Chapter 487: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (4)

If she followed her heart, this mutt would be a fine chew—spit out the cavities and grind down the rest.

But there were two minors in the party, so she needed to dial back the gore.

If Jin Jangmyeong had known, she would have felt wronged.

I’m an adult! I’m not a kid!

If Murong Juhee had known, she might have felt even more wronged.

Excuse me, you let me practice, remember?

Qing didn’t care.

Everything tangible and intangible she’d piled up in the Martial World was a golden tower mortared with other people’s grievances.

How come she rolls her eyes all lewd and drools and trembles and then her martial arts shoot up?

Where does that sturdy, monstrous physique even come from?

Why does someone with three heads have great legs and a pretty face too?

If you’re that aggrieved, you should’ve been the protagonist.

Anyway.

The one who caught the Blood Sect Empty-Blood Hall technician was Qing.

So Qing had the right to do as she pleased.

Because of the kids, we keep it gentle. No blood.

She just dislocated everything.

Anyone who’s had a shoulder pop knows the viciousness of that pain.

What tops a dislocated shoulder? Maybe a kidney stone.

At the edge of human suffering, the mouth rips screams and the eyes and nose leak their respective fluids.

The Blood Sect technician—utterly undeserving of pity—hung limp-limbed under arbitrary violence, tears and snot streaming.

The mouth was gagged, so no screams—and no spit.

Because asking questions before the torture is the mark of a lesser hand.

“Okay. Put yourself in my shoes. I trust by now you can understand the pain I suffered from those delightful traps. Yes?”

The technician’s blood pressure spiked with righteous indignation.

The “pain” Qing had suffered amounted to ladybug-red polka dots on her training robe—already healed without scabbing thanks to her human-transcending recovery.

“Be smart and answer. I held back the blood because of the minors, but the Martial World is rough—maybe I should raise them tough.”

“Tsk. I’m an adult,” Jin Jangmyeong muttered, thumping Qing’s arm.

Even a massage would hurt more than that.

Judging by Jin Jangmyeong’s reaction, Qing’s mouth ran idiotic, but her point hit center.

When there’s no blood, there’s room to joke.

“Name, affiliation, age.”

“Heh. I have nothing to say. Kill me.”

“Still not getting it? An Yunjuk?”

“Y-yes!”

Pale-faced An Yunjuk seized the technician’s torso and shook him up and down.

With every joint already out, the Blood Sect man’s reactions popped like a field of exclamation marks—deeply satisfying to Qing.

“Gyaaah! I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”

“Again. Name, affiliation, age.”

“...I am Cheong Sinwan of the Blood Sect’s Empty-Blood Hall. I am thirty-sev—”

“Liar! With that face, how are you thirty-seven? You look past fifty at a glance! Still not getting it? An Yunjuk!”

“Gkyaaa! I—I’m thirt—AARGH! I’m fifty! I’m fifty, I said!”

Pain takes precedence over truth.

“I am fifty years old...”

Twenty years digging tomb corridors into bedrock had aged Cheong Sinwan to dust.

How does thirty-seven look past fifty?

Anyone who’s seen the quartermasters in Qing’s homeland’s army can barely understand: men around thirty-five who already look near sixty.

Suffering ages a man overnight.

He’d lost his youth—and now, slandered for lying about his age, he’d been promoted to half a century besides.

Qing slitted her eyes.

“Doesn’t even feel like fifty... Whatever. Age isn’t that important; moving on.”

The technician’s blood pressure surged again.

If it wasn’t important, why torture a man over it!

“You’re the one running the traps, right? What’s your game?”

“Kkhh... heh heh... thick-skulled wench. Can’t you see the shape of things? You heard the Blood Sect named—if you’re not a simpleton, you can guess how this goes.”

“Simpleton? What an insulting term. I have an excellent head; if we’re grading intelligence, call me a high-pleton.”

“There’s no such—”

“Enough. So it was all the Blood Sect’s handiwork, yes? Figures—the Treasure Map was distributed way too artfully.”

Elder Cheon Yuhak’s eyes cooled to winter.

Lectures, map-decoding, sleep—

Memories of last summer’s threefold routine rose up.

Unlike Qing—whose brilliance peaked whenever she was ruining someone—Cheon Yuhak was a true grand master of the world.

At the very mention of the Blood Sect he’d grasped the truth in a breath; hearing it aloud only stoked a fresh anger.

Beside him, Murong Juhee turned cold as well.

She and the Blood Sect were already mortal enemies who could not share one sky.

Cheong Sinwan got shaken out—

Not a euphemism: literally, physically, one-dimensionally shaken out.

With every joint out, he flopped and jiggled; the tactile “shake” was exquisite.

They swapped to Elder Cheon mid-way, then Murong Juhee—waiting quietly in line—took a turn and spiritedly rattled the Blood Sect’s wicked minion.

The result apparently delivered a level of pain even Cheong Sinwan found satisfying.

Bits of broken teeth kept clicking from his mouth—the trace of clenching past the limit—and the whites of his eyes were all blood: at the extremes of pain, capillaries pop.

