Chapter 582: Let’s Kill the Bandits (4)

The one who seemed to be their chief barked the charge, and the bandit horde poured downslope.

It was black night; sword-auras bloomed in color, sketching countless lines in the air.

To Qing’s eyes—hmm—it looked like a crowd running down with glow sticks about to die out.

Even at their brightest, sword-auras shone only to that level—like the glow-in-the-dark dinosaur on a nephew’s bedroom wall before she’d even debuted.

Still, by any measure these weren’t ordinary bandits.

What bandit rabble in this world has every man’s weapon breathing a faint radiance and raining slaughter?

Even in a Green Forest “regular” stockade, more than half would be burly laborers relying on external force.

You’d have to call this a regular combat unit.

The kind some city-dominating sect might be able to field.

A truly powerful force.

However—strength is always relative.

Qing yanked her left hand over her shoulder.

A feral killing intent boiled up in a flare.

A woman’s life flashed across her mind in an instant.

Abuse that never ended in childhood; the one who sold her unripe body was her own father. Women in the same state, consoling one another as they slowly broke; a paltry life dragged forward only because death hadn’t taken them; fire, knives, blood, screams. The only sisters who had given her a reason to keep living—those thin, fragile strands she’d clung to just to breathe—severed. The hand clenched tight enough to snap with resentment, a hand quivering with gnashing frenzy—drained of blood, white as paper, delicate enough to be clear.

Behind the back of Qing’s hand, a demon-hand wrought from a woman’s grievance lent its strength.

A gaunt frame, beast-long nails, each joint twisted—by shape alone a thing that shouldn’t exist in the world.

Yet a hand that flashed with pure white radiance, wrapping even that horrifying shape in some austere beauty—sheer, transparent malice.

White Hand.

White is the ugliest color.

Like the snow that merely covers and hides a suffering earth; a ghastly color that stoppers the soul’s terrible screams.

Qing’s nail merely grazed a bandit’s belly-skin and caught an unlucky hem, ripping it ragged.

But the white demon-hand veiling the back of her hand burrowed into the man’s belly.

Not cutting—rending out of spite.

Schrak—hot blood spattered her face.

A heat once boiling with life—yet across Qing’s whole face it cooled to ice.

Hooo—an oozy smile slipped before she knew it.

Yes. Filthy men should all be slaughtered. Every last one. All of them.

Her master might even praise—hm, Master—no, Master said “beat them,” not “kill them.”

Mm. Killing them all is a bit much, isn’t it?

How do you kill half of humankind?

And anyway, not every male is ridden by lust-demons—no, for males, being in heat twelve Double-hours a day is the “normal” state, right? The abnormal is not being ridden by lust.

Even so, not many flipped their eyes white under that drive—the line dividing human and beast lay there, didn’t it.

And then—why am I even debating this? Does it make any sense to kill on the single reason of being male?

Ah! That’s the ideology. That’s the demon art.

The brutal imagery of the White-Hand Demon Art—its true will to butcher every man in existence—made Qing’s skin crawl.

It was the moment she properly felt and understood why “demon art” is called demon art.

Only now—upon reaching the Flower Realm!

Good thing I reached Flower Realm.

If I’d slipped into Entering Demon, the Central Plains might have birthed a male serial killer—or a male-extirpating exterminator.

But looking at these bandits—somehow they’re really eyesores; this actually is dangerous.

Is it that demon arts are dangerous, or is it because this is among the Ten Great Demon Arts, and the purple one at that?

Then I should try another demon art.

A shocking event! STEM-mode thinking!

Qing transcended her liberal-arts birth and achieved a human-level evolution of thought.

If you greet someone and they slap your cheek?

A liberal-arts grad says, “What a lunatic,” and cuts ties.

But a STEM brain does otherwise—probes the causality of the event to find the precise cause.

Was it because you greeted them? Because you acted like you knew them?

Or were they simply in a foul mood and itching to slap a cheek?

Right—maybe they mistook you for someone else?

To discover this, you’d change variables and try approaching differently.

So Qing tried addressing the demon art in another way.

Her left hand traced a different shape.

Those long, slender fingers spread—four diagonal slashes of force drew four lines.

Within the sunset glow, a vivid skeleton of blood shone through, and there was even a peculiar illusion of something heavy slowly settling.

Taesan Blood Claw—First Form: Blood-Claw Presses the Dark Rock.

A bandit with flicker-flicker half-baked internal energy—about second-rate—snatched up his saber in a panic to meet it.

But could a second-rate fool possibly stand against a martial artist of the Flower Realm? Of course not.

Four deep furrows gouged through the bandit.

He toppled, and a great saber dangled from Qing’s left hand by her hooked fingers.

She flicked her arm; the big blade, bitten out hard, fell pathetically—clang.

Qing’s eye-corners trembled.

Haaa—claw-technique really does have superb hand-feel.

As its name says, Taesan Blood Claw holds the mystery of “weight” within claw-work—a principle ill-suited to clawing—overcome by steepening the killing will.

Mm. Doesn’t seem to be making me whirl out of control.

Isn’t surging bloodlust in a fight natural?

Turning-Wheel Demon Cataclysm—kuk-kuk—I’ll grind them all.

This rough, buzzing sensation of ripping—would cutting a person with a chain-saw feel like this?

