Chapter 13

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Another gigantic foot came down from the clouds. It landed hard right next to the mass grave and caused the earth to shake and resonate violently.

The two hiding in the mud nearly flew up from the shockwaves.

A large, terrifying hand reached down from the clouds and scooped up the entire mass grave, along with the demon that was as large as a small hill.

The large hand pulled back and returned to the clouds.

There was a dull chewing sound that rumbled like muffled thunder.

The sky darkened, and cold, black blood started pouring down. It rained down, again and again, causing the empty space in front of them to be drenched in black, and it gave off a stench that made one feel like puking.

After a long time, the chewing sound from the clouds stopped, and the black blood eventually stopped raining down.

The two gigantic feet started walking and moved away with a thunderous sound. It only took a few steps for it to vanish from Gu Qingshan and Zhao Liu’s line of sight.

Zhao Liu was completely stunned as he said, “What was that monster?”

Gu Qingshan’s heart completely sank as he murmured, “Even that demon has appeared…”

Zhao Liu continued to repeat to himself, “What was that monster? What was that monster?”

Gu Qingshan couldn’t be bothered with him and started pondering this matter in his heart.

That was an extremely rare demon—a Faceless Giant. It was an incredibly powerful creature of the Chaos Species.

Faceless Giants would not appear just like that. It would only receive a call for help when demons simply couldn’t conquer the humans it had surrounded, and it would come to the battleground to attack the humans.

According to his memories from his previous life, since this year was only the last year of Cheng Ping, that meant that the first battles between man and demon had just started. So why were there Faceless Giants already?

The first time a Faceless Giant had appeared was in the first year after the players from the real world had entered the game.

At that time, a huge war had broken out between mankind and demons. The war lasted an entire year before ending, and Gu Qingshan remembered this very clearly.

In the final deciding battle of that year, there were tens of millions of players, but they couldn’t do anything about the Faceless Giant, so they just had to watch as the Faceless Giant broke through the border.

The players then had only entered the game for a short period of one year, and they hadn’t reached a high level of skill or cultivation yet. The appearance of the Faceless Giant had made all the players feel deeply helpless.

In the end, it took one of the Three Saints, Xuanyuan Heavenly Prime, to personally come out and kill off this demon.

But by the time that had happened, the border was already half-ruined, the human army had already collapsed, and they had to move farther back to allow a huge area of land to be their buffer zone.

In this first battle, the humans had lost here.

But!

This was the last year of Cheng Ping, so the battle had just started, and humans and demons were still sounding each other out.

So for a Faceless Giant to appear at this time didn’t seem to make sense in terms of the timeline.

Unless something that even Gu Qingshan didn’t know about had happened.

Gu Qingshan felt that there was a fog covering his heart, but he couldn’t seem to clear it away and couldn’t see the truth hiding behind it.

Zhao Liu’s eyes had lost their soul, and he was still repeating that same line.

“What monster was that…”

With a loud slap, Gu Qingshan hit Zhao Liu on the back of his neck and he lost consciousness.

Zhao Liu had been too severely traumatized earlier and seemed to be going crazy, so it was better that he took a rest first.

When the players saw a Faceless Giant for the first time, many of them were also deeply terrified. But this realm was real, and Zhao Liu was just an ordinary person. After seeing such a demon all of a sudden, it was very possible that he could go mad from fright.

Gu Qingshan carried Zhao Liu back into the room and flung him onto a cot before returning to the entrance of the camp.

Since a Faceless Giant had appeared, then there might be armies following it.

After just a few minutes, a demon army appeared.

A Gloomy Fire Evil Snake with one horn slithered through the forest, meandering its body across the surface of the ground without a sound, leaving a burnt trail behind it.

Seated on its back was a creature that looked like a human and that was fully covered in a gray armor. But its hands and feet were more like claws, and there were no other features on its face besides a huge and bloodied mouth that could open up 180 degrees.

That was the insanely bloodthirsty Blood Drinking Demon.

If it managed to find its way into a human army, it could massacre a small group.

After that first Gloomy Fire Evil Snake had appeared, even more Gloomy Fire Evil Snakes appeared one after another. There was a Blood Drinking Demon sitting on top of each snake.

One, two, three… there were twenty in total.

