Back to Mount Heng (6)
Hold on — weren't wolves supposed to be among the weakest of beasts...?
The pack in front of me looked downright ferocious. And these weren't one or two strays — there were more than twenty of them, moving like old hands at the business of hunting together.
"Won! Stay right on my back!"
"O... okay!"
I glued myself to Zhuge Yang's spine. It wasn't a heroic look, but staying alive came first.
Bare-handed, I might manage one wolf — two or more, not a chance. If another beast lunged while I was locked in a shoving match with the first, it would be over. I'd trained my whole fighting art against human opponents, and wolves were a wholly different problem.
At some point, the wolves ringing us began to move.
Two of them, having claimed the ground at my back, charged in.
WHAM!
"This way!"
Zhuge Yang yanked me behind her back again and moved to meet the lunging wolf. Or rather, she tried to.
But then the charging beasts abruptly pulled up short.
In the same breath, two more came flying at me. Each time Zhuge Yang shifted me somewhere new, wolves would dart in from that angle as well, and before we knew it we were being squeezed into a corner.
Since when were wolves this drilled and disciplined?
AWOOOOOO—!
A huge wolf at the rear seemed to be the conductor, bellowing out the orders, but there was nothing we could do about it from where we stood.
Once the pack caught on that Zhuge Yang was tethered to protecting me, they simply bided their time, waiting for an opening — and she couldn't afford to stray so much as an inch from my side.
If I could charge out and take them head-on, thirty of them wouldn't be a problem, let alone twenty.
The wolves that had been so doggedly working my back finally made their real move.
Two lunged at me at once, and a heartbeat later several more rushed Zhuge Yang too.
Clever beasts — they were exploiting her desperation to keep me safe.
From where we stood, it was enough to make my blood boil.
SHRAK!
The instant Zhuge Yang cut down the two wolves flying at her, a ribbon of blood spurted from her left arm.
"Ugh!"
"Are you okay?!"
She'd been so focused on covering me that she hadn't managed to dodge. With every lunge of the pack, her wounds kept multiplying. If they'd all rushed us at once, I might have found some way to handle it — but these clever devils kept harrying me to split our attention, nicking and biting away at Zhuge Yang bit by bit.
CRUNCH!
"Hah!"
SHRAK!
This time her calf came within a hair of being clamped in jaws. If a wolf ever got its teeth into her and shook — the moment her head so much as cracked against the rock, it would be the end.
AWOOOOOOO—!
That damned mutt!
Three wolves had already died on Zhuge Yang's blade, but plenty more remained, circling, eyeing us for the next opening.
"I-I'm sorry... this is all because of me..."
"No, it isn't! I'll figure something out! They won't find it so easy to charge in!"
"...Looks to me like they're planning to stall us out...?"
Before I knew it, we'd been driven to the lip of a cliff.
The wolves never loosened their encirclement. The moment we stepped forward, they would surely dart in at my back again — or else they'd simply wait for exhaustion to drop us where we stood.
I had grown complacent, never having faced any real danger until now. If Zhuge Yang could fight freely instead of shielding me the whole time, she would never be taking hits like this...
I have to free up her movements somehow!
Not that I had any intention of throwing my life away. I stole a glance over the edge.
Huh? Something was jutting out down there?
A flat slab of stone protruded from the cliff face. I couldn't see behind it, but it didn't look all that far down — about the height of a two-story building...?
"Yang."
"Yeah! Won, don't you worry! I'll find a way through — cut down a few more and they'll probably scatter!"
If the wolves kept up their rotating relay of attacks, Zhuge Yang on her own would get no sleep and nothing to eat; she'd wear out in no time. And then the two of us would be done for.
"They don't look like they intend to charge at all...? At this rate, we'll be the ones to give out first."
"N-no! But don't you go getting any ideas! None at all!"
Look, I know exactly how precious my own life is.
"There's a ledge partway down the cliff, big enough to stand on. Once you've driven off the wolves, come pull me up — I'll be waiting down there!"
"Really?"
"Yes, really. I'll keep talking to you from below, so once you've wrapped things up here, you'd better haul me back up, got it?"
"Got it!"
Trusting in this sturdy body of mine, I leapt down toward the flat stone.
THUD—!
I landed safe and sound. Not a scratch, thanks to my tough hide.
The rocky face of the cliff was blanketed thick with creeping vines.
First things first — report in alive.
"Yang! I'm safe!"
Her answer came back at once.
"Just hold on a little longer! HAAH!"
It sounded like Zhuge Yang was charging into the pack.
Well then — the top is hers to handle. I'll wait down here, shall I?
YIPE!
Something pattered down in a spray, and then a large shape whipped past right before my eyes and plummeted into the depths below.
The shape was a wolf, and the spray was the blood pumping out of it.
...This is getting unnerving. Maybe I should press myself flat against the rock?
I leaned back against the cliff wall — and my body suddenly tipped backward.
Gah — what the—?!
I was too startled even to cry out. I simply toppled over backward.
...There's a hollow back here?
Hidden behind the tangle of vines, the rock had been hollowed out deep into a recess.
The moment I registered it, the very first thought that struck me was—
A fortuitous encounter!
Now this is what murim is all about!
Of course, it might be nothing more than a natural hollow, so I peered inside cautiously.
