Chapter 324 - Black Forest (4)

The South Fist Sect, which had been put in charge of safety management for the Great Journey, vehemently opposed the new mission proposed by the instructors.

"The Black Forest is not a place you can wander around carelessly...! Do you know how many people have entered that forest and never come out?"

At Yang Japyeong's words, Noh Jinha gave a sneer.

"I take it the South Fist Sect cannot use Grass-Skimming Steps?"

"I have been letting your words slide, but you...!"

"You?"

Just as Yang Japyeong flared up and started forward, Noh Jinha's face hardened coldly and he rose from his seat.

"How dare some nobody from the South Fist Sect who never even attended the academy behave like this toward me, a Hall Leader of White Tiger Pavilion?"

"..."

Just as Noh Jinha was about to pick a fight in earnest.

"Please stop."

A South Fist Sect man who had come with Yang Japyeong stopped the two of them.

Then he stared quietly at Noh Jinha and asked in a low voice.

"... The academy instructors will clearly be taking responsibility for this matter, correct?"

"Hmph!"

Instead of giving a yes or no answer, Noh Jinha snorted.

But the South Fist Sect man did not back down.

"You must make that part clear. Otherwise, we intend to withdraw at once and report this to the Murim Alliance."

"Ha... this is absurd."

"You will be taking responsibility?"

After the repeated question, Noh Jinha rolled his eyes for a moment, then nodded confidently.

"Fine. I will take responsibility."

"Understood. Then the South Fist Sect will provide guides for the exploration. In exchange, please add the condition that the academy students must obey the guides' instructions without question."

"What about attacks from wild animals or demonic beasts encountered during the exploration? Can the South Fist Sect handle those too?"

This time, Yang Japyeong stepped forward and shook his head.

"We might manage tigers or bears, but we do not have the power to subjugate demonic beasts."

At that, Noh Jinha's face turned triumphant.

"Then why should they follow the South Fist Sect's words?"

Yang Japyeong said with a grave expression.

"Because otherwise, they will die."

"... Do not make me laugh. All you are doing is guiding the way."

But Yang Japyeong did not back down either.

"Please promise it."

After glaring at him as if he wanted to kill him, Noh Jinha eventually nodded.

"Very well. And there is no need to guide every academy student."

"... What do you mean by that? Have you perhaps prepared other guides?"

"That is no longer any business of the South Fist Sect's, is it?"

"Understood."

Once Yang Japyeong received the promise and stepped back, Noh Jinha assigned exploration areas to each group's leader.

One by one, the areas were decided, and when my turn came last.

TAP.

Noh Jinha pointed to the deepest part of the Black Forest.

"If you are the academy representative, you should be able to explore this much, no?"

A place called the Demonic Realm even within the Black Forest.

Ha, this man...

"Are you scared?"

I had thought he was an utterly useless human being, but to think he would be so considerate of me like this?!

Could it be that this man actually liked the Taiyi Sect?

I smiled brightly and conveyed my gratitude.

"I am not even a Qingcheng disciple, so what would I have to fear?"

"...!"

Noh Jinha must have been moved too, because he was left speechless.

Truly, what a harmonious teacher-disciple relationship this was.

#

The next day, while we gathered by group and made preparations for the exploration, Ilgak approached me.

"Benefactor Jin... please be careful."

Ilgak brought his palms together with a face full of concern.

Why did this man worry so much? Did he go bald because he worried too much?

"It is not as if I am going there to die, so why go that far?"

Ilgak lowered his voice and let out a sigh.

"The Demonic Realm... I have heard it is an especially dangerous place even within the Black Forest. Monk Taesu, a venerable elder of my sect, once entered the Demonic Realm and nearly died several times..."

"..."

What is this baldy trying to do with me right now?

Is this some kind of Buddhist curse?

Still, since he said someone had entered before, I grew curious and asked.

"Did that person obtain any spiritual elixirs or spiritual creatures in the Demonic Realm?"

"No. He said there were none whatsoever. He also urged us never to even think of entering that place."

"..."

What a truly useless baldy.

The guide for our group was Yang Japyeong again.

Apparently, the only person who had gone as far as the Demonic Realm was Yang Japyeong, or something like that.

In any case, unlike before, once we started walking through a somewhat denser forest, our pace became absurdly slow.

Should I say it was even slower than the pace ordinary people walked?

It was hard to believe that every member of the group was a martial artist and that the guide was someone who managed the Black Forest.

Every few steps, Yang Japyeong left marks on trees with a knife and retraced the path he had taken several times.

It was true that the undergrowth was thick and even the sun was blocked, making it impossible to tell the direction, but even so, it reached the point where I thought this was a bit much.

"Do we have to keep going at this speed?"

When I finally vented my dissatisfaction, Yang Japyeong nodded as if it were only natural.

