Chapter 490: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (7)

After (physically) inquiring of numerous Empty-Blood Hall technicians, Qing had it: the treasure room holding the manual of the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art (Saljungsal) could be reached through the central control room.

The problem was the prowess of Am Haryong of Ghost Mountain Ten-Thousand Chambers.

A solid later stage of the Second Rank.

That was no small problem.

The Empty-Blood Hall Lord knew his own fragility better than anyone, so the security on the central control room was said to be anything but ordinary.

“Keuk-keuk, the grand plan is already underway, and the Hall Lord can handle the rest alone. You will watch the entire world drown in blood under nothing but vile desire.”

“Mm. So your mouth is still alive.”

Torture wasn’t a cure-all; there were always a few who burned their last breath into rage.

But that only hurt them; hold out to the end and you only died more painfully, so Qing didn’t especially mind.

For Qing, the torture itself was amusement enough; whether anything useful spilled out along the way was a secondary matter.

Even if they kept their mouths shut, it wasn’t Qing who lost out.

Like this one.

“Kahahah! I’ll go first and wait for you in hell!”

Qing looked down at the Empty-Blood Hall technician whose blood ran in a steady rill.

That expression—plainly saying this is ridiculous—looked all the more pathetic reflected in the technician’s eyes.

“There are always guys like you. Think you die if you bite your tongue?”

“...?”

“You bite your tongue and all you lose is your tongue. Does a man die just because he has no tongue? Is the tongue your brain? Your heart? Do you think with your tongue and circulate blood with it? Did twenty years of digging dirt finally drive you mad?”

The Empty-Blood Hall technician looked up at Qing with the face of a man abandoned by the world.

“Ahng... uhguh? (I... don’t die?)”

“You die, sure—eventually. When’s the last time you brushed your teeth? Mash meat with that and of course you get suppurating sores. Your tongue rots first, you burn out with a fever and die by inches... or if you’re lucky, you live and end up a mute.”

“Ueon... (That so)....”

His gaze turned aggrieved.

As if shouting, Why, heavens! Why does this world deceive and mock me to the very end! and spitting blood with it—

“Ae—augh! Khuk, kheee—”

Not just the look: he actually tried, and then choked on the blood geysering from his tongue.

Coughing spiked his blood pressure; the pressure spike sent the blood pouring out in thick rills, shlup, shlup, splattering to a steady beat.

During this involuntary consultation, Qing had heard how the Blood Sect rats justified themselves.

There is no grave without an epitaph; each of these technicians had their reason to hate the world.

Since the world hates me, I will hate the world.

Since the world wronged me, I will destroy the world—isn’t that a bit much?

Who stole my family from me!

The Central Plainsers!

Therefore, I will exterminate the Central Plainsers!

A breathtaking leap in logic, but who in this world hasn’t seen a few like that?

Even if you look only at futures that haven’t happened yet.

Where does my suffering (poverty) come from?

From the haves, the educated, from parents who bequeathed poverty and the ancestors who made me this miserable.

So I will beat to death the rich (the rich deserve death), the teachers, the doctors, the technicians, and the parents, and I will smash and burn everything the hateful ancestors left behind!

I am innocent, and my massacre has its reasons!

When people meet someone this proud of himself, they click their tongues.

Tsk-tsk, a lunatic.

Qing’s hand, which chastised yet another pitiable seed of the Blood Sect, was full of mercy.

Arms and legs twisted and tossed aside just so—so he would live as long as possible before he died.

And so, before the central control room.

A stout iron door blocked their party.

Its coarse workmanship seemed to shout that it was anything but an ordinary door.

Unlike the stone doors whose security was their sheer tonnage and over-an-inch thickness, this was an iron door designed as a true mechanism.

Force it, and the passage would collapse forever.

If it wasn’t opened from within, you couldn’t pass—an essence of mechanism array craft stacked up by the Empty-Blood Hall.

The Empty-Blood Hall technicians were a breed of diehard, but their concordant testimonies didn’t smell like a con—testing it felt unwise.

What if they tried something and the passage collapsed for nothing?

Then Qing’s party wouldn’t see the Empty-Blood Hall Lord’s face.

To fetch the manual, they’d have to detour through the lower passages.

Then the Hall Lord, sensing things weren’t right outside, would immediately clear a path to the treasure room.

Some hapless lucky bastard rooting below would end up with the manual.

Then retrieving it to burn would become much harder.

“Mm. So what now?”

“I had a method in mind.”

Qing explained the contingency she had prepared.

Elder Cheon Yuhak’s face wrinkled.

“That will work?”

“Worth a try, isn’t it? Sword-Friend, I’m counting on you.”

“Leave it to me.”

Namgung Sinjae dipped his head with tragic gravity.

He lifted his sword, leveled it at the iron door—then, click, sheathed it again at light-speed.

Then he raised his fist and pounded the iron door savagely.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!

“Hall Lord! Hall Lord! It’s an emergency! Right now—huff—an emergency! I said it’s a disaster!”

He sounded so desperate he might expire mid-sentence.

It was also the moment Qing discovered an unexpected talent in Namgung Sinjae.

What the hell, why can this kid act so well.

No idea why he drew and re-sheathed his sword for nothing, though.

Namgung Sinjae kept rapping the iron door and pouring his soul into it.

If you cropped the world to just the doorframe, you’d swear something truly disastrous had happened—so convincing was the scene.

Or not?

From the Blood Sect’s perspective, isn’t it actually a disaster?

Qing’s face slowly shifted into that face.

—What is it! You! How many times do I tell you to report through the voice tube, by procedure! You think that much pounding will knock down the iron door? You half-wit bastard, it’s open so get in!

