Episode 274. Yeoran, I’m Sorry.

I was never someone who became a demonic madman from frequently consuming elixirs.

My internal energy was always insufficient.

Since I had been lacking from the very beginning, I felt no dissatisfaction about the deficiency. Just as one born into poverty feels little about being poor. Thus, even when my internal energy fell short of my opponent’s, I was still fairly good at fighting in my own way.

In the early days of my debut in the jianghu, I had mainly built up my skills fighting experts of the dark path, and when battling orthodox experts, I used the dark path methods I had learned back then.

There had been no other choice because my internal energy was lacking.

Fleeing when fighting the Butcher, and running away while carrying the Beggar Sect Leader on my back—these too were a kind of habit.

Perhaps it was simply the manner I had chosen because I was always the one running away.

What would happen if someone like me later came to overwhelm an opponent with internal energy?

I don’t know.

Because I have never done it before.

I would probably be invincible, no?

I already possessed the Heavenly Jade in my dantian, but that didn’t mean I could become invincible overnight. Because in life, strokes of luck are rare to begin with.

However, if I were to discover a spirit medicine like the Moon Orchid in Manjang, that would be my fortune. Because the Moon Orchid is difficult to transport, so it’s better for me to consume it directly.

Of course, spirit medicines like ginseng (蔘) or medicinal oils (油) could naturally be stored and transported, so they would go to Moyong Baek or Yeoran.

Since my destination was quite far, my thoughts grew long even as I ran.

Having run for five sichen without rest, I surveyed the bustling streets with a weary air.

Since I had planned to spend money freely from the start, I bought a floral white outer robe to layer against the chilly weather, changed my worn shoes for new ones, and purchased a folding fan as well.

Come to think of it, were floral robes trending again these days?

Fashion goes in cycles, and I was rather unhinged myself, so I adapted well to trends.

I briefly debated whether to enter a shabby inn or a large one. Since I planned to eat only once a day, I chose lodging that looked rather expensive.

The Yellow Crane Inn.

Curiously, a warning notice was posted at the entrance. The Yellow Crane Inn was contracted with Mansang Gate (萬象門), and the brief text warned that causing trouble would result in a conflict with Mansang Gate.

A mood where I wouldn’t need to cause unnecessary trouble, so to speak.

“All the better.”

Dark path scoundrels were unlikely to run wild in an inn protected by a martial sect.

After entering the Yellow Crane Inn, I observed many things as an innkeeper of the same trade.

I took the smallest room, then came out to eat with my bundle strapped to my back like a country bumpkin. Though the bundle contained no elixirs, it held enough money to eat and play for a year even at such an expensive inn, so I couldn’t leave it in an empty room.

Although there were over thirty tables, fewer than ten people were dining. I seated myself at a quiet window and ordered three dishes from the waiter.

“Would you like alcohol as well?”

I shook my head at the waiter’s question.

If intoxicated, my departure would slow and my qinggong would slow as well. I intended to fill my stomach, nap briefly, then rise to run again, whether in the middle of the night or at dawn.

The waiter asked as if to confirm.

“Will you settle the bill when you leave after your stay?”

I observed the waiter’s expression, then nodded.

“Understood.”

While waiting for the food, I looked outside the inn. Ordinary people were too busy working to glance up at the upper floor of the inn, but occasionally passing jianghu martial artists would look toward where I was. Since it was unwise to get into pointless staring contests with jianghu folk, I would nod my head slightly first whenever our eyes met.

Internally, I kept drilling into myself that my identity was a herb picker.

It was a relatively peaceful neighborhood.

Just when I was thinking the food was taking a while, the sweet-and-sour fillet, bang bang chicken (棒棒鷄), and fried rice (炒飯) arrived. Bang bang chicken was obviously a chicken dish, but I didn’t know how it was made. I only knew that it was prepared by catching a rooster fed with alcohol, but the meat was far more tender than the sweet-and-sour fillet. The reason the character bang (棒), a weapon used as a club, was in the dish’s name was probably because they beat the drunken chicken to death with a club.

