Chapter 1 The Disrupted Knight

The disrupted knight in his peculiar armor had been moved by Hao Ren and his group to a flatter piece of ground nearby, and they had turned him over for a thorough examination. As they had discovered before, however, the knight's injuries had all healed.

Furthermore, the data terminal's advanced scans revealed that his body was in perfect health. Not only were there no wounds on the surface, but his internal organs were also in perfect order. It could be said that, apart from being unconscious, he was completely normal.

Hao Ren also had the data terminal check whether the disrupted knight had any traces of mechanical modification in his body, but the conclusion was that everything was the same as an ordinary person. It seemed that the disrupted knight and the black knights used completely different "production techniques." The former's superior combat power must have been achieved through other means.

"I have a guess," Awenna suddenly said, looking at the disrupted knight in his unconscious state, "His injuries might have been healed by that tree."

Hao Ren looked toward the towering tree in the center of the ruins. The giant tree, which had been transformed from the Holy King's sacrifice of her life in some ancient era, still stood quietly on this land. Although the kingdom that the Holy King and her people had fought to protect had vanished, the surging vitality continued to emanate from the giant tree, as if the war back then was still ongoing.

"Very likely," Vivian nodded gently, "He was seriously injured and fled here, then collapsed beside the roots of the 'Tree of Life'. The power that escaped from the Tree of Life healed his body, but because the injuries were too severe, his spirit had dissipated, resulting in the current situation of having no injuries but remaining unconscious."

"But the soul hasn't dissipated," Lily suddenly interjected, "I can see it. The soul is still wandering in his body, but it's very weak. And affected by the surrounding Black Pine Forest, his soul is gradually transforming toward the direction of the Black Pine Forest, which makes it even more difficult for him to wake up."

Lily's eyes widened: "Isn't he going to become a real vegetable?"

"We have to find a way to wake him up and figure out what happened," Hao Ren nodded, "The simple treatment equipment I carry with me isn't very good at dealing with this special situation. Who wants to give it a try?"

Without saying a word, Vivian summoned a crackling ball of lightning, but before she had time to throw the lightning ball over, Lily jumped up and howled, "Bat, take it easy! One ball from you, and even if he wasn't a vegetable, you'll fry him into one!"

Vivian rolled her eyes at Lily, throwing the lightning ball at the disrupted knight while saying, "What do you know? This is electrotherapy! I have a sense of proportion!"

With a crackling sound, the disrupted knight's whole body bounced, but apart from being electrocuted into an afro, nothing seemed to have changed.

Lily shook her head: "Is this really going to work... forget it, I'll just try pinching his philtrum..."

As a result, before the husky girl could act, Lily was pushed aside by Leah: "Forget it, forget it, I'll do it—one finger from you and he'll die again. I've studied souls at least a little, maybe I can reverse his soul transformation."

The goddess of creation, who had once created countless lives, personally took action, and the two half-baked medical personnel immediately shut up and concentrated on watching Leah show off her skills.

And Leah's operation was also simple and crude. She reached directly toward the chest of the disrupted knight, but her arm turned into a semi-transparent, strange form when it approached the knight. This semi-transparent hand went straight into the latter's body, grabbed around everywhere, and then directly pulled out a ball of light that emitted a faint glow from the other party's body!

Seeing this scene, Hao Ren knew that Leah's operation was something that others could not learn—although it looked simple, there were probably more than one concept transformation and information extraction process involved in it, otherwise she would not be able to pull out the invisible soul so simply!

"I say... is this really going to work?" Vivian couldn't help but ask, looking at Leah's next move, "This doesn't look like treatment at all..."

"Don't worry about me taking action," Leah said, kneading the soul around, "My style has always been very stable, I won't mess around..."

Hao Ren rolled his eyes when he heard this: How could someone with a stable style kill herself ten thousand years ago? And even set up a plan to destroy her entire clan after her death...

But no matter how unreliable others thought it was, Leah's series of mysterious operations successfully stabilized the state of that "soul." After a series of steps that looked like kneading dough, she stuffed the ball of light back into the disrupted knight's body, then snapped her fingers next to his ear: "Done!"

The disrupted knight slowly woke up...

Lily was shocked: "This actually worked?!"

"What's so impossible? Although I haven't gone to school, I still have this little bit of skill," Leah rolled her eyes at Lily, turned her head to look at the disrupted knight who seemed a little dazed because he had just woken up from a deep sleep, and in the other party's gradually focusing gaze, she saw obvious nervousness and vigilance, "Don't be nervous, we're not enemies, we saved you—do you remember? You fell over there."

As soon as the disrupted knight woke up, he saw a large group of strangers surrounding him, most of whom were carrying weapons, so his first reaction was naturally to be on guard. However, Leah's harmless appearance and reassuring voice made him calm down a little. He quickly glanced around, confirming the general characteristics, positions, possible identities, and weapons of everyone on the scene, and deduced his current situation.

