Chapter 456. I'm the Expert at That, You Know. (5)
Even the longest road begins with a single step.
No matter how far the journey, if you keep moving steadily forward, you’ll eventually reach the end.
But when it isn’t a thousand li, but two thousand, the saying changes a little. At three thousand li, it changes again.
And once it stretches to six thousand li, it becomes an entirely different matter.
“...Are we even going to make it there?”
“If we keep walking, we’ll get there someday.”
“...”
Since Chung Myung had first appeared at Mount Hua, the disciples there had been relentlessly drilled on the meaning of refusal, of not giving up. Thanks to that, they were still somehow managing to keep the journey going.
But now they had run into a different problem—one stubbornness alone couldn’t solve.
“Ugh...”
“...Hiiik.”
Jo Gul rubbed at his face with trembling hands. Even that had gone numb from the cold, and he could hardly feel anything.
“My nose... I think my nose is going to fall off, sahyung.”
“...I can’t feeeel my ha-hands.”
His tongue had gone so stiff it came out with a faint lisp, as if it had frozen too.
The fierce wind kept slapping their faces over and over, literally battering them without mercy.
They’d heard it was cold. But who in the world could have imagined it would be this bad?
“What the hell kind of wind is this?!”
“...Why are you asking me?”
Their teeth were chattering so violently they seemed ready to shatter at any second.
They’d expected the temperature to drop. Of course it would be colder farther north.
But nobody had said the wind would be like this.
It felt as if their whole bodies were being sliced by blades, and their eyeballs might freeze solid and crack apart at any moment.
“So this is what they mean by a cutting wind.”
“Those bastards in Maninbang had blades, sure, but those weren’t even real blades.”
Shivering hard, Jo Gul turned to look beside him.
“M-Monk, are you all right?”
“...I’m fine, benefactor. I am...”
“You don’t even have hair, so you’ve got to be even colder.”
“...”
Hye Yeon turned to stare at him with a look that seemed to ask, What in the world is wrong with this guy? But seeing the honest concern on Jo Gul’s face, he didn’t really feel angry so much as a little desolate.
“S-Sa... Sago... is it always this cold here?”
Dang Soso, who had spent her whole life in the warm southern lands, was especially unable to adapt to this situation.
Wrapped from head to toe in wool and then covered in leather on top of that, she still found the savage wind making every layer useless.
“...I don’t know.”
Yu I-seol moved her frost-numb lips with difficulty and muttered softly.
“Amazing. People live here...”
“...Yeah. They all seem insane, Sago.”
They were all slowly curling in on themselves, reduced to tiny bundles by a cold none of them had ever experienced in their lives.
“...Are we almost there?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Pardon?”
Jo Gul gaped, then turned to Baek Cheon before the wind forced him to squint again.
“What do you mean you don’t know, Sasuk?”
“Do you think I’ve ever been to the North Sea? I’m just making an educated guess.”
“Still, you must have heard something!”
“...At about this point, we should be seeing something.”
Baek Cheon turned his head toward the cart, then suddenly froze and tilted his head.
“By the way, where did that Chung Myung brat go?”
“Huh? He was over ther... huh?”
Jo Gul frowned with one eye still half shut.
“Where the hell did he go?”
“Did he fall off somewhere along the way?”
“No way. That guy wouldn’t just fall off.”
“True enough. Then where the hell did he...?”
At that moment, Yu I-seol let go of the handle and walked over to the cart. Then she leapt lightly upward and started sweeping the stacked luggage aside with rapid movements, left and right.
“Sago?”
Like a rabbit burrowing into its hole, she disappeared into the pile of baggage, then suddenly poked her head back out, frowning.
“Not here.”
“Huh? He’s not there?”
Everyone’s eyes went wide.
It made no sense that he wouldn’t be in there too.
“Where the hell did he go?”
“Did he really fall off on the way?”
“I’m telling you he wouldn’t fall off. Would that leech of a bastard ever fall?”
“He could’ve frozen and fallen off.”
“Oh? I never thought of that.”
Jo Gul’s eyes shook wildly.
But even while they were bickering, Yu I-seol kept scanning the area with narrowed eyes. Then, all at once, she stared hard at one spot.
And then.
Thud!
She grabbed one of the larger sacks in the pile and tossed it up onto the luggage in a single motion.
“Sa-Sago? Suddenly...”
Rustle.
“...”
The sack that had been thrown onto the pile shifted faintly.
Baek Cheon’s mouth fell open.
“...No way.”
He shot forward like an arrow, grabbed the sack, and yanked it open.
Inside, the remaining wool, leather, and blankets were tangled together in a complete mess.
