Seeing the people dressed in black, Lin Xuanhao slightly raised his eyebrows, intrigued.
Mountain bandits?
He speculated inwardly as another person dressed in black appeared from behind the ten people in front of him, seemingly the leader of these mountain bandits.
He held a saber in his right hand, and his face was covered by a mask. There was a strong sense of killing intent between his exposed brows.
"It seems we have encountered a lost young master of a wealthy family. How about we escort the young lord to the nearby village in exchange for a hundred silver?"
The man in lead spoke, his voice laced with killing intent and greed.
He guessed from Lin Xuanhao's attire and extraordinary appearance that the latter was the son of a wealthy family and had gotten lost in this forest.
He had encountered such situations before, and extorted quite a large sum of money by scaring those young lords who had never stepped foot outside of their warm homes and guards' protection.
In fact, a hundred taels of silver was an over the top amount of money, and mountain bandits like them only had that much after saving for a year.
100 taels of silver were enough to buy a nice house in any local city, after all!
Normally, the rich kids these bandits extorted gave them everything they had, and although there was never a case someone had a hundred taels on them, they at least had 10 taels.
The reason he directly asked for a hundred taels was just to scare the other party a little bit and then extort whatever money he had.
"Are you sure about that? I'm at the Body Forging Realm."
Lin Xuanhao said coldly, his eyes sweeping over all the bandits present.
With his current strength, it would take less than a minute to kill all of them. None of them possessed any trace of cultivation.
The reason he explained his realm was because he didn't wanna fight unnecessarily, and he didn't have his previous pride.
After all, he was no longer at the Immortal Emperor Realm. As someone who had grown from a mortal, he knew very well that background only came in play when the other party was aware of it.
Who knew about the existence of the Immortal Emperors in the Mortal World?
"Huh? Kid, what are you talking about?"
Suddenly, one of the bandits at the front asked with disdain.
The other bandits also showed a hint of confusion upon Lin Xuanhao's words.
The leader stopped momentarily before showing a face full of contempt. Even though his expression was hidden under the mask, Lin Xuanhao could guess by his exposed eyes.
"Has young lord gone senile after being lost for a long time?"
The bandit leader asked, his voice turning ice cold as he stepped forward.
Lin Xuanhao was slightly stunned as he noticed all the changing expressions of the bandits.
Do they not know about the Body Forging Realm? Are they really country bumpkins?
He couldn't help but question inwardly.
Even though the existence of the cultivation world and Immortal Cultivators was very well hidden back when he was a struggling cultivator, mortals still knew of at least the Body Forging Realm and only considered cultivators of the Meridian Connecting Realm and above as "Immortals" and "Deities".
Small mortal dynasties back then also had cultivators of the Body Forging Realm and many Loose Cultivators who had no hopes of advancing came to the secular mortal world and enjoy their life.
Lin Xuanhao could tell that these bandits weren't alone and likely belonged to a big group from their outfits and the words "Iron Fang" carved onto the back of their clothes.
Named bandit groups should at least know of the Body Forging Realm, right?
Then how come they didn't know?
Thinking of this, Lin Xuanhao furrowed his brows.
The leader of the bandits took on a stance as his saber glowed with a cold light, locking onto Lin Xuanhao.
"Is this the famous Swift Saber Technique of the leader that less than 10 people in the entire Iron Fang Brigade have managed to learn?"
"You're new so you don't know! Our boss Huang here is one of the most trusted aides of the leader, the reason why he can command 20 people alone! He has killed over a hundred people with the Swift Saber Technique in the last 2 years!"
"Boss Huang is truly formidable!"
"Boss Huang is one of the reasons our Iron Fang Brigade has stood tall here in the Red Dragon Mountain Range for the last 2 years, of course he's formidable!"
The surrounding bandits cheered and chatted with each other, as if they were on a field trip.
Lin Xuanhao's annoyance grew with every passing second.
Are these people not afraid of the authorities?
Well, no one who's afraid of the authorities will become a mountain bandit, but still.
Finally growing tired of the hopeless situation, Lin Xuanhao looked straight into the eyes of the Boss Huang of this bandit group.
His grey eyes revealed extremely cold killing intent, directly pressing down on Boss Huang and making him halt in his steps.
What is this...feeling-
Just as Boss Huang realized something was wrong, Lin Xuanhao suddenly appeared in front of him, his hand shaped like a sword as it came down onto Boss Huang's right shoulder like rumbling thunder!
*Crack!*
A cracking sound echoed in the ears of everyone present as the saber in Boss Huang's hand fell to the ground while the ground itself shattered, creating spider webs like cracks that spread out to a few meters.
Boss Huang didn't even have the time to cry out in pain before he passed away almost instantly, falling numbly on the cracked ground.
Witnessing this scene, silence ensued for a moment.
No one spoke or even shifted from their original position.
All the bandits who were praising Boss Huang earlier had their mouths agape at this moment.
Finally, after a few breaths of time, the deathly silence was removed by a pale voice laced with fear and surprise.
"B-Boss Huang...is dead?"
As soon as these words were spoken by someone, the twenty or so bandits' previously blank expressions were replaced with fear as they began to scatter in different direction almost immediately.
"Since you're all already here, there's no need to go back."
Lin Xuanhao's calm voice entered everyone's ears no matter how far away they had reached, causing them to be even more frightened.
*Swoosh!*
"G-g-ghost! He's a ghost!"
*Bang!*
"D-don't come near me-"
*Splatter!*
"Spare me, Immortal!"
*Boom!*
Countless cries of desperation, pain, and pleading echoed in the mountain path along with many horrendous sounds of blood splattering and heads being cut off.
In less than a minute, Lin Xuanhao caught and killed every single one of the bandits who were with Boss Huang earlier on.
He didn't use any flashy moves and directly crushed them with pure strength of his physical body. There was no need for him to waste any extra effort on them after all.
As for the reason why he killed them, it was simple. He knew it was better to not leave any foe alive unless the cause for enmity was removed.
Second reason was that he didn't have any mortal currency with him which he knew he would be needing for some time.
After collecting all the silver taels from these 20 or so bandits including that Boss Huang, he had a total of 47 taels. Boss Huang had the most silver on him, amounting to more than 10 taels, while the rest only had 1 or 2 taels each.
Even then, this much silver was enough for a mortal family of four to last for a few years with 3 meals daily.
As Lin Xuanhao stood in place, reflecting what he had seen and heard from this encounter.
He got to know a few things, one of them being that the mortals around here didn't know of Immortal Cultivators and most possibly regarded them as myths.
Another thing was that there was a high chance that some Immortal Cultivators were hiding around here, since the Swift Saber Technique that Boss Huang used was created by an Immortal Cultivator.
Yes, Lin Xuanhao could figure that out too.
There were traces of insights on that technique, which could be done by at least a Meridian Connecting Realm cultivator.
Although it couldn't hold Spiritual Energy due to the cultivator's cultivation base being insufficient, it was very powerful to mortals.
"Either the so called Leader of Iron Fang Brigade is an Immortal Cultivator of the Meridian Connecting Realm or connected to it in some way. There's also a chance he just obtained a fortuitous encounter and got the Swift Saber Technique."
Lin Xuanhao speculated before turning his gaze towards the village which was a few miles away but could be seen with his eyesight.
Perhaps I can find some clues there...and also some food.
With that thought in mind, he started to walk towards the village.