Chapter 342. Watching Over Each Other.

With a bundle slung over one shoulder, I walked precariously along the top of Manjang Cliff. One wrong step, and it was a sheer drop of a thousand gil.

The Four Great Villains and the White-Clad Scholar were following behind me. When I kept walking while staring down below, the White-Clad Scholar asked,

“Sect Leader, what on earth are you looking for?”

I ignored the White-Clad Scholar and glared at one spot.

“There.”

The others’ gazes turned downward. It was so fathomlessly deep that they seemed unable to tell what I was pointing at.

I untied my bundle and threw it toward the spot I had in mind. Inside the bundle were all sorts of things: liquor in bamboo tubes, salt, seasonings, leftover dried meat, and so on.

I lowered my voice and said,

“Listen carefully.”

A moment later, the faint sound of the bundle plunging into water could be heard.

The White-Clad Scholar muttered,

“I heard a splash.”

I looked at the group and said,

“Good.”

The Lust Demon replied,

“What’s good about it now? I’m getting nervous. I don’t think any of this is good.”

“See you below. Watch carefully and follow my lead. Don’t make it hard on yourselves.”

I looked at the group, whose expressions were growing stranger by the second, then hurled myself off Manjang Cliff. As I instantly fell, wrapped in the wind, the Lust Demon’s curses grew more and more distant.

To lessen the wind’s effect, I stretched both hands forward and straightened my body into a line.

If I hit the ground like this, my life would be ruined, and so would the jianghu.

But I had palm wind.

I watched the point where I was falling, adjusted the weight of my body midair as I plummeted, then turned a few somersaults. Feeling dizzy, I crashed with my whole body into the lake that suddenly appeared beneath me.

Boom!

I sank so deep I wondered if my body might end up embedded in the lakebed, then headed for the surface. As soon as I grabbed the bundle and emerged, I raised both hands high and declared to Manjang Cliff,

“……I am alive!”

When I looked up at the sky, the Four Great Villains and the White-Clad Scholar were standing motionless, looking down at me. I could not see their expressions, but it was not difficult to tell that they were still cursing at me.

I waved my hand toward the sky to confirm my position, then pointed at the lake beside me.

At that moment, the Sword Demon threw down his bundle first, then leaped into the air and dropped straight down.

I had not known it when I was falling myself, but watching someone else fall made admiration rise on its own.

“Wow, that’s insane. He must be crazy to die.”

The Sword Demon, who had been descending vertically, soon arrived as well, raising a waterspout in the lake. I welcomed the Sword Demon with applause.

“As expected of our eldest brother.”

Next, the White-Clad Scholar set off from the cliff. However, perhaps he did not want to jump down all at once, because he began walking down with both feet planted against the cliff, then turned his body and fell in a hair-raising fashion. Soon, while in a standing posture, the White-Clad Scholar kicked off the cliff, and his fall stopped.

The White-Clad Scholar insisted on descending Manjang Cliff in this manner.

In the meantime, the Ghost Demon hurled himself into the air and let out a scream. Since the Four Great Villains were not fools, they eventually threw themselves into the lake, and even the Lust Demon arrived safely.

A short while later, we gathered by the lakeside and watched the White-Clad Scholar, who was still coming down the hard way.

Looking at the stubborn White-Clad Scholar, I said,

“What a damn fuss. What a damn fuss he’s making. That stubbornness is something else.”

The Four Great Villains also laughed at the same time as they watched the White-Clad Scholar.

In the end, the White-Clad Scholar must have lost his temper with himself, because he descended more violently, kicked off the wall, crossed the air, and landed near where we were.

I greeted the White-Clad Scholar with applause.

“You’ve had a hard time.”

The White-Clad Scholar’s expression was truly hilarious, so we all applauded as one.

First, I dug the ground with my foot to make a pit, then marked out where the brazier would go. After roughly making a one-person brazier with branches and stones, I said to the Four Great Villains and the White-Clad Scholar,

“See that? Make the same thing.”

After giving the order to the four of them, I took off my upper garment and wrung out the water. I placed it beside the brazier, then said to the Lust Demon,

“Light a fire in the center. So we can take from it.”

The White-Clad Scholar stayed still for a moment, then asked me,

“Where is the spirit medicine?”

While trimming a branch with the Flash Dagger I had taken from my upper garment, I said,

“I’ll go catch it, so wait.”

“You’re going to catch the spirit medicine?”

I looked at the White-Clad Scholar, who was trying to do nothing.

“What should I do with this scholar bastard? Make the brazier first, just like the example. Is it because all you’ve done is read books? You can’t get your head on straight.”

In no time, I finished making a spear and headed for the lake. I waited for the water to grow calm for a moment, then made a second branch spear. Behind me, the Lust Demon was lighting the fire and harassing the White-Clad Scholar while making the braziers.

