Chapter 492: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (9)

What the hell—did the status window break?

Gooseflesh rippled up over Qing’s whole body in an instant.

A broken status window? No, absolutely not.

If the senile status window suddenly goes, “Hey, want a taste of medieval Western Regions instead of wuxia this time?” then...

Her pupils were just starting to jitter when—

Khrrrk. A low cough snapped her out of it.

Qing’s head whipped around.

“Hey, old man, what is this? You said Absorbing Qi Demonic Art (Saljungsal), so why did you stick in the Heart-Plucking Art instead? You just swapped the cover—only the cover, right? Right?”

“Ke-heh... keh—heh... where... where is the dagger?”

“Oh, for— A person is asking you something. Since when do you answer a question with a question?”

“Khk... have you ever even seen the mnemonic verses of the Heart-Plucking Art before? I wanted you to notice later and scream—since you caught it now, you get to see it with your own eyes before you die. Well? How do you feel... right now?”

Qing let out a breath of relief.

So Absorbing Qi Demonic Art was never here in the first place, and he’d prepared a cover-swapped Heart-Plucking Art. That was the answer.

A broken status window—how terrifying would that be?

In that brief span she’d broken out in a flood of cold sweat, clothes clammy head to toe, panic attack arrested right at the brink.

“Whew. Took ten years off my life. Next time, say that up front. I almost—”

For the record, “took ten years off” means exactly that—my lifespan just got shaved by ten years; it’s how much I was startled.

“Hm?”

Am Haryong’s eyebrows twitched.

“Seriously, then Absorbing Qi Demonic Art never existed from the start. We came here and suffered for nothing.”

“You got fooled by a trick that wouldn’t fool a child because you stuck decoration... on your head. Try thinking, khrrk, for once. Pig-ignorant wench.”

“Excuse me?”

“‘Saljungsal,’ my ass. If our Blood Sect really had the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art, why would we be wasting time digging into a stone mountain?”

Qing, impatient, decided to let the parts he forced out between wheezes slide right past her ears.

“Because you’re the Blood Sect? Since when do Blood Sect freaks need a reason to pull weird stunts.”

“Idiot. A divine art that guarantees supremacy of the world? Let the cultists learn it and we send out thousands of qi-sucking fiends to conquer the martial world. Why bother with any of this?”

“Oh?”

Qing blinked that face.

The old man... sounded disturbingly convincing.

She recalled the technicians’ testimonies.

Sure, they could have all clammed up just to make her eat it—her ideal outcome—but the timid one, the brazen one, the funny one, and so on: not all of them could have coordinated some grand stratagem.

Maybe vengeance had united them and they all lied in chorus.

Or maybe the “fake” was known only to this decrepit boss.

Either way, the point was: she’d been had.

Not that Qing despaired over it. So what?

They’d just have to walk out empty-handed.

“Then why were you digging at all if Absorbing Qi Demonic Art never existed?”

“The only people who know our Blood Sect is involved are you and that well-assorted pack of yours—young and old, men and women. If we say it’s a plot by Blood Sect scum using a Heart-Plucking Art instead of Absorbing Qi Demonic Art, who in the world goes, ‘Ah, I see,’ and moves on?”

“Ah. So you’re one of those types who spill everything right before you die. If you dump all that, what do you think happens? Now that I know, I’ll just esca—”

THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK! THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK-THUNK!

A roar chopped Qing’s words clean in half.

The sound of something heavy slamming down.

She lifted her head toward the noise—and wouldn’t you know it, the vertical shaft from above had sealed tight.

“How? I cleared out the Blood Sect vermin.”

“I weighted it with a box as a counterweight. Well? It sparkled, didn’t it? Didn’t your hand just twitch to grab it?”

“Ugh. Figures. I did wonder why in the world a dagger would weigh that much.”

While opening the trap she’d focused on feeling for catches, not on traps that trigger when weight is removed.

And if you think about it, it’s simple—basic.

Primitive cavemen from long, long ago could’ve rigged this one.

“So what exactly is your problem? Are you about to spew some snot-nosed ‘I’ll destroy the world’ kiddie nonsense too, old man?”

“Ke-heh. You get old and even ancient grudges digest. The stomach burns, but you don’t shake with rage like you did young. I used to think ‘time heals’ was irresponsible crap—turns out not.”

“And?”

“At first they were tools to raise and use. Calling them ‘disciples’—hah. You’d get better results training a stray dog.”

When mechanism-array technicians chose apprentices, they scrutinized the boy’s quickness and picked only the clever ones.

Because the Mechanism World was pure talent.

No matter how much you taught a dolt, he’d only repeat what existed; he’d never make anything better.

Which was why Am Haryong expected nothing from his disciples.

But that only lasted a day or two. They’d scraped that stone mountain for at least twenty years together; he’d watched the so-called head disciple for over forty. In the end, he’d grown fond.

“Vengeance? I never cared. I figured I’d die among my disciples and call it a good death. The heavens are cruel, but living turns out not so bad—you let it be.”

Am Haryong tittered.

“So even if I die, I can’t help but make you die ugly, at least.”

His tone sounded casual, but the hatred inside it was chilling.

Which made Qing happy.

So the old man was bleeding tears on the inside while pretending otherwise.

“Heh-heh. You should’ve said so earlier. Then I wouldn’t have just killed them—I would’ve dragged every last one here in {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} front of you and flayed them, scrap by scrap.”

“What a pity. You missed a fine show. Ke-heh...”

“Want to know a secret? Your disciples aren’t dead yet.”

“What?”

Am Haryong’s contented eyes snapped open.

“Just killing Blood Sect maggots felt too merciful, so I killed about half and left the rest to die on their own. Right now your disciples are probably crying for their master. Master, please come save us. Master, save us, it hurts so much.”

