My monster cards can evolve infinitely.

Xiuqi looked at the tall, muscular man with a fierce expression, and the last trace of hesitation in his heart disappeared.

He sighed, a helpless expression on his face, and slowly began to unbutton his robe, seemingly preparing to submit.

"Hurry up! What are you dawdling for!" the burly man roared impatiently, taking a step closer.

"This... sir..."

Xiu Qi forced a troubled smile, while leaning his body slightly forward to adjust his center of gravity, preparing himself to exert force at any moment.

"This robe isn't worth much, I'll pay for it..."

"Enough nonsense! I've got my eye on this robe!"

The burly man looked extremely impatient, and took two steps closer to Xiu Qi, spitting as he carried his rusty axe.

"Take it off when I tell you to!"

Xiuqi took a step back.

It wasn't out of fear, but because the other person's spittle almost flew into his face.

Seeing Xiu Qi retreat, a sinister smile appeared on the burly man's face. He whistled and then shouted towards the opposite woods:

"Peppa, teach this brat a lesson, but don't kill him!"

Just as tensions were about to rise, Xiu Qi's ears twitched slightly, and he keenly caught a very faint sound of a bowstring vibrating coming from the grass on his left.

call out--

A whooshing sound suddenly rang out from the bushes to the side!

A black speck of light instantly streaked across the sky, tearing through the air and emitting a sharp, piercing sound.

Their target was Xiuqi's thigh!

It seems the bandits want to make an example of this unruly man by crippling him.

It was a sneak attack!

"Be careful!"

The man who looked like an official immediately gasped in surprise, while his female companion next to him closed her eyes in fright.

However, the woman's eyes suddenly sharpened, and her right hand, which had been hanging in front of her, slowly disappeared behind her back.

In mid-air, the feathers at the tip of the flying arrow vibrated violently due to friction with the air, and the impact of the fully drawn bowstring causing the arrowhead to travel sixty feet and appear before Xiu Qi's eyes in an instant.

But then, the iron arrow, carrying all the elasticity of the bowstring, suddenly went astray.

Like a seventy-year-old man, he no longer possessed the strength to withstand the wind like he did at eighteen. The arrow's sights were lowered, seemingly deflected by the wind.

The force remained undiminished, but the target of the iron arrow shifted from Xiuqi's left leg to the green meadow at his feet.

"Pfft!"

The iron arrow was deeply embedded in the grass at his feet, only the fletching still vibrating violently, causing the surrounding grass to rustle and the tall, strong man's face and eyes to freeze in a daze.

"This...this can still miss?" The burly man's stunned face was filled with astonishment. He clearly admired the archer's skill and couldn't believe that he could miss at such close range.

The passengers behind Xiuqi and the coachman lying on the ground all stared in disbelief at the strangely off-target arrow, their faces filled with astonishment and relief at surviving a disaster.

However, the veiled woman's expression was different from the others. She narrowed her eyes slightly, and a sharp glint flashed in her purple eyes.

"He's actually a mage..."

"Deflection... a force field type spell?"

The woman spoke to herself in a very low voice.

A shrewd-looking man in leather armor standing to the side stomped his foot and began to curse loudly:

"You damn idiot Paige, what are you doing?!"

"Your arrows are even more inaccurate than that thing you're using!"

"Quick! Shoot him again... Aim carefully before you fire!"

"Yes, boss!"

A male voice came from the woods on the left side of the path.

Xiu Qi shook his head; he hadn't looked at the arrow at all from beginning to end.

Instead, he pinpointed the location from which the sound was coming from the opposite woods, grinned, and revealed eight clean, even teeth.

"finally found you!"

"Little punk..."

Although Xiu Qi didn't understand what it meant, ever since he awakened the Monster Card Maker System, some unknown words kept popping into his mind.

Xiuqi's left hand was inside his pocket, stroking a rectangular card that was sturdy and smooth.

"Let's attack!"

"Princess Alice!"

......

Archer Paige lay prone in the damp, decaying leaves, her knuckles white from gripping the bow handle so tightly.

He kept his breathing very low, only daring to breathe shallowly through his nostrils, so as not to disturb anyone with the rise and fall of his chest.

When he heard his boss's angry curses, he also felt a little embarrassed.

That arrow was clearly aimed precisely—he had aimed it at the gray-robed boy's left leg with his own eyes.

Sixty feet was no different from point-blank shooting for him.

With his keen eyesight, he could even calculate the arc of the opponent's body swing as they took a half-step back, which was within the prediction of his arrows.

But after the long arrow was shot, it was as if it was deflected in mid-air by an invisible hand. The arrowhead suddenly veered off course, and the force was inexplicably dissipated.

"That's weird, I clearly aimed for the thigh just now..."

He muttered something, then took a deep breath, drew an arrow from his quiver, and nocked it back into his bow.

This time, he squinted, aiming the longbow's crosshair directly at Xiuqi's other knee.

On the forest path ahead, the gray-robed youth still had his hands in his pockets, looking quite relaxed.

"Kid, let's see how you hide this time!" Paige tensed all his muscles, his eyes flashing with ferocity, and drew the bowstring taut.

Just as the archer Paige was about to draw his bowstring taut, he suddenly felt a shiver run through his body and a chill run down his spine.

As a professional bandit who has practiced longbow for many years and makes a living by ambushing, his premonition of disasters is extremely accurate.

It is precisely this almost instinctive awareness that has allowed him to escape death and survive to this day.

However, this calamity seems to be very close to him, almost within reach.

Moreover, the direction is right...

Paige suddenly looked up, and there it was, in mid-air directly above his large head...

An extremely thick wooden stick covered in knots suddenly appeared before his eyes.

A pair of slender, delicate hands were lifting the thick wooden stick high, until it was perfectly perpendicular to the ground...

Those small hands used all their strength, harnessing their own weight, to swing the thick wooden stick vertically down with all their might.

The fierce gust of wind that was whipped up first landed on Paige's pale, bloodless face, causing every hair on it to tremble violently and uncontrollably.

The thick wooden clubs that followed landed squarely on Peppa's delicate face.

In an instant, Peppa felt the earth shake violently, her vision went black, and she fell straight backward to the ground.

......

An eerie silence fell over the forest path.

"What are you waiting for?"

Xiuqi had his hands behind his neck, looking at the three bandits in front of him with a bored expression.

"Are they still waiting for that archer?"

"Don't wait anymore, he's not coming out!"

The tall, burly man's face instantly darkened to a grim color, and he stared intently at the bushes from which the arrows had flown, muttering curses incessantly:

"Damn you, Paige, what are you doing?!"

Snapped--

His response was a longbow thrown from the woods.

The jet-black bow, spotless, was instantly covered in grass clippings when it landed on the meadow.

"This...is Paige's longbow..."

Paige even lost her bow; her fate was obvious.

The burly man's face turned extremely ugly. He gripped the iron axe in his hand tightly and looked at Xiu Qi with a look of surprise and uncertainty.

"Who...who exactly are you?"