Chapter 40 : Chapter 40
Chapter 40: He Seemed to Be Unnaturally at Odds with the Species Known as “Old Men”
That was not to say that, once you discovered your opponent was some untouchable powerholder, you could simply dust off your backside and walk away.
Quite the opposite. If they failed to keep Luo Li safe, then once the great figure behind her learned of it, not only would he pursue them for dereliction of duty, he would likely not spare their families either!
The moment Luo Tong heard this arrangement, joy rose in his heart.
Yet before he could open his mouth and agree—
Chen Guan said gravely,
“Here’s how it will be. Next, I’ll take a small path to the edge of the Ten Directions Marsh and escort you out first.”
“Once you’re out, go straight to Wangbei City.”
“Wait for me there for three days. After I resolve the mark on her body, I’ll come meet up with you.”
“If, after three days, we still haven’t arrived, then keep moving. Go straight to Shangjing City in Great Zhou.”
“Each time you pass through a city along the way, leave our agreed marker and message at the largest escort inn in town.”
“If we happen to get ahead of you, I’ll leave word the same way, so we can reconnect.”
“This...!”
Luo Tong’s whole body jolted. In an instant, he understood the weight of what lay behind Chen Guan’s arrangements.
The danger ahead was not merely the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes, which might appear again at any moment. The even greater danger lay in the deathsworn hidden in the shadows.
And more terrifying than the deathsworn were the lofty... nobles standing behind them.
Those nobles were the kind of people that Escorts like them, who scratched out a living on the edge of the blade, could never afford to offend.
If an ordinary escort mission failed, at most they would lose their own lives.
But this escort...
If they continued onward, then no matter how it ended, they would be drawn into an even deeper whirlpool.
What would be lost would not just be their own lives, but the heads of their relatives and their entire households!
What Chen Guan was doing was forcing them out of that mire.
If the nobles behind all this gave up the pursuit, then Chen Guan would naturally meet back up with the main group.
But if deathsworn continued to hound them all the way, then Chen Guan alone would shoulder every bit of that danger and killing intent himself...
At that thought, Luo Tong’s old eyes reddened at once, and even the white beard on his chin trembled violently with emotion.
How could such a debt ever be repaid?
“Uh...!”
Chen Guan was caught off guard by the old man’s on-the-verge-of-tears expression.
Then he understood. The old fellow had obviously mistaken him for some self-sacrificing heroic champion.
Chen Guan rolled his eyes inwardly.
I just don’t want you people hanging around me and dragging me down!
If not for wanting to understand why the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes had come out of the Ten Directions Marsh, he would have fallen out with this lot ages ago, after what happened with Li Fei.
“Escort Master Chen...”
Luo Tong still wanted to say something heartfelt enough to move heaven and earth, but Chen Guan impatiently waved him off.
“That’s enough! We don’t have that much time to waste here. Go explain things clearly to the other three. We leave at once!”
Luo Tong stood where he was in silence for several seconds.
In the end, he still forced all those unnecessary emotions back down and gave Chen Guan a heavy cupped-fist salute.
“Great kindness needs no words of thanks!”
Having said that, he turned at once, called Liu Shuo and Zhao Ren over, and carefully explained Chen Guan’s decision and the deeper meaning behind it.
After hearing it, the three men first broke out in cold sweat from shock. Then the lingering fear in their hearts turned into deep gratitude as they all looked toward Chen Guan.
Men in the escort trade risked their lives in wind and rain. What they feared most was not dying, but dying and leaving no one behind to care for those at home, ending with no line to follow after them.
On this road of blood and steel, who among them was not wagering his life so that the wives, children, and old parents back home might live better?
Who would gamble tomorrow with his life purely for the thrill of it?
Only now did they fully understand.
Chen Guan might have seemed cold and heartless all along the way, but in truth he had always been practicing his own kind of jianghu righteousness.
If he had truly been cold-blooded, then with his ability, he could have taken Luo Li and left them all to die without a backward glance.
Yet he had not done that. Not only had he personally killed more Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes than all of them put together, he had also led them in their desperate escape the whole way.
And now he was even taking everything onto his own shoulders.
Such pure jianghu righteousness was rare in this chaotic age.
Liu Shuo, the other three, and even Luo Tong all felt that bond of jianghu brotherhood at the same time.
