Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 44 - Let Us Go See Elephants
Chapter 44 – Let Us Go See Elephants
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Ju-seong quietly half-opened his eyes and sorted through his enlightenment. His energy circulation had become much more natural, and the movements of the Three Yang Fist now seemed to carry a higher level of principle.
The dynamic art that Ju-seong had mentally named the Karmic Fire Demonic Art was optimal for operating the Flame Crow Six Stage Art’s internal energy.
If he combined the Three Yang Fist with the Karmic Fire Demonic Art’s dance movements, he could supplement the ascending principle that the Three Yang Fist had been lacking.
In that process, Ju-seong felt the wall within his grasp.
‘Peak level…’
Ju-seong slightly furrowed his brow as he contemplated that lofty level. His master was called super-peak in the world, an even higher level, but in truth, peak-level masters were not common in the martial world either.
There were hardly any known peak-level masters in Yunnan Province alone.
Looking ahead, Red Beggar was standing guard, leaning against the shrine entrance.
“Red Beggar.”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Come and get some sleep. I shall take the night watch now.”
It was still before dawn, and Red Beggar needed some sleep. The rain had not stopped yet either.
“Congratulations on gaining enlightenment. Quite a strange fortune you found.”
“I am a man whose fortunes do not come quietly. It was a troublesome fortune.”
“That is life. Nothing ever goes as planned. I shall rest my eyes a bit. Let us leave around the hour of the hare.”
“Let us do that. Sleep.”
Red Beggar fell into dreamland the moment his head touched down. Ju-seong scratched his belly while watching Red Beggar snore, then smiled briefly and squatted at the shrine entrance to watch the rain.
“Ah…”
He thought the raindrops falling through the leaves, bouncing off grass and rocks, were beautiful.
Looking carefully, the raindrops were round.
From forming in clouds to falling and shattering on the ground. Raindrops fall only to shatter.
“How novel that all things are born to perish.”
Even if Ju-seong were to shatter when his time came, he wanted to be a raindrop that seeped into the earth and made at least a small sprout bloom.
Feeling as if he would gain enlightenment and become a Buddha at this rate, Ju-seong slapped his own cheek, then leaped up and began refining the forms of the Three Yang Fist.
* * *
Ju-seong and Red Beggar came back to the boundary of the southern jungle as soon as the rain stopped and were examining the area.
They were circling along the boundary, looking for traces of the sexual predator.
“Damn, the rain washed away any noticeable scent…”
While Ju-seong was rubbing his nose and muttering, Red Beggar’s voice came from the distance calling him.
“Brother! Come here a moment.”
He was calling from down in a slanted ravine.
“Coming, coming.”
Ju-seong looked down the steep slope, then used qinggong to run straight down.
Running on two legs and finding it difficult, he ended up somersaulting to descend.
“You really do all sorts of things.”
“Shut up. What is it?”
“Look at this. This thing seems to be one of those monster moths.”
A moth the size of a human head lay sprawled on the ground.
“Oh…”
Ju-seong lightly touched the moth’s wing, which crumbled with a dry crackle.
Moreover, the center of its body was blackened and dead.
“That is his martial art, is it not?”
Ju-seong placed his hand on the creature’s body and felt the residual energy. It had been dimmed by last night’s rain, but the sticky, cool energy was definitely his palm technique.
“What a complete lunatic.”
Ju-seong smacked his lips and muttered.
Looking ahead, he could see a continuous trail of broken branches and trampled shrubs. The man had not even tried to cover his tracks.
‘Well, he is out of his mind right now.’
Ju-seong narrowed his eyes and gazed into the forest, then pulled out a mask and rain cloak from his pack.
“What are you doing?”
Ju-seong did not answer and began digging the ground right beside the flowing stream.
“Why so suddenly? Making a reservoir?”
“Help me a bit. My useless little brother has no use.”
Red Beggar grumbled but dug alongside Ju-seong.
