Chapter 482: I Don’t Believe in Legends (18)

Qing’s gaze swept the hall.

Two, four, six, eight...

Counting even the ones cracked, punctured, and half-broken from the traps—forty-two in all.

Qing looked again at the number above the stone door.

Twenty-one.

Forty-two, twenty-one. Dead even—half.

Some kind of incomprehensible, cutting-edge internal-energy mechanism array in the Central Plains that sensed headcount and dropped the number at half? She tilted her head.

No—say it could count people. Then what were the letters over the lintel supposed to be? Five passages meant a maximum of fifty bodies. So they must have carved everything from twenty-five down to, what, the low twenties, and after sensing the headcount, the matching number slid down?

Yet no one seemed particularly bothered. Qing could not make sense of it.

To be honest, Qing’s attitude was downright rotten. “There’s no way the Central Plains had tech this advanced!”—the so-called enlightened view.

Her homeland was a world far superior to the crude “technology” of Central Plains primitives, absolutely more developed. So her stance was that a high civilization you’d expect from home could never emerge among primitives.

That was the way so-called civilized folk looked at a “backward” society—and one of the many secondary causes for slaughter and exploitation. (For reference, the primary cause was greed.)

Suppose monkeys had made a mechanical clock. Impressive, sure—but from the spectator’s side, the only reasonable conclusion was: nonsense; there had to be a trick.

From the monkeys’ side, though, it was marvelous but not suspiciously impossible. Thus the “cleverest” of these primitive Central Plains men answered:

“How could a door pick exactly half the people to kill? It’s not like someone’s up there watching and lowering it.”

“Heh. Does that make sense? Is there a ghost left in a hundred-year-old stone tomb keeping guard? It’s just chance. The next passage will probably tell us to split by sevens like at the entrance.”

“Ah. That so...?”

“How would it know how many would wipe out on the traps in the first place?”

“But what if the traps swept them all and like twenty tumbled in at once?”

“Heh. Were they that vicious? Anyone nimble would’ve dodged them already.”

“Hm. True?”

Now that he said it, it sounded awfully plausible. Qing dropped her suspicion.

After all, this was a world where if a human muttered under her breath and breathed, she gulped down the world’s qi, flew and leapt, shone light, and shot beams. Why wouldn’t a mechanism array run on qi?

So: they needed forty-two to become twenty-one.

And then something rose in her chest.

At first Qing cut down villains to live. Once she became a master, it was compromise. But what about cutting down the greedy cattle penned here now? Wasn’t this nothing but a tragedy of mutual killing, jerked around by the hand of some bastard who had died ages ago?

To get through a stone door—to get a demonic art—they had to halve the headcount here?

That was... mm.

Wow! Infinite villain refill! Bottomless topping-up! Unlimited slaughter available! (Number-limited.)

Long live the late Absorbing-Qi Demon! How had only the red-numbered ones gathered so neatly?

Qing’s lips curved in a pretty arc.

Cut them in order of highest evil karma first, yes? The injured ones—leave them. They would die on their own; keep them breathing to pad the numbers.

Like a kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet, she weighed which dish to kill first.

A seditious mood started to seethe, seethe through the grotto.

Only twenty-one needed to survive? Obviously it paid to clump up and fight.

Those with acquaintances—or any sort of tie—traded looks, felt each other out, and edged closer by degrees.

That was when—

“Esteemed sirs! If we had to halve the headcount anyway, wouldn’t it be better to enjoy ourselves while we’re at it?”

One of them barked out. A man whose face was unusually pale—and handsome. Handsome face aside, though: “enjoy ourselves” when they were about to kill each other? Even if none of them were exactly decent folk, wasn’t that a bit too demon-brained?

People shot him aghast looks. He only beamed a fresh smile.

“I was the man called Dam Hwajong. The women of the world acclaimed me, saying I had mastered the four refinements, and called me the Four-Refinements Jade Face.”

“Jade Face” was a byname for pretty men. Qing, thinking, Sure, pay off your epithet then. Someone had come to the Central Plains and ended up a so-called peerless beauty, eh—had just bumped him up the priority list when—

“Four-Refinements Lust Demon!” “Four-Refinements Lecher!”

Right on cue, an old Central Plains ritual popped out.

Qing nodded. Ah. A sex fiend, then. You got the eunuch’s sentence—castration.

Faces soured as they looked at him. Truth was, even among demon scum, the famous sex fiends were treated like filth by other demon scum.

From Qing’s observations of Central Plains villains: there was no difference between sex fiends and demon scum, yet they insisted there was. Why, she had killed more than a few who leered at her on sight; she could not even remember whether one of them had the big “sex fiend” reputation or not.

Her observation was correct. Demon scum treated the act of forcing a woman as a brag to shout from rooftops.

There was a difference, though. A demon scum saw blood run downward while doing evil and then attempted rape; a sex fiend roamed from the start expressly to do that. Either he had learned a yin-harvesting line of arts, or he was just set on it as a taste, jamming his way around.

So, for demon scum, being lumped together was insulting enough to draw instant life-and-death duels. If you were good at killing, you were a bold hero; if you chased only women, you were a rutting cur.