I hadn’t thought of alcohol while eating the fried rice and bang bang chicken, but once I started on the sweet-and-sour fillet, a sigh escaped me unbidden. Yet when I thought of Yeoran, who would be at the Jaha Inn, I couldn’t drink.

I ate while trying not to look at the people in the inn, when someone nearby asked me.

“Traveling?”

I chewed my fried rice and shook my head. After placing a piece of chicken on the fried rice and taking another neat bite, the questions continued.

“Then what?”

“I’m a herb picker.”

“Ah… which mountain are you headed to? A herb picker in a floral robe. That’s a rare sight.”

Only then did I look the man up and down.

He was a blademan (刀客).

There was no reason to tell him my destination, so I answered vaguely.

“Here and there. This mountain and that mountain.”

The man stared at me fixedly, so I looked back while eating. Did I look like such a country bumpkin? Or did I look like someone who would dine and dash? Or perhaps I simply looked like a jianghu person and had piqued his interest.

He was an ordinary martial artist whose level was impossibly far below mine, and he didn’t seem to have the eye to properly gauge my skill.

The food wasn’t bad, so I emptied my bowl cleanly, then looked out the window. As I was enjoying the outside view, this man slightly overstepped.

“Anything interesting out there?”

I rinsed my mouth with tea water and looked at the man.

“I’m not looking because there’s anything interesting out there. I’m just looking. At people passing by. I don’t know what you’re so curious about, but come here and ask it all. I’ll be your conversation partner.”

“Shall I?”

The man grabbed his bottle and sat across from me. When he extended the bottle, I shook my head.

“No thanks.”

“A very upright young man who won’t even touch alcohol. You look less like a herb picker and more like a disciple from a rural martial hall. Where are you from?”

“Baengeungji.”

“So you weren’t from the countryside. Aren’t there many martial halls there?”

“Oryo Martial Hall.”

“How long have you been learning the blade?”

“Over a year.”

I answered offhandedly, and the man laughed.

“A young man who’s learned the blade for a year at Oryo Martial Hall, ordering three dishes at the Yellow Crane Inn? Your family must be wealthy. Or you’ve struck it rich with herbs.”

“Not yet.”

I called over a passing waiter and pointed at the man in front of me.

“Do you know this man?”

The waiter read the room and answered.

“He is the martial artist Yang Haejo of Mansang Gate. Since we cooperate with Mansang Gate, he visits often as a guest. Is there any inconvenience?”

“None.”

The man in front of me spoke.

“I’m called Yang Haejo. And you?”

“Cha Seongtae. Anything else you want to ask?”

“Well, well, prickly, aren’t you? My apologies if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

My mood had soured in an instant, but I obediently returned to my room and lay down. Even after nothing more than a brief conversation with a single man of the jianghu, sleeping felt uncomfortable.

“Ah, damn it.”

I had heard nothing of Mansangmun. The world was far too vast, and simply reciting the names of all the sects and factions would take more than half a day.

I dozed lightly.

After resting for barely two sichen, I eventually got up in the dead of night, packed my things, went downstairs, and called the waiter over to settle the bill.

The waiter read what he had written down, then said to me,

“……You are leaving right away? Including the food and lodging, it comes to two standard silver pieces.”

I stopped as I was about to take out my money pouch.

“What?”

“Did you not check the prices when you came in?”

When I looked where the waiter was pointing, a price list I had failed to notice was stuck to the table.

“That’s one hell of a rip-off.”

A sigh escaped me on its own, but with the thought that I should avoid causing trouble, I handed over two standard silver pieces.

“Please visit us again.”

“It’s so expensive I doubt I’ll ever come back.”

“Yes, sir.”

As I stepped outside, I heard hurried footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.

When I turned around, all was quiet again.

I tied the knot on my bundle tightly, took three or four steps, then stopped. In that instant, I turned back and looked at the Yellow Crane Inn.