Pitch dark in there.
I cleared away the vines overgrowing the entrance. As sunlight spilled in, what met my eyes was a skeleton laid out deep inside — and...
With Ma Won sheltered below and her shackles finally cast off, Zhuge Yang threw herself straight at the wolves.
The pack swarmed in from every side again, but with nothing more than simple footwork she turned every attack to nothing, cutting the beasts down one after another.
She had yet to reach the Peak Realm, where one could raise Sword Qi from the blade, but each stroke of her sword felled a wolf.
Ten wolves remained — counting the one that looked to be their leader!
"Hah!"
Loosing that sharp cry, she flung herself forward. Only then did the leader sense that something had gone wrong, but it stood no chance of escaping Zhuge Yang's blade as she gave chase, her lightfoot art unfurled to the full — and it passed from this world.
A killing chill lanced out—
One glare was all it took. The leaderless wolves scattered to the four winds.
"Nothing but a pack of small fry..."
Now she had to haul Ma Won back up.
"Won! It's all taken care of!"
No answer came.
"Won...?"
A creeping unease began to crawl over her.
"Won!!"
She looked down. The ledge Ma Won had spoken of was there — but no one stood on it.
Blood was spattered across the stone.
"No... no, no...!"
It was a sheer drop of a thousand fathoms, so deep the bottom vanished from sight. She had cut down one of the charging wolves and sent it tumbling over the edge — something must have gone wrong at that very moment.
Before she knew it, tears were streaming down Zhuge Yang's face.
"MA WON!!!!!"
Just as her mind was bleaching white—
"...Uh, huh? Yang, is it all over?"
A voice drifted up from somewhere below — a distinctly goofy one.
"Huwaaaaaah! Won!"
...A strange sense of déjà vu washed over me. Back when Zhuge Yang had miraculously survived on the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, she had buried herself in my arms and sobbed exactly this bitterly.
"I'm sorry. I was so absorbed in something that I didn't hear you calling me."
"I thought you'd fallen! You scared me half to death!"
She pounded my chest and poured out all her pent-up sorrow, and I took it without complaint. There was no internal energy behind the blows, so it didn't even hurt.
I patted Zhuge Yang gently on the back.
"I'm sorry. I got distracted looking at what was back there..."
"What's back there...?"
Only then, seemingly calmed, did she perk up with interest.
Inside the hollow lay a single skeleton, along with a scattering of belongings that hinted at the man's trade in life.
A wicker basket, a hoe, a medicine kettle, and several books.
"Looks like he was an herb gatherer and apothecary both."
Among the books, I lifted the one that had swallowed my attention so completely I hadn't even heard her shouting, and held it out for her to see as well.
"What's this?"
It was an old book. Fortunately it hadn't crumbled away or anything of the sort, and its contents were still perfectly legible.
The title of the book was...
The Hwan-gol-tal-tae Sutra
"The Hwan-gol-tal-tae Sutra?"
"Yeah. This man spent his life researching how to achieve hwan-gol-tal-tae — a complete physical rebirth — through the use of elixirs."
"...But there's no way something like that could actually work, right? It looks like this man failed at it too..."
I'd thought so too. Right up until I ran the Treasure Locator on it.
Owner:Ma Won
Value:95 / 100
Which could only mean one thing: this was the real deal.
Zhuge Yang was reading the book aloud now.
"'If five elixirs are refined in harmony and consumed together, the body becomes saturated with their energies, and a hwan-gol-tal-tae rebirth can be forced to occur...' As if something like this could... could it?"
She had started to flatly declare it impossible, but catching my expression, she quietly bent it into a question. Since I was incapable of forming a dantian, this method was exactly what I needed — and she seemed determined not to trample my hopes.
But this one would work. Otherwise, the book's value could never have rated that high.
And nowhere in its pages was there any mention of a dantian. The theory held that even an ordinary person could achieve hwan-gol-tal-tae, so lacking one should be no obstacle at all.
Zhuge Yang turned to the next page and read on.
"'The required ingredients: a Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng... Azurite Stone Milk... a Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root... the inner core of a Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp... the inner core of a Poison-Horned Flower Python...?'"
Zhuge Yang's expression shifted with every ingredient she read, until at last it settled into pure incredulity.
Setting aside whether hwan-gol-tal-tae was even achievable, there was no guarantee anyone could gather those elixirs even in a lifetime devoted to the search.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng alone had turned up only a handful of times in all of murim history.
Not that I hadn't personally dug up two of them in the present day, of course.
"How is anyone supposed to find all of these...?"
"Why wouldn't we? We've already got one, haven't we?"
My basket already held a Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng.
And I had already finished confirming that the Azurite Stone Milk, the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root, the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp, and the Poison-Horned Flower Python all existed as well.
The only problem was... they were scattered far and wide across every corner of the Central Plains.
Still, so long as I knew their locations, it was merely a matter of time.
"Let's put our hopes in this too, while we're also looking into a cure for my qi blockage."
"R-right. We'll fix you, no matter what!"
Zhuge Yang answered, sounding less than convinced.
Because it might make healing my burns and my dantian possible after all, she had — without realizing it — just been shortlisted once again as a candidate to be my bride.
"Oh, one more thing. There was this book, too."
The Mystic Elixir Sutra