For that reason, the martial men in the grotto got the gist of what Dam Hwajong meant without listening further. And sure enough—

“It was all dark with nothing but men anyway; why not, this once, include a few women?”

Eyes slid toward the groups with female martial artists. Those who felt the stares sidled toward Qing’s party with wary eyes.

Naturally, the mass split: men only versus the parties traveling with women.

Qing found it rather convenient. She had been fretting over whom to kill and whom to spare; even in this situation, the idiots who obeyed orders from their dicks were clustering on their own.

But Qing’s brow twitched.

Wasn’t this... an insult? They flapped their mouths in front of her? Who did they think they were agitating in front of?

Qing sprang up and drew her blade.

“Since you insisted on saying what decent tongues could not repeat, this girl could hardly sit and take it.”

“Sit and take it? You should lie down and take it!”

Someone yelled, and a wave of raucous laughter rippled—but it died almost at once.

Because Qing flooded the grotto with a hard, rushing exhalation of Guardian Qi.

“This girl would not take anything lying down—but you are many, and we are few, and we have people to protect. We should therefore invite a stalwart elder to fight at our side.”

They stared at her, not quite sure what she meant.

“Which elder among you was strongest? If you came to us, I think the scales would about balance.”

A voice answered from the crowd.

“Skill you may have, but you spoke impertinently. Why, precisely, should one stand with the weaker side?”

A grizzled middle-aged man: the temples gone frost-white. It was the hallmark sign of reverse-aging: by the Flower Realm, the wrinkles smoothed and the hair blackened again. Not full “returning to infancy” against the natural order, but a partial restoration of youth—reverse-aging, they called it.

“In any case, the Divine Art would have one master. How could one split such a precious thing? When strife came later, Elder, would you not find it more convenient to have [N O V E L I G H T] been with the weaker party?”

“Hmph. This one or that—what was the difference? And that a woman spewing Guardian Qi said so—what if we simply cut down the men on your side and dragged the women along to make up the numbers? Unless... there was some other advantage?”

The Flower Realm master grinned a clammy grin. Old or young, a bastard was a bastard. Qing hesitated, feigning at a loss for words—then composed a tragic face and nodded.

“As Elder willed.”

“Hm. A woman who weighed her words. Good.”

He marched over with his lackeys—straight toward Qing’s side.

“Wait, Mount Tai Demon Lord! Please hear me for a moment!”

Dam Hwajong cried out, panicked.

Qing’s ears perked. Mount Tai Demon Lord? Fancy name. Must have been quite famous. Then again, a Flower Realm master not being famous would have been stranger.

“That suspicious bitch—how could a female master at the Absolute peak not know the name? We, however, respected the weight of your name, Elder, and wished to serve you. Let us be the ones to attend you!”

“Hm? You, woman—your name?”

“I was called Wild Dash, a nameless wanderer; Elder would not have—”

“See? She was openly hiding who she was!”

The Mount Tai Demon Lord stopped. Ears thin, if not his realm.

“And the result was the same anyway, was it not? As you said—take the women and—”

“Enough.”

The Mount Tai Demon Lord laid down weight—and strode toward Qing’s party.

“Wh—why...?”

“One. You would have me rut in a pack like beasts?”

“Rut” was the term for animal mating.

“Two. Would I share a table with a sex fiend?”

Coming by with a lecher’s angle himself, yet despising sex fiends—the Mount Tai Demon Lord. Was this self-hatred?

In any case, with him joining, the numbers about balanced. The men-only side even looked cowed.

Qing stepped forward to him and lowered herself in a courteous bow.

“Thank you, Elder. Permit this girl to offer a prostration.”

“Yes. A child with proper manners. You were taught rites well?”

He was smiling, pleased.

Here was a basic fact one must always have known. When Qing went to her knees, you checked very carefully whether there was an elder nearby whose murderous nature she truly followed. If there wasn’t, you tightened up and did not blink. Because Qing’s knees usually bent for thrust.

If you didn’t know this?

You got it.

Qing finished her deep bow—then rose and snapped her blade forward. No wind-up, no killing aura—just a blade that slipped straight between the Mount Tai Demon Lord’s legs.

Once, even with Guardian Qi up, Qing’s chest—her breasts—had taken the hit. Because Guardian Qi protected bone and muscle. It was not a universal shield draped over the skin to stop physical impact.

A woman’s chest—made largely of fat—lay outside that protection. The point was only larger for a woman; a man likewise carried an unprotected vital between his legs.

“Urgh.”

A low cry. The worse the pain, the quieter the scream.

Master or not, a man was a man. The Mount Tai Demon Lord clutched his crotch and his spine bowed like a drawn bow. Forward, of course—backward would have been a weird moment.

Qing let the sword go, clamped his head, and—twisted!

A human-surpassing strength turned the neck. If she had clubbed him or stabbed with the sword—maybe. But in a burst of groin-shock, who could guard a spinning neck?

His view wheeled. A feat: seeing the ceiling while bent double!

Just in case, Qing spun him twice more—then ripped the head clean off. A Flower Realm master might, perhaps, have lived with a spun neck.

Thud. The headless body slumped.

Qing hoisted the head high and shouted:

“Enemy commander—defeated!”