Chapter 331: Chapter 331

“Find anything?”

Seong Mo-ran’s question snapped me back to my senses.

When I looked at the Red Phoenix Bracelet again, its vibrations had already stopped.

‘Was I imagining things?’

It was a bracelet dangling loosely on my arm without being fastened, after all.

A wrong movement could make it shake, and if it shook enough, it could seem to move on its own……

‘Like hell it could.’

Escapism wasn’t going to help in a situation like this.

You could only solve a problem when you faced it head-on.

It could’ve been a coincidence.

The bracelet might have just happened to shake.

……But that damn monkey had just uttered the blasphemous word “Heavenly Demon.”

Two terrifyingly ominous things had happened back to back, and if I interpreted even this positively, there’d be something wrong with my head.

And I wasn’t the kind of bastard with something wrong in the head.

“Where did the main group go?”

I pressed the stragglers, but no useful information came out.

It wasn’t like I could do anything with people who’d lost their sense of direction in the first place.

I grabbed the hunter by the collar.

“……C-curse of the Divine Spirit…… Th-the Divine Spirit is watching us……”

People have always gone out of their minds when hit with too great a shock.

Battlefields were full of people like this too. People who’d lived alongside death their whole lives, yet lost their minds the moment unexpected misfortune struck.

If you didn’t treat people like this quickly, they became an even bigger problem for your allies.

“Young Master Jin, what are you doing……”

“Lucky me. I learned the cure.”

“……C-curse of the Divine Spirit……”

THWACK!

The man’s head snapped halfway to the side, and a glimmer of awareness returned to his vacant eyes.

“Gurgh…… Th-the Divine Spirit……”

“The guy who was strutting around saying he’d hunt a Divine Spirit — why’s he trembling over a curse now?”

Still needs more treatment.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

When I struck only the most painful vital acupoints, the hunter flailed his hands.

“S-stop! Stop it! What in the world……!”

Oh, looks like his head’s finally fixed.

I asked without lowering the hand I’d raised toward him.

“Where did the main group go?”

“……”

Still some aftereffects left?

Beatings are the best medicine for aftereffects……

“I-I’ll talk! I’ll talk, so…… lower your fist.”

The hunter, blood streaming from the corners of his mouth, pointed north with a trembling finger.

“Th-that way…… They went that way.”

“Lead the way.”

“Y-you’re thinking of chasing them? Are you insane? And even if you know the direction, they’re already half a day ahead — how do you plan to catch up……!”

Don’t try to bullshit me.

“You have a way to track each other’s positions. You think I don’t know that?”

They weren’t the kind of people who’d enter a labyrinth like this without preparing against getting lost.

“……”

Since there was no answer, I raised my bloodied fist again, and the man covered his face with both hands.

“F-fine. I’ll guide you. How is someone called an Orthodox Path Representative so…… N-no! I didn’t say anything……! A-and I absolutely refuse to take the lead……”

When I released the hunter’s collar, he scrambled backward.

“What was that about?”

Seong Mo-ran scrunched her face as if she’d just witnessed something unsightly.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to chase after the instructors? They won’t just sit still…… They’ll say we interfered.”

“If my guess is right, the instructors won’t be a major problem.”

Because people only raised objections when there really wasn’t a major problem.

***

The group’s movement speed slowed with the addition of the stragglers.

We had to carry the wounded on our backs while crossing Natural Formations.

On top of that, we encountered Demonic Beasts along the way.

The creatures that had been so hard to find when we were looking for them now appeared two at a time, throwing the group into confusion.

“Take ’em down!”

“On it!”

Of course, thanks to the squad members who were well-practiced in hunting Demonic Beasts, it wasn’t a major problem.

We tracked the instructors using the Thousand-Li Tracking Fragrance the hunters used to follow one another.

And we came across another group of stragglers.

“……This is.”

“……This is going to be a big problem, isn’t it?”

Among the stragglers we found this time, three had already died.

Most of the others who’d fallen behind were in a state of severe injury as well.

Seong Mo-ran couldn’t contain her anger and burst out.

“No matter how blinded they are by Spiritual Pills, isn’t this crossing the line?”

I agreed.

The instructors probably agreed too.

