"Whew!"
Only after shaking off the pursuers behind him did Lian Youming lean against a tree and catch his breath.
But as he panted, his left hand, which supported the girl's waist and abdomen, quietly exerted force, as though he meant to kill her on the spot.
"Mm, that hurts!"
Unexpectedly, the girl went pale. Her hands and feet trembled in pain, and her body instinctively curled up.
Seeing this, Lian Youming frowned slightly, looking bewildered.
That wasn't right?
She really was an ordinary person.
With a move like that, she was already at his mercy, yet she showed no reaction at all: no release of Qi, no movement of muscle or sinew. She could not have been more ordinary.
Had he guessed wrong?
Lian Youming pondered briefly, then carefully set the girl down, as though facing a formidable enemy.
But to his surprise, the girl obediently climbed down. Her tearful eyes stared at Lian Youming with reproach, yet both hands clutched his sleeve, as though she was terrified of being abandoned in these deep mountains and ancient woods.
Who could withstand that?
Lian Youming had intended to test her further, but remembering that they were not out of danger yet, and seeing her tear-streaked face, he sighed. "Sorry... I thought you were..."
Before he finished, beasts could be seen running through the forest behind them again, as though someone had disturbed them.
"Why are they staying so close on our heels?"
Lian Youming assumed the pursuers had caught up again, but the next second-
"Roar!"
A thunderous tiger's roar suddenly erupted from the wild forest, shaking the mountains into fearful silence and sending birds scattering in alarm.
An invisible, towering wave of savage menace seemed to sweep in every direction, making Lian Youming's scalp prickle and every hair on his body stand uncontrollably on end. A cold wind passed, and his back was instantly soaked.
Lian Youming stood rigid for several seconds, then abruptly shuddered. "There are tigers on this mountain?"
But the moment he asked, he realized it was a pointless question.
What was strange about there being tigers on Changbai Mountain?
The girl was also scared deathly pale.
Lian Youming's expression turned ugly. "Damn it, the White Lotus Sect's Beast-Driving Technique... how are we supposed to get down now?"
He drew a deep breath and noticed a faint, inexplicable rank smell in the mountain wind.
The girl looked stricken. "Then what do we do?"
"Make a cold salad!"
Lian Youming hoisted the girl onto his back and rushed into the dusk. Whatever Li Da might do next, staying alive came first.
That single tiger's roar sent the beasts in the forest mad, scattering in every direction like a surging tide.
Fortunately, the tiger did not seem to be coming for them.
Lian Youming's gaze swept rapidly around. He faintly heard several startled cries in the distance. It seemed Li Da had been right: quite a few people had come this time. Whether they were friends or foes, good or bad, he had no idea.
This situation was anything but simple.
For no apparent reason, Lian Youming sensed tremendous danger.
Before darkness fell completely, he ran farther and took the opportunity to get his bearings.
Just then, the girl on Lian Youming's back pointed somewhere ahead. "We're almost at Black Wind Pass. The wind is very strong there."
Without realizing it, they had reached the northern slope.
Feeling the powerful mountain wind, Lian Youming grew even more puzzled. Since the girl knew the way, perhaps she really was a villager who had come up to gather herbs.
"Hold tight."
With that warning, he climbed straight up along the mountain path.
Lian Youming did not go to Black Wind Pass. He had no idea what the various places on this mountain were commonly called and could only look for matching locations using the markings on the map.
"Do you know a place around here called Erman's Birch Forest?"
The girl hurriedly pointed up the mountain. "There!"
Lian Youming followed her gesture, looked at the dark mass of trees, and rushed toward it with great strides.
As the last daylight faded, a cold moon hung at the edge of the sky.
The forest was pitch-dark. Clear moonlight fell through the sparse leaves of the low, crooked trees onto their faces.
Holding his breath, Lian Youming felt his way forward little by little with the girl on his back.
But it was like poking a hornets' nest. Many beasts were huddled in the forest, presumably hiding there to escape the mosquitoes and horseflies farther down the mountain. Once wild boars and red deer encountered the intruding humans, one would leap out to the east and another would charge out to the west, creating a tremendous commotion.
