Chapter 73

Cho Yoon walked toward the opposite bank of the river, rousing his inner energy to blast away the moisture clinging unpleasantly to his clothes. He then tightly wrapped the bundle he had urgently stripped off his outer robe to carry and sent a telepathic message to Cheon-oh, who was likely stomping his feet in anxiety on the other side.

[Cheon-oh-ya, did you bring the Longevity Lock?]

[Yes, I brought it. Master, why aren’t you coming this way…]

[First, restrain your breathing as much as possible. While inhaling as little air as you can, hold the Longevity Lock and return to the Estate of Deep Mists. I will deal with this and follow you.]

[What is it? Just what was in the river that…]

Cheon-oh’s anxious feelings were transmitted clearly even through the telepathy. Cho Yoon hugged the object wrapped in his outer robe to his chest and turned back to look at his disciple in the distance. Transparent green water had already soaked through the fabric, dripping down to leave marks on the sandy beach. The medicinal scent, intensified by holding his breath, and the thick layer of inner energy he had wrapped around it were blocking the poison spreading in all directions, but it seemed he would reach his limit soon.

Cho Yoon looked down at what he held in his hands for a moment, contemplating, then spoke.

[It is a Zhenniao (Venomous Bird). A Zhenniao and a Human-Faced Water Snake were dead.]

What Cho Yoon’s cotton clothes were covering was none other than the monster of extreme poison, known to be able to kill a person just by dipping a single feather into a cup of alcohol.

When he went down under the river where the massive poison was flowing out, what he saw was a giant blue water snake. The diameter of its body alone exceeded two jang, and its winding body stretched all the way to the end of the river, making it difficult to even estimate its length. And where the snake’s head should have been, a human face was attached, but somehow the flesh around the mouth and chin had all melted away, creating a horrific visage.

Cho Yoon realized with ‘Cho Yoon’s’ knowledge that this monster was a Human-Faced Water Snake living at the bottom of the Yeonpa River. And he could easily tell that the source of the poison leaking out was inside the Human-Faced Water Snake’s body.

This guy… only eats fish or mountain beasts and doesn’t have a separate poison gland. This poison looks like Zhenniao poison, but why would such poison come out of something living in the water?

Unable to leave it as it was, Cho Yoon palpated the torso of the Human-Faced Water Snake to find anything strange. He easily found a spot where his hand sank deep as if the internal organs had all melted, and when he cut open the belly, what abruptly came out was the corpse of a Zhenniao.

Cho Yoon, who never dreamed this would come out of here, was flustered for a moment, but the Zhenniao’s corpse, now out of the Human-Faced Water Snake’s body, immediately began to wreak havoc. Cho Yoon hurriedly snapped to his senses, escaped from the water, and racked his brain on what to do with this thing, which was practically a biological weapon.

[Furthermore, take out the medicinal herbs I tell you, pack enough luggage and travel expenses to stay for a few days, and go down the mountain. In any case, you should leave here for a while…]

“Master!”

Just then, Cheon-oh’s voice drowned out the sound of flowing water and rang loudly through the mountains. Cho Yoon, seeing his always polite disciple cut him off mid-sentence and raise his voice for the first time, was stunned for a moment. But soon, he frowned and admonished the child.

“Did I not tell you to restrain your breathing!”

“I will hold my breath after saying just one word. I do not want to run away far alone. I want to learn everything Master does. I will try harder, so please give me a chance!”

Why is he suddenly being so stubborn again?

It felt as if the mountain itself shook at Cheon-oh’s last shouted words. His head ached for the first time in a while. Even at this moment, the vegetation encroached by poison was drooping, and that child across the river would soon be in danger too. But Cheon-oh looked ready to kneel right there if his wish wasn’t granted.

In the end, Cho Yoon, urgent and regretful, bent his will.

“Fine. I understand, so hurry to the Estate of Deep Mists.”

[Yes, Master. Thank you for granting my unreasonable request.]

Cunningly, as soon as Cho Yoon granted the request, Cheon-oh answered promptly via telepathy.

Anyway, disciplining the child was a task for later. Right now, he had to save the mountains and rivers dying in real-time, the child who could be endangered by it, and the people downstream who might use the monster-rinsed water for daily life.

As Cho Yoon listed a few medicinal herbs, Cheon-oh immediately threw himself into motion, leaving behind words telling him to take care. Cho Yoon, watching the child’s retreating back disappear at high speed, also gritted his teeth, turned around, and stomped his foot. His figure, leaping lightly into the air, quickly vanished into the rugged mountains.

There was no time.

***

Cho Yoon ran downhill in an instant, crossing the ridge of Mount Cheongwe. Looking up, he saw Mount Godo rising in the distance as if to pierce the sky. Unlike other mountains where vitality could be felt, Mount Godo was dark as if cast in shadow, starting from the color of the densely grown vegetation, and was shrouded in gloomy mountain fog.

But Cho Yoon knew the fact that this was because the energy compressed in Mount Godo had reached an extreme.

The most primordial, most miraculous, most pure energy of nature in its raw state was fatal to sentient beings by its very existence. Humans, mere insignificant creatures, were often helplessly swept away by the mountain’s properties of mutual generation and assimilation, losing their ego and becoming part of the massive ecosystem.

