Chapter 692

Sometimes instinct beats reason.

Like the moment I saw the Water God Dragon’s Origin Essence nestled so prettily in the Black Tiger’s mouth.

“You bastard. When did you steal that?”

—……

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

The Black Tiger gave me a cold look, then sent a thought my way.

—“Steal” is a strong word.

It was a little strong.

Even if he really had stolen the Water God Dragon’s Origin Essence, he could swallow it whenever he wanted. Under the circumstances, I was the one who had to apologize.

“Fine. I’m sorry.”

I held out both hands politely.

“Now spit it out. You can see my palm, right? Spit it out here. Ptooey. Come on.”

—It was astonishing.

“Yeah, I’m pretty shocked too. I get it, so first, could you just…”

—I felt the power within it. Then I saw a vast stretch of time.

I stopped. “Time?”

—Yes. It was several hundred years of time and memory, visible only to beings of the same kind. Everything belonging to an imugi¹ who had failed to become a dragon was contained within it.

“…!”

—At the end of those ancient memories, there was a human. Young, rough, and endlessly reckless.

The Black Tiger’s blue-white eyes, so much like Muyaho’s, rested on me. Then another thought echoed through my mind in what sounded like a man’s calm voice.

—Be grateful to that imugi¹. If I had not seen his memories, you would all have met the same end as that unpleasant human.

The world was full of unpleasant humans. Turn the whole place upside down and shake them out, and there’d be enough to fill the Yangtze and then some. But I had a pretty good idea who the Black Tiger meant.

“Don’t tell me… Heugung?”

—I do not know his name. Unlike you, though, he had only one forepaw.

Technically, it was a hand. That wasn’t important right now.

I looked at the Black Tiger with fresh eyes.

“Should I start by thanking you for saving me?”

—It does not matter. It was my choice.

“Then I’ll thank you anyway. I mean it.”

The Black Tiger glanced at me, turned, and began to walk. I fell into step behind him.

“I have a few questions.”

—How tiresome.

“What? You’ll answer them all sincerely even though it’s a bother?”

—No.

“Oh. Thanks for agreeing so readily.”

—…Human communication is truly strange. Have too many years passed?

I ignored that and asked the most important question first.

“How much time has passed?”

His tail hung stiffly, plainly showing his displeasure. Still, the answer came.

—You have been here for one day, by human reckoning.

“One day?”

Ordinarily, that would be no time at all.

But under the circumstances, it was a different story.

The Great Snow Fiend and the Black Hand Fist Demon had warned of the bloodbath about to sweep Nanman. With even the Beast Miao King’s whereabouts unknown, no one was left to stop the Southern Heaven Demon Empress.

Damn it.

The situation had been unavoidable, but it wouldn’t have been strange if thousands—or tens of thousands—had died during the one day I was unconscious.

I clenched my teeth, swallowed a curse, and forced out the words.

“An exit. Tell me how to get out of here.”

—You intend to leave?

“Yeah. I’m grateful you saved me, but I can’t waste any more time.”

—You intend to save your own kind from danger. Recklessly, as you did before.

“You…?”

—Do not worry. I cannot read human memories. I saw you in the imugi’s¹ memories and made a guess. I imagine you fought so fiercely for much the same reason.

“…You were watching?”

—Yes. From beginning to end. As always, I watched everything that happened here.

The Black Tiger turned his head toward me, his thoughts as calm as ever.

—But I saw no reason to involve myself in human affairs. Not until you brought out that.

“…!”

My eyes widened. Not because I knew he meant the Water God Dragon’s Origin Essence.

I remembered reaching for the Origin Essence in one last desperate attempt to stay alive—only to hesitate when a chill wind blew in from somewhere. At the same time, I sensed something strange and let go of the Origin Essence. Muyaho arrived immediately afterward and saved my life.

“Then that wind…”

My voice trailed off. The Black Tiger’s answer sounded in my head.

—You were about to do something foolish. If you defy what is ordained, that is defying Heaven. Had I done nothing, you would have died, unable to overcome the power left behind by the imugi¹.

I watched him walk along the endless cliff.

“Not once, but twice.”

—What do you mean?

“You saved me twice.”

The Black Tiger gave a small snort.

—I merely felt sorry for someone who had handed everything they possessed to a foolish human. Without that reason, you deserved to die.

“That’s a little unfair. I don’t know why you hate humans, but I’ve never done anything bad enough to deserve that.”

—Even after you tried to take innocent lives and set fire to their peaceful home?

“What?”

Instead of answering, the Black Tiger nodded toward the foot of the cliff.