Those fully armed guards were obviously quite threatening. Although the strength of ordinary soldiers was not worth mentioning in the eyes of the disrupted knight, he was now mentally distracted, weak, and a strange numbness lingered on his body, so the threat posed by ordinary soldiers could not be underestimated.

And the two gray-haired people nearby, who looked like siblings, had obvious magical item fluctuations on their bodies even though they didn't have armor. The man had a sword at his waist, and they were obviously combat personnel, and their strength was probably stronger than the surrounding soldiers.

Only the one man and three women closest to him seemed less threatening—none of them were carrying weapons, and there was even a child among them, so they were obviously the weakest in combat...

Hao Ren had no idea how much the disrupted knight in front of him, who was dressed like a space marine, had thought in that one fleeting moment. Noticing that the other party was awake and had calmed down, he asked, "Are you awake? Do you remember how you got here?"

"I feel like... I had a very long dream..." The disrupted knight struggled to sit up. During this process, his body trembled involuntarily several times, and faint electric light flickered in the gaps of his armor. "I experienced a battle, fought with many enemies whose faces I couldn't see, and finally I became a tree... and was struck by lightning..."

Everyone's eyes involuntarily turned to Vivian.

Vivian's face turned slightly red, and she turned her head to the side: "At least it shows that my electrotherapy still had an effect, at least it got straight to the source of the disease..."

"You're not Imperials," the disrupted knight shook his head, trying to dispel the buzzing in his mind and the strange feeling of weakness. His sanity also became clearer in the process. "Who are you?"

"Travelers from Ys," before Hao Ren could speak, Charlemagne took the initiative to say from the side, "For some reason, we are being chased by the Black Knights, and we had to escape into the Black Pine Forest, and then we found you in these ruins."

He didn't directly reveal his identity—although he and Awenna had turned their attention to Princess Constance behind the Black Knights, it was always good to be cautious when he didn't know the details of the disrupted knight in front of him. As for being chased by the Black Knights, it could be said, after all, Constance had already raised the banner of rebellion, and the disrupted knights and the Black Knights were on opposing sides.

"Ysian travelers chased by the Black Knights..." The disrupted knight's eyes changed slightly, and then he sighed softly, "That's normal, they have lost their minds, foreigners like you will be in great danger in the southern Empire."

Then he staggered to his feet and solemnly performed a salute that Hao Ren didn't recognize: "I am Kaim Gravos, a loyal warrior of Princess Constance. Your righteous deeds will not be in vain, Her Highness Constance will definitely repay you well."

"Let's not talk about that first, we didn't save you for that reason, Mr. Gravos," Hao Ren waved his hand, "We can be considered to know each other now, right? So can you tell us in more detail—why would a disrupted knight appear in the center of the Black Pine Forest? We already know about the news of the Imperial civil war, and we also know about the battle between you and the Black Knights—if I'm not mistaken, you are one of the disrupted knights who fought with the Imperial Corps at the Kopolus River a few days ago? Some of the scars on your armor have traces of ablation and shock shattering, which is a phenomenon that can only be caused by the mechanical swords of the Black Knights. What happened after that? Did you break away from the main force?"

Kaim Gravos would of course have some suspicion and caution about a group of suddenly appearing "Ysian travelers" asking him these things, but these strangers had just saved his life, and the things they asked were not secrets, so the only suspicion and caution were of course not worth mentioning. He nodded: "Just call me Kaim—it's true, as you said, I am one of the disrupted knights who participated in the battle that day."

Then he began to talk about his experience.

"It was an accidental encounter—but it soon evolved into a war," Kaim said, "We were originally preparing to go to the northern border to respond to the princess's summons, but we encountered a wandering Imperial Corps on the Kopolus River, and a Black Knights Corps happened to be nearby, so the battle broke out and escalated. We suffered heavy losses in that battle, but most of us still managed to withdraw successfully. Then we split into two groups, half of us went elsewhere to carry out missions, and the other half were preparing to continue north through the Black Pine Forest as planned. I belong to the latter."

"But the roads into the Black Pine Forest are all blocked by the Black Knights," Charlemagne frowned, "Not to mention Greenaway, the Daolin intersection to the west and the Linmu town to the east are also stationed by the Knights, and looking at you... you don't look like you're disguised to sneak through the checkpoints, so did you force your way in?"

Speaking of this, the prince couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. He remembered that his group had disguised themselves a bit, but in the end, they directly pierced through the blockade of the Black Knights and the Imperial soldiers and rushed into the Black Pine Forest...

But Kaim shook his head: "We didn't enter from those intersections, but came over the Changfeng Mountains."