Splish. Splish.

At Yu Gang’s single stroke, the white tiger’s neck was severed and it stopped moving.

Since it had already been dead, it wasn’t correct to say it died by Yu Gang’s hand.

“...”

Yu Gang looked down at the tiger’s head, separated from its body.

The second reason for that sense of wrongness:

‘It has no eyes.’

In a living predator, its eye-glow should have shone even brighter in deep darkness—but there was no light.

“Does it have an injury on the right eye?”

Yu Gang looked back at Seolhwa.

She was examining the fallen beast’s torso.

“Yeah. Looks like a blade wound.”

“...I thought so.”

Seolhwa checked the white tiger’s rotting abdomen.

Its belly hide had been split open, cut by something sharp.

Seolhwa had seen this white tiger before.

‘This white tiger... it’s the numinous beast Master fought.’

Back in Xingxian, when the battle with the Flesh Curtain broke out, Seop Mugwang had staked his life against this very tiger after losing his inner power.

It had been eaten up by demonic energy and controlled by someone.

‘That white tiger died by Master’s hand that day.’

After the fight with the Flesh Curtain, she had even watched him personally retrieve its core.

‘They brought that corpse and made it into a jiangshi?’

A jiangshi made not from a human corpse, but from an animal’s.

Hard to believe—but the proof was right before their eyes.

‘In my previous life, the Fourth Blood Lord never went so far as to turn animal corpses into jiangshi.’

If he was now using even dead animals to swell his forces, it meant he felt that much more threatened.

And the source of that sense of crisis was likely Seolhwa—her.

‘The battle in the gorge and the deaths of the Blood Lords.’

Those defeats would have become a grave menace to the Blood Lords who remained.

‘It was worth coming.’

Gaining intel that diverged from the prior life was a great harvest.

Learning that they were unsettled by this change wasn’t bad, either.

“My apologies.”

The White Shadow came over.

At a critical moment, his misstep had nearly ruined things.

Only because Yu Gang was quicker—had it been a faster beast, the White Shadow would have been the one to suffer.

“I was tracking the thing’s presence, but my inner power scattered of its own accord... I’m truly sorry.”

When all one’s focus is devoted to a single point, if concentration scatters in an instant, dizziness can follow.

She could not fail to understand that.

“It’s all right. Just be a little more careful from here on.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

After inspecting the beast’s corpse, the three set out again.

Perhaps because this was the white tiger’s domain, they did not encounter any beasts for quite a while thereafter.

Even so, they moved without relaxing their guard in the least.

By the time the sun began to set—

“We should find a place to stay the night.”

Within the array, sunlight didn’t reach, and night fell quickly.

They couldn’t light a fire carelessly when beasts might appear anywhere, anytime.

“Better to find a cave. This forest gets rather cold at night,” the White Shadow advised.

Following his advice, the three started looking for a shelter from the cold.

It would take a full four days’ travel; if they didn’t rest properly on the first night, the days to come would be hard.

— Seolhwa. (Voice Transmission)

Crouched to one side examining something, Yu Gang called to her.

When she approached, there were animal tracks before him.

“Bear tracks.”

“Right.”

“Bears usually den in caves. Want to follow them?”

Seolhwa nodded.

Following the tracks would surely bring them face-to-face with a beast, but ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) rather than wander blindly in search of a cave, it was better to kill the beast and claim its den.

Above all, the bear’s tracks weren’t that large.

Likely an ordinary bear, not a numinous being—so it wouldn’t be a difficult opponent.

Rustle— rustle—

The three pushed through the brush, following the bear’s traces.

As expected, before long they found a cave.

— Six? Seven? (Voice Transmission)

— Seven. (Voice Transmission)

“Seven.”

Seolhwa and Yu Gang looked to the White Shadow.

“One looks like a cub. Can the two of you handle it?”

The White Shadow likewise looked between Seolhwa and Yu Gang.

Seolhwa answered.

“It won’t be two.”

“?”

Seolhwa glanced at Yu Gang.

He was already drawing his blade as he rose.

“I’ll be back.”

Tack—

Without hesitation, Yu Gang plunged into the cave.

Soon, roars thundered from within.

Inside the cave, far darker than outside, a fierce melee broke out—Yu Gang against the bears trying to kill the intruder.

Seolhwa and the White Shadow waited silently, hidden in the brush, for the fight to end.

Then—

“...Well now.”

The White Shadow lowered himself further, looking toward the side opposite the cave mouth.

Seolhwa was already watching that way.

Thud— thud! Thud!

WROOAAAR—!!

From the direction of their gaze came a bear’s bellow and earth-shaking impacts.