Countless beasts, their bodies blackened in places, drank from an unfamiliar stream. There were thousands of them by my rough estimate. With all the others that might be sheltering somewhere in this seemingly boundless place, I couldn’t begin to guess the total.

What the hell…?

I stood on the cliff, staring down at them.

—The inferno you unleashed is still devouring the entire mountain. If the flames had spread unchecked, everything would have burned away long ago.

“…”

—Yes, I led them here. Just as I did seven days and nights ago.

Seven days and nights ago.

That had been the very day the Beast Miao King and I received the emergency report and headed for Ailao Mountain.

I searched my memory, and realization struck.

The beasts.

I remembered clearly. Of the three hundred or so warriors stationed at Ailao Mountain, about two hundred had returned alive.

The beasts hadn’t.

I hadn’t seen them anywhere—not on Ailao Mountain, not in the Poisonblood Grounds.

“You were the one who did that too. You saved the wild beasts.”

—Monsters that should never have been there were set loose. I had not interfered in human affairs for hundreds of years, but that time I could not stand aside.

Ordinarily, I might have let that pass. But I was listening closely to the Black Tiger’s thoughts, and I caught the oddity at once.

“Set loose?”

—You did not know?

Faint contempt entered his blue-white eyes.

—Humans did all of it. Your kind has done such things since long ago, and I have remained here and watched.

Damn it.

I’d only been able to guess what had happened at Ailao Mountain. Now the Black Tiger had confirmed it.

Dark Heaven had been behind that, too.

If only we’d found out a little sooner.

With belated regret, I looked at the Black Tiger. I thought I was beginning to understand why he had acted that way that day. I remembered his back as he repeatedly appeared and disappeared, even though he could have escaped at any time.

“You weren’t attacking us that day.”

—Yes. That was not my mission.

“You were trying to show us where the Thousand-Year Spider was.”

—I could not simply watch while a foul monster disturbed this mountain. Humans planted the seed, so humans should reap it. That is the natural order.

He walked on. The path along the cliff grew narrower and steeper, and birds nesting on rugged peaks above the clouds watched us with curious eyes.

How long had we been walking? Clouds and mist surrounded us, and the ground below seemed impossibly far away.

I’m sure this place wasn’t this big.

When I first woke, I’d thought it was a forest around a small pond. Now I could see vast mountain ranges, valleys, and green pastures.

What the hell is this place?

I could no longer begin to guess. Staring at the impossible landscape, I finally asked, “Where are we?”

—A land filled with life. A place where all things live in harmony.

What kind of nonsense was that?

For some reason, I remembered the church deacon who used to give me spicy rice cakes when I was little while shouting, “Jesus, heaven! Unbelievers, hell!”

“Even so, this can’t be heaven.”

—The kingdom of heaven? A fitting description, in its way. But this place lies deep within the land, where no one can enter without my permission. It is very close to where you were.

“Then… are we in the Poisonblood Grounds?”

A few paces ahead, the Black Tiger gave a small nod.

—It is.

“But this place…”

The words stuck in my throat. The Poisonblood Grounds?

I wouldn’t have believed we were anywhere on Ailao Mountain. There were no raging flames here, none of the eerie feeling that hung over the mountain.

—Enough. This is a place that you humans can neither invade nor understand.

He was right. Murim had all manner of strange things, Mystic Gate Formations among them, but what lay before me went far beyond anything they could do.

“Ha. The Poisonblood Grounds. This is the Poisonblood Grounds.”

Laughing hollowly, I followed him up the peak.

As we neared the summit, his thought reached me again.

—Poisonblood Grounds is its current name. As I did, humans changed many things over the passage of time.

“What was it called before?”

—The Sacred Land.

“What?”

—That was in a past as distant as the imugi’s¹ memories. Beasts, not humans, ruled this land then. The few humans lived in groups within their own territories and worshiped us.

“Huh.”

I had no words.

This forbidden place, where no one could set foot, had once been called the Sacred Land. And if there had been so few people in Nanman back then… how long ago was that?

Five hundred years? A thousand?

This is driving me crazy.

Even if I’d put every point into Intelligence from the start, I’d have felt like an idiot right now.

I shook my head and opened my mouth toward the Black Tiger, who had stopped walking before I noticed.

“Then you. What exactly are you?”

—Did you not call me an apparition yourself?

“I’m asking what they called you when this place was the Sacred Land.”

The Black Tiger was silent for a moment before moving his massive body. Something wistful passed through his blue-white eyes.

—A guardian spirit.

“What?”

—Long ago, that was what people called me. The mountain lord² who guarded Ailao Mountain. A guardian spirit born alongside the sacred stone.