Round eighteen: three hundred and fifty sheepmen, maybe more.

“Why do I have wings, yet still walk unsteadily?”
Morriel turned angrily at Forty-Seven, annoyed that the sand kicked up by his feet had hit her face. She wiped it away and continued following Jacob, observing the route the merchant was taking them along: “Stop talking nonsense. This is the Outer Lands, idiot. I don’t want everyone here to see us. Who knows if they can adapt to your shiny golden light after being used to the misty skies?”
“Calm down, mighty warrior,” Jacob said, slowing down as well. “There’s no need to rush. Whether we walk or fly, it makes no difference to our journey—our destination stays where it is, and we’ll arrive when it’s time.”
“Is that so? Better come up with something new before I get tired of guessing, BlueBlue elf.” Somehow, Forty-Seven had managed to attach “Bip-Bip Boy” to his left wrist. The silver skull was clicking and whirring, emitting a series of soft mechanical noises, like a clock being wound up.
“You misunderstand…” The merchant didn’t take the threatening tone in Forty-Seven’s voice too seriously. He realized that as long as he didn’t really anger this guy, he could ignore his threats. “The physical laws of the Main Material Plane don’t apply here completely, because the rules governing everything are different.”
He pointed at the sky. “For example, there’s no sun in the Outer Lands… that’s different from most material worlds. Even many outer planes have a sun in the sky, not even the Bottomless Abyss or the Bato Realm is an exception. Another notable and unique characteristic of the Outer Lands is its distance issues—the distance between places keeps changing. We’ll never know exactly how far away our destination is. Walking, riding, flying, or teleportation won’t help us get there faster—but as long as we’re not lost and know where to go and how to get there, we’ll arrive eventually. It’s the Outer Lands itself that determines the time it takes to get there.”
“Wow, that’s amazing,” Kayro said, looking around as he listened. “The ground moves on its own? Maybe we’ll wake up and find we’ve already arrived!”
Explaining anything to someone from the Main Material Plane was really difficult. Jacob decided to pretend he didn’t hear that. After all, countless silly ideas and questions arose every day in the Outer Lands.
“It sounds like relativity,” Forty-Seven said, not intending to discuss this issue with Jacob. He thought the plane merchant actually knew nothing about it either—not much better than those from the Main Material Plane. After all, even after two or three thousand years and billions of people, only one Einstein had emerged.
Now his attention was drawn to something on the horizon. “What’s that?”
The merchant quickly turned and looked in the direction the steel warrior had indicated. At first, he was nervous, but after observing for a while, his expression relaxed.
“It’s fine.”

“What’s okay?” Forty-Seven zoomed in on the landscape and saw that the figure approaching from afar resembled a centaur from a fairy tale, though with some differences in detail. “Do you know this four-legged friend?”
“A centaurope. Half human, half sheep—whatever we want to call them—but it’s best to treat them as intelligent beings equal to us when dealing with them,” said Jacob, shrugging his bare browbones. “They usually live in groups, wandering across the fields and grasslands of the Outer Lands and many higher planes. But there are also outliers who roam alone—who knows? Centauropes are carefree and irresponsible for their actions. Still, compared to other creatures we might encounter in the Outer Lands, they’re practically saints in the Heaven Mountains… as long as you don’t provoke them.”
The centaurope moved nimbly along the rocky veins that peeked through the yellow sand, avoiding getting stuck. As it drew closer, the sound of its hooves grew louder and clearer, until it stopped on the dune beside them.
“Do you think it’s here to cause trouble?” Forty-Seven kept staring at the centaurope on the hillside, while the centaurope warrior watched the travelers cross this dried-up riverbed. It hadn’t removed its hunting bow from its back, but its hand rested on the hilt of its curved sword. Its long, trimmed hair was blown wild by the wind, almost covering its pair of curved goat horns. The centaurope remained expressionless, seemingly unimpressed by Forty-Seven’s skillful head rotations.
“If you keep staring at it like that, you’ll become one too,” said Morriel, though she suspected things weren’t that simple.
But the centaurope didn’t follow them. Forty-Seven and his group continued forward. After turning around a not-too-high rock mountain, the warrior’s figure was out of sight.
Jacob clearly breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nothing. Most centauropes are kind-hearted, but their behavior is unreasonable,” said the merchant, brushing sand off his sleeves. “Maybe it’s just curious or wants to see if we need help.”
“Its gaze doesn’t seem like it’s trying to help us,” said Kairo. The sensitive little girl could always see things others overlooked.
“Unless it’s Pan, why would I want its help?” Forty-Seven strode forward, leaving deep footprints in the sand, signaling the end of this little incident.
It was a shame he wasn’t a musician; otherwise, he could have marked a stop to avoid all the trouble that followed.
The group hadn’t gone far when the sound of hooves appeared again. But this time, it came in waves—louder and more intense, with the ground trembling as if it were a drum surface shaking violently.
“The God of Magic above…” Jacob couldn’t help but mutter.

Dozens, no—perhaps hundreds of adult goatmen rushed in from all directions, gathering to form a semicircular encirclement to chase after the group of forty-seven. In an instant, these pursuers closed any gaps, surrounding them tightly in three layers, with their curved knives and arrows pointed at the travelers, ready to strike at the slightest movement. Notably, each goatman warrior’s eyes burned with flames, hatred and fury serving as fuel, almost overflowing from their sockets!

“You must have been to ‘Donglaishun’ far too many times before,” sneered Forty-Seven, stepping forward to shield Moriel and Kayro behind him. He slid rivets in and out of his fingers, reassembling a complex array of small devices into a new structure. Though he didn’t raise his hands, it was clear they could handle everything from skinning and gutting a goat to cooking it in any way possible.

