Anhui (2)
In the end, I took my place at Zhuge Yang's side and faced Namgung Jinchen. The mere fact that she had looked so glad to see me sent my courage climbing right back up.
"It's an honor to make your acquaintance. My name is Ma Won."
Clumsy, but as respectful as I could manage, I performed a fist-palm salute.
"And who, might I ask, is this, young lady...?"
Namgung Jinchen brushed off my greeting without so much as a glance and turned straight to Zhuge Yang.
I'm the one who greeted him — why is he asking her?
Even Zhuge Yang seemed to find his dismissiveness distasteful; a faint stiffness hardened that angelic face of hers.
"I believe Wonnie just introduced himself."
"Hmm..."
A grunt of pure displeasure. So was it my face that was the problem, or the fact that I was a man?
When I'd first laid eyes on Namgung Jinchen, he'd looked like the protagonist of the whole world — I'd even caught myself wishing I could be him. I was considerably more awake now. Ignoring anyone who didn't interest him was an ugly habit. Or maybe it was simple arrogance: the refusal to waste words on someone as unremarkable as me.
Zhuge Yang said her goodbyes too. She was obviously in a bad mood.
My own mood, on the other hand, had lifted right up at her reaction.
"Well then, we'll be on our way."
"Nay, young lady — allow me to escort you to my family's estate."
"We're on a tight schedule. Our party has arrived, so we'll take our leave."
For a moment I braced for him to chase us down and stop us, but he couldn't quite bring himself to go that far. Or perhaps there were simply too many eyes watching for him to try.
Namgung Jinchen stood rooted to the spot, watching our backs until we vanished from view. We'd been hounded out of the shops without buying half of what we needed — but the trip had borne fruit all the same.
Not our fruit. Mine.
The fruit of learning that Zhuge Yang thought more of me than of a man who had everything, the likes of Namgung Jinchen.
I made a vow to myself.
Right now, my martial arts, my family name, my face — none of it could hold a candle to his. But it wouldn't stay that way.
One day I would propose to Zhuge Yang, standing tall and proud.
"Don't let it get to you, Wonnie."
Did she think being snubbed by Namgung Jinchen had knocked the wind out of me?
The moment we were clear of Anhui, Zhuge Yang tried to comfort me.
"Oh, it's gotten to me, all right."
"Huh?"
"I'm committing this to memory. Just as soon as I fix my body, the next time we run into him, I'm going to ask him exactly why he ignored me."
"Ahahahaha! I love it. Let's fix you, for sure! And here's hoping my hunch about Mount Jiuhua pans out too!"
The place my hunch — no, the place the Treasure Locator — had guided us to this time was an enormous waterfall deep in a valley on Mount Jiuhua.
"Wow! So that's a waterfall!"
Seeing one for the first time in her life, Zhuge Yang marveled aloud. Yeon Hwa said nothing, but her eyes had gone glassy at the sight all the same.
"Pretty incredible, right?"
"Wonnie, isn't this your first time seeing one too?"
"...Yep. Yep, it is."
Come to think of it, I'd never seen one in my past life either — only ever on a screen. And aside from the trip to Mount Heng, I'd been glued to Zhuge Yang's side ever since I woke up in this body.
Anyway, when I pointed toward the falls, Zhuge Yang scanned the area around them.
"Wonnie, there's nothing here. Oh! Wait — is it in the water?"
Isn't a cave hidden behind a waterfall, like, the oldest trick in the book? I decided to teach her a thing or two.
"I've got a feeling there's something behind the waterfall."
"Behind it?"
The falling water was so violent that nothing showed through it. No naked eye could pick anything out; short of someone tumbling under the falls by pure accident, the place would never be found.
Alone, I'd have been swept away by that raging current — but our little party happened to include two Peak Realm masters.
We slipped inside without so much as a scratch.
We lit the torches we'd brought wrapped in oil paper for exactly this occasion and swept their light across the cave.
"Whoa! It's huge in here!"
"Right...? Since when is a natural cave this big?"
The tunnel bored deep into the mountain. Every cave we'd found until now had been a few steps and done; this one, home to the Hollow Azure Stone Milk, was so vast and deep I half wondered if it ran clean through the mountain.
Damp, chilly air greeted us as we pressed inward, torchlight leading the way.
"Hwa-unnie, is that...?"
"A shed skin, Young Miss."
A little farther in, the cast-off skin of a long snake lay draped across the ground — a good four meters' worth.
"It appears a serpent dwells here. Watch your step, Young Miss."
"Okay! Wonnie, get between us."
"Got it."
And so I found myself sandwiched between Yeon Hwa and Zhuge Yang once more, under escort.
So sad I could cry... or, well, "Won"...
Not that a four-meter snake was anything to Peak Realm masters. There was little to fear.
We ventured deeper. Shed skins lay scattered everywhere. The problem was, they kept getting longer.
"This one's got to be six and a half meters at least."
"That one's closer to ten, Young Miss..."
"W-we have to keep going..."
"Wonnie, could what you're sensing be this snake's inner core or something?"
"Maybe."
Yeah, no. It's the Hollow Azure Stone Milk. I just... hadn't counted on this thing living here too.
The only place I'd ever seen a snake this size was the movie Anaconda...
It wasn't until we found a shed skin of nearly sixteen meters that I finally reached my destination.
At the very heart of the deep cave, a single milky-white droplet hung from a stalactite overhead.
