Chapter 125:

Chapter 125:

Escape (3)

While Mu-yul was busy playing with the monkey.

The other four had already gathered at the agreed-upon location.

“Why isn’t Mu-yul here?”

“Did he get lost?”

“Where would he get lost? He just needs to use qinggong to reach the visible mountain peak.”

“Hmm. Maybe he didn’t get lost, but forgot he was supposed to return?”

“......”

“......”

Everyone fell silent and looked at each other, finding Mu-gyeong’s hypothesis too plausible.

“Hahaha. No way, even so, that couldn’t be the case.”

Except for Cheongsu Dojang.

For some reason, everyone felt more certain after hearing Cheongsu Dojang’s words.

It was lucky that Mu-jin ran into him while returning at the promised time; otherwise, Cheongsu Dojang might have also been distracted, admiring flowers and trees.

“It’s definitely that.”

“Ugh. From tomorrow, I’ll have to take him with me.”

“Then what about Cheongsu Dojang?”

“Cheongsu Dojang, you should take him with you, Mu-gyeong.”

“Let’s decide that later, we need to find Mu-yul first, right?”

“Yeah. Let’s move.”

After deciding, the four moved in the direction Mu-yul had originally headed.

Mu-jin tracked the traces Mu-yul had left behind, continuously blowing his whistle along the way.

If they got close enough, Mu-yul might hear the whistle and come looking for them.

How long had they been scouring the mountains like that?

As the sky began to be painted with crimson hues of sunset, Mu-jin worried that the surroundings would soon turn dark due to the mountains’ nature of bringing nightfall early.

“!!!”

He felt a faint clash of qi from somewhere.

Mu-jin, feeling uneasy, dashed in the direction of the clash of qi.

As they started to get closer, Cheongsu Dojang, Mu-gyeong, and Mu-gung also sensed the anomaly and their faces turned urgent.

What they saw as they ran at full speed using qinggong.

“...Why is he fighting a wild boar?”

“...Look over there, isn’t the monkey fighting too?”

It was an undeniably bizarre scene.

However, the strangest thing wasn’t that he was fighting a wild boar, nor that the monkey was also fighting alongside him.

“Why are they so in sync...”

The most baffling thing was that Mu-yul and the monkey’s coordination was impeccable.

They demonstrated perfect harmony as if they were one entity.

It wasn’t just that they alternated positions or executed well-coordinated attacks.

Both the monkey, an animal, and Mu-yul, who was close to being an animal himself, moved based on instinct rather than structured coordination, yet they somehow worked together seamlessly.

Moreover,

“The monkey seems to be mimicking Mu-yul’s moves?”

The monkey clumsily imitated Mu-yul, trying to perform Crane Fist, Snake Fist, and Leopard Fist.

“Then what Mu-yul is doing must be Monkey Fist?”

Mu-yul was also occasionally mimicking the monkey’s movements.

‘If this continues, the final form of the Shaolin Five Fists might change from Dragon Fist to Monkey Fist.’

For a brief moment, an idle thought crossed his mind.

“Let’s go. Mu-yul seems to be getting tired.”

With Mu-jin in the lead, the four who joined belatedly charged into the battlefield.

He wasn’t sure when the fight started, but Mu-yul, whose inner strength was waning, was gradually slowing down.

Whoosh!

Mu-jin, using his extreme Fast Ascent Step, tore through the foliage on the ground as he rushed forward.

In an instant, Mu-jin reached the battlefield and, channeling his inner strength, shouted.

“Move!!”

Even while busy fighting the wild boar, both Mu-yul and the monkey reacted to the shout and stepped aside.

A path to the wild boar quickly opened, and Mu-jin’s fist struck the boar’s forehead directly.

Bang!

At that moment, a thunderous sound akin to an explosion echoed, and the massive body of the boar was flung backward, unable to withstand the impact.

The flower bed, unable to bear the weight of the boar, had furrows like those plowed by an ox.

It was overwhelming violence.

If this had been an ordinary boar, its body wouldn’t have merely been pushed back but would have exploded entirely.

“Indeed, it must be a spiritual beast.”

Thanks to Ling-ling’s support, Mu-jin could easily acquire the boar’s internal elixir.

Even finding this location was thanks to Ling-ling, making it a stroke of good luck.

Ultimately, under the pretext of avenging Ling-ling’s mother, Mu-jin focused his energy and crushed the boar’s head with a single blow.

Then, he used his energy to cut open the boar’s belly and find the internal elixir.

“Phew.”

Mu-jin finally succeeded in extracting a round, bead-like object from the boar’s belly.

