Chapter 616: I Am Wronged (6)

The meals in Repentance Hall were better than Qing had expected.

A whole chicken, and dumplings piled like a mountain?

Even if it’s a special holiday spread, how does that make sense?

For reference: in the Central Plains, dumplings are one of the New Year foods, supposedly because the phrase “send off the old years and welcome the new” and the word “dumpling” sound the same—or something like that.

No, but seriously—what.

I used to wander the streets with nothing to eat, literally picking up whatever I could find.

Aren’t these bastards the human dregs who got hauled all the way into Repentance Hall?

Three square meals a day, patting their bellies and la-di-da—no doubt they were living fine even back when I was doing my beggar stretch.

Wouldn’t it be better to spend the money it takes to keep these bastards on feeding the people starving in the streets?

Thinking that way, it makes no sense at all.

If you’re going to kill them anyway, why keep them alive—alive like this, neatly and well?

At first I thought, seeing no one with a beard, that maybe they even did beard-grooming here; turns out they’re just eunuchs, so it doesn’t grow.

Even so, there’s no particular stench; the hall is kept quite clean, isn’t it.

Why in the world did True Person Cheon Bija insist on ordering me to “experience” Repentance Hall?

If I’m suffocating, I’m allowed to come out; they even went to the trouble (well, a Kunlun disciple went to the trouble) of setting a fine bed; and if I’m told I can sleep in the guest hall at night, it’s frankly too mild to call an “experience.”

It would at least make sense if the treatment of these wicked bastards were harsh and brutal.

It’s not as if the lesson is “don’t butcher them and put them on display—just throw them in a dungeon to suffer for a long, long time so their faces and hearts are shamed,” though the “heart” part baffles me.

Still, the True Person must have his reasons.

Qing vented that bottled-up frustration by going berserk on the food.

The poor dishes were chomped, ground, smashed to bits by Qing’s pearl-white teeth, then swallowed in a wrecked mishmash.

Mm. Tastes good, though.

He did say I’d be allowed to eat my fill even in Repentance Hall, so fine.

Only—mm. He did say “eat your fill”...

Qing looked down at the serving bowls.

Five dishes, and the staple served in five big bowls.

And yet there was still enough left to say the amount was evenly “this much.”

What the—what do they take a person for.

How is anyone supposed to eat all of this... as a human being...

Shock! Seomun Qing declares she can’t finish because the portions are too big!

Shock! Seomun Qing, proprietor of an inhuman appetite, resets the human standard!

The Kunlun Daoists, having watched Qing eat, had heaped it on with the thought that better to have extra than run short.

Truly, the Central Plains possesses a barbaric dining culture that insists on leaving leftovers and creating food waste!

Still—this much is impossible. Humanly impossible.

Qing is the sort who doesn’t leave food.

It’s an un–Central Plains–like, practical attitude, but my mental roots are what they are, and I have a grudge with food.

So I kept shoveling it in, right up to the edge of overflow, then—no, this won’t do.

No matter how elastic my stomach is, no matter how far my belly skin stretches, I don’t have some compression technique that ignores physical space.

My belly was already about to burst.

Food sloshing up to my chin.

So I planted a palm behind me and sprawled on the floor, rubbing my stomach.

My gaze, though, stayed on the food.

It’d be a shame to leave food they went to the trouble to make.

I’ll let it sit, let it cool a little, and then nibble slowly.

Not the sort of thought a person stuffed like Mount Tai would usually have.

But I have that grudge tied up with food, so call it a hopeless attachment.

Only then did Qing notice the prisoners to the front, left, and right, staring at her like they couldn’t believe it.

Mm. I was so focused on eating I didn’t even notice.

They don’t even have cores; mm—yeah, I should reflect on that.

Living as a true master, I must have stopped noticing commoners at all.

I mean, I already have Protective Steel Qi; even if commoners rush me with knives, what I should fear is my robe getting torn.

And this monster body can drink bowls of poison with no problem.

So I must have subconsciously categorized those without martial arts as entirely harmless.

And I guess I’ve come to take it for granted that people gather to watch while I eat.

“What? First time seeing a person eat?”

“Are you raising a beggar in your belly? How does it all go in?”

“Hmph. None of your business. Why?”

“No, it’s just... I was wondering if you were done.”

Their eyes bounced between the food Qing had left and Qing’s swollen belly.

