Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 292 Black Armor Knight
Ye Jiu's heart skipped a beat.

Of course he knew how the previous owners of "Shafa" died.

The reason why the strange weapon equipment "Killing" is called Killing is because this set of equipment contains an extremely strong desire for killing. Every time Ye Jiu puts on this armor and holds these two weapons, he can't help but feel the urge to kill all the living things he can see in front of him.

Especially when he puts on the mask, he even has a brief feeling of "forgetting himself".

In that state, he was no longer Ye Jiu, a qualified person equipped with the "killing" weapon, but a member of the group of black-armored cavalry who broke into the battle line and killed the enemies and fought bloody battles more than a thousand years ago.

But the reason why Ye Jiu became the best performer among all the qualified candidates of "Shafa" was not because of the extremely high synchronization rate between him and "Shafa", but because he could always keep his original heart and not be controlled by the murderous intent.

All those who were once qualified for "Killing" were, without exception, gradually eroded by the desire for killing in battle after battle. The thrill of cutting flesh and breaking bones was as addictive as illegal drugs... Not only that, the golden ghost mask covering the face would continue to amplify this pleasure, making those who were qualified for Killing indulge in it.

When the qualified person is completely reduced to a puppet of killing, that is the moment when killing can exert its greatest power.

Strictly speaking, the Qualified One cannot be considered as the manipulator of killing, nor can it be said to be the "living CPU" of killing... but rather it is closer to the effect of a "limiter".

Use human will to counter the "instinct" of strange equipment.

The process of using this strange weapon is to gradually loosen the limiter, using the ever-reducing restraints in exchange for the powerful power of the strange weapon.

Experienced qualified personnel can grasp the "degree" of removing restrictions - that is, to maximize the original power of the strange equipment without completely losing control.

But even the most experienced and qualified person will make mistakes one day.

As the power of the strange equipment is released again and again, the threshold on the edge of control and loss of control will slowly slide to one side... and the self-consciousness of the qualified person will be assimilated by the strange equipment little by little when he uses the power that does not belong to him again and again.

Ye Jiu had heard a saying - for most of the strange weapons and equipment, qualified people can only be regarded as a kind of "consumable".

But Ye Jiu is an outlier.

He summed up the experiences and lessons of his predecessors, and then combined them with his own experience, and came up with a way to curb this erosion.

Compared to constantly hinting at things like a sense of justice, responsibility, or patriotism, Ye Jiu discovered that it was the sand sculpture and abstract attitude towards life that could perfectly restrain the tempting desire to kill.

Ye Jiu was rarely affected by killing. Even though he had just chopped off the two infected special agents like chopping melons and vegetables, he did not feel anything unusual.

Ye Jiu had carefully read the files of several previous qualified candidates of "Shafa". According to their self-descriptions and psychological test reports, before they became puppets of "Shafa" or had to be relieved of their status as qualified candidates for various reasons, their thinking logic and psychological state would show obvious changes... and Ye Jiu would do similar tests not only once a week, but also before and after each mission, but he had never detected any abnormalities.

"If that's the case, why did this happen... Is this an illusion or something else?"

Ye Jiu held the reins tightly, feeling puzzled.

At this moment, the row of black-armored cavalrymen charging side by side in front suddenly dispersed. The gap between each cavalryman expanded from less than one meter to about five meters. The width of the front end of the entire army formation suddenly extended four or five times.

"Spread? Why should it spread?" Ye Jiu was a little puzzled.

Although there is almost no combat record of the Black Armor Cavalry, there is no doubt that this is a standard heavy cavalry unit.

As a veteran game geek, Ye Jiu has played at least eighty cold weapon war games. He has also read a lot of documents and military books describing cavalry battles. Although he cannot be called an expert, he at least knows a lot about cavalry tactics in the cold weapon era.

The simplest and most effective tactic of heavy cavalry is to charge in groups, relying on their own weight and inertia after the charge to tear through the enemy's formation.

