The Lone Road to Shaanxi
“Then take care.”
Jegal Sea took two steps forward before glancing back over her shoulder.
I adjusted the pack on my back. Inside were the steamed rice and jerky I’d taken from Eun Seollyeong’s place.
“Jegal Sea, that’s the third time you’ve said that. Are you my nanny or something?”
“It won’t happen, but don’t go getting yourself killed or hurt out of sheer bravado while you’re alone. If you get injured, every last one of my plans falls apart, my household collapses, the martial world collapses, and Shaanxi itself turns into a wasteland. Got it?”
…
I blinked.
“Is that some kind of scholar’s joke?”
“You’re going to have to learn the art of conversation for romance from me later. Answering like that is exactly why you’re unpopular with women. And what I just said was half joke, half deadly serious. Here—take this map.”
The plan had changed.
Jegal Sea didn’t go into detail, but she said she now had a few new favors to ask of Eun Seollyeong, so she would travel with her instead of accompanying me as originally intended. Thanks to that, I would be heading to Shaanxi alone.
The deadline had been pulled forward from a full month to a single week. The time was much tighter, but the route itself was shorter than the first one, so it was manageable. Stick strictly to the back roads, cut through one village near Shaanxi, and that would be it.
“Resupply food and such at this village here, then one more day’s travel and you’ll be in Shaanxi. Keep that in mind. Well then—we’re off?”
I nodded.
In front of me, Jegal Sea and Eun Seollyeong stood ready to depart.
“But Eun Seollyeong’s outfit…”
I pointed at her, stumbling over the words.
“What. Is there a problem?”
Eun Seollyeong asked flatly.
“…No. No problem at all.”
She hadn’t said a word of complaint. Yet a shadow had settled in those cool silver eyes.
That’s definitely a face full of discontent.
“Ah, that?”
Jegal Sea spoke as if it were nothing.
“I got the idea from something you said before. You know how it is—Eun Seollyeong stands out just from her looks. So we decided to cover her up like this, at least. When else am I going to get the chance to be escorted by the legendary Guardian of Mount Hua instead of some ordinary sect?”
Eun Seollyeong wore a tattered straw hat and a dog-skin cloak over her white martial robes—nearly identical to the ones I had once put on her. Her dazzling beauty and curved figure still showed through the cloak, but the extreme clash of the two created a sight that was truly rare to behold.
“Moyong Bi.”
Eun Seollyeong spoke.
“Do not twitch the corners of your mouth.”
I clicked my tongue.
“…You saw that?”
…
We agreed to part at the fork in the road. I would take the left path; Eun Seollyeong and Jegal Sea would continue straight. We would reunite in Shaanxi a week later.
Before we split, Jegal Sea tilted her head at me once more.
“Ah, why does this feel so uneasy? No matter how I think about it, maybe I should stick to the original plan—go with a bodyguard myself and pair you with Eun Seollyeong… Anyway, let me say it again: when we meet in Shaanxi, the moment you open your mouth with something like ‘due to such-and-such reasons I am unable to fight,’ you die and I die.”
I narrowed my eyes and muttered,
“…It’s just cutting through one village. Why are you this worried?”
“Do you know what an anchovy is?”
“Anchovy? What’s that?”
At my confusion, Jegal Sea explained.
“It’s a tiny fish they catch in the sea. People say it’s delicious raw, but its temper is so impatient and its life so short that the moment it’s caught, it does everything it can to die and start rotting right away. So while folks on land say ‘like watching a child left by the water’s edge,’ the fishermen down south have a saying in the same vein: ‘like watching an anchovy just hauled up in the net.’”
“Anchovies and the sea, huh.”
I shrugged and muttered,
“Once everything’s over, I’ve got another place to go and something else to eat.”
“Are you seriously telling me you let every single word before that go in one ear and out the other and only snagged that one phrase?”
I pulled a small, faded scrap of paper from my robes. With a short, sharp piece of charcoal I scrawled a few clumsy lines in crooked handwriting.
“What is that?”
Eun Seollyeong asked.
“Nothing important.”
I mumbled and folded the paper back into my clothes. On one side were the words “places to go and things to eat,” along with a few scattered sentences.
Eun Seollyeong spoke calmly to Jegal Sea.
“Jegal Sea. We must hurry as well. Even if Moyong Bi is taking a detour compared to us, if we are to carry out the revised plan, we need to move quickly from this moment on.”
She gave a light wave of her hand toward empty air as she spoke in that detached tone.
Jegal Sea gave me one last earnest warning.
“Then let’s meet without incident in Shaanxi a week from now—when I arrive dragging every last support force I can muster.”
Right up to the moment she disappeared down the road, Jegal Sea kept pointing two fingers at her own eyes and then at me, more than ten times, before she finally vanished into the distance.
—Whoosh.
The wind blew.
Once I confirmed they were gone, I set my feet in motion.
There was no swift light-foot technique. Just a slightly brisk walking pace, ordinary and unremarkable.
Jegal Sea had repeatedly stressed that I leave no traces that might suggest a high-level martial artist.
If there’s any change in the movements of the Eight Demon Dragons or the plan itself, we’ll contact you immediately by carrier pigeon or whatever means necessary. Until then, leave as little trail as possible. Especially—absolutely no using internal energy of one gapja or higher.
So I chose simply to walk the winding road in silence.
There was not a single sign of human presence around me.
