Set Course Northwest
Turn northwest. Fuck, I really almost died. There were several genuinely hair-raising moments. Thanks to Yang Sowol’s help and the fact that almost no attacks reached the side where Jin Jangmyeong was tucked against me, I barely survived. Yet no attacks had targeted Jin Jangmyeong. That meant the goal of all those villains who had gathered for the meeting at the inn was that foul-mouthed little brat. And she had even been in the middle of being kidnapped. What the hell was this kid? Was she some kind of princess? She didn’t exactly look the part, though…
At that moment, Yang Sowol dropped into a deep bow before Cheong. Cheong flinched in alarm. Even if the woman had aged gracefully, she was still old enough to be a mother—accepting such a gesture felt like an enormous burden, an overwhelming one.
“I am once again in your debt, Great Hero.”
“Debt? Come on, none of that. Hey, stop—ack!”
Cheong waved her arm and swallowed a scream. Blood was steadily dripping from it. Other people’s blood was fine, but her own felt precious. Selfish, maybe?
“Great Hero, your wound…!”
“It’s fine. A little spit and it’ll heal.”
Cheong had no need to worry about infection. It was the kind of wound that would close with medicine and rest, though it would take time and be quite inconvenient.
“But Great Hero, your arm…!”
“Damn it, there goes my patience again…”
“Great Hero?”
“It’s fine. Losing one arm is nothing compared to the child being safe.”
I did it! Cheong grinned like an idiot.
“More importantly, we need to treat this quickly.”
Fortunately, Yang Sowol knew basic medicine and even carried decent wound medicine. Unfortunately, there was no way to administer anesthesia. In the end, Cheong bit down on a handkerchief instead. While the arrowheads were removed and the wounds stitched, Cheong tasted hell on earth. Deep wounds had their inner flesh turned inside out. Those were pressed back in, sewn with large stitches, and the process repeated according to depth before the surface was closed with finer stitches. By the time a clean cloth was wrapped around the injury, Cheong’s eyes had turned bloodshot—every capillary had burst. The endless sobbing probably hadn’t helped either. Forget being a warrior; it had simply hurt too much for any human to bear. Truly.
Once the pain subsided and embarrassment set in, Cheong changed the subject.
“So, who were those guys?”
“That is…”
Yang Sowol trailed off, hesitating. After a moment, her expression hardened with resolve.
“It would only be proper to tell my benefactor the truth.”
“Uh, I wasn’t actually that curious…”
She had asked without thinking, and now the weight of it felt suffocating. She had meant it, but Yang Sowol didn’t believe her.
“I appreciate your consideration. In truth, this child…”
The buildup was so dramatic that there had to be some huge secret. Cheong swallowed hard.
“She was born with the Pure Yin Blood constitution.”
The conclusion was shocking! Pure Yin Blood! Cheong had no idea what that was. Yang Sowol, with the insight of age, noticed her confusion.
“Great Hero, the Pure Yin Blood is…”
Yang Sowol had originally been a martial artist, but after marrying her husband she retired and settled in a remote part of Fujian. Her husband had been a kind man, and so on. The usual story of marital happiness. The peak of that happiness came when she became pregnant. The child had been frail—her hands and feet always cold, prone to indigestion, and difficult to rouse once asleep. Even so, none of it had diminished their joy. Then, when the child grew old enough to learn basic self-defense, they discovered something was wrong with her constitution. It was a type of Absolute Meridian. Those born with it rarely lived past thirty. The terrified couple searched far and wide for renowned physicians who specialized in Absolute Meridians. The result was the worst possible news: Innate Qi. The fundamental life force every person possesses. The amount varies slightly from person to person, but not by much. The nature of that qi also differs slightly—commonly called the Yin-Yang Five Elements—but again, the differences are minor. Very rarely, however, a child is born with one of these qualities pushed to its absolute extreme. Yin qi is cold and dark; its coldest aspect alone is called Pure Yin, while its darkest aspect is called Death Yin. Yang qi is bright and hot; its brightest aspect is called True Yang, its hottest Pure Yang. These are the six children of extreme polarity born only once in a great while: boys with Pure Yang, Extreme Yang, or True Yang; girls with Death Yin, Extreme Yin, or Pure Yin. Among them, a girl with Pure Yin Blood is the most precious. This child was exactly that.
