Ch. 18
Chapter 18: Endless Pursuit
Seeing the grave look on Chen Guan’s face, Luo Li immediately realized that this Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape—something she had never even heard of before—was far more serious than she had imagined.
She did not dare delay. Taking the waterskin, she repeatedly washed the back of her hand with clean water. But the more she scrubbed, the more her expression changed.
That red mark simply would not come off!
“Wh-what is going on?” Luo Li asked, startled and suspicious.
If ordinary blood got onto one’s skin, it would wash away with clean water after a few scrubs.
But this red mark remained stubbornly imprinted there no matter how many times she rubbed it. The skin on the back of her hand had already been scrubbed red, yet the mark itself would not fade at all.
“It’s nothing.” Chen Guan shook his head and withdrew his gaze.
“Hmph.” Luo Li shot him an irritated glare. “You nearly scared me to death.”
She seriously suspected that this fellow had deliberately taken the chance to get a little too close to her.
After all, a hot-blooded youth like him harboring crooked thoughts toward a beautiful young girl like herself was hardly something she had never seen in storybooks before.
She had originally wanted to throw him straight out of the carriage, but seeing that afterward he behaved himself and merely leaned in the corner with his eyes closed, resting quietly—
and seeing also that dawn was still some time away—she ultimately did not dare chase Chen Guan out.
At that moment, however, Chen Guan was carefully reading the entry for 【Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape】.
The farther down he read, the deeper his brow furrowed.
On the Demonic Fiend Bestiary, the base danger rating for a 【Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape】 was only three stars.
But for their current situation, its actual danger was more than ten times greater than that of the marsh demon wolves!
What made this sort of demon ape truly terrifying was not the savagery with which they attacked in groups, but the inescapable power of “grudge-parasitism” contained within their blood.
Killing them was possible, but one absolutely could not be touched by the blood released after their self-destruction.
Once stained by it, one would become infested by the resentment in their blood.
Though the afflicted person would feel no discomfort at all, an unremovable mark would be left behind upon the body.
That mark was like a guiding beacon, allowing every Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape within a thousand li to lock onto your location at any moment.
Its effect was simple: it issued an endless hunt decree.
In other words, from the instant that drop of blood touched Luo Li, they would be hunted without end by the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes all along this road.
If it had been a marsh demon wolf pack, then so long as one escaped their territorial range, the danger could be left behind completely.
But the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes were entirely different!
The very nature of these creatures was engraved with the word resentment. Simply put, they were creatures that held grudges to an extreme.
Once one offended them, it became a struggle that ended only in death. They would hunt you to the ends of the earth, until the seas ran dry and the rocks crumbled.
And most terrifying of all...
The mark on Luo Li’s body would gradually grow stronger with time. The stronger its scent became, the wider the range within which they could track her.
Chen Guan closed the system panel, leaned in close to Luo Li, and lightly smelled around her.
Sure enough, it was exactly as described in the Bestiary.
From this girl, he caught an extremely faint yet unmistakably clear scent of rotten peach.
Luo Li had been sitting with her eyes half-closed, pretending to rest, when she suddenly felt a warm breath touch her cheek. She snapped her eyes open.
A handsome, sunlit face was almost pressed against the tip of her nose.
“Ah—!!!”
Luo Li let out a shrill scream in fright, instinctively clutching her chest and shrinking into the far corner of the carriage like a startled rabbit, staring at him in terror.
“Wh-what are you trying to do?!”
Her scream immediately alarmed Luo Tong and the others outside.
A sharp “Whoa!” rang out as the carriage jerked to a sudden halt.
In the next instant, the curtain and the side window were both yanked open roughly. A whole array of strange-looking weapons, each gleaming with a cold, murderous light, was thrust at Chen Guan inside the carriage.
As if she had finally found support, Luo Li immediately rose, ready to escape from the carriage.
But Chen Guan seized her and pulled her back, pressing her down into the seat while barking in a low voice,
“Don’t get out!”
Li Fei’s face was so dark it looked ready to drip water. The spear in his hand pointed straight at Chen Guan’s throat as he roared,
“Chen Guan! What audacity! You dare murder the employer?!”
For an escort to kill the employer!
That was an absolute taboo anywhere!
Not only would the entire escort trade regard such a man as a mortal enemy and hunt him down for execution, every major dynasty’s authorities would also place him on the highest level of wanted lists.
“If you don’t want to die, then get out of the way and stop wasting time!”
Chen Guan did not even spare these threats a glance. He did not so much as turn his head back once, and instead spoke again to Luo Li.
“Smell yourself! Smell the scent on your own body!”
“The scent?!” Luo Li froze.
Though she found this man greedy and detestable, she also knew that he was not some lecher.
Otherwise, when she had fainted from hunger on the road, if he had truly wanted to do something to her, she would not have been able to resist at all.
She did not delay. Immediately, she raised her wrist and brought it to her nose for a light sniff.
The instant she did, her face changed.
It was exactly as Chen Guan had said. Aside from the faint natural fragrance of her own body, there was now a scent that clearly did not belong to her.
It was the smell of a peach ripened to the point of turning rotten—sweet and cloying, yet carrying a strange, sour corruption beneath it.
At once, panic seized her, and she hurriedly asked,
“Th-this scent... what does it mean?”
“This is the mark I spoke of earlier,” Chen Guan said flatly.
“Anyone stained by the self-destructed blood of a Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape will be left with a grudge-mark on the body, and it emits this unique scent.”
“Now, every Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape within a thousand li can lock onto your position through that scent. They’ll hunt you without end, like sharks catching the smell of blood.”
“Ah—!”
Luo Li’s lovely face went pale.
Outside the carriage, Luo Tong and the others were also taken aback.
The way Chen Guan described it was detailed and methodical, with every feature clearly laid out. This grudge-mark did not sound like something he had invented on the spot...
Yet at that very moment, Liu Shuo suddenly burst into loud laughter.
“Hahaha!”
“I say, kid, if you’re going to fool people, could you at least find a more convincing excuse? There should be a limit even to putting on an act!”
“What Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape? What hunt decree? You make it sound real enough!”
“We’ve walked the escort road for decades. If we haven’t seen a thousand demons and fiends, then we’ve seen at least eight hundred. But we’ve never once heard of any Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape. If you’re going to fabricate a reason, at least come up with one that can stand on its own!”
Li Fei remembered the matter from earlier and, emboldened now, forced himself to echo the sentiment.
“That’s right.”
“If it were really as sinister as you say, then no one in the escort trade would still be alive to work it!”
“Which one of us here hasn’t spent more than twenty years on the escort road?”
“We may not have crossed the Qingcang Mountains a hundred times, but at least eighty. And never once have we heard of any damned ‘Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape’...”
Before he could finish, the killing intent around Chen Guan suddenly spread outward. In an instant he appeared beside Li Fei, clamped one hand around his throat, spun, and slammed him directly against a roadside tree.
Bang!
Li Fei only felt his vision blur, and in the next instant his entire back went numb.
“Chen Guan, what are you trying to do?!”
Luo Tong’s great saber gave a sharp tremor as he flashed forward and confronted Chen Guan head-on, his voice thunderous with accusation.
The others also raised their weapons and closed in tightly around Chen Guan.
None of them had expected that this fellow would be so bold as to resort to violence directly. Where would that leave the face of the older generation?
For a moment, killing intent filled the air, and everything stood on the edge of eruption!