Chapter 43: Sacrifice Array
The battle at the city wall was completely over after ten minutes. The dragon guard breathed out five times in a row, and the remaining gnolls and kobolds were defeated. Some fled, while others lay down and surrendered.
Those who escape will be ignored, and those who surrender will be killed after being disarmed.
However, the battle was not over yet, because those who escaped fled to the stone hall in the center of the tribe, where some remnants were still there.
At the same time, Li Qing's powerful soul sensed the disgusting breath of death coming from the direction of the stone hall.
The troops were divided into two groups, checking the tents and cabins one by one to eliminate any that had escaped the net.
The troops continued to clear the area until they reached the center of the tribe and regrouped.
The stone hall is located in the center of a large square. There is a large area around it with no buildings, only open space. There are many strange stone statues on the edge of the square. They are neither gnolls nor humans, but strange-looking monster statues that Li Qing has never seen before.
The stone hall is not big and its surface is severely eroded by wind, but there are no plants such as moss and vines.
There were some complex and strange pictures carved on it, but the wind erosion was too severe and the pictures were too distorted. Li Qing looked at it for a long time but couldn't figure out what was painted on it.
Of course, his attention was not here, but inside the stone hall.
The stone hall is not very big, but judging from its structure, there must be an underground floor, which means that the main body of the stone hall is underground.
So many gnolls and kobolds can hide in there, so the underground place must be quite large.
A small tribe of gnolls, and this kind of building...
All we can say is that their ancestors were indeed once wealthy.
But that was in the past. As the plane was shattered and its origin leaked, the power level of the plane declined year by year. Now it cannot even accommodate people above the sixth level of transcendence. Even the leader is only at the third level. What threat can this pose?
As Li Qing waved his hand, five infantrymen walked in front and stepped into the stone hall.
Li Qing did not follow in. The leader was An Erqiu and the three brothers of the Xie family, who brought in forty subordinates. Long Shou stayed outside and guarded him.
Li Qing was not idle outside either. He sent people to mobilize more than a hundred civilians from the city and asked them to demolish the village of the jackal tribe.
Tents, wooden houses, stone walls, etc. were all dismantled and piled up, then stored in the palm space, decomposed, and reassembled into plant fibers, wood fibers, stones, metals and other raw materials.
The more basic supplies like these you have, the better, so you can pick them up whenever you need them.
When the stockade was half demolished, two archers came out of the stone hall and reported to him:
"My Lord, Knight An Erqiu found a strange thing underground. Please go and take a look."
Li Qing nodded and led Long Shou and ten of his subordinates into the stone hall.
They walked down a slope that went deep into the ground for about twenty meters and came to the underground level of the stone temple. Two soldiers led them forward, passed a stone gate, and came to a large square. In the center of the square, they saw a blood-red stone pillar, and the sides were crowded with the corpses of gnolls and dog-headed men.
A large amount of blood flowed out, flowing along the cracks in the floor towards the blood-red stone pillar in the center.
The shape of this stone pillar looks like several strange creatures hugging each other.
An Erqiu ran over and whispered:
"I didn't encounter any enemies along the way. After I got down to this floor, I found that all the gnolls and kobolds were dead. The strange thing is that they didn't have any wounds on their bodies, but all the blood flowed out and seeped into the ground, along the stone pillar, and even the flesh and blood were slowly absorbed by the floor."
Li Qing frowned and looked at the square and the blood-stained stone pillar in the center of the square.
The powerful soul perception did not sense any special existence. The only special thing was this stone pillar.
In his powerful soul perception, a faint wave slowly spread out with the stone pillar as the center.
A large amount of blood flowed along the grooves on the square to the stone pillars. It seemed that as the stone pillars absorbed a large amount of blood, they seemed to come alive.
"Could this thing come back to life after absorbing enough blood and flesh?"
Li Qing pinched his brows and said to Long Shou:
"Try burning it."
Without saying a word, Long Shou opened his mouth, gathered his strength, and spit out a breath of flaming dragon breath.
When the flaming dragon's breath burned the blood and corpses on the ground, many of the surrounding men suddenly covered their heads and screamed.
"Everyone retreat and retreat to the upper level of the stone hall."
Li Qing stared at the stone pillar wrapped in flames with his eyes sharp. At the moment when the fire burned the corpse and flesh, he felt a strange wave coming from the stone pillar.
“That’s a real problem.”
Li Qing thought about it, took out a three-meter-long wooden pillar from the space in his palm and threw it on the ground:
"Knock down this pillar!"
Long Shou immediately stepped forward and picked up the wooden pillar with a diameter of nearly 50 centimeters. Together with the three brothers of the Xie family, they rushed towards the stone pillar.