Meanwhile, one of the wicked arts of the jianghu was the technique known as cai yin bu yang—stealing yin energy through sexual relations with a woman. It was different from Daoist bedchamber arts. Those arts involved mutual exchange and circulation of energy, benefiting both parties. Thus, while indecent, they were not considered evil. They were, after all, a branch of immortal arts. And among the six yin-yang extremes, Pure Yin was simply too convenient. When it met yang energy, it would settle beneath it, enhancing its heat and brightness. For a martial artist cultivating yang-based techniques, it was an unparalleled elixir. For one cultivating yin-based techniques? It was a supreme elixir that purified their yin energy even further. And martial artists had a particular view of elixirs: they were worth risking one’s life for. If one would not stake their life on an elixir, then what was the point of preserving it? Martial artists were a breed willing to die for elixirs. If word spread that the child possessed Pure Yin Blood, she would never survive. She would meet the most miserable death imaginable, enduring cruel torment. They needed a background powerful enough to protect her from threats too horrific to even put into words—at least until she reached the First-class realm, when no method could steal her Innate Qi any longer. Fortunately, such a sect existed in the jianghu: the Mt. Wu Goddess Sect. However, the journey from a remote village in Fujian to Mt. Wu in Hubei was far too harsh for the child. Traveling across half the continent with a body already so frail… But after her husband died, Yang Sowol no longer had time to hesitate. And so mother and daughter left home hand in hand.
“Wait a second. So all those crazy bastards…”
Every single one of them had gathered to assault a single middle-school-aged girl. This was… the world of martial arts?
Separately, the child’s identity was also somewhat horrifying. So you… were a middle-school girl all along…? Cheong looked down at the brat sleeping soundly on her thigh. After enduring the torture disguised as treatment—sobs muffled by the cloth in her mouth, tears streaming instead—the girl had immediately claimed Cheong’s thigh as her pillow. She really was an utterly wicked child.
“I am truly ashamed to ask this, but if you feel any pity for the child, would you perhaps accompany us as far as Mt. Wu?”
“Of course! Those lust-crazed—”
A mission window suddenly appeared and cut Cheong off.
[Omen, the (Unknown)th Crisis]
You stand before the greatest opportunity of your life.
Good Deed) Escort the child to the Goddess Sect
Good Deed) Or escort the child to a suitable sect
Good Deed) Hand the elixir over to its rightful owner
Bad Deed) Sell the elixir
Bad Deed) Take the elixir for yourself
Heavenly Slaughter) Destroy the elixir and take its pure blood
[This choice may influence the entire world.]
It was a mission window in a format she had never seen before. Usually missions were just “kill the bad guy” or “do bad things together,” and sometimes “kill the bad guy’s friends too” or “kill everyone, good or bad.” It had always been roughly that. She should have read the mission guides if she knew it would come to this. Character creation and early farming routes—that was all the information Cheong had seen before entering the game. There hadn’t been time to look up anything else. The game’s file size hadn’t been that large to begin with; installation finished quickly and she had launched it right away.
What was an “Omen”? And what was the “nth Crisis”? The second Good Deed condition was the same. Hand the elixir over to its rightful owner? The word choice was unpleasantly blunt. There was only one way the mission treated Jin Jangmyeong as a person. Elixir? Calling a living, breathing child an elixir or whatever. Grind. Cheong gritted her teeth. What the hell was this? What was she supposed to do? Who was she? Was she inside a game? Was she the protagonist? What kind of world was this? The child? The mother? Were they people or just programming? Why her, why only her, why—
Something cold touched her wrist. Cheong turned her neck like a rusted machine with a broken neck, her eyes faded and empty. A small hand was gripping her wrist. Cold enough to snap her back to her senses.
“Cold…”
The child pulled weakly at her wrist. Cheong’s hand followed and touched the girl’s unusually cool cheek.
“Haa.”
Cheong let out a long sigh. What a fucking awful feeling. Even the fact that she freaked out just from seeing the status window was a kind of illness. Was this a mental illness? Me, a mental patient! What a truly astonishing fact. But you’d understand if it happened to you too. Cheong forced down the nausea rising in her throat. The bitter stomach acid that had shot up her esophagus and reached the root of her tongue retreated without coming out. She vented by roughly clearing her throat.
“Great Hero?”
“Ah. Yes. What were we talking about… Ah, right. Of course we should go together. How could I refuse such a request? Of course not.”
Cheong answered like that. Was there no settings window? Something to turn off these suddenly appearing mission windows. Goddamn thing. Instead of cursing, Cheong looked down at the child’s face. A sleeping child naturally calmed the mind and body. Humans had probably evolved that way. To protect a weak child? Maybe?
Mission or not, Cheong only had one choice. The middle-school girl was a kid. Kids had to be protected. That was basic common sense for any cultured modern Korean.