“Kind-hearted… Good, very good,” Moriel pushed Kayro between Forty-Seven and the plane merchant, ensuring the girl had the best possible cover.

After a brief standoff, the goatmen shifted their formation, clearing a path for their leader.

“Executioners! What kind of vicious soul could drive you to commit such crimes?” The goatman leader, standing out from the group, was quite old, both in human and goat terms. His eyes were sunken, his skin yellowish, and two thick, spiraled goat horns stretched back from his forehead, curving back onto his broad shoulders beneath his tunic. A thick, dense white beard, like a waterfall, nearly reached the ground, tied at the end with jewels hanging from it—seemingly comical at first glance, but the old goatman’s sharp, knife-like gaze and the spiked staff in his hand were enough to dissuade anyone from laughing, not to mention the hundreds of arrows nocked on taut bows around them, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

“I’d be more than happy to prove this accusation true,” Forty-Seven glanced at the old goatman, probably already thinking about what ingredients could be used to remove the “gamey” smell.

“Respected goatman chief, there must be some misunderstanding. See, we’ve only just emerged from the portal in the abandoned temple a few hours ago. Aside from you and your powerful warriors, we haven’t met anyone else yet,” Jacob said, his spider-like fingers moving back and forth as he carefully chose his words to maintain balance in the crisis. “And my companions have never left their home in the primary material realm before to come to this foreign land. I’m sure they could never have done anything to offend the goatman tribe… Could you be looking at the wrong people?”

“Primary material freaks!” spoke the goatman standing close to the old chief. He was much taller than the others, wearing almost nothing but a few wide belts tied around his body. His massive frame and bulging muscles made him seem more suited to the name “goat-ox.” A long, deep scar ran down from his shiny, bald forehead, around his nose, through his lips, splitting his face into two distorted halves before plunging like an angry lightning bolt into his thick chest hair.

He wielded the massive double-bladed axe with as much ease as if it were a cutting knife—apparently the only centaur warrior among them to use such a cumbersome weapon. His roar sounded like the shrill screech of a blade being sharpened: “They’re a bunch of thugs who attack at the slightest provocation, just because someone says something or even just looks at them! There’s nothing to talk about—eye for an eye, blood for blood!”

“We attack because we’ve been insulted.” There was something in Moriel’s calm voice that silenced not only the loud accusations of the strong centaurs but also chilled everyone’s hearts like a cold wind: “If you could learn to use a gentler term than ‘main-material guy,’ perhaps we could find a much less violent way to meet. Tell me, before we destroy each other—what exactly has led you to draw your swords?”

A moment of silence. It was like a group of people standing around a nuclear bomb with a countdown, staring at the dwindling numbers in shock, yet none of them could come up with a proper solution to save their lives.

Perhaps out of fear of the female mage and the iron warrior, or maybe because the centaurops really weren’t sure if they had targeted the right enemies, the centaurops chief gestured to stop the aggressive scarred man, though his accusations remained harsh: “Our swords are only for evil! Hand over your weapons and surrender, and you’ll receive a fair trial!”

“Bip-bip boy, please tell me what to do when dealing with centaurops.” Forty-seven raised his left hand and asked the silver skull as if no one else was around—of course, before Forty-seven released it, the little skull could only emit a series of meaningless noises.

“Root them out, and everything will be fine!” The skull floated up, its rows of teeth clacking together as it uttered these words, enough to make everyone’s lungs explode with anger… except Forty-seven.

“You iron bastard!” The scarred man dug his hooves into the ground and charged forward, his raised axe eager to make close contact with Forty-seven’s shiny hair.

But he was quickly stopped, forced to wave his curved horns threateningly at Forty-seven. The one who stopped him was Jacob, the seemingly gentle and harmless realm merchant.

“Distinguished friends! I guarantee, on the reputation built by my family through generations of trade, that we can first understand the full context of this situation.” Jacob grabbed the scarred man, his fingers wrapping around his humanoid wrist like ropes, holding him tightly, while in his other hand he held his double-bladed axe—almost no one could see how he disarmed the centaurops warrior.

“Sir warrior, please calm down too. The information in that talkative skull is pre-programmed and not entirely accurate. What it says depends entirely on its creator. That last statement must have been from the harsh citizens of the city!” Jacob stabilized the centaurops and turned to explain to Forty-seven, giving the impression of having control over the situation: “If you ask it again, the answer might be different!”

Forty-seven asked again, and the skull indeed gave another answer. It sounded as though the speaker must have received a high education and possessed good character: “Treat others with courtesy and win them over with virtue.” Before the half-goat’s patience was completely worn out by Forty-seven and Bibi’s ruse, Moriel and the others finally figured out what had happened. A small half-goat settlement was raided the night before last. The invaders were extremely brutal; all the adult half-goats were killed. The only survivor was a young half-goat whose parents hid him in a rock crevice, shielding him from the flames at the cost of their own lives. According to the half-goat’s fragmented account, one of the murderers was a young female mage, while the other had two blazing red eyes—no wonder the half-goats went berserk when they saw Forty-seven and the others. “We only arrived in the Outer Lands today; we had been trapped in the Star Realm before,” Jacob said, his voice louder now that he understood the situation. After all, he was a merchant, not a liar. “Believe me, respected chief. I am deeply saddened and sorry for the terrible atrocities inflicted on your people… But this has nothing to do with me or my friends. We…” “With a red-eyed arsonist mage?” Moriel mused. She closed her eyes and opened them again, looking calmly at the half-goat chief. “I want to know more. May I meet that little half-goat?”