WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
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◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 13: The Martial World
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It took me a long while to catch my breath.
The hand gripping my sword hilt began to shake like an aspen.
I had once stabbed an Orthodox Faction spearman to death in Blue Stone Valley.
He had fallen in the mud, and my sword had caught him as I thrust upward to save my own life.
Even then, I had vomited everything in my stomach as soon as the fighting ended.
Today was the first time I had taken a life with a sword I had swung with the intent to kill.
Nausea surged up from deep inside me.
My stomach was empty, so only sour fluid rose into my throat.
I swallowed hard and forced it down.
It was not a fight I had won through skill.
That bastard died because lust had made him expose his weakness.
I had merely seized that stroke of luck.
I searched the bundle beside his cooling body.
There were five silver taels and two strings of copper coins.
There was also a bundle of dried jerky, a fire tube containing embers, and a handful of dried jujubes.
I put it all into my clothes and bundle.
I also gathered a handful of salt from a torn sack beside the broken cart and wrapped it in cloth.
On a harsh road, clean salt was worth as much as silver taels.
What owner was there to claim the belongings of a dead man?
If it had been Jang Pal, he would have cleaned the man out already.
But I did not touch his famous sword or jade token.
A sect emblem was engraved on the scabbard, and his three-character name had been carved into the jade token.
The moment I carried items that revealed his identity, they would stop being valuables and become shackles.
Even if this bastard's filthy truth came to light, the way the world saw me would not change.
'A demonic warrior who ambushed and murdered a chivalrous Qingcheng disciple to hide his own sins.'
You think the world could not possibly be that rotten?
After seeing with your own eyes what a disciple of a famous sect had said and done just now, could you still say that?
When one of their disciples was harmed, famous sects always protected their reputation first.
They fabricated the facts and struck back.
If the disciple failed to return to the main sect for several days, they would send out a search party.
Following his trail would eventually bring them to this mountain road.
If they found someone carrying his jade token or famous sword, that would be the end.
Regardless of the truth, that person would become the murderer.
I kicked his corpse into the roadside bushes.
I wiped the blood from my iron sword on the hem of his white martial robes.
The white clothes he had worn to show off were at least useful as rags.
I did not look at his face again.
It was not a face worth remembering.
It was different for the woman who had taken her own life.
I chose the least damaged garment among the clothes scattered across the road and covered her body.
I wiped the dried blood from the corner of her mouth with a sleeve.
Then I covered even the face twisted by terror and resentment.
I took a handful of salt from the cart and scattered it over the clothes covering her.
A farewell offering in place of incense.
If she had set out to sell salt, it felt right to place salt upon her final road as well.
That was all I could do.
I had neither the time nor the strength to dig a grave.
If I lingered here and became entangled in this, my life would be over too.
"...I'm sorry."
I swallowed the excuse that one hundred and fifty paces had been too far.
Excuses were words meant to make the living feel better.
They were useless to someone who had closed their eyes.
Beside the broken cart lay the body of an old driver with an arrow lodged in his neck.
His features resembled the woman who had taken her own life so painfully closely.
Had he been her old father?
Had a poor father and daughter come down this mountain road hoping to survive by selling salt?
There was no way to know.
And even if I knew, there was nothing I could do.
This was a world where good and evil could not be judged by the color of one's clothes.
Beneath the white robes of the Orthodox Faction lived beasts steeped in lust.
Beneath the black robes of the Demonic Cult lived men like Jang Pal, who would throw themselves into danger for their comrades.
Those who left such men in a valley and used them as kindling wore the same black robes.
This was the Martial World.
* * *
I pulled my bamboo hat low and hastened my steps.
Before the sun rose, I needed to get as far away from this blood-soaked stretch of road as possible.
It was a place of slaughter, with more than ten corpses strewn about.
Whether officials or sects found it first, they would swarm around it like flies.
The man wandering near the scene would be the first to be suspected.
My mouth tasted bitter with every step.
I had seen the deaths of twenty thousand people. I should have become numb to slaughter by now.
But I had not grown used to it at all.
Perhaps it was better that I never would.
Then, from a distant mountain ridge, an animal's cry tore through the dawn air.
It sounded like a wolf's howl, but it was not a wolf.
The long cry ended with a strange, abrupt twist.
It sounded like the wail of someone who had died unjustly.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
The weight of the word beast, which I had heard in the marketplace, pressed down on me anew.