A mysterious elixir, it was said, drawn from stone steeped in clear, pristine energy — the elixir of the ages, one that would send a martial artist's internal energy soaring and purify the body in a single dose.
Zhuge Yang let out a stunned gasp of admiration.
"Whoa...! Th-the Hollow Azure Stone Milk...?"
"S-so it would seem. We don't know what else might be lurking nearby, Young Miss. Please be careful."
We kept watch in every direction — front, back, left, right, even above and below — but no snake appeared. Carefully, I produced a small gourd bottle, collected the Hollow Azure Stone Milk, sealed it tight, and tucked it into the wooden case at my chest.
"We got it. All that's left is getting out."
"Yes! Let's hurry!"
Two legendary elixirs down already. At this pace, we'd be finished in no time.
We beat a hasty retreat — there was no telling whether the snake had vanished for good or merely stepped away.
Making our way back down the long tunnel by the light of a single torch, we spotted daylight spilling in from the far end.
We're going to make it out without a hitch. The instant I let myself relax, the light at the cave mouth disappeared.
"Huh?"
My eyes couldn't make it out clearly, but Yeon Hwa and Zhuge Yang both cried out at once.
"The snake!"
"It's the snake!"
The enormous serpent had appeared out of nowhere and coiled its body across the entrance, plugging it completely.
It was a creature of staggering length and girth — as if to insist that the last shed skin we'd seen had been old news.
It blocked out the now-darkened mouth of the cave, tongue flickering, yellow eyes glaring us down.
"Looks like an Imugi. Was it planning to swallow the Stone Milk at the decisive moment?"
An Imugi was a being that cultivated itself toward becoming a dragon. It had likely been saving the Hollow Azure Stone Milk for a critical stage of that cultivation — and our arrival had made it furious.
"Well, thank goodness we got there first... but can we punch through?"
"We have to! Hwa-unnie, let's go!"
"Yes, Young Miss."
All I could see was a silhouette and a pair of vertically slit yellow eyes, but Zhuge Yang and Yeon Hwa — Peak Realm masters both — advanced warily on the Imugi.
I pressed myself flat against the cave wall to stay out of their way, and the Imugi's head swung toward me.
The look sent chills crawling over my skin.
"The Hollow Azure Stone Milk...?"
It seemed interested in the elixir I was carrying.
"Wonnie! It could lunge at any moment — stay sharp!"
"Don't worry! I can dodge at least one lunge!"
When we'd run into the wolf pack, their sheer numbers had made escape impossible — but one oversized Imugi? I could get out of the way of a single strike.
As Zhuge Yang and Yeon Hwa closed the distance, the Imugi pulled its gaze off me and eased its body back a touch.
Then it lunged at Yeon Hwa without warning.
"Not so fast!"
Yeon Hwa flowed into her footwork, slipped past the striking head, and swung her blade, wreathed in Sword Energy.
With the coil that had sealed the entrance gone, my line of sight cleared, and I could finally watch the battle unfold.
Blood sprayed from the Imugi's body. And then — the beast I'd thought was charging Yeon Hwa heaved its massive bulk around and came straight for me.
"Over here!"
Already wound tight, I threw myself toward Zhuge Yang, the nearer of the two.
She planted herself in front of me and swung, gleaming Sword Energy wreathing her blade.
Pah!
Crrrack!
Blood burst from the gash Zhuge Yang's blade had opened — then crackled and froze solid.
That's the Moon Spirit Freezing Sword for you!
The frozen flesh creaked and groaned; the wounded section was going numb, bit by bit. The Imugi seemed rattled, but its tongue never stopped flicking — it was still dead set on tearing the Stone Milk from my chest.
Perhaps it had judged that calmly fending off both women was a losing battle; it looked ready to accept any wound if it could just snatch the elixir by force.
Watching how desperately it guarded its head from the blade, I hid behind Zhuge Yang and baited that head right out into the open.
Shhiss!
In the end, the Imugi — its body far from whole — gathered its ruined bulk for one final clash...
Swish!
...and before it knew it, Yeon Hwa had slipped behind it and taken its head.
The massive headless body thrashed for a long moment before going limp at last.
"So this is Sword Energy...!"
I couldn't help but marvel. Before Sword Energy, even a cultivating Imugi was nothing more than one very large snake.
"That's small, for an Imugi."
"It doesn't seem to have been cultivating for long, Young Miss. It doesn't even have an inner core."
Yeon Hwa split the revolting carcass in half — body and head both — to check, but nothing out of the ordinary turned up.
"This is small?"
"Yep. It's only just begun its cultivation. An Imugi on the verge of becoming a dragon grows ten times bigger than this — big enough to ascend to heaven the moment it claims its dragon pearl."
"Then that's a relief."
"It is. A bigger Imugi, and our Sword Energy might not have cut it at all. We got lucky. And now, once we grab the last three, we can finally put the Hwan-gol-tal-tae Pill to the test, can't we?"
I nodded. Three remained: the Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwo, the inner core of the Ten-Thousand-Year Huali, and the inner core of the One-Horned Flower Python.
Factoring in the route and the difficulty, the Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwo was the next target.
"Let's head back to Anhui first. It looks like we'll be traveling far."
"You've got a feeling already? Where this time?"
"North."
Next stop: Hebei. Home of the Hebei Peng Family, one of the Five Great Families.