Ryan, thrilled with the success of his first spell test, cheerfully covered his tracks in the valley and made his way back to the village.
As soon as he entered the village Ryan observed tense atmosphere and found all the adults gathered together at the village square and discussing something seriously.
Ryan slowly reached there and found the reason upon listening to the adult's arguments.
So, the reason for the tense atmosphere is that the neighboring village was attacked by bandits after the grain merchant bought all the goods and left after paying them.
One night, while the villagers were sleeping peacefully, ten bandits armed with swords and wearing armor rode into the village on horseback. They took control of the village chief's house, injuring those inside, and stole all the tax money and the funds meant to be distributed to the villagers for selling rice.
Although no lives were lost, the villagers who lost all their seasonal crop money quickly went to the nearby town and complained to the lord. The lord sent a guard to other nearby village to warn them of the bandits' attack and issued a bounty for capturing them, dead or alive.
For some reason the Town has entered a curfew period, and Lord has declared he can't send troops to subdue them immediately, so he asked the villagers to form independent militia during this time to protect the villagers.
The villagers are now arguing about how to arrange the shifts to guard the village during nights without disturbing the schedule of villagers to harvest their crops.
Ryan found the situation suspicious. The bandits attacked on the same day the merchants arrived, paid for the grain, and left. How did the bandits know the merchants had left unless they were following the merchant caravans, or the merchants were colluding with the bandits for extra income?
Ryan dismissed the first option that the merchant caravan was under the observation of bandits, as there were many guards patrolling and guarding the caravan. If they found any suspicious persons on their way, they would warn the villagers to be on guard and wouldn't leave the village unless they were sure it was safe to leave.
So, we can be sure it is the second option which has the great possibility of occurring's as even children in the village knew the caravan merchants are the greediest one out there, they will turn into bandits once there are enough benefits in robbing a village.
They can enter the village as merchants, observe and map the important places, and plan their heist after noting the number of guards.
After paying for the grains and leaving the village, they can inform the guards disguised as bandits about the village details and commence the banditry.
To do this, they must have known the town couldn't send troops immediately as it was tied up with other matters.
They will only steal the valuables without killing any villagers, which will put a small bounty on them for a few days. Then, they will change back to guards in the morning and do their work, while no one will doubt them as they have the heavy duty of protecting the grains and the merchants.
Ryan figured all of this out after listening to the adults arguing, but he didn't speak up because no one would believe him without any evidence.
So, he slowly left the place and went back to his home where his grandfather is cooking the food while waiting for him to return back.
Seeing Ryan return from the field, John happily stood up and asked him to wash up with the water and come inside as the food was almost ready.
Ryan smiled and agreed, reminding John to be careful with the piping hot dishes or to wait for him to freshen up so he could help carry them to the hall where they would be eating.
By the time Ryan has freshened up, Old John has already placed the food and plates in the hall area and is sitting there, ready to eat while waiting for Ryan's arrival.
Ryan immediately came and sat beside him and serving the food to into both of their plates and started eating.
While they were eating Ryan informed his grandfather John of the bandits attacking the neighboring village and stole all the money in the village.
When he saw his grandfather was tensed upon hearing bandit attack Ryan asked him to not get so tensed as the villager are discussing of arranging night guard's while making the young man in the village work some extra few hours to guard the village.
So, they can repel the bandits easily without any problem, and he informed old John that the bandits never killed villagers after stealing the valuables. He said that if we can't defend, we can just surrender our things, and they will leave us alone.
Old John felt relaxed upon hearing his grandson's assurance and started eating the food happily, as there wasn't much in the house for the bandits to steal.
Ryan didn't share the deduced theory with his grandfather to avoid worrying him. He ate his food quietly, then helped old John clean the dishes. He then asked John to rest until evening while he returned to his room.
After entering his room, he shut the door tightly and sat on the bed while thinking of the counter measures if the bandits really did attack them.
Soon he unknowingly entered the meditative stance and went into deep meditation and found the answer to the problem in the spells he has learned today.
The vine entanglement spell can be stored in the vine plant seeds in advance, and they can be used to activate the spell upon contact of the seed with the target.
Generally, those in the early-stage qi refinement realm can't perform such spells because they require a huge amount of spirit energy to store the spell in the seeds, which they can't handle at that stage. Meanwhile, in the late stages of the qi realm, basic spells become redundant in fights, as they can be easily cut down with a single swing of their swords.
But Ryan who can automatically recover spirit energy can try this method and increase the fighting power.