The tactics of the Black Armored Cavalry in front of them, on the contrary, were more like the light cavalry spreading out and encircling from the left and right, and then making roundabout moves... However, this tactic not only completely abandoned the advantages of the heavy cavalry's strong armor and sharp spears, but also actively exposed their own shortcomings such as poor endurance, inflexible turning, and a sharp drop in combat effectiveness after stalling to the enemy.

Could it be that... the general commanding this group of black-armored cavalry is a mediocre person?
Are you kidding me? Emperor Zhenguan would let a mediocre person lead the Black Armor Cavalry?

But soon, Ye Jiu understood the reason why the front row of black-armored cavalry dispersed.

The black-armored cavalrymen in the back row raised the powerful crossbows hanging on their saddles, and countless crossbow arrows were shot out from the gaps between the cavalrymen in the front row, nailing the monsters that rushed to the ground... and the black-armored cavalrymen in the back row were equipped with hard longbows taller than humans. The way they shot arrows was not flat shooting, but projectile shooting. The bowstrings kept exploding like thunder, and wave after wave of arrows rained down on the places where the monsters were most concentrated.

"Does the Black Armor Cavalry still have such a powerful long-range strike capability?" Ye Jiu was completely stunned - although the Black Armor Cavalry a hundred years later would also be equipped with some bows and crossbows, they were basically some palm-sized hand crossbows or short bows less than one meter long. This kind of weapon was okay to use against unarmored targets, but as long as the enemy was equipped with a shield or armor, the lethality of this kind of weapon would be very limited.

But the strong bows and crossbows in the hands of these black-armored cavalrymen can even directly penetrate the shields and plate armor of the heavy infantry. When facing these humanoid monsters who are only protected by leather armor and chain mail at most, shooting them is as easy as mowing the grass.

"It turns out that even the equipment of the later Black Armor Cavalry were castrated versions?" Ye Jiu lowered his head to look at his saddle, and sure enough, there was also a powerful crossbow hanging on the right side of the saddle - the crossbow had been strung, and the heavy iron box stuck above the bow arm was filled with crossbow arrows forged from the same fine iron.

This is even a semi-automatic crossbow!
"Could this be the long-lost Zhuge Crossbow?" Ye Jiu took off the crossbow in surprise. He was shocked to find that on the side of the trigger, there was a safety similar to that of modern firearms!

"Oh my god..." Ye Jiu turned on the safety, held the crossbow horizontally on horseback, aimed at a strange creature nearly a hundred steps away, and quickly pulled the trigger.

A crossbow arrow whizzed out, instantly crossing the distance of nearly a hundred steps, and completely sank into the body of the strange creature. At the same time, the next crossbow arrow in the iron box naturally fell down and stuck into the firing slot of the crossbow machine. With a complex mechanical sound, the bowstring that bounced back to its original position was tightened again, ready for the next shot.

"This thing is just as useful as a gun!" Ye Jiu looked at the crossbow in his hand with some envy, "It would be great if 'Killing' also included a crossbow like this..."

Unconsciously, Ye Jiu seemed to no longer worry about why he was thrown onto this battlefield - in his opinion, this might be a test of "killing" for himself, but he didn't quite understand how to pass this "test".

Not participating in the battle may be a wise choice, but when it comes to "killing", this is obviously not the right answer.

If Ye Jiu didn't kill any of the monsters, it would mean that he and "Killing" were completely incompatible. From then on, the synchronization rate between the two might drop drastically...

And participating in the battle... Even though the Black Armor Cavalry and the strange creatures have not yet fought each other, Ye Jiu can already see that this is an extremely brutal battle. If you want to survive in such a battle, it is impossible without killing people.

But if I really kill people with bloodshot eyes...

Wouldn't that mean you will become a puppet of the desire for killing?
Is this a trap?
"Shafa" saw that he hadn't fallen for so long, so he took the opportunity to set a trap for himself and forced himself to jump into it?

Either give up "killing" or give up yourself...Ye Jiu can only make one choice between the two.

"Damn it, you have no martial ethics." Ye Jiu slapped the breastplate's breastplate with some dissatisfaction, and the breastplate immediately responded with a clanging sound.