The cry echoed through the mountain range once more, then abruptly stopped.
I gritted my teeth and lengthened my stride.
The eastern sky was beginning to brighten.
Black Fang Mountain was still two hundred and ten li away.
* * *
I walked for another four days.
During the day, I slept hidden in bushes or gaps between rocks, and when night fell, I walked.
Thanks to the jerky and salt, I did not collapse from hunger.
I never would have guessed that the most valuable inheritance left by that mad Orthodox Faction bastard would be dried jerky.
The farther north I went, the harsher and steeper the mountain ranges became.
Even the homes of slash-and-burn settlers grew scarce, until there was no sign of people at all.
It was the morning of the fifth day.
Ahead on a narrow mountain path thick with fog, I saw a person.
The first person I had seen in days.
An old man carrying a worn wooden frame climbed the slope.
The frame was piled high with medicinal herbs gathered from the mountains.
At his waist, instead of a weapon, hung a rusty sickle used for digging herbs.
I pulled my bamboo hat low, slowed my pace, and followed behind him.
Keeping too far away would look suspicious to a mountain dweller.
Passing him without warning would only make him wary.
"The weather is cold, Elder."
"It is. The first frost fell white all night."
Without stopping, the old man glanced back at me.
His eyes, assessing an unfamiliar traveler, were calm and alert.
He was like an old mountain beast that had roamed harsh peaks all its life.
"Where are you headed?"
"I'm heading northwest. I'm looking for something."
"Northwest, you say. If you keep straight along this rough mountain road, you'll come to Black Fang Mountain."
Before I could bring it up, Black Fang Mountain came from the old man's own lips.
That was better.
For the past few nights, I had felt uneasy as I walked.
It was because of the rumors from the village at the mountain's entrance, where people vanished without a trace, and the cry I had heard at dawn a few days ago.
If you buried an ominous feeling, it always came back with interest.
"You seem familiar with the area, Elder, so I was about to ask. I must pass through Black Fang Mountain. How are the mountain roads there lately?"
The moment I finished speaking, the old man came to a dead stop.
His eyes had changed when he looked back at me.
"Pass through? Black Fang Mountain?"
"Yes. I have no choice but to cross beyond that mountain."
"What foolishness! Turn back at once and take a wide detour. Even if it takes three days, no, five more days, you must go around it."
"...Why do you say that?"
The old man pointed his old carrying stick toward the northwestern range.
Jagged rocky peaks emerged above the morning mist.
They rose hideously, like the black rotten teeth of a beast.
"Right now, a tiger that has completely lost its senses and gone mad has made its den in those mountains."
"A tiger...?"
"Not just some large tiger. It is a man-eating tiger that has developed a terrible taste for human flesh."
The old man's cracked voice settled like the mist.
"That disaster began over two months ago. Woodcutters disappeared leaving behind nothing but bloodstains, and herb gatherers vanished without a trace. Around the last full moon, even a group of merchants driving carts along a busy official road were all carried off. I heard not even bones remained. Several deaths have already been confirmed."
"Then the rumor that the villagers below the mountain bolt their doors as soon as night falls..."
"That is its doing. What else could it be?"
The old man spat on the ground.
"The authorities sent skilled tiger hunters too. They could not even find one man's body. The other was found with his insides eaten, only half his upper body caught in a tree branch. Since then, no one has set foot on that mountain. They do not go near it even in broad daylight, much less at night."
"How is a tiger that has tasted human flesh different from an ordinary beast?"
"It becomes an evil spirit that stubbornly hunts only people. Picking out the bones and eating them is troublesome, but human flesh carries a deep, salty taste from all the food people have eaten in their lives. They become completely addicted to that taste."
The old man caught his breath and narrowed his eyes.
"Once it stops fearing people, it is no longer a beast that follows instinct. It becomes a madman who enjoys cruel killing as a game. That is what it would be, if it were human."
The old man cast another glance at the northwestern range.
"I do not go near that mountain these days either. An herb gatherer can sense a beast at once just by looking at the plants growing in an area. Frightened roe deer and rabbits do not come near the paths a tiger uses. When roe deer do not come, the grass around there grows abnormally tall. The grass at the entrance to Black Fang Mountain has grown as high as a man's waist."
'Damn it.'
Why did even this fit so perfectly?
The old man's words explained why the cave beneath Heartbreak Cliff was not discovered until the latter half of the scenario.
