Fire Safety Is a Must, Even for Embers
Whether asleep or awake, always beware of fire. Even an extinguished flame deserves a second look. Cheong soared through the sky, clutching Jayu and Yeon Pa tightly in her arms. Today, it felt like she had flown more than enough to last a lifetime. The chilling, heart-dropping sensation of weightlessness and the repeated experience of gravity's sudden pull had become so routine that she even had the luxury to let her mind wander.
Thankfully, she could see the water's surface glinting far below. She had worried the whole way—whether the carriage might break mid-flight, or if their trajectory would fall short or overshoot, causing them to crash on the riverbank instead. But fortunately, everything had worked out.
In truth, Cheong was confident she could survive even if captured by the Imperial Guards. She could survive being dragged off by them. The ones truly in danger were Jayu and Yeon Pa. If Jayu were caught by the Imperial Guards, he would die. But because the carriage had flown in a straight line over the mountain, a path to survival had opened up like this.
As Cheong drew near the water's surface, she twisted her body in midair with a resonant thud, releasing palm force into the empty space. The three of them plunged into the river feet-first with a splash. Plop. Three heads bobbed back up above the surface.
Cheong paddled through the water in a clumsy backstroke-like position, holding the other two close. "Ugh, are you both okay?"
"Kuhuk. You reckless child! What kind of madness is this, endangering His Highness's precious jade body? Your Highness! Your Highness!"
"Hold on. Just check if he's breathing and don't wake him yet. I'm seriously injured too, you know? If Jayu starts flailing around, I won't have any way to handle it. It'll be every man for himself then. I'll abandon you both. The living must survive, after all."
At that, Yeon Pa's senses snapped back into focus. Not out of fear of being abandoned, but because the absurd statement had left her utterly speechless. If Cheong had truly been the type to abandon them, she never would have dragged the carriage all the way here in the first place. Whether one should call her a foolish, stubborn idiot or commend her for her loyalty was hard to say.
"Saying things you don't even mean. Tsk tsk. Hmm. It seems His Highness has simply exhausted his energy and slipped into a brief unconscious state."
"Unconscious, my foot. Real unconsciousness would be one thing, but he's just passed out. That's all."
"A noble person does not simply 'pass out.' That is precisely why they are noble."
"Calling it unconsciousness doesn't change the fact that he looks exactly like someone who got knocked out cold."
Now all they had to do was grab onto one of the larger pieces of carriage debris and float downstream... But no matter where she looked, there were no trees. Why were there no trees? Where had they all gone? It wasn't as if they had all burned up like they were breaking through the atmosphere or something. But where were they?
No matter how much she scanned the area, there wasn't a single tree she could lean against. Thanks to that, Cheong's frown refused to fade. She was supporting two people with one arm while flailing the other arm and both legs. Every time she thrashed her limbs, a fierce pain protested from her side, so her face remained twisted in a vicious scowl.
Zitan wood sank in water. It would have been stranger if a material harder than mid-grade steel floated. Cheong, unaware of this fact, simply found it infuriating. Why couldn't anything ever go smoothly!
"Are you hurt?" Yeon Pa's voice was thick with concern.
"I already said I was hurt from the start. I thought my side was starting to heal a bit, but looking at it now, it's probably all torn open again. The cracks in my bones haven't mended at all—they've probably spread even further."
"Hmph. Such dramatics. The fact that you're speaking so clearly means you're still alive. Have you ever actually had cracked bones? When it's real, you can't even move. The slightest motion brings screams and forces you to collapse."
"Then you just have to endure with grit. That's your problem—you lack grit. Pure grit."
Cheong's swimming gradually picked up speed. It wasn't because her energy was surging, nor was it due to the molten-lava-like agony in her side fueling her rage. The current was growing stronger. They were somewhere between the upper and middle reaches of the Musu River. The flow was already substantial, and with the steep gradient, the water that curved around the eroded cliffs of Mount Gyeokmok and flowed westward now stretched straight ahead, accelerating rapidly.
"Yeon Pa. At this point, we're not so much swimming as we're being swept along, you know? Do you see any villages or anything?"
The best way to find shelter during a shipwreck was to follow the water downstream. Surprisingly, the capital's waterworks technology in this primitive, ancient, uncivilized Central Plains was actually quite advanced. However, that technology was used only to make large cities more convenient—it was never employed to build settlements based around waterways. In this era, such techniques were the exclusive privilege of noble persons, far beyond the reach of lowly commoners. The lowly were simply meant to endure discomfort. They must not dare grow comfortable through technology.
