Chapter 555: Hanga Yoran (15)

Qing’s Tathāgata Divine Palm had rung that temple bell many times before.

But this timbre was unlike any prior—deeper, more immense—and it bored into the chest, thrumming on and on as an aftersound.

The “temple” in temple bell meant All—ten thousand things of the cosmos, the motion of Heaven and Earth, the yoke of karmic deeds, the cycle of birth and death, the rounds of transmigration and return—the working principle that held them all.

Thus the bell’s voice cut through human vexations, entered, and washed the heart—the cleanest sound that existed in the world.

Perhaps that was why.

All within the field turned toward it.

Even the Blood Fiends—the low ranks who’d done nothing but gorge, gnawing on Evil-Path warriors—wiped the demonic glaze from their eyes for an instant and turned their heads, seeking the single pure source of that sound.

For the Short Blade & Twin-Swords Society, it was the sound they had waited for—the most welcome of sounds.

Faces brightened—some with shy small smiles, some radiant, some letting out a backward breath as if to say we believed—and of course their joy rose, and heads turned of their own accord to find its owner.

Where all gazes met, a blood-smeared figure stood—arms flung out, unbowed.

A woman with not a patch of original color left—lacquered in blood from head to toe—and still she had not lost her beauty.

In that instant, every fight froze; the world went hushed—silence so still you could hear a sparrow’s chirp ring.

It was the moment someone gulped.

The blood-drenched beauty’s lips parted.

“Ahk—ugh—dead— I’m—dead—”

And—thud.

The woman’s form collapsed anyway.

For a heartbeat, it was as if question marks—yet unknown to the Central Plains—popped over every head.

...? What?

Flash before death? The sky brightest before the sun goes down? A last strike with all that remained?

“Qing!” “Qing!” “Miss Seo Mun!”

The friends’ voices cracked the air.

The first thing Qing saw when she opened her eyes was a dance—light, elegant, and whirling into a storm.

Murong Juhee danced.

Gold-Ram Sword-Flower—the sword-flower’s figure truly a “golden ram,” a round-dance worthy of the nickname folk had given it: silk streaming in the wind.

One blade was straight and hard.

One was thin and supple, bending and singing.

She spread the two swords like wings; her body turned; long sleeves fluttered like a butterfly at leisure.

Blood Fiends leapt, clawed the air, skimmed past, and wherever the sword-roads passed—shraaa—blood fountained.

A strange beauty that seized the eye—as if all time doubled its speed while she alone moved at half.

Their eyes met—and did not.

Her gaze was hazed, its focus thrown far away—wasn’t this the look of someone who had realized and entered no-self?

Seeing that fine, beautiful Murong lady like that—everyone must have been holding firm.

Qing let herself relax—just a little.

KWA-RUNG! A giant thunder-peal rolled.

Qing’s gaze snapped over.

Her eyes flew wide; before she knew it she sprang up, thrust out a hand, and pushed the empty air.

Index and thumb spaced a knuckle apart—the Amitābha Nine Grades seal—and the ringing truth of the Brahma precepts rolled out.

And—ah—urgh—me—me right now—what—

Pain so fierce she couldn’t voice a sound.

Her breath locked of itself, lungs cinched; in an instant tacky sweat beaded on her brow and down her spine; the sweat glands prickled like they’d been needled.

Qing creaked her head down.

From shoulder past navel to thigh, a long split wound gaped left and right—packed full now with a mashed red paste of blood—

All the pain she had deferred till now—all the agony she had held off by force of mind—came surging in at once.

As justice returns to its course: Heaven’s will to punish the idiot who—knowing nothing of the value of her own body—rampaged and wrecked it—Heaven’s scourge, a ghastly pain.

Me—what kind of—what state am I even in now?

How am I alive—how am I alive?

She thought a plea for help slipped out of her mouth without her knowing.

Her mind went distant; black closed in—

—and right then—Aaaagh...!

Her body twisted and the wound followed; for the price of letting go for a moment—kkugh—just kill me, I’ll tell you everything, please, someone save me, truly.

“Qing!” “Qing!” “Miss Seo Mun!”

If not for the voices drilling in at her ear, she’d have lain there just shivering, twitching.

But in a breath—like the tail of a soul that had slipped out past her lips whipped back in.

Grinding her teeth, Qing planted an arm, levered her torso up, set her left foot, pressed the knee joint—and in the end, she rose again.

She raised the crescent sabre and leveled the cold tip of that moon at Chang Sanya.

Her legs shook; her arms trembled—no one would call that a proper state.

Still—once. She had enough to swing it once.

After that, she couldn’t imagine what kind of recoil would follow—but even so—thanks to this.

Flower Realm had given her a last chance—to set a full feast, for all of us together to sit and eat—yes, a meal. A meal is a major affair.

Eat, to live.

Eat together, live together.

“Hey. Old man. Leave the frail kids alone and come have a go over here.”

Her voice kinked in the middle, slid off-key—but even that, not shrieking halfway through, deserved applause right now, didn’t it?

“You—you bitch!”

“Hey! Is your ‘martial study’ just picking on barely-trained brats your size? You think an over-the-hill geezer gets to ‘rejuvenate’ just by acting like a toddler in his heart? Tsk. You proud you’ve been stuffing the years up your ass? If it were me—if I had to age as ugly as you—I’d dunk my face in beef soup and off myself.”

Filth from a pretty mouth.

But the effect was tremendous.

