Chapter 528: Poison-Blade Uproar, Poison-Blade March (1)

The Evil Path crowd—the so-called Demonic Union lads—couldn’t fathom why heirs of great houses would step up to help Qing.

What was this? What were those brats lacking that they’d cozy up to a mere disciple of the Divine Lady’s Gate?

By Evil Path rankings, the Divine Lady’s Gate wasn’t in the Ten Evil Celestial Sects—laughable—and even if you doubled the roster to twenty, it still wouldn’t make the cut.

The orthodox bloc had the Nine Schools and One Sect and the Ten Great Houses; that’s twenty seats filled.

The Divine Lady’s Gate was famous only as a women’s school; ranked by order, it had critical defects in both scale and force.

If a Young Dragon came out of a place like that, obviously the Nine Schools and One Sect and the Ten Great Houses would treat her like a stranger, secretly sneer, check and sabotage—and best of all, remove her, right?

Grow any further and she’d be a master who’d challenge them—and a rising force.

If Qing heard it, she’d click her tongue.

Ha. Evil Path level. Well, that’s you. Sure.

Of course, the Evil Path could protest.

What was so glorious about the orthodox club’s “we’re all brothers” turf they carved out for themselves?

Not a matter of good and evil—just where the circle of “us” stopped.

Among the Evil Path’s tangled, cannibalizing sprawl, “my people” meant nobody but me.

So they acted without watching for faces.

But what about the orthodox already?

By their own rule—that one orthodox school must not covet another’s benefits—there could be no movement up or down in rank.

So long as they didn’t go bankrupt, the Eon Clan of Jinju would still be holding a chair among the Ten Great Houses.

A hundred years ago the Five Great Houses were the Five Great Houses; before that, the Nine Schools and One Sect were the Nine Schools and One Sect.

And the pontiff of orthodox martial society was Shaolin—people even said “Thousand-Year Shaolin.”

A perfect caste, unchanged in rank for ages.

So if a powerhouse like the Heavenly Flower Sword appeared, of course you should check her—no?

They had thrown themselves into a life-and-death duel without even giving their names or affiliations—meaning they had truly staked their lives.

Why? What was so pretty?

“Mm. She is pretty. A peerless beauty; Xi Shi can step aside.”

“Ah. So that’s it? If they’re men—sure. But there’s a Tang Clan woman there, too. A woman fell for a woman’s charms?”

“Don’t you know Young Master Ok Girin? They must’ve followed Ok Girin.”

“If they followed out of love for Ok Girin, shouldn’t they be cheering for us instead? Eliminate the rival first. If it were me, I wouldn’t think twice—I’d look for an opening and flick a poisoned needle.”

“...? Didn’t you say your wife was a widow? That her husband died of a pest?”

“Hoho. Figure of speech, man.”

The Divine Lady’s Gate wasn’t that scary.

There was said to be a First Among Women, but that was one person—and only very old masters even remembered the infamy.

And Evil Path warriors had far lower average lifespans than the orthodox. “First Among Women” was the generation before the generation before last—ancient history.

But the Five Great Houses were scary.

The Tang Clan and the Paeng house? The Jeogal house—well, a little soft.

The Jeogal house hadn’t made its name by martial prowess, which was why Jeogals for generations fumed, shouting, We have divine arts and we’re strong! We didn’t coast on our Five Great Houses ancestry!

So the avengers promised themselves tomorrow.

After seeing that roster of names, how could you talk vengeance today?

In the Central Plains, a grudge ended with applause for the one who resolved it; today’s meanness would pass—eventually their time would come.

And the warriors who weren’t avengers swelled with expectation.

In truth, among the massed warriors, the density of avengers was not that high.

The rest were still clinging—unable to let go—to the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art, seekers of a supreme art.

Most warriors trailing after Qing didn’t even know they had a grudge with her.

They believed the raid on the temporary base was the Blood Sect’s plot.

The Blood Sect Conquers the World scrawl; the control chamber found by those who rummaged the empty Shin Family Tomb out of regret; and then the Blood Sect witch revealed her true face—at that point everyone “understood”: ah, it really was the Blood Sect; what a pity.

But?

Supreme arts were a separate matter, weren’t they?

Even so, the truth about the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art hadn’t been settled.

If it truly existed, the Heavenly Flower Sword at the center of it all would have taken it.

She said she meant to destroy it—but supreme arts are more-is-better. If it existed, how could a warrior choose to erase the strongest martial art?

She could hand it to the orthodox and have it decoded and corrected—or, if not the orthodox, use her house’s power to settle it.

Qing would have pounded her chest in frustration if she heard it—in fact, boing, boing, rippling—what a racket.

But humans were always like this.

In Qing’s homeland, once folks fell for stocks or coins, it turned into faith, not analysis; they even knew it was a scam and still said, we’ll eat and get out together.

And was the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art some ordinary style?

Number one in the martial world!

The strongest master of the age!

A thought-guarantee for the supreme demonic art in history.

One strike and your life flipped!

Even well-educated people hanged themselves on “one strike”; in a primitive age with no formal education, of course warriors’ eyes spun.

Its existence wasn’t confirmed.

You couldn’t confirm existence when you couldn’t prove absence.

Yet—it existed.

When an art had to exist, and the people who needed it wanted it to exist, the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art had to exist.

