Chapter 489: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (6)

When a fresh placard dropped over the old and updated the surviving headcount, the faces of the Evil Path still in the hall became a spectacle worth framing.

Something to keep as a picture and pull out to savor again and again.

The men of Guangryong Fortress and Suwang Fortress split cleanly into two ranks.

Twenty-seven remained.

Seven more had to die right there.

Mouth full of jerky, Qing watched with bright, glittering eyes.

Well? How would they play it?

Would they trim the numbers “fairly”—four on one side, three on the other, or three-and-a-half apiece—killing their own to hit quota?

Or seize the chance to brawl again and shove the losses onto the other side?

Either way was very Evil Path.

But the first would crush the scouting party’s morale, and with forces so evenly matched, they’d pay a deadly price.

Qing’s take? Men should have loyalty; even if it kills you, you stick with the ones you share rice with and fight as one—

Mm. Right. They’re Evil Path trash after all.

They moved, and Qing admired it.

Wounded disposal.

They killed their badly injured—the ones who would be baggage even if dragged along.

How could she not admire a choice so ruthlessly efficient—utility over sentiment, beauty of function first?

“Wow. Evil Path scum don’t just abandon the wounded; they finish them. And these pieces of shit are the same ones who preach inter-sect loyalty and brotherhood the rest of the year. I’ve got goosebumps.”

“Heh. Loyalty completed through death, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh? You crack jokes.”

Qing was a little surprised.

Share the same space, watch the same [N O V E L I G H T] show, get hooked together, and suddenly you feel a kind of camaraderie?

Is this the famed Blood Sect bond between colleagues?

She decided she’d spare about half.

Then see if they fight each other... or line up to die on their own.

Anyway, after culling the wounded to make an even twenty, the Evil Path dogs all turned to stare at one thing:

the stone gate that still didn’t look like it would open.

And all the Blood Sect technicians’ eyes turned to one thing, too:

Qing.

She blinked at the Empty-Blood Hall technicians gazing at her with a mash of expectation and regret.

What? Why? Why are these idiots staring at me instead of opening the gate?

“Uh... shall we open the gate now?”

“And if you don’t?”

“Heh-heh—well, um—no, nothing. Then we’ll—”

For some reason they looked a little deflated as they slouched toward the pulley, like a line from a novel ought to drop in—they moved their feet against their will...

And Qing—who had run wild on strength since leaving the mountain but had always possessed a killer nose for the room—caught it at once.

“Hold it. Want to do one more? How many this time? Fifteen? Ten’s too few.”

Empty-Blood Hall faces bloomed like nothing had ever been wrong.

“Fifteen is best!”

“If we choose an even number they might split it friendly; make it odd so they have to carve!”

Two great Evil Path sects had already lopped off their wounded for the grand cause (finding the most vicious demonic art in the world for private gain).

Now—thunk—a new placard dropped before those merciless men.

Sorry. Just one more round.

Musical chairs. Fifteen seats. Go.

“Fight! Fight!”

“Crash together like men, you bastards!”

The control room was boiling; the stone hall below looked like a house in mourning.

Which—given the lines of corpses—was fair.

Fifteen apiece—that’s about what each side had when they first entered.

If they’d just started with “kill everyone except our guys,” they’d be fine.

After swallowing tears and cutting down their own wounded as a dirty compromise, they were told to kill five more?

And the sides sat ten to ten.

If they slammed together, the best-case was mutual ruin; with luck, how many would still be standing?

So—Qing watched jaws working, and then they did the sensible thing: they finished off the rest of the wounded.

Boo. Buzzkill.

From the Evil Path’s view, it was rational.

Kill the injured and, if still short, a baggage-boy; at least you yourself are safer.

But at ten-on-ten, your neck’s on the block.

They didn’t know it, but they’d also delivered a deep disappointment to their Blood Sect audience.

The Blood Sect eyes drifted back to Qing again.

Just once more? Please?—eyes said it all.

Empty-Blood Hall technicians, emboldened by the idea they wouldn’t be the ones paying, were ready to go wild.

“We stop at this cut. Enough. When you open the next door, what traps are waiting?”

“A trapped corridor, of course. No priority targets requiring special activation, so no need to trigger those.”

Veins rose in Qing’s smiling cheek.

Priority targets for removal.

So you were singling me out, were you.

“And after the survivors regroup—”

“What!? Don’t tell me it’s ‘kill each other’ again. With creativity that bankrupt, why even bother? People will say this place can only do ‘kill each other.’ Who’s running this project?”

“Heh-heh, not that. The next chamber is named the Chamber of Wailing. It concentrates the Empty-Blood Hall’s finest mechanisms.”

After two battles, the survivors would step into something like a columbarium.

And on the wall, a friendly note:

The divine art you want lies in one of these caskets.

But to open a casket, you must offer a human brain—or a human heart.

Thus those filthy knife-wielding robbers would have to extract hearts and brains to open the casket where the divine art slept.