Without hesitation, Baek Cheon began pulling the wool and hides out by the handful.
And then.
Thud!
The strange sensation he felt beneath his hand made Baek Cheon’s eyes flash.
“You little—!”
He shouted and yanked out what he’d grabbed in one brutal motion. Familiar hair(?) surfaced at last.
“The rest of us are out here hauling this cart through a killing wind, and you’re hiding inside a sack now? Get your ass out here right this second!”
But there was no immediate answer. Chung Myung, who ought to have been flailing by now, merely lifted his head a little without a word.
A moment later, a tiny, trembling voice came out.
“Do... Dong-ryong.”
“...”
“It’s co-cold.”
“...”
“So, so cold. Ughhhhh.”
Chung Myung scooped up the fallen wool at lightning speed and stuffed it back in with hurried hands, then crawled right back into the sack.
Baek Cheon, dumbfounded, stared at him for a moment before frantically grabbing him again.
“Get out of there!”
“I said it’s cold! I’m gonna freeze to death!”
“What kind of whining is that? You little freak!”
Watching the two of them squabble, the Mount Hua disciples muttered in stunned voices.
“I mean... does a person normally think of climbing into a baggage sack? Even if it’s big, still...”
“It’s Chung Myung.”
“Even so... no matter how cold it is, does someone think of crawling under the baggage? Isn’t that, like, a little much?”
“It’s Chung Myung, though.”
“...That’s pretty universal, huh?”
It was amazing how, no matter the situation, once Chung Myung’s name came up, somehow everything became understandable.
“Get out here right now!”
“Haaah!”
“Now he’s even hissing like an animal? Are you out of your mind?”
“...It’s not me.”
“Huh?”
Baek Cheon stared blankly into the sack.
Then, from among the wool, a fluffier white tuft than the wool itself suddenly lifted its head and bared its teeth.
“Haaah!”
“...”
Baek Cheon’s eyes as he looked at that scene were the eyes of a man who had lost his country.
“...One is already more than I can handle, and now there are two... no, two beasts tearing people apart from the inside.”
What crime did I commit in my previous life?
What exactly did I do wrong...?
Baek Cheon’s insides were rotting away, but Chung Myung had plenty of excuses of his own.
“Ughhhhh! Damn it, what kind of place is this?”
In the past, he had once reached the realm of heat and cold invulnerability. His energy had been so abundant that even the bitter cold had been unable to invade his body.
But that was in the past!
“I-I’m freezing to death!”
Being invulnerable to heat and cold had actually been the problem. He’d lived for decades without ever knowing real cold, so how in the world was he supposed to adapt now?
No, seriously—if I stick my hand out now, it feels like it’s being sliced open with a knife. How am I supposed to endure that?
“If you circulate your inner energy a little, you can still manage, can’t you, you bastard!”
“I can’t, I’m telling you!”
Chung Myung barked back.
His internal power was the purest and most refined in the world.
Which meant... its output was unbelievably high, but the amount itself was pitifully small. If he used it just to warm his body, he’d end up wasting the little internal power he had left.
Where exactly did they think he was, asking him to squander power like that? The Demonic Sect bastards might be chasing them down with swords in their teeth at any second.
“Damn it all! Why’d I build up such useless internal power in the first place?”
It was good for fighting, sure, but otherwise it was useless. Completely useless!
“Haaah! Haaah!”
Meanwhile, Baek Ah kept slashing at Baek Cheon’s hand with sharp claws whenever he reached into the sack. Then it darted back into the wool pile and hid itself again.
“Um... Sasuk.”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t mountain martens supposed to be animals that live in cold places?”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Then why is it acting like that?”
“How should I know? Maybe living in the southern wilderness spoiled it.”
“...Lived in the warm south and got too full of itself.”
Baek Cheon let out a deep sigh.
Whatever the case, whether it was this one or that one—
While Baek Cheon’s attention was pulled to Baek Ah, Chung Myung wiggled and wriggled his way deeper into the wool and hides, then started sealing the mouth of the sack again.
“Get out here, you brat!”
“I’m telling you I’ll freeze to death!”
“Freeze to death my ass! You planning to keep acting like this the whole time we’re in the North Sea?”
“Sasuk!”
“What?”
“Take care of me!”
“Get out!”
When Baek Cheon still refused to give in, Chung Myung made a long suffering sound and poked only his head back out of the sack. Then he glanced around, peering at the scenery.
“All I can see is white.”
Snowfield.
An endless, boundless stretch of snow. If not for the fact that it was so damn cold, he would’ve called it a magnificent sight. But after being beaten mercilessly by the freezing wind the whole time, it looked less like a wonder and more like a white hell.