Therefore, a river with such abundant flow should certainly have villages nestled along its banks. As Cheong let the current carry her along for quite some time, the merging streams met a cliff and turned northward. After floating further and then curving eastward again, the mountain range suddenly dropped away, revealing rice paddies and fields on the right—the northern riverbank.
"There! A village! There's a village!"
It was the most welcome sound she had heard in a while. And so, they headed toward the riverbank.
All three of them were wearing thick fur coats, now soaked through and weighing a ton. Moreover, after floating in the water and suddenly reaching land, their bodies struggled to adjust, making them feel even heavier as the full weight pressed down on them.
Lightning kept striking inside Cheong's head. Her side—her poor side. She wanted to just carve it out. It would probably hurt less if it were gone. Thinking such ungrateful thoughts about her own ribs, Cheong woke the frail young man.
Despite being perfectly fine, he had been sleeping alone, so she slapped his cheeks with all the annoyance she could muster. Slap! Slap slap!
"Jayu? Jayu?"
"You wench, how dare you strike His Highness's—"
"Huk, huu, huuu. Friend, is that you? Yeon Pa? Where is Yeon Pa?"
"Your Highness! This lowly one is here! Have you come to your senses!? How is your body?"
"Mmm. There isn't a single spot on me that doesn't hurt. However..."
Jayu gently stroked his own cheek.
"I thought I had hit my head on the carriage, but it was my cheek? It stings terribly."
At that, Yeon Pa shot Cheong a glare sharp enough to cut like an axe blade. Cheong pretended to be intently observing the smoke from the mountain fire rising in the distance.
And so, the less injured woman and the frail young man supported the heavily wounded old woman on either side as they headed toward the village.
It should have been a proper village. If it were a clan village, things would get truly difficult. Remote villages in the Central Plains were essentially small-scale warlords that had completed their fortification. Naturally, they did not welcome outsiders.
However, a wall built by deliberately connecting house to house stood proudly revealed. It was the typical fortified style of a Central Plains village. Still, the fact that the gate-like entrance stood wide open was encouraging. It seemed they weren't entirely closed off. Maybe they could offer up their fur coats and rest for a while.
But that was Cheong's miscalculation. The open entrance did not mean they welcomed outsiders—it meant the village was empty. A wildfire had broken out, so everyone had fled.
In a way, it was for the best. These fortified village folk were utterly untrustworthy. If they refused entry, they became obstacles. If they did let you in, there was a high chance they would turn into bandits.
There were several chimneys still sending up smoke. Had they fled in such a hurry that they didn't even put out their fires? Even if the wildfire miraculously missed them, the entire village could burn down. Well, it couldn't be helped.
She could at least repay them for the fire safety oversight by resting here. With that thought, Cheong kicked open the door of a building still emitting smoke and burst inside.
Then, a startled gasp burst out. "Wh-who are you!"
"Ah. There was someone here. I'm sorry..."
It was an old man whose back was completely bent. He had been startled by the sudden home invasion, but the river water streaming down from their coats, their deathly pale lips, and above all, the pitiful sight of Jayu trembling violently as if suffering from an earthquake seemed to tug at his heart.
He immediately gave up his spot by the fire, covered them with blankets, and generously filled bowls with hot tea. Nothing restored body temperature like hot water. As the hot tea entered their cold, aching bodies, an ecstatic sensation spread as if their entire beings were melting and loosening up.
"Huuu, thank you."
"We are grateful for your kindness."
"Are you hunters? Or martial artists, since you're carrying blades? Well, with a wildfire raging, what does it matter. Looks like you jumped into the water after seeing the flames."
"Something like that."
When ordinary people saw soldiers dressed in bandit clothing, this was exactly the impression they got. Bandits dressed like beggars living in the mountains. They didn't wander around in high-quality fur coats, fur hats, and fur shoes.
"It seems the villagers have evacuated. Are you still here, sir?"
"I've lived here my whole life. Where would I go? My old lady is buried right behind here. I can't just leave her alone. It seems it's about time for me to go meet her."
"Ah..."
"That's right. The wildfire came. What can you do?"
Jayu and Yeon Pa looked at Cheong. One characteristic of these isolated, fortified mountain villages cut off from the world was their thick dialect. Having lived only among themselves for so long, their speech had evolved into something completely different from regional accents—essentially a foreign language where only a few words were understandable.
