Chapter 289: Tangent (1)

After several days of continuous rain, and fierce downpours at that, it’s not strange for a softened mountainside to collapse.

Fortunately the sound came from far away, but it was still unsettling.

Will it be okay here?

It won’t suddenly collapse, right?

But there’s no other option.

Primitive ancient nights are pitch black darkness with no light source except moonlight.

The only portable lighting individuals can carry are torches or lanterns, which are useless on a rainy night anyway.

So they can’t go down the mountain at night, and there’s no guarantee it would be safe even if they did.

The mountaintop is probably safer.

At least they wouldn’t have built the stronghold in a place that would collapse, right? Even if they’re ignorant bandits?

Qing finished her assessment and headed inside the stronghold.

Should I call it under a huge roof?

At one side under the roofless shelter, the entrance to a building with a large bonfire lit is clearly visible.

Of course bandits wouldn’t sleep on the ground using a roofed shelter as a bed, that’s only natural.

Then are they bandits? Just barbarians.

Hmm? They do seem to be barbarians.

Anyway, the method of finding the best room is obvious, just follow the corridor to the end and find the most lavishly decorated door.

The more lacking in authority, the more they cling to symbols of authority, so at the end of the corridor a large door lavishly decorated in gold and red even has a lantern hung saying “I’m here, this is the boss’s room” with its presence.

Since it’s not my house and I’m not a guest anyway, Qing who had both hands occupied with Seol Iri kicked the door open with a gallant motion.

The door fell like a drawbridge as her foot accurately hit the wood, revealing the interior.

And inside-

“Aish. Bachelor smell…”

Qing’s unique peerless beauty was filled with contempt.

As soon as the door fell, the intense bachelor smell that hit made it feel like her nose would fall off.

At least the bed looks good.

It’s wide, big and tall, clearly a plush high-quality bed at a glance, but the silk spread on it. Hmm.

Only the feeling that it was originally high-quality matching the bed remains, with the color changed to yellow from the center to the edges, and approaching closer, it’s clear this viciously strong bachelor smell originates from the bed and roughly bundled blanket thrown aside.

Qing picked up the blanket and shook it out, and for a moment that night flower-like but much more fishy and sticky damp smell hit again.

Ugh, it’s dirty, so dirty.

Is this a blanket or a rag?

Qing carefully set Seol Iri down and picked up the blanket to wrap around her.

She’s already in rags and got soaked in the rain, so she needs to maintain body heat for now.

At this, Seol Iri painfully turned her head to follow Qing with those big eyes.

“Smell…”

“What’s a little smell? No matter how dirty, it’s still a blanket, did they pee on it or something? At most it’s just lots of sweat, saliva, yeah. That kind of thing. Just heavily fermented.”

Qing’s expression was sour as she said this.

Actually, ugh, saying it out loud it’s more disgusting and creepy than I thought.

At this, Seol Iri’s eyes widened in shock and she tried to squirm, but let out a pained groan “Auk” and frowned.

“See? When you’re not feeling well. Wait a moment. I’ll change clothes, no, I’ll bring clothes to change into.”

She was in such a hurry to escape this terribly smelly space that her words came out wrong.

Qing headed back out towards the carriage and suddenly looked outside.

“This damn rain is really pouring down.”

In five years in the martial arts world, this was the first time seeing such endless pouring rain.

Well, after five years it was about time to experience a downpour.

But is the young master still alive?

Since the clothes were wet anyway, Qing headed out from under the roof towards the puddle she had roughly thrown him in.

Along with the refreshing shaa sound, raindrops intensely hit her face.

Three corpses with lost limbs were visible, and between them the young master foaming at the mouth.

Over 300 points of evil karma shone, wow, he’s still alive.

Is his lifeline tough because he’s a bad guy?

But even if the world’s greatest doctor was here right now, he’s beyond saving.

If it seemed like he could live I wouldn’t have thrown him in the first place, I just couldn’t be bothered to finish him off on a whim, it wasn’t neglect of live and let live.

Well. How trivial.

Qing lost interest and turned away.

She gathered clothes from the carriage and rushed back inside the stronghold, kicking open every door she saw bang bang to check inside.

No matter how high quality the bed is, it’s so dirty and smelly, not just any smell but bachelor smell that feels like it’s polluting her lungs, there’s no way she can sleep there.

But if the boss’s room is like that, how would the other rooms be any different?

Rather, the boss’s room used alone was better, the rooms used by several unwashed men together were worse if anything, ugh.

