Chapter 543: Hanga Yoran (3)

Qing looked at Yu-ryang’s young face.

A pretty girl, mouth and chin lacquered in blood, droplets pattering down—an eerie sight.

In her fist, a heart—already slack, just a lump of meat now that its breath had gone.

Mm. One glance said it all: a pampered darling.

Qing had seen the type a thousand times.

Raised where everything she touched went her way.

For her, anything that left her lips became fact.

Calling Nyonyeong a stinking, suspicious, revolting corpse-handler? To her, that was unquestionable truth.

(Setting the smell aside, it wasn’t entirely wrong. Even a broken clock is right twice.)

Her “ambush” that failed to pierce muscle—killing her own subordinate and, far worse, punching a hole in Qing’s precious breast—had morphed, in her mind, into a heart-piercing, lethal strike.

Qing getting back up wasn’t proof her heart was intact—no, in Yu-ryang’s head it proved Qing was a jiangshi who could live with a destroyed heart.

She’d always been the world’s center—and the truth.

Whose fault was that?

If every soul around her had cooed and clapped—Princess Mahee is always right, yes, yes, as Your Highness says—and handed down the verdict “you are correct”...

Qing let out a little leaking snort.

None of that mattered.

What mattered was: how to kill this monster in a way people would say she deserved it.

Mm. How to break her so hard she regretted being born and begged for death?

How, indeed?

Strip her naked, grab her hair, and parade her around Hangzhou? Wouldn’t that be shame enough to die? I hear she even has a crush—let him dump her properly.

Mm, no—what if he’s a sweetboy who “heals her wounds?”

In that case—ah! Bring in a beast—

No. Can’t.

Tempting plan, but innocent people could get burned by the splash.

“How dare you peep at our princess’s lewdness!” Then the Blood Sect brats would take it out on bystanders.

The innocent must not suffer.

So—what, then?

Qing took a step forward.

The Heart-Plucking Demon Princess Yu-ryang flinched back one step.

Plainly frightened.

And who wouldn’t be, seeing that?

Qing’s pupils glowed with ominous color, leaving a lingering afterimage.

Tracks of killing intent—of the Baleful Star itself—etched into space.

“D-don’t come! That’s right—you, you corpse-handler slut—think you’ll get away with this? If Father finds out—yes! Put that monster down now and beg forgiveness at once! If you do it now, I’ll— I’ll forgive you!”

Eon Yeonyeong didn’t even pretend to listen.

She only watched Qing with a gentle gaze.

“Oh my. Miss Seo Mun—how valiant you are. Not even an hour of the Heavenly Killing Star, and I’ve always thought the world cruel to me—perhaps not, after all? Huhu.”

“You! Corpse-handler! Stop this, now! I’ll pretend none of this happened—just stop that thing!”

Astonishingly, this was the greatest mercy Yu-ryang had ever offered in her life.

Princess Mahee, who had never once held herself back.

To “pretend it never happened”—boundless grace, as vast as the sea!

Which is to say—she still hadn’t come to her senses.

Qing took another step.

Should I hang her upside-down like I did in the Green Forest?

Too slow.

Even with that half-assed pretend-qi, she could mimic true qi a little.

String her up and she’d just spend the day doing ab crunches.

Smash her lower dantian? Mm... but she still looks like a girl; some soft-hearted passerby might free her.

Tch. Should I just kill her now?

I want her to hurt for a long time, though.

“G-get back! Get—hiiik.”

Yu-ryang flicked a glance behind her.

Her “poison heart,” who had so gallantly sliced her own subordinate’s belly for a sneak strike, was gone; only a coward remained, frantic for escape.

To be fair, when you’re outmatched, running is wiser than lunging in.

But only if there is a way to run.

At some point, Eon Yeonyeong’s women—her jiangshi flock—had filled the changing-room corridor, faces blank, sealing the exits tight.

“You—you corpse-handler! What are you doing! Get rid of these monsters right now! Think you’ll live if my father hears of this!?”

“That’s become a bit troublesome. Oh?”

Yu-ryang suddenly sprang at Eon Yeonyeong.

Qing was dumbstruck.

What—choosing death?

On what confidence did she charge that genuine monster?

To Yu-ryang, Eon Yeonyeong was only a technician who knew how to craft jiangshi.

Far easier prey than Qing, whose eyes were spilling starlight from the Baleful Star.

Yu-ryang’s body stopped dead.

Both feet hung in the air.

Front leg folded toward her target, back leg stretched, sword arm drawn—frozen mid-pounce, eyes rolling in panic.

“Huh? Wh-what? How—mmpf.”

“Oh dear. Did I look easier to you?”

A chill ran up Qing’s spine.

Air-Striking Seizure—plucking things through empty space. A household skill of peerless masters.

Her teacher used it to bring a blade, a switch, a brush set from across the room.

But to seize a person with it—pinning in midair a supposed qi-user?

Qing grimaced, shaken.

That’s what an end-boss feels like?

How are you supposed to beat that?

Eon Yeonyeong, unbothered, gave Qing a warm look.

“Miss Seo Mun, would you like to handle it yourself? Or shall I? Either way, rumor will say the Heavenly Flower Sword killed Mahee. The Blood Sect will be very cross.”

