Chapter 526: Chaos (12)

The enemies wore deadly-serious faces at the sudden interference.

“Hey. There’s no code that lets you cut into a life-and-death duel staked on personal grudges.”

“A duel staked on grudges? Nine of you step out against one woman and you’re proud of it? Ha. Please.”

“That was the Heavenly Flower Sword’s public declaration—”

“Hmph. Then go fetch one more mid-Peak and make it an even ten, why don’t you? No—since you lot are going to fight too, bring two mid-Peaks and one early Absolute, how about that? We can handle exactly our tier, so add exactly that much.”

“That’s absurd!”

Jeogal Ihyeon stepped forward.

“Absurd? What exactly is absurd? Even if you win nine to one, we’re going to be left as your future trouble. In that case, facing you together is a gain for you as well, no?”

“You said it was a grudge. Any reason to draw weapons? A simple match would do nicely.”

Paeng Daesan added on.

In Qing’s eyes, Paeng Daesan was exactly the type who always put on a cool act while pretending to detest faces and women clinging to him.

“Ahem. Then we’ll try to gather more people and—”

Tang Nanaa’s eyes flashed.

A square of pressure slammed down—flash!

“—match the numbers and come back, hmm?”

The spokesman looked down at a sharp sting in his own instep.

A hair-thin needle had budded up, only the pinhead peeking out.

His mind went blank.

What? Didn’t that little woman just now flick her hand in plain view? At a time like this?

“An ambush! How craven—!”

“Hmph! It’s fine to do that to a craven bastard! Here—here’s the antidote! I’m a proper enemy now, right? Not going to fight?”

“P—poison!”

Tang Nanaa trained with concealed weapons for recreation; she did it because she loved it—he who knows < he who loves < he who delights.

As the Master said: in any art, the one who knows cannot match the one who loves, and the one who loves cannot defeat the one who delights.

And the Tang Clan’s concealed-weapons style was never about throwing just one.

“Nanaa?”

“Nine Absolutes? They’re schemers. If we don’t kill them now, they’ll hound us for ages, won’t they?”

At the Tang Clan’s pinnacle, one didn’t bother with public opinion.

The Tang family would dearly like her to bother, but villains never learn that sort of thing.

An ordinary warrior would think the infamy she piled up became her own shame—and the shame of her organization, the Sichuan Tang Clan—thus a nuisance inflicted on others.

A villainess is the opposite.

She assumes her house and her followers will of course move for her sake. If the rabble mutters that she’s craven—so what?

Can they afford to cross the Tang Clan?

“Come on, then! We’ve got a long way to go!”

Tang Nanaa, knives braced between every finger joint, shouted for all to hear.

If they backed off or tried to circulate inner qi to expel the toxin, she’d throw without scruple.

“Damn it! Take the antidote!”

Fury drove the warriors in.

To be exact—seven of them; only the one hit by the needle, and those who owed him, jumped in with a scowl.

And the other two? They watched the wind, edged backward, and slipped into the crowd.

They’d planned nine against one; it had become four.

Who’s crazy enough to jump into a fight you’re sure to lose?

You got poisoned, not me. You’re the ones who need the antidote, not me.

An Absolute shows up at least one per small city; in large cities, every sizable hall has one fixed in place.

So although nine had gathered, they scarcely knew each other; they’d combined to avenge themselves, but if it looked bad, of course they’d scatter.

“Lady, Jeogal—guard Nanaa!”

“Yep! Big sis!”

Qing wrapped sword-qi around the crescent blade with rear iron maul.

A presence stepped in at her shoulder.

Qing grinned.

Two is still better than one.

A military crescent blade’s standard proportions: a four-chi haft and a three-chi edge.

A seven-chi sweeping half-moon—miraculous reach. A sword with at most a two-chi edge couldn’t even imitate it.

“Out of the way! That wench launched an amb—”

“No questions! Save your excuses!”

“No, not an excuse—she clearly struck first—”

“Die!”

Letting them keep talking would only drag down Nanaa’s reputation.

So Qing kept cutting them off mid-sentence and drove a ferocious assault.

Moon Maiden Sword, Fourth Move: The Moon-Arc Draws the Blade.

One day, at the sound of clashing, Moon-Arc came running and saw a young man fighting a band of brigands.

The young man was badly hurt and bleeding; Moon-Arc was shocked and hurried to break up the fight.

Moon-Arc’s “realm” was only the southern wood, a little ridge south of Moon Country called the Southern Forest.

Her life was nothing more than playing with monkeys and whipping branches in mock battle.

So, not yet understanding hatred, a grown child but still guileless, she butted in—why are many bullying one; you must all get along—saying such innocent nonsense.

The bandits only snickered at the extra beauty who’d suddenly turned the count from one to one-plus-one.

At least, until they took a straight, handsome branch in the face and went rolling.

The crescent blade skimmed the air as light as a willow twig, darting crisscross, weightless and quick.

Twenty-five geun—of course, not quite that if you didn’t count the iron maul fixed to the back—but still a hulking slab of iron with length behind it; imagine the momentum when it swung.

This was the first time Moon-Arc lifted a blade not for herself but to shield another: the first stroke of her life for someone who was not herself.

...Huh? Was it?

Qing’s gaze flicked around.

