Morning broke over a boat that had lost its captain.
In the meantime, we rested our soaked bodies and dried our clothes.
Drying them was not that difficult. With energy, they dried quickly enough.
“Haa......”
The problem was—
my head felt strangely dizzy.
My stomach feels way too heavy.
My body did not feel particularly good either. My stomach kept feeling nauseous and uncomfortable, as if I had indigestion.
I could barely eat. Did I really have indigestion? Even after reaching this realm, I could still get indigestion? With a body where getting seasick would be bizarre, something about this felt wrong.
My condition stayed lousy all day.
So I went to find someone who might know something about it.
Not that there was more than one person I could ask.
“...You said you do not feel well.”
“Yes.”
I asked the Sword Emperor, who had been inside the boat.
“Hmm.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, then stepped closer and extended a hand.
“Give me your hand.”
At those words, I held out my hand without much thought.
The Sword Emperor placed his fingers against my wrist.
Wooooong—!
Energy flowed in.
I did not reject it.
I felt the Sword Emperor’s sharp energy make one circuit through my body. It did not take long. The energy briefly circled through me, then returned to the Sword Emperor.
Immediately after that—
“What did you eat?”
“......”
The Sword Emperor asked in a firm voice.
This man seemed to have sensed at once that I had gotten my hands on something.
“...Has something changed?”
“You cannot feel it?”
“Yes. I do not really know.”
After waking up, I had checked my body’s condition, but I could not tell what had changed.
Had my energy increased?
It had, but compared to the vast amount I had felt, the actual increase was extremely slight.
So I thought my energy had barely increased and there were no major physical changes either.
Judging from the Sword Emperor’s reaction, though, something significant had changed.
“...You have touched the wall. Your energy’s state has.”
“...What?”
The wall?
“What happened in the span of only a few days? Is it related to yesterday’s disturbance?”
“...Ah, yes.”
“I assumed you would handle it yourself and paid it no mind, but what exactly did you experience?”
I figured as much.
This man had not shown himself even while that whole mess was going on, so I had assumed he was simply ignoring it.
So I gave him a brief explanation.
That people had been throwing sacrifices to a spirit beast, and that while wrestling with that spirit beast, I obtained and consumed its spirit pill.
“A spirit beast... So such things still remain.”
“Have you seen one before?”
“Once, in the distant past. It was a gigantic red tiger that lived on Mount Tai.”
A red tiger.
Not even a white tiger, but a red one? That sounded like a spirit beast that would make anyone flinch on sight.
“I once split open that thing’s belly and consumed its spirit pill as well... but even then, it was nothing like this.”
“What exactly changed?”
“Your inner qi has risen so much that it is strange you have not noticed.”
“...What?”
It had?
I frowned and checked my condition.
Even after looking again, it felt the same.
What was this?
My vessel had not expanded, nor had its quality risen. No matter how I looked at it, I could not see a difference.
I could not feel it.
“It is strange that you cannot perceive it. It does not seem as though there is anything wrong with your body, but can you truly not tell?”
“I cannot. Rather than feeling like my energy has increased... the discomfort is much stronger.”
“...Hmm.”
The Sword Emperor narrowed his eyes.
“I do not know the reason. I am not especially knowledgeable about this either. However, it is certain that you have touched the wall.”
“When you say the wall...”
“The wall that determines whether you enter the next realm or not.”
“...!”
The next realm.
That meant—
Transformation Realm.
The realm of the beings beyond heaven, said to transcend humanity and truly break through rank itself.
There were likely several realms above it as well, but Transformation Realm was known as the level at which a single human could wield the power of a legion.
...That wall?
Really?
It was surprising, but I could not feel it, so I had nothing to say.
“If you cannot perceive it yourself, and your body seems to have some issue, watch it for now.”
“When you say watch it...”
“I mean do not use your energy for the moment. This is my first time encountering a case like this as well, so it is difficult to say anything certain.”
“Should I visit a physician?”
“Hard to say... As far as I know, there is only one physician capable of understanding this condition.”
“Ah. Don’t tell me.”
One person came to mind.
The one famous as the greatest physician on the continent.
The being said to be capable of reviving even the dead.
“...Are you telling me to find the Divine Physician?”
“If possible.”
“......”
I had no idea where that person was.
Where was I supposed to find someone like that?
It did not seem like I would die immediately, but still.
Does that mean my body is in bad enough shape that I need to see the Divine Physician?
The Sword Emperor’s words seemed to imply that, so my head became a little complicated.
Was this really okay?
Looks like eating a spirit pill isn’t simply a fortuitous encounter.
My energy had increased and I had touched the wall, but something seemed to be wrong.
“...For now, I understand. Thank you for checking.”
Not a single thing ever went smoothly.
I bowed my head to the Sword Emperor and moved.
*****
I came up onto the deck.
A clear sky caught my eye.
I looked at it and flicked my hand lightly.
Fwoosh!
Blue flame surged up.
It was the karmic fire the Heavenly Demon had mentioned.
Hmm.
Maybe because I had drawn it out once already, I could release the flame without issue.
What was strange was—
“You’re here.”
“Yeah.”
Other people could not see this flame.
