Along with the footsteps came a jingling of metal — clearly the newcomers wore metal armor and carried weapons; that was the clatter of it as they pushed through the woods.
On the Wildfire Plain, anyone walking around armed was most likely an adventurer.
And running into other adventurers on the Wildfire Plain was not necessarily a good thing!
Xia Ya knew very well that he only moonlighted as a bandit now and then, and made a thoroughly unprofessional job of it. But most adventurers on the Wildfire Plain made a year-round, professional trade of preying on their own kind!
Everyone out here was walking the badlands with his life in his hands, scraping a meal where he could; nobody paid the slightest attention to morals or the like. A blade in the hand was the only argument that counted!
Generally speaking, when adventurers met colleagues out in the wild, the first thing they did was take each other's measure.
If the two sides were about equal in numbers and strength, everyone would keep a wary distance and part quickly, going their separate ways without interfering with each other.
But if one side was strong and the other plainly weaker — and the weak side just happened to be carrying valuables... heh heh!
His own side now numbered only two, and both of them wounded... or, to put it bluntly, in Xia Ya's calculations of fighting strength this poor wretch did not even count as a "man"; he counted as dead weight and nothing more.
If the other side saw how weak they were, they might well turn greedy and butcher him like a fat sheep!
Before, he had nothing on him at all, and even if he met someone, they would not necessarily have been tempted by his money.
But now he had a first-rate wolf pelt on his back and a small fortune tucked inside his coat!!
Xia Ya pulled every muscle taut, yet his movements only grew lighter. With one arm around the poor wretch, he quickly picked out a big tree in the distance and, agile as a lynx, swarmed up it and hid himself behind the thick leaves.
He held his breath, shot the poor wretch a few threatening looks, and clamped a hand hard over his mouth. At last, after a short while, Xia Ya Leiming saw who had come.
There were four of them in the party.
The one in front was a man who looked at most thirty, blond, tall and straight, wearing a fine mail shirt — all metal, no less! The silver-white armor was polished to a shine. He also had a cross-hilted longsword on his back, its pommel set with a red gemstone.
Few adventurers on the Wildfire Plain wore metal armor. Not for any other reason than that metal armor was usually heavy and bulky, and walking about in thick, heavy metal did nothing to help one move. Only the few with deep pockets could afford the finest armor — mail, for instance, forged of fine steel, its ring-shaped links so exquisitely worked that they cut away as much as possible the unwieldy bulk of traditional plate, lighter in weight yet excellent in defense, especially against arrows.
But the price was naturally no small matter either. Xia Ya had once seen someone on Black Street selling such a thing, asking five gold coins a set!
One of these days, I'm going to walk the Wildfire Plain in armor of that class...
The second man wore a long black leather robe. He looked short and thin, but the robe had a hood, and it covered his head; from where Xia Ya sat up high, he could not make out the fellow's face...
The third was a brute built like a giant bear, with a wild mane of red hair; he was the most powerfully built and the tallest of the group. Yet to Xia Ya Leiming's eye all that exaggerated muscle looked rather bloated. The fellow had a huge shield slung on his back like a turtle's shell — and an iron shield, hard as anything, its face graven with gaudy patterns Xia Ya could make no sense of. What drew Xia Ya's attention most was that this giant used the same weapon he did: an axe!
What made Xia Ya rather ashamed was that the other's axe was plainly far classier than his own.
It was a fine steel battle-axe! The haft was wrapped in ring after ring of grooving, so the grip would not slip when the axe swung; the blade was a keen moon-white, its graceful curve like a crescent moon, the thick poll of it full of mass and power, and the tip was even fitted with a spear point!
An axe like that was exactly the weapon Xia Ya Leiming dreamed of!
He had once seen a similar axe in a weapons shop in Wildfire Town; in quality it seemed a touch inferior to the one this fellow carried, yet it was priced a little cheaper than a mail shirt — and it was still an astronomical sum to Xia Ya Leiming: three gold coins!
Looking at that battle-axe, Xia Ya could not keep a certain longing out of his eyes. He unconsciously touched the pouch of gold coins inside his coat, and the hard, solid feel of it comforted him. Mm — when I go back this time, I'm buying myself a fine axe like that too! And one of those light mail shirts, while I'm at it.
Then Xia Ya's gaze fell on the fourth person.
This one was a woman!
Without question, this was a beauty that would make the vast majority of men in the world catch their breath.
Cheeks like congealed cream, eyes like peach blossoms, brows like a cold moon, skin like frost and snow...
Those soul-hooking eyes were enough to set most men's hearts fluttering. And on top of that, the woman was young; as she came slowly forward she was wearing a splendid leather cuirass — and why call it splendid?
Because the thing was made of rare white-rhino hide! White-rhino hide was acknowledged as one of the very finest of all materials for making leather armor. Tough and sturdy, hard for ordinary blades to pierce through, it was the pick of the pick among leather armors. More to the point, white rhinos were very rare — getting hold of a single hide would fetch a big price!
And the white-rhino armor this beauty wore had even been given a coat of silver-white lacquer, traced over with patterns like flowers bursting into bloom; the hide's excellent breathability and elasticity meant the armor was most finely made, clinging tight to the beauty's body and setting off the proud curves of her upper body to ever more alluring effect.
Below the cuirass was a war skirt, and every scale of it was shaped like a lotus petal.
The woman was tall and slender, and on her back she carried a longbow; the stave was jet black — a first-rate iron-frame bow, no less — while the string was fine and thin, giving off a silvery sheen. One look at it and Xia Ya could not help sighing. Good God, is this woman crazy rich? She's using silver thread for a bowstring!!
Even more outrageous, the girl had a quiver hanging at her waist, and there were a mere ten arrows in it!
Xia Ya looked closely, and sighed again.
A single one of those arrows was probably worth enough to feed him for a dozen days or more! (In fact, he was still underestimating.)
Ordinary arrows, even rather better-grade ones, had nothing better than goose feathers for fletching. But this woman's arrows — with one glance, with the eye of an experienced hunter, Xia Ya identified them: they were fletched with eagle feathers!!!
And there were only ten arrows in the quiver... That, too, left Xia Ya quite puzzled.
On the Wildfire Plain, wild beasts and magic beasts were thick as flies, to say nothing of the other dangers one might run into. Most archers among the adventurers carried at least two big quivers, and even that barely served.
This woman...
This party had a warrior, a swordsman, an archer, and that one in the leather robe who might be a healer — or even a mage out of legend.
That was exactly the makeup of a standard adventuring party. And judging by how fine the gear was, anyone who could afford equipment this expensive had to be an expert!
Of course... there was one more thing that made Xia Ya sigh inwardly...
This woman archer's looks...
Alas, so there really were women this ugly in the world...
It seemed that even experts could be ugly.