"Master."

"What?"

"Slow."

"..."

Baek Yoonjun stealthily looked at the direction they had just left.

A distance he would have reached as soon as he stretched his foot if he had moved as usual.

That's right.

Baek Yoonjun's current pace boasted a speed comparable to that of an earthworm.

"If it's burdensome, I'll go alone. I have something to prove my identity, so there won't be any trouble getting in."

Tang Yuhwa's expression was the same sullen one as usual, but it was a situation where even a three-year-old could tell that her words were filled with consideration for Baek Yoonjun.

'Should I? It's a big city, so there probably won't be any danger, right?'

Baek Yoonjun was greatly shaken inwardly, but he soon shook his head.

'No. What kind of era is this? Isn't it an era where it's common to be stabbed to death on the street?'

To Baek Yoonjun, who had memories of modern Earth, this era was the very definition of a barbaric era.

Of course, it was too much of a mental burden to send this little one in alone.

"Stop talking nonsense and let's go."

Baek Yoonjun took a confident step forward.

And froze.

As he got closer to the gate of Sichuan, the crowd of people coming and going came into his sight.

"Why are there so many people? Did a war break out or something?"

"This is when there are few people."

At Tang Yuhwa's words, Baek Yoonjun felt his mind go dizzy.

'What?! This is a small number?!'

Baek Yoonjun took a step back without realizing it.

He took a step back with such a confident appearance that Tang Yuhwa, who was walking with him, didn't notice and continued to walk, and only belatedly felt a sense of incongruity and looked back.

"What are you doing?"

"A person sometimes has to retreat."

"Sigh."

Tang Yuhwa sighed with her usual sullen expression.

"Master, you stay here. I'll just go in and come back."

"What are you talking about, coming all this way?"

"You wait here. I'll be back soon."

Tang Yuhwa quickly headed towards the entrance and went straight into Sichuan.

'Should I follow? No, I have to go.'

Seeing that, Baek Yoonjun was endlessly repeating one step forward, three steps back.

And so, while Baek Yoonjun was fumbling for a moment, Tang Yuhwa came out of the gate with a bundle.

"What on earth are you doing?"

Tang Yuhwa approached Baek Yoonjun, who was repeating one step forward and three steps back as if sliding, and held out the bundle.

"Take it."

"What is it?"

"Have a drink while you wait outside."

Baek Yoonjun carefully untied the bundle.

Inside were wine and snacks.

Baek Yoonjun naturally noticed that Tang Yuhwa was being considerate of him.

Having been shown consideration twice, Baek Yoonjun's heart was complicated.

A slight sense of being moved and the complexity of still finding it difficult to set foot in a crowded place coexisted.

"Yuhwa."

"I'll be back. Stay put."

At this point, it was a situation where it was unclear who the guardian was, but fortunately, the place where Baek Yoonjun and Tang Yuhwa were was far from the crowd, so no one had confirmed his pathetic state.

Tang Yuhwa went back into the city, and Baek Yoonjun stared blankly at her back, and then.

Slap!

He slapped both his cheeks with his hands.

'Hey! You pathetic bastard!'

Baek Yoonjun came to his senses at Tang Yuhwa's determined appearance.

But of course, he had no courage at all to follow Tang Yuhwa into the city.

"Ah, damn it."

Baek Yoonjun roughly scratched his head and spread his senses.

Fortunately, from what he had grasped with his senses, there seemed to be no martial artist who looked stronger than him.

'I don't have the confidence to go in proudly. I have no choice.'

Baek Yoonjun performed his lightness skill to its fullest.

He jumped over the city wall at super high speed and quickly confirmed the location of the tallest building.

Whoosh!

"Did something pass by?"

"The wind is strong today, isn't it?"

He broke through the crowd of the marketplace with his extreme lightness skill, jumped onto the tallest building, and landed.

'Is there no one?'

Baek Yoonjun was relieved after confirming that there was no one around who had noticed his presence.

Normally, Baek Yoonjun didn't have the guts to do something like sneaking in, but he had gained a tiny bit of courage from Tang Yuhwa's appearance.

As a result, he had succeeded in secretly infiltrating the city.

'Hmm, my martial arts are third-rate, but maybe I have a talent for being an assassin?'

As a result, Baek Yoonjun had gained a tiny bit of confidence.

'Anyway, there's no one, right?'

Although he had gained confidence, his homebody introvert nature wasn't going anywhere, so Baek Yoonjun checked the range he could confirm with his senses dozens of times and then sat down with relief.

