By Zephyria Third Young Master (4)
“Seong Mu-yeon!”
He thought he heard Baek Ryeo-il’s voice.
But the next moment, the cold river water engulfed his entire body, and all thoughts vanished into a blank. The winter river water clawed at his skin sharply, like blades.
He floundered, swept this way and that by the black currents.
Every time he surfaced, the fierce rapids pulled him down again.
How long did he drift like that…
He felt a rough hand pulling him, and soon he was dragged onto land.
“Cough, cough!”
As he emerged from the water, a heavy gravity pressed down on him. Seong Mu-yeon desperately clutched at the hard ground, spitting out water. He clawed at the ground, afraid of being dragged back into the water, but he had no feeling in his fingertips.
Seong Mu-yeon chattered his teeth and shivered violently. His body trembled incessantly, unable to stay still for even a moment.
Suddenly, his body floated up, completely out of the water. When he came to his senses, he was in Baek Ryeo-il’s arms.
He clung to Baek Ryeo-il’s warm skin, desperate for the heat.
“Just hold on. You’ll warm up soon.”
Seong Mu-yeon couldn’t think. He only wanted to pull the life-saving warmth closer, deeper.
After some time, when his chilled body had regained some warmth, Seong Mu-yeon blinked, realizing that warm hands were slowly stroking his back.
“Looks like you’re coming to your senses.”
He was naked, buried in Baek Ryeo-il’s wide-open collar.
He didn’t remember when or how his clothes had been taken off. Somehow, Baek Ryeo-il’s clothes were dry and fluffy, warmly enveloping Seong Mu-yeon’s back.
“Where is this? I remember being swept away by the river.”
As the chill subsided, he had the presence of mind to look around. But his face and lips were still frozen, and his pronunciation was slurred.
“You drifted quite a bit. It seems to be a cave downstream.”
As Baek Ryeo-il said, he could see the fierce currents swirling at the end of a cave with a sloping ceiling.
“I, I thought I was going to die.”
“You almost did. If I had been any later, you would have died of hypothermia.”
Seong Mu-yeon sighed in relief and pressed his cheek against his bare chest. Baek Ryeo-il flinched as his cold nose touched him.
“That guy who took Seong Mu-jae, he’s the Third Young Master, right?”
Seong Mu-yeon nodded, and Baek Ryeo-il continued.
“I had a nagging feeling. At first, I thought they came to retrieve the Spirit Pill, and I responded accordingly, but as time went on, something felt off.”
Baek Ryeo-il didn’t stop stroking his back.
“Turns out, they were trying to take Seong Mu-jae. It seems they were deliberately trying to draw attention. Then suddenly, that guy appeared.”
Baek Ryeo-il trailed off, then added.
“He was strong.”
“……”
Seong Mu-yeon had never seen Baek Ryeo-il talk like that. He seemed quite shocked. It must be because he had never met anyone his age who could match him.
Suddenly, Seong Mu-yeon noticed something strange and looked up.
Baek Ryeo-il’s body temperature was unusually high.
Soon, he realized that Baek Ryeo-il was using his inner force to warm his body. His body heat alone was not enough to restore warmth to Seong Mu-yeon’s chilled body.
“Why?”
Baek Ryeo-il asked casually, as if nothing was wrong. He seemed indifferent on the outside, but he was a delicate and warm person on the inside.
Seong Mu-yeon felt a warm glow spreading not only through his body but also through his heart.
The two stared into each other’s eyes without a word. Suddenly, Baek Ryeo-il lowered his head and kissed his lips. Seong Mu-yeon stared blankly at the lips that had playfully touched and pulled away, then suddenly devoured his lips aggressively.
His head must have gone crazy from being subjected to both cold and heat. The sudden impulse was irresistibly intense.
Seong Mu-yeon clung to Baek Ryeo-il, biting his lips.
“Ugh.”
Baek Ryeo-il suddenly frowned and groaned, and Seong Mu-yeon snapped back to his senses.
“Are you hurt somewhere?”
Seong Mu-yeon examined his body.
“Ugh, don’t touch me.”
Seong Mu-yeon gasped.
“Your arm is broken! And you swam like this?”
Now that he looked, the arm that wasn’t stroking his back was hanging limply, bleeding.
