Hearing the vendor’s words, Xu Zimei slightly furrowed his brows and said, "Can you be more specific?"
"There’s a family in the south of the city, a little girl lives there.
I watched her grow up, and she often came here to eat my wontons," the vendor said on his own.
"That little girl has always been an orphan, but recently, parents have appeared.
And that little girl doesn’t come to eat my wontons anymore."
"Who dares eat your wontons," Ji Ruobing muttered softly, glancing at the corpse of Qin Luo beside her.
"I understand," Xu Zimei pondered for a moment and finally nodded.
He proceeded directly to the south of the city with Ji Ruobing.
"Do you believe him?" Ji Ruobing asked.
"Whether I believe him or not, we’ll know once we get there," Xu Zimei replied.
The south of the city was somewhat barren.
The ground was full of weeds, and it seemed that the people living here were mostly from the lowest tier of this city.
Tents of various kinds could be seen on both sides of the road, with disheveled people lying inside.
In an alley on one side, beggars dressed in tatters and ragged clothes struggled to sleep in groups.
The city seemed to have a hundred different facets.
You could see different things in each district.
The two arrived in the south of the city, as mentioned by the vendor, and found the so-called courtyard.
The courtyard was very old, with surrounding earthen walls that had collapsed in places.
"Let’s go in and have a look," Xu Zimei said.
He knocked on the door and, before long, the courtyard door opened.
The door was opened by a little girl.
Dressed in a simple coarse white shirt with two small braids on either side, her face seemed dust-covered.
"Do you need anything?" the little girl asked with confusion.
"Little girl, are your family members home?" Xu Zimei asked.
"Daddy, someone is looking for you," the little girl shouted into the house.
Just then, a "coming" was heard, and soon a middle-aged man in a deep blue long shirt walked out.
The man looked ordinary and showed no signs of being unusual.
"Who are you?" the man frowned and asked.
"Oh, we are Orderers under the Wood War God, the master of destruction," Ji Ruobing quickly answered.
"We are here on a mission to investigate the Form Blood Beast escape incident."
"What does that have to do with us?" the man asked somewhat nervously.
"Somebody disclosed your connection with the Form Blood Beast, so we specifically came to investigate," Ji Ruobing said indifferently.
"Sirs, please investigate clearly," the man quickly explained.
"These days, the city is not peaceful, and we don’t even manage to leave our house; how would we know anything about the Form Blood Beast."
"More talk is of no use; we will investigate, and if there is nothing, naturally we won’t trouble you folks," Ji Ruobing said.
The man hesitated for a moment and eventually nodded.
He said, "Please come in, sir."
Walking into the house, Xu Zimei slightly furrowed his brows.
The little girl who received them and the man showed no abnormalities.
The courtyard was quite austere.
A coughing sound came from a room inside the house.
"Old Dong, has someone come?"
Upon hearing the voice, the man quickly explained: "This is my wife, she is seriously ill and inconvenient to meet people; I hope the sir will understand."
"Let’s go see," Xu Zimei said.
Entering the inner room, a strong medicinal smell assaulted the senses, very pungent.
On the table inside was a just simmered medicine pot, and the bed held a woman covered entirely with a blanket.
"My friend here is a doctor, and as the saying goes, a doctor has the heart of a parent. Let her have a look at your wife," Xu Zimei said to the man with a smile.
"Perhaps there might be some miraculous effect."
"Then I thank you, my lord," the man hesitated for a moment, but eventually nodded.
Ji Ruobing gave Xu Zimei a glance and then slowly walked towards the woman.
"Ma’am, please stretch out your hand," Ji Ruobing said.
"That would trouble the beautiful lady," a strange voice came from the quilt, followed by a green claw sweeping past in front of Ji Ruobing.
Aiming directly at her eyes.
Ji Ruobing coldly snorted, seemingly prepared, as she swiftly retreated.
With a loud "bang," the next moment, the room’s door closed, and the quilt was flung away, revealing a fully green creature standing up.
This creature was grotesquely shaped with a shiny, oily green skin, resembling the legendary goblin.
Its ears were similar to those of elves, sharp and elongated, bald-headed with ripples on the top.
Both eyes were pure white, with a hawkish nose and hooked beak.
"You all should die," the goblin angrily stated.
Suddenly, four goblin-like creatures jumped down from the ridge beam of the room.
Meanwhile, the little girl and the man, who had been scared into trembling, hid to one side.
"Is this what a Form Blood Beast looks like?" Ji Ruobing curiously asked.
"They are not Form Blood Beasts," Xu Zimei shook his head gravely.
He had never personally seen a real Form Blood Beast before.
But previously on the Northern Continent, he had seen some leftover patterns at the ruins of the Jiang Family, who were the guardians of the Form Blood Space on the Northern Continent, just like the Sword Immortal, Jiang Yun himself.
Though Form Blood Beasts differed in shape, they shared one thing: they used the power of the Form God.
It was a distinct power from the dying days of the Mythical Era.
Like the gods of the Mythical Era, who all possessed Divine Power.
But these green creatures before them merely transformed ordinary Spiritual Energy into their power, hardly comparable to the lords of the late Twilight of the Gods era.
"Who exactly are you?" Xu Zimei frowned and asked.
"Your superior has come, and yet you ask who we are?" the creature said coldly.
"You’ve disrupted our tribe’s ceremony; do you know what the consequences are?"
"What tribe are you?" Xu Zimei continued to inquire.
The creature did not respond but slowly raised its hands.
These hands were different from ordinary creatures.
Most creatures had five fingers of differing lengths.
But the creature had six fingers, all roughly the same in length.
Having seen quite a bit of the world, Ji Ruobing pondered for a moment, then exclaimed in astonishment, "Are you from the Six-Fingered Tribe?"
"Oh, so there’s someone who knows this name," the creature glanced at Ji Ruobing indifferently.
It snorted coldly, "But how could those lowly, blood-muddled offshoots of the Six-Fingered Tribe compare to us.
We are the authentic Mountain God Tribe."
"Mountain God Tribe?" Xu Zimei shook his head slightly.
"I’ve never heard of it."
He wasn’t much of a reader, mostly indifferent to things other than his interests.
With three thousand tribes in the world, how could he remember them all?
"Mountain God Tribe," Ji Ruobing gasped.
Tentatively, she asked, "The ceremony you mentioned, were you just worshiping the Mountain God?"
"What else did you think?" the creature said somewhat angrily.
"But because of your arrival, I had to stop the worship."
Hearing the creature’s words, Ji Ruobing carefully tugged on Xu Zimei’s clothes, whispering, "This might be a misunderstanding."