Chapter 547: Hanga Yoran (7)

The representative of the petitioners from the Blood-Lama Gate closed his eyes and let out a long, deep sigh.

What unfolded was even worse than their worst fear. That wretch Mahi should have just died cleanly; instead, he could already see the Heart-Plucking Demon Lord rampaging in his mind’s eye.

Damn it—she ran ahead after leaving only a “get here fast” message, got herself wrecked, and now how were they the ones stuck with the fallout? The unfairness of it was galling.

Their only way to live now was to seize the enemy, wrap her up nice and neat, and lay her at their master’s feet.

“We just received word that the young lady in the suite—the Gate Master’s daughter—is on the verge of death after being hideously tortured by the Heavenly Flower Sword. From this moment the Heavenly Flower Sword and the Blood-Lama Gate are mortal enemies. Please, consider our position, won’t you?”

“Ahem.”

Chae Unsok faked a cough and worked his lips—what he always looked like when he sent a voice-transmission.

—Once the investigation’s finished, we’ll subdue the Heavenly Flower Sword and send her to you. So withdraw for now, will you? I’ll put in a good word with the Union Lord about our Blood-Lama Gate’s ‘concession,’ mm?

The representative’s stance was hardline; “subdue and send her” was just a pretty wrapper around “kill her and ship the corpse.”

Of course, Qing had not the slightest intention of tamely accompanying the Demonic Union.

A nice, oily little scheme between two con artists—truly venomous.

Then the Blood-Lama Gate’s famed Beastmaids swarmed up to Chae Unsok and—whump—dropped to their knees in front of him.

They prostrated themselves and begged.

From Qing’s perspective, bitches who wore collars and ran on all fours bowing their heads now looked... exactly like what they always were.

“Elder, please reconsider our grievance just this once. Please? We beg you...!”

“We’ll beg like this! To be forced to turn back with our enemy right before us—what in this world could be more wretched and more bitter?”

“Please, we beg you! Elder!”

“A-hem, ah, don’t—don’t do this.”

Chae Unsok couldn’t hide his awkward grimace. He kept shooting frantic looks that said: get these women off me.

Inside, though, anger was rising.

Come on—he’d even compromised, promising to take care of them later so they could all “resolve it nicely,” and now they pull this ridiculous village farce and make things hard for him?

If he shook them off here and walked off with the Heavenly Flower Sword, what would that do to the Union’s face?

These Blood-Lama bastards only want to steal the Heavenly Flower Sword under a dozen excuses because they desire demonic arts—and they dare—

Qing quietly shifted her weight onto her “forepaws.”

For her, kneeling was merely a one-step wind-up for thrust, a single step back that primed the big picture.

Because she herself used it that way, the moment she saw someone kneel and lay out a great bow, her first suspicion was whether they were preparing to ignite their booster.

And sure enough.

The Beastmaids sprang as one.

A vicious rush worthy of authorities on mimicking beasts that run and leap on all fours!

“Eh—!?”

Chae Unsok reacted a beat too late.

Just as Qing had been swarmed, they clamped onto his limbs with teeth and hung, fastening tight, and he could only stagger backward in a lump with the Beastmaids.

He was a master, so he didn’t go down—on pride alone.

Only for a moment, though.

One Beastmaid who had bitten his waist and was being dragged along fumbled in panic, then reached between his legs.

Her fist clenched—

“AAAAAAAAH!!”

A marrow-freezing, abject scream.

Just as a woman’s breasts aren’t shielded by Guardian Qi, a man’s two jewels aren’t either.

There is no master or novice when it comes to the pain of castration. Chae Unsok collapsed where he stood.

Qing slammed a foot into the floor.

“Elder!”

Her high, sharp cry as she lunged sold the panic perfectly.

Anyone would think she was rushing to save the Elder. Inside?

No! I am not giving up the last hit!

Her leg thumped into a Beastmaid’s flank—thud!

