The cave where the goblin captives were held was not far away. It was only a one-minute walk from the camp along a small path. There was no obstruction between here and the camp, so they could see each other clearly. The grass and trees at the entrance of the cave had been simply cleared, leaving a good view, and two bonfires illuminated the entrance.
Wang Jiyuan arranged a squad to guard here, but most of them had already gone to sleep in their sleeping bags, leaving only four people standing guard at the entrance of the cave.
"Who?! Don't move!" The leading sentry Cai Long saw Ji Yijun and Ye Zi emerge from the darkness and immediately raised his gun. After seeing their faces clearly, he cursed, "Fuck, it's you! Don't you know the battalion commander wants a curfew?"
"Old Cai, you are a serious soldier, a deputy platoon leader. Don't make a fuss, okay?" Ji Yijun paced and walked to Cai Long, hooked his back and said, "Who else would come to this broken forest except goblins? You look so nervous, are you afraid of ghosts?"
"Go to hell!" Cai Long laughed, pushed him back, and asked, "Why are you here?"
"Aren't you talking nonsense? Of course I'm here to review the intelligence." Ji Yijun said.
"Didn't the battalion commander just leave not long ago? Why is he trying him again?"
Ji Yijun pointed at Ye Zi and said, "Old Wang asked me to bring her here to try and see if a woman can make the goblin speak. After all, she and the goblin have a good relationship, right?"
Cai Long glanced at Ye Zi and approached Ji Yijun: "Are you sure? Wasn't she just dismissed? This isn't some trick you came up with to pick up girls, right?"
"Get lost." Ji Yijun also whispered, "God and heaven, which man in his right mind would go after her? Are they afraid that domestic violence isn't exciting enough?"
"It's hard to describe why the Queen of Flowers has her own unique flavor." The two of them laughed.
Ye Zi, who was standing at the back, became impatient. "What are you guys whispering about? Speak out."
"We're talking about the secret code." Ji Yijun was the smartest at this time. "Old Wang is a meticulous person. He even set a password. Right?"
"Yes, that's right!" Cai Long said seriously, "You want to interrogate the goblin, right? Do you want to bring it out for questioning, or go into the cave and ask?"
"Inside." Ye Zi replied.
"They are all unarmed, but that shaman looks evil, so you'd better be careful." Cai Long moved the fence at the door and asked his soldiers to hand them two torches. After the two men went in, he closed the fence again.
The cave was smaller than Ji Yijun had imagined and its structure was much simpler. After walking a dozen steps along a straight stone path, he reached the bottom of the cave.
By the light of the fire, Ji Yijun saw a dozen ragged goblins huddled in the corner. The goblins were short and not very strong, so without weapons, the guards were too lazy to tie them up.
When the goblins saw Ji Yijun and Ye Zi coming in, most of them looked nervous, dodging and not daring to look at them, and some were trembling. The only one who seemed relatively calm was an old goblin with strange patterns painted on his face and a bone necklace on his body.
"Here, that's the guy." Ji Yijun pointed the torch at the goblin shaman. The shaman squinted his eyes due to the light of the torch, but he didn't make any sound.
Ye Zi walked up, looked at the old goblin, and asked, "You are the shaman who leads this tribe, right? I want to know why you appeared in this forest and why you killed the villagers around you."
The old goblin squinted his eyes, glanced at Ye Zi, lowered his head and said nothing.
"You killed the villagers around you, so we attacked your village. You must pay for what you have done. But I think the death of so many goblins is not what you want to see. And for me, I don't think killing all the goblins is the only solution. So I need you to tell me how this all started."
The old goblin sneered, but still did not answer Ye Zi's question.
"Don't give up this opportunity. Some people wish you all would die." Ji Yijun interrupted.
At this time, a female goblin holding a child came up to the goblin shaman and mumbled something. The old goblin's face changed slightly. He slowly raised his head, stared at Ye Zi, and began to speak in a hoarse voice. His tone was a little strange, like a foreigner speaking Chinese: "I never trust any human. I have lived for fifty years and have seen many goblins die at the hands of humans. You are more vicious than wolves and more cunning than foxes. All goblins who have trusted humans have had a bad end. But my daughter just told me that you let her go once. Why?"
"Because she was holding the child." Ye Zi replied.
The goblin shaman sneered, "Humph, false compassion. You humans are always like this, doing bad things with sympathy on your face. As for us goblins, we do whatever we want!"
"So we live in a house on the plain, and you can only sit in the woods!" Ji Yijun responded with a sneer.
"You're not happy until you do something bad, right? Let me ask you something." Ye Zi waved his hand to shut him up, and then asked the goblin shaman, "Don't you want to save your daughter and grandson? If you show your value, maybe you can save their lives."
The old goblin looked at the little goblin in the mother's arms and shook his head. "Goblins are useless to humans. We don't have the skills of dwarves, the knowledge of elves, or the strength of orcs. Therefore, humans will never give us any other way out except to kill us. You don't have to waste any more effort. I don't want to be deceived again. If you hadn't let my daughter go this time, I wouldn't even talk to you."