“Thank you for saving me?”
Baek Ryeo-il raised the corner of his lips and asked playfully as Seong Mu-yeon glared at him through gritted teeth.
“…Thank you. For saving me.”
“Well, you should.”
Seong Mu-yeon lost all will to fight and sighed deeply.
He managed to find emergency medicine inside Baek Ryeo-il’s clothes. He could apply medicine to the cuts and scratches, but there was nothing he could do about the broken bone. As his furrowed brow refused to relax, Baek Ryeo-il whispered slyly.
“…Instead of that, how about you finish what you were doing?”
“Is this a laughing matter?!”
Seong Mu-yeon was annoyed.
He was fortunate that it was the arm opposite the one he used to hold a sword; otherwise, he could have suffered permanent aftereffects.
And yet, he was grinning like it was nothing!
As if it was no big deal…
“It looks like we can’t get out of here right now.”
The entrance to the cave was directly connected to the river, and to get to land, they had to swim across the river to the other side. It was a miracle that Baek Ryeo-il had managed to save Seong Mu-yeon and find the cave in this rapid current with only one arm.
“If we wait a little, someone will come to rescue us.”
“…I wonder. Did anyone see us fall into the river?”
Bang Gyeom was unconscious, so he wouldn’t have seen them, and if it hadn’t been for Baek Ryeo-il, who had chased after Seong Mu-geuk, he would have already been dead.
“By the time I chased after Seong Mu-geuk, the fight was already coming to an end. When Seong Mu-geuk retreated, the other guys also pulled back. They’ll realize we’re gone soon and come looking for us. Of course, I don’t know how long that ‘soon’ will be…”
In the aftermath of the battle, they would be busy dealing with the injured and dead and wouldn’t have time to notice who was missing.
Baek Ryeo-il kept clinging to Seong Mu-yeon. Seong Mu-yeon’s body and mind turned cold again when he learned that he was injured. He had no desire to do anything lewd to an injured person.
But he couldn’t keep getting angry at the person who had saved his life.
He didn’t show it, but the pain must have been immense. Perhaps he kept clinging to him to forget the pain.
With that thought, he reluctantly indulged him a few times before pushing him away, and he didn’t cling to him anymore. Instead, he began to mumble and tell him about what had happened last night.
“Before the attack, I requested support from Mount Hua. Wudang also called for support from their headquarters, and Jegal from their main family.”
“Is that so?”
“Originally, when people arrived from each Sect, we were going to form two squads, one to join the pursuit team and chase after the Demon Slayer Unit, and the other to stay here and protect the Spirit Pill…”
“It didn’t go as planned. They even took Seong Mu-jae.”
Did Seong Mu-geuk intend to kill him?
“We can always make another plan… It can’t be helped if Seong Mu-jae died. The important thing is that we survived. I have many brothers… We can just bring another one.”
Seong Mu-yeon suddenly sensed something strange in Baek Ryeo-il’s tone. His words were strangely drawn out, and his pronunciation was inaccurate. Besides, he no longer needed to burn his inner force to generate heat, yet when he touched his skin, he felt a hot heat.
He wasn’t generating heat by using his inner force.
“You’re burning up!”
Seong Mu-yeon shouted.
“Am I…?”
Baek Ryeo-il blinked blankly. He didn’t even seem to realize that he was sick.
What kind of person was this?
It turned out that he wasn’t just injured in the arm; he had also been stabbed in the abdomen, and blood was seeping out little by little. It seemed that the wound, which had been treated by stopping the bleeding with pressure points, had become infected after he entered the river.
“This won’t do. I’ll go and get someone.”
Seong Mu-yeon jumped up. Then he picked up the clothes scattered on the floor and put them on. Thanks to Baek Ryeo-il using his inner force to push out the water, they weren’t wet.
His heart sank as he recalled the cold river water that felt like blades, but this time it would be different.
Earlier, he had been unable to cope properly due to the shock of falling from a high place and suddenly being plunged into cold water, but now the situation was different.
He just needed to keep his wits about him.
Baek Ryeo-il had saved him, so he also had to save Baek Ryeo-il.
“…Don’t go.”
Baek Ryeo-il looked at Seong Mu-yeon with eyes clouded by fever and moved his lips.