Chapter 28

Longlao looked at the vines and thought.

‘It’s well known that this Jin Ja-gang survived in the sulfur zone of the Mixed Spring Ground.’

There must have been something in that Mixed Spring Ground. Something that allowed Jin Ja-gang to acquire this terrifying deadly poison.

Otherwise, there would be no reason for Mang-ryo to be so obsessed with him.

‘Foolish Mang-ryo, you missed a treasure. I’ll claim this one for myself.’

Longlao smiled at Sa Heung-sam, Relentless Dagger, and the warriors who were watching him.

“It seems he’s spread poison in large quantities here. Don’t worry. No matter who he is, he can’t have an unlimited supply of such poison.”

Sa Heung-sam nodded.

“Let’s continue.”

Meanwhile, the cold corpse of the bearded warrior was moved to the side of the road.

How much further did they go?

“There’s a fork in the road ahead!” 

A warrior who had been sent ahead shouted.

“Which way?”

“Well… both ways, sir.”

Sa Heung-sam had no choice but to see for himself.

When he arrived, he saw that both were small paths that a horse could travel on. And horse tracks were visible on both sides.

Clearly, someone had deliberately traveled back and forth to confuse the pursuit team.

“Which of the two is it?”

Having fallen into several traps already, the pursuit team was cautious. One of the two paths was certainly a trap.

“Ah! Look over there!”

One of the warriors shouted.

A dead rabbit could be seen on the left path.

Relief flashed in the eyes of the pursuit team warriors. If it hadn’t been for the rabbit, they might have been the next corpses there.

“If the left is a trap, then he must have gone to the right!”

Sa Heung-sam was cautious. He sent three warriors to the right path first.

The three warriors put on pigskin gloves and moved forward.

Then one of them stopped.

“There are traces of soil covering the ground.”

Whether someone had tried to hide it or not, different colored soil and dry leaves were covering the ground.

“Don’t touch it, go around it.”

At Sa Heung-sam’s words, Longlao interjected.

“What nonsense. We need to check it. We need to confirm whether he’s simply camouflaged it or spread poison, so we can determine how much poison he’s consumed.”

“But the risk…”

Jin Ja-gang’s poison was exceptionally potent. With the current level of internal energy of these warriors, being poisoned would certainly mean death.

“Just be careful.”

Longlao spoke as if it were someone else’s problem.

Sa Heung-sam reluctantly gave the order with an uncomfortable expression.

“Check it.”

The warriors’ expressions darkened. But there was no point in arguing, and arguing would only lead to worse consequences, so they had no choice.

The warrior who had first discovered the trap on the ground bent down tensely and carefully brushed aside the scattered leaves and soil with his pigskin-gloved hand.

“Huh?”

The moment he felt something catch in his hand, the warrior quickly jerked his body backward. He fell down on his backside.

Ping!

A branch snapped and flew past above the sitting warrior’s head.

Thud.

The branch that had flown over his head fell limply to the ground.

“Urgh.”

The warrior was terrified. Looking back, it was just an ordinary branch. But judging by the thorns on the branch stem, it was clear that poison had been applied there as well.

Longlao came over to check.

“He applied poison.”

Longlao put down the box he was carrying on his back. Inside were all sorts of miscellaneous items, from which he took out a thinly rolled piece of leather, carefully wrapped the branch, and put it back into the box.

Sa Heung-sam and Relentless Dagger came over to look at the trap.

Someone had lightly dug into the ground, bent a flexible branch into a circular shape, slightly embedded it in the ground, and placed a thorny branch on top of the loop. Then they had covered it with soil and grass.

“A crude trap…”

It was designed so that if stepped on or disturbed, the branch would spring upward.

It couldn’t be called an impressive trap. It was clearly visible, and if stepped on firmly, it might not spring up but simply be crushed. Even if it did spring up, it might not hit anyone.

It was truly an amateurish trap, one that would make anyone who fell for it look like a fool.

However, the potency of the poison was the issue. The poison’s power outweighed all those shortcomings and more. If even a slight brush with it meant death, then even the most rudimentary trap would be a different matter.

That’s why Sa Heung-sam was irritated.

These weren’t even sophisticated psychological traps; they were literally like a child’s pranks. Yet, three men had already died from these seemingly trivial traps.

Since everything was his responsibility, he couldn’t be in a good mood. The Extreme Poison Sect didn’t value human life much, but losing too many personnel would be problematic.

Moreover, the fact that they were wasting time on such crude traps was even more displeasing.

In the meantime, warriors who had returned from checking the path ahead shouted:

“There are three more similar traps up to ten zhang ahead!”

Longlao was delighted.

“Excellent! We can collect them all.”

Sa Heung-sam thought differently.

“There’s no need to meticulously check every obvious trap. If he’s laid so many traps, he surely hasn’t been able to flee far, so we should instead speed up our pursuit. We can check and collect the traps after we’ve caught him; it won’t be too late then.”

Longlao made a displeased expression.

“First, analyzing the traps will greatly help in understanding his characteristics.”

“If you insist, then Elder Long can stay behind and follow later.”

Longlao didn’t refuse.

“I’ll check the traps on the left path as well and then catch up.”

“Very well.”

Sa Heung-sam assigned five warriors to Longlao and led the remaining twelve warriors along with Relentless Dagger to continue forward.

“Tsk, tsk, people are so impatient. Even if the poisoned ones flee without riding horses, how far could they possibly go?”

Longlao clicked his tongue as he watched Sa Heung-sam’s back, then smiled at the remaining warriors.

“Well then, let’s get on with our work, shall we?”

The warriors’ faces turned ashen.

***

Read only at nineheavens.org

Translated by Nine Heavens!

https://discord.gg/XC9DTsTQ9Z

***

“Huff… huff.”

