Nanman Beast Palace
There's something in this world scarier than a cliff.
A lunatic who suddenly appears and starts hacking through the ropes of a bridge.
Paaang!
Another rope snapped clean through. In an instant, the bridge became pure pandemonium.
"Run!"
I shoved Ilhong forward with everything I had. Ahead of us, Dang Yeohye was doing the same, shoving Neungsam along as she sprinted.
The bridge rocked wildly left and right, moments from tearing free. Even in the chaos I twisted back for a look.
A figure in black was pulling a long cylindrical device from his robes.
It looked a hell of a lot like the projectile launchers the Dang Clan used—the ones Ilhong favored.
"Ilhong! Keep running all the way!"
Puh-ung!
A familiar detonation. A storm of poison needles rained down on us.
I spun and flailed the Dog-Beating Staff like a madman.
Ta-ta-ta-ta-tak!
Short, rapid impacts. The tip of the staff cut the air and batted most of the needles aside.
Pusshuk! Pusshuk!
A few still slipped through. I had no choice but to take them with my body. Sharp poison needles buried deep into my shoulder and thigh.
Whatever vicious toxin they'd been coated with, dizziness crashed over me and the strength drained from my legs.
"Mujin!"
"Boss!"
In that same breath the bridge collapsed in a roaring cascade. Turning back to save the others had cost me dearly.
Women screaming my name like a death cry from the far side of the gorge.
I felt the ground vanish under my feet.
"Shit…!"
My body plummeted with nothing to grab. Startled hands and feet clawed at empty air.
Falling off a cliff not once, but twice. What kind of cosmic joke was this?
Shaaaa—
Cliff faces blurred past at breakneck speed. My clothes whipped and tore in the wind.
Far below, white foam boiled across a savage current.
One of these days I'm learning to walk on air.
That was the thought that flashed through my mind a heartbeat before the abyss of the river swallowed me whole.
Splash—!
Wuxia protagonists always seem to fall off cliffs and stumble into some miraculous opportunity.
I'd already learned the hard way that my life doesn't work like that.
So I thrashed for all I was worth, fighting to stay alive in the current that wrapped around every inch of me.
"Hrrk! Uff!"
No miracle opportunity—just a raging torrent doing its best to drown me.
The cliff hadn't been as high as last time, but the river was far more vicious.
My body spun this way and that with zero regard for my opinion on the matter.
Every so often a rock jutting from the bank would greet me with a friendly welcome.
Thud. Whack.
"Guhhk!"
A lovely little event that forced me to spit out every last scrap of air I'd managed to hoard in my lungs.
The water kept hammering me without pause until even opening my eyes properly was a struggle.
My arms and legs grew weaker by the second. I was just starting to think this was finally it—that I was sinking into the deep for real—when something unknown locked around the arm I'd flung out of the water.
A powerful pull yanked me free of the river in one smooth motion.
"Cough, cough… haah, haah."
River water poured from my mouth.
The contact had been brief, but the hand was massive. And strangely soft, like stroking a thick coat of fur.
"I-I don't know who you are, but thank you."
I'd heard some Nanman folk were as hairy as barbarians, but this was next-level.
Then I looked up and realized my rescuer wasn't a person at all.
"…What the hell?"
Black eye patches. A body that was anything but small. Fur so thick it looked like a carpet.
A colossal beast was staring down at me.
"W-Wangbao…?"
It wasn't exactly the same as the ones I knew, but overall the creature looked a lot like a panda.
"Kuuuung?"
Even if the cry itself was cute, that monstrous bulk and those nightmarish claws were the furthest thing from panda-like.
On top of that, for some reason every bit of fur except the eye patches was the color of fresh blood.
I was still staring blankly at this impossible panda when young voices drifted down from above its head.
"Hyeol-ungmyo pulled up another weird thing."
"It's not a weird thing. It's a person."
I tilted my head further and spotted a boy and a girl perched on the broad back of the panda.
Sun-bronzed copper skin, faces full of the mischief that comes with that age.
"This guy's skin is so white."
"And he's trained. Looks like a martial artist from the Central Plains."
The way they chatted without a shred of reserve made it clear they were siblings.
"Why's he so out of it, though?"
"Say something random to him."
"…P-Pibao?"
They say the Central Plains are vast and strange people are as common as grains of sand.
Live long enough and even getting rescued by a panda becomes a thing, I guess.
"He really is just saying random stuff."
"Must've been pretty shocked."
I shook my head hard and forced my brain back online.
My body might belong to a man of the Central Plains, but half my soul still came from the land of Eastern courtesy.
If someone saves your life, the proper first step is to say thank you.
"Thanks for pulling me out."
The unknown siblings grinned and nodded at my gratitude.
"So who are you, mister?"
The boy beat me to the question I wanted to ask.
"Troubleshooter of the Central Plains. Nickname: Dog-Beating Dragon. Name: Dan Mujin."
I dropped the moniker with a little flair, half hoping they'd recognize it. Their faces stayed completely blank.
Looks like I need to work harder if I want the name Dog-Beating Dragon to reach even the deep south of Nanman.
You never know where the next client might turn up, after all.
"We live nearby at the Nanman Beast Palace."
"He's Maeng Pyo. I'm Maeng Seol."
And just like that we finished introducing ourselves by the riverside.
Then the giant beast in front of us started rumbling and snorting like it wanted in on the conversation.
"Kuuheung, kuuheuung."
"…Why's this animal acting like that?"
I asked the boy and girl who were still draped over the red panda's back, chins propped on its head as they looked down at me.
"She's sulking."
"Why?"
"Because she was the one who saved you, but you only thanked us."