After digging a pit, before long stream water seeped in and began to pool.
Ju-seong promptly submerged the rain cloak, mask, and bandages in the water and poured in the medicine bottle he had brought.
“Their poison has strong wood energy. Have you heard of metal conquers wood? Metal energy overpowers wood energy. Tiger bone, pine cones picked in autumn… Anyway, this is an antidote well-blended from ingredients rich in metal energy.”
“Tiger bone? Good heavens, are you rich?”
“Am I rich? My master’s medicine storehouse is abundant. When he sees the tiger bone is gone, Master will… Ah, he probably already knows.”
There was no way his master had not smelled the tiger bone being boiled. It was none other than the Divine Physician who taught him the Celestial Nose.
‘Thank you, Master.’
Ju-seong silently offered thanks as he poured out the medicine bottle.
-Bubble bubble…
Bubbles rose, and Ju-seong rummaged through his pack and threw in bandages as well.
“But Brother, is it really okay to do it so sloppily without even a pot?”
“Would it be okay? I am just a quack doing this.”
“I see…”
Ju-seong and Red Beggar sat beside the pit, waiting for the medicine to soak into the cloth.
Shortly after, Ju-seong fished out all the cloths. The rain cloak, mask, and bandages had taken on a faint yellowish tinge.
“We must also soak our bodies in it. That way the toxicity cannot stick to our skin and seep in.”
“Ah, really? Then let me go first…”
Just as Red Beggar was about to get into the pit, Ju-seong grabbed his collar and pulled him out.
“When did you last wash, you bastard? If I go in water you have been in, I think my skin will rot even without the poison.”
“Ah, how cruel.”
Ju-seong made Red Beggar wait while he first soaked himself in the pit and came out. Red Beggar also grumbled as he went in and out.
Red Beggar stuck his nose in his own armpit, sniffed, and said.
“Ah, fragrant. I should not need to wash for half a year now.”
“Sigh… Wrap these bandages around yourself. Wrap them snugly around your hands, ankles, and any other exposed body parts.”
“Understood.”
The two wrapped bandages around their hands, forearms, and ankles, and put on the medicine-soaked headscarves. Ju-seong draped the rain cloak over Red Beggar’s shoulders.
“Huh? Should you not wear this, Brother?”
“My martial art has some resistance to poison. With yesterday’s enlightenment, the characteristics of my internal energy have become even stronger. You wear it.”
“Ah, it is so hot…”
Red Beggar grumbled but wrapped himself snugly in the rain cloak. Watching him, Ju-seong suddenly realized.
‘The clothes will absorb the smell.’
Ju-seong did not want to be excessively fastidious either, but having learned the Celestial Nose, he could not help being sensitive to smells.
“Hey, you keep that.”
“Oh, really? Thanks, Brother.”
Red Beggar happily checked his body over. Having confirmed there was no exposed skin, the two stepped into the jungle full of grey toxic powder.
The air inside the jungle was especially humid. Because of that, the fog was thick, and trees a few zhang away appeared as mere elongated silhouettes.
They could see the corpses of moths that had been ruthlessly suppressed and strewn about as they walked.
“There are more and more of these. But, they say if you inhale the toxic powder you fall asleep. How did that fellow get this far?”
The two were wearing medicine-soaked masks. Thanks to that, breathing was a bit difficult, but they could block the fine toxic powder rising from the ground with every step from entering their respiratory systems.
But that insane sexual predator bastard had come in bare-bodied, so how had he not fallen asleep and kept going?
“Probably, the toxin of the small ones does not work on a martial artist who has reached a certain level. Unless it is the toxin of their leader or something like that, these small ones have weak toxicity and may have had no effect.”
“Small ones…”
Red Beggar muttered while poking at a moth corpse the size of a human head.
“They are really so small and cute I want to bite them. Brother, how big is their leader?”
“No idea. Huge, probably. According to old records, about as big as an elephant.”