A sharp, irritable, ringing voice sounded, followed by the metallic clack of a latch engaging.

In that instant, the distilled essence of the Empty-Blood Hall’s mechanism array unraveled.

“No way this works? Are all Blood Sect rats idiots?”

“C’mon. People are people anywhere—you get the same everywhere.”

What use is a fine facility.

In the end, people operate it.

Amazingly, Qing’s stratagem hit.

It hadn’t been some feckless try of it’d be nice if it works and oh well if it doesn’t.

They had let their guard down completely in what they deemed a safe place; with that, one sloppy moment blew a hole through the guard post—no, through the control room’s security.

Truthfully, the laxity of the underlings is the same word as the laxity of the overlord.

If the Empty-Blood Hall Lord had kept discipline and preached and practiced the importance of security daily, his men could not have behaved like this.

As the art of war says, that is military discipline—the foundation of every soldier.

Hearing Qing’s explanation, Elder Cheon Yuhak clicked his tongue.

And part of him felt proud.

Right. Our girl doesn’t think often, but the head on her shoulders is damned good.

How did Heaven see fit to give such a brain to a woman like this.

“I raised one pupil properly. I’ll retire. From now on, you do it for real.”

“Aw, how could a mere disciple dare when Master is so hale?”

“Words.”

—The door’s open! Did all that pounding blow out your ears!? You said it was an emergency—who’s pestering you to solve an emergency with another emergency!?

From the lines alone, he had to be a crusty old man with a temper.

When he could have just said stop knocking, he went with do you think pounding will knock down an iron door.

When he could have just said get in quickly, he went with did all that pounding blow out your ears.

There are people who insist on speaking in the filthiest way possible.

Qing opened the iron door; at the end of a half-zhang or so of passage, another iron door waited.

In case they had wised up and were up to tricks, Qing ghosted forward without a sound and nudged the door.

But with a screech of twisting plate, the iron door swung obediently inward.

And at last, the very man who had spent twenty years burrowing without once getting dirt on his fingers—who had pointed, and men dug, building a vast underground city—showed himself.

You may not be born with it, but an old man’s face is the sum of the years he’s lived.

A prickly-looking old codger met Qing’s eyes head-on and pulled a sour face that said, Who the hell are you.

“What is this? Who are—”

Am Haryong’s words cut off.

Seeing the line of bodies file in behind Qing, he scrunched one side of his face and let out a long, deep sigh.

“Those brain-dead idiots. I told them to watch the martial artists down there and open the door—so why did they open our front gate wide as their own?”

“Is it really a good look for Grandpa to say that? I have a hunch who they learned door-opening from.”

Who had opened the central control room door, after all?

“I wasn’t hard enough, that’s how we got here. But we ate and slept together in those tunnels for twenty years; just wait a little longer, I told them, just a little longer and the day will come when we take revenge on the world—and I kept indulging them out of pity, and here we are. Who is there to blame?”

He had already put everything down.

Qing scratched him sweetly from the inside.

“Who will you blame?”

It didn’t land.

“Heaven, of course. That damned Heaven is hell-bent on chewing me up. All I wanted was to sweep this Central Plains clean of beasts who speak the Central Plains tongue. It would be better for Heaven and the world both. Why this meddling, why, hm.”

Righteous words, suddenly?

Seductive to the ear, but an argument born in the wrong age.

Central Plainsers of this era were, if anything, above the global average in basic human decency.

At the very least, the Central Plainsers of this era were big-hearted enough to embrace red-haired ghosts (whites) and sea ghosts (blacks) as the same humans.

Because whether they were red (white) or black or the outland tribes—Wa, Dongyi, Mohe, and the rest—they were all just barbarians of the marches anyway.

Amazingly, Central Plains “barbarian treatment” wasn’t even all that bad!

At least they didn’t exhibit you like a rare animal, stack you like baggage to haul and work you like a packhorse and then, “we got good use out of it,” dump you in a field.

Anyway, Qing planted her fists on her hips.

“What exactly is the problem? Why are you so crazed to have blood-blood-bloodshed?”

“Ha! How could a girl raised well like you understand our sorrow.”

Am Haryong sneered and went on.

“Do you even grasp what hunger is? Have you ever been so hungry you chewed a bug raw as it crawled by?”

“Uh... yes.”

“You have?”

“Hehe. I’m a beggar-bred too.”

Am Haryong’s words jammed.

The branch of logic he meant to climb snapped at the first joint; of course he came up short.

If there was a single person who could stand unashamed before the Blood Sect’s world-hating bile, it was Qing.

Those wretched days still visited her dreams now and then.

Those fine Central Plainsers hadn’t given her a single common alms once—not one drop of human warmth.

Of course, the Central Plainsers might have their say.

Who would show warmth to a diseased beggar girl whose face was tangled and warped like a monster’s—just breathing in the same room looked like it might spread pestilence, right?

So did Qing hate the Central Plainsers for it?

Did she grind her teeth and vow, Watch me, you vicious, filthy, base, stone-age pantry-keepers—I’ll wipe you all out, butcher the lot?

She did not.

What Qing had wanted instead was warmth—surely it had to exist somewhere in this world.

Even carrying the malign star of Heaven-Slaying Solitude in her fate.

So Qing wandered.

And now, Qing no longer sought warmth.

But she was still wandering.

A piggish woman with too many wants, she roamed the world not to drop the armfuls of bonds she carried, fighting the status window—an existential crisis and cosmic terror.

Thus the drifter who wished to settle flashed a bright smile and said,

“Now then, if you hand over the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art nicely, bloodshed will occur. Either way it’s a capital sentence, so how about you save us the trouble and quit life cleanly?”