Then she came across the kitchen and looked at the ingredients. Fortunately it seems we can eat a hearty breakfast. Hmm? What’s this?

There’s another small door inside the food storage.

It was firmly locked so Qing imitated a barbarian again and kicked it open-

“Ow.”

Originally when kicking something, the more it shatters the less impact returns to the body.

Conversely, if the target stays intact the full impact returns, so Qing frowned at her throbbing ankle.

What is this? Seems like a chunk of metal?

Qing’s eyes shone seeing the fist-sized padlock on the door.

Come. Is something good stored here? A treasure vault?

The padlock was sturdy, but the iron ring it was attached to wasn’t, so when Qing grabbed and twisted the padlock, the iron ring bent and came off.

So stairs leading underground were revealed, and going down with a lantern, wow, my goodness.

A small warehouse filled with yellow light reflecting off shiny objects, wow, gold!

Qing picked up a gold ingot called one guan.

Originally gold has a vicious weight compared to its volume, so that precious weight settled heavily in her hand.

Ah. So this is why there were two Transcendent Realms.

Roughly counting, there were over 40 guan of gold ingots, enough vast wealth to need two Transcendent Realms guarding it.

Wow. These bastards.

They gathered this much gold from banditry?

Just how much did they steal?

Qing regretted belatedly.

I shouldn’t have killed them so cleanly.

I thought they were just robbing to scrape by and make a living even if it was banditry.

This is a full criminal enterprise. Total bastards.

Anyway, sleeping here tonight is wrong.

Though Qing is someone who would sleep on the street if needed, she really can’t sleep on that filthy bed stained with dark men’s sweat and saliva and women pulled in, ugh, it’s disgusting, really.

She can’t bear to sleep on such a dirty stained bed, and it’s not like she’s particularly tired from not sleeping for one day anyway.

I’ll just let the injured Miss Seol sleep there, and I should properly loot this bandit lair.

Returning to the smelly room, Seol Iri was making soft cute snoring sounds golong golong.

Now that I look, it seems she naturally snores a bit, not because of her cold.

“Miss Seol. Change clothes and sleep. You’ll catch another cold.”

“Yes…”

She seems to be the type to answer when spoken to while sleeping, answering golong golong while snoring.

At this, Qing unwrapped the bundled blanket, ugh, the smell…

The wet clingy clothes don’t come off easily. She’s limp and half-asleep in a daze, just answering “Yes” when told to lift her arms but completely passed out.

It’s hard to breathe from the smell, and having to take off wet clothes, vigorously wipe her body with cotton cloth, then change her into dry clothes in the middle of the night, it feels like what a hassle.

She’s not even a child really. Completely useless.

As a result of thoroughly searching the stronghold overnight, Qing found a decent amount of money and weapons that could be sold as scrap metal in addition to the gold ingots, as well as several secret manuals.

However, among them only two blue martial arts entered the martial arts window, and the rest like Great Strength Vein-Breaking Technique, Dragon Roar Sword Technique, Eight Trigrams Thousand Zhang Staff had very grand names but gave no response when touched, opened and skimmed.

It meant they weren’t proper secret manuals.

Well, why would bandits trust and teach good martial arts to their subordinates?

They probably removed core formulas, or twisted the qi circulation to create flaws.

She moved all the gold ingots to the carriage’s luggage compartment and piled lots of scrap metal weapons on top as camouflage.

And since it was still the middle of the night, Qing went into the carriage and roughly covered herself with a blanket to pass the time.

She may have dozed off or not.

Then morning came.

In the morning the rain lessened to a drizzle, and the thick clouds that had completely blocked the sky cleared a bit, so though it was cloudy it felt like day had dawned.

Ah. Wasn’t there a landslide last night?

Qing put on a bamboo hat and leapt up to a watchtower she hadn’t known existed last night to survey below the mountain.

Ah. It wasn’t a landslide, she thought.

Perhaps as a strategic decision, they had cleared trees to allow a clear view below from the watchtower.

So the path up the mountain was clearly visible, and while the ridge below came into view, a horrific sight at the foot of the mountain appeared through the morning mist.

It wasn’t a landslide but a flood.

A tributary of the Yellow River flowing south of Gamsan had overflowed.

It was truly a wasteland, with yellow mud and fallen trees forming a thick band stretching from east to west as far as the eye could see to the ridge blocking the view.

If we had been down there…

Then she realized, if the driver hadn’t brought us to the stronghold we would have been caught up in it.