“You—you—khhk—how, how do you wear a human face!”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’ve watched Blood Sect brats pull their tricks more than once. Whenever I killed them, people clapped and said, ‘Good job.’”

Qing remembered the blood devils in Gwangju.

Those wretches who gnawed their own mothers.

Utter clowns.

Murderers who thought they were the world’s saddest victims.

Trash who believed being pitiful earned blanket forgiveness.

“You’re trash, and your brats are all trash. For those who’d harm everyone under heaven, even death is mercy. Disciples? If you truly cherished them, you’d have quit the Blood Sect and told them to settle down with spouses and live ordinary lives.”

“You—you—gkhhh...”

As a conversational partner, Am Haryong was the worst.

Foul mouth, and when a person talked to him, he wouldn’t even pretend to listen.

“I’ll kill you—I’ll kill you! You bitch!”

The old Blood Sect man, legs smashed to pulp, flailed with bloodshot eyes.

His guts were already ruptured and he’d been coughing blood; now rage surged and his condition worsened fast. His complexion blackened toward death.

And then, suddenly—

“You— you won’t die easy. Kh—heh... I’ll go first and wait...”

It was the moment the Empty-Blood Hall under the Blood Sect met annihilation.

Well, maybe not annihilation—some not-yet-dead would still be squirming above.

Qing beamed. Ah, what a lovely show.

Villains should die miserably.

All that “I’ll go first and wait for you”—so trite, so trite.

Yet every time she heard it, it pleased the ear, heat blooming through her whole body. Gods, this is the good stuff.

She swept the chamber with a wolfish glint.

The old man was dead; Absorbing Qi Demonic Art had never existed.

Still, it wasn’t like she’d come away empty.

At this rate she might collect all Ten Supreme Demonic Arts.

She was scanning for an exit when—

Rrrrmm—rough vibration shook every side, stone dust sifting down.

At the same time, eight different walls crashed apart.

Beyond the now open, eight-way-blown stone room, treasure-hunters and martial artists in every direction stared, eyes aghast.

Qing’s gaze slid around the ring of faces and met theirs, one after another, and only then did she speak.

“Ah. Shit. I’m screwed.”

—

The Empty-Blood Hall’s magnum opus, the Grand Bloodshed Plan, had aimed from the start to use a non-existent Absorbing Qi Demonic Art as bait to trigger a massive schism in the martial world.

Thus the final punctuation on that plan—the flourish at the end—was the climax the Empty-Blood Hall had dreamed of.

Am Haryong hadn’t set up a special routine just for Qing.

If the box was opened, that meant someone had obtained the (fake) Absorbing Qi Demonic Art, and of course they would want to flee with the manual safely.

Would anyone leave a suspicious vertical shaft, right overhead, alone in that moment?

So when the thirteen-pound counterweight (the dagger) was removed and the device tripped, the vertical shaft to the central control sealed by design.

Then, naturally, the thief would try to run.

But if the escape were clean, how would a bloodstorm whip across the rivers and lakes?

And what fun would the technicians have watching?

So after that, every stone door and every partitioning wall between passages throughout the Shin Family Tomb would fall, giving every treasure-hunter inside one last chance to snatch Absorbing Qi Demonic Art.

They had planned to throw a celebration while watching the best scene of the twenty-year Grand Bloodshed Plan play out.

But the Empty-Blood Hall Lord was dead, and his technicians were dying.

And Qing—having opened the box first—had popped her head up into center stage, the target of every treasure-hunter’s glare.

When all the doors dropped and the stone walls they hadn’t known were doors also dropped, every eye saw it: the room in the very middle.

And there stood a wide-eyed woman peering about.

And in her hand, a book.

A book? A book!

“Absorbing Qi Demonic Art!”

Someone shouted. The rest piled on with “divine art!” and “secret manual!” until the atmosphere turned into a noisy marketplace.

At the center, Qing drew a long breath.

“Wait!!”

With eyes pouring in from front, back, right, and left, Qing chose her words slowly.

She raked her fingers slowly through her hair.

It was the fake hair attached to a Human-Skin Mask.

Feeling its dry, straw-like texture steadied her heart.

She was wearing a face—

Her identity was hidden.

A Human-Skin Mask was invincible, and a false name was divine.

Qing’s confidence surged.

Now then.

Even if it said Absorbing Qi Demonic Art on the cover but the contents were Heart-Plucking Art, would they believe her?

Only now did she grasp the use of the corpses decorating the room.

Not just to set the mood with stick-thin cadavers while hinting, “Absorbing Qi Demonic Art inside this box,” but to cement certainty in latecomers’ minds after the doors opened.

And the other sort of corpses—those with holes in their hearts—she understood them, too.

Even if someone realized the art was fake, the truth would be drowned.

This isn’t Absorbing Qi Demonic Art—it’s the Heart-Plucking Art!

Shut up! Maybe that’s the junk you learned.

You expect us to swallow that you stole the real divine art and swapped in Heart-Plucking trash?

Those corpses with holes through the heart are the proof!

They’re so fresh they could sit up—don’t tell me they aren’t the sacrifices you killed to get the divine art!

After that, what words would get through?

Qing reached a conclusion.

She had a Human-Skin Mask on anyway.

All she needed was to shake them for a moment, then slip away and discard the disguise.

So, hmm.

She drew a breath, collected her thoughts—then bellowed:

“Ha-hAA! Idiots! You’re late! The divine art is me! I, the Blood Sect’s number-one beauty, self-titled Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl—what was it the world called me—Carnivorous Madwoman? Mad Carnivore? Whatever! The most beautiful, most graceful, most noble, this lady, a face genius, a martial genius, a genius at everything—the strongest girl ever, Eon Yeonyeong—am the master of the divine art!”