Chapter 622: I Am Wronged (12)

Qing’s mind snapped awake.

Normally, after the Brain-Kneading Study Method, she should be flat on her back for half a double-hour.

But all of a sudden it felt like the dantian had filled with boiling molten iron; a savage pain surged in.

The moment she learned Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi, the dantian began to throb—ah, this pain, ugh, I’m dying here.

It was a proper stomach disaster, as if something were gouging her innards; cold sweat streamed in an instant and—khhk—groans popped out on their own.

What is this, internal injury? Did I mess myself up learning a demonic art?

Ugh—help—what even is—khuuugh—

Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi snickered.

It was the kind of murderous chuckle that felt like it ought to be written in some crooked Western script.

In that instant, little ones stepped in to block its path.

Two inner arts that oversee Qing’s mental health.

One, a worst-of-the-worst demonic method that stains the upper dantian with killing-mind and drags its master into becoming a ghoul.

And two, the paired legendary inner arts that purify the upper dantian and safeguard the heart.

Mutually intolerant—therefore mutually incompatible—the opposed true-energies faced off.

The three little ones locked eyes; a long, taut line of jet-black tension rose between them.

And at last—

As if on cue, the three little ones thumped the dantian floor—thunk!—and charged.

Tap-tap, thump-thump! pat-pat, bonk-bonk!

A blood-duel that truly swelled the chest!

Alas, delicious food is bad for the body.

The pleasure of killing that people take from slaughter is a colossal joy, incomparable to the quiet meditation of seeking out the sages’ words.

The latter is boring and tedious and offers not a speck of fun.

So even three-on-one, the two mind-guarding arts got pasted, bumps and bruises multiplying.

That is the fearsome thing about demonic arts.

Humans are always vulnerable under their temptation; they are creatures bound to waver.

At last Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi yawned its jaws wide—ready to chomp—

When a little one in monk’s robes, one breast boldly bared, came flying in with a gorgeous double side kick at typhoon speed and smashed its boot into Light-Roaring’s ribs.

Beside her, clad just as boldly but “clothed” only in jewels, the very wanton All-Forms-as-One Inner Art.

And snorting bwoo-bwoo, roooaar, an elephant and a dragon at her flanks, Royal Prajñā Energy bellowed its wrath.

The three Indian-lineage sisters had joined the fray.

“Ugh, trash!” snarled the demonic energies, moving to swarm—

But one true-energy stepped in their way.

Though “dressed” in nothing but sheer scraps and trinkets—downright indecent—her expression was downright vicious, eyes blazing: Joyous true-energy.

At that, the demonic energies screeched to a halt.

Memories of past beatdowns started to surface; they didn’t dare jump in lightly.

Around the Ice Crystal, the cold-aspected true-energies—arms around each other—crunched on roasted corn from who-knows-where and settled in to spectate in earnest.

The violet martial arts fight was five-on-one.

A fight to make the chest feel downright cramped!

Even Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi couldn’t handle five inner arts at once; in the end it covered its head, curled up, flopped flat like making a kowtow, and took a group beating.

Thump-thump-thump—the dust-shaking went on for quite a while.

Light-Roaring’s ultra-tiny pupils turned into a crisscross and twin nosebleeds trickled down.

Suddenly the five inner arts lifted gently into the air, and between them—tak, tak—the footfalls of Moon Maiden True-Energy rang out.

For Moon Maiden True-Energy is moderation itself; it permits neither absorption nor annihilation of true-energies.

The inner arts clicked their tongues with regret.

It looked like that settled it—

Except, from the demonic energies’ point of view—

If you were going to stop it, you should’ve stopped it in the first place.

What kind of mindset watches until someone gets pounded into a rice cake and only then steps in?

That one is absolutely not moderation.

Then an unpleasant laugh.

Khi-hik, hihit, khit—Heaven-Rending Demon-Energy, unlike its usual self, broke into full-blown giggles.

Murderous light glinted in the demonic energies’ eyes.