I imagined the Mad Demon of my previous life going back into the Yellow Crane Inn, smashing things here and there, then finding the man who had annoyed him with conversation and slapping him across the face.

‘What a lunatic.’

In my previous life, I really did seem to have gone around doing far too many wicked things.

To be honest, I wanted to do wicked things even now, but I held myself back, thinking this too was all experience. Because I kept remembering the small hand that had wrapped around my fist.

After watching the sleepless lights of the bustling district, I was about to leave when men emerged from an alley and followed me as naturally as could be.

When I quickened my pace with short steps, they followed with short steps from behind. In no time, their numbers swelled to over ten, and a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks.

“Stop.”

It was that bastard from the inn. To the bastard who had bothered me with tiresome words and followed me all the way here, I threw out words that would have no effect whatsoever.

“Just you wait.”

They say there is no one frightening among those who say, “Just you wait,” but I am different.

“Hey!”

I immediately thought of Yorani, then escaped the area. As I unleashed my lightness skill, the riffraff grew farther and farther away. Since they were idiots, it was impossible for them to chase me. They probably thought my bundle contained a lot of money.

If so, Mansangmun belonged to the Black Path.

Since I had committed it to memory, I intended to stamp my foot there again someday.

* * *

Having shaken off the temptations of the Mad Demon from my previous life several times……

I had barely managed to change jobs into a kind herb gatherer.

In the end, without any incidents or accidents, assaults or chaos, uproars or damned nonsense, I arrived at Manjang Cliff and first looked around the place where I had been surrounded by the Demon Cult.

A laugh escaped me anew.

Because the leader of the pursuit party was at the Zaha Inn. Now I had stopped that lecherous bastard from committing lecherous acts and had twisted the fate in which he threw himself into the Demon Cult, so in any case, the outcome of the fight we had on the cliff was my victory.

Standing alone at the edge of Manjang Cliff and giggling to myself, I really looked like a lunatic.

“How am I supposed to get down?”

There was no particular method.

Looking at the cliff so deep that the bottom could not be seen, I was worried about getting back up as well. But it was not a depth that could be solved with something like a rope, so for now I jumped down from Manjang Cliff.

Only after I was suspended in midair……

Regret came flooding in that I should have jumped toward a place where water was visible.

“Damn it…….”

But the power of my internal energy had already reached a level far beyond the weight of my body, so I was not particularly worried.

Just how long was I going to keep falling?

The moment the ground came into view, I poured out the palm force of the Great Hand Seal, and in the aftermath my body spun in a circle. I twisted my body and rapidly rotated three or four times, changed direction with palm force, then kicked off a nearby wall and bounced out noisily again before landing on the ground.

Eight points out of ten.

Suddenly, I looked up into the sky.

“…….”

I remembered the cultists who had fallen like dots. Just how terrifying was the Cult Leader that they threw themselves off a cliff at a single command? Or had that lecherous bastard given the order deliberately to kill his subordinates?

On the off chance, I waited for the mysterious man who had appeared from the sky, but the same thing did not happen. I examined the surroundings for a while and thought about where it would be good to climb.

Looking up like this, I found myself thinking it was fortunate I had not come with the Four Great Villains.

In other words, even the Sword Demon would not be able to climb a cliff of this height easily.

And what did that mean? It meant that among the Four Great Villains, I was first in lightness skill.

After all, a cliff this rugged could not be comfortably climbed without the Cloud-Ladder Leap.

Though it was still bright daylight, the air below Manjang Cliff was quite chilly. I drew my wooden sword, cut away the branches getting in my way, and checked the surroundings.

According to Moyong Baek……

In places where sunlight was scarce, naturally, there was a high probability of finding spiritual medicines imbued with yin energy. Even so, it was not as if a spiritual medicine like Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng would appear in a place like this.

Spiritual medicines worth obtaining in a place this deep would be……

Kongqing Stone Milk (空靑石乳) or Natural Wine Fruit (天然酒果).

