As soon as Max saw his spear hitting the bandit, he took a few steps back and hid behind a tree. When the spear had landed, there were a few shouts of alarm, but it didn’t seem like any of the bandits spotted him. Even with his help, the fight was still skewed heavily in the bandit's favor.

A few minutes had passed and footsteps were approaching.

“Come out you sneaky villager, all you’re good is for ambushing!”

The bandits had sent someone over to check his location. He knew that he wasn’t well hidden, he was just standing behind one of the larger trees.

“Ahh, there you are!”

Resigning to the upcoming fight, he drew his dagger and stepped out behind the tree. To his surprise, the man wasn’t even looking in his direction. It was only when he made himself known did the trickster turn his way. He had clearly gotten played. In the end, he was still too green at this.

‘Fuck me, where did my 22 Intelligence go?’

The bandit looked to be in his late 30s with a patchy brown beard. He was wearing tattered clothes with quite a few holes in them. In his right hand was a saber that had at least three times the reach as the claw dagger. The bandit was a cultivator but was not one of the two stronger ones.

Analyzing…

Human Bandit

Status: Alive

Cultivation: Body Tempering 4th Stage

“So you’re the little fucker with the spear, where are they now? You think you can kill with that little thing?”

Max didn’t respond to provocation, instead, he got into the same stands he was when he fought the wolves. His center of gravity was lowered, his left hand was parallel to the ground, and his dagger was readied.

“Huh, not a talker, are you? Fine by me, a dead man does need to speak. I like your robes, maybe I’ll take them off your corpse once the gang —”

Max was expecting the bandit to finish his sentence, but instead, he had already charged. They were only 10 to 15 feet away and the bandit had closed the distance in a few short breaths. He had his eyes on the saber, trying to see where the man would strike. He was so focused on the saber that he was taken by surprise when a fistful of sand was thrown in his face.

“Agh!”

Max had once again underestimated his opponent. He had originally thought the man’s saber was the biggest threat to him, but now obviously he was wrong. The bandit had outsmarted him several times in this short exchange.

Before he could blink the sand out of his eyes, he heard something swing down for his head. Instinctively raising his arm, the attack was easily blocked. The bandit’s saber impacted his bracers and it bounded off. This time it was his opponent’s turn to be surprised.

When the bandit saw his scheme had worked, he was already thinking about how he could gloat to his friends after the battle. But he did not account for the armour underneath Max’s sleeves nor did he realize how strong the person he was fighting against was.

Just the mere act of raising his arm had rebounded the bandit’s saber leaving him open. Even blind, Max could tell that he had successfully blocked the strike. Taking a chance, instead of stepping back to regroup, he took a step forward into his opponent’s guard and stabbed out with his dagger.

Max could feel his dagger sliding into something and in the next moment there was a sharp gasp. Having gotten this feedback, he unhesitatingly stabbed out four more times. There were resistance in the first three stabs, but the fourth met nothing but air. There was a soft thump in front of him. Blinking the sand out of his eyes, his vision returned to him. The bandit was laying on his back with four different holes all around his torso. The man was looking up into the sky unbelievably. After a few more seconds, a new notification hovered in the periphery of his attention.

While he did help kill two bandits, the villagers were still outnumbered 14 to 16 and that was including the teenagers that were staying back. Not only did the bandits have superior numbers, but they also had stronger combatants.

As Max was debating how he could best help in the fight, a loud horn rang out from the direction of the settlement. The horn was accompanied by a group of men on horseback riding over. At their current speed, it wouldn’t take them long to reach the fighting.

The faces of the villagers had considerably brightened when they heard the horn. The bandits on the other hand immediately disengaged. After they each backed off a few steps, they all turned and ran for the treelines, the exact direction Max was in.

Seeing this, Max picked up his belongings and started sprinting to his right. The fight had been about half a football field’s length away from him. The bandits were fast, but Max was even faster. By the time the group had reached the treeline, he had already made a half loop and was closing in on the villagers.

Before he could get close, the strongest one stepped forward “Halt! Who are you?”

Max sheathed his dagger and held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender.

“I mean you no harm. My name is Ma Xie. I used to live in the forest.”

He had given some thought to what to call himself after his encounter with the Ye couple. They had mentioned that his name was odd to them. Ma Xie had been the nickname that his paternal grandparents had called him. Given the punctuation of the Ye duo’s name, he thought “Ma Xie” was a fitting name for him to use.