For the Moon Maiden, maybe. But Qing had already dipped her hands in blood—no, not dipped; she’d pinched her nose and leapt in with a splash, wearing every karmic smear there was.

In her heart-image, the Moon Maiden spared the brigands; she knew nothing of human hatred yet.

But Qing?

Was there any need to spare bandit scum?

Just kill them all and be done.

The heart-image fractured; a gap opened along the line the crescent blade had been drawing.

“Die!”

An enemy with his skull already split and bleeding didn’t miss that gap; his sword-qi lanced in.

Qing loosened her grip into a half-open fist. The heavier rear maul shifted the weight; the long shaft slid, and the blade’s guard tapped her forefinger—tok.

As if she held the iron maul in reverse.

Her hand shot forward; her elbow folded; the heavy maul ran the length of the shaft and—whumm!!

A ten-geun iron maul buried deep in the bastard’s cheek.

A jaw wrenched sideways; a nosebleed erupted in a flash; he’d thrown up a sheath of Guardian Qi—a so-called early Absolute—but his head didn’t burst.

He ricocheted off three times faster than he’d dived in, scree—ch—skidding on the far cheek in a long gouge.

A face-first crash; the enemies balked, recoiled, and glanced over.

He’d flown right to the spectators, writhing, the petitioner for vengeance.

And thwip!—a throwing knife planted itself right in the middle valley between his wide, flattened buttocks.

Every gaze swung to Tang Nanaa.

Tang Nanaa snorted once through her nose and ducked behind Jeogal Ihyeon’s massive frame.

Meanwhile, Paeng Daesan had taken two Absolutes and was fighting a decent holding action.

A soft peal of thunder rolled—kwarrung, kwareureung—a sky-wail out of place under the clear, high autumn blue.

Mixed-Origin Thunderbolt Divine Art.

In the beginning, there was neither Heaven nor Earth—only all things muddled together in one chaos.

Thus all things are one: the One-Source.

Because it is the great root: the Great Origin.

And because all is mixed: the Mixed-Origin.

One day, the Paeng clan heard thunder that cleaved the world with light in a season of unstable skies—thunder that fell with the sunder of light.

A sound not heard by the ear but felt by the body: the savage voice of destruction. Whatever the beginning held, that sound must have been there.

So a saber like thunder came into the world; the root of the cosmos, the most fearsome sound, followed after it, they say.

New to the Absolute tier, his unstable blade-qi rippled over a thin, keen saber, sketching irregular waveforms.

Even so, he held two at once without being pushed back, thunder pealing again and again—this was the true power of a divine art and supreme school.

The slim saber was quick, flashing as it cut; its flexible sweep broke, kinked, and segmented like a storm of lightning thrusts.

Paeng Daesan, for his part, was grinding his molars.

Two men of the same tier, and he couldn’t seize the initiative?

If he’d known, he would’ve obeyed Big Sister Ryeo and brought the greatsaber.

Day after day: “offer the flesh, cut the bone”—the weight that lets you give up meat and break the skeleton—the way a true man fights; the real power of the Paeng house, she’d roar.

Of course, Big Sister Ryeo wasn’t a “man”; she was a beast worse than a man. If she were here, she’d already have split one and pinned another.

Come to think of it, the reason Paeng Daesan ditched the greatsaber for a slim saber was all thanks to a certain someone who preached “muscle supremacy” every day and evangelized “brute force first.”

A surge hit him.

Paeng Choryeo’s sisterly love had a violent streak; now, at least, she couldn’t grab and whirl a grown man, but what had it been like when he was little?

A sister who daily cranked his head, choked his neck, seized his joints and grappled—meaning a younger brother who got tormented every day.

Maybe Paeng Daesan’s allergy to women started with his own sister.

His body tensed without thinking; the carefully simulated lightning of his blade-qi suddenly surged, jumped the track, and slammed down as a flash.

A snap from quick to heavy; the enemy stamped back in a hurry.

Thud! The blade drove deep into the ground.

But there were two. The other one slashed in, “now!”—and fire flared at the corner of Paeng Daesan’s eye; his hand shot out—KWA-RUNG!

What’s terrifying about an ancient house’s divine system is the matched set.

Unified techniques born of one heart-image complement each other, erasing weaknesses and stacking together.

Inner qi from the Mixed-Origin Thunderbolt Divine Art.

Footwork from Mixed-Origin Steps.

The right hand wheeled the saber back—Mixed-Origin Thunderbolt Saber. That left the left hand free.

So what goes in the left hand?

Mixed-Origin Thunderbolt Palm.

Startled by the thunder, the foe flattened his blade and braced to receive.

Clang!—like stone cracking—Paeng Daesan staggered, two steps back.

His foe ploughed two long ruts and slid—so although the distance was similar, you’d call it a judge’s decision for the petitioner for vengeance, except—

Swi-ack!

A throwing knife jutted from the petitioner’s flank, only the handle sticking out.

This is why, even in Qing’s homeland, the rule in many-on-many is: kill the ranged attacker first.

All the more when she’s a woman who uses poison?

“Khff.”

The petitioner coughed wetly.

Paeng Daesan lifted his slim saber and charged again.

The petitioner for vengeance thought:

Fuck—what a filthy life-and-death duel.