This is insane—wow—I could get addicted.

Black-Slaughter Demon Palm—kuk-kuk—I’ll smash it all.

Different from cutting and slicing and tearing—this splintering impact clears out the chest with brute爽快. Kyaha, good—so good.

One Hundred Eight Asura Swords. Right now I’m a dangerous beast!

Mm, but the itch in my canines—the urge to bite—on the jaw—that’s a bit risky.

Even so, to bite—mm—but truly, truly it tugs. If I bit living flesh with teeth, the fragrance filling my mouth—how sweet would it be—gulp—ah, my mouth is watering.

Should I try? In a life-and-death duel, one bite—could happen, right? As in, right now—mm—no, what is this, stop—cannibalism.

This one’s dangerous too.

Having unfolded a few demon arts, the conclusion:

Among demon arts, there are sets whose imagery itself is dangerous and extreme, and those that aren’t.

Naturally so—“demon art” includes not only forms that stain people with demonic imagery but also cultivation methods that are wicked or with an unusually cruel hand.

Still, for a demon-arts ignoramus like Qing, this counted as a large insight and growth.

Only, if anyone knew her inner thoughts they’d be speechless.

A woman who slices, tears, and smashes people—yet inside, she’s sampling the ideologies of demon arts one by one, savoring them and trying them out—so leisurely she’s practically lounging.

This was a plain fact.

Qing had leisure to spare.

When she swung the monstrous war-instrument, the Mace–Moonlight Sword, enemies lopped away in snips.

As much as the length made close range a vulnerability, the demon arts unfurling from her left hand—breaking, tearing, cleaving—kept up ceaseless slaughter.

At some point she’d bored into the very heart of the bandit mass; her presence was the geysers of blood arcing beyond.

“Hee-mae!”

Gyeon Pohee took a worried step forward, meaning to go toward Qing isolated amid the enemy.

But she stepped back again—Peng Daesan’s words held her.

“Leave her. She’s spent every other sentence claiming to be a true master; if it gets dangerous, won’t she come back on her own?”

“But—it’s dangerous.”

“It’s far better than before. I can clearly see the way she would’ve, like some mother, fussed around, circling nearby to protect and losing focus—but she isn’t, is she?”

“Huh? Mmm.”

“At least it means she isn’t worried we’ll get hurt. If we get hurt needlessly, that stubborn lug will shrink in on herself again and get self-conscious. So skip the nonsense and guard yourself.”

“Mm...”

Had Qing heard it, she’d have sniped that someone who can’t even beat Hee-mae is mouthing off about “guarding yourself,” that a lower is trying to coach a master. But—

Qing, high on the first blood in a while, missed the chance to tease.

Far to the rear, in a hollowed crack of rock where Seol Iri had dumped Amukhablap, she immediately raised her body and started back up the slope.

On the way up, bandits missing both legs crawled along the ground, groaning low and bleak as they died.

Seol Iri stared at the sight, expressionless.

“S-save... me...”

She approached and set a gentle hand on a severed thigh.

Ice-White Divine Palm—the vast cold of ice surged out; on an already cold winter night, the ice technique showed its native potency without attenuation.

The wound froze solid in an instant.

Even as he looked at her with pleading eyes, the bandit whose fear had trembled his face let out a breath of relief as if soothed.

“Th... thank...”

At that, Seol Iri’s lips bent slightly.

Her eye-shape did not change at all; a cold sneer, full of scorn.

Lady Ximen always said the wicked should not die comfortably.

So she had only lengthened their fate so they wouldn’t die easily—how would they survive anyway.

Thus she froze, and froze again—freezing the torn stump of an arm for emergency hemostasis; freezing the belly-skin of a bandit whose gut had burst; freezing the forearm of one whose arm had been torn away; freezing the shoulder where another’s arm had been ripped clean—

For some reason, arms and forearms kept appearing, ripped away savagely—bones and long strings of muscle dangling as they rolled.

Step by step she climbed, until two figures came into view—blocking the narrow upper pinch of the gorge.

One of them she had no interest in anyway.

Seol Iri’s gaze fixed on the other—Gyeon Pohee’s fearsome effortless skill.

At the blade coming for her, she slid aside with a somehow sticky, then languidly odd motion, and her hand naturally caught the wrist of the bandit cutting the air.

Then, as if they were a pair practicing a set, the bandit’s body turned naturally, did a swallow’s roll, and soared high into the air.

Left on the ground with Gyeon Pohee was a masterless forearm; she swung it like a club—whack!—and smashed a bandit’s skull, the blow flipping his lower half up toward the sky as he crashed.

Lady Ximen and Sister Gyeon both had unusual strength—had strong women sworn sisterhood?

Somehow Seol pictured the two pressing their laced fingers tight, testing strength; a savage smile and a lewd grin crossing; then, under a blizzard of peach blossoms, on a dais, politely offering cups of wine—a string of such scenes.

Then, as the two turned their heads together and lifted hands to wave in greeting, a slender silver-haired woman approached from behind—

Thump!! A heavy impact, a body falling from the sky, shattered Seol Iri’s odd, impish daydream.

A bandit with shoulder bones gnawed off crashed, rolled down the slope, and thud—stopped against the sole she put out.

It was the moment she understood what those strangely numerous arm-torn bandits really were.