Chapter 88: Going Down the Mountain

“Oh, I’ll go.” After hearing the boy’s message, Master put down his wine bowl, wiped his mouth, and casually replied to the boy.

After the boy finished speaking, he turned and left. It was doubtful whether he had heard my master’s words or not. He was really arrogant.

Da Xing looked at the master with some concern, but the master just gave him a sideways glance and then stood up with a little bit of a drunken air, saying, “What are you worried about? If you haven’t been punished or called to do anything special, it means that the master has decided not to hold a grudge against you.”

“Whether or not the great shaman Buden will take issue with me and punish me, I don’t care… Old Jiang, I’m just worried… no matter what the outcome, you mustn’t get excited. You’ve never been a softie in your life… but when the great shaman Buden was young, he was a strong and stubborn man who wouldn’t be swayed by ten oxen. You…” Da Xing Da Wu inevitably rambled on a bit when he talked about this.

But the master just looked at him with a smile and didn’t answer. It wasn’t until he saw that Da Xing Da Wu had no intention of stopping that he patted him on the shoulder and said, “You and I have been friends for so many years. Do you think I’m going to die here? Don’t worry.”

While the master was talking, I also stood up, drank a few mouthfuls of hot soup to relieve the hangover, patted my clothes, and was ready to go with the master.

I didn’t want to go, but my master pushed me down to the table and said, “Chengyi, I’ll go alone this time.”

“Master…” I didn’t understand what my master meant.

But Master looked at me with a kind of unyielding persistence in his eyes, then he didn’t say anything, just patted my shoulder and turned and left.

I looked at the back of my master as he left, and I didn’t move for a long time. Da Xing, the great shaman, urged me, “Chengyi, are you really not going?”

I took a sip of wine, put down the bowl, picked up a chopstick, and stuffed it into my mouth before saying, “No need to go. Master has already made up his mind. He wants to go see the Budoan shaman alone. I think there are some things he can’t say to me in front of me. He doesn’t want me to know.”

“You know? When did he say something like that to you?” Da Xing Da Wu felt strange. Perhaps he couldn’t understand the tacit understanding between me and my master.

“Haha, I just know. Daxing, let’s get drunk together.” As I said this, I raised my wine bowl. I felt strangely calm, a calm that told me that my master would not be in any danger.

But in this peaceful calm, I was sad… I didn’t know why I was sad, and I didn’t say anything, I just wanted to get drunk.

I said I was going to get drunk, and I really did. The rice wine was sweet and mild, but the aftertaste was incredibly long… My last memory of the drunkenness was of me collapsing in the lobby, and after that I knew nothing.

The next day, I was awakened by my master gently wiping my face… I opened my eyes and saw my master’s calm and gentle gaze, and a warm towel was wiping my face, which also took away the heaviness of my drunken brain.

I said that my master rarely showed such tenderness. I often wondered if his tenderness only came when it was late at night and I was asleep, and if he only showed it to me then.

But today, he was so gentle again that I suspected I was hallucinating from the alcohol.

“Are you awake?” Seeing that I had opened my eyes, the master put a handkerchief on my face, and the loving look in his eyes also subsided, becoming calm… It’s always so awkward.

I complained to myself, then grabbed the handkerchief and wiped my face. I sat up with a heavy head. After this movement, I knew that what I had just seen was indeed real. I also didn’t know what Master had said to the great witch yesterday, or what kind of stimulation he had received, that would suddenly make him like this?

“Master, how did the conversation with the Budoan Shaman go yesterday?” In fact, I really wanted to know why the Master was like this, but when the words came to my lips, they became this.

There were some details that I couldn’t say, and there was no way to ask… And the long years of getting along with my master also determined that I would not pursue any topics of warmth between me and my master. That’s it. I missed the possibility of knowing some things in advance… But how could a person at that time see the future clearly?

“The result is good. He will let Qiangzi go down the mountain… and because of Qiangzi, he will send someone to escort us all the way to the Snow Mountain Range.” Master was standing by the window, filling his pipe at the time, and his answer was very direct, but I couldn’t tell from his face that he was happy about it, as if it was all a matter of course.

“Really? Master, is there a price we have to pay? Is this a good thing?” But I was very excited. What could be better than this outcome? After leaving the bamboo hut, my master and I had been on the run for more than a month. This time, not only could we achieve our original goal, but we could also escape this kind of life… how could I not be happy?

“Why would I lie to you? It’s true. We don’t have to pay anything either?” The sun’s rays hit the side of the Master’s face as he stood by the window, making his outline a little blurry… I squinted to see his expression.

“So what exactly did you say to the great shaman Budaen? How could he offer such conditions?” I was filled with doubts, not knowing why.

“Nothing much, just analyzing the situation for him… As for protecting us all the way to the Snow Mountain, it’s because Qiangzi is going to be following us, so naturally we have to protect his safety.” Smoke came out of Master’s nose and mouth, and his tone became more and more flat, as if this was just an extremely ordinary matter.

However, from my brief contact with the Budeen, it is definitely not an easy task. The Budeen has a strange temper… and the Daxing also commented that the Budeen is a strong and stubborn person.

Perhaps seeing that I still wanted to ask more, the master added, “Anyway, you don’t have to think too much… This time, the people from the eighteen ancestral villages will escort us to the meeting point of the Snow Mountain clan. At that time, we will wait for Qiangzi there… No one knows how powerful the Snow Mountain clan is except for the people of the Snow Mountain clan themselves. Because it is unknown, no one dares to provoke the Snow Mountain clan. If we wait for Qiangzi at the meeting point of the Snow Mountain clan, we will have a lot less to worry about.”

“So Qiangzi won’t be traveling with us?” I asked subconsciously.

“Well… it’s good for him to have some more time.” The master ended the conversation with these simple words, and then he started talking nonsense with me… After we had breakfast at the Daxing Da Wu, someone came to the door and said that they were going to escort us down the mountain.

No matter what form a martial art school takes, whether it is an orthodox school, a clan, or even a family, you should never underestimate the things they hide.

When my master and I were taken down the mountain, we were still blindfolded… but it was obvious that we weren’t taking the same route we had taken to get up the mountain… I could even tell from the unique smell of the underground that we had been traveling underground the whole time.

We didn’t know the exact time, but we had a general idea of the time. In any case, I think we had been traveling underground for at least five hours, and that was still faster than walking.

I was just thinking, if these underground secret passages were not naturally formed like the secret passages of Snake Gate… if they were artificial, then what a huge project it would be? And how many generations of people would have been involved.

My master and I didn’t know where the people who took us down the mountain would take us, or where we would end up. Because we didn’t rush up the mountain, and we stopped and rested often… when we finally got down the mountain and the blindfold was removed, it was early morning again. In other words, we had been walking for a day and a night before we got down the mountain, and the place where we ended up was no longer the small town, but a strange, seemingly uninhabited wilderness.

The three or four escorts who had brought us down the mountain stopped here with their horses. One of them, who spoke a little Chinese and had chatted with us occasionally on the way, said to us, “This should be a safe place. At least no one will find you here and cause trouble… You wait here for a while. Your rescuers will come for you soon.”

After that, these people handed me and my master our luggage… and they didn’t even leave a word of farewell, they just took their horses and left.

This made me feel that the actions of the eighteen generations of the ancestor gods were really “mysterious” without a beginning or an end.

There was no other way, so my master and I could only wait at the foot of the mountain, where the bushes and weeds were thick.

People, are they here?