Bai Mu walked through the village and realized there was not a single living soul left.
Whoever ransacked the village spared no one. Corpses were scattered everywhere.
Judging by the state of decomposition, they had been dead for at least three days. The stench of rotting flesh hanging in the air was nauseating.
Someone like Adai, who hunted year-round, was accustomed to blood, and could expertly skin prey, remained relatively unfazed. However, Ashi, a girl who rarely ventured out, had turned deathly pale and was gagging. Fortunately, the villagers possessed strong constitutions, and no one actually vomited.
The vast majority of the fatal wounds on the bodies were blade cuts. From the severed limbs and the clean slices through their clothing, it was easy to reconstruct the scene: the raiders had wielded sharp, high-quality swords and sabers.
Only a small fraction of the victims had been killed by firearms. Those shot down were clad in armor; they were likely the village's ruling class. Since blades struggled to pierce their armor, the attackers had used firearms to blast clean through both armor and chest. Judging by the shape of the projectiles, the design of these firearms must be quite primitive and crude, far inferior to the shotgun in Bai Mu's backpack or the revolver he carried. Still, they were far more advanced than bows and arrows. Since they had developed firearms, they had undoubtedly figured out how to use explosives. At the same time, the bullet holes in the corpses reminded Bai Mu of that massive, heavily scarred wild boar.
When that wild boar first appeared, it looked like a literal honeycomb. Bai Mu had not thought too deeply about its appearance at the time, but in hindsight, the wounds covering the massive beast looked exactly as if it had been peppered by firearms. If an entire squad armed with muskets had fired a continuous volley at the boar, they could have easily inflicted such injuries.
This would also explain why the giant boar harbored such deep resentment toward humans. It had been blasted into that state by people. Likely fueled by an unyielding grudge, it had encountered some unknown anomaly along the way. As a result, even though it sustained fatal injuries, it did not die. Instead, it acquired a powerful new strength and mutated into a so-called Mountain Evil God.
The exact truth remained uncertain, but Bai Mu felt there was a high probability that the human society on this side was intrinsically linked to the Mountain Evil God. He estimated that as long as Players survived in the Script, they would inevitably cross the mountain range and arrive in this land sooner or later.
The spread of the Mountain Evil God and the curse would continuously compress the Players' living space. Withered forests, polluted water sources, and the relentless pursuit of the Mountain Evil God would force the Players to flee step by step. Ultimately, they would inevitably escape eastward and arrive in this region. This would likely happen in the mid-to-late stages of the Script, around the fifteen to twenty-day mark, when surviving Players would be compelled to seek refuge here.
By then, they would discover that the birth of the Mountain Evil God had some connection to the humans living here.
He had arrived here on the fifth day, effectively bypassing the normal timeline of the Script. For a Player, this served as a sort of "reward." It relieved him of the urgent anxiety regarding monsters chasing from behind, affording him a more relaxed timeframe to delve into the depths of the Script.
He knew that Paradise offered multiple ways to clear its Scripts. A Script never restricted a Player's freedom. No matter what method one used to complete the Main Quest, as long as it was done, it was deemed correct.
Bai Mu used his Night Vision Camcorder to record some of the tragic scenes in the village, treating it as news gathering. Xiao Wei displayed a sorrowful expression for the deceased. She did not harbor much fear toward the corpses; after all, when she previously swapped bodies with the Witch, she had personally experienced something countless times more bloody and agonizing.
However, the devastated village reminded her of her own home and family. These villagers, who relied on farming for their livelihood, had done absolutely nothing wrong. An unexpected disaster had simply descended upon them, costing them their lives and leaving them to die miserably in their fields and in front of their homes.
As for why the raiders had committed such a massacre, the answer was not hard to find.
After doing a lap around the village, Bai Mu found that not a single grain of rice was left in the houses, nor was there any sign of livestock like chickens, ducks, cattle, or sheep. Near the largest house, he discovered a stone fire pit filled with embers. Scattered beside the pit were the bones of cattle and sheep, along with the smaller bones of poultry. After pillaging the land and stripping the villagers of their food, the raiders had lit a bonfire near this house that very night and feasted. A few half-naked corpses of young girls lay near the stone pit, making it glaringly obvious what had transpired here.
Such events were not uncommon in human history. In chaotic eras, human lives were cheaper than grass.
Nevertheless, it still made Bai Mu deeply uncomfortable. Many of the corpses were pitted and mangled, bearing the gnaw marks of snakes, rats, birds, and beasts. Their killers had no intention of dealing with the bodies, simply leaving them exposed to rot on the dirt.
Even though this was a world with supernatural powers, capable of birthing monsters like the Mountain Evil God, these people had not transformed into vengeful spirits or zombies upon death. Despite dying with profound resentment and terror, they had no way to enact vengeance upon their enemies.
Becoming a malicious ghost required a certain kind of talent, a fact often documented in horror films. Typically, only a girl possessing an extreme Yin constitution born in a Yin year, on a Yin day, at a Yin hour who died wearing bright red clothing and harboring immense resentment could transform into a life-claiming poltergeist. When ordinary people died unjustly, they simply stayed dead. They could not even become malicious ghosts; they could only rot in dark corners, much like the corpses before Bai Mu. After walking around the village, the Shaman desperately tried to persuade Bai Mu to leave the area immediately.
However, Bai Mu still spent a few minutes having Witch help him drag the corpses into a pile and set them ablaze.
On one hand, he genuinely despised seeing such a tragedy. On the other hand, an excess of corpses would breed plagues. Moreover, he could not rule out the possibility that if the Mountain Evil God came here, it might spread its curse and mutate these bodies into zombie-like monsters.
It never hurt to be cautious. In a certain story, a hero would grind even low-level mobs like goblins into dust, refusing to stop until they were obliterated by an ultimate skill. The reason for this extreme behavior was that in his past life, the hero had failed to properly dispose of mob corpses, allowing the final boss to resurrect them during the decisive battle, which ultimately led to the hero's gruesome death.
The thatched huts and corpses went up in flames together, sending sparks drifting into the sky. Xiao Wei clasped her hands over her chest, closed her eyes, and silently prayed for the deceased. Afterward, Bai Mu used the hoofprints and footprints on the ground to identify the direction the village's butchers had gone, and he led his group after them. These people were armed with firearms; perhaps he could pry some information about the Mountain Evil God from their mouths. Even if they refused to talk, confiscating a batch of equipment to arm his "believers" would still be a welcome outcome.