"boom!"
The stone pillar shook violently, but did not fall.
Li Qing discovered that when the wooden stake hit the stone pillar, the sound was very small, as if it was hitting flesh and blood.
“Come again!”
The wooden pillar retreated two meters and crashed into him again.
This time, there was a crisp sound at the bottom of the stone pillar, and it broke and fell down.
Almost instantly, everyone's eyes fell on the fracture, and they discovered that the inner circle of the broken stone pillar was stone, and the edge was a layer of tangled flesh and blood, as if the stone pillar was slowly coming alive.
He did not see the necromancer as he had imagined, and even now he had not sensed the breath of death.
"Is there no necromancer, but..."
"strangeness!"
If there is no necromancer, where did the werewolf undead puppet come from?
But then again, the stone pillar before us was indeed absorbing the flesh and blood of the corpse to revitalize itself.
If there is enough flesh and blood from corpses, the stone pillar will gradually turn into flesh and blood, and then... it may be resurrected as a powerful monster.
It is obvious that the flesh and blood of these corpses are not enough to revive the stone pillar.
Judging from the number of corpses and the degree of fleshing and blooding, even if this werewolf tribe was at its peak, the flesh and blood from its corpses would probably not be enough to completely revive this thing.
Judging from the appearance of this thing, this stone pillar monster is obviously not of the same race as the gnoll.
In other words, this stone temple may not have been built by the gnolls.
It was just a group of gnolls who discovered this stone temple and the stone pillar inside, and gathered into a tribe under the influence of this unknown force.
However, whether this is true or not has nothing to do with Li Qing.
He directly opened the space in his palm and sucked the broken half-flesh stone pillar into it.
The moment the half-flesh and blood stone pillar was taken away, he suddenly felt an invisible wave exploding with the stone hall as the center, quickly extending to the entire werewolf tribe, stopping after expanding to the edge of the tribe, and then returning like lightning.
After the invisible wave was withdrawn, the entire werewolf tribe seemed to be stripped of a layer of color and became a little gray.
And that invisible wave returned in less than three seconds, gathering into a ball of light above his flesh and blood pillar, exactly the same as the ball of light that condensed after the werewolf leader died in battle.
Li Qing rubbed his hands excitedly. This thing should be the trophy for destroying the werewolf tribe.
The world law of the new era is that spoils of war will be gathered after defeating a powerful enemy.
He reached out and held the ball of light in his hand, and it quickly transformed into a small box with an exquisite crystal shell, attracting the attention of many people.
Li Qing opened the box without hesitation, and there were six cards inside.
An Erqiu rubbed his hands excitedly and said:
"Boss, what's in here? Can I see it?"
Li Qing shrugged:
“Of course you can watch it!”
He took out six cards from the box and spread them out in front of them.
Maybe it was because the leader hero of the gnolls had already condensed the treasure, but the reward for destroying the gnoll tribe was a little worse than he imagined.
There are quite a few cards, six in total, but the quality is a bit disappointing.
The first one is a one-star hero card that can transform any professional into a hero.
The second card is a gnoll card, which contains 100 gnolls, half male and half female. After activation, you can summon 100 gnolls in the divine realm.
The third one is a kobold card, which contains 500 kobolds, half male and half female.
The fourth card is a Gnoll Promotion Card that can be used 50 times, starting from a level 5 Gnoll, promoted to a level 14 Gnoll Warrior, a level 24 Gnoll Warrior, and a level 34 Gnoll Chieftain.
The fifth card is a Kobold Promotion Card that can be used 100 times, which is the promotion path for the Kobold leader.
The sixth card is a one-time prop card - Death Sacrifice, which contains a one-time sacrifice array. After summoning the sacrifice array, you can sacrifice the life and soul of the sacrifice to some mysterious existence, and then the reward is determined according to the quality of the sacrifice.
It is obvious that this death sacrifice is related to the magic circle under the stone temple in front of us. Perhaps the magic circle under it is the sacrificial magic circle.
Li Qing thought for a moment, put away the Death Sacrifice Card and the Hero Card, then walked up to Xie Zhu and said:
"I am a person who rewards and punishes clearly. You three brothers have played a significant role in this operation. I said before that I would give you a benefit. Now you can choose any two of these four cards."
"Of course, if you don't want this, I will prepare another benefit for you when we return to the mentor's castle."
Xie Zhu thought for a moment and asked:
"May I know what the benefit is?"
"A large counterweight trebuchet, an arrow tower, and a subsidy of 200,000."
"Well……"
Xie Zhu was silent for a moment, then said:
"I want to choose two cards."
Li Qing nodded:
"Sure, which two do you want?"
