Chapter 493: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (10)

The martial artists who’d gathered for Absorbing Qi Demonic Art felt like someone had slapped them across the face for no reason.

Past outrage, straight to the sting of being smacked.

What did she just say?

Who calls herself a “Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl”—hell, who calls herself a girl out loud?

And saying with her own mouth that she’s beautiful, graceful, and noble—since when is that allowed?

Obviously, it isn’t.

If you boast like that yourself, the nickname that fits isn’t “Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl,” it’s Thick-Faced Lunatic—Iron-Mask Madwoman, at best.

All of them, with one mind, stood dumbstruck, lips opening and closing like fish.

A rare, full-spectrum unity across the martial world.

Qing rolled her eyes hard in the meantime.

Which way do I bolt?

Where’s the side with the softest targets bunched up?

Come to think of it, the snapped ladder might be a blessing.

The party will slip out safely through the disguised exit the Blood Sect technicians bored.

All I have to do is peel my own body out.

Mm. I can make that work. Somehow.

For absolutely no reason at all, Qing felt good about it.

Like back in uniform, when she could bed down on any filthy ground without a peep.

Wearing the face of Eon Yeonyeong, Qing felt a surge of bravado, like she could ignore any gaze on earth.

A transformation—yes, a full-on transformation!

“Ladies and gentlemen! Feast your eyes! A miraculous strongman act! I’ll show you something!”

She didn’t give the divine-art scavengers time to think.

Give them time and they’d mob her in a wave.

Since two thousand years ago, everyone has known how to handle the many: divide and rule!

Qing held the manual with both hands, pinched lightly with thumbs and forefingers—then tore it in two.

“Gasp—w-what are you doing!”

“Please. Ripping one little book isn’t hard. Next!”

She wadded the half-book into one and—rrrip!—split it left-to-right again.

Half the crowd reeled in horror at the sacrilege of tearing a precious divine-art manual.

The other half went pale at the sheer brute grip that shredded paper like a cracker with just four fingers total—two and two.

“Can’t stop here, right?”

“Don’t tell me...!”

Without leaving a gap, Qing kept rrripping pages.

In her rush she balled a fist instead of using fingertips, which made it less impressive, but watching the manual go to confetti in real time stole everyone’s breath.

“Wait! Stop! What are you doing!”

When someone couldn’t take it and lifted a foot, Qing snapped back, urgent:

“Do you want power!? If you do, I’ll give it to you! Pick it up well! I’ll leave the entire manual right here!”

Then her hands swept up in a V.

Shreds of the manual scattered like plum blossoms, fluttering and giggling on the air as they drifted down.

A blizzard of falling petals.

“Damn it! What are you doing—Tyrant Force Sect! Secure the manual!”

“The manual! The manual!”

Throw silver by the box in a market and you’d get this exact hellscape.

They rushed, bending and hunching to grab scraps.

Shoving, striking—and then thwup, skrrrk—weapons slid free at last.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

Now.

Boom! She stamped a rough advancing step.

Black mold seemed to bloom as her footprint crushed a hollow into the stone floor.

Heavenly Demon Conquest Step—Three Steps, a Hundred Li: First Step.

With a miracle like the Heavenly Demon’s Shrinking-the-Earth, Qing straightened into a long vector and shot out.

Sage-Sword Wang Uram was stooping to pick up a fallen scrap.

He’d acquired about one-thousandth of Absorbing Qi Demonic Art; perhaps clawing through every trap and vicious gauntlet to reach the depths had paid off?

A foreboding prickle made him lift his head—and he saw the sole of a foot filling his vision.

That was Wang Uram’s end.

Thud. From the bubbling-spring point under her foot, rough, sky-splitting demonic qi blasted out and pulped his skull like a watermelon.

Why the hell did this bastard look up now?

There happened to be a guy right there in the spot for this step; the plan had been to stomp his back and take a second-stage boost.

But the idiot suddenly raised his head.