The look toward the food was desperate; the look at Qing’s belly was like a tiny individual reduced before the mysterious wonders of heaven and earth.

Unable to look away from either, their eyes flicked back and forth and back again.

Sprawled with a hand propping her chin, Qing declared to those busy pupils:

“If you like free food, you’ll end up like Dumpling-Ear over there. The miracle man who sold his core, meridians, balls, and both arms for three taels! A man who therefore isn’t a man anymore!”

Laughter boomed from the far cells, and Dumpling-Ear’s face collapsed into a sour grimace.

Qing giggled too—then her stomach clenched, reflux threatened, so she hurriedly wiped the smile away and continued solemnly:

“Make me an offer. How much are you willing to pay?”

Qing unleashed poison on the Central Plains.

A primitive society not yet ready for a few hundred years to come could not even shut its gaping mouth at the cutting edge of diabolical sales practice.

Besides, it’s not like they have anything to offer even if they wanted to.

One of the rare pleasures of life in Repentance Hall is gastronomy.

That’s why Dumpling-Ear, with a tragic grandeur, had made the grand decision to say he’d provide holiday specials if I’d escape with him.

But with food more precious than the specials (leftovers!) sitting right there, what could the other prisoners possibly put on the table?

“Mm. I’ve got nothing to give you but ‘flick-stones.’ Will you take those?”

“Flick-stones? What are those supposed to be?”

“Ah. You’re new, so you don’t know. These are flick-stones. You’ll need them if you’re going to live in Repentance Hall. It’s one of the few ways to kill time.”

From the cell on the right, the man with the crooked nose held out something dark and dingy.

They looked like little go-stones, but one side was pocked with holes; not very heavy.

Flick-stones? Stones you flick?

He said when they get cow or pig bones, they grind them smooth and make these.

Then they flick them to knock each other’s flick-stones out of a drawn boundary—so they play.

In short, knuckling marbles.

Qing, grimacing, glanced at the square boundary scratched on the floor, connecting the bottoms of the iron bars between the two adjoining cells.

“Pass. Anything else?”

“Maybe game-pieces for ‘High Chess’...”

“Eh? High Chess? They let you have that too?”

High Chess is the original form of the folk game we call chess back home: same pieces, but the rules are more restrictive and a bit more complex.

“Don’t tell me they actually provided High Chess sets so you wouldn’t be bored in Repentance Hall?”

Not quite that far.

He handed over a pawn; etched letters scratched onto what looked like pig or cow bone.

Purely handmade.

What a worthless handmade item.

“The warders all know, but they look the other way. As long as you don’t do it out in the open, they won’t say anything.”

“Mm.”

I can guess why.

When people are bored, they go crazy and do who knows what.

If you pretend not to see it and let them go, “There you go, have your fun,” they won’t be up to anything worse.

“Forget it. Let’s hear some stories. How’d you end up in here? Did you also come in after wiping out everyone because you were afraid of repercussions?”

“Ahem—don’t compare me to that ignorant U-gaya bastard. That one is the infamous ‘Backstab Ghoul.’”

My right-hand neighbor—the crooked nose—cast a sidelong glance at Qing. Dumpling-Ear and the Backstab Ghoul both looked at Qing as if expecting something.

Stare all you want, I don’t know you; and I’m not about to pretend I do for a man who went for three taels and a Big Knife.

A tattle-tale who snitches out of pique—what “Big Knife,” my ass.

Best to rip your dick off—oh, right, it’s already off.

Dumpling-Ear wore a face of plain disappointment.

Crooked Nose wore the face of someone who’d figured it out.

“Looks like the newcomer is still young.”

“What, you want me to treat you like an elder?”

“No need. If we’re going to be seeing each other for ten or twenty years, it’ll happen naturally. Anyway, that one over there would’ve been caught by those Shaolin baldies if not for this place. He fled to Qinghai and thought Kunlun Sect would be easy prey, I suppose.”

“Mm. Shaolin can be scary. Hm? But didn’t all of you get caught by Kunlun anyway?”

“At least I didn’t. Wasn’t it idiotic to flee into land held by the Kunlun Daoists, reputed to have the finest movement arts under heaven?”

A chorus of ahh’s and sighs went up here and there.

So these bastards were all ears while pretending not to listen.

“I, for one, was in Hollow Mountain Sect custody, but when the Blood-in-the-Hot-Springs incident broke out and Hollow Mountain’s holding cells were full, they sent me here.”