A demon who had entered Demon and was already swollen with rage—his threshold for fury dropped to the floor—took a vicious taunt.

At that level, if he’d only heard “hey, old bastard,” his eyes would have already flipped. Qing didn’t know that much—but she kept running her mouth.

Because she didn’t trust herself to get all the way over there.

So—the enemy had to come.

Thud! The vicious Advance-True shuddered through the soles of Qing’s feet.

Chang Sanya’s form slammed in with an assault so fast it beggared sense.

Qing took him in with those wide eyes.

She watched, drew a great breath; right foot, left foot, right foot, left—she read the faint difference.

Ah. His left foot’s bad right now.

Qing lifted the iron-mace crescent sabre high—

—and the world obeyed and followed her.

The world tilted.

The earth tilted.

Behind the Heavenly Flower Sword sank and the front rose; Heaven and Earth set to swap places; the world turned over.

The ground stood up straight; he ran “down” the face toward her—more fall than charge.

With the earth reared like a cliff, his shape dropped straight.

Chang Sanya felt the question bite.

The world moved—thrust him at the blade.

Like a ship flipped by a typhoon, the ground turned—his body lay horizontal—and he pitched as if drawn, headlong, into the vicious edge of the moon-blade.

All present saw the strange sight.

The gazes gathered by the bell’s sound witnessed a world reversing—and human will was so powerless no one could twitch a finger.

They set like stone—only able to watch.

Heaven and Earth inverted.

And within that—only one thing—

stood unmoving.

A single crescent sabre stood vertical without a quiver; and suddenly a realization—ah—there—there was the very center of the world.

Chang Sanya stared, blank—sky overturned—gazing up at the sky with his head below—and down.

The half-moon—the moon-blade’s edge—was at hand.

At death’s brink, Chang Sanya mustered one last effort, trying with a single planted foot to shove off the ground mid-charge—

Tzzit—current nipped his thigh.

Instead his strength failed and his body listed.

Ah. That. Damn bastard—that slick-faced bastard—

was Chang Sanya’s last thought.

The earth hurled his body into the sabre.

A world fully reversed—foot-sun-rises, Earth-lid-closes.

A dawn sky fell away underfoot in a bottomless precipice; the sun sank and cast its splendor; the earth closed above like a ceiling.

One single weapon held its place.

Because that was the world’s center.

At some moment the world “returned.”

“Returned” wasn’t the precise word.

Like a long spring dream—like a mirage that vanishes in a blink—it had only been a phantasm.

Hah—hah—the ragged taking and throwing of breath rattled everywhere.

Then, all at once, bodies reeled.

They had been standing upside down in a turned world.

Lone-Sword, Nine Forms. First Move: I Alone Am Sovereign.

Alone in the world—so you stand as master of Heaven-and-Earth, of the cosmos.

If the sword had eyes to see the world, then you would be immovable, and the enemy would come; the world would move; left and right turn; up and down invert; the compass whirl.

Oneness with the Sword—when a warrior forged into one blade stands as master of the world—if you looked, the sword would not have shifted a finger’s breadth.

Belatedly Chang Sanya toppled sideways.

His torso, split exactly in half, poured out its insides from a filthy cut surface; steam curled up.

Qing exhaled—whooooo.

The Great Emperor of No-Heaven—had there ever been a mad old man like that.

Across all ages, the foremost martial who ever lived poured every last wish into nine moves—a violent ideation that, from start to finish, dyed the entire universe in his own hue.

Only—mm.

That [N O V E L I G H T] old Great Emperor of No-Heaven and I—don’t fit.

Alone in the world—how is that not a horror?

So that old man had no friends either.

But in that faintly glimpsed realm-beyond-heaven—a vague sense of the loneliness that a warrior must, inevitably, touch—a fate to go on alone at the end—prodded her chest with a shape not yet clear.

No matter how far martial study advances, in the end cultivation is one’s own, by oneself—what one achieves.

Someday the time will come to choose—

“Khf.”

Qing gave one light cough.

And—PWAAH!

The bleeding she’d barely checked burst out rough.

Every muscle twisted and began to spasm; fine hairline cracks webbed across every bone.

Her vision red-shifted to blind; blood filled her nose and streamed out nose and mouth; in her ears was only quiet—no sound of the world—only the feel of a viscous liquid running.

Of course—she’d known it would be like this.

The move, seen all the clearer because she’d reached Flower Realm, was a high order of martial art—hard to “carry whole” even if the body were sound.

And she had thrown it from a body already hanging by tatters, the sort that made others say “how is she even alive”—how could she be unscathed?

But—I did my part, didn’t I?

Clutching consciousness as it winked, there was no need to endure—sober—the hellfire-grade recoil that would follow.

Because—I have friends.

Even if I break and shatter and fall—there are people who will tend me, watch my back, take what comes after—I can cut a little corner.

Yeah. I can leave the rear to them, right?

I did what I could; now I’m going to rest a bit.

Qing’s lips curved—soft, unmeant.

To hand something to someone and be able to collapse—was this how peaceful the heart could feel.

Was I being too stubborn?

What if, from the start, I’d carried a petition and asked the Martial Alliance for help?

Or—whether that penance-march or the trip to back the Eon clan—it was—if I’d begged Teacher to ask for help.

Or if I’d simply come to Hangzhou with General Wang Ssangryong and my friends.

Ah—but.

Isn’t this the revolving lantern?

If I slip, I might really die—

And then—black.