Chapter 88

I met Kang Myeong and Kang Cheong-woo in front of the inn.

Unlike me, holding my horse’s reins, the two of them hadn’t brought any horses.

“Are you planning to run there?”

“I’m faster than a horse.”

Kang Myeong lifted her knees one after the other as she spoke.

“What about you, Cheong-woo?”

When I pointed at Kang Cheong-woo and asked, Kang Myeong jerked her chin toward the horse’s rump.

“There.”

“I’ll be in your care, Brother!”

“…Right.”

I let Kang Cheong-woo hop on behind me and we set off.

He was being so polite I couldn’t bring myself to refuse.

One horse and one person dashed forward in earnest.

Just as she’d said, Kang Myeong was faster than the horse.

She even had enough spare breath to chat with me without her breathing getting ragged.

“Why do you keep glancing over?”

“Oh, I was just thinking you run really well.”

In truth, I was thinking about what the Heavenly Demon had said.

What exactly was ‘echo-positioning,’ and what did he mean by her senses?

‘I’ll slip it into the conversation later.’

I didn’t know why, but I had the feeling that if I brought it up, Kang Myeong would explode.

If she got mad enough she might even call the whole deal off, so I figured we should at least reach the site first.

“I’m pretty good at running.”

Looking pleased with herself, Kang Myeong suddenly called out, “But anyway, Young Hero Baek.”

Ever since we’d agreed to split the reward money fifty–fifty yesterday, my form of address had been promoted from “you” to “Young Hero Baek.”

“What is it?”

“You know what you said yesterday. About that dog statue or whatever?”

“It’s a pig. A bronze seated statue.”

“Right, that. How did you find out it’s under Hidden Dragon Cliff?”

“Oh, I heard it from an old monk I met by chance.”

“Wow, life really is unfair. One person meets some crazy defrocked monk and ends up bouncing between life and death, while someone else meets a fine, respectable monk who points them straight to a treasure.”

I snorted and shot back.

“Maybe you just haven’t accumulated enough virtue.”

“Not enough virtue? Me? Honestly, Young Hero Kang, you really don’t know me.”

I didn’t know her well, but I had heard plenty.

Her nickname was the Yangtze Monster Flood Dragon, meaning some monstrous flood dragon lurking in the Yangtze.

You don’t get a fearsome nickname like that for living a quiet, well-behaved life.

She caused so many incidents that people practically branded her with a warning label so others would steer well clear.

Just counting the scandals I personally remembered, there were six or seven; who knew how many more I didn’t know about?

“So where did you meet this monk?”

Her question made me think of one man.

When I’d left the Demon Cult and gone looking for the Life-and-Death Divine Physician, I met an elderly man at his residence.

He was obsessed with not allowing anything in the world to remain unknown to him and stuck his nose into every conceivable matter.

‘He even called himself the Ten-Thousand-Stories Scholar.’

The problem was that the Ten-Thousand-Stories Scholar talked too much.

I stayed at the Life-and-Death Divine Physician’s house for half a month, and by the end of it my ears practically ached from listening to his stories.

Among the countless tales he’d poured out, one of them had been about this Bronze Seated Statue.

How he came to take an interest in it, the effort he went through to track down the source, how he finally figured out where it was buried, and—

‘That it lay in a Dragon Pool beneath Hidden Dragon Cliff.’

To be honest, up to that point I hadn’t believed him.

He just seemed like a textbook blowhard.

I only realized how accurate his deductions were about a year later.

There was a good reason for that.

Anyway, thanks to him, I’d gotten my hands on a fortuitous encounter.

And money is a fortuitous encounter, if you ask me.

Not that things necessarily turn out well just because it’s a fortuitous encounter.

Unfortunately, the young man who found the Bronze Seated Statue in my previous life died a sudden early death.

On the very day he offered it to the owner of the Myriad Gold Money House and received his reward.

It had been a fishy death.

The Ten-Thousand-Stories Scholar had summed it up like this:

-What the owner of the Myriad Gold Money House gave him wasn’t gold and silver. It was coins for the road to the underworld. And he took even those back in the end.

Even if I was stealing that young man’s opportunity now, I was also saving his life, so it wasn’t something he’d have any right to resent me for.

I’d be the one in danger instead, but that was just what I wanted.

Getting tangled up with the Myriad Gold Money House meant there was a lot more to gain.

“Here we are! This is the place, right?”

Lost in thought, I looked up to find we’d already arrived at Hidden Dragon Cliff.

A massive old tree stood on the clifftop.

I walked up to it and peered down over the edge.

Unlike other stretches of the Ba River, the current here was vicious.

