Chapter 588: Journey to Kunlun (1)

No sooner had we returned to the stockade than Amukhablap spoke to the party.

“This duty—to sound the alarm—is most weighty. Great Me is likewise equipped with the sincerity to shave off even a single moment. You Middle Kingdom lot are sluggards by nature; Great Me knows this very well. But this time, may your heavy rumps and slow feet be diligent, you souls destined to be born as oxen.”

And with that, he trudged out of the stockade, taking Happy Puppy with him.

At first we figured he was just spouting his usual nonsense and stepping out to take a piss.

But time passed and he didn’t come back—what, a big one?

“Iri, didn’t you say that tasted bad?”

“Once I kept eating—yes.”

“So you’ll eat anything as long as it’s boiled.”

“Of course.”

Huh. Gunyeong’s vocabulary is getting richer bit by bit, isn’t it? But the “of course” carried such smug pride.

Not praise, Gunyeong...

Only much later—after Seol Iri had sipped and sipped and sipped and polished off about five bowls of the truth-bringing soup—

we realized Amukhablap’s “hurry up, you lazy bastards” had been his way of saying goodbye.

He just left—like that?

Even if it’s urgent—at this hour?

Whatever else, his bias for action is unhinged.

Come to think of it, he barged in right on time to “go quash bandits,” and without knowing a thing about the enemy he sprinted straight ahead, didn’t he.

Tsk, tsk. Action’s excellent, but without thought the body always pays.

There are people who, without prior knowledge, just start anything first and say “it’ll work out somehow,” and charge in like fools.

If someone had heard Qing’s inner thoughts, they’d wonder—what’s this, self-criticism? Since when does she?

Sadly, no one in the party had the ability to read minds.

So Qing’s party tidied up the battlefield.

(Meaning: we ransacked the stockade.)

They’d said all the captives had been taken away by the lama monks; what we found was just the stashes each man had hidden for money.

Only Seol Iri in the party counts as a beggar.

Even Gyeon Pohee holds shares in a trading company—and Qing doesn’t know it, but she’s also the sworn sister of the Grand Protector of the Celestial Demon Church, the Heavenly Demon’s adopted sister: a personage of rank.

We did find a few snacks someone had hidden to eat alone, but there was something unpleasant about touching them—so Qing ate them all and cleared them out.

Not a total waste, then.

“Mm. Let’s go too.”

It was a shame we hadn’t saved a single kidnapped victim—but in the martial world, things are a string of such shames.

First we gathered every last scrap from the food stores; then, so there wouldn’t be a fire, we carefully killed the embers in the bonfires we’d lit.

Then Qing’s party left the bandit camp without a backward glance.

Not everyone, however, left without regrets.

“W-we—what about us?”

“Take us with you!”

A heap of those left behind.

Some still had all four limbs attached.

But Qing’s way of handling villains is to start by snapping the long bones of the arms and legs and tossing them aside.

Rope is needed to tie people, and there’s always the worry they’ll slip free; but if you just give their limbs a few sharp kicks and break them, how convenient—and effective.

Nights in Xining are still deep, and winter nights only grow harsher toward dawn.

We left their earnest send-off behind.

Well, then—who told you to turn bandit? Who threatened you at swordpoint to go thieving?

****

Do you know the cozy peace of coming home on a cold night after a day of worthy labor?

Ask for bathwater and put a big smile on the face of the idle young inn-hand.

Sleep deep, rise late, eat a meal that the Middle Kingdom doesn’t have a word for yet—brunch—and take the road.

Hainan County lies in the southeast of Qinghai, an administrative district about a tenth of the whole.

The broad region is high to the north and low to the south.

But the north is warm and the south is cold.

You’d think higher ground should be colder—that would make sense.

But the lower half is all jagged ridgelines—perpetual snow glittering on rugged mountains—while the north of Hainan borders the vast plains spread across the Qinghai Plateau.

Meaning: it’s easy traveling.

Granted, even the “plain” is bumpy—gentle rolling hills with a fair bit of relief—but a proper coach road is laid for ox-carts.

Compared to the itinerary of climbing nonstop since Sichuan, it was as comfortable as a flat road.

The party bounded along lightly—but the pace itself was anything but light.

Their realms could match a decent-sized sect in a mid-tier city.

Granted, Seol Iri’s breath was a tad rough and sweat dropped bead by bead.

At sunset we entered a small city called Taekgo.

The next day we headed north and reached a Zang tent town called Maeksu.

“Honored guests, you’ve come, but the granary will only just last the winter, so... mm. Forgive me. You’ve stopped by, and I have no face.”

The old Zang man, in fluent Middle Kingdom speech, apologized repeatedly that he couldn’t offer proper hospitality.

By hospitality, he meant he was sorry he couldn’t welcome us with a village feast like the Zang in Sichuan had done.

Soft to kindness, Qing unpacked the provisions we’d taken from the bandit camp and threw a proper feast.

We set out early, the whole village—young and old—turning out to send us off with fervent cheers.

From here we left Hainan County and entered Huangnan County—so we came into Huangnan city, small (though “large” for Qinghai), where the county seat lies.

We passed the small Huangnan villages of Cheomchal and Bonganggu, then Ping’an in Xining County—then Xining!

Xining is the capital of Qinghai—and the only city whose scale can measure against the Middle Kingdom proper.

Even the skin of the buildings is different—white-washed walls, and the Zang Buddhist temples are gilded bright gold.

And also—oh, what’s that?

Why is there a structure like this in the Middle Kingdom?

Qing stared at a temple with a rounded dome and let out an admiring “oooh.”

How did they build that, I wonder.

Qing is more dutiful as a carpenter than as a martial artist.

What’s unique about Xining is the presence of the Hui, whom you don’t see in southern Qinghai.

