Chapter 17
Chapter 17
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 17
Chapter Title: Sudden Showers Don't Last All Day
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The sudden shower doesn't last all day.
"Tell me. What went through your mind when you saw my face?"
"Well, you're pretty."
"Is that all?"
What the hell is this girl saying?
"Why are you asking something like that?"
"Because it feels like this is the only time we'll have alone together. Was that such a difficult question?"
'What? It's basically her saying she's already prepared in her heart, so confess first—I'm a woman, after all.'
Why would such a pretty girl...?
What's she lacking that she'd go for a guy like me?
No.
Don't jump ahead.
If it backfires and I end up humiliated, that's it. It could just be her probing casually.
Yeah, that's it.
They say women are instinctively drawn to the man who saved them in danger. At her young age, she clearly couldn't suppress a momentary impulse.
'She doesn't even look that young, though.'
"Is my answer that important?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because depending on how you answer, we might meet separately later for a serious talk."
At the end, Dang Yak-ran glanced toward the forest. Heuk Do-san's gaze followed to the forest, then back to Dang Yak-ran.
'This isn't a joke!'
He'd heard that martial artists, unlike stuffy scholars, had no reservations about men and women mingling.
Hadn't he seen it at White Deer Academy? The young disciples from visiting martial sects mixing freely, men and women together day and night.
'Ah, what if she wants to sneak off to the forest alone? She's not going to jump me, is she?'
Even if they're free-spirited, it wouldn't go that far. Still, the world has its "what ifs"...
'Should I just close my eyes and go for it?'
If the Tang Clan head finds out later, he'll skin me alive. He could turn me into a beehive with that Mancheon Hwau or whatever Tang Clan hidden weapon.
'But there's no guarantee we'll even return to the Central Plains, right?'
If we can't get back and I pass this up, what a waste. And with a face and figure like that, isn't it worth the gamble?
'A gamble with my life...'
"If you don't want to answer, forget it."
Dang Yak-ran turned away sharply.
'Whoa, hold on!'
A chill ran down Dang Yak-ran's back as she sat turned away. Her pride was truly wounded.
Heuk Do-san smacked his lips bitterly.
'Ah, she's quick-tempered.'
A deathly silence fell.
The crackle of sparks from the campfire sounded like thunder. After a long, awkward silence, Dang Yak-ran spoke again.
"There was a mangnani."
"......?"
"He'd rush to the government office whenever called and chop off prisoners' heads. He naturally inherited the trade from his mangnani father."
'What random talk is this?'
"I was only seventeen then, knew nothing else, and never thought to try. One day, an old monk passed by the yamen and saw him clutching his money pouch, weeping at the gate. He asked,"
"Why do you weep?"
"I couldn't sever the head in one stroke."
"Tell me your story."
"I took money from the criminal's family. They begged me to kill painlessly with a single cut. But even after three swings, the head wouldn't fall. It had never happened before. Sob sob."
"'Make the Buddha in your heart.' The Buddha sees the dimness in your mind—how could you spend the night alone? Amitabha. Will you come with me?"
"The mangnani discarded his old name and took the dharma name Hyeon-gak. He became a monk. Ten years later, over thirty unidentified masters raided the temple under cover of night. They stole ancient scriptures from Tianzhu and vanished. It later turned out to be the work of Demonic Cultists. Rumors said it was to complete some sinister formation, the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation..."
'The blockhead was a mangnani? No wonder that monkish guy has such a foul mouth.'
"Over ten monks died blocking the assassins, including his master and martial uncles. To him, his master wasn't just a teacher. He was a father who gave him a new life."
'The blockhead's master died to Demonic Cultists.'
"The real issue came after. Shaolin Temple severed the meridians of the captured Demonic Cultists and let them all go. They took no retaliatory measures whatsoever. When the Righteous-Demonic Great War broke out, they even sealed their gates."
Shaolin Temple's gate-sealing at the outbreak of the Righteous-Demonic Great War was a major event in the martial world. Weren't they the Buddhist orthodox sect that should lead the extermination of the demonic seed?
"One monk kicked open the gates and left. He vowed to kill all the demons, then cast himself into the fires of hell. He didn't join the Righteous Alliance but wandered the battlefields alone, fighting Demonic Cult elites."
"Hellfire?"
"When the Righteous-Demonic Great War ends, he plans to take his own life. It's his way of punishing himself for breaking his master's precept against killing."
"So you're saying it's justified for the blockhead to kill Demonic Cultists? I'm not interested. Not my place to judge."
"I just wanted to tell you about him. Why he hates Demonic Cultists so much, why he won't yield an inch on anything Demonic Cult-related."
Whether Shaolin sealed their gates or the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult raided them—it didn't matter to him.
But the blockhead being a former mangnani was surprising. What kind of fate makes killing people your trade? Then becoming a monk—that was a dramatic life turnaround.
'Or not? Now he's back to killing Demonic Cultists like a rabid dog. Back to square one?'
Whatever. What did it have to do with him?
Heuk Do-san flopped onto the sandy ground.
His head ended up right next to Dang Yak-ran. Absolutely not intentional. Just his long torso.