"Then is there a third option..." For some reason, Ye Jiu subconsciously thought of Sun Hang.

If Sun Hang were in his current position, what choice would he make?
Ye Jiu suddenly realized that he had no idea what the answer was.

Even though he had been with Sun Hang for a long time and thought he knew him very well... but when he thought about it carefully, he found that he was extremely unfamiliar with this person and everything about him was so unpredictable... In other words, "that guy never plays by the rules."

But sometimes, just when you think he won't play according to common sense, he just follows the rules and plays a pair of three.

"Damn it, why should I think about that bastard at such a critical moment?" Ye Jiu shook his head vigorously.

He thought of a third option.

That is to maintain one's inner clarity in the midst of crazy killing.

"Can I do it...?" Ye Jiu glanced at the crossbow in his hand, then looked at the large group of monsters less than thirty steps away from the front row of black-armored cavalry, and couldn't help feeling a little nervous.

However, the battlefield did not leave him more time to think. The group of black-armored cavalrymen in the front row let out bursts of whistles from under their masks. They threw iron chains to their comrades around them and used these chains to connect a whole row of horses together.

These iron chains were hung with barbed caltrops, and when the front row of black-armored cavalry crashed into the group of monsters, these iron chains also knocked down a large number of monsters that had nowhere to hide!
The second row of black-armored cavalry immediately followed up, and the iron hooves of their war horses instantly trampled the knocked-down monsters into meat paste, while those that escaped were finished off by the cavalry holding halberds - the halberds in their hands were wrapped in purple-black flames, and after piercing through the bodies of the monsters, in just a few seconds, the flames of the same color that spread to the monsters would burn them to ashes.

"Thousands of qualified people equipped with strange weapons... Even in modern times, they are a very terrifying force." Ye Jiu lay on the horse's back and whispered to himself, "Why did the Zhenguan Emperor form such an army... And where did their enemies come from... Could it be that as early as the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, there was a large-scale active period of strange things?"

The last time strange creatures were active on a large scale, 99 percent of human civilizations were destroyed, and only this ancient civilization on the Xiazhou continent survived... And during the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Zhenguan suppressed a large active period of strange creatures with just a few thousand black-armored cavalry?

How could this be possible given the level of technology at the time?

"No... It shouldn't be a global active period... Maybe it's just active in some local areas." Ye Jiu kept patching up his guesses, "Just like the Eternal Night, it has happened several times in history, but at that time the imperial court chose to let the people in the affected areas fend for themselves, and rarely formed a special army to clear out the weird things that appeared in the Eternal Night area... Thinking about it this way, it seems to make sense."

It is obviously impossible for an emperor like Emperor Zhenguan to tolerate the rampant evil spirits under his rule, so it is reasonable for him to form a team of black-armored cavalry to deal with the evil spirits at all costs.

The only thing that Ye Jiu couldn't understand was how did the Black Armor Cavalry get so many strange equipment and then find so many qualified people? According to the research level of strange objects in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, I'm afraid they couldn't even measure the synchronization rate between strange equipment and qualified people?
"Wait... strange equipment? Mass production? Matching qualified people..." Ye Jiu couldn't help but widen his eyes.

He thought of something.

The red square crystal that Sun Hang found in the underground palace.

According to Sun Hang, that thing can mass-produce artifact-like strange objects, and can even tailor the adaptability of the strange objects according to the user's wishes... In other words, that thing can be used to mass-produce strange equipment and qualified persons, thereby forming an army composed entirely of qualified persons?

So, Sun Hang’s “mass production plan” that almost made him drop his jaw... was completed by Emperor Zhenguan more than a thousand years ago?
While he was thinking, the Black Armor Cavalry's formation had already collided with most of the strange creatures. Countless strange creatures were knocked away by the Black Armor Cavalry, whose horses and men weighed nearly a thousand pounds. But at the same time, many Black Armor Cavalry were pulled off their horses' backs by the strange creatures and torn into pieces in the blink of an eye.

The charge did not stop, but the number of black-armored cavalrymen around Ye Jiu was constantly decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

There are just too many weird things...

(End of this chapter)