“North Sea Ice Palace, my ass. What kind of lunatics live in a place like this? What the hell are they even picking up and eating?”
“...I never thought the day would come when I’d agree with your foul mouth.”
Now he understood why ice crystals or iron stones might exist in places like this. If you get battered by a wind like this for a thousand years, your temper would go bad too.
“Even so, shouldn’t we be there by now?”
“Looks like we’re still far off. I can’t see the sea yet.”
“Huh?”
Chung Myung turned his head from the narrow opening he’d made and looked at Baek Cheon.
“What sea?”
“The North Sea, isn’t it? Even if it’s cold, the sea doesn’t freeze, they say. So there should be water visible, but I still don’t see any.”
“...Guhh.”
Chung Myung twisted and shook his neck as if his insides were about to explode.
“You stupid human! Since when is the North Sea a sea?”
“...Isn’t it?”
“It’s a lake, a lake! A huge lake in the north!”
“Then why call it the North Sea? Wouldn’t North Lake make more sense?”
“It’s a lake so huge it looks like the sea!”
“Ah. So?”
Baek Cheon nodded as if he understood now.
“Ah, then if it’s a lake, it’ll freeze.”
“Exactly.”
“Then we need to find a huge frozen lake...”
Baek Cheon looked around, then turned back to Chung Myung in silence.
“...How, exactly?”
“...”
All they could see was a pure white plain.
Telling them to find a frozen snowfield here was no different from telling them to find yellow soil in the middle of a desert.
Chung Myung wordlessly pulled his head back in and scratched at it.
“Wouldn’t it be fine if we just looked carefully?”
“Chung Myung.”
“Yeah?”
“Put your clothes on properly and get out here. If you don’t want to die.”
“...”
Just as Chung Myung’s face was twisting as if he’d been told to go die—
“Sasuk!”
“What?”
“Isn’t that a person over there?”
“Huh? A person?”
Baek Cheon whipped his head around.
Before they had reached this snowy land, while passing through the northern grasslands, they had seen the occasional hut that looked like a place where people lived. But once they entered the snowfields, they hadn’t seen so much as a shadow.
And now there was suddenly a person?
“Where?”
“There! Over there!”
Baek Cheon followed Yoon Jong’s pointing finger with intense focus.
Where could a person be...?
“Hmm?”
His eyes narrowed.
Sure enough, he could see a black dot in the distance.
“Could be a bear.”
“Though it seems a little too small for a bear.”
After a moment’s thought, Baek Cheon nodded and said, “Let’s go check. Whether it’s a person or a bear, it’s better than just standing around here.”
Crash, clatter, bang!
“Huh?”
Baek Cheon turned, and his face instantly crumpled.
That insane brat had already crawled into the gap between the luggage and buried himself under it, collapsing the pile and hiding there.
“Can you at least try to act like a human, you bastard? Like a human!”
“...Really, Sasuk, you should just give up a little. This isn’t exactly new, is it?”
“That’s exactly why I can’t give up!”
“...Fair enough.”
Grinding his teeth, Baek Cheon finally let out a long sigh and jumped down from the cart. The expression on his face as he seized the handle was resolute.
“Let’s go, then!”
“Yes!”
The Mount Hua disciples hauled the cart and sprinted forward. Fortunately, it was a plain, so pulling the cart didn’t seem like it would be too hard...
“Ack! My legs are sinking in!”
“Sasuk! The cart wheels are buried in the snow—it won’t move properly!”
“Aaaagh! There was a rock under there!”
Baek Cheon clenched his jaw and shut his eyes tight.
Would they be all right?
Would they really finish this mission and make it back to Mount Hua safely?
“North Sea, North Sea. I’d only ever heard the name...”
He could only marvel, over and over, that a place like this existed in the world.
After enduring that long ordeal, when they finally drew near the thing that looked like a person, Baek Cheon found himself unconsciously letting go of the cart handle.
The others were the same.
“...My word.”
“A-All of this...?”
Before their eyes lay a sight none of them had ever seen before in their lives.
Transparent ice.
Clear, transparent ice, gleaming white under the sunlight, stretched out without end.
It looked almost like an ice desert. The Mount Hua disciples stared in stunned silence, their mouths hanging open.
“...So this is the lake frozen over?”
“How big is this lake supposed to be?”
“...It’s beautiful.”
In this sublime, astonishing scene that could never be seen in Zhongyuan, all the Mount Hua disciples let out involuntary gasps of admiration.
And then—
“Sasuk! Over there!”
“Hmm?”
The figure sitting on the ice—whether bear or person—slowly turned its head toward them.
“Are you people from Zhongyuan?”
Baek Cheon’s eyes flew wide open. It was familiar Chinese.