After circling around twice, Lian Youming finally stopped before a lush thicket, where a strangely shaped rock half a person's height stood partially concealed.
Two foolish roe deer lay beside it, too lazy even to move. They stretched their necks up and stared at the pair with wide eyes.
"What are you staring at? Once I get out of this, I'll eat both of you." Lian Youming drove them off with a slap apiece.
"What are you looking for?" The girl watched without understanding.
Lian Youming said nothing. His eyes flickered as he circled the rock with his bayonet in hand, then hacked at the birches growing around it. Only after clearing a patch of ground did he push the rock over with all his strength.
As the rock toppled, a rust-speckled circular metal plate was exposed in the moonlight. Dust lay thick upon it, along with grass blades and rotting husks. A huge ring sat in its center, covered in rust.
Lian Youming cleared away the dirt, then took a deep breath, seized the ring, and hauled upward with all his might. Amid a series of hoarse, grating metallic scrapes, a dark, deep circular entrance appeared before them.
Back along the way they had come, the forest abruptly fell deathly silent. Then a rank wind rose, and an enormous, ghostlike figure slowly emerged from the darkness into the moonlight, half a dripping, bloody body clamped in its jaws.
What a ferocious tiger.
Lian Youming's features stiffened, and his hands and feet went cold, but his gaze fell behind the tiger. Someone stood there. He could not make out the person's face and could only roughly judge from the figure that it was a woman.
Besides her, there seemed to be figures in every direction in the forest.
Sure enough, they were all lurking in the shadows, watching.
There was no escape.
Lian Youming suddenly looked at the girl beside him and narrowed his eyes. He truly could not be certain of her identity.
And who knew where that bastard Li Da had run off to.
Things had reached this point. There was no retreat.
Who could have imagined it? Even Lian Youming himself had never imagined that he, an educated youth sent to the countryside, a student who had still been thinking about how to make a name for himself a year ago, would somehow stumble into a major affair of the martial world like this, without knowing a single person involved. What a cursed mess.
"Li Da, fuck your uncle!" Lian Youming glanced at the pitch-black entrance and calmly drew a deep breath. First, he threw his head back and shouted that curse, then seized the girl's wrist. "I don't care whether you're good or evil. If you're good, I'll definitely die before you down there. If you're putting on an act, we'll die together."
With that, amid the girl's startled cry, Lian Youming leaped into the fortress entrance.
Not long after the two jumped inside, figures emerged one after another.
Yet as they looked into the bottomless entrance, none of them attacked or moved first. They seemed to be watching, considering, and holding one another at bay.
"You two from the Xingyi Sect, why aren't you dealing with your own internal affairs instead of coming here to join the excitement? Xue Hen has practically gone mad with killing, and you still have the mind to covet other things."
"Damn you, so you do know that's our internal business. If I remember correctly, Xie Tianhong was from your Eagle Claw Sect, wasn't he? With a traitor like that, you still have the nerve to show your face and criticize us?"
"So what if we had a traitor? Didn't the Eight Trigrams Sect have one too? And the Chen Family Fist, the Praying Mantis Sect, the Taiji Gate-even the Nature Sect has people who joined the White Lotus Sect... which of those Thirty-Six Heavenly Gang Venerables isn't an expert from one of the martial world's sects? Even Shaolin and Wudang are no exception. None of us has any right to laugh at the others."
Everyone talked over one another, arguing furiously, but several meters below the entrance, the young man was braced against the sides with his hands and feet, listening thoughtfully to the commotion above.
So Third Brother Xie had been from the Eagle Claw Sect.
The Thirty-Six Heavenly Gang Venerables?
Lian Youming could not help recalling that Third Brother Xie had claimed to be one of the White Lotus Sect's thirty-six Attendants.
Could they all have come for that preparation of old medicine?
To prolong their lives?
Lian Youming looked again at the girl clinging to him. She was as panicked as a rabbit, holding on desperately and trembling all over.
Suddenly, he drew his hands and feet inward and slid swiftly down along the smooth stone walls.
(End of chapter)
Before you continue