Jin Ja-gang, who had been hastily climbing the mountain, briefly turned to look back and caught his breath.

It was a mountain covered with dense forests.

He had hidden Yong-myeong, ridden back on the horse, and liberally used poison to set as many traps as possible, but he still didn’t feel at ease.

He was anxious because he didn’t know how much time he could buy.

After catching his breath, Jin Ja-gang continued searching the mountain for monkshood.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he spotted it.

“Ah!”

It was a short, green plant that looked similar to mugwort. Though the flowering season had passed and there were no blooms, he was familiar with the plant’s shape from his time in Hundred Flower Valley.

Jin Ja-gang quickly dug at the base.

A clumped root emerged. It was the highly poisonous part also known as aconite. To be sure, he chewed a bit of the leaf.

It was spicy and bitter.

It was definitely monkshood.

For an ordinary person, this would have been a dangerous action, but for Jin Ja-gang, it wasn’t particularly harmful.

‘I need to get back quickly.’

Jin Ja-gang muttered with a tingling mouth as he dug up several monkshood roots and tucked them into his clothes. Then he headed back down the way he had come.

Because his leg was impaired, the traces of Jin Ja-gang pushing through the underbrush remained clearly visible. This made it easy for others to pursue, but it also meant Jin Ja-gang wouldn’t lose his way back.

Jin Ja-gang came down to the place where he had hidden Yong-myeong and cleared away the grass.

Yong-myeong’s face appeared.

“I’ve brought the monkshood.”

Yong-myeong’s body was so stiff now that he could no longer speak. He could barely move, with only his eyelids quivering slightly. He couldn’t even move his fingers, and his breathing was so faint it was almost inaudible.

“Please let me know how much monkshood I should use.”

When Jin Ja-gang took out two roots, Yong-myeong signaled with his eyelids.

Jin Ja-gang looked around carefully. Being not far from the road, he was tense, not knowing when the pursuit team might arrive.

After confirming that no one was around, Jin Ja-gang put the monkshood in his mouth and chewed it.

Crunch, crunch.

His mouth felt numb and tingling from the potent poison.

His lips swelled up immediately.

Though Yong-myeong was immobilized by the pufferfish poison, his mind was perfectly clear, so he was dumbfounded seeing Jin Ja-gang’s actions.

Chewing the deadly poisonous monkshood with his mouth?

He could die just from swallowing the saliva!

Of course, Jin Ja-gang didn’t die. He was just grimacing from the extremely spicy and bitter taste.

Jin Ja-gang chewed both roots and dripped the juice into Yong-myeong’s mouth.

He had now done all he could.

He could only hope that the monkshood poison would properly react with the pufferfish poison to reduce its potency.

At that moment, he sensed presences from a distance.

“Keogh!”

The sound of someone’s dying breath.

“There’s a trap here!”

A shout followed.

Jin Ja-gang grew anxious. Since they were following the traces and traps he had left, they would reach this area soon.

Jin Ja-gang quickly whispered in Yong-myeong’s ear.

“I’ll buy more time. Stay still.”

After covering Yong-myeong with grass and fallen leaves, Jin Ja-gang quietly moved in the opposite direction from where the sounds were coming.

* * *

Longlao had taken the left path of the fork to collect the remaining poison.

The warriors were now much more cautious than before, carefully avoiding the poison, but just moments ago, one of them had been poisoned by brushing against some plants while entering a side path.

Jin Ja-gang had spread a considerable amount of poison.

Narrow passages were almost certainly covered with poison. Even knowing this, they still fell victim because the mountainous terrain and dense vegetation made it impossible to avoid all contact, no matter how careful they were.

But Longlao urged the warriors on.

“You’re doing well. You’re doing well.”

He didn’t care whether the warriors lived or died.

He was only interested in the poison. He had already collected several poison-coated branches and stems.

Though the quantities were minute, they were potent enough to easily kill a person, which pleased him greatly. It was almost like concentrated essence of poison.

At this point, Longlao was dying to get his hands on Jin Ja-gang.

‘I need to capture him and find out where in the Mixed Spring Ground he obtained this poison. If I get that poison, I’ll gain tremendous power!’

At the very least, he needed to capture him before he used up all his poison to get whatever remained.

‘What a waste. Such a waste.’

The poison randomly scattered all around seemed like an incredible waste to Longlao.

Just then, he heard the faint sound of something moving.

Rustle.

Longlao raised his hand to stop the warriors’ movements. He channeled his internal energy to his ears to enhance his hearing.

‘The sound of stepping on dry leaves!’

Rustle, rustle.

It wasn’t the footsteps of a wild animal. There was an additional sound, as if something was being dragged.

‘Didn’t they say he had a bad leg?’

Longlao’s excitement made his skin tingle.

‘It’s him! He wasn’t on the right path but the left!’

The more he thought about it, the more cunning this boy seemed.

Knowing that traces would inevitably be left because of his leg, he had spread poison on all the traces.

From the pursuit team’s perspective, every trace they had discovered so far had been a real trap, not a fake one, which was disconcerting.

This was probably the first time someone had worried about too many traces being left while pursuing someone.

No matter how clever Jin Ja-gang was, he was still only a ten-year-old child. He couldn’t create sophisticated psychological traps that delved into human psychology. Unable to compete in quality, he had no choice but to use quantity to buy time.

Longlao used hand signals to indicate the direction of the moving sound to the warriors. They slowly moved in that direction.

Longlao was also about to go toward the sound but stopped.

‘Wait a moment?’

Longlao had just called Jin Ja-gang cunning.

But making noise while escaping? Knowing they were here?

Somehow, that didn’t add up!

‘Come to think of it, where is the Vice Sect Leader of the Medicine King Sect?’