The water was so clear it was transparent, so I could see the movements of the large fish in detail. As I sharpened the spear, I said to the Ghost Demon,

“Set out the liquor. Prepare the seasonings too. We’ll eat the dried meat with it.”

The Ghost Demon nodded.

“Understood.”

In any case, since the Sword Demon was the eldest brother, I excluded him from chores at times like this. When I stole a glance, the White-Clad Scholar was also making his own brazier while looking at the ones others had made. It was strange that, perhaps because he had some dexterity, he was making his better than ours.

I held the spear in my hand to prepare the spirit medicine I would feed to the Four Great Villains and the White-Clad Scholar.

It felt as though I had become a hunter born in ancient times. To be honest, I did not even know whether the fish here were spirit medicine or not. It was true, however, that Woldanhwa’s cold energy had disappeared. If they had an effect beyond ordinary nourishing food, then they were indeed spirit medicine.

I threw the spear and caught the giant fish swimming through the transparent water. I threw ten spears, and seven fish were pierced through. Since even one fish was enough for a meal, I did not catch any more. I went into the lake, threw the fish pierced by the spears onto land, then came back out.

While I was catching fish, preparations for camp had been perfected.

There was a campfire in the center, and around it were each person’s brazier. I walked around and distributed the fish caught at Manjang Cliff.

A short while later, we skewered the fish and gently cooked them over our personal braziers.

The White-Clad Scholar turned his fish this way and that as he said,

“This is spirit medicine?”

“Have you tried it?”

“No.”

“If you haven’t tried it, don’t talk.”

I drank the Dukang wine from a bamboo tube while thoroughly roasting the fish over the fire.

“And I haven’t searched the far side of the lake yet, but there should be fleeceflower root all over the place. It isn’t on the level of the hundred-year fleeceflower root that occasionally circulates in the jianghu. From what I can tell, this fish is also an extreme yang-type nourishing food, so if you eat the fleeceflower root right afterward as well, it might upset you. Make sure you eat while circulating your qi and regulating your breath.”

Everyone quietly listened to me as they looked at their own fish.

“……Ah, and there are a lot of poisonous plants here too. Don’t just pluck and eat any grass you see.”

The White-Clad Scholar examined his fish from every angle, then said,

“Can we eat now?”

When I nodded, the White-Clad Scholar tapped the fish with his hand, stripping off the scaled part, then tore into the white flesh of the enormous fish.

The White-Clad Scholar quietly chewed the meat with a bewildered expression, as if the taste of fish, which he was eating for the first time, struck him as strange.

Then the Four Great Villains also began tearing into the fish.

Since I had deliberately cooked even the outside thoroughly, I simply bit into it whole. Before I knew it, everyone had turned into idiots with oil smeared all around their mouths.

As we ate the fish, our stomachs began to grow hot. Yet perhaps everyone sensed something, because no one put the liquor to their lips. They seemed afraid the energy of the spiritual medicine would be washed away by the alcohol. With things like this, we understood one another without needing to speak.

The White-Clad Scholar, who had cleanly finished off one fish first, looked around at us.

“……”

It seemed he wanted to circulate his qi and regulate his breathing, but was wary of the situation.

I looked at the White-Clad Scholar and said,

“Are you afraid of a surprise attack?”

The White-Clad Scholar nodded.

“Aren’t you all the same?”

“But you won’t be able to endure it without circulating your qi right now, will you?”

The White-Clad Scholar let out a sigh.

I looked at the Four Great Villains and said,

“Let’s do it this way. There’s no chance of an outsider falling down here anyway. Even if someone does, they’ll fall as noisily as the White-Clad Scholar did. In the end, if White-Clad and we don’t circulate our qi because we can’t trust each other, there’d be no stupidity greater than this. We’ll enter qi circulation first. If the White-Clad Scholar beats us all to death, then that can’t be helped either. Eldest Brother, you start.”

The Sword Demon glanced once at the White-Clad Scholar, then sat cross-legged and quietly closed his eyes.

The Ghost Demon looked at the White-Clad Scholar, then sighed.

“This is the first time I’ve ever circulated my qi in such an uneasy state.”

When the Ghost Demon began qi circulation, the Lust Demon asked me,

“Is this really right?”

I nodded at the Lust Demon’s question.

“If we meant to kill each other, we should have fought up above. What disgraceful behavior is this?”

“Ha……”

The Lust Demon, wearing a troubled expression, also entered qi circulation.

I looked at the White-Clad Scholar.

“Who goes first?”

“You go first.”

I studied the White-Clad Scholar’s expression, then sat cross-legged and began circulating my qi. The moment I closed my eyes, I felt as if the White-Clad Scholar’s palm force would come flying at me, so I was anything but calm.