A pure white breeze slipped now and then through the hot air, announcing the turn from late summer into early autumn. Leaves trembled faintly in the gentle wind. At the tips of the green, among thousands of leaves, three or four showed the faintest wash of brown—so slight you might think it a trick of the eye.
“Time moves fast. I thought it was still spring, but it’s already tipping into autumn.”
The older you get, the faster time flies. The Host changes, I change. Everything changes.
Before I knew it, a massive black dog was matching my stride beside me.
I looked at Mumyeong.
“You’ve gotten bigger, haven’t you? You’re almost larger than a full-grown wolf now.”
You’re imagining it.
“…I’d sooner mistake a rice paddle for a rice spoon than mistake your size.”
At my scolding, Mumyeong replied in that dry, emotionless tone.
The more the Host’s body transforms into a complete Demon Escape physique, the more the demonic energy fills it, the closer I too approach my completed form. On top of that, I’ve learned a few ways to hide my body by now.
Mumyeong rippled like thick black ink, melted into the shadow on the ground, then re-formed with crimson eyes gleaming once more.
“Approaching completed form… like Ilmanhyeolje?”
…Do you have to compare me to someone from the Blood Cult even when making analogies?
I took that as confirmation.
“In your eyes, Mumyeong, what’s my current combat level?”
No one knew my condition more objectively and without concealment than Mumyeong. Since the question was directly tied to my survival, he didn’t answer lightly.
We crossed a ridge. Passed a waterfall.
—Splash, splash.
We waded through a clear stream that came up to my ankles, the pebbles on the bottom visible through the transparent water. After I muddied a stretch of it, I backtracked a little upstream, filled my water flask with clean water, and drank.
Then we set out again.
The ones below aren’t worth discussing—they can’t affect the Host’s survival anyway. Objectively speaking, if the Host goes all out, he could kill someone on the level of the Sichuan Tang Family’s Guardian. Of course, the kind of nonsense the gossipmongers spout about not getting a single hair out of place is pure rubbish.
“…I’m that strong?”
I asked again, a little taken aback.
Yes. And to keep you from getting any wrong ideas… this is both a strength and a weakness: the Host has inherited the Blood Cult’s nature extremely strongly.
That was unexpected.
“Me? Not even the Heavenly Demon Cult?”
If there were someone who was a child of both the Heavenly Demon Cult and the Blood Cult’s mother, the White Lotus Demon Sect, it would probably look exactly like this. The Host has traits of both mixed together… and the Blood Cult trait is that the Host’s attitude in battle changes far too drastically depending on emotion.
I already knew that much.
“Well, pretty much all of my real skill was built on life-and-death fights, so it shows even more.”
Eun Seollyeong had pointed it out before as well. The difference between me in a spar and me in a death match was night and day. Even in group fights, my hands moved on reflex to kill the opponent within three exchanges at most—before things could drag on any longer. No one had taught me that. It was a habit I had carved into my own body while thrashing and clawing to stay alive through countless melees.
That was only one fragment. In every footwork, every breath, every movement of a single finger, I had never once met another martial artist in the jianghu who carried the same kind of momentum as me.
Mumyeong continued.
My judgment that you could kill the Sichuan Tang Guardian is also based on the fact that you already fought Jeokmaryeong—who killed that same Guardian—to a standstill.
The sun set.
As I climbed over a ridge to rejoin the path, I felt how much earlier the sun dropped in the mountains than on flat ground. The moment the dusk began to thicken, I stopped walking for the day.
I drew Myeolseom from my waist, felled a nearby log into a thick section, and carried it on my shoulder to the campsite. I chopped it into hefty chunks—one to sit on as a makeshift chair, the rest stacked aside. I gathered dry twigs, dug a shallow pit, collected pine needles, layered small branches on top, then the thicker pieces. I struck flint and set the bottom layer of needles alight.
—Crack-crackle.
Sparks flew as the flames climbed from the needles to the dry branches above. Carefully I set the large log chunks on top.
—Hissss.
Sap oozed from the green wood and sent up white smoke. For a while the fire refused to catch properly, then it took hold in earnest and settled into a steady, long-burning blaze. I laid a flat stone across it, pressed the steamed rice into a cake with my fist, and set the rehydrated jerky on top to roast.
By the time everything was ready, a cool chill had settled in and the night had grown properly dark. Amid the chorus of insects, I faced the first night of the journey.
“So among everyone I’ve met so far, who’s the strongest?”
That’s not even a question.
The black dog answered while staring into the crackling campfire.
Without a doubt, Ilmanhyeolje. And we only met him after he’d passed the first of the seven nights—nowhere near his completed state. Below him would be the Specter of the Battlefield, the Mount Hua Guardian, then Jeokmaryeong and the like.
I recalled the martial artist sleeping in one corner of my memory—the one who had held a long greatsword in both hands.
“…He’s that strong? The one I remember was just a filthy-mouthed lecher who talked way too much.”
And while we’re on the subject: never even think of fighting the Eight Demon Dragons one-on-one. You have to coordinate with Eun Seollyeong and take them on together, exactly as Jegal Sea’s strategy requires.
Mumyeong’s crimson eyes glowed brighter. Red firelight flickered across the black dog’s face.
“Why?”
Behind us, my shadow and the black dog’s danced and intertwined in the firelight.
If my guess is right, each and every one of them is at least on the level of Ilmanhyeolje after that first night—or higher. In our era they were called “those who left the path.” Even Guardians avoided facing those hellish fiends who had nothing left to lose in single combat.