Once he finished his introduction the group of men from the village arrived. The one in the lead eyed him suspiciously but didn’t say anything. Instead, he directed a question at the one that had called out to Max.

“Wang Wu, what happened here?”

The men looked away from Max and answered “Li’ge, we were ambushed on our way back from the hunt. The bandits were waiting for us at our rabbit snares. The Zhang brothers, Yang Jie, and Liu Hu stayed back to slow them down. But they still caught up to us.

One of the teenagers rushed out and started running to one of the bodies. Seeing this, one of the men on horseback followed the teenager.

“And what about this person?” the man asked Wang Wu while pointing in Max’s direction.

“We’re not sure if he’s a bandit, he didn’t run when all the others did. He says he lives in the forest.” Wang Wu answered.

Max repeated himself “My name is Ma Xie. I used to live in the forest.”

Then added, “And I am not a bandit, I even helped kill two.” After saying that he pointed to the body with a spear sticking out the back of its knee and the body that was closer to the treeline.

The men that Max had helped piped up and said “Li’ge, Wang Wu I saw him throw that spear and in all honesty, it likely saved my life.”

With a cupped fist the villager turned to him “Little brother Ma, I, Chen Ying thank you for your assistance back there. Because of you, I am able to see my family again. Hu’er, come thank your father’s savior.”

The teenager that was standing behind the man named Chen Ying stepped forward and mimicked his father’s cupped hands and said “Thank you for saving my dad.”

At this point, Max started to feel a bit awkward. Aside from the Ye couple and Ma Erk, he hadn’t really talked to anyone in the almost month he’s been in this new world. In his previous life, he wasn’t an extrovert nor did he have social anxiety, but it was always hard being the center of attention, especially if it was a group of people he didn’t know.

Scratching the back of his head, he answered “Haha, I didn’t do much. Besides, I’m sure anyone would do the same thing if they were in my position.”

As he finished his sentence, a grief-filled scream filled the air. It came from the teenager that had left the group. He was also the one that was openly weeping when Max had first surveyed the fight. Hearing this, most of the men could only frowned and shaked their heads.

“Young friend, I am Li Kung, the Village Head of Bai Si Zun. Thank you for helping my people. I wish we could have met under better circumstances. But as you can see, we have many brothers who died today so please forgive me for being brief.”

After saying that Li Kung rode out with half his men presumably to comfort the teenage boy and to gather the dead. The reminding five horsemen each got off their mounts and helped the most injured up the horse, Chen Ying was among them. There weren’t enough horses for all the injured. Some of the newcomers helped carry those who were hurt. Once everyone was ready, they made their way to the village. Max settled in next to Chen Ying and his son, Chen Hu.

“Chen Ying, can you tell me a bit about Bai Si Zun? I’ve lived all my life in the forest and don’t know too much about the outside world.”

“Ahh, is that the case? Bai Si Zun is as small as a village can get. There’s only about 100 of us, well even less now that the Zhang brothers, Yang Jie, and Liu Hu have left us.” There was a moment of silence after Chen Ying said that.

Max didn’t know what to say to that, and can only reply with the basic, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Little brother Ma, you don’t have to be. The bandit attacks have nothing to do with you. You even killed the one that took Liu Hu’s life. We must thank you for that.”

Max just nodded and smiled at that.

“Almost everyone in Bai Si Zun is a farmer. The Bai Si Zun is one of the villages owned by the Li Clan of which Li’ge is a member. In a way, we are all members of the Li Clan. Each year someone from the Clan would come and collect the grains that we grew. In return, we get some cultivation resources and other stuff we need.”

“Hmm, I see…”

‘That sounds a lot like feudalism where the land is owned by the lords and the servants are farming it. Well, at least they get something in return.’

In this current group, there were a total of 19 people. Aside from the three teenagers who were non-cultivators, there were seven more, five from the group that was fighting the bandits and two from the group that came with Li Kung. Everyone else here was between the 3rd and 5th Stages of Body Tempering. Max could also distinctly feel the four that had gone with Li Kung were stronger. When he used Analyze on them, the cultivation part had returned questions for Li Kung and two that were on the left and right of him. The other two were both 6th Stage of Body Tempering.

‘Damn. If just the farmers here were already that strong, then how strong would the Li Clan be?’

As he thought of that, he let his notifications come to the forefront of his attention.

Enemy killed. You gained experience.

+40 experience points

‘Sigh, why do I get the feeling there’s going to be a lot of those from humans in the near future…’