Chapter 349: Journey to Naknyeong (2)

Qing Focuses on the Sound and Begins Crawling—

“Khk...!”

Qing froze mid-crawl, her arms stretched out before her like a sculpture caught in a dramatic pose—completely still but trembling faintly.

What the...? What the hell’s going on with my body?

—“Holy shit! Hey, did you hear that? You heard it, right?”

—“Hear what? Why’re you freaking out all of a sudden?”

—“Didn’t you hear a moan or something? Fuck.”

—“A moan? Wasn’t that just some dying bastard? I just finished one off a second ago.”

—“It was a woman’s voice. A ghost, maybe? A ghost woman?”

—“You idiot. Why would there be a ghost woman here? Although, if there is—count me in.”

—“Count you in for what, you crazy bastard.”

Their chatter, half bickering, half joking, gradually faded into the distance.

Good. I should use this chance to slip out...

Gritting her teeth, Qing resumed her crawl.

She had stupidly laid her wounded side against the ground and stretched out her arm, which caused all her weight to press directly on the injury—of course it hurt like hell.

She flipped over and dragged herself forward with one arm. Ugh, they said the Great Rejuvenation Pill is the best restorative out there, even a bonus life—but I still hurt!

Well, that was expected. The Great Rejuvenation Pill was for internal injuries and replenishing energy. External wounds needed time. Sure, applying a topical salve might help, but no miracle potion would just make new flesh sprout out of nowhere.

She needed to check her wounds—but first she had to get out of here.

And as she dragged herself another half-length forward, Qing suddenly paused.

Wait. Why the hell am I crawling?

I can just slice my way out.

Planting the long Moonlight Sword like a pillar, she drew the Celadon Sword and cut open a ventilation slit in the tent wall.

She didn’t exit right away. Checking her wounds took priority.

One by one, she loosened layer after layer of clothing, knot after knot. After untying the fifth overlapping layer, she finally exposed her skin.

As dim light leaked through the slit, the world’s colors bled together and distorted—like peering through a warped lens, as if she were back in her hometown, looking through a broken camera.

Yup. Eyes are still fucked.

Should be fine in a few days though.

Let’s see...

Red—her chest wrap.

White—her skin.

And the black swollen lump on her side—

“...Shit.”

Shouldn’t have looked.

There’s a strange quirk in human nature: until we actually see an injury, the pain somehow feels distant. But once we visually confirm how bad it is, the brain starts ringing every alarm it has.

She hadn’t seen clearly yet, but even through her blurry vision, she could tell her side was swollen up like a mountain—charred black and bruised dead.

Qing was a licensed medical woman, personally approved by the great Langjung Doctor himself.

She pressed her wound. Gently rubbed it. Diagnosed herself, wincing and nearly in tears at the pain she caused herself.

Fortunately, her pelvis was intact—just a fracture.

A fracture in the lowest rib too.

Muscles—torn to shreds. Her abs were officially asymmetrical now. Once she recovered, she’d have to train her left side more to balance it out.

Her spleen was inflamed and swollen with pus.

The abdominal lining felt full of fluid—likely internal inflammation.

But fractures would heal with time.

Torn muscles just needed medicine.

The spleen would settle with rest.

The fluid would drain slowly, over time.

No need for immediate surgical intervention. Time would solve everything.

Considering she got slammed with that giant hammer?

Frankly, she’d done well to survive. She deserved praise.

Good job, body. You’re still my body, after all. That’s why I’m the one and only Qing the Unparalleled.

Final diagnosis: Will she die? No, she’s fine.

Can she move? Yes.

Can she move normally? If she pushes through.

It’ll hurt like hell, but it’s doable.

Seeing the wound may have made the pain sharper, but now that she knew what she was dealing with, it was bearable. She’d taken a Great Rejuvenation Pill, so her internal organs should recover just fine.

Thus, Ximen Qing—resurrected.

The oddly raised tent split open vertically without a sound, and Qing crawled out on all fours before rising shakily to her feet.

Those thugs had been searching for something earlier.

No way I’m letting that happen.

The spoils of war belong to the victor.

That meant everything the villain Wang Cheolgun had was now hers. She could do with it as she pleased.

These bastards... Typical bandits. Can’t even abandon their old habits. Sneaking in to loot the corpses, huh?

Qing’s eyes gleamed coldly.

****

Bae Jong-gu ranked unofficially 95th in Noklim’s first branch. Officially, though? He didn’t rank at all.