Watching them kill to open caskets would be fun; watching them paint the room red fighting over someone else’s extracted heart and brain might be even better.

Faces hardened all around their party.

All except Qing’s.

“Oh. That’s delightfully Blood Sect.”

“Heh-heh. Thank you for the praise.”

“Right then. Open the door. The next show is the main course—why fill up on side dishes?”

The technicians looked regretful, but Qing was right; wasting time here would only cheapen the better show ahead.

They swarmed the winch and heaved.

The massive stone gate rumbled, and the vibration rolled up into the control room.

Qing clapped once, sharp, and all eyes came to her.

“Listen up. You saw those Evil Path bastards just now, didn’t you? So-called men who don’t even have the stones to slam into each other and decide life and death like men. Do things like that deserve to be called men?”

“No!”

“Cut their cocks off!”

The technicians burst into roaring laughter and joined the chant.

Qing smiled, satisfied, and continued.

“Right? So you do it like men—kill each other now. I’ll spare exactly half of you. All of you—half live.”

“...?”

“Pardon?”

“Didn’t you hear me? You little shits have been living large hiding up here and pulling levers where it’s safe. Now it’s your turn. Half live. Fight. Like men.”

Empty-Blood Hall technicians blinked.

Was this a joke? Was this the part where they laughed?

Words don’t teach Blood Sect types. Steel does.

Qing sighed and flicked her blade.

The protruding nail gets hammered.

The wrist of the technician closest to Qing dropped to the floor with a soft thunk.

“Ah—ahhh!”

He collapsed clutching the precious joint and screamed.

Qing stood beside him and let the edge glint.

Qing called it “sparkling,” but that pale starlight from Guardian Qi was a vicious gleam that burrowed cold into a human chest.

“Did I say I’d kill you all? I said I’d spare half. Half. When I’m sparing half, shouldn’t you bow and say thank you kindly, we’ll commence killing each other now—and get cracking? You think batting your eyelashes will get you mercy?”

“Why—why are you doing this...!”

“Why? Do you need a reason to purge filthy Blood Sect trash?”

“...!”

“Wretch! You’re not one of us!”

“You deceived us!”

Qing’s chin lifted.

“When did I? When did I ever claim I was anyone in the Blood Sect? I asked if you knew who I was.”

Behind her, her companions ducked their heads in shared embarrassment.

A swindle is a swindle, after all.

The more time they spent with Qing, the harder she was to present in polite company.

Qing alone stood proud.

I didn’t trick them. They banged the drum and blew the pipes by themselves and danced like fools.

“Move. Quickly. Evil Path-on-Evil Path was fun, but without sound it just doesn’t land.”

She smiled, chill as a draft.

****

Qing had not promised to kill them all.

She had promised to spare half.

She was the sort who tried to keep her own word.

When the technicians finished their brawl, three were left.

And Qing, keeping her promise, spared half of those.

Which meant she killed the other half.

She left entrails spread outside their bellies but didn’t finish them.

Life or death would depend on the level of medical attention to come.

Of course, the Empty-Blood Hall technicians who could tune mechanism arrays but not human bodies weren’t going to provide medical care.

They would die, without fail.

Qing had passed the physician’s board as a one-share “medical woman” and knew a bit of classical medicine.

If you consult the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, the root text of Central Plains medicine, how are you to treat illness from corruption and suppuration?

Answer: draw out the pus, cleanse the wound, then pray with all sincerity.

If the prayer reaches Heaven, the patient lives. If not, the patient dies!

Barbaric, thought Qing—but for the era, the Central Plains was advanced.

At least Central Plains medicine was the distilled fruit of hundreds of thousands of trials and the statistics they yielded.

Out west, the hook-nosed types were still at “whoever shouts loudest wins” for treatment.

Stomach hurts? Amputate the anus.

Head hurts? Amputate the anus.

Heart hurts? Drown the patient.

Creative and experimental, to be sure.

At this point you might wonder whether Qing was truly a Daoist—or just a big-bladed butcher lucky enough to be counted orthodox.

Granted, she was lucky.

First, her party had witnessed the Evil Path thugs rampaging to get the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art (Saljungsal).

No one in her party counted them as “people” anymore.

And Blood Sect abominations weren’t people to begin with.

You might spare a worm; you did not spare Blood Sect garbage—that was how the martial world thought.

So Qing’s vicious hand against the Blood Sect?

It was what a person should do. The methods were... somewhat extreme, but acceptable.

Thus she could still barely keep her face as a Daoist.

Of course, she wasn’t wandering the control rooms cracking down on the Blood Sect’s unlucky and wicked for kicks alone.

The pleasure of Blood Sect-killing was only the byproduct of acting toward her goal.

She hadn’t forgotten the goal.

To destroy the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art.

So she ranged widely: securing an exit route for later, and cross-checking bits of information the technicians blurted by gathering multiple statements.

Only then would she head for the central control—straight to the Empty-Blood Hall chief.