Chapter 519: Chaos (5)

TL Notes: Zhangpyeong = Great Plain Sect

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“I’m going to kill that bastard who bought that damn net.”

That was the single thought of To Ungung, Chief Instructor of the Great Plain Sect.

A saber was, at base, a cutting weapon.

The handle was long, easy to control, and even if you only dropped your body weight straight down with the mass of the weapon itself, it delivered brutal force.

This was why the Evil Path favored it: add a saber to the basic strength and speed of a martial artist, and it was the fastest road to getting strong.

Saber arts themselves were simple—easy to learn.

Subtleties like Swift or Illusory loops belonged to the higher-class manuals.

There was only one edge; you just swung and that was that.

Yes, the point could be sharp enough to stab.

But with the weight centered toward the tip, and with the broad greatsaber thickening as it ran from the grip to the point, it only meant stabbing was possible in theory. In practice, after you poked, it didn’t seat or drive worth a damn.

Granted, there were willow-leaf sabers with a fluttering, flexible blade specialized for ever-shifting phantom thrusts,

and there were slim, light “ceremonial” or “ring-pommel” styles that cut and stabbed and were used like a sword.

But the Great Plain Sect had none of that.

They were the men’s men of a men’s sect, wielding the big boys: thick chopping sabers, greatsabers, mountain-cleaving sabers—huge, heavy, sharp—smashing through by raw force.

And then that gods-damned net.

To Ungung ground his teeth.

Now the Heavenly Flower Sword was flat-out bodying into them.

Multiple blades chopped for her shoulder, but the net—hemp rope thick as two fingers, cords twisted with iron wire—blocked them cold.

A shrill “Kkyaaak!” split the air.

But when hurt is real you hear the breath break with an “ugh,” not those high, off-key squeals. High pitch meant she could still take it.

Hack away as hard as they liked, the cords caught the edges; at best it was like clubbing.

He shouted for thrusts, but the Great Plain Sect’s standard saber forms contained no stabbing movements to begin with; the awkward pokes they mustered carried no body weight at all.

So the tips were pointy, but the strikes kept bumping into the thickest part of the sabers and only peppered her with pricks.

The white uniform blooming with scattered red dots was the proof.

So it wasn’t that blades couldn’t get in—

The problem was To Ungung’s own weapon: a demon-head saber.

That was a greatsaber with a heavy ornament at the tip—usually carved as a demon’s head—hence the name.

Hang a weight on the point and imagine the bite on a cut.

But? With no sharpened point, it didn’t stab.

The Heavenly Flower Sword’s blade flashed.

Too big and too heavy to call a “sword”—it made no sense that she could swing that cumbersome giant one-handed.

The qi laid on it was poured in so stupid-thick the aura looked a full inch across.

One of the first disciples went down at a diagonal.

He’d been the sect’s bright prospect, newly entered into early Peak.

He tried to set the saber and block, but got shoved aside and sprung open like nothing; the edge of the Heavenly Flower Sword, qi burning on it, went in at the ear and came out below the armpit.

No matter how strong you were, after a cut like that you didn’t explode back upright.

After she carved the first disciple, the Heavenly Flower Sword’s tip dug into the ground with a thud; her waist folded, her fist nearly brushed the dirt—she was stooped.

Blades poured down on that narrow, slender back—the exact opposite of her broad chest.

To Ungung’s demon-head saber fell among the brightest of them, arcing in a wide, starry curve.

A woman bent forward: through the uniform the line of the spine drew a graceful, indecent, suggestive curve. He struck straight for it.

A qi-laden chop that should have severed a spine—and ran flat into the net.

“Urk!” The Heavenly Flower Sword let out a sound of real pain and slapped to the ground, but in the next breath she sprang up on all fours, groaned “Uuugh,” then pushed to her feet.

Even if the net caught the steel, a full-power chop should’ve left her like she’d been hit with a mace, smashed to pieces—yet she stood, throat rasping under the crush, still getting up.

Damn dog of a net. To Ungung blamed the net.

What kind of bastards made something like that and put it on the field!

Answer: Imgi County’s tiger hunters.

A great tiger could put out eight hundred geun of force, and it was vicious and cunning to boot.

And if the pelt got damaged, you didn’t get your hazard pay. So the usual method was: throw a tough net, stake it down, and hammer the beast to death.

Qing rampaged like a tigress.

(What the Central Plains called a “tigress,” her homeland classified as a leopard.)

The great Central Plains man said: tiger, leopard, still beasts; same hide, only the pattern differed—call them the same kind.

The thick, heavy one was a great tiger; the lithe, sleek one, a tigress.

Only, Qing was the great-tiger type.

Two Great Plain Sect disciples were already dangling in the net.

With the Heavenly Flower Sword wearing the net like a cloak and dragging the extra length on the ground, they tried the reasonable thing—yank her off her feet.

Reasonable, and useless: they yanked, she dragged, they tripped; arms tangled; two burly adults got hauled, rolled, scraped across the dirt.

All while the Heavenly Flower Sword flew.

She stamped and her silhouette cut the air; the men hanging from the net skipped after her like stones tossed across a pond.

How the hell did a woman have that kind of brute strength!

To Ungung’s molars were the only ones suffering, grinding and grinding.

Granted, Qing’s look was indecent.