'As expected, high places are nice.'

Baek Yoonjun liked high places.

It wasn't that he liked looking down on people or feeling a sense of superiority, but it was for the simple reason that there were few or no people in high places.

'If I just wander around high places, maybe I can wander around in a city like this?'

A very small amount of courage welled up in Baek Yoonjun, but.

'What kind of crazy thought am I having?! Can't you see the huge crowd of people below?!'

At the sharp retort of the numerous small Baek Yoonjuns in his head, his courage shriveled up again like a deflating balloon.

'Should I just wait outside the city?'

As Baek Yoonjun, who was sitting as if stuck to the floor, was seriously pondering, the wine and snacks that Tang Yuhwa had given him came into his sight.

'She has no parents, so if I, her master, don't take care of her, who will?'

Baek Yoonjun carefully opened the stopper of the bamboo leaf green wine and drank.

'I think I'll feel a little better if I get drunk, but the alcohol content is low and it's a cheap wine, so I'm not getting drunk easily.'

Although bamboo leaf green wine was neither cheap nor low in alcohol content, since the only wine he knew was bamboo leaf green wine, Baek Yoonjun sincerely thought so.

'Still, it's a little better now that I've had some wine.'

Baek Yoonjun, using the very slight intoxication as courage, chewed on a skewer of some unknown meat that seemed to have been put in as a snack and spread his senses.

-These days, the great heroes of the heretical factions...

-Damn orthodox faction bastards...

Baek Yoonjun hastily withdrew his senses at the voices coming from the area his senses had reached.

'Why have my senses become so sensitive? It's like I can even hear conversations now?'

Baek Yoonjun's very small amount of courage began to shrink like crazy.

Before his courage completely shriveled up and disappeared, Baek Yoonjun hastily spread his senses again.

-A plague in the imperial capital...

-A rumor that there is a vicious group called the Demonic Cult in the far north...

Baek Yoonjun finely tuned his senses, and when he heard the presence and voice of an unknown person, he hastily turned away.

And so, as a result of continuously tuning his senses.

He felt the movement of a familiar small figure.

'It's Yuhwa!'

As a person he knew was caught in his senses, only then could Baek Yoonjun feel relieved.

He withdrew all his senses and focused entirely on Tang Yuhwa.

A fine operation on a different level from the senses he had spread before.

As a result, Baek Yoonjun's senses exerted an unexpected effect.

'Huh? Wh-why is this happening again?'

It was as if he could see Tang Yuhwa's figure as if he could grasp it in his hand.

No, that wasn't all.

It was a feeling as if he were looking at the world from a third-person perspective above Tang Yuhwa's head.

Baek Yoonjun, at the surrounding scenery that seemed as if it could be grasped, was about to hastily withdraw his senses but didn't because of a strange sense of stability.

'Hmm, this is like a third-person game perspective, isn't it?'

At the feeling as if he were looking from above in the third person, Baek Yoonjun lost his sense of reality and even felt a sense of stability.

Moreover, if he were to move the person who was the center of the perspective, he would have been anxious, but since she thought and acted on her own, that was also comfortable.

A comfort as if watching a game being played on a broadcast.

'This is not bad, is it?'

Although it took more mental and internal energy than usual and the range was much smaller, at the familiar comfort, Baek Yoonjun sat comfortably in his seat, sipping his wine and picking at his snacks.

'I did watch internet broadcasts for a very short time after being cooped up in my room.'

It wasn't bad to see someone on the other side, who didn't know of my existence, talking and playing a game on their own.

Of course, he didn't even log in, let alone chat.

Since he didn't log in, the video quality was the lowest, but even with that, Baek Yoonjun was quite satisfied.

But after his homebody introvert's unique mental illness worsened, even that became burdensome, and he quit.

'It's definitely much better now than back then.'

Baek Yoonjun, although he didn't go out, was immersed in reminiscence, recalling the time when he was in the best condition during his homebody introvert days when he was still doing something.

'If I do well, I might be able to fix it.'

A very small hope rose in Baek Yoonjun's chest.

'As if.'

But it soon disappeared.

Satisfied with his current sense of stability, Baek Yoonjun observed Tang Yuhwa and her surroundings.

Tang Yuhwa was heading towards the outskirts of Sichuan.

A shabby, abandoned house on the outskirts.

There, a crumbling main gate and a sign that was on the verge of crumbling were hanging.

[Tang Family Clinic]

With just that sign, Baek Yoonjun knew that that place was Tang Yuhwa's family home.