Standing beside me with her arms folded, Kang Myeong muttered to herself,

“The center’s bubbling up, while the edges are dragging things down. Figures there’s a pretty deep pit down there. Perfect conditions for a vertical whirlpool. Go in wrong and the downward force slams you and the upward force flings you. Your body ends up in shreds. Sounds fun.”

She didn’t seem to be talking for our benefit, just organizing her thoughts out loud.

Then she unfastened the folded wooden rods from her waist.

With a flick of her wrist, tatatatak! — sections of different thickness snapped together.

In an instant, they had become a fishing pole easily three meters long.

“Cheong-woo.”

“Yes, Aunt.”

When she held out her hand, Kang Cheong-woo quickly pulled a thin white line from his bundle.

I asked her,

“Is that Heaven Silkworm silk?”

“Oooh, Young Hero Baek has a good eye. That’s right. It’s a fishing line made of Heaven Silkworm silk. It’s insanely expensive, but for anglers like me, our gear is our life.”

For the finishing touch, she tied a fist-sized lead weight to the end of the line.

Gripping the completed rod, she gave a light snap of her wrist.

The long rod bent in a smooth arc, and the weight traced living shapes through the air.

‘No wonder she’s famous.’

I couldn’t help being impressed.

With nothing but the motion of her wrist, she was controlling the weight and length to perfection. It was like the rod was part of her body.

Splash.

She flicked the lead weight into the Dragon Pool.

After moving it here and there for a while, she soon reeled it back in.

“I’ve got the lay of it. Now I just have to go in.”

“Already?”

“That took longer than usual. Normally I can judge it at a glance.”

“Are you confident?”

It wasn’t Kang Myeong who answered my question, but Kang Cheong-woo.

“Don’t worry, Brother! For my aunt, the water is no different from dry land. If it’s dangerous, she’d grab a fish by the tail and ride it up if she had to!”

“Exactly, exactly.”

Pleased by her nephew’s unconditional faith, Kang Myeong smiled in satisfaction.

I watched them for a moment, then opened my mouth.

This felt like the best time to pass on the Heavenly Demon’s words.

“Hero Kang, before we set out today my master said something.”

Just hearing the word ‘master’ made her flinch.

W-what did he say?”

“He told me to tell you not to put blind faith in your senses underwater.”

“W-was that… for me?”

“Yeah.”

As if she found it absurd, Kang Myeong immediately raised her voice.

“What kind of nonsense is that! Do you know how sharp my senses are in the water?!”

That was exactly the reaction I’d expected.

Anyone would be upset to have someone meddling in their area of expertise.

“C-can your Great Heavenly Dragon swim well or something? I’ve spent thirty years in the Yangtze!”

“Maybe he can’t swim as well as you, but my master doesn’t say pointless things. So don’t just brush it off. Keep it in mind.”

“Ugh, whatever. I’m going.”

With that, Kang Myeong leapt from the cliff.

It didn’t look like she’d jumped so much as the water had sucked her in. She vanished without a trace.

Kang Cheong-woo took incense sticks out of his bundle and lit one.

“What’s that?”

“Timekeeping Incense. Each stick burns for a quarter of an hour, and Aunt can stay underwater until three of them burn down.”

“She can stay under for three-quarters of an hour?”

Truly fitting for the Yangtze Monster Flood Dragon.

With her level of cultivation and her specialized arts, it made sense.

“-There was this one time too. My aunt—”

I chatted idly with Kang Cheong-woo for a while.

He didn’t forget and lit the next stick of Timekeeping Incense the instant the first one burned out.

The second stick burned down too, and the third began to smolder.

From that point on, his chatter sharply decreased.

He didn’t take his eyes off the incense, as if it would go out if he looked away.

Then, it was at the moment when the last stick was burned about halfway down.

The anxious boy finally spoke.

“Brother, I think something might have happened to my aunt.”

I’d already been wondering if she was really planning to stay down for the full three sticks?

The Heavenly Demon’s warning kept floating back into my mind.

There had to be some problem with the way Kang Myeong used her senses.

Coming from the Heavenly Demon, that kind of judgment wasn’t something I could doubt.

All I could do was hope his advice would turn out to be needless worry.

With that in mind, I told Kang Cheong-woo,

“Don’t worry. She’s probably just wrapping things up. She’ll be up any— Hey, you brat!”

I shouted before I even finished speaking.

Out of nowhere, Kang Cheong-woo had taken off toward the cliff’s edge.

I used my footwork to try and grab him, but missed by a hair.

Without noticing, he’d edged far too close to the drop.

And just like that, he vanished from my sight.

When I hurried to look down, I saw him diving into the water.

‘What kind of ridiculous follow-through is that…?’

I was dumbfounded.