Gu Qingshan held his breath and stood in the camp as he quietly counted them.

The demon army quickly passed the camp, went in the direction of the Faceless Giant, and disappeared into the forest.

Throughout this entire process, the camp had not been discovered, and this was a good thing.

But Gu Qingshan couldn’t find it in himself to be happy about that.

Gloomy Fire Evil Snakes were the best at killing stealthily. They moved without a single sound, naturally came with fire—one of the Five Elements—and were extremely difficult to deal with.

Never mind how terrifying the Blood Drinking Demons that rode on them were.

The commander-in-chief of this particular camp had died at the hands of several Blood Drinking Demons.

Within the army, there was an unspoken agreement between all the soldiers that if anyone ran into a Blood Drinking Demon during their mission, they could give up their mission right away and they wouldn’t be punished by their officers.

Only generals were able to go up against this sort of demon.

Twenty Gloomy Fire Evil Snakes and twenty Blood Drinking Demons could start an ambush.

They followed the footsteps of the Faceless Giant and left quietly.

Something big was going to happen.

Gu Qingshan was just thinking about this when he suddenly noticed a small bird perch itself on a tree branch outside the camp.

This bird had a human face. It took a short rest on the tree branch and was going to continue in the same direction as the Faceless Giant.

“I’m so tired… so tired. I’m almost catching up!”

The strange bird whined.

It spread its wings and shook the blood off itself. Then, it used its short beak to tend to the long wound under its wing.

This wound was very deep and continued to bleed now and then.

Gu Qingshan looked intensely at the strange bird’s wound and only considered the situation for one second before he raised his military bow and took a shot.

Rapid Shot!

He shot three at once, then another shot of six arrows, and finally a slew of twelve with no pause in between.

After Gu Qingshan finished shooting these 21 arrows at one go, his hands were still trembling, despite having the skill of Stabilization.

In those few moments, Gu Qingshan had used all the strength he had.

Since he had made an attack, he was definitely not allowing his target to leave this place alive. Otherwise, a strange bird with this sort of intelligence would definitely draw a demon army to this place.

The sharp arrows became flashes of death as they flew out of the camp and aimed straight for that strange bird.

Out of the first three that flew out, one of them hit the strange bird, causing it to struggle and start flying. It spread its wings wide immediately and managed to dodge the next six arrows, but was surrounded by the last twelve arrows and became fatally injured.

“Soul Power +2. Current Soul Power: 3/5”

“You have fully grasped the skill of Stabilization and made a breakthrough in the battle. This skill will upgrade in level: Steadiness.”

A warm rush flowed through Gu Qingshan’s arms and took a while before it went away.

A Growing Skill?

Gu Qingshan was shocked. He nocked an arrow to the bow and drew it.

His arms didn’t move at all and weren’t even trembling.

Gu Qingshan tried moving forward, backward, left, right, sprinting, moving suddenly—no matter how he moved, it didn’t affect his arms’ steadiness at all.

His arms were so steady that it was as if they had been in a position to aim accurately right from the start.

This skill was not bad at all!

Gu Qingshan reached a conclusion after putting down his bow.

It wasn’t that sort of legendary Growing Skill but rather just an ordinary improvement of a skill.

But that wasn’t too bad either.

Stabilization was a basic level skill, while Steadiness was a slightly higher-level skill. War God Techniques could make a basic level skill turn into a higher level and more powerful skill, so this capability was pretty incredible.

Steadiness seemed like it only increased the stability of one’s movements, but it was extremely useful in practical situations.

From now on, Gu Qingshan’s hands wouldn’t tremble at all even if he was moving extremely quickly. He could maintain a repeated attack under all sorts of battle circumstances.

When it came to powerful creatures that moved slowly, he could attack them while running and wouldn’t have to worry that his position would change as a result of his movement.

Gu Qingshan kept his bow away and took the demon bird into the camp. He started a fire and threw the bird in to be burnt to ashes.

No matter how strange a demon was, it could no longer pull any funny tricks once it was completely burnt.

“Hmm? What’s this?”

Gu Qingshan exclaimed when he looked at the pile of ashes after the fire had completely burnt up the bird.

There was a blood-red Jade Plate lying quietly among the ashes.