The road ran right along the Luohe River at the foot of Gamsan, so now no trace of even a pebble from the road could be seen.

Driver mister. You had such grand intentions.

And I didn’t even know…

You did one good deed before dying, so King Yama will probably reduce your sentence by at least one ke.

Qing isn’t particularly skilled at cooking, but she’s not bad at it either.

In fact, Qing isn’t very picky about food.

Rather than not picky, she has a real dog’s tongue, finding everything delicious and edible, shoveling it down hurriedly.

And this type of person has a hard time cooking well.

But Qing also remembered the tastes of ingredients she had eaten amazingly well.

So dishes roughly stir-fried in an iron pot with oil turn out edible enough.

She put dried meat in a pot, roughly threw in some herbs to remove gamey flavors, poured in rice and barley with water all at once and boiled it vigorously to make a large pot of porridge.

“Miss Seol? Stop sleeping and eat breakfast. We should head down soon. I prepared porridge.”

“Porridge.”

Seol Iri’s eyes snapped open at the word porridge and she tried to suddenly sit up, but “Auk” and collapsed back into the bed.

“Miss Seol? Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

She keeps saying she’s okay but.

When I wiped her down yesterday her whole body was covered in dark bruises.

It was hard to find normal skin color on her entire back, shoulders, and outer arms and legs, but the insides of her torso and limbs were fine, white and pretty.

It means she couldn’t counterattack and just curled up in a ball getting constantly hit.

No wonder her whole body is battered.

No, a martial artist should counterattack.

If you imitate a pillbug you’ll just keep getting hit until you die, right?

That’s why she got dragged by her hair.

Her skills are poor and her attitude is a mess too.

Really just her face, aish that face…

“Can’t you stand? Should I carry you?”

“No.”

Seol Iri said that and very painfully, slowly and laboriously like a dying old person, clung to various things to barely stand up.

Then she stuck to the wall, supporting herself with her hands as she barely took one step at a time to follow.

Qing didn’t particularly want to carry someone who refused, so she just slowly led the way.

After eating a hearty breakfast like that.

And then it was time to depart.

“Can you drive the carriage?”

“I’ll do it.”

“No, we’ll crash nicely together at this rate. It’s not about whether you’ll do it or not, can you do it or not?”

At this, Seol Iri bit her lip hard.

Her spirit is admirable, but how could a woman whose hand trembles even holding a porridge spoon drive a carriage?

As Qing’s eyes narrowed, Seol Iri gave a different answer:

“I’ll teach you.”

“What? How to drive a carriage?”

“Yes.”

“Can that be learned in one go?”

“It’s easy.”

Qing likes living villains, not leftover flesh and bones of the dead.

They can’t stay in the stronghold full of corpses anyway, so.

And so Qing’s first carriage driving experience!

Surprisingly, it’s easy.

That’s because horses have eyes too.

Moreover, horses are extremely timid creatures.

Since creatures with eyes are also very timid, they skillfully avoid obstacles on their own, and if it seems dangerous the horse refuses first and absolutely won’t try to go.

The reason war horses are expensive is because it’s extremely difficult and maddening to train such timid beasts to charge at enemies.

Aish. Being a carriage driver was really a job that’s a piece of cake.

Of course that was natural.

One reason carriage driver is counted among the five most lowly jobs in the world is that anyone can do this easy job.

Of course, it takes great skill to drive fast or maintain a smooth ride while checking road conditions, but if the only goal is to pull a carriage, anyone can just hold the reins and the horse will skillfully pull it along on its own.

Horses also prefer walking on well-maintained solid roads rather than through bushes or trees.

The road was slippery and downhill.

But since they had made a path for carriages to go up and down to the stronghold as a base, they could somehow manage to go down the winding gentle downhill path swaying back and forth.

The wheels kept getting stuck in mud.

But here we have the superhuman Transcendent Qing, the Female Xiang Ji, and the human crane Ximen Qing.

When the carriage got stuck while driving they pushed it out, returned to the driver’s seat to watch the horse’s swaying rump, then got stuck again with a thud.

They say horses are clever and indeed they were.

When the carriage got stuck, it immediately stopped and turned its head to look at Qing.

As if saying hurry up and get the carriage out, what are you doing?

Then a slowly rising feeling of frustration.

No, what kind of hardship is this?

That Seolhwa’s only redeeming quality besides her face was knowing how to drive a carriage, but now I’m doing even that myself. she thought.