Poison Dragon greeted me calmly when he saw me.
He could not see the fire burning in my hand.
“How is it? Do you understand it a little?”
“...I think I understand it roughly, but am I really doing this?”
“We have no other answer.”
We needed to move the boat and head to our next destination.
The problem was that there was no one here who could steer it.
The reason was simple.
The captain and everyone else who could do it are dead.
The captain had likely been caught by water ghosts in the river and killed.
As for the others who might have been able to steer the boat—
“You should have spared at least one of them...”
“You’re blaming me for this?”
Peng Dojun had killed them all.
Cleanly.
Without leaving a single one behind.
At my words, Peng Dojun stared at me in disbelief.
“You told me to handle it myself, so I handled it myself. It is unfair to complain now.”
He sounded wronged.
He was right.
I had told him to handle it himself.
But how was I supposed to know?
The situation had been urgent, [N O V E L I G H T] so I had briefly forgotten that we needed someone to steer the boat.
And that was how this mess happened.
“...So we are really doing this?”
“...Will this really be all right?”
Cloud Dragon sounded deeply doubtful.
Four grown men were standing there, agonizing over a boat.
“What if we crash on the way?”
“Then we start running from there.”
Peng Dojun spoke as if that was no problem at all.
There was still a fair distance left, and he wanted us to run over the water?
I would trip and die on the way.
Besides.
I did not want to move through this water.
There were not exactly one or two water ghosts down there.
“...Let’s try it first. If it doesn’t work, we’ll think about it then.”
“...I-I will begin.”
Poison Dragon stammered and started moving the boat.
“We should move too.”
We headed over to take the oars.
A boat could not move on its own, apparently.
Thankfully, even though the oars were disgustingly large, each of us was a martial artist, so moving them was not an issue.
Splash!
The boat slowly began cutting through the current.
Thankfully, it worked.
Some time passed like that.
And at last, we reached the land we had been waiting for.
*****
“...Ugh... ah...”
As soon as Poison Dragon stepped onto land, he collapsed as though exhausted.
“Now... now, of all things... even a boat...”
Poison Dragon, who had ended up moving not just horses but now even a boat, lamented his fate.
I approached him and patted his back.
“You were amazing. As expected, when it comes to driving, it has to be you.”
“......”
His expression said this was not comforting at all.
I had praised him sincerely enough, but look at that face.
“Still, we arrived, didn’t we? It’s thanks to you.”
“Yes... thank you.”
His expression was not thankful in the slightest.
I lightly ignored that.
“Now, let’s go.”
When we arrived at the dock, the others there looked at us.
Their gazes were odd.
Especially the way their eyes fixed on the women disembarking from the boat.
“It has been a long time... since women got off that boat.”
“They carried women this time?”
Apparently, women getting off the boat was strange in itself.
Ah.
Was it because they always killed them all as sacrifices before arriving?
“Where is the captain?”
As soon as we disembarked, someone approached and asked.
He looked full of confusion, so I simply told him.
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“He was doing filthy things inside the boat, so I killed him and threw him into the river. He was doing disgusting things with women.”
“...That... that is...”
His eyes shook.
Seeing that, I understood.
“Ah. Are you with them too?”
“...Huh! I am...!”
Grab.
“Ghk!”
I seized his neck and pulled him close.
Then I showed him my chest.
The part marked with the symbol of the Lesser Moon Unit.
“We’ll need to take this one in too.”
“...Le... Lesser Moon Unit...? How has the Lesser Moon Unit come this far...!”
“You can figure that out yourself.”
I threw the man behind me.
As expected, these things could not have been done by one side alone.
There had apparently been someone handling things on the opposite shore too.
“...Thank you... truly, thank you...”
The women who got off the boat came to me with tears in their eyes and offered their gratitude.
“Thank you for saving us... If not for you, Master, we would have...”
“It’s fine. Please thank that man over there.”
Peng Dojun was the one who killed them, not me.
I waved my hand and refused their thanks.
“B-but...”
The women approached me regretfully.
I could see relief in their eyes, mixed with another emotion.
This was seriously troublesome.
“It’s really fine.”
“Yes, you should be thanking me.”
When Peng Dojun spoke proudly, the women flinched.
Then I saw them retreat.
“...Why?”
His expression turned hurt.
Sorry.
Most things in life run on faces, you know.
“...Let’s get going. We’ll leave the boat for them to handle.”
The merchant caravan or someone else would come out and take care of the aftermath.
We were done with that.
Now we needed to move quickly.
“Since we’ve come this far, do we head to Xinjiang now?”
I asked while looking somewhere.
It was Mi Yeonhwa.
She had come out at some point, and she nodded at my words.
[Yes.]
This woman had tucked herself away inside while the whole mess unfolded, and now she decided to come out.
Whatever.
Nothing would have changed if she had come out anyway.
Time to go.
It was time to head toward our destination.
Only now did I truly recognize that we had come close to Xinjiang.
I had no choice but to recognize it.
I can already feel them.
The moment we arrived in this region, gazes fixed on us.
Most likely—
Demonic Cultists?
From here on, it seemed, was the Demonic Cult’s territory.
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