In the technical language of social science, this is called “really asking for a beating.”

Lying on the bed and sweating cold, Qing’s twisted face suddenly smoothed into serenity.

“Mm?”

The agony that had come out of nowhere vanished all at once, clean and cool.

What? Again? Just like that?

While Qing blinked, having no clue what was going on, the usable capacity of Heaven-Rending Demon-Energy ticked up by a speck.

When you learn a new inner method the usable amount grows a little—she didn’t know the mechanism, but apparently it worked like this.

Anyway.

By the time the morning trade wrapped up, quite a bit of time must have passed.

Of course, the morning trade didn’t go smoothly.

Take that knife bandit, for example.

“Hey, the mnemonic you sang just now is different from earlier. Total con artist, huh? You said before it went down under the floating-wealth point—so why’s it curving right this time?”

“Ah—did I say that?”

She hadn’t.

But the cheat was clear.

If the Martial Arts Window stays silent, a botched mnemonic won’t register; she’d poked at it on purpose.

And the knife bandit who’d twisted the mnemonic got flustered hard.

As expected of a filthy bastard dragged into the Repentance Hall in a crippled state—what a scammer, a scammer through and through.

Not that a scammer who would swindle evildoers without hesitation was something she herself would refuse to be.

“Not going to sing it right? Start over from the top. What are you, a pure con? I don’t deal with cons.”

Qing laid down the threat.

Granted, even a scammer doesn’t deal with scammers; so her words were, contrary to her thoughts, things one could very well say.

It was bluff with no clue where the wrong bit was, only that it was fake.

How would a prisoner in the Repentance Hall know?

And thus the knife bandit coughed up his inner cultivation method.

Then there were those who were learning it flat-out wrong.

Dumpling-Ear Prisoner was one of them.

“That right? You sure?”

“Damn it, I said it’s right, you bitch—going to get blisters in my mouth at this rate; how many times do I have to say it?”

She’d sung it twenty full times and the Window still said nothing.

To Qing’s thinking, this bastard Dumpling-Ear just reeked of the uneducated from speech to manner.

In short, he didn’t have the chops to fool others with character-chant tricks.

Only then did Qing bump into one of the unhappy truths of the martial world.

Learning a complete martial art is harder than you think.

And if the owner of the art tinkers with it—“this would be better”—then even if it seems effective at once, most of the time side effects come around in the end.

Which is why Master warned her: even if your dantian is peculiar, don’t just swallow whatever mnemonic you find.

“How am I supposed to trust that? Bowl. Hand it over.”

“You—what’s with those eyes?”

Because it was pitiful.

Believing a flawed martial art is the real thing—being maimed, castrated, and locked up here—wasn’t one of the reasons exactly that side effect?

Stung by eyes brimming with pity—that is, an “I feel sorry for you” gaze—Dumpling-Ear bristled.

Still, since he’d told it as he knew it, he’d get food as promised.

And then there were the ones who knew only part of it. What the hell is that supposed to be?

“It feels cut off mid-sentence. The back half?”

“Regrettably, my fateful chance ended there. The latter folios were missing. Ah, had I possessed the complete mnemonic, I could surely have become a master who reached the world.”

A search by martial art name returned a gold border. With a complete art, he might indeed have become a famed master.

But so what—he was, to the core, a rotten demonic bastard.

Even with a complete secret manual, a filthy dog wouldn’t turn into a sage.

Early or late, it was just a question of when he’d arrive in the Repentance Hall.

“No good. How do you sell a half-martial-art? I don’t need trash like that.”

“Even without the latter half, it carried me into late Super-transcendent—how could that not sell?”

“Because you didn’t know the latter half, you only reached late Super-transcendent. Anyway, rejected. You don’t get to eat.”

“What! What nonsense is that!? Hey! And ‘only late Super-transcendent’? You wet-behind-the-ears girl—where were you standing that late Super-transcendent is ‘only’?”

“Me? Realm of Nature. You’re a pipsqueak Super-transcendent.”

“What?”