To them, it was simple truth.

For some people, the Earth is flat.

Some severe simpletons believe all humanity is a single ethnicity—descendants of one ancient empire—and say a 1979 alt-history novel proves it.

A much older watermelon painting would be better.

Or that snake monsters rule the world.

Or another humanity lives underground.

Or that if you scrawl in blood on the floor and decorate it with special parts of assorted creatures, somehow a demon-king bestows power.

The Heavenly Flower Sword’s bewitching tongue had made it so only petitioners for vengeance could even challenge her.

And anyway—what time was there to demand “the truth” from the Heavenly Flower Sword in a life-and-death duel where the winner lived and the loser died?

Still, as their regret trailed after her, a big variable appeared.

Maybe those people would fight among themselves over the supreme art—and sure, if it was the Absorbing Qi Demonic Art, even orthodox dogs would drool.

The life-and-death duel was blown; the Heavenly Flower Sword might die and keep her mouth shut forever.

She couldn’t keep soldiers around her for a thousand years—the chance remained.

For these reasons, the party relaxed.

They ate and played very well.

Because someone was treating them very well.

“Haha! Behold the Heavenly Flower Sword’s friends—fine men and women, handsome and beautiful! The pillars of the realm’s martial world stand here; the Way of Orthodoxy shines like the sun with no shadow! Though army and martial world are distinct, you are patriots who wish for peace and defend the nation—this Great General cannot but extend hospitality to comrades who share my will! Come—take a cup!”

“An uncommon structure of logic. Truly a tremendous rhetorician. Ah—of course not comparable to my big sister.”

Qing gave a snort of laughter at the running commentary beside her.

It was wine personally bestowed by a Great General making the rounds.

What martial artist in the world ever received a Great General’s cup?

Only—Tang Nanaa, the Tang Clan’s unofficial imperial princess of Sichuan, had been worshiped by default her whole life.

She instantly noticed the fine difference in courtesy between how he treated Qing and how he treated her.

So after the Great General passed, a whisper.

“Qing, who is that guy to you? Why is he serving you like a servant serves a master?”

“Uh—mm. He says he’s an acquaintance of my mother.”

“Huh? Didn’t you say you don’t have a mother?”

Harsh, if anyone else heard it.

But Qing had seen Tang Nanaa more than once.

No insult—just fact-checking.

Tang Nanaa’s actions ran straight from the spine; the brain exerted no influence on her speech and deeds.

In truth, Qing’s take was precise; how had Tang Nanaa, who lived by spinal reflexes, survived this long?

She trusted the Moon-and-Flower Pavilion’s ultimate secret move: once she did it, she was always forgiven.

“Please. Who has no mother? Nobody pops into the world with a poof and, mm... eh.”

Mm. Someone who popped into the world with a poof—right here.

Pricked by her own words, Qing knocked back her drink.

Given primitive brewing limits, anything strong was expensive and good.

It tingled; the heat went down smooth and did nothing at all.

“Strictly, I don’t know. She claims to be my mother—but probably, no, certainly not a lie.”

“Then just make her ‘mother,’ no? Judging by how the Great General acts, she must be someone very high.”

“Mm. It’s complicated.”

“Why? Is she trying to swing you around? Demanding gold? Or now that she found her daughter, trying to marry you off somewhere?”

“Nothing like that. She’s a good person.”

“Then what’s complicated? Good is good.”

Come to think of it, they would soon meet Her Majesty the Empress.

Using the Empress’s identity tablet to mobilize the Provincial Commander—of course she’d know.

If Princess Yeonsul had died and Qing had taken the body, Qing was willing to play the stand-in.

It would only make her a substitute for a mother who lost her child; she wasn’t going into the palace anyway—she could visit sometimes and clown a little.

But if not?

If Yeonsul was alive?

If the Empress’s daughter had barely kept breathing, and Qing had taken that body?

Then—that wouldn’t be right.

Mm. Don’t know.

Think about it when it comes.

Right now there was a more urgent problem.

How do I shake these people off?

That was Qing’s top-priority puzzle.

It was obvious they’d stick like leeches out of “face.”

They wouldn’t go just because she told them to go.

If that were possible, they wouldn’t have cut into a life-and-death duel; at minimum they’d have announced their Five Great Houses backing before the duel and told the rest to back off.

She was truly grateful they wanted to fight with her.

It was excessive kindness.

But—they were really fragile...

More than one had tried sneaking poison into a life-and-death duel; Qing, immune to Blood-Spittle Poison, had just let them.

Thinking on it, at least no one bolted mid-duel; probably they judged anyone hit by a needle wouldn’t go far.

And not just poison.

From her time as a lady physician—get pricked by a thorn and, if unlucky, you died of infection in this primitive age.

Were they strong?

High-tier?

Too shaky to rely on for anything.

Friends were friends; they didn’t need to tag along on every major affair.

Weddings or funerals, maybe. Not rushing in a mob because something happened.

So although Qing was glad to see her friends—pleased—hmm. No.

How could she peel them off without hurting feelings?

She drove her brain hard.

But Qing, hard against malice and soft against kindness—what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know.

Just then.

The duty soldier who handled all practical affairs under the Great General—Steward Yang—approached and delivered a crisp report.

“Sir, the friends you mentioned are currently waiting in front of the restaurant.”