Noklim didn’t even acknowledge anyone under 50th in the hierarchy.

Unofficial ranks were purely informal. Still, he could be called friends with Tae Yun, who was unofficially ranked 107th.

The reason they were friends despite the ranking difference? Because pretending to be equals without earning it got you beaten to a pulp. And if the higher-ups were in a really bad mood, it might not stop until you were dead.

In hindsight, it was a shit job.

He’d wanted to quit a hundred times, but never did—because, honestly, what else could he do to survive?

But Noklim was shut down now.

With his third-rate skills, he’d be doing grunt work even if he joined another hideout, and it’s not like he had any real trade to fall back on.

Then a memory sparked in his mind.

“Chief, isn’t this the Master Map?”

“You think I don’t know what a Master Map is? I’m asking where the hell this one is.”

“You think there’s only one place in the Central Plains that looks like this? If we had a proper map to compare with, we’d figure it out in no time. Want me to get one?”

“Oh. You can figure it out, huh? So where do you get one of these proper maps?”

“Military Strategist Office, under the Provincial Command.”

“What the hell, you crazy bastard. You want me to steal a map and have thirty thousand soldiers chasing me? You been going too long without a beating or what?”

“Well, there’s a less accurate version—tactical mini-maps at the Regional Command. But you’d have to gather them area by area—ACK! My bones! My BONES! I wasn’t suggesting it! Just saying it’s hard! Ack! AAAAAAA—”

That entire conversation, held between Noklim’s first and second (or possibly third) top-ranking members, had been overheard by Bae Jong-gu and Tae Yun—who were just squatting behind the Strategy Hall, twisting wire for traps.

Of course, the Chief had known the two idiots were outside twisting wire. But in the eyes of people like him, subordinates were like furniture—so he didn’t pay them any mind.

Just like how no shopper ever worries about what the clerk hears.

But clerks are people too.

They have ears, eyes, and brains. And now that the situation had gone to hell...

Wait. Maybe that Master Map is still somewhere.

It was the Master Map, after all.

If they could find it, their lives would flip overnight.

Just one big score, and he could strut through the city like a boss.

That was how Bae Jong-gu found himself back in this cursed field of corpses.

Bodies everywhere. Mangled limbs and torsos littered the ground—screams threatened to leap from his throat with every grotesque fragment he laid eyes on.

Worse still, he thought he’d heard a woman’s ghostly wail.

If it hadn’t been for Tae Yun’s goading, he would never have set foot in a place this ominous. But now that he was here, what could he do?

So he combed through the Chief’s war tent, muttering prayers to Confucius, Buddha, the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, Lord Guan Yu, Cao Zhi, and every other divine name he could remember—begging for mercy and protection against evil spirits. And also, maybe, for a Master Map to turn his life around.

That was when his hand froze.

Beneath an opulent, strangely luxurious bed—strangely extravagant for a field tent—he spotted something unnatural tied to the frame.

He looked around.

Tae Yun had gone off to check another tent for anything worth looting.

Which meant... if the map really was here, and he kept quiet... he could keep it all for himself.

But he hit a problem.

It was too narrow to crawl under.

He’d have to smash or overturn the bed to get at whatever was underneath.

But the noise might bring Tae Yun back.

And flipping the bed alone? No way—too heavy.

So, what else could he do?

At last, Bae Jong-gu called out.

“Hey! Tae Yun! Over here! Hurry up and get your ass over here!”

He made a fuss.

But... no answer.

The camp was dead quiet—eerily so. No way Tae Yun hadn’t heard him.

And knowing Tae Yun’s personality, the second he heard something, he’d have come running, shouting, “Did you find it?! Did you find it?!”

“...Tae Yun!? You there?!”

Still nothing. Just the silence of a corpse-ridden battlefield.

“Tae Yun? Come on, don’t fuck with me. You’re there, right?”

And then—at the tent’s entrance—a hand reached in and waved casually up and down, as if to say "All good here."

Bae Jong-gu nearly jumped out of his skin.

“AAAH! H-Holy shit—who—who’s there?!”

Then, like a child testing their parent’s reaction, a head slowly poked into the tent.

Seeing his friend’s familiar grin, Bae Jong-gu let out a relieved sigh.

“You bastard! Now’s not the time for jokes! Come help me flip this thing.”

But Tae Yun shook his head.

“What? Why not?”

Another shake.

“What the hell? Say something. Speak.”

Tae Yun tilted his head, like he didn’t understand.