No matter what Spiritual Pills they obtained, if Academy students died like this, the problem would spiral out of control.

“Hey, what happened?”

“Jin……So-un?”

I tried waking the least injured-looking Academy student among them to hear what had happened, but.

“The Divine Spirit…… We shouldn’t have…… hunted it. We were wrong……”

That was all they managed before passing out.

Yang Ja-pyeong let out a low hum and asked me.

“What do we do?”

“Let’s tend to the wounded first and keep moving.”

The number of wounded had already exceeded half of those still uninjured.

Moving with them would clearly make it harder to fight off Demonic Beasts, but we couldn’t just leave them behind either.

“The bodies……”

“We’ll leave them for now. We’ll retrieve them later with the Southern Fist Sect’s help.”

“……Understood.”

Yang Ja-pyeong, who looked like he had much to say, eventually nodded.

As we were arranging our formation to move again.

Chitter.

Grrrrrrr.

Unwelcome sounds reached our ears.

“Damn it……”

Five pairs of yellow eyes gleamed through the undergrowth.

After assuming a combat stance, I called out quietly to those around me.

“Ready for combat!”

As if they’d been waiting for this very moment, five Demonic Beasts lunged out simultaneously.

***

We moved as fast as we could, but our pace kept slowing.

Most of the stragglers were either too injured to move properly or useless in a fight, and Demonic Beasts kept pouring out all the while.

“Why the hell do they keep multiplying……!”

Seong Mo-ran screamed in frustration, but no Demonic Beast was going to politely back off just because she said so.

On the contrary, as if aware of our predicament, some attacked even more ferociously, while others exploited openings to target only the wounded.

“Hoo……!”

We’d already taken down close to ten Demonic Beasts.

CRACK—

There was no time to absorb the toxic inner cores.

Too many eyes were watching, anyway.

I divided even the millet-sized Spiritual Pills among the squad members. There was no time to circulate qi right now.

Just then.

“What’s that?”

An Academy student with a broken arm in a splint pointed out what we were doing.

I answered briefly.

“Inner cores from Demonic Beasts.”

“……Inner cores from Demonic Beasts? I didn’t know such things existed.”

What was he trying to say?

“……You’ve been keeping those all to yourselves this whole time?”

Ah, so he wanted to talk bullshit after all.

I tilted my head to the side and answered.

“And what if we have?”

A sense of entitlement burrows deep into the mind and doesn’t fade easily, no matter the circumstances.

Meaning that even when someone was in a situation where they should be flat on the ground groveling, the notion that they deserved better treatment didn’t easily go away.

“What?”

“Can you even absorb one right now? They’re inner cores, so they’d be toxic. Oh, don’t tell me you’re expecting us to wait around while you do?”

“……”

He couldn’t argue back, yet the dissatisfied look didn’t leave his face either.

And then the best he could manage was.

“Hmph! I was told lowborn scum weren’t worth associating with.”

Unable to watch any longer, Seong Mo-ran shot to her feet and grabbed the bastard by the collar.

“Hey, where are the Righteous Path Association members you’re so fond of?”

“……”

“The ones who picked you up instead of the Righteous Path Association that abandoned you — that was us. Still don’t get it? Or would you rather stay alone in the Black Forest and become a tasty meal for the Demonic Beasts?”

“……!”

For the first time, the bastard seemed to realize exactly what his situation was.

His expression was nothing short of bewildered.

Because just as Seong Mo-ran said, a single word from us could decide whether he lived or died.

Seong Mo-ran released his collar with a flick of her hand, as if she’d touched something filthy, and murmured quietly.

“Don’t say a single word until we’re out of the Black Forest. If you do, I’ll throw you into a Natural Formation myself.”

“……”

That single remark from Seong Mo-ran was effective.

All those who’d been voicing complaints, consciously or not, now clamped their mouths shut.

I swept my gaze over everyone and gave the order.

“We move again.”

Even those who’d been whining about needing a break stopped their groaning.

They’d clearly realized who was holding their leash.

“Those who took the inner cores, focus on circulating your qi whenever we get a break. In the worst case, there might be no time to rest at all.”

“Young Master Jin, is it really okay to keep going like this?”