Yet Cheong understood it perfectly. However, it didn't occur to her that while her own speech was perfectly normal, the fact that the old man could understand her was strange. It was simply human nature to assume that if you could understand someone, they could understand you too.
"The government troops set fire to the mountain."
"Eh? What did you say? This isn't the season for that."
Suddenly, the old man began busily packing his belongings. Cheong looked puzzled.
"Didn't you say you couldn't leave your wife behind?"
"The government dogs started the fire. So this isn't a wildfire. Those damn government bastards! Those rotten, motherless sons of bitches! They should all be thrown into a jar of salted seafood paste and fed to their own mothers to end their bloodlines! I have no intention of dying at the hands of government dogs."
He could die in a wildfire, but he refused to burn to death in a fire set by government troops. Even the dialect for curses was roughly the same. Calling them government dogs, saying they should make salted seafood paste out of them and feed it to their parents to cut off their lineage. It perfectly revealed what the old man thought of the government and the authorities.
At the horrifically blasphemous words, Yeon Pa shuddered in disgust. "Th-this old man..."
"Enough." Jayu's expression was dark as he stopped her.
The old man finished packing and left just like that. Now, in the house whose owner had vanished, only the guests remained, sitting there awkwardly.
"Well, this worked out nicely. Jayu, you should rest. Drink some more hot water, warm up your body, then take off those wet clothes and wrap yourself in a blanket. I'll go find some dry clothes and something to eat. Yeon Pa, could you help me?"
"Aigoo, I don't think I can go."
"What? You called me dramatic, but now look at you. And you're at the Harmonious Realm, no less."
"What? Aigoo, a young and energetic wench is now glaring like a hawk, trying to order an old woman around. My body is covered in places where the internal energy has burst through and blood is flowing. You're trying to work an old woman to death."
"Ah. Then you should have said so. Yeon Pa, you should take off your wet clothes too, dry off, and wait here. I'd like to treat your wounds right away, but I need to find some clean cloth to put on them first. Ouch."
Cheong let out a groan as she stood up. Her body felt heavy, every muscle was taut, and her side burned with pain as if red-hot nails were flowing through her veins instead of blood. But if Jayu went out, he might freeze to death or catch a fever from the cold, which would be disastrous. And since Yeon Pa said her pierced and torn wounds had reopened, what else could she do?
---
In truth, Yeon Pa had thought Cheong was being dramatic. She claimed her muscles had torn and her bones were cracked, but if someone truly suffered such injuries, even breathing would cause agony. They wouldn't be able to sleep and would simply groan in pain. Yet here was a woman who had vigorously pulled a carriage and then swam while holding two people for nearly half a shichen, saying she was in pain.
So Cheong alone continued to bustle about. She gathered the remaining food ingredients and clothes to change into, re-stitched Yeon Pa's torn wounds, applied medicine, and wrapped them with cotton bandages. She boiled all the remaining ingredients to make a mixed porridge. She couldn't even sit properly the entire time.
Only after the meal was finished could Cheong finally examine her own side. As she unwrapped the bandages compressing the wound, she kept letting out groans of "Ah-heuk." And Yeon Pa was horrified.
"You, you wench... in that state..."
The right side of her waist was sharply caved in like a gourd, while the left side was swollen outward so severely that if a pregnant woman were carrying a child in her side, this was exactly what it would look like. The wound that had been starting to settle into a dark bruise had torn open again, with new purple bruising blooming over the old one. On top of the blackened swelling, fresh violet bruises had risen, making the whole thing lumpy and grotesque.
"Heavens, how utterly wretched..."
Only then did Yeon Pa realize Cheong's words hadn't been dramatics at all. Her bones really were cracked from top to bottom, and all her muscles had torn. Literally.
"How could you walk around in this state!? How, you child, oh heavens. What are we to do?"
Yeon Pa wailed in distress, reaching out her hands only to pull them back, unable to even touch the wound. "If it hurts this much, you should have acted like it hurt! I had no idea, oh heavens. This old woman's eyes must have gone blind."
She paced back and forth, unable to hide her guilt. Cheong let out a small chuckle, but immediately changed her expression as pain shot through her.
"I've been in pain the whole time, so I've gotten used to enduring it. Besides, I couldn't just lie down because it hurts. And anyway, when you get into a real fight, you don't even notice when you're being stabbed or torn apart. That's just how it is."