The Hui are descendants of westerners who believe the western religion called Hui Teaching; in Qing’s homeland terms, they are believers in Islam.

Only—the Hui of Qinghai have long since mixed blood; their faces are indistinguishable from Middle Kingdomers.

Their dress is Middle Kingdom style—only the headgear is Islamic: the men tug down a loose, string-work looking cap, and the women wrap themselves tight in cloth, showing barely their eyes.

A proper metropolis where money can buy every luxury—and an exotic scene that looks nothing like the Middle Kingdom. With so much to see, we’d have loved to take a room and spend a few days strolling slowly for fun.

But we weren’t in a situation with that kind of leisure.

“Mm. First let’s see Qinghai Lake, then go up to the Kunlun Sect. They say it’s that broad?”

“You mean go to Qinghai Lake—now?”

“Mm? So we’re not going?”

“Ah—right. Since Xining is famous for Qinghai Lake, you must think it’s adjacent.”

“Why? When there’s a great lake, isn’t there usually a big city beside it? What—is it far?”

Peng Daesan snapped his fingers.

Even exotic as it was, it was still a metropolis, and buildings rose three, four, five stories high.

Come to think of it—they stack to four and five stories?

How? If you just lay up baked brick, it should crumble. Some secret method?

Had she not become a martial artist, Qing could have made a great civil engineer of the age.

You see as much as you know; thanks to that, Qing enjoyed travel twice as much as anyone—by herself.

Oblivious to Qing’s wandering thoughts, Peng Daesan curled a mischievous smile.

“Qinghai Lake is up there.”

“Mm? Where—huh?”

Only then did Qing’s focus shift from the tall buildings to the mountain range draped behind them.

Snow lay thick even at a distance—obviously no ordinary mountains.

Don’t tell me we have to cross that?

Qing stared with a puckered look.

“Customers? That’s Jiryeon Mountain. To reach Qinghai Lake, you need to cross {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} North Sea Pass, that way.”

A nearby street vendor corrected the angle of Peng Daesan’s finger, which had pointed too far north.

High, yes—but the ridges sloped markedly lower than the other range.

Qing breathed a sigh of relief—then slanted her eyes long at Peng Daesan.

“What was that, San? Not that range, he says. Did Amuk make that strong an impression? ‘Not this mountain?’”

“Ahem.”

“First time here, huh? For a first-timer you sure know a lot—I almost thought you’d been here.”

It was Peng Daesan who guided us to Xining’s top inn, Qinghailou (for some reason the name felt very familiar and faintly wistful to Qing), and Peng who explained the Hui—Middle Kingdomers who just worship a different god—and their mosques.

He seemed to know things; I thought he’d been.

“I just picked it up, in passing.”

“Right, right. Studied up for Qinghai, huh? Hey, nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Qing poked Peng Daesan in the ribs.

“That’s a favor, you know? With a friend like you, travel gets easy. People are allowed to be wrong once. Don’t fuss.”

“‘Studied,’ she says. I merely picked things up in passing. Why would I go out of my way.”

He said it while turning his brim to hide earlobes gone ruddy.

That “in passing,” again.

How is it that whenever he “goes passing by,” snacks tumble into his hands and travel tips “happen” to flow to him?

Well—thinking on it, that’s San for you.

He’s masked now.

Remember—the living legend who paved the ground of Luoyang in brilliant colors with intact handkerchiefs.

The Jade Qilin who made Song Yu gasp, Ban An start, Wei Gai kneel, and the Prince of Nanling tear off his mask.

For reference, Song Yu, Ban An, Wei Gai, and the Prince of Nanling are the four most handsome men in the Middle Kingdom’s history—the Four Great Beauties among men.

But by current opinion, that’s old news; now is the age of Iljon Sagang—no, of the peerless, all-ages-most-handsome—Peng Daesan.

So of course if he walked with his face uncovered, snacks would carpet the road like a flower path.

Those fan-girl stalkers—

“You look... profoundly disgruntled.”

“Huh? What? What face was I making?”

“The face you make when you told them to bring every dish they had, and in the end only five plates came out. Although most wouldn’t call five ‘only.’”

“Who do you expect five dishes to feed? They’d vanish with a taste.”

Peng Daesan snorted.

Even his snort rolled out handsome and low.

“Do people usually ‘taste’ like that?”

“That’s because I’m hungry. When you’re hungry, everything tastes—no, not that everything tastes good, the dish—any dish tastes good when you’re hungry. So to really judge a dish, you need to be moderately full, feel satiety, and only then can you objectively decide whether it’s good or bad.”

“Mm?”

“And there’s an order to eating: if you eat something rich or heavily seasoned, then something delicate afterwards will feel bland and disappointing.”

“‘Disappointing taste,’ she says—what even is that.”

“I’m saying if you don’t eat broadly overall, you aren’t ‘tasting’ at all.”

It was pure nonsense—but oddly persuasive nonsense.

Peng Daesan drifted into thought—was that how tasting worked?

Anyway.

Qinghai Lake is two hundred li to the west—and you have to climb six hundred fifty jang to see it.

So said a local vendor who sold threadwork ornaments—precise local intelligence.

Qing scrunched her clear brow with an effort.

What lake sits on a mountaintop?

Filthy far and high.

And the Kunlun Sect, too—why did they go build there.

The Kunlun Sect would protest the injustice.

This is the “closer” version—after they moved.

Properly speaking, “Mount Kunlun” is the Kunlun Range—a mountain mass roughly the size of all Hubei.

They used to be in a deep mountain backwater—nothing but mountain after mountain after mountain.

Not even in the Middle Kingdom—a plateau land.

They took a lot of ribbing that Kunlun should count as part of the plateau’s martial world.

So shouldn’t this count as incredibly close, now?