Ribs snapped in a neat row; the Beastmaid sagged with a gurgling cry.

Qing seized that one by the hair and flung her aside, then rammed herself, urgent and low, between the tangle of women.

They were jammed together under their own weight.

They didn’t notice Qing right away. She shouldered through the press, the iron tang of blood thick in the air. Her hand slid out—over a face, a beard, a neck—reaching farther across a shoulder, and at last past the collarbone—

Her fingers punched into Chae Unsok’s chest.

With brute force she pried open his ribs; her hand split into the thoracic cavity and clamped his heart.

The strongest grip in the world squeezed and pulped muscle.

“Khugh.”

Chae Unsok, age sixty-three. Born male, died a eunuch.

Late-Flower Realm; assessed to reach the Profound Realm and become a pillar of the Demonic Union—snuffed out in futility.

He died buried under a pile of women. One could call that, in its way, a happy death.

“What... what is this...!” “Branch Lord!” “Master!!”

“C-Catch the Heavenly Flower Sword or we die!”

“They’re attacking! Everyone, draw!”

The Blood-Lama Gate warriors finally showed their true faces; sword-light flashed, sword-qi and blade-qi tangled into a hundred trajectories, clashed, and spat sparks.

As Chae Unsok went limp, the Beastmaids who had been chewing meat, drinking blood, and raking at skin paused.

They slowly raised their torsos, traded looks of stout satisfaction—

And then felt something wrong.

Wait. Do we have an infiltrator among us?

After all, if all of them were splashed head-to-toe in blood and filth, and only one of them looked strangely beautiful and shone—

“Ah. You caught me?”

“You—Heavenly Flo—”

A Beastmaid’s jaw snapped sideways before she could finish.

Her eyes went vacant; her pupils rolled up as the clean shot landed flush.

Qing’s hands shot left and right, seizing hair by the fistful. She drew her fists together with annihilating force—and the two skulls attached to that hair smashed together in the middle—bang!

“KyAAAA!”

Two heads collided; one scream rang out.

When your skull cracks and brain and bright chips of brain spill out—beast or Beastmaid, you don’t make sounds after that.

“Kya-oooo!”

“Use words!”

Qing barked, lifted two fingers, and jabbed—slick—straight into the two neat holes in Kya-ooo’s “face” where eyes go.

“KyAAA!” The shrill scream came as Kya-ooo clutched what used to be her eye sockets.

Hnh. If you can scream in a human voice, what’s with the beast noises?

What are they, monsters made by feeding them animal hearts instead of human ones?

Even a cow uses “moon-steps” and sometimes crushes a mouse by chance; had the Heart-Plucking Demon Lord heard that thought, he would have flinched and demanded to know how she knew—but alas, he wasn’t here, and Qing didn’t actually know.

“Kheuheong!”

“You too!”

Qing snapped, skimming upward.

Her knee rose smooth to the pit of the stomach and came down—crunch—on Kheuheong’s nose.

She mounted his chest. A howl of fury, her two fists rising and falling in alternation—wet, splitting thuds.

“I! —crack!— Said! —crack!— Use! —thud!— Human! —smack!— Words! —scrunch!—”

She flung the blood-mash that had been Kheuheong aside and swept the melee with eyes gone feral, all ill-omened colors flickering in them.

“Anyone else got something to say? After Kya-ooo and Kheuheong what’s next—Awoo? Mooo? Cock-a-doodle-doo?”

“Eek!” “Hic!” “No!” “Nothing!” “We’ll speak human!”

“Tsks. Beast or human, you only listen after a beating. Hand over the leash!”

“Eh?”

“I said hand over your leash! Don’t know what a leash is? Can’t unbuckle it? Want me to rip your neck off first and then unbuckle?”

“J-Just a second, it won’t—won’t come—”

“H-Here!”

“Tsk. Figures. Consider yourselves lucky.”

Qing growled, snatched a leash, buckled it around her own neck, then kicked off.