“Even if you compare it like that… I have never seen an elephant, so I would not know.”
“Me neither. They say you can sometimes see them in southern Yunnan Province. It would be nice to see one before we go back.”
Ju-seong and Red Beggar talked about what they imagined elephants to be like as they walked through the jungle.
“They say elephants are most common in the Tianzhu Kingdom.”
“What kind of place is the Tianzhu Kingdom anyway? They have elephants, and Master Dharma and the Buddha came from there too.”
“The Monkey King and Master Tripitaka were heading there too…”
All things considered, there was too much to see in the world. If there were no demonic paths in the world, no evildoers, no people who needed saving, and no dark path thugs bullying the weak, Ju-seong would have quit the foolish business of storing internal energy in his dantian and long since set off to the Tianzhu Kingdom to see elephants, peacocks, lions, and the like. In such a world, that would be the more valuable thing to do.
“Someday I must take a trip to the Tianzhu Kingdom and the Western Regions.”
It was a promise to himself.
A promise born from the desire to make a world where traveling to the Tianzhu Kingdom was more valuable than cultivating martial arts in the martial world.
Red Beggar cut through Ju-seong’s reverie.
“Take me with you.”
“I hear people from the Tianzhu Kingdom are sensitive to smells.”
“I shall wash faithfully once every month or so.”
“Excellent. Yes. Let us go see elephants together later.”
As Ju-seong and Red Beggar walked, they felt that the moth corpses were growing more numerous and larger.
“This one is almost the size of a grown man’s torso…”
While Red Beggar was poking at a moth corpse, Ju-seong’s eyes flashed and he shot a double palm strike with internal energy wrapped around both hands.
-BOOM!
A fluttering moth that had been flying toward them blazed with sparks from the fierce heat of the Flame Crow Six Stage Art and tumbled away.
“That startled me, damn.”
“Live ones are starting to appear now. Ha, this is something.”
Ju-seong sighed at the sight of a hole blown through the bandages he had wrapped.
The heat of the Flame Crow Six Stage Art had ruined the carefully wrapped bandages. According to the principle of mutual conquest, fire overcame metal, making them damage more easily.
Since he could quickly wrap internal energy around his hands anyway, it was not a big problem.
-Flutter…
Incomparably quiet wingbeats sounded from all around. Sounds an ordinary person would not even hear. But as martial artists, Ju-seong and Red Beggar immediately sensed that many enemies were approaching.
They quickly put their backs together and assumed a battle formation.
Red Beggar muttered in a suppressed voice behind his mask.
“Tasteless creatures, why do they have to be so big.”
Did having no taste mean they did not deserve to be big? Red Beggar was truly a harsh man.
-WHAM! SMACK!
Since Ju-seong was bare-handed, Red Beggar, who wielded a staff, could reach farther.
Most moths were quickly smashed down by Red Beggar’s swift staff swings.
Ju-seong slashed with knife-hands, burst with palm techniques, and pierced and tore with fingers to handle the occasional ones that slipped through, saying.
“These bastards are really riled up.”
Red Beggar kept a few moths at bay with his staff and replied casually.
“They are upset we invaded their territory, what else.”
“No, no. It is not that simple. If this were their usual habit, there should have been more moth corpses by now.”
Ju-seong analyzed the situation even while fighting. If this was the moths’ behavior of swarming en masse, the sexual predator should have experienced the same.
But the moth corpses he had seen along the way were scattered one by one at intervals.
‘Something must have happened to make these creatures savage…’
Ju-seong grabbed both wings of a moth as big as a man’s upper body.
-Chomp! Chomp!
Its horizontally split mandibles opened and closed frantically.
They did not screech or anything. These insects were originally silent. They did not even make unnecessary cries, just glided through the air unpleasantly quietly.
“Such unlovable creatures. Still, I apologize.”
Ju-seong briefly apologized to the beast and tore it in half.
Yellowish-green ichor gushed out.