The smooth curve of Dang Yak-ran's waist entering his view was also pure coincidence. She hugged her knees to her chest and asked.
"What about you?"
"What?"
"How did you end up enlisting?"
"Here we go again."
"I'm not asking if you're righteous or demonic. Whichever side, there must be a reason. You didn't join drunk, did you?"
"......!"
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
My priest died to a Demonic Cultist with a scorpion tattoo on his butt. I don't remember well, but they say on the day of his funeral, drunk, I wrote a blood oath vowing revenge. Next morning, sober, I was saying goodbyes to my senior brothers.
Say that, and I'd look like an idiot?
"'Heaven in the gourd, cosmos in the pot.' Worldly affairs are in the wine jar—what's the difference?"
"That's not how you use that saying, is it?"
Smart girl?
"Even after Guan Wuzhang's beard dies, someone tying it up makes a broom."
"You're a mercenary, but well-versed in literature? Were you a scholar before becoming one?"
Scholar or courtesan—what did it matter now? He was just a defeated soldier who didn't even know where he stood.
Didn't know where he stood?
Looking back, his life had always been that way.
When he realized he had no parents, when childhood memories wouldn't come, as he wandered searching for why...
Even the brief moment he thought he knew his place.
He remembered it clearly.
In a dark room corner, huddled crying, his master quietly brought brush, ink, and paper, and wrote a thunderbolt phrase for him.
「Sudden showers do not last all day」
From then, he studied as if one day were ten. First to forget everything, then to become a great minister and start anew.
But an nameless academy disciple could do nothing. His spirit broke, dreams of glory scattered like smoke.
Even then, he asked himself.
-Where do you stand now?
-What the hell are you doing?
Dang Yak-ran stared at Heuk Do-san.
He'd changed so much.
The soft hand that once held a brush now had fingers tough as pine roots, the scrawny arm that couldn't wring a chicken's neck now thick enough to pull an ox horn on first try.
But the indifferent, empty gaze remained. Sad, wistful, holding something back.
That's how she recognized him at first sight on the junk. He'd changed enough to be anyone else, but she knew instantly.
'But why don't you recognize me?'
* * *
Yeom Jin-sang, who fled to gather firewood, didn't return even after an hour. Despite roots scattered everywhere on the beach.
He was probably hiding somewhere, shivering in the cold, waiting for Gong Cheon-ak—or realizing Gong Cheon-ak wouldn't return, had fled far away.
Gong Cheon-ak appeared about half a shichen after the campfire was lit. His face and limbs trembled like aspen leaves from his ordeal in the cold water.
In that state, he carried Bing-seol out of the sea. Already frozen stiff, Bing-seol dangled lifelessly in his arms, unmoving.
Her face was seaweed-green, her neatly bound hair a tangled mess, looking like a corpse.
Just then, Yeom Jin-sang appeared hugging a bundle of firewood. He dropped it like trash and made a fuss about this bolt from the blue.
"Brother, pull yourself together!"
Pretending to be a Demonic Cultist.
Yeom Jin-sang side-eyed Heuk Do-san warily, lest he spill the beans, winking like scolding a thief.
'Desperately struggling to survive.'
As he dragged her near the campfire, Gong Cheon-ak rubbed Bing-seol's limbs frantically.
Admirable effort to save her, but her consciousness wouldn't return.
Heuk Do-san tossed a wood chunk from Yeom Jin-sang into the fire and asked Dang Yak-ran.
"Know any medicine?"
Poison and medicine are two sides of the same coin, and Tang Clan of Sichuan masters, famed for poison arts, were all deeply versed in medicine.
As the only daughter of Poison King Dang Segi, Tang Clan head, Dang Yak-ran's medical skills were undoubtedly superb.
"I can handle prescriptions."
"Will that woman pull through?"
"Her heart just stopped."
"Too bad."
"You may not know, but Heavenly Demon Divine Cult witches deeply involve themselves in the magi's strategies and tactics. Just look at how crucial they were in recreating the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation. One word from her in the command room could kill hundreds of righteous sect members. Does that change your mind?"
"Whether she caused hundreds of deaths or not, without her, we might not get home."
"What do you mean?"
"That stormy night, she prophesied one would die. That day, the hunchback did. But thinking back, it wasn't predicting his death—it was foretelling six survivors. And today on the junk, she told me the direction to land."
"Really...?"
"Remember she said currents were carrying land away? Without her, we'd be shark bait in the open ocean by now. No guarantee it won't happen again?"
Heuk Do-san muttered lowly, but everyone heard clearly.
Dang Yak-ran truly wavered.
Rumors of Heavenly Demon Divine Cult witches having precognition were drilled into her ears. She'd certainly help their path ahead.
Moreover, if the Nine Heavens Illusion Grand Ancestral Formation dumped them in this unknown world, returning likely required it too.
Those previously vanished probably couldn't return because no one there knew the formation.
In this situation, Bing-seol was the only one who knew.
"Out of the way!"
Dang Yak-ran shoved Gong Cheon-ak aside and took Bing-seol's side. She first tilted the head to open the airway and breathed into the mouth.
At the same time, she repeatedly pressed the chest. A resuscitation technique to restart a stopped heart.