And at that moment—goosebumps surged down Bae Jong-gu’s spine.

What kind of position lets a head peek in like that, sideways, at shoulder height?

Even if someone crouched, there was no way their head could tilt horizontally like that.

“You—You! What the hell—how are you—?!”

Tae Yun’s head suddenly dropped, then sprang up again, bouncing wildly up and down in the entrance like a grotesque puppet.

“AAAAAARGH!!!”

Bae Jong-gu screamed, collapsed backward, and frantically crawled away.

Thunk—he hit the bed, then shoved at it with his back as he scrambled across the ground.

And then—

Thud.

Tae Yun’s head dropped between his legs, rolled forward, and tapped him right in the crotch.

Face-up.

Right as Bae Jong-gu locked eyes with his dead friend’s vacant stare—

“WAAAAAAAUGH!!!”

He shrieked loud enough to rupture his own throat.

Somewhere nearby, Qing gave two short, dry chuckles before wincing and wiping her Moonlight Sword clean.

She’d used it to pin the head in place, but it had gotten blood and grease all over it.

The sudden movement made her side flare in pain again. Another grimace.

“Hey now... just because someone’s dead doesn’t mean you get to take their stuff. Seriously, you’re worse than a dog.”

Bae Jong-gu’s pants turned dark, soaked completely through.

And that wasn’t the end of it. A clear trickling sound followed.

Tae Yun’s severed head, nestled close to the water source, still wore that grinning expression from the moment it had been sliced off. But he was probably weeping blood in the afterlife.

And then—business as usual.

“Alright, bastard. Hand over everything you’ve got.”

“I-I will!”

“Spill everything you know.”

“I-I will!”

(Some general explanation about the Master Map, yadda yadda...)

“And you thought you could steal from me? From me?! UNFORGIVABLE!”

“P-Please spare me!”

“No.”

“PLEASE—!”

“Fine. Then crawl under the bed and fetch the pouch. My body’s a bit too messed up to reach right now.”

(Bae Jong-gu does it.)

And then, as always—

“Thanks for the effort! Now DIE.”

“Wait, you said you’d spare me—!”

“Fooled you again! I never said I’d let you live!”

“This is for the thieving hands—!”

Shing! Off went one arm.

“This is for defiling Tae Yun’s memory—!”

Shing! Off went the other.

“This is for polluting the sacred earth—!”

Shing. Off went the head.

“...Ah. I forgot to take my cut.”

Only after everything was over did Qing’s expression finally contort in pain.

“Ahh... ssshh...”

Slaying an evil bastard and playing around had been distracting enough to ignore the pain.

But now? Her side was protesting loudly.

Why?! Why did you do this to us?! You want this wound to rot?! You want us to get worse?!

She couldn’t exactly yell “Shut up!” and smack her own side.

No matter how bitter and miserable she felt, Qing had no choice but to endure if she wanted to heal.

She opened the pouch and dumped its contents on the bed.

One martial arts manual.

The title... well, it had words on it, but her vision was so busted it all looked like smears.

But Qing didn’t need her eyes—she used her hands.

She picked it up, and her martial system flickered to life. The title glowed red in the overlay—temporary registration confirmed. The font was tiny, but she could still tell: black meant text, blue meant status window.

One small wooden box.

It felt heavy in a way that said “herbal medicine.” She cracked it open and sniffed.

Smelled good. But considering it came from a bastard who thought eating humans was no big deal...

...Mmm. I’ll ask someone I trust later.

And something else—a soft, fluttery pink fabric. Felt like a handkerchief.

Wait. Pink?

Qing pictured the Chief.

A walking hairball with excessive fluff on both ends of his body.

And yet he owned a pink handkerchief?

Must be genetic. His daughter had been just as... lush. Like a rainforest. Or a coral reef.

Wait. Was it for her?

Then suddenly—the mission window lit up.

Qing had gotten used to just clicking it away. Even when it flashed with updates, she didn’t care much. She always did what she wanted anyway.

Slay the wicked, help the good.

But this time, she actually looked.

[Omen — (Unknown) Threat Level]

You have acquired the Master Map of the Xin Family Vault.

Mission-related action:

(Unknown)

This choice may influence the fate of the world.

That’s it? That’s all they give me?

Feels kinda short. Lacking detail.

Qing glanced at her status window, pretending to read it.

Not that she actually could.

Hmph. Bet you’re pissed, huh? Joke’s on you. I can’t read it anyway.