If all of us died here at the White-Clad Scholar’s hands, it would be because I had made the wrong call, so there was nothing to be done.

A person cannot become detached at the crossroads of life and death. I kept feeling as if death were flickering before my eyes, but I forced myself to focus on circulating my qi. Since I had eaten a spiritual medicine of extreme yang, I regulated my body with the qi circulation method of the Hundred Battles Ten Stages Art.

Becoming stronger is this difficult.

The human heart, filled with suspicion, is this frightening.

Overcoming the fear of death is this hard.

Even though I was merely circulating my qi as usual, a drop of sweat ran down my spine. In truth, I could not deeply trust the White-Clad Scholar either.

Even as I focused my mind, I heard the White-Clad Scholar sigh.

For a while, silence settled all around us, with only the sound of the campfire burning and the quiet rhythm of breathing continuing on.

I could not tell whether the White-Clad Scholar had begun circulating his qi or not. I merely heard his sighs from time to time. As I concentrated on the Hundred Battles Ten Stages Art, the Radiant Right Envoy and the black-clad man briefly came to mind.

Strangely, I could not forget the expressions on those two men’s faces.

Had it truly been the right choice for the Radiant Right Envoy to leave us there and flee?

If he had shaken off the White-Clad Scholar and arrived first, that meant the Radiant Right Envoy’s qinggong was no worse than the White-Clad Scholar’s. Moreover, if the White-Clad Scholar had been startled enough by the Envoy’s bluff to retreat, then the strength of his palm force must also be considerable. As I recalled the Radiant Right Envoy’s expression, this thought came to me.

Perhaps killing us was not the priority.

Was protecting the basic material for Cheonok not the true priority?

For some reason, I began to suspect that the two of them might have attacked each other while moving. They were both of the demonic path, after all. I could not shake the suspicion that the black-clad man had followed while knowing it, and that the Radiant Right Envoy had left that place with a full understanding of everything.

Perhaps because the ember of fear had not gone out……

I fell into my thoughts, only to find myself surrounded by several people.

The Cult Leader stood before me. To my right, the Radiant Right Envoy and the black-clad man appeared as well, and Grand Duke Yang, whom I had seen before, also emerged, leaving me encircled. Even if the Violet Haze Divine Art unfolded in its entirety, it seemed it would not be an easy fight.

If I were placed in such a situation, what should I do? Unfortunately, with my temperament, I would end up detonating the Sun-Moon Light Heaven on the spot.

If I vanished, would the Hao Gate remain intact?

Would Yoran be able to grow properly into a warrior of the jianghu?

If I vanished, would the other Three Talents and Im Sobaek be able to block the Cult Leader’s assault without trouble?

I had no choice but to arrive at negative conclusions for all of them.

I restored my body, which had been blown apart by the Sun-Moon Light Heaven, then found myself trapped once more within the encirclement.

‘As always, running away is the answer.’

Only if I fled would the Sword Demon join in, the Ghost Demon arrive, and the Lust Demon watch for an opportunity. The White-Clad Scholar would appear with that unlucky expression of his, and finally, only when Cheonak arrived as well would we be able to turn this fight around.

In the end, I had to keep growing stronger.

Strong enough to flee to the ends of the world, no matter what situation I encountered. After completing the Greater Heavenly Circuit of the Hundred Battles Ten Stages Art, I quietly opened my eyes.

A long breath flowed out of me.

“……Hoo.”

The other Four Great Villains already had their eyes open and were looking at me.

I checked on the White-Clad Scholar. Perhaps he had not circulated his qi all this time, because he was staring blankly at me.

I asked the White-Clad Scholar,

“White-Clad, what are you doing? Time is precious.”

The White-Clad Scholar looked around at us and said,

“……What kind of idiots circulate their qi together in such a defenseless state? Are you all done?”

When we all nodded……

Only then did the White-Clad Scholar sit cross-legged, closing his eyes as he said,

“Now it is my turn. Stand guard, protectors.”

The aura swirling around the White-Clad Scholar’s entire body calmly subsided, and his expression also changed to that of a sleeping man.

It looked as though he had fallen into qi circulation with the four of us before him.

Since I had nothing in particular to do, I watched the expressions of the Four Great Villains, then looked back at the White-Clad Scholar. Because the way he had kept insisting on strange things the whole way here was amusing, I twirled my finger around near my temple and mouthed the words.

‘Crazy bastard…….’

The Four Great Villains hurriedly held back their laughter.

I quietly picked up the Dugang liquor in the bamboo tube and looked at the Four Great Villains. Then the Sword Demon, Ghost Demon, and Lust Demon also picked up the Dugang liquor beside them.

We said what needed to be said with our eyes, then quietly took a sip of liquor.

Once the White-Clad Scholar entered qi circulation, Manjang Cliff grew quiet again.