Ch. 20
Chapter 20: Have You Decided to Go with Them, or with Me?
Inside the carriage, Luo Li frowned when she heard those words.
True escorts should not have been so mindlessly obstinate.
Yet these people had been targeting Chen Guan without pause, which was nothing like the conduct of veteran escorts who had walked the escort road for decades.
After thinking it over, she pushed the doubt aside again. She was only the employer, not an escort. The internal affairs of escorts were not hers to manage.
Then, through the crack in the carriage window, she looked at Chen Guan outside and silently asked in her heart:
Will you really escort me all the way to Great Zhou?
Chen Guan was busy observing the movement outside and did not notice her gaze.
Just then, his brows tightened.
That invisible sense of danger he had felt earlier was drawing closer and closer.
The mountain forest was silent. Not a single sound stirred.
They were now less than ten li from Heishi Town, yet not a single demon ape had caught up to them.
That calm was far too abnormal.
Years of escort-road experience told him—
they had already been surrounded!
Only when a group of predators powerful enough had entered an area would all those scattered lesser demons and fiends hide in their nests and not dare emerge.
Only then would the insects and birds around them fall utterly silent, not daring to make the slightest cry.
The closer they came to Heishi Town, the clearer the staggered rows of black-tiled houses below the mountain became. They could even see a few wisps of cooking smoke rising in the noonday sunlight, making the place look especially peaceful.
Yet Chen Guan’s heart only sank further.
It was too quiet.
This place was already at the edge of the Qingcang Mountains. The deeper one went, the higher and more dangerous the terrain became, and that was where the high-tier demons and monsters gathered.
Chen Guan suddenly yanked hard on the reins, and a spark of insight flashed through his mind.
At last, he understood why those Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes had not caught up with them.
Demon apes were good at climbing and preferred to strike from above.
It was not that they could not catch up.
They were waiting—waiting for the convoy to enter the perfect killing ground.
And that little town below the mountain, set in the mountain ravine, was precisely such a natural ambush site.
“Hyah!”
Seeing Luo Tong at the head of the convoy leading the carriages onto that narrow mountain path descending toward the town, Chen Guan did not hesitate in the slightest. He drove both legs hard into his horse’s flanks, and with a shrill neigh, the beast lunged to the very front of the convoy.
“Miss Luo, you cannot go down the mountain. It is dangerous below.”
Chen Guan turned his horse broadside across the path and said, “We have to change routes immediately, bypass Heishi Town, and leave the Qingcang Mountains.”
“Hiiih—!”
Luo Tong jerked hard on the reins, and the fiery horse beneath him reared up at once with a terrified scream.
The entire convoy was forced into a sudden stop. The wheels scraped sharply against the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Once everyone had steadied themselves, their weathered old faces all darkened at once.
Liu Shuo stared at Chen Guan, and for some reason, the fear that had been in his eyes earlier was gone. He let out a cold, mocking laugh.
“So, brat, you really think you’re something, do you?”
The riding whip in his hand pointed straight at Chen Guan’s nose as he spoke, flecks of spit flying.
“We’ve put up with you for long enough on this road! First you say we have to go, then you say we have to stop, and now that we’ve reached the very gates of the place, you tell us we aren’t going in?”
“Who is the chief escort here? You or me?”
The surrounding escort masters also closed in with hostile looks, and Li Fei, after glancing over the situation, frowned slightly and rested a hand on the hilt of his saber.
“Do you even know how much extra distance it would add if we detour on the way to Great Zhou?”
Li Fei let out a cold laugh, clearly not taking to heart what had happened earlier when Chen Guan had pinned him against the tree.
“Well then, let me tell you!”
“This route runs straight from south to north. We only need to pass through these eight hundred li of mountains, enter human territory, cross three commanderies, pass over one stretch of marshland, and enter Great Zhou. It is a straight line, with a total distance of no more than two thousand li.”