As Seong Mo-ran said, continuing to move like this was inefficient.

“How about sending a few people ahead to the base camp instead?”

Doing as she suggested might have been the best choice, in a way.

But I shook my head.

“Since the instructors left the base camp, we can’t expect help from there. If we leave these people behind…… they probably won’t last even half a day.”

For whatever reason, the Demonic Beasts had become far more ferocious.

These weren’t the Demonic Beasts that had been wary of humans and stayed hidden.

The Demonic Reaches had quite literally become hell.

“Our best option right now is to gather as many stragglers as we can and head for the base camp. Before our other squad members take more casualties.”

Thanks to Seong Mo-ran, our pace picked up considerably.

After hunting two more Demonic Beasts along the way, we arrived at a place where.

“Hmm.”

For the first time, there was a large straggler group numbering nearly thirty.

On one side lay the corpse of what appeared to be an Academy student alongside a Demonic Beast carcass.

It seemed they’d ended up this way after trying to hunt Demonic Beasts on their own while separated.

“Who’s in charge here?”

I called for the person in charge among the thirty, but no one answered.

They simply glared at us with hostile eyes.

“Can nobody here speak?”

When I asked again, a sneering voice came from one side.

“You really are like a scavenging hyena. How’d you even find this place?”

Daoists who pulled their hair back to wear their cap exposed their forehead and eyes, sometimes creating a horse-face shape, which was why some got teased as “Horse-Nosed Daoist.”

But this guy’s nose actually looked like a horse’s.

“Hey, Horse-Nose. You in charge?”

“……”

“What happened?”

“Ha! You think I’m going to tell you?”

I stared silently at his nose.

“Is it just your nose that’s horse-like, or is your skull horse-grade too?”

“What?!”

“I saw five corpses on the way here. All of them Academy students. You don’t understand what that means?”

“……”

“Don’t tell me you think since you were just following the instructor’s orders, none of this is your fault?”

In that moment, wrinkles bunched up across Horse-Nose’s, well, nose.

Wow, he really thought that? This guy was a conscienceless lunatic.

“Divine Spirit or whatever — people are dead. If they kept chasing the Divine Spirit until things got this bad, then we have to assume the instructor bastard is a Black Path spy.”

When I struck at the bone of the matter, Horse-Nose, who’d been so defiant just moments ago, wailed as if about to crumble.

“O-our senior would never do that!”

Ah, so this one was from the Qingcheng Sect.

I sighed and stepped one pace closer to him.

“What the hell happened?”

“……”

His gaze drifted toward the stragglers we’d brought along.

He hung his head in silence for a moment, then.

“C-can we come with you too?”

He looked up at me with the most pitiful eyes in the world.

Good grief, you idiot.

They were still just immature brats, in the end.

Lured in by that bastard instructor No Jin-ha, they’d nearly died without even understanding why.

I turned away and answered dryly.

“If you follow properly.”

“……We were chasing the Divine Spirit and lost it. While we were resting, it came back with what looked like its young. We had to move fast, so we couldn’t keep up with the main group.”

I looked at Yang Ja-pyeong.

He slowly shook his head.

Even wild animals had maternal instincts — when chased by predators, it was instinct not to run toward where their young were.

No matter how powerful a Divine Spirit was, coming back with its young in tow made no sense.

In the end, I had no choice but to face the truth I’d been trying to avoid.

What the instructors and Academy students were chasing wasn’t a Divine Spirit.

“What the hell are these fools chasing?”

An ‘ominous’ word tickled the edge of my mind, but I chose not to voice it.

If it really was that…… it’d be way too bleak.

Shit, no matter how cursed my second life was by the Demon God. That’d be going too far.

I tried neither to affirm nor deny it.

Didn’t even Confucius say that the middle path was supreme?

I clapped my hands once and looked around.

“Get ready to move. What have you been doing all this time without even giving first aid?”

While the stragglers received wound salve and performed first aid, I approached the Demonic Beast.

The Horse-Nosed Daoist stopped mid-treatment and stared at me with a puzzled look.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“What do you think? Even in a rush, you’ve got to collect what needs collecting.”

Of course, you were the ones who hunted it, but still.