"In the Black Forest, securing the path back out is more important than entering. That is why we must enter like this, even if it takes time."

I could not quite understand it.

No matter how much this was the Black Forest, was it not still a forest in the end?

The trees were tall enough that I had never seen their like in the Central Plains, but they were not so tall that a martial artist could not climb them.

And if one climbed above the trees, one could check the sun or the constellations and determine the direction.

If one knew one's position and direction, should one not be able to reach the destination?

"As expected... that is a way of thinking befitting someone from the Central Plains."

It was a laugh that somehow felt hollow.

He looked at me for a moment, then began to move.

"... Rather than explain it in words, it would be better to show you directly."

Yang Japyeong gathered the dry leaves nearby.

Then he took flint and a wad of cotton from his robes and began to start a fire.

CLICK, CLICK.

Soon, the cotton caught fire, and that fire spread to the dry leaves.

As the flames gradually grew stronger, he suddenly broke off some wet leaves and covered the fire with them.

The moisture in the leaves evaporated, the flames weakened, and acrid smoke began to rise.

Yang Japyeong turned his head toward me as I watched the series of actions with a puzzled expression.

"Now, would you try climbing up?"

"..."

I looked at him for a moment, then kicked off the ground and leaped upward.

Other than the leafy top, there were not many branches on the tree.

Moreover, the distance between the branches was fairly wide, making it awkward to step on them in succession.

That did not mean climbing was impossible.

WHIZZ.

I threw the Flying Dragon Claw and embedded it into the tree, then reeled in the Heavenly Silkworm Thread and used that force to kick off the tree again and leap upward.

After repeating that about three times, I almost reached the top of the tree.

'It is certainly incredibly tall compared to the Central Plains.'

By the time I reached the top, the branches I could step on had grown thick, so I no longer needed the help of the Flying Dragon Claw.

Just as I was about to kick off the branches with my bare body and leap above the forest.

"Huh?!"

My body was not flying through the air across the top of the forest.

WHOOSH.

It was plummeting toward the ground.

#

"Shit!"

Perhaps because I had kicked off the ground so energetically on the way up, the speed of my fall was no joke.

I shot out the Flying Dragon Claw, fixed my body to a tree, and looked upward again.

I had clearly stepped on the branches and gone upward.

Yet for some reason, my body had been plummeting toward the ground.

"Eldest Senior Brother! What are you doing over there!"

Moreover, my companions were thirty meters away.

'What on earth is going on?'

I kicked off the tree again and went upward.

However, in preparation for another fall, I moved carefully this time.

Fortunately, this time I climbed above the forest and could check the sun.

But...

'What is this?'

The smoke that Yang Japyeong seemed to have lit directly below was rising sixty meters away.

Unless Yang Japyeong had put out the fire and another group had lit one, it was an impossible situation to explain.

I began running across the trees toward the place where the smoke was rising.

But this time, was the smoke not getting farther and farther away?

"This is driving me crazy."

Just then, Yang Japyeong's sound transmission reached me.

-Can you follow the smoke?

It was a strange thing.

It was clearly visible to my eyes, and I could distinctly smell it as well.

But why did it keep getting farther away?

-I saw earlier that you had an interesting tool. Please come down where you are. I will go to you.

As Yang Japyeong said, I released the Flying Dragon Claw and descended.

By the time I reached the ground, Yang Japyeong was pushing through the undergrowth and approaching me.

"How was it?"

"... What on earth is going on?"

"It is the influence of the spirit vein."

"The spirit vein?"

Yang Japyeong nodded heavily.

"In the Black Forest, natural formations arise both on the ground and in the canopy. That is why it takes a form similar to a cave. In addition, the dust emitted by the insects living in the Black Forest causes confusion in people's senses."

It was not all that surprising for natural formations to arise in the mountains, but to think they created natural formations even above where the trees grew was truly strange.

On top of that, did that not mean we were continuously breathing in some sort of bewitching incense from who knew where?

"If you can step on empty air and fly through the sky, completely escaping the influence of the spirit vein, then perhaps you could get out as you said, Representative Jin."

Yang Japyeong continued calmly.

"But the moment you set foot on a tree even once, your sense of direction will be distorted. Representative Jin... would you be able to distinguish the direction and proceed?"

He spoke so easily of needing to have reached at least the level of treading the void or crossing empty air.

Moreover, it was not merely to the degree of making one lose the path, but of confusing one's senses.

Only now did I understand why a mere forest had been designated as a forbidden zone and why countless martial artists had entered full of confidence, only to leave as lonely ghosts.

"I will never..."

I readily admitted it.

"Get cocky again."

When I lightly bowed my head, Yang Japyeong looked surprised.

"What is it? Did I do something wrong?"

