Ch. 27
Chapter 27: What He Could Not Make Sense Of
Chen Guan glanced toward Li Fei and Liu Shuo in the crowd. Though the two old fellows were wounded, their injuries were not especially serious.
That left him a little puzzled.
Originally, those two had mocked him from beginning to end, deliberately picking fights and stalling for time. They had obviously seemed suspicious.
But after this battle...
He was no longer so certain.
Because both men had fought desperately just now, without the slightest restraint and without holding back in the least.
Even so, Chen Guan was not so petty as to keep harping on earlier unpleasantness forever. He merely waved a hand in dismissal.
Of course, that did not mean he would let his guard down.
His instincts had never once been wrong.
“Forget it.” Chen Guan waved his hand again and suppressed that concern.
Then he looked toward Luo Tong. These seven deaths would count as the harshest lesson the man could possibly have learned.
When Luo Li saw those old fellows—men who usually looked down on everyone from on high—actually apologizing so solemnly to someone decades younger than themselves, she unexpectedly felt the first faint stirrings of approval toward Chen Guan.
“But don’t get too happy too soon.”
With that single line, Chen Guan sent everyone’s hearts straight back into their throats.
“We’re not out of danger yet. If anything, you could say that the real danger... is only just beginning.”
“What do you mean by that?” Luo Tong’s face tightened as he asked in a grave voice.
Chen Guan did not hide anything. He directly recounted, exactly as recorded in the 《Demonic Fiend Bestiary》, the habits of the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes, their danger level, and the terrifying coordinated assault methods they employed.
Once the others heard it, their hearts sank all over again.
So that was it!
Only now did they fully understand why Chen Guan had refused from the very beginning to let them linger, and had kept urging them to detour and keep moving.
Now they realized that the deaths of those seven brothers had been entirely of their own making!
Most of all, Liu Shuo and Li Fei clenched their fists so hard that their nails dug deep into their palms, and blood ran down through their fingers without either man even noticing.
Liu Shuo had always possessed a foul habit of loving to outdo others and throw around his seniority. Never had he imagined that this time it would lead to such a terrible price.
He had been the very first one to jump out and oppose Chen Guan. If, when they first encountered that Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape, he had only been a little more cautious—
if he had not insisted on competing with Chen Guan and had called a halt in time—
then none of the disasters that followed would ever have happened!
Thump!
Li Fei and Liu Shuo could no longer bear the guilt in their hearts. Their knees gave way and they dropped heavily to the ground. Bowing toward Luo Li—and, in a sense, toward Chen Guan as well—they struck their foreheads once against the earth and spoke in hoarse voices.
“We are sorry, Young Miss! It was we... who brought calamity upon everyone!”
The sudden act startled Luo Li so badly that she did not dare say a word. Instinctively, she looked toward Chen Guan.
“That’s enough.”
Chen Guan waved a hand, signaling them to rise.
He had no intention of wasting time on this matter.
Sweeping his eyes over the surroundings, Chen Guan then issued the next order.
“We rest here in place. We depart tomorrow morning.”
“What?!” Luo Li froze and blurted out, “Shouldn’t we take advantage of the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes’ retreat and quickly find a chance to detour around them? Why are we staying here to wait for death instead?”
Chen Guan gave the girl a look.
Originally, he had assumed she was merely a pampered young miss who had never seen the world and was a bit delicate.
But over the past two days, he had gradually begun to feel that this girl’s background might not be simple at all.
Today’s battle alone was enough to show him that much.
An ordinary wealthy young lady, after seeing such a bloody scene, would not merely be frightened and retch. Most would have fainted long ago, or else broken down completely.
Yet Luo Li had only been briefly unwell. Very quickly, she had adapted on her own to the bloodshed and the dangerous situation.
She had even still had enough presence of mind to ask him to save others.
That sort of composure, adaptability, and mental resilience was not something an ordinary wealthy household could cultivate.
And besides, this little girl was only sixteen, yet she already possessed the strength of the middle stage of the Xiantian Realm. Her martial talent was plainly extraordinary.
Yet she possessed no combat techniques whatsoever, and did not even understand the most basic art of mobilizing true qi.
That made her even harder for him to read.
Withdrawing his gaze, Chen Guan still answered calmly,
“The Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes have a particular habit. They treat every battle as both a lesson and a challenge.”
“Once they are defeated, they immediately retreat, summarize their experience, refine their tactics, and choose a battlefield more suited to themselves.”
“So tonight, they will not come here again.”
“This...!”
Hearing that, not one of them felt the slightest joy. Instead, every last brow tightened even further.
The unspoken meaning of those words was obvious.
The next time the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes came, they would return with tactics and force upgraded once again.
Only by using tonight’s time to recover to their best condition did they stand any chance. Otherwise, when the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes attacked again, these battered and diminished survivors would have no power to resist at all.
At the same time, the way they looked at Chen Guan changed further, becoming even more respectful and wary.
How could he know so much about a kind of demonic fiend none of them had ever even heard of?
Just who exactly was this brat?
No one raised the slightest objection. They all cupped their fists and accepted the order, then began cleaning the battlefield, treating wounds, and preparing for the next desperate struggle, whenever it might arrive.
Once the others had withdrawn, Luo Li walked over to Chen Guan’s side. After hesitating for quite some time, she finally opened her mouth with unusual care.
“Brother... Brother Chen, is there really no other way to avoid the pursuit of these Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes?”
Chen Guan withdrew his gaze from the cliff below, turned around, and cast her a somewhat surprised glance.
What was this? Had the sun risen in the west today?
How had this little girl suddenly become so polite?
He muttered that inwardly to himself, then shook his head.
“Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes are themselves aberrations even among demonic fiends. Their danger rating ranks among the highest in all demonkind. If something of this level could simply be avoided whenever one wished, then the world would have been peaceful long ago.”
The moment she heard that, guilt spread across Luo Li’s face.
Today’s battle weighed upon her heart like a great boulder.
If attacks of that sort came a few more times—or worse, if they grew stronger—then the ending for these escort masters fighting to protect her, and even for Chen Guan, would be beyond question.
They would all be wiped out.
She remained silent for a moment, as though gathering courage, then asked tentatively again,
“Brother Chen, since you understand these Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes so well, have you... perhaps heard of some special method that could remove the tracking mark from my body?”
In truth, that was also the question most baffling Chen Guan at this very moment.
In this world overrun by demons and monsters, fiends capable of planting marks on people were by no means rare.
For example, there was the “Malediction Demon Owl,” a creature that all escorts in the trade turned pale at the mention of.
Once one provoked it, it would brand the victim with a vicious curse.
That curse would make a person unable to sleep day or night, trapping them in constant terror until their vital essence was exhausted and they died.
Yet even a curse that seemed so unsolvable had, through centuries of experimentation and summary by escort masters, long since yielded a method of breaking it—
simply knock the cursed person unconscious and force him to sleep.
That kind of curse would break automatically once its victim fell asleep.
But as for the Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape’s mark of resentment, the reason no effective method of removing it had ever been passed down was actually quite simple at its core—
the Qingcang Mountains were not supposed to be a habitat for Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes at all!
Escort masters had never before encountered such a bizarre demonic fiend in this region. Naturally, there could be no discussion of any strategy for dealing with it.
And that was precisely the point Chen Guan had been unable to make sense of no matter how much he thought.
“The place where these Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes appeared is far too strange.”