I spent one sichen combing through the southern floor of Manjang Cliff, but far from a spiritual medicine, I did not even find poisonous herbs. The fact that I could not even see a single root of fleeceflower was a little strange.

It felt as though someone had already been here before me.

I returned to the place where I had landed and was examining the northern side of Manjang Cliff when something suddenly occurred to me, and I looked up at the sky.

The Sword-Cry Bridge (劍鳴橋) was nowhere to be seen.

The only bridge that could cross Manjang Cliff was the Sword-Cry Bridge, but truthfully, I had never seen an intact Sword-Cry Bridge myself. All I had heard were rumors that the Orthodox Path and the Demonic Path had fought a one-on-one duel atop the precarious Sword-Cry Bridge and cut the bridge down.

As I headed north, I discovered something like a shabby rope hanging limply down the cliff. On the opposite side as well, part of an identical rope had snapped and was touching the cliff.

After rummaging through the undergrowth for a long while and arriving at the point beneath the Sword-Cry Bridge, an unexpectedly wide clearing appeared.

The atmosphere of the clearing was strange. It was not in its natural state, but rather a clearing that seemed to have been touched by human hands. In other words, it gave off the impression that someone had deliberately made this wide clearing.

I looked up into the sky, checked the face of the cliff, and stared blankly at the wide clearing again before coming to this conclusion.

After the people fighting on the bridge fell here……

Could they have fought again?

If so, they really were lunatics. If the rumors were true, it meant that even in this clearing, an expert of the Demonic Path and an expert of the Orthodox Path had fought.

It was a situation where I could not expect much in terms of spiritual medicines, but I had a hunch that the white bones of an old expert might be somewhere. To be honest, after coming all the way down here, the desire to take at least something back up with me was surging within me.

If I gained nothing at all……

I intended to strike the cliff with the Ilwolgwangcheon and erase Manjang-ae from existence.

As I searched to the north, fleeceflower root finally appeared. After digging it up and checking the root, I found it was at least over a hundred years old. Since it had grown beneath Manjang-ae, even a hundred years did not feel particularly long. I placed the fleeceflower root into a box I took from my bundle, then continued north.

A short while later, I took the fleeceflower root out of the box, shook off the dirt, and ate it myself. The farther north I went, the older the fleeceflower roots I could dig up became. In other words, there was no helping it, since there were too many to carry them all in my bundle. I was in a situation where I had to take only the oldest, highest-grade fleeceflower roots.

Moyong Baek had read the situation correctly.

Cutting away the dense weeds and branches with the Flash Dagger as I headed north, I came upon a small lake-marsh. It was a little too small to be called a lake and far larger than a pond, but the water was so clear that I could see fish swimming even from a distance. Around it stretched a flat wetland where there was no sign of human passage whatsoever. I felt sorry to say this to the fish, but they looked more valuable than most spiritual medicines.

I stood with my arms crossed for a while, admiring the surrounding scenery.

Was this why people sometimes retired and shut themselves away in deep mountains and secluded valleys, never to come out? It was the perfect place for seclusion.

As I quietly admired the scenery, something squirmed in the wetland, and when I looked, a freshwater crab was moving. Following the movement of the crab and looking beyond the marsh, I saw the graceful form of a Woldanhwa blooming in a crevice of a lone rock set amid a place thick with mud.

Manjang-ae had been harboring a Woldanhwa?

I had no choice but to abandon the thought of destroying Manjang-ae.

In that case, I had become the guardian of all things, the vanguard of nature conservation, the greatest beneficiary of mountains, rivers, plants, and trees, the revolutionary of cliffside fortuitous encounters, the man of the precipice, the selfish bastard who had run all this way so he could stuff himself with spiritual medicines alone, the master who claimed he was thinking of his disciple only to end up eating everything by himself, and the patient who had pretended to be doing this for Sir Moyong but, in the end, would be the only one to consume the spiritual medicines.

I stared at the Woldanhwa with my arms crossed, then calmly accepted this unavoidable situation.

“……This is actually better.”