So the planting foot went vertical instead of horizontal.

Naturally, the long arc of Qing’s movement kinked at a right angle and shot for the ceiling.

And—crack!!

Her crown smashed the ceiling in a brutal collision.

Lightning flashed through her vision.

That familiar, soul-splitting pain—

A primordial, nuclear nut-cracker to the skull.

Stone chips sprayed off the eon-hardened slab overhead.

Qing sprawled hard.

Felt like her head broke—did it actually break?

But escape—escape came first.

She gritted her teeth, sprang up, and, trampling the innocent floor to gravel, took the First Step again.

Her body arrowed forward once more.

Running through time moving alone like syrup, she planted the second footprint and, gaining speed, was about to launch when—

A yank clamped around her leg.

If your leg gets snagged mid-flight?

A strangled yelp—and then the floor rushed up.

Still carrying her sprint’s momentum, Qing got slung into the ground.

KRANG!!

This time her forehead hammered stone.

A shallow pit dented in; pain spiked like a nail driven through her brow.

Nuclear nut-cracker, strike two.

“Augh.”

Crown and brow both throbbed as if nuked.

Which bastard—

Qing’s eyes slashed upward, feral.

A never-seen, ill-omened color flared; rage burned like a fiend-god’s glare as she looked to her feet.

A whip cinched her ankle.

Follow the long line—there, a man somehow keeping both feet under him on the world turned sideways.

“Uh—uh?”

The man hadn’t even gathered his wits.

Qing boiled over.

The idiot didn’t think ahead to catch after throwing—he’d blanked out!

She’d been unluckily snared by a blind whip.

“Ha—got you!”

He snapped back to himself, looped the whip twice tight around his wrist, and yanked with all he had.

Qing, dragged on her back, suddenly thrust up a broad saber gripped in both hands.

Clang!

The blade scraped the stone, throwing a spray of furious sparks.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

She snapped upright and seized the whip.

Strength that even Xiang Yu might tip his head to.

The man, arms outstretched, flew.

A tumble of bodies colliding, clattering.

Qing sprang to her feet and bellowed:

“You punks! I asked you to back off nicely—do I look like a joke to you!”

A hand so pale it was nearly translucent—beautiful—long fingers scored four lines.

Fingertips punched through a shoulder blade, severed the spine, and burst out a flank.

Her other hand gathered primly and shot straight; as a sword slides into a sheath, it slid into a warrior’s chest.

“Ah-woo!” “Chu!”

Warriors cried names and rushed.

People live by ties stitched from chance and time; cutting a life sews that many grudges.

“Fine! Then today’s the day you all get ancestral rites!”

From Qing’s eyes rose a color like blue, like red, like purple, like green, and like none of them—

A hue that exists nowhere: the most ill-omened star-light in the world.

At that, a clutch of demonic arts stirred and answered—

the Black-Kill Demon Palm, the Self-Rotating Demonic Art, and more of that evil lineage.

Arts rooted in the will to kill, forged solely to harm people.

A blackened grip smashed whatever it caught, breaking bone; the other long, lithe hand tunneled into flesh and, with sawtoothed qi, gouged and churned—meat spattered, a storm of blood howled.

A purple bolt lanced out, skipped through space and time, and struck an enemy.

A hand skimmed past like a whip—caressing a nape—and left, afterward, a bestial bite of a wound from which blood fountained.

Qing’s world began to narrow.

Thunk, thunk, thunk—as if lights went out in a shrinking ring. The ground underfoot ran slick with blood; above, a purple baleful star boiled, revealing viscera made of five-colored mercury.

And then the cosmos began to flow.

With each blink, the baleful star rose, filled the sky, and slid away—starlight reeled and danced—then a vile dawn broke and the baleful star rose again...

A celestial motion like time sped ten thousandfold on a lonely blood-world.

In that stream, enemies budded up—

Enemies made of blood.

But unlike the sky’s flow—ten thousand years in a quarter-hour—they moved like a quarter-hour stretched to ten thousand years.