Among them, Mount Godo was the place with the heaviest and most dense energy. There was no free will for any living creature living here, including monsters. Inside that mountain fog was a world operating solely for the persistence of the ecosystem and the prosperity of nature.

Cho Yoon’s mind, stepping into such a dangerous place without hesitation, was full of other thoughts.

The Zhenniao isn’t a monster of the Point of No Return Mountain Range. Maybe Mount Danha in Guangdong Province… Wait, Guangdong?

The Hao Sect and Hui, who made Guangdong their base, naturally came to mind, but Cho Yoon quickly shook his head.

No, there’s no benefit for Hui to commit such an act. Besides, catching a Zhenniao and releasing it in the Point of No Return Mountain Range isn’t something just anyone with decent skill can do. Even the warrior named Yeowa beside Hui probably couldn’t do it.

No matter how much he searched his memories of the original work, no expert capable of intentionally committing such an act came to mind. The one called the strongest in poison in the work was the Immortal Healer Cho Yoon himself, and the Sichuan Tang Clan was relatively weak, losing to the protagonist and having their poisons stolen and improved by the Demonic Cult.

Wait, the Demonic Cult?

If it was the Demonic Cult, where villains of all sorts of settings were hastily improvised and popped out to give the protagonist a crisis, it was possible there was a poison expert Jeong Hayoon hadn’t seen yet. But whoever was behind it, he couldn’t understand why they would suddenly put a Zhenniao in the Point of No Return Mountain Range no matter how much he thought about it.

Since I didn’t sense any other person’s presence on Mount Dumang, if someone came and pulled a stunt, it means they at least broke through Mount Wonik’s formation, or used an artifact that hides presence… No, what’s important right now isn’t the mastermind but the cleanup.

Anyway, what had to be prioritized right now was a way to get through this situation. If things went wrong, people living at the foot of the mountain were on the verge of dying en masse, so even Cho Yoon, who had an indifferent side toward fully grown adults, felt urgent.

Furthermore, this wasn’t just a problem for adults. In this era lacking entertainment and amusements, where else would peer groups of young children living near the river play? Only the valley upstream.

Also, those likely to be by the river at this time would be women in charge of housework, and the land farming with this water would all die too… The more he thought about it, the bigger the disaster.

For now, since the poison would be filtered to some extent as it flowed down through the Point of No Return Mountain Range, there was a little time left. Let’s quickly dispose of the Zhenniao corpse first, purify the river, and go straight down to the village below the mountain.

While he was pondering this and that, Cho Yoon had climbed to the waist of Mount Godo before he knew it. Because leaves larger than a palm blocked the sunlight, the surroundings were dim like evening. Trees with diameters that ten people linking arms wouldn’t be enough to encircle were taking firm root while tangled messily, and with every breath, a heavily settled energy pushed into his lungs.

It seemed he had entered deep enough by now. Cho Yoon turned his head to look toward Mount Dumang once. And he released the inner energy that had been suppressing the poison at once. Since he had been wrapping it thickly by compressing formless energy to the point it became tangible so this atrocious poison wouldn’t leak into the air, the consumption of inner energy was massive, and it was hard to hold out any longer.

Haze-like poison shot out in all directions in an instant. At the same time, a violent wind blew, and the mountain shuddered. The sound of trees shaking and hitting each other was so sharp it sounded like the threat of a beast.

Cho Yoon filled his emptiness-stricken danjeon with the energy of Mount Godo through deep breaths and swung his gaze around the noisy surroundings. Then, he saw an unbelievable sight.

The surrounding vegetation was reaching out toward Cho Yoon.

The speed wasn’t that fast. But if growth was visible to the human eye, it wasn’t slow at all. Plants with stems began to crawl slowly toward where Cho Yoon was, and sharply honed tree branches were approaching, covering the sky like the grasp of an evil spirit.

It seemed Mount Godo had firmly deemed the Zhenniao corpse and Cho Yoon as ‘things ruining the ecosystem.’

W… Wait a minute. This is a bit too much.

Since it was the mountain with the strongest energy, he brought it here thinking it would prevent the Zhenniao’s poison from spreading outside and handle self-purification well. But the mountain’s reaction was more sensitive than he expected. Seeing the mountains, rivers, and vegetation moving squirmingly like one giant organism, it felt like he had entered a scene in a fantasy horror movie. If things went wrong, he was poised to be buried completely by the vegetation.

Originally, he intended to bury the Zhenniao corpse in this mountain and run away quickly, but with the mountain being this sensitive, problems were bound to arise. Monsters startled by the poison seeping into the ground might leave Mount Godo and attack other mountains, or the spiritual energy of Mount Godo, regarding the Zhenniao corpse as a danger, might cause a landslide.

And if the mighty monsters of Mount Godo were released into the rest of the Point of No Return Mountain Range, it was clear it would cause a severe ecological imbalance. Even if a landslide occurred and the Zhenniao corpse was swept down, there was a high possibility it would fall into the Mangmang River between Mount Cheongwe and Mount Godo, causing the same situation to happen again.

What do I do? It’s a dilemma on all sides.

He put a hand to his forehead and looked around. The new shoots that had grown in that short time gently wound around his ankles. Cho Yoon shuddered, shook off the plants restricting him, and looked at the wet white bundle.

If it had come to this… there was no choice.