"Gnoll Cards and Gnoll Promotion Cards."
"OK!"
Li Qing took out two cards without hesitation and handed them to Xie Zhu.
At this point, the cost of hiring the three Xie brothers has been paid.
Next, Li Qing gave an order and his subordinates began to dismantle the stone temple. Such large stones were all supplies.
Then they returned to the temporary camp not far away, picked up all the laborers, and tucked away the temporary camp.
Li Qing did not leave for home immediately. There were still twelve or thirteen days left before the second month's big class. It would only take him two or three days to go back, leaving him ten days to plunder resources.
He rebuilt a temporary camp within the gnoll tribe, then sent out troops to protect the civilians and began to cut down the surrounding virgin forests.
Each of these trees is very thick, with a diameter of one or two meters. They are all high-quality wood, and we can cut down some more for backup.
Anyway, there are only ten days left, and he is too lazy to look for other indigenous tribes. It would be better to use this time to make more preparations.
It is just right to demolish and rebuild the base town in the Divine Domain Ranch.
In the following time, Li Qing spent most of his time in the divine realm to build.
A large amount of wood was pulled in, decomposed through the space in the palm of his hand, and then combined into solid wooden boards, wooden planks, and wooden pillars, which were then used by his subordinates to build a house.
Small rooms can be formed as one in the palm space and then placed outside. Large houses, factories and the like are too large and have a diameter of more than ten meters. They can be accommodated within the palm space with an inner diameter of one hundred meters, but the exit has a diameter of only ten meters and cannot be moved out.
In order to make room inside the Divine Realm, Li Qing moved all the residential areas of the Divine Realm's people to the base town within the Divine Realm Ranch.
Anyway, the space inside the Divine Domain Ranch is larger than the Divine Domain, with enough land and sufficient water, so there is no problem with temporary residence.
In fact, many war lord apprentices do this in the early stages, migrating the people in the divine domain to the divine domain pastures or farms, and only moving them out when the divine domain expands to a size large enough for habitation.
After the people moved into the ranch, Li Qing only needed to surround the core tower of the divine domain and the divine domain ranch with high walls, and then build a city wall around the entire divine domain.
Then, extend the city walls at the four corners of the divine domain to the edge of the divine domain.
In other words, the outer wall of the entire divine domain is like a "mouth" shape with four corners extending out, dividing the periphery into four areas.
The double layer of defense surrounds all directions, which is basically enough in the early stage.
Of course, this was just a plan, because the outer city wall he planned was twenty meters high and ten meters wide, which required a lot of stone. At present, the entire divine domain was short of stone reserves.
In addition, the city wall was large in size, and foundation trenches had to be dug and built in many sections, which was inefficient and could not be completed in one step. So we had to build the inner city wall first and then the outer city wall would be built slowly.
When he came out of the divine realm, he was accompanied by more than two hundred male and female laborers, each of whom was carrying a hoe, shovel, hammer, saw and other tools, and some were pushing carts.
Their task was simple: digging.
Anyway, he can turn the soil into stone, so he doesn't have to go through the trouble of digging the stone directly, because that thing is too hard and difficult to dig.
Dig the soil and pile it into a small hill, then use the golden finger to suck it into space and transform it into stone.
It can be said that the more of this stuff the better. When enough is accumulated in the future, combined with the transformation of source material into the soil of the divine realm, the internal space of the divine realm can be expanded.
The essence of the expansion of the internal space of the divine domain is the process of plundering external matter to fill the interior, but in addition to matter, some source materials are also needed to broaden and stabilize the space of the divine domain.
Of course, expanding the space in this way simply expands the area of the divine domain, and the essence of the divine domain will not become stronger.
In order to make the essence of the divine realm stronger and able to accommodate a higher upper limit of power, other conditions are required.
Time passed unknowingly, and on the morning of the eighth day, Li Qing ordered his men who had already dug out the location of the river valley of the Jackal tribe to gather together, dismantle the camp and prepare to return to the mentor's castle.
There are still four or five days left, and he plans to take a detour on his way back to see if he can encounter more ferocious beasts to help his dragon guard level up.
After the previous battles, the Eight Dragon Guards would go out with some of their men from time to time, killing many ferocious beasts. Now they have reached level 29 and have gained most of the experience points. They are only a little away from reaching level 30 and being promoted to a third-tier hero.
The team went north along the valley, and after a distance left the valley and turned right.
The jungle was still as dark as ever, but after being outside for half a month, they had become accustomed to this darkness.
In order to attract the ferocious beasts to attack them, Li Qing deliberately withdrew most of the troops and left only twenty subordinates.
Less than a kilometer away from the valley, a ferocious beast set its sights on them.
