Chapter 496: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (13)

Some people swallowed unspeakable disgrace for a cause larger than themselves.

The famous Han Xin crawled under a man’s crotch—under another man’s dick—on his belly.

Goujian, King of Yue, ate his enemy’s shit.

The assassin Yeyan lacquered his skin and overturned his own flesh, then swallowed hot charcoal to scar his voice.

And Qing, before a crowd of men, flirted, shook her ass, and purred like a courtesan.

A humiliation worthy of the annals of history; if posterity coins a four-character proverb for it, it would be something like “Waggling-Rump Coquettishness.”

Still, she had a Human-Skin Mask over her face and a stolen name—she wasn’t Qing at all but Eon Yeonyeong, borrowing the power of the Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl, the Strongest—so the feat was barely doable.

The one who’s embarrassed here is Eon Yeonyeong, not me!

The lewd, lascivious temptress dancing the Art of the Stripping Immortal isn’t me—it’s Eon Yeonyeong!

Qing endured gooseflesh so intense it felt like launch-velocity, and a death-wish level of shame, by splitting herself—call it dissociation, call it a clean severance of persona.

Only, there was a problem: Eon Yeonyeong.

The “Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl” part was purely self-styled; with the Human-Skin Mask on, her face was... well, not exactly.

If Qing had claimed the epithet barefaced, no one would have quibbled.

Beauty is the strongest power in the mortal world; put on a Human-Skin Mask and no matter how seductive the sway, its force drops off a cliff.

Worse, the parts of a woman’s body that most reliably unhinge men—the breasts and the rump—were wrapped up tight for the disguise.

Qing hid her chest! The chest hid its strength!

If you hide it, how’s anyone supposed to know it’s there?

So the Art of the Stripping Immortal, all breast-shake and rump-shimmy, could only exert half its proper might.

For those reasons, Qing’s escape attempt—undertaken at the price of personal disgrace—was, if nothing else, daring.

She used a half-power method while her looks were set to “concealed.”

There were even a few women present.

Granted, women like naughty things too—oh my, what is that, how indecent—and they covered their mouths while watching, eyes glued to the show, privately vowing to train their own divine arts harder.

Thus Qing’s cheeky gambit looked like it might miraculously work.

If not for Pobidon Jang Sonam—the obese member of the Five Vagabonds—who, inconveniently, happened to be a Flower Realm master.

“Th-that bitch! That— that!”

Jang Sonam was a grandmaster of Jerky Triple Layer.

Jerky Triple Layer is an indestructibility art on par with Vajra Indestructible—an art famed for defense.

Where Vajra Indestructible grounds its absolute defense in the principle of hard meeting hard, Jerky Triple Layer grounds its absoluteness in the principle of softness overcoming strength.

The comparison gets uglier from there.

Shaolin monks pound, break, and smash their own bodies daily to cultivate Vajra Indestructible; Jerky Triple Layer asks you to stay awake eating delicious things, and when you’re not eating, to lie down and sleep. That’s not training—that’s the Pure Land of the human world.

Put side by side, Vajra Indestructible is just pure suffering, while Jerky Triple Layer looks like the loftier study, more suited to divine arts.

But that’s not all.

Amazingly, Jerky Triple Layer doesn’t just give physical defense.

At the extreme, Jerky Triple Layer reshapes the body into something turtle-like.

Flesh rounds off the torso, bulging into circles that reach above the elbows and knees, making the limbs look short.

Anyone who sees it goes, Wow! A turtle! A terrapin! A pond tortoise! Something like that!

And when the long limbs are reduced to nubs that only start at the joints—well then what happens to a man’s dick?

Thus Jang Sonam was a eunuch who wasn’t a eunuch.

Having given up entirely, his defenses against women reached their own extreme.

This is the mental defensive function of Jerky Triple Layer.

A truly terrifying efficacy.

“She’s escaping, isn’t she! She’s slipping out right now!”

“I’m not escaping! I, Eon Yeonyeong, just get suffocated in tight spaces! The Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl, being a stalwart hero among men, needs open air! Don’t hunch in a half-basement—live large! Everyone, relax and focus on cultivation! I am absolutely not escaping!”

Bang—before Qing even finished speaking, her foot smashed the floor; dust like black mold spores billowed up.

One step.

Bang! Second step.

“She’s running!”

“Catch her!”

“Leave the divine art and go!”

And—bang!—third step!

At the third step Qing hit top speed; her body stretched, slicing the space ahead.

Behind, the passage thundered with pursuers piling in—

They tangled each other’s legs and couldn’t pick up speed, until—suddenly—Kraaagh! Aagh! Gyaaah!—bloodcurdling screams, and six people popped out of the press, gathering speed.

Three Flower Realm stone-gate-breakers who had been born on different days but were destined to smash the same gate—acquainted, not friendly.

“You—! Are you betraying the revolution? Are you abandoning the oppressed and the weak of the whole world? Stop there! I said stop!”

A genuine red man who’d shown up two hundred years early barked like a drill sergeant.

Qing flicked a glance back. What the hell—since when do Flower Realm masters bud like amoebas? Two more faces I don’t even know?

“Damn it! Throw the steel rings! We only need the mouth and the torso! Legs—go for the legs!”

“You’re too much! I told you I’m not running! I’m going somewhere brighter to keep going! Eon Yeonyeong hates the dark! Hates tight spaces!”

“A lie even a dog wouldn’t buy! Madwoman! Halt! Halt! Halt, you little—!”

Qing ran.

Qing looked back.

She hopped and avoided the flying steel rings.

She looked forward, then back again, then forward—again back—while the rings, glowing, carved bright arcs and closed in.