After choosing his words for a moment, Yang Japyeong opened his mouth.

"... No. I was simply thinking that you truly have many sides to you."

"...?"

Well, either way, it was my fault for acting up.

I spoke politely again.

"I will be in your care."

And so, we began moving again.

The group members, having realized what happened when I got cocky, quietly followed behind Yang Japyeong.

I also no longer urged him to speed up or anything like that, but I could not help being bored.

The one fortunate thing was that the deeper we went inside, the easier it became to find sources of poison.

"... Are you going to keep doing that?"

"Would you like to try too, Lady Seong?"

SHING!

"Get that away from me at once! Before I kill you!"

You startled me.

I do not think her temper was originally that bad...

"I said hurry up and get it away!"

"Yes, ma'am."

At first, I could not know how strong each poison was, so I asked Yang Japyeong about them one by one, but after repeating it a few times, I became able to roughly distinguish poisons by their color or shape.

In that way, I slowly neutralized nearly thirty poisons, and I could feel my resistance increasing.

Spending the entire day walking while neutralizing poison, then finding another poison and practicing neutralizing it, was rather fun in its own way.

Certainly, once I had neutralized a poison, its toxicity was not that strong even if I was affected by it repeatedly.

At this rate, by the time the Great Journey ended, I even had the strange expectation that anything short of a truly urgent poison would not be much of a problem.

The more that happened, the greedier I became, and without realizing it, I smacked my lips while looking at my junior disciples.

'Tsk, they should be doing this too.'

I did not know about the other group members, but I wanted to make the Taiyi Sect members undergo training to build poison resistance, yet Saryeon would absolutely not permit it.

To begin with, Geumpyo and Eunho did not want it either.

Only...

"Eldest Senior Brother, I can try eating this, right?"

The fellow whose eyes sparkled innocently.

Dongryong shook the purple mushroom in his hand.

At a glance, it seemed likely to carry a dangerous poison, but Dongryong had already digested more than twenty poisons too.

I smiled at him with satisfaction.

"Try eating it. If you think it might be dangerous, spit it out right away."

If it was truly urgent, I could simply use my internal energy to expel the poison.

By around the third day of doing this, neither our party nor Yang Japyeong said anything about it anymore.

On the fourth day since we had started moving toward the Demonic Realm, something interesting happened.

"... Why are Eldest Senior Brother and Dongryong not being bitten by bugs?"

Geumpyo, whose cheeks had swollen up from being bitten by bugs overnight, tilted his head.

As for me, I had been carrying Pungryeong inside my robes, so bugs had not gathered around me since we first entered the Black Forest.

Dongryong had suffered until the second day, but from the third day onward, the number of times he was bitten by bugs had decreased.

"..."

Yang Japyeong showed signs of debating whether to say it or not, but eventually opened his mouth.

"... In truth, people of the Tang Clan are not bitten much by bugs inside the Black Forest either."

"...!"

"..."

"..."

It was an answer where I could not pinpoint the exact cause, but something roughly fit together.

Unlike Dongryong and me, who wore triumphant expressions, the rest of the party grimaced, and Seong Moran's face turned black as if she were about to die.

I asked Eunho.

"Want to try?"

"..."

After pondering for quite a while, Eunho finally let out a long sigh.

It seemed that the second day, when he had been bitten by bugs all night and had not slept a wink, had greatly influenced him.

"You are not planning to buy us Hundred-Poison Pills anyway, are you?"

I gave no answer.

"Damn it..."

Why bother asking when it only tires your mouth?

Eunho approached me with an expression like he was about to cry.

"Yes, come along."

Among the insects I had used for poison resistance work so far, I caught a suitable one and made it bite Eunho's arm.

"Urgh...!"

Before long, Eunho's face quickly began turning yellow.

The moment changes occurred in his body, Eunho entered qi circulation, and Geumpyo, Jaehwa, Seollan, and the others followed after him.

I stared quietly at those who remained.

"Ha... I never thought I would do this of my own will."

In the end, Saryeon and Namgung Seonhwa also held out their hands to me.

After all, there was no one who had not suffered because of the bugs inside the Black Forest.

Meanwhile.

"Aaaah! No! No! I would rather do it with a snake!"

Even Seong Moran, who fiercely refused bugs, ended up being bitten, and Yang Japyeong began to look at us with an expression of utter disgust.

"If I tell my sect this story, no one will believe me."

"We cannot train external arts right away, after all."

"..."

Moreover, we get poison resistance too.

How wonderful.

Thus, on the fifth day since we had left the encampment.

"Shhh."

Yang Japyeong, who had been leading the way, raised a hand and stopped the party.

After holding his breath for quite some time, Yang Japyeong spoke in a low voice.

"It is a demonic beast."

At last, the first treasure chest had appeared.