After the earnest shaking, Cheong Sinwan melted onto the floor, limbs bent at strange angles, joints loose.

What they learned was remarkable.

The Blood Sect Empty-Blood Hall had been digging the Shin Family Tomb for twenty years.

This wasn’t a “major work”—

Gutting a solid stone mountain and installing a complex like this is not a civil project.

It’s a great work—a world-shaking endeavor worthy of the name “grand history.”

“Wait—twenty years? Why go that far? What grudge against the world makes you dig earth for twenty years?”

Cheong Sinwan chuckled hollowly.

“I—I and my parents were tenant farmers working land in Shaanxi owned by those detestable Mount Hua Sect dogs.”

“Mount Hua? The Mount Hua without a volcano?”

Faces hardened.

Why bring up Mount Hua?

Had the famed orthodox sect done something monstrous?

“One day, men calling themselves Mount Hua priests drove us out. Said our yield wasn’t half from the same fields. Do you even know a tenant’s life? Pitiful folk clinging to others’ land with not an inch to their name.”

Not just any land—Mount Hua’s land.

Word spread that their yield was under half.

No landlord alive wants to hire “failed” tenants.

In brutal poverty, his father got beaten to death stealing a neighbor’s dog; the nursing baby starved.

His mother went mad with the dead child in her arms—roamed clutching the blackening meat until one day she never returned.

In the hush, Elder Cheon asked, expression doubtful.

“Hold on. That’s odd. How is yield half from the same land? If water or soil were to blame—or locusts—every plot would halve. Why only yours?”

Qing knew nothing of farming.

Nor did a young master like Namgung Sinjae or Murong Juhee.

Even Jin Jangmyeong, sickly through childhood, had been an ailing daughter in a prosperous house supplied by the Divine Lady’s Gate.

Cheon Yuhak came from wealth too, but he’d wandered enough to see and hear a little—hence the objection.

“That’s not the point! Those hypocrites of the Nine Schools and One Sect strut around as righteous heroes, and they drove out the homeless and helpless over a few sacks of cheap oats! Drove us to die in the streets! My father! My mother! My baby brother who never learned to walk! Those damned murderers! Hypocrites! I swore I’d see Mount Hua burn! That I would burn that vaunted Mount Hua myself!”

Did this punk just say he skimmed?

The party’s eyes went cold.

Fact is, the orthodox landlords are known for lenient tithes.

For face alone, they fear rumors of exploitation and keep an eye on public opinion.

That’s the difference between orthodox and demonic—who cares about the world’s gaze.

“Eat your fill if you till a priest’s land”—that saying doesn’t exist for nothing.

So, a tenant on a generous Daoist estate skimmed grain?

And not from any old temple—from Mount Hua.

If you dare steal from sword-bearing martial folk, how easy will you find unarmed landlords?

Of course no landlord would take you in.

Mount Hua is Shaanxi’s pride, Shaanxi’s dignity, the heroes Shaanxi loves.

If you’re known for skimming Mount Hua’s grain, even as day labor you’ll find no takers.

“As far as I know, Mount Hua’s lot leave more than enough. Their tenants aren’t known for starving—”

“Don’t make me laugh! Those Mount Hua bastards—don’t they think that endless spreading land, land with no end even if you walk and walk, is all theirs! They have granaries my kind won’t own in ten thousand years! And a few sacks of oats—aren’t those less than a single grain of our rice!”

“Uh, hm. So, because Mount Hua is rich, it’s fine to skim a bit?”

“Then what—because I was born a tenant, I’m to farm other men’s land my entire life? Wanting a little plot of my own—does that doom me to die in the gutter?”

Cheong Sinwan howled blood.

Qing cocked her head.

What? Why is this bastard proud?

“Your clan wasn’t wiped because you wanted land. It was because you stole Mount Hua’s grain, no?”

“Only seven seom of oats! Only seven seom!”

For reference, one seom is two hundred forty geun.

Seven seom is one thousand six hundred eighty geun.

In Qing’s homeland’s weights, that fills one big measure and then some.

“Okay, to summarize: your family skimmed seven seom of oats, which to Mount Hua is less than a single grain of rice—utterly trivial. And they pettishly massacred your whole family over something so trivial. That it?”

“Yes! Hypocrites! I’ll kill them all!”

“Uh, hm. Right...”

Qing was at a loss for words.

For the record, making Qing at a loss is a feat to boast to your descendants for generations.

Cheong Sinwan had accomplished just that.

So what was Mount Hua supposed to do, exactly?

Are the other tenants idiots for paying their tithe?

If Mount Hua indulges one “poor soul,” what happens to the rest—and the next and the next grain thief?

Frankly, not beating him and merely throwing him out was already mercy.

People often mistake this: weak or poor does not mean good.

And a man’s own pain is always the greatest injustice in the world—to him.

It sounds absurd, but you can find men like this easily—whether in the Central Plains or in Qing’s homeland.

Qing reached a conclusion.

“Let’s lay out some viscera and go hunt the other Blood Sect rats. Jangmyeong, out. No kids for this viewing.”