"You said 'again'? Have you dealt with humans before?" Ye Zi asked.
"Did I say that? That's just a thing of the past. Huh, otherwise why would I speak magic language?" After saying this, the goblin shaman sat down without saying a word.
For a moment, the cave was silent, with only the slight crackling of the burning torches as the sound came.
Perhaps because of the smell of torch smoke, the little goblin in the arms suddenly started crying. He was much smaller than a human baby, so his voice was very sharp and sounded very annoying.
The goblin shaman stretched out his finger, drew a strange symbol in the air, and then lightly pressed it on the little goblin's forehead. Soon, the little goblin's voice became softer, but the old goblin never took his hand back.
The female goblin suddenly screamed when she saw this, and frantically pleaded with the goblin shaman. She spoke very quickly, as if something important was about to leave her.
"What's going on?" Ye Zi asked anxiously.
"Maybe... he wants to kill that little thing." Ji Yijun guessed.
"What are you doing!" Seeing the little goblin's breath gradually weakening, Ye Zi hurriedly kicked the shaman's hand away. The female goblin took the little goblin and hid in the corner.
The goblin shaman staggered after being kicked by Ye Zi and fell to the ground. He slowly stood up from the ground, looked at the female goblin and other tribesmen with fear on their faces, and sighed: "What I know... What's the point of telling you what happened to us? Being your slaves means death. Even if you let us go, where can we go? It's still death. The child died here and didn't have to suffer anymore."
"You should give it a try." Ye Zi said, "At least, I can see that you can't bear it."
The goblin shaman sat cross-legged, his eyes slightly closed, mumbling something, his hands making various movements in coordination with the faint chanting. After a while, he said, "My ancestors told me that there is still a chance, and asked me not to give up... Well, I'll tell you why we came here. Our tribe used to live in the deeper mountains and forests, where few humans would go. There were many wild beasts and little food, so our tribe was never big, but we could survive. However, just over two months ago, everything became uneasy. First, there were frequent earthquakes and landslides in the mountains, and the wild beasts became particularly ferocious. The Wolf Fang tribe near us moved to the outside forest, but was soon attacked by human magicians. Many goblins fled back and joined our tribe. However, it wasn't long before a group of humans attacked our tribe at night. They might not have been the tribe's opponents, because our ancestral soul warriors and shamans outnumbered them. But they attacked us with despicable means, just like you did."
"We launched a sneak attack?" Ji Yijun said dissatisfiedly, "We attacked openly!"
The goblin shaman ignored him and continued, "That night, many warriors were killed in their houses before they woke up. We could only fight and flee, leaving the village overnight. The next day, I counted the number of people in the forest, and only half of the tribe escaped. The rest were dead... all dead."
"Where are those who attacked you?" Ye Zi asked.
"They occupied our village and stole all our food. So we had to flee all the way here. There are humans here and we might get more food. Otherwise, winter would come and my tribe would die."
"It's not just that, right? You also captured a lot of people and wanted to use them as sacrifices." Ye Zi pressed.
The goblin shaman was silent for a while before he said, "It takes sacrifices to summon the ancestral spirits to bless the warriors. I wanted to turn the remaining strong men in the tribe into ancestral spirit warriors so that we could fight our way back to the village. But, everything was destroyed by you."
Ji Yijun leaned against the stone wall with a torch in his hand, and suddenly remembered something: "What kind of people attacked you? Tell me clearly!"
"They were all humans, maybe seven or eight, maybe a dozen, I can't tell, but the two leaders were a strong man who could transform into a rock giant, and the other could shoot arrows. The shaman of our tribe all died at his hands." The old goblin pointed to his left arm, where there was a coin-sized scar, "I was also hit by an arrow from that man."
"Transform into a giant and an archer?" Ji Yijun jumped up, picked up the old goblin by his tattered clothes, and shouted, "Where is your village? Take me there! Take me there quickly!"
"Do you think it's Orvel and Awan?" Ye Zi asked.
"It must be these two bastards. They fled into the woods. They must have gathered some horse thieves these days and are trying to go back home through the forest."
"Put him down now, you're almost strangling him to death."
Ji Yijun threw the goblin shaman to the ground, squatted down, and stared at him fiercely, "Speak quickly!"
The shaman coughed a few times, then gave an ugly smile and said, "It seems that I really have what you need. Then I can make a deal with you. You promise to release all these goblins and drive away those people in our village. Then I will lead the way for you!"
"Will Captain Wang agree?" Ye Zi asked in a low voice.
Ji Yijun thought for a while and remembered that Wang Jiyuan had ordered him not to take revenge privately. He shook his head and said, "Him? How can I let him know? If I miss this chance, I may never have another chance. I won't be stupid enough to tell him! I will let these goblins go and take revenge myself."
"This is not just your grudge! I'll go too!" Ye Zi said.
Ji Yijun didn't seem surprised, he just asked, "Are you sure? This is the second time you, a good girl, have made a mistake."
"Sure!" Ye Zi gritted her teeth and said, "You good girl."
"Haha, that's good." Ji Yijun glanced at the goblin shaman, "Deal!"