Covered in blood from rummaging through the boar’s abdomen, Mu-jin held the elixir and moved towards the flower field.

Inside the flower field, where a cliff towered overhead like a roof, water flowed down the cliff, creating a pond over the ages.

Mu-jin washed his arms and face in the pond’s water and surveyed the area.

The terrain suggested that natural energy would be concentrated here, but the pond’s water was not a miraculous elixir—just somewhat beneficial spring water.

This was because creatures that thrived on the natural energy accumulated in the pond existed here.

‘There it is!’

Mu-jin’s eyes shone as he spotted blue leaves growing near the pond.

Several blue leaves were growing along the pond’s edge, just as Mu-jin had hoped.

‘But why are there so few...?’

There should be more, right?

The thought barely formed before Mu-jin came up with a hypothesis.

‘Could that boar have eaten some of them earlier?’

Of course, there was no way to confirm this theory.

After all, when Dao Yuetian discovered this place in the novel, such a boar didn’t even exist.

But the reason didn’t matter much. What was important now was that an even greater opportunity awaited them than expected.

“Look. Do you see those blue leaves around here?”

“Yes.”

“Start picking them one by one. That’s the miraculous elixir I mentioned.”

“Really?”

“Seriously?”

With surprised expressions, the four of them dug around the blue leaves and soon found the main body, which resembled ginseng, rooted in the ground.

Even though they avoided the smaller, almost grass-like ones and only pulled out the larger ginsengs, they managed to gather six in total.

‘Dao Yuetian only managed to get three!’

This was an incredible success in many ways.

Even though, if they divided them among the five of them, each would get only one and one would be left over, Mu-jin was willing to give up his share. Moreover...

“Cheongsu Dojang, I’m sorry, but could you let Mu-yul, Mu-gyeong, and Mu-gung have these ginsengs? After all, I have the Great Restoration Pill, and you have Taecheongdan, so we already have plenty of internal energy and won’t benefit as much.”

Mu-jin was reluctant to give one to Cheongsu Dojang, who only had an obsession with swords and didn’t care much about anything else.

“Hahaha. Since you were the one who knew about the elixir here, Mu-jin Doin, you should decide as you wish.”

Cheongsu Dojang, who had no attachments other than to swords, didn’t mind at all.

Thanks to this, the distribution was easily settled, and Mu-jin handed two ginsengs each to the three members of the Muja Trio.

‘In any case, eating multiple of the same elixir only builds resistance and diminishes its effect. Two is the proper amount.’

Dao Yuetian had eaten three ginsengs, but by the time he ate the third one, it only increased his power by about five years.

Compared to the twenty-five years of power gained from the first one and ten years from the second, the efficiency of the third was quite disappointing.

At that moment, Mu-gung, holding two ginsengs, asked hopefully,

“But, could those flowers also be elixirs?”

Looking at the spot Mu-gung pointed to, they saw Ling-ling, who had reclaimed his home, happily eating the red flowers growing from the ground.

“You’re half right and half wrong.”

Mu-jin explained with a grin.

“Those flowers can only be eaten if you have the ginseng. They are poisonous otherwise.”

In the novel, Dao Yuetian had almost crossed the river of death because of his greed for the flowers.

He had barely survived by hastily eating the ginseng after consuming the flowers first.

The forty years of internal energy Dao Yuetian gained included the energy obtained from those red flowers.

“It’s probably because of the relationship between the ginseng and the flowers. The place where natural energy is most concentrated is this pond.”

Mu-jin pointed at the pond as he spoke.

“But this water has almost no elixir effect. The ginseng and flowers around it have absorbed all the natural energy. Probably, the flowers with poison first emerged to monopolize the natural energy, and then the ginseng, which can neutralize the poison, grew around the pond, absorbing the energy that would go to the flowers.”

“Oh.”

“Mu-jin, how do you know all this?”

“As expected, your family is known for its medical knowledge. You seem to know everything about this.”

“Ah! So that’s how you knew there was an elixir here!”

Although Mu-jin was merely recounting Dao Yuetian’s reasoning from the novel, he felt no need to correct the children’s misunderstanding.

After that, each member of the Muja Trio picked a few red flower petals and began to consume them along with the ginseng.

Meanwhile, the sky, which had turned orange at sunset, darkened, and the moonlight and starlight softly illuminated the flower field where they were.

About an hour passed. The first to open his eyes was Mu-gyeong.

Thanks to his outstanding comprehension, he had the deepest understanding of the internal energy technique among the three.

After another quarter-hour, Mu-gung opened his eyes, and another quarter-hour later, Mu-yul did as well.