The sounds were closing fast.

“Looks like the leader was out.”

The White Shadow sighed.

From the approaching sound and the tremors alone, they could tell it was on a different level than the bears inside.

Enormous bulk and speed.

And the sound of trees snapping like twigs.

The White Shadow fished out his bow.

Seolhwa glanced over, a little surprised.

“You’re going to shoot?”

“I don’t know if it’ll go well. But if we turn our backs like this, won’t it be dangerous?”

It didn’t seem terribly dangerous.

And Seolhwa was curious to see the White Shadow shoot; she let him be.

Should he fail to bring the bear down, it wouldn’t be hard to clean up afterward.

The White Shadow set an arrow at once and drew the string.

Drrrrr—

With that sound, the bowstring was drawn so taut it seemed it might snap any moment.

Seolhwa marveled inwardly.

‘There isn’t a speck of waste in the way he draws.’

She had never properly learned archery and didn’t know bows well, but even to her eye, the White Shadow’s form was perfect.

And the inner power concentrating into the arrow—

‘It’s unsteady, but the force is immense.’

To sheath such tight, dense qi around so small a bow—

To be struck by such an arrow wouldn’t merely mean being pierced; the body would surely be split in two.

At the same moment as Seolhwa’s silent admiration—

With the cracking, splintering sound of trunks breaking, a massive bulk burst from the forest.

The instant it did, the White Shadow loosed.

With a sharp thrum, his arrow tore the air and flew at the massive form.

Thunk—! Pak!

A dull impact like rock striking rock, then the sound of something lodging in succession.

When Seolhwa looked to the bear, it was already pitching over, exactly as it had been as it charged from the woods.

A hole the size of Seolhwa’s fist was punched into the bear’s brow.

Thud—!

Seolhwa swallowed dryly.

‘Clean.’

The first impact was the White Shadow’s arrow piercing the bear’s brow; the second was the arrow that had gone through the bear’s head burying itself in a tree.

Even after passing through a bear four times the size of an ordinary one, the arrow’s path hadn’t wavered—it had sunk true into the tree behind.

“Oh! Thank goodness.”

Seolhwa looked back at the White Shadow as he let out a breath of relief.

He kept brushing a hand over his chest.

“...”

Meanwhile, the commotion inside the cave had gone quiet.

A moment later, Yu Gang emerged—one shoulder bearing a bear carcass, his other arm dragging two more.

With an old man’s face hauling multiple massive bear carcasses, the contrast was so stark that Seolhwa couldn’t help but laugh.

Unaware of how he looked, Yu Gang flicked one carcass into the woods and asked,

“Something happen? It sounded noisy out here.”

Having flung the other two in succession, he finally noticed the leader’s body and started.

“Did you do that, sir? Argh! I missed it!”

Regretting that he’d missed seeing the White Shadow’s archery, Yu Gang stamped his feet for quite a while.

“You’ll have a chance next time. Ah—tomorrow morning I’ll teach you a bit of archery.”

At the sight of Yu Gang’s old-man face full of regret and the White Shadow consoling him, Seolhwa smiled again.

The three dragged all the bear-beast carcasses out of the cave and dealt with them.

If possible they would have burned them so the Fourth Blood Lord couldn’t use them again, but with beasts bound to gather, the best they could do was dismember the bodies.

That night, they slept comfortably in the cave that had been the bear-beasts’ lair.

And the next day, after erasing any trace of themselves left in the cave, the three set out at first light.

Three days passed like that.

For three days, they felled every beast they met and pressed on without delay.

However, unlike the first day, they couldn’t find suitable places to spend the night, so for two nights they had to stand watch in turns and make do with uneasy rest.

Fortunately, on the last night they found a small cave and slept soundly; the morning they greeted after that—

Now they were only a day’s travel from the Heavenly Mountains.

“I think I understand why the Demonic Sect and the Central Plains have had no dealings for so long.”

Yu Gang, who had borne the brunt of dealing with beasts on this journey and was the most worn out, let his shoulders sag as he spoke.

The White Shadow, fletching arrows at his side, lowered his brows.

“My apologies. Because of me, it took so long to cross the range.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know. Without me, the two of you would have crossed the mountains in less than two days.”

Just as he said, moving swiftly with light-footwork, they could have crossed in under two days.

“But in exchange we learned the archery of a great master. I was interested in archery as it was. I truly learned a lot this time.”

“Heh-heh, thank you for saying so.”

The White Shadow rose, gathering up his bow and arrows.

Perhaps because they would finally reach the Heavenly Mountains tonight— 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

His expression had been a little dark since yesterday.