“You read my mind. I was going to let it spread that you killed her and pinned it on me.”

“Oh my. Even if the Blood Sect are fools, they aren’t such halfwits as to believe that. How could a frail corpse-arts practitioner slay the Heart-Plucking Fiend who’s taken thousands of hearts?”

“Or—she’s only pretending to be frail. In truth, life-and-death duel stage at least, hiding her strength behind the corpse-craft.”

“Life-and-death at twenty-five? Why, how astonishing. Huhu.”

Even Qing thought that was a tale no dog would swallow.

Her fist trembled.

What a humiliation.

Couldn’t beat her with martial arts, couldn’t beat her with mouth.

Even if Qing grabbed her by the hair and slapped her, this one would only laugh it off—my, Miss Seo Mun, even your hands are fair—never letting Qing scratch the inside.

Not that she’d let herself be hit in the first place.

Mm. Qing cut her losses clean.

Maybe she should be grateful the end-boss wasn’t hostile.

Guide-post lord, once again you save my neck. May you live long in health, work little, and be paid much.

“Or we could try something else,” Eon said. “We could let the Heart-Plucking Demon Princess go. She’ll run to her father, and I’ll be expelled from the Blood Sect.”

Let her go? Hmph.

Sure, let her go and Eon gets cast out—maybe the Blood Sect fractures.

But that girl has eaten thousands of hearts. If we let her go, how many innocents die next?

Let a serial killer go, just to spite a bigger villain?

No.

That’s not right.

A monster like this must be killed when you can—and killed so she spends her last breaths cursing the fact she ever lived.

“Forget it. Hold her steady. I’m breaking her core first.”

“Like so? Easier this way, yes?”

Yu-ryang’s limbs snapped wide, splayed to the four directions.

Only a muffled “mmph” of struggle—no movement at all, floating helplessly.

Eon even positioned her perfectly so Qing’s hand could reach the lower dantian.

Qing set her palm on Yu-ryang’s dantian.

She probed inward—then immediately saw the cause of that counterfeit qi, that half-baked force.

A dantian doesn’t expand without end. As inner power piles up, it compresses into pure nature and settles.

But look at this—

A mishmash: hundreds, thousands of different true-qi “flavors” were swaddled together, cinched tight under a blanket.

With qi that uncondensed, how could you project real force?

Only a matter of time, though.

The miscellaneous currents were the stolen internals from devoured hearts; the blanket squeezing them—Heart-Plucking Demonic Qi, the true core of the inner art.

The strangled qi was slowly losing its color, merging into the heart-plucking core.

Given time, the “blanket” would thicken, the pressure rise, absorption accelerate—until it all purified into a single stream.

Mm. Exactly. You can’t let a thing like this live.

Qing tore down the dantian wall—then pricked the swollen balloon of heart-plucking qi, still clotted with mixed currents.

“Ah.”

An ominous sound slipped from Qing.

“Mmph! Mmph! Mmph! Mmph! Mmph!”

Yu-ryang forced out strangled groans.

Smashing a dantian is a kind of surgery; “ah?” “huh?” “oops” are among the very last sounds one wants to hear mid-procedure.

Thankfully, Qing hadn’t erred. She was just startled.

The qi that should have dispersed with the core shattered instead poured from Yu-ryang’s lower belly into Qing’s palm—then sprinted through her sixteen-lane, blown-wide meridians.

In an instant, Qing had absorbed all of the inner power.

Not a drop wasted. Down the hatch.

So—is Qing not only a glutton for food, but a human sow that gobbles other people’s qi as well?

No! Not even a pig eats like this.

From now on, don’t call Qing a pig—call pigs “Qing.” Brute-beast Qing; Brute Qing for short.

Of course, she hadn’t meant to.

What was this? Why? How? She’d only shattered the core—why was the qi flowing into her?

She had Heart-Plucking Art temporarily registered, and in breaking Yu-ryang’s core she’d understood its flow and principle perfectly.

Perhaps the cosmos had judged: “learned technique—channel accordingly.”

Or maybe Nyonyeong had nudged it—at life-and-death level she could have guided the scattering streams, forcing them into Qing.

Or a will had moved: the qi of the countless robbed hearts rallying to their avenger—a romantic stroke of fate.

Qing didn’t know.

Only that this was no time to sit cross-legged, analyze currents, and trace causes.

“Mm. Feels icky. Bring her.”

“Huhu. As you wish.”

From changing room to bath.

A proper high-class bath had, of course, a boiler tub for scalding water—ladled in to adjust temperature.

Qing crouched at the firebox beneath the still-steaming boiler, coaxed the coals to life with practiced breaths, and fed in the stacked firewood.

“Oh my. The Cauldron—are we using the Cauldron? Dear me. Huhu.”

“Mmmpf! Mmph! Mmmmmm!”

At the word “Cauldron,” Yu-ryang strained to scream again.

The Cauldron meant boiling—water or oil—cooking you alive.

Before long, the water rolled at a furious boil.

They’d only just finished bathing; embers still live meant the fire hadn’t been out long.

“Shall we dunk her and give her a nice long soak?”

Qing shook her head.

“No. Parboil only. Leave the head out; dunk the body deep, count to exactly three, then pull her up. You know what I mean, right?”