Chapter 44: Who Is a Player and Who Is an NPC?

“You want to leave?”

“Did you ask this Chieftain here for permission?”

Qin Shujian watched the broken sword fly toward him, and his gaze finally grew cold.

In the next moment, ROAAAAR!

An earth-shattering roar of a tiger resounded through the entire forest, sending hundreds of birds into flight out of fright.

The roar’s ferocity was like a typhoon gaining speed and like the dark and bitterly cold nights of winter.

Everyone was immediately stunned by the impact of this intense aura. The players who were running for their lives suddenly came to a halt.

BOOM!

The figure of a black tiger appeared and roared as an icy blade suddenly gleamed brightly.

The broken sword shattered into pieces and went flying everywhere just by coming into contact with these shockwaves.

KAA BOOOOM!

It felt as if the earth was shaking and the mountains were swaying.

It also felt like a ferocious tiger had been awakened from its deep slumber, and it erupted with an authority that belonged to an animal that was king over the rest.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

Many of the players didn’t even know what was going on before becoming bright flashes of white lights and vanishing.

When the bright gleam of the blade subsided, the icy blade reflected a different sort of color under the bright sun.

A long gully started from the blade and extended outwards into the distance.

Gulp!

A player barely managed to swallow a mouthful of saliva as his throat was so dry, it was having difficulty working.

The scene in front of them had shocked them terribly.

That was only one slash of the blade.

Two-thirds of the players had been sent back to the Respawn Zone just like that.

The terrible difference in ability made even Liu Qinghong and Fu Moyan suddenly feel overwhelmed by despair.

They had utterly no idea.

They didn’t know the Mountain Thief Boss of Mount Mingai would be this powerful.

If they had known earlier, Liu Qinghong and Fu Moyan would never have brought their teams over to this area to complete their mission.

With a Boss at this level, they probably had to gather a few hundred or even 1,000 players together to defeat him.

Step, step!

Qin Shujian held his Tiger Head Blade in his hand and slowly walked towards the players who had been forced to stop in their tracks.

Niu Feng got over his shock and started to get the other Mountain Bandits to cut off any exit route the players might have.

You could say, in just barely ten seconds, Liu Qinghong, Fu Moyan, and the rest were now trapped in a desperate situation with no way out.

“Qinghong!” Liu Qingqing ran over to where Liu Qinghong was, and her face was covered with great fear.

It couldn’t be helped. Qin Shujian’s demeanor now was rather frightening after all.

Even though she knew this was just a game, she still couldn’t help but feel afraid as this man’s aura continued to cover them.

Liu Qinghong patted the hand that was grabbing his shoulder and was about to speak.

WOONG!

A terrifying gleam that came from a blade had covered him.

BOOM!

Liu Qinghong, Fu Moyan, and everyone else completely disappeared, as if this gleam had swallowed everyone up at once.

When he saw this, Niu Feng gasped in his heart.

He knew that Qin Shujian could be very frightening, so before Qin Shujian could fully unleash an attack, Niu Feng decided to surrender first and offer Mount Mingai to Qin Shujian with both hands.

The scene he just witnessed made him feel that the decision he made before this was definitely the right one.

The level of those two outlander leaders wasn’t much weaker than himself.

If Qin Shujian weren’t around today, Mount Mingai’s men might not be a match for the outlander’s attack.

But even though the outlanders were strong, they couldn’t even hold up against one attack from this chieftain of his.

Two swings of the blade!

It just took two swings!

Dozens of outlanders were completely annihilated just like that.

Even though Niu Feng had never experienced this terrifying gleam, he could sense how frightening it was.

Qin Shujian looked at the items strewn all over the ground as he kept his blade back into its sheath and also kept his aura away immediately, “Clean up the place and keep everything that’s useful.”

“Yes, Chieftain!” Niu Feng was as polite and respectful as could be.

He then commanded the other Mountain Bandits to pick up all the items that the players had left behind after dying.

These players didn’t have a lot on themselves, and even after death, they didn’t always leave everything behind.

But there were always players who had bad luck.

A few dozen players had died, but they had only left behind ten-odd items. Most of them were weapons like knives and swords, which was just nice for these Mountain Bandits to use.

The large sabers that Mountain Bandits carried were of inferior quality.

But the knives and swords left behind after the players died were clearly of a higher quality than their large sabers.

“In this world, who are the players and who are NPCs?” Qin Shujian stood there quietly as this question popped into his mind.

When players killed an NPC, the NPC could revive.

When an NPC killed a player, the player could also be revived.

Even when it came to fighting monsters to level up, the scenario was the same.

This made Qin Shujian suddenly feel that he was the player and the players were NPCs instead.

But, this sort of thinking only lasted for a while before he cast it aside.

He was the Liangshan Stronghold Chieftain now.

He was a powerful Boss to the players.

This had decided that he would always be on the opposite side of the players right from the beginning.

“Liangshan Stronghold Elite Leader Wang Tiezhu has killed more than enough outlanders so that he will level up to Martial Entry-Level Five!”

A prompt from the system caught Qin Shujian’s attention.

Ever since he got the Mountain Bandits from Liangshan Stronghold to enter Messy Stone Forest and hunt down the players, he would get a message from the system from time-to-time.

Either it was about the Mountain Bandits leveling up, or it was about the Mountain Bandits dying.

But Qin Shujian had ignored the majority of the messages.

Only this particular one caught his attention.

“Martial Entry-Level Five!” There was a bright gleam in Qin Shujian’s eyes.

It required more experience points to level up with every increase in level.

Even though Mountain Bandits couldn’t see how far along they were in terms of accumulating experience, he could still make a good guess based on these Mountain Bandits’ rate of leveling up.

But he hadn’t entered Messy Stone Forest for very long.

Half a day?

Or was it one day?

Wang Tiezhu had gone from Martial Entry-Level Four to Martial Entry-Level Five. That had got to be too fast, right?”

“Unless…”

……

“Attack!”

Wang Tiezhu’s blood was boiling, and he was ready to kill with his large saber in hand. He had just broken through to Martial Entry-Level Five, so his aura was at its peak right now.

Next to him were ten-odd Mountain Bandits as well as 20 to 30 players.

All the Mountain Bandits that had walked out from Liangshan Stronghold were all no less than Martial Entry-Level Three.

While the players here were mostly Martial Entry-Level Twos, a few were already at Martial Entry-Level Three.

But the number of players was at least twice the number of Mountain Bandits.

So even though the players were not as powerful, they made up for it in terms of their numbers.

“D*mn it, it seems like this Boss’ level has gone up!” One of the players clashed head-on with Wang Tiezhu, and the impact made his arm hurt terribly as he puked blood and stumbled backward.

“Chen Gong, go up and help to fend off the attacks from this Boss.”

Huang Kun’s expression was grim, but he continued to give out commands in an orderly fashion.

He thought that he had merely run into a high-level opponent in the wild, but after exchanging a few blows, he realized that this fellow was like a low-level Boss.

Given his team’s capability, it was a bit tough to fight off a low-level Boss and a dozen ordinary enemies, but it wasn’t entirely impossible either.

But now, this Boss had suddenly broken through to the next level, and this had created tremendous pressure on them all of a sudden.

If they couldn’t hold up against this Boss, then they’d make a terrible loss this time around.

After all, to surround and kill Wang Tiezhu, Huang Kun’s team had already lost 20 or 30 players so far.

The price for respawning was to drop by one level within the game.

The price of dying was too high a price to pay.