“Oh dear. Even with my dantian broken, must I dirty my mouth with a mere Super-transcendent? Wow, what a waste of time. You scrub. That’s why, when you had to pick between ‘become a eunuch’ and ‘get locked up,’ you picked the latter.”

“You—! You bitch!”

And so the morning trade ended.

Then, lying on the bed, she registered the provisional acquisitions, and for the blues that cost barely any training points she slammed them straight up to the ten-star cap.

She drooled through Brain-Kneading, lay groaning afterward, then suddenly got better—and here she was.

Qing checked the total of her inner energy.

She’d always had a lot; even after adding quite a few inner methods, it hadn’t grown much.

At this rate, when would this booger-sized inner energy ever grow to a Translucent Realm transcendence?

At least the total capacity of Heaven-Rending Demon-Energy—that thing’s level is a mental parasite—so that’s probably around the Life-and-Death Boundary, no?

Should I swing by the Sword-Cut Wall and the Repentance Hall both?

She let her mind wander a bit, then, with nothing to do, grew diligent; on the bed she continued dantian breathing, the primitive, ancient training of savage martial artists, i.e., meditation, to grow All-Forms-as-One Inner Art.

For reference, cutting-edge martial artists don’t meditate.

Don’t you cut down evildoers, earn training points, and slam your levels up?

If you just meditate, how many ages will it take to grow your inner energy?

Granted, once you reach the Translucent Realm, the primitive method—which grows without ceiling and gathers speed—does become far superior.

But it’s not like anyone can just stroll into the Translucent Realm.

So, with nothing else to do, Qing stayed diligent and kept up her breathwork on the bed.

Who knows how long it had been—

Suddenly, a toasty aroma rose.

And the rattle-rattle of a food cart rolling.

The Repentance Hall’s door is wood plated with iron; whoever made it, it opens so smoothly it doesn’t make a sound.

Oh. Lunch! It’s lunch!

Delighted, Qing flipped the curtain and popped out.

“Today’s lunch is perilla porridge and water-boiled pork.”

The names of Central Plains dishes are admirably kind: usually “method + ingredient.”

“Water-boiled” means boiled in water. “Pork” is pork.

In other words, boiled pork!

Watching him ladle, Qing saw he was piling the bowl high with wonderfully nutty perilla porridge and tender, well-boiled pork.

But—no dipping sauce?

As always, a touch malicious.

Perilla porridge is of course nutty and tasty, but it’s also frankly a bit bland.

And to serve boiled pork—without even salt?

And—

No plate?

Where’s my portion? My dish?

While Qing’s pupils quaked with seismic activity, Master Danlun passed her cell, made a full circuit to the far end, then stopped in front of her.

And said:

“A visit.”

The air inside the Repentance Hall turned frigid.

Across the way someone sighed, “Fuck.”

What? Dumpling-Ear? What—even a sigh? Getting fond of me already?

Muttering followed.

If that girl goes to die already, who’s going to let us taste the cooking?

There it is. They were thinking with their stomachs.

That aside—going to die?

Wasn’t the Repentance Hall permanent isolation, life sentence, imprisonment without term?

“What? What is this mood? Daoist, why does a ‘visit’ do this?”

Danlun answered kindly.

“Exactly what it sounds like. Someone wants to see you. But who would ask to see a heinous demonic head, if not an enemy? We do not encourage revenge. We do not stop it, either.”

Ah. So that’s the system.

Come to think—fourteen cells in the Repentance Hall; even if each of the Nine Great Sects ran one, that’s just a bit over a hundred prisons.

The Central Plains are vast and the filthy bastards countless. How would a mere hundred-odd cells handle it?

If the enemies demand it, they let you out.

Not that Qing had any reason to fear.

She simply understood.

So that’s why there was no lunch.

Since she hadn’t come out of the Repentance Hall, she figured the boys hadn’t called her to eat together.

Still, following meekly felt a bit... dull.

A mischievous gleam slicked over Qing’s eyes.