With two full grown men hung behind her as counterweights, the net cinched tight around her torso; it drew taut across her chest until the flesh swelled as if it would burst.

And she was fine?

That was a woman’s vital spot.

It hurt—tear-jerking, eye-stinging hurt.

Don’t guard your chest? You’re Three-Headed, and you throw away two heads? We are not useless lumps of flesh! This is a woman’s most important organ, secure it now!—the protest surged as pain.

The tremor at the corner of Qing’s eyes was the proof.

This won’t do. It hurts too much to think.

So—“Hrraaah!”

A rasping kiai that scratched her throat.

Rough, yes, but a beautiful voice stayed beautiful even when she scraped her cords.

Qing heaved on the net with strength, and the two men dangling behind her launched in wingless flight and crashed into the Great Plain Sect line.

One saber man with qi up couldn’t bring himself to cut down his own underlings in cold blood, and he couldn’t tenderly catch them either; he vaulted and chopped high instead.

One human counterweight hit the ground and his neck snapped; the other suffered an open fracture, white shinbone out in the world, and screamed, “Aaaagh! Kill me!”

Qing grabbed the front hem of her net-skirt and flipped it like overturning a dinner table.

The human counterweights and a corpse rose with it; the heavy net fanned out with a charrak; it billowed and, from below, wrapped around a mid-Absolute who’d leapt into the air.

And that counterweight still had strength enough to soar even higher. Qing took the chance—shot both hands up and flicked her chin.

The net wedding robe peeled away with a pap-flutter.

It should’ve slid off clean, but it scraped her jaw and left a raw burn; never mind—now three Great Plain Sect bodies—two disciples and one corpse—were tangled together, beginning their fall behind Qing.

Freed of the net, Qing felt light.

She shed the weight that had pressed on her whole body; she shed the pain that had physically strangled her chest fit to burst—now she felt so light she might fly.

So that’s why people train with sandbags.

And straight away—what was his name again, the talky one? To-something? To-In? To-Ingong? How the hell is a person named To-Ingong?

Anyway, the one who’d been bleating excuses.

Qi met qi.

Broken star-light sprayed in all directions.

“Senior brother!”

A voice—Yeom Bing, the disciple—suddenly stabbed in.

Early Absolute, qi still unstable and shaky, shoved in with it.

But the Heavenly Flower Sword vanished from in front of his eyes.

Yeom Bing’s blade cut empty air; To Ungung’s eyes dropped at once.

The Heavenly Flower Sword lay back with knees folded, back and the soles of her feet stuck to the ground. Their eyes met, and as they did, her recumbent arm swept the ground and the great blade lifted with a wheeze like a skewered scream—

—and in that path lay the disciple’s ankle.

“Aaaagh!”

Lucky for him, he had Guardian Qi up; instead of severing the foot, it flicked his sole up and sent him tumbling.

“You cur!”

To Ungung chopped in, desperate.

So desperate he couldn’t tell man from woman.

Martial arts were for fighting humans, and humans didn’t normally lie down in a fight.

Meaning: the foundation of martial arts was not built to fight an opponent flat on the ground.

Pak!

The greatsaber pegged into the earth; dirt blew up rough.

Beyond it, the Heavenly Flower Sword rolled back—showing a huge rump, a back, a white slender neck—and then sprang up—

—and in the flash of her eyes there nested: rotten meat, camellias withering into ruin, corroded iron, a hill of corpses and the fat running down it, and all manner of inexpressibly baleful colors.

“You, you Heav—”

BONG!

A grand temple bell erased To Ungung’s words.

A vast shock sheared his cheek; pfwuk—meat dropping, a human body collapsing like a hunk of flesh.

He couldn’t spare a glance to see whether it was a disciple or a junior who died.

All at once a brilliance of star-light filled his vision, right in front of his face.

“Ah.”

The Moonlight Sword bored into To Ungung’s eyes.

With a vain last word no one would hear, the fiercest killing intent a human could cast—and the qi—ripped through his brain and tore it to pieces.

If there was an afterlife, To Ungung’s road there wouldn’t be lonely.

His disciples and juniors would arrive soon; an instant later everyone would be reunited.

“What kind of bitch was that.”

“But did you see the chest on her? Man, if I’d known she’d be that much of a kink, I’d have tied one up at the brothel.”

“Huh. You didn’t see her iron-face guard dead-on like we did. If that’d been a bed? You’d die.”

Idle chatter like that, friendly as thieves; with Evil Path manners being what they were, likely all headed for Hell together.

Naturally, Qing had no way to know about any afterlife.

She hadn’t known her homeland’s world even when she lived there, and she didn’t know the Central Plains even as she lived here.

Yes, she was more ignorant than most.

But a human’s world stopped at their own line of sight. People only understood what they’d seen; in the end, that was all the world was.

By the same reasoning, in the eyes of the spectators, the enemies, the soldiers—now only the Heavenly Flower Sword remained.

In their world now, a giant called the Heavenly Flower Sword would be standing.

A woman stood alone within a field of stares.

Her white uniform, soaked in other people’s blood, clung and exposed a brazen, dramatic curve.

Cruel, and yet wanton.

In the silence thick with the sound of hard swallows, a breath came out—haa—a little fevered.

Only then did a clear voice follow.

“Then, next.”