“So what did you do to get grabbed by Hollow Mountain?”

“I can’t claim I’m innocent, but it wasn’t some monstrous crime that deserves being crippled and caged for life. It’s just—as you must know—those Hollow Mountain warders are fussy bastards.”

“Ah. So you’re ‘wronged,’ too?”

Qing’s brow twitched.

Wronged—but not by karma?

“Half the men in here are notorious evil-doers. Compared to that, I only made a small mistake.”

“Mistake, my ass. That bastard scattered medicinals laced with poison, then strutted around like a divine physician hawking the antidote.”

If there aren’t patients, make them!

So this is “creative economy,” is it!

Qing’s eyes narrowed.

At that look, Crooked Nose rushed to defend himself.

“Don’t look at me like that. It wasn’t lethal—no one would have died even without taking the antidote.”

Qing’s eyes narrowed further.

“No one would have died even without the antidote,” huh?

A man who defends himself always says only what advantages him.

So, fine—no one died.

But some part—or many parts—would have been maimed.

While the corner of Qing’s eye quivered, the cell on the left supplied the commentary:

“While he was spreading those tainted medicinals, the inevitable big accident happened. Four hundred died in the Thousand-Hand Bloodbath. That’s this bastard’s ‘achievement.’”

“I told you that was a mistake. Something especially nasty got mixed in that time; even now I don’t know what went wrong. It’s not like I ever put truly lethal stuff in—”

“It was only a matter of time. You thought you could do that for a thousand years and never make one mistake? For all we know, if someone dug into the other cases of whole villages wiped out, they’d find this bastard’s hand there too.”

One can only admire Kunlun Sect’s eye for judgment.

This one’s a real piece of ####.

“That’s plenty. Hand over the bowls. Honestly I’d say you don’t even get the soup, but I’ll pay what I heard.”

Qing ladled portions of dishes and staples through the bars and shared them out.

“Mm, if you could spare just one of the big chunks... ah—are you interested in the others’ stories, too? I can tell you what I know—”

“Shut it, quack! Why are you trying to sell other people’s stories?”

From the left cell, an ugly man hastily cut the quack off.

His face was ugly, but his voice was a deep, rich baritone—what, is he in the voice trade?

Like the narrators who voice masked plays or puppet shows—ancient proto–voice actors.

“How’d you get hauled in?”

“All from squalid jealousy. A man who couldn’t even keep an eye on his wife—”

“Eh? Adultery? With that face?”

Qing took in the left-hand neighbor’s especially wide, ocean-broad nose and crooked teeth.

“The quack said you were a young woman, and he’s right. Young women think the face is everything. What matters is the heart.”

“There he goes again.”

“A man locked in Repentance Hall talking about ‘the heart,’ give me a break.”

A storm of denunciations rained down.

With his testimony combined with the chorus, Qing could piece together the charge.

A serial adulterer, it turned out!

With that face!

The ugly man puffed his chest out and preened, triumphant.

“You think ladies of good houses look at a man’s face? Men in good houses—none of them are ugly. They’ve had their fill of handsome faces.”

So when an ugly man approaches, curiosity wins out: Fine, what does he have to say?

Then, add the fervent love their husbands don’t give them and my phenomenal bedroom arts, and they just become prisoners of love.

Because he’s ugly, they think he’ll only have eyes for them—so he says.

“Right? The men who can’t even keep their wives are somehow wildly successful otherwise, and I end up like this.”

In the end, he was saying he was wronged.

He seduced only the ladies of aristocratic houses; their noble husbands colluded to get him thrown into Repentance Hall.

If not for the other prisoners’ commentary, it might have sounded “wronged.”

“That one’s a real dog. He skimmed the promissory ledgers and siphoned off the family fortunes entrusted to the front, then when the lady ran off with him—after knocking out the household pillars—she got crippled and ended up as a cheap prostitute. Any man would see red.”

So after “running away for love” with some noble lady and looting the estate’s wealth, he cut her tongue, severed her meridians, and sold her into a brothel.

Just like the men of good houses tend to be handsome, the ladies of good houses tend to be beauties.

He must have pocketed a big pile selling her.

Qing had to consider seriously.

Shouldn’t this bastard be flayed and told not to “drink” the briny, salty soup, but “apply it to the skin” instead?

For this one, even Master would praise me: well done.