'How bitter.'

Baek Yoonjun watched Tang Yuhwa open the crumbling main gate and go inside with a bitter feeling.

Tang Yuhwa passed through the small, unmanaged courtyard, went into the building, and came out with a few books.

'Yuhwa doesn't look very happy either...'

Although her expression was the same as usual, for some reason, he felt that she was feeling a similar bitterness to his own.

After coming out of the building, Tang Yuhwa hesitated for a moment, looking at the building, and then turned her head and walked away.

'Is there no other place to stop by? I should go and wait in advance.'

Baek Yoonjun, after confirming that Tang Yuhwa was heading straight for the city gate she had entered earlier, was about to turn away.

'Huh? What are those bastards?'

He discovered a group that was following Tang Yuhwa with his senses.

If he had spread his senses as usual, he would have discovered them long ago, but since he had spread them in an unfamiliar way, his discovery was late.

'First of all, they're third-rate or lower, but they're all martial artists.'

Having confirmed that all six of them had uniform attire and were third-rate or lower martial artists, Baek Yoonjun fell into thought.

'Should I follow them right away? But if I follow them, I have to push my body into that crowd, don't I?'

Baek Yoonjun's face turned pale after confirming the huge crowd in the Sichuan marketplace.

'What should I do? Should I first check what they're doing and deal with them from a distance?'

As he pondered and pondered, Baek Yoonjun took out a needle case from his bosom.

The moment they did anything foolish to Tang Yuhwa, he was thinking of sending them all to the other world with his long-distance acupuncture (hidden weapon technique).

'I've never used it in a crowded place like this, so will it work well?'

Baek Yoonjun, with numerous worries in his heart, observed Tang Yuhwa and the group of martial artists following her with his senses.

And so, as Tang Yuhwa was passing through a secluded place, the group of martial artists blocked her path and eventually surrounded her.

'Are they bad guys after all?'

Baek Yoonjun took out a needle from the needle case.

Since it was quite a distance, he took out a long needle instead of a fine needle to send them off for sure.

And just before he was about to throw the long needle (hidden weapon).

"It's been a while, Yuhwa."

Baek Yoonjun stopped his movement at the words of a bald martial artist.

'What? They know each other? It's a good thing I didn't throw it, I almost caught an innocent person.'

As Baek Yoonjun was admiring his own prudence and putting the long needle (hidden weapon) into the needle case.

"What business do you have?"

He froze at the sound of Tang Yuhwa's voice.

Ting!

He was so surprised that he dropped the needle he was trying to put into the needle case.

'Why is her way of speaking so normal?!'

Baek Yoonjun's mind went blank at Tang Yuhwa's normal way of speaking.

Whether that was the case or not, the conversation between the bald martial artist and Tang Yuhwa continued.

"Why are you so on edge when we've met after a long time?"

"We're not on good terms, are we?"

"How can I not be glad that my niece, who I thought was dead, is alive?"

"I'm not the one you're glad to see, am I?"

"Phew, let's move to another place and talk first."

Baek Yoonjun was so frozen by Tang Yuhwa's normal way of speaking that he couldn't react even as the martial artists narrowed their encirclement of Tang Yuhwa and were on the verge of grabbing her.

'Damn it!'

Having come to his senses late, Baek Yoonjun quickly took out the long needle (hidden weapon).

Although he had taken it out, Baek Yoonjun's hand was full of hesitation.

'Damn it! It's too far, and the distance between Yuhwa and the martial artists is too close. They won't get hurt, will they?'

Due to his homebody introvert nature, a lot of hesitation welled up at the important moment.

"Let go."

In the meantime, Tang Yuhwa was caught by the martial artists.

'Damn it! This is not the time for this!'

Although he had no confidence in hidden weapons, he was confident in his sword in his own way.

'First, let's go, cut them down, and run!'

Baek Yoonjun threw himself towards Tang Yuhwa.

At that moment.

"To think that people who have learned martial arts are harassing a young lady!!"

A black figure appeared as if soaring up and intervened between Tang Yuhwa.

The man, wearing black clothes and covering his face, performed a capturing art and struck down the men who were holding Tang Yuhwa.

'What? A ninja, no, an assassin?! Why is he dressed like that?'

Baek Yoonjun, who had been about to jump in, hid his body and looked at the confronting group of martial artists and the man in black.

"Who are you!!"

"You martial artists who call yourselves the orthodox faction! Be ashamed!!"

The ninja, no, the man in black, clashed with the group of martial artists.

(End of Chapter)