When everyone who climbed the mountain was eaten by that monster, what madman would search through the bushes below the cliff?
If that fortunate wandering martial artist found the cave in the scenario, it meant the monster was no longer on Black Fang Mountain by then.
Perhaps some passing master had cut off its head, or perhaps it had died of old age.
Either way, that was still far in the future.
Put differently, now, when I needed to enter Black Fang Mountain, the lord of that mountain was alive and watching with both eyes wide open.
"Is a tiger really that frightening?"
Though I knew the answer, I asked as if I were calm.
The old man looked at me as though I were a young man who knew nothing of the world.
"You truly know nothing of tigers, the spiritual beasts of the mountains. Tigers are fundamentally different from dull bears. They are wickedly clever. They count exactly how many people they have seen and remember it. They memorize the routes people take, and they always move downwind to hide their scent. They climb huge trees with ease and swim across rivers without hesitation. They bite through the necks of even fierce bears, tear them apart, and eat them. That is what a tiger is."
"What if there were strong men carrying weapons?"
"Even ten strong men with well-forged spears, standing together, could never handle one tiger. Instead, the tiger would hunt those ten men one by one in the darkness as though it were playing. It attacks without a sound from behind the rearmost man on a pitch-black night."
The old man tapped the back of his wrinkled neck with the edge of his hand.
"A man taken in a tiger's jaws does not even realize he has been bitten. It clamps down here in an instant and gives one hard shake. Then it is over."
The old man swallowed dryly and lowered his voice further.
"But... I hear this one is no ordinary size. Someone who saw the body of the tiger hunter, the one they only recovered half of, passed on the tale. They said there was a span and a half between the tiger's canine marks sunk deep into the flesh."
A span and a half.
With that much space between its fangs, it would have jaws large enough to bite through the head of a fully grown calf in one mouthful.
It was not merely a large tiger.
It was a great tiger found only in legend.
No, even that could not be guaranteed.
The forests of this world held monstrous beasts and demonic beasts beyond what people could imagine.
That cry I had heard at dawn a few days ago crawled back into my ears.
'That... was the cry of that monster.'
I moistened my dry lips and addressed the old man politely.
"Elder, may I ask your name?"
"My name? Bae Noseok. I have gathered herbs in these harsh mountains for over forty years, treating them as my playground."
* * *
As I walked silently with Elder Bae, I weighed my options.
Ghost Sword Art slept beneath the cliff at Heartbreak Cliff, ninety li away.
On the only path to that cliff sat the Mountain Lord, which was said to slaughter ten spear-wielding strong men in the middle of the night.
Should I try fighting it?
It was a foolish burst of bravado.
Not a chance.
Just recently, I had fought five wandering martial artists wielding chipped swords and barely escaped with my whole body torn apart.
What could I possibly rely on to contend with the lord of that mountain?
No matter how precious martial arts were, they could not be more precious than my one life.
To live out one's natural lifespan, one had to distinguish between what one could do and what one could endure.
It would be a blatant lie to say I was not disappointed.
I had walked more than two hundred li through a land of death.
And the end of the road I had finally reached was the jaws of a man-eating great tiger.
Still, I was not empty-handed.
I had picked up a sword stroke in the marketplace.
From that mad Qingcheng bastard, I had gained half a beat of first-rate footwork and five silver taels.
As long as I stayed alive, other paths would open in the Martial World.
Even a spiritual tiger could not live forever.
I could come back then and dig up the secret manual.
It would not be bad to rest in a mountain village and look for other martial arts.
Only after letting go of my fixation did exhaustion finally rush over me.
After the long forced march, the soles of my feet burned as though they had been laid on a brazier, and my empty stomach ached.
"Elder, are there any villages near this mountain road?"
"Of course. Once we cross this ridge, there is a mountain village where around ten households live together. I am heading there now to unload this bundle of herbs."
Elder Bae Noseok slowed down and looked me over again.
"Judging by your appearance, you must have spent several days and nights sleeping roughly under the cold dew. What do you say? Will you come with me? It is only a mountain village, so it does not have much, but no one there is stingy with their hospitality."
“…Then I hope you’ll forgive me for accepting your hospitality.”
A bowl of hot rice and a place to sleep out of the wind would be enough.
I wanted to wash away the emptiness of giving up my fated opportunity with one night of deep sleep.
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