"…Don't tell me she understands speech?"
So she wasn't just a huge, weirdly red animal.
Had she absorbed the energies of heaven and earth long enough to awaken a spirit?
"More or less? She gets the feeling, anyway."
Not a dolphin, yet somehow capable of resonating with people.
This had to be one of those spirit beasts of the Central Plains, famous for their mystical aura and powers.
"…Thanks for saving me, Wangbao."
I carefully patted the giant panda's belly in thanks.
"It's not Wangbao. It's Hyeol-ungmyo."
"Thanks for saving me, Hyeol-ungmyo."
Right—around here they called pandas ungmyo, bear-cats.
"Kuuung."
"She likes being praised."
"You can keep going if you want."
I watched the giant spirit beast shyly twist its body with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.
I was clearly inside the territory of the Nanman Beast Palace, and this spirit beast seemed to hold a special place among them. No harm in getting on its good side.
"What a solid build. Muscles like iron. I bet the females are all over you."
I slapped one of those thick arms and laid the compliments on thick.
Instead of brightening up, Hyeol-ungmyo wilted and drooped.
"Kuuheung…"
I asked the siblings why the praise had backfired.
"She's a girl."
"…"
Ah, for crying out loud.
What kind of beast has feelings this delicate?
"Oh my, how… how cute… Your fur is unbelievably soft."
I forced my eyes away from the claws that looked ready to shred a man and the vicious fangs, and kept the praise coming.
"Kuuheungheung."
Apparently satisfied, Hyeol-ungmyo rose back up.
"But mister."
"But oppa."
"Yeah? What is it?"
I pulled my hand from the red fur and answered.
"You look like you're from the Central Plains."
"Why'd you come all the way out to Nanman?"
Explaining that properly would take a while.
Should I say I came to rescue a certain woman whose social skills were so catastrophic she'd been unceremoniously kicked out?
"I came to catch the Man-Faced Spider."
I compressed the reason for my visit as much as humanly possible.
The boy and girl on Hyeol-ungmyo's back both went wide-eyed.
"Th-the Man-Faced Spider?"
"That evil thing that's been tormenting the villages?!"
Looks like the people of the Nanman Beast Palace already had a personal acquaintance with the very monster we were hunting.
"Hic… hic…"
A boy who looked about fourteen had buried his face between his knees and was sobbing fat, ugly tears.
The mournful wail of someone who'd just lost the leader he trusted and followed.
"I never thought the boss would… would just leave us like this… uuhh."
The cliff had been deep and the current a raging torrent. Ilhong had already decided that even a Peak Realm martial artist couldn't have survived, and despair had swallowed him whole.
"…Hey, we don't know that yet. He could still be alive!"
Dang Yeohye, on the other hand, still clung to the hope that Dan Mujin was out there somewhere.
"But it was such a deep drop…"
"That bastard's a Peak Realm martial artist. And for some reason his life force is tougher than most Transcendent Realm experts."
A bizarre man who could take a sword through the gut or a lethal dose of poison and still spring right back up like nothing had happened.
"Th-that's true, but…"
The shock had clouded his thinking, but once he replayed it, Dang Yeohye was right—Dan Mujin wasn't the type to die that easily.
"The young miss is correct. Young Master is the man who will one day become her husband. He would never leave us like this."
"…"
And then there was Neungsam, saying something completely unhinged with a perfectly serious face.
"Anyway, we go down and follow the river. There'll still be traces."
Sitting around blubbering was a pointless waste of time.
They could regret it after they'd actually looked.
She gave the dejected Ilhong a firm pat on the back and surged to her feet.
"We find him, and if he's alive, we beat the living daylights out of him for pulling that stunt again."
Putting his own life on the line just to save them.
"Arrogant bastard. Who's saving who? I'm the one who made the unreasonable request…"
She clenched her teeth hard.
Then she stood and led the group toward the riverbank.
On the road to the Nanman Beast Palace.
With every step I took, my stomach knotted and gurgled like it was being wrung out by hand.
After my body recovered from near-death and massive trauma, this hellish hunger always came roaring after.
"H-hey, kids?"
"It's Maeng Pyo and Maeng Seol."
"Right. Maeng Pyo and Maeng Seol."
The little brats lounging comfortably on the bright-red back of Hyeol-ungmyo, leading the way.
"You wouldn't happen to have any food on you?"
I asked with more desperation than I cared to admit. This Heavenly Killing Star of mine had the absolute worst fuel efficiency.
"Nope."
"We were just out for a walk."
So a place crawling with poisonous insects and venomous creatures was basically a stroll for these two.
Then again, with a sturdy Hyeol-ungmyo like that, I could see how it would feel that way.
"Ugh."
Whoosh.
In the end I resorted to the last option available: I snagged one of the insects buzzing all around us and stuffed it straight into my mouth.
"Uh, oppa. That's a Blood Poison Bug. It's a venomous insect."
Maeng Seol stared at me with round eyes as I crunched it like a snack.
"It's fine. Won't kill me."
I caught another one and ate it too, just to prove how sturdy my body was.
"Whoa. I've never seen anyone do that."
"He really doesn't seem bothered at all."
"Amazing."
People with any real knowledge of poisons always looked at me like I was some kind of circus act.
"Most folks from the Central Plains struggle out here."
"That mister could just live in Nanman. He fits right in."
"Right? Perfect match."
Fits right in, my ass.
I like the Anbu Nakdo, thank you very much.
I'm the kind of man who wants to enjoy fine dining and cultured living in a high-class inn.
Crunch.
For now, though, I just kept chewing on whatever strangely shaped poisonous bug I could snatch.