A stench of cow dung filled his mouth and nose.
Duncan felt his head buzzing, as if he’d been punched hard on the right side of his face, with half of his cheek swelling and a metallic taste of blood in his mouth.
His face and body were covered in cow dung, his body collapsed next to a pile of dung and straw. Before he could figure out what was happening, he heard a spine-chilling scream not far away, followed by sounds like chopping meat on bones.
A thick smell of blood assailed his nostrils.
Duncan staggered to his feet and immediately saw a corpse with eyes that wouldn’t close—a middle-aged Westerner, dressed like a farmer, in tattered clothes. The man was dead, with blood froth seeping from his mouth, his chest stained with blood, and a manure fork pinned under him.
Another scream pierced the air.
Thirty meters away, a farm woman was slashed by a sword, her carotid artery spurting blood over a meter high.
A hulking figure withdrew the sword, kicked the woman’s corpse aside, and reversed the grip to pierce another resisting farmer.
This was a complete massacre.
Three fully armed soldiers were slaughtering a group of unarmed farmers. Like cutting through butter, they scattered these rabble and every swing of their weapon claimed an innocent life.
He had traveled through time.
Duncan realized this instantly, and the next moment he reached out to grab the manure fork beside him.
The weapon granted him no sense of security.
But in this situation, holding a weapon and being barehanded were two completely different concepts. He took a second to observe himself: in tattered clothes but fairly robust, a new body, very young, with no severe injuries except a punched right cheek.
He could fight, but stood no chance of winning.
They were a group of defeated soldiers.
The information in his mind was excessive, probably the memories of the body’s original owner, but Duncan had no time to digest it. With strong willpower, he extracted the most useful information to himself.
The Empire was defeated again.
Defeated soldiers looted the village, clashing violently with the farmers, slaughtering this sparsely inhabited village.
They had no intention of leaving survivors, for the blame could be shifted to the enemy.
Duncan realized he could die here at any moment.
Raiders loot like combs, soldiers pass like lice combs.
The defeated soldiers’ actions were akin to beasts.
These defeated soldiers, facing a group of farmers, were like fierce wolves, as if such actions could recapture the courage lost when they were easily dispersed by the enemy.
Duncan held the manure fork and quietly withdrew.
He didn’t think he had the ability to take on three well-equipped, professionally trained soldiers with a manure fork, especially when one looked like a medieval knight, albeit without plate armor or helmet, his gear more like robe armor.
"Where’s the cheat? Where’s the system?"
Duncan got no response and had already retreated several meters. Without a cheat, he stood no chance. Although he didn’t know the relationship between the farmers and the body’s original owner, since he had time-traveled and got a new life, he wouldn’t willingly risk his life here.
So he prepared for a strategic retreat.
"There’s another one there!" The man dressed like a knight had bloodshot murderous eyes sweeping around and said immediately: "Hyena, go kill him!"
Not far away, a sinister tall, thin man turned and approached Duncan.
He drew a short-handled throwing axe from his waist, rounded the haystack ahead, and gradually picked up speed, attempting to handle him at the corner with the throwing axe.
"Enter combat state!"
In a daze, Duncan seemed to hear something, and the next second his consciousness began to ascend. In an instant, his awareness seemed to enter a void, and suddenly he saw everything around him clearly.
A sparsely inhabited, desolate village.
Three men dressed as soldiers were marked prominently in red within the village’s map area.
In front of him seemed to be a projection screen, showing everything around him with a 360-degree omniscient view.
Duncan saw a young man running away, clutching a manure fork tightly, with a tall, thin defeated soldier about fifty meters behind, holding a throwing axe and rounding the side of a haystack. Nearby were two haystacks and two wooden houses. If they met head-on, Duncan probably wouldn’t even have a chance to engage, as the opponent’s axe would either kill him or severely injure him.
Duncan wasn’t armored, wearing just tattered burlap clothes.
In the lower right corner of the projection screen.
The two red-marked defeated soldiers were still massacring the other villagers. One with a star marker likely indicated a stronger knight. The corpses on the ground were clearly visible, the scene as bloody and brutal as an immersive movie.
Duncan’s consciousness hovered in the void, the projection screen before him seemed like a game interface.
Duncan willed slightly, and the black-haired youth frozen in the screen suddenly moved. He took two steps forward, stepped back once, then jumped in place.
He still controlled the youth’s body in the projection screen, just like manipulating a character in a game from his past life.
Except this time, it wasn’t using mouse and keyboard, but with his mind, immersed as if playing a virtual game.