Without another word, they strode quickly over to Chen Guan and let their knees go weak, as though preparing to kneel and offer the great salute one gives to an elder or senior.
But before their knees could touch the ground, Chen Guan hauled them back upright in one motion.
“That’s enough, brothers. We don’t have that much time to waste.”
Frowning, Chen Guan said, “I’ll get you out first. Whatever there is to say, save it for after we meet up again.”
At the side, Luo Li looked completely bewildered.
Why were they suddenly kneeling?
And what did he mean, get them out?
What did he mean, meet up again?
But Chen Guan clearly had no intention of explaining any of it to her.
At this point, every time he looked at the dead girl, he felt irritation rising in his head.
She had thoroughly dragged him into the mud.
No, to be more precise, it was her dead grandfather who had dragged him into the mud.
He was beginning to feel that this year, he seemed to be somehow at odds with the entire species known as “old men”!
Every time he ran into one, something unlucky happened.
...
Their mounts from earlier were gone, so no one had a means of transport now.
Thus Liu Shuo volunteered to walk point with longsword in hand, while Chen Guan and Luo Tong stayed in the middle to guard Luo Li, and Zhao Ren brought up the rear.
The sparse grassland that had stretched endlessly before was now replaced by a thick reed marsh.
For whatever reason, the reeds here had grown so densely that not even wind could slip through. Once a person walked inside, the very air seemed to vanish, and a sense of suffocation followed close behind.
Before long, Luo Li was beginning to feel unbearable discomfort.
She kept turning back to look at Chen Guan, as though wanting to say something, yet every time the words reached her lips, she swallowed them back.
In the end, she could not hold out any longer. Her pretty face was flushed red with restraint as she leaned close and asked in a low voice,
“Brother Chen... could you carry me on your back?”
At that, Chen Guan stopped in his tracks, stared at her from head to toe, rolled his eyes, and answered without the slightest courtesy,
“Are you three years old?”
You want me to carry you?
He had grown this big without ever enjoying that kind of treatment himself.
Of course, he only thought that to himself and did not say it aloud. He merely felt that this little girl had clearly been spoiled rotten by her family.
Walk a few steps and she already wanted someone to carry her. Did she think she was still some little baby?
Luo Li’s cold, proud face turned redder and redder, until it seemed ready to drip blood.
It was not that she was truly being delicate. The reeds on both sides really were too tall and too dense.
She was not very tall to begin with. Walking among them, all she could breathe was that damp, rotting smell. It not only made her nauseous, it was so stifling that every step felt like an eternity.
At last, biting down hard on her lip, she added in a small voice,
“I... I can pay extra.”
“Pay extra?” Chen Guan glanced at her again, then refused without the slightest hesitation. “No.”
When he made an employer add money, it was not truly because he cared about that bit of silver. It was to trigger the system reward.
And that kind of reward only worked if he was the one to propose it first. If someone else offered extra on their own, it was useless.
Luo Li’s face flushed red again and again.
But faced with a man this utterly immune to charm, she could only endure that unbearable discomfort, secretly circulate her true qi, breathe in great gulps, and continue trudging behind Luo Tong with difficulty.
Fortunately, they did not encounter any especially formidable demons or fiends along the way.
The Ten Directions Marsh was certainly perilous, but not every demon and fiend there actively attacked humans. Especially creatures like the Ironclad Demon Ox from earlier—herbivorous fiendish beasts.
As long as you did not provoke them, they could not be bothered with passing living things.
Of course, that was only relatively speaking, in terms of the outer edge of the Ten Directions Marsh.
Even if they went another thousand li deeper from where they stood now, it would still only count as the very edge of the marsh, like the shoreline of a vast sea. Strictly speaking, they had not even truly entered the Ten Directions Marsh yet.
The true Ten Directions Marsh stretched across the borders of ten nations, vast and without limit. The Great Yun Dynasty itself was merely one of the ten nations built around its perimeter.
As for what lay at the very center of the Ten Directions Marsh, no one knew.
After traveling through the reeds for half a day, the view before them suddenly opened up, and a continuous stretch of forested hills appeared ahead.
At once, a trace of delight appeared on Luo Li’s cool face.
“We finally made it out.”