His worry for his aunt had completely short-circuited a ten-year-old’s reason.

But this was far too reckless.

If this were something Kang Cheong-woo could handle, then Kang Myeong wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place.

“Gah, gurgle!”

Sure enough.

It wasn’t long before he bobbed back up and thrashed around.

Forget saving his aunt, he was struggling just to keep himself afloat.

“Haah.”

My head suddenly throbbed.

Honestly, this time I wanted to take the free ride. The hard part was supposed to be Kang Myeong’s job.

But now it had reached the point where I had to step in.

‘Sigh. I can’t just let the kid die.’

How was I going to save him?

I fell into thought for a moment.

‘I can’t just jump in after him.’

I didn’t have much experience swimming.

Even if he was young, Kang Cheong-woo was definitely more at home in the water than I was.

And look at the state he was in. If I jumped in too, all I’d be doing was adding one more corpse.

‘Is there a better way?’

I quickly scanned our surroundings.

Before long, my eyes landed on something.

The fishing rod Kang Myeong had left behind.

The Heaven Silkworm line was incredibly long. If I threw it down, wouldn’t it reach him?

‘Let’s try it.’

I grabbed the rod straight away.

Leaving the rod itself in my left hand, I took hold of the middle of the Heaven Silkworm line and cast it downward.

By some miracle, the lead weight at the end splashed into the water right near Kang Cheong-woo.

“Hey, grab it!”

“Y-yes— pffft!”

“Don’t answer!”

“Y-mmf—!”

I had the sudden urge to smack my forehead.

I forced myself to keep my focus.

Unfortunately, his hands still couldn’t reach the line.

I scanned our surroundings again.

This time, my eyes were drawn to the cliff face halfway down.

A thick tree branch was jutting out at an angle from between the rocks.

‘So these are my three tools right now. The rod, the line, and that branch.’

A plan popped into my head.

The moment I came up with a plan, I moved.

Even as I watched, Kang Cheong-woo’s face was growing paler by the second. I didn’t have time to waste.

I gripped the rod in my left hand and wrapped the Heaven Silkworm line around my right arm.

Then I dashed down the cliff with the Soul-Extinguishing Flash Step and kicked off hard from the rock.

I shot away from the cliff in an instant.

Now the real part began.

First, I twisted my body in midair.

Using the added centrifugal force, I hurled the lead weight toward the branch.

The weight flew out horizontally, wrapped around the branch several times, and drew the line tight.

We were anchored.

‘Good.’

The taut line yanked me back toward the cliff.

I bent my knees to absorb as much of the impact as possible.

Then I began running straight down the cliff face, unspooling the line as I went.

Wind whipped at my clothes.

The strong wind sent my hems flapping.

My eyes stung, but I didn’t close them.

I didn’t want to lose sight of Kang Cheong-woo’s position.

One blink was more than enough time for the current to sweep a person away.

Now!

I reached the right spot.

I pushed off the cliff with a bend-and-stretch of my knees.

At the same time, I thrust the rod out with my left hand.

Unlike before, this time the tip reached Kang Cheong-woo.

“Grab it!”

Maybe it was pure survival instinct.

He flailed and seized the rod in a death grip.

I had no idea where that much strength came from in someone who’d been on the verge of drowning.

Bracing the line in my right hand, I fought against the pull and hauled up on the rod as hard as I could.

The rod bent so far it looked like it would snap.

For a second, I was genuinely worried.

‘Can this rod handle it?’

It had to.

Wasn’t Kang Myeong someone who had that said her gear was her life.

“Ungh—!”

Drawing up my internal energy, I poured strength into the entire left side of my body.

Bang! With a sharp crack like a bowstring breaking, the rod whipped back with explosive force.

That recoil sent Kang Cheong-woo hurtling up into the air.

“Grab the branch!”

Thump!

His body flopped onto the branch like laundry thrown over a line.

He didn’t exactly grab it, but he landed on it, and that was what mattered.

“Cough! Cough!”

Because of that, he spat out all the water he’d just swallowed, which honestly made things even better.

“Whew…”

Only then did I finally let out a deep breath.

I’d burned through too much internal energy and my head was spinning, but it was still manageable.

The problem was…

“…How am I supposed to get back up?”

I looked up.

The cliff seemed absurdly high.

‘What happened to Kang Myeong?’

By now, all three sticks of incense would have burned down.

Could it really be that the flaw the Heavenly Demon had mentioned had come into play?

“Ha.”

I let out a quiet sigh and looked back down.

Fwoooosh!

A column of water shot up as something massive surged out of the river.

It was a gigantic eel, easily over twenty meters long. And—

“Waaahhh!”

Clinging to its back was none other than Kang Myeong.