They were still.

What’s easier than fighting statues?

In that instant, Qing felt a kind of... boiling lift.

What do you call this?

Ah.

So this is what omnipotence feels like.

The baleful star answered.

—Do you desire power?

A wall of blood surged up before her eyes, climbing beyond the reach of sight—

A vast barrier that blocked the way.

A hideous, boiling sun reached out and split that wall right and left.

Beyond it lay only a blood-colored, silent abyssal sea.

Qing realized she stood at a fork.

Ah. This is Entering Demon, the demon’s gate.

Martial arts are techniques for killing others.

And diving into that sea of murder—that is Entering Demon; that is how you become a demon.

A face flashed by.

Ah. Master. I miss you, Master.

If I vaulted that wall in this dirty way, he’d probably deliver nuclear nut-crackers five thousand times over—use every warhead he had and then conjure infinite resupply.

Qing’s mouth tilted up.

“‘Do you desire power,’ huh? What a moth-eaten line.”

The baleful star yawned wide; between planets splitting sideways, endless teeth showed—

Mockery? Or a pitying sigh?

—You still haven’t abandoned human warmth? The world is ruthless; ties are illusions; the flowering ends in fruit that rots. Only fear shall set you free.

“Who stays afraid for a thousand years? Live by the sword, die by the sword. If you take a knife in the back in your twilight, is that freedom?”

—Man’s nature is evil and weak. Warmth crumples before gain. The ones you love most for the peace they give you are the quickest to betray and take their profit.

“Well, if that happens, it happens. I decided I’d eat that cost.”

The baleful star flared again—

Again like mockery, again like a regretful sigh.

Ambiguous light, fading at last.

—How long will you spurn your fate? I’ll leave the door open. Come when you wish. I’ll be waiting.

“No thanks. Demon, shmemon. I’m never coming. Never!”

The world snapped back into place.

Ringed around Qing, warriors stared with startled eyes—

And among them, a middle-aged man thrust a sword and roared:

“You bitch! So you are the Blood Sect’s vile Minor Demon Witch! How many demonic arts have you learned!”

“Gasp.”

Qing jumped.

“They’re— they’re not demonic arts, okay?”

“How dare you! We saw the lesser demonic art, the Black-Kill Demon Palm, the Heavenly Wheel Demonic Catastrophe, the Self-Rotating Demonic Art!”

“That’s not— it’s Div— mm? No, wait.”

Reflex said deny—but then she remembered: she wasn’t Seo Cheong right now. She was Eon Yeonyeong.

“Ha! Now you see! This is the power of me, the Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl, strongest girl alive, Yeon Yeonyeong! Power as mighty as my beauty! I, the most beautiful girl under heaven, in all ages—ohohoho! Think my looks make me easy pickings and you’ll get a tongue-lashing! Clear the way at once!”

Faces curdled across the crowd.

Never mind the babble that made their souls try to flee—what was that laugh?

“A Blood Sect witch, is it. Then there’s no reason to temper our hands.”

The middle-aged man—Jung Gichung, Lord of Jeollak Fortress—raised a fierce blade-aura.

On the right, a waddling mountain of a man swelled a water-aura, and over there, a desiccated lama monk wrapped staff and palms in force.

Behind, several more nameless warriors leveled cold, blue qi—

Flower Realm auras—you can spot them with the naked eye.

It’s the sheer lumen.

Three in the Flower Realm—and those West Gate tunnel-rats aren’t even fighting each other?

How many Absolutes is that on top?

Everyone and their mother is throwing out aura?

No. Nope. That’s not right.

Qing shut her eyes, quiet.

Reached inward, toward a deep, etched image—

That world where blood flows, the baleful star fills the sky, and opens its mouth to her.

“Power! I need power! Give me power!”

—...? Didn’t you just say you didn’t need it, that you’d never—

“Save it! I’m in a rush! Hurry up and hand it over! Damn it, I said gimme!”