She landed on all fours dead-center in the brawl between the Blood-Lama Gate and the Demonic Union, jinked sharp and nimble through gaps, and shot out—pure beast-bitch energy.

The Beastmaids left behind plopped down. More than half of them made a wet, splutching sound when they sat.

Qing cut the battlefield on a crisp zigzag.

With a leash on her neck and running on all fours with long hair streaming, anyone who saw her saw “some Beastmaid.”

So the Demonic Union’s fighters flinched and made way; the Blood-Lama Gate’s fighters shouted and pointed, but either way, neither camp blocked her path.

She vaulted the fray and sprang into the Hangzhou onlookers.

They hurriedly shoved aside and opened a lane; Qing landed on all fours—thunk.

“Rawr.”

She gave one beast-cry for form, then vaulted the human wall and tore down the night streets of Hangzhou like a lone tiger gone berserk.

She planted on a pavilion wall, sprang to the eaves, raced the roofline to the next avenue, then, hitting a residence, snatched a garment off a clothesline and dropped light into a back alley.

“Shhhh— thought my heart was going to fall out.”

Running on all fours had consequences—everything bounced. The hole punched clean through her chest was making a damned scene, delivering agony like it was about to kill her right now.

Qing slid a hand into her blouse and probed, careful.

“It’s really torn—sss...”

Her fingers brushed the wound and she froze, sucking air through her teeth.

This is absolutely going to scar.

If I get a jar of Renewing Salve from Nanaa and smear it on, I could erase it in a month or two, but... mm. I can’t let her see.

She bound her torso tight with the stolen clothes for now, ripped off the leash at her throat, and flung it away.

That was when—

“Trickster of deception; yet you cannot deceive me.”

“Uh?”

“For I have penetrated the wisdom of all things. The shallowness of Central Plains women is cunning. You exist within the palm of your Buddha.”

A peculiarly gaunt human silhouette slid into view at the mouth of the alley.

Qing recognized that shape.

The Freak Monk—uh—what was his name again?

“Fishcake Trio?”

“I am Amukhalab! Insolent Central Plains bitch! You toy with the name of a man! Even the Buddha will not forgive!”

“Mm. I think the Buddha would forgive you.”

“I have received great insult, you wicked Central Plains bitch! Hand yourself over to me! Then the Absorbing Star Great Law will remain unharmed!”

Sounded like: hand over the “Absorbing Qi Demonic Art,” and he’d pretend he hadn’t seen anything.

Qing got the gist.

“No, there was never any Absorbing Qi Demonic Art. Why won’t you believe human words? How do I give you something that doesn’t exist? Want me to make one up for you?”

“The mouths of Central Plains swine belch lies from sewers. Very filthy! Even Buddha admits it and throws them into hell!”

“Who the hell taught you Central Plains speech? Did the Buddha teach you that too? If you’re going to learn anyway, why not learn from a Central Plains Buddha?”

“Identical to the low-grade brain of a bitchy dog. Your Central Plains ‘Buddhas’ are knockoffs. All Buddhas are manufactured in India.”

...Huh. When you think about it, that’s not wrong.

He calls himself a monk; he’s weirdly sharp on sutras.

But since when did monks have mouths this foul?

“Anyway, I can’t call something that isn’t there ‘there.’ You’re going to make me die of frustration.”

“Agreement. Central Plains fiend, if you lie, you will farm. If you hand over the divine art meekly, there will be no bloodshed.”

“For real... you’re driving me nuts...”

Qing dragged both hands down her face and, as if by accident, flicked a glance behind him.

Mm. Is this bastard alone?

Even that glance caught the mountainous bulk filling the alley.

Despite that massive body, he’d somehow crept up without a trace, inching forward: the grand king of fatties, Pobidon.

That fat lump Pobidon—durable as old leather.

And did the two of them become friends?

Skinny draws the eye while Fatty pounces?

Didn’t look like they got along before, but the childish ones fight, then get close—that kind of dynamic?