“But if we leave the Qingcang Mountains by detouring around them, then the entire way will still be mountain terrain. Setting danger aside, the distance alone will increase by at least double.”
Luo Li was also leaning at the window, pinching her nose and watching Chen Guan. Clearly, the smell on her body had already become enough to choke her.
Chen Guan did not look at the others at all. Instead, he looked only at Luo Tong, that so-called old hand of the jianghu.
“Though the old man was overbearing and deeply dissatisfied with him, he had at least always kept faith with the rules in his own heart, and had not let himself be wholly swayed by the others.”
“For a man who had walked the escort road for fifty years to be led to his death like this at the very end would truly be a pity.”
At the same time, however, this made Chen Guan fully realize something.
This so-called “escort seniority,” in the eyes of these people, had long since lost its original meaning.
It was no longer experience used to predict danger.
It had become a staff of authority with which they put on airs, pressed down on others, and established their right to speak.
To them, face mattered more than the employer’s life, and more than danger they could not see or touch.
Rather than calmly analyzing the situation, they cared more about whether this brat had stolen their limelight and damaged their dignity.
Otherwise, Li Fei and Liu Shuo alone could never have swayed the decisions of the others so thoroughly.
Chen Guan was no saint, nor was he some wandering hero.
As an escort, he had already done enough to satisfy his conscience merely by speaking a warning.
Good words cannot save a ghost bent on dying. Since they insisted on charging headlong toward the gates of the netherworld, then let them go.
“I have said all I need to say. Life and death rest with fate!”
Throwing out that final sentence, Chen Guan could not be bothered wasting another word on them. He turned his horse at once and rode directly up beside Luo Li’s carriage, looking down at her from above.
“Miss Luo, get out of the carriage and come with me.”
Luo Li looked down through the window toward the few rising trails of smoke below the mountain. The scene looked peaceful enough.
Then she lowered her head and smelled herself. That sour, rotten-peach stench was now so strong that merely moving a little made the entire carriage nearly unbearable to sit in.
And what lay ahead was very likely a long, difficult journey.
In the end, she still could not help saying, “Chen Guan... can I at least go into that town and rest a little first? Take a bath?”
Seeing that Luo Li was hesitating, Liu Shuo immediately moved up with a fawning eagerness and stepped between Chen Guan and the carriage, his face full of disdain.
“I ask you, why are you making such a fuss? You’ve been acting strange and spooky all along the road. Who exactly are you trying to frighten?”
Then he turned and put on an ingratiating smile toward Luo Li. “Miss Luo, don’t listen to his nonsense.”
“If you think he’s unreliable, then just send him packing. With us brothers escorting you, we guarantee we’ll get you home in complete comfort!”
Chen Guan did not even lift an eyelid, because by now he was certain of it. This man had a problem. He was deliberately obstructing any attempt to make a detour.
At once, Chen Guan asked Luo Li directly,
“Have you decided to go with them, or with me?”
Luo Li looked at Luo Tong and the others, then back at Chen Guan, then smelled herself once more.
That single breath nearly made her vomit. Gritting her teeth, she said as tactfully as she could,
“Chen Guan... I only need half a ke. I really can’t endure much more.”
The corner of Chen Guan’s mouth twitched.
A bath? If you keep delaying, your life will be gone.
He could not be bothered wasting more words on this foolish girl.
He directly reached into his robes and pulled out a palm-sized little booklet, its edges already curled from being thumbed through too many times.
Flip, flip, flip—
After turning a few pages, he became like some old village schoolteacher and, expressionless, recited aloud,
“《Chen Guan’s Escort Rules》, Route Contract Section, Clause Two Hundred and Seventy-Three, Article Seventeen: During the course of an escort, Party B, the Employer, must unconditionally obey the route arrangements made by Party A, Escort Chen Guan.”
“If this clause is violated, Party A has the right to terminate the employment directly, and no deposit or advance payment will be refunded.”