Then Qing kicked off, pattered up the wall, and sprinted along it.

Three-dimensional lightness skill.

The very look of a grandmaster at the far extreme of qinggong—but all this bunny-hopping bled speed like crazy.

“You bitch!”

Jang Sonam’s voice boomed like a bell.

Qing glanced back and—huh—no, fuck—what is that—what kind of martial art is—

The already-round man suddenly fired like a cannonball, then ricocheted left-right-up-down—pong-pong—bending into a tangle of broken straight lines as he barreled in!

“That— that is not physically possible!”

This is the absolute line that separates Absolute-class and Flower Realm (on the verge of Entering Demon): the power of ideation.

When martial art touches thought, it warps the laws of heaven and earth; your body can rebound like a ball and deliver a brutal strike.

Because it’s ideation-touched, the rebound angles mean nothing; they go wherever they please.

Then—bang—Jang Sonam rebounded off the rear right wall and came at Qing like a shell.

You can’t cut that insane hunk of meat; if you hit him he just wobbles.

So what do you do?

Screeech—

Qing scraped the floor to a stop.

Jang Sonam’s bulk skimmed past her by a hair.

As he spun by, his face came level—eyes met hers.

Time went syrup-slow.

Qing’s hands shot forward.

Her splayed fingers slid into the fat.

Then the greatest grip under heaven—no, in all ages—clamped and held.

Soft, yielding lard filled both palms—

and for a split second, the feel of it was—

plush-puffy-springy-chewy—like—

—and then the self-loathing hit, hard.

Qing clenched her teeth and braced.

She’d grabbed a massive thing flying left; of course mass times acceleration dumped a brutal load across her frame.

But—

“Rrryaaaa!”

With a throat-raking roar she whipped her body, hard.

Vwoom! Vwoom! The Flower Realm lardball orbited her, faster with every loop—one turn, two, three—vwoom! vwooom!! VWOOOM!!!—the air howled.

And then Qing realized something.

Ah. One more turn and my arms come off.

So she let go.

Arms are precious.

SHWEEE—! Pobidon launched.

In that instant, across East and West alike, a new human land-speed record—by any means—was set.

It would stand unbroken until the invention of powered flight.

Amukhalab watched the incoming fat missile and worked his lips around a rough phrase.

“Mother—ghrk!”

Maybe the foreign monk, far from home, suddenly missed his mother; maybe he was cursing in a language he didn’t really speak and got interrupted.

The dried-to-sticks lama monk dove into the fattest man in the Central Plains; they became one and flew backward as a single mass.

Amukhalab was so light he bled off no speed; the bolus sailed straight into the treasure-hunters chasing Qing behind the masters—

KWHAM!!!

Bodies defied gravity and scattered upward.

Like a Western sport where you roll a ball to topple a triangle of pins, people arced through the air with lusty screams.

“You—!!”

“Ghk—ugh! Mmph!”

An unnamed Flower Realm master drove in, sword-edge thick with Guardian Qi, dropping it straight to split Qing in half.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

Rather than dodge, she stepped in, lifting her forehead to meet him—go on, split it if you can.

Had Qing chosen death?

Or was this the pride of the hardest head under heaven: cold-iron skull plus Guardian Qi equals enough to block?

Neither.

The master flinched and withdrew his qi.

What he wanted was the oral formula of the Absorbing Star Great Law inside Qing’s head.

He had no power to read the mush inside her skull and decipher it into a formula with his eyes.

A blade without qi—what’s to fear?

Qing caught the sword in her left hand; her right, drawn tight, speared straight for his exposed dantian—SHWEEK!

He flew off, body folded like the radical with the open side—匸.

Having taken a full, unblushing shot of Lesser Demonic Art straight to the dantian, his future looked bleak.

Then the first idiot, Jung Gichung, came fluttering in, sleeves snapping.

Qing shook the left hand she’d been clamping with—FWIP—like an arrow’s hiss—

“Hidden weapon!”

Startled, Jung Gichung slashed.

Clang—like glass shattering.

Another Flower Realm master rushed in.

Clang, clang—blade and bare hands collided in rapid beats.

She wasn’t the orthodox Daoist Seo Mun Cheong right now; she was Eon Yeonyeong, the Blood Sect’s Peerless Thunder-Smile Girl, and she used Lesser Demonic Art with zero shame.

Granted, she’d never shown much shame before either, but still.

“Guhh—ub—grrkh.”

“What? Use words or shut up!”

Qing’s lips rounded into a perfect O—

the shape of a lover reaching for a kiss—

and from between them, zzziip—

like a kingfisher’s jet of water, a stream of something shot out and struck the Flower Realm master square in the eyeballs.

“Gyaaa! You filthy bitch! Ugggh—disgust—!”

For some people that would be a reward. For this Flower Realm master, apparently not.

“Ha-ha! Thif if Hahoh Hahh—!”

Qing crowed with pride.

With so much left in her mouth, she was unintelligible.

But the Flower Realm master should have understood.

If he’d caught the words this is Blood-Spittle Poison, he would have ripped out his own eyeballs on the spot, like that Hah Hu fellow.

Wasn’t there one more dangerous guy?

Right—the red.

Qing snapped her gaze—and there he was, Jong Jeongpil, the Solitary Blade—no, not the Solitary Blade anymore: the People’s Blade, Red Guard Blade, Red Vanguard Blade, Society Blade, Communal Blade, Ownerless Blade—pick your slogan—

the man in red advancing with ponderous gravity.

Why the gravitas?

Think you’re the final boss? My destined nemesis?

Either way, how considerate.

Qing saw Jong Jeongpil approaching, and without a shred of hesitation, turned her back on him.