Chapter 626: Kunlun Sect vs Blood Thunder Sound Temple (2)

Qing gave the prisoners of the Repentance Hall nicknames one by one.

Poison Quack, Adulterer, Dumpling-Ear, Old-Timer, and so on.

And the more they heard them, the more those names stuck perfectly on the tongue.

Originally the prisoners of the Repentance Hall, in their way, tried to keep up a pretense of rank—plucking each other’s surnames to say Brother Wang, Younger Zhang, Senior Woo—putting on the show of deference.

To Qing it was pure clownery, so she deliberately slapped nicknames on them and spoke down without even pretending to keep the forms.

And then what happens?

A fresh-green newbie—by all appearances a young whelp—comes in and sprays informal speech like piss.

As for courtesy—did she pour it over her rice and eat it? Did she lick the bowl so clean there’s not a trace left?

Which led to a thought.

Do I need to keep courtesy, too?

You’re all the same anyway—cripples locked up in disgrace.

And you think being a little older makes you “brother”? You’ll just die old in here.

You hit the rivers and lakes ten-odd years earlier so you’re “senior”?

All it means is you strutted ten years earlier and got caught ten years earlier—what achievement is there to respect?

A thick disgust rose up.

From the start they’d merely kept appearances while, inside, each thought the other a dumb bastard.

So the shift from “Brother Zhang” to “Hey, Poison Quack” took not even a day.

But dropping honorifics is, by nature, dropping your guard.

If you truly like someone, respect them from the heart, then after speech grows informal you can bare yourself more easily; it becomes the bridge to a friendship like none other.

But the opposite?

If at the root you were looking down—“Well, I’m still better than that idiot”—

then the moment you drop your speech, the relationship is a driverless cart racing toward a cliff.

Casual speech exposes your guts without you noticing.

In the end the path is set—you’ll sour, then become mortal enemies.

What kind are the Repentance Hall cutthroats?

They’re the type that won’t accept even a speck of loss to themselves, who put their own peckishness ahead of another’s starvation—pure selfish.

So the relationships to come—well.

In a word, Qing released poison in the Repentance Hall.

And what does Qing do after she releases the poison?

By now it was Day Four in the Repentance Hall.

Counting from after the first day, she’d had a delightful three days.

Of course she had—because the prisoners had turned into meek sheep and were crawling to please her.

These great cutthroats who once upended the world were now watching her face and obediently doing whatever she told them—how could that not be fun?

It helped that the price Qing named was far too appetizing.

She said she’d choose one companion for the escape—maybe bait, maybe not.

Sure, in the prisoners’ minds: this bitch will definitely toss the pick as bait.

But still—when else in their remaining lives would a chance like this come?

Besides, she was—oddly—trustworthy.

Whether there was affection or not, she kept give-and-take like a knife; even if you didn’t make the cut, you could at least get the food she promised.

Thus even the cutthroats realized that if they tossed pride aside, the deal carried no downside.

So from that day, they buttered her up gently, some coyly, some blatantly, tripping over themselves to fawn.

Naturally, that part delighted Qing most.

These filthy petty men had no pride left.

No conscience, no reputation, no core; their limbs’ sinews were severed; they were even missing their manhood.

Now they’d thrown away the last thing left—their pride. All these shabby creatures had was a body good for nothing anywhere.

Better to keep them alive—you can at least feed them and get manure.

Now, even killing them would only cost extra effort to dispose of; they were defective goods without a sliver of value.

Thinking so, an odd, piquant pleasure rose of its own accord.

This was a new kind of fun.

Turns out I can have plenty of fun without slaughter.

Maybe non-killing is the strongest disciplinary tool of all?

Bat-Man, you were right.

Turn someone into a supreme cripple and then force them to live—that doesn’t burn for a brief moment like pain, it shoves their entire remaining life into the gutter.

And that’s not all.

It can brake the dulling joy of killing and the hands growing ever more cruel with it.

I’m a Daoist, after all. If not for the Divine Lady’s Gate, and my master, teacher, and friends, I could honestly publish a book of ten thousand ways to kill with Righteous Execution.

But my reputation isn’t mine alone, so for everyone’s sake I should polish my manners.

Before, I was a third-rate who knew only the “m” of martial—or the “stop” in martial—without the strength to do more.

Now I’m a proper expert; I should mind my face, shouldn’t I?

Who am I? Harmony.

I, too, am going to keep some dignity.

Even as I looked at these dog-shit bastards who ought right now to have their hides flayed and salted, or have a hot iron plate hoist them by the neck chain to dance a frenzy—the Dance of Death till they die—

I just laughed in their faces and let it pass.

Mm. But honestly, the sight of a whole body cooking on an iron plate while dancing—I want to see that once.

When I meet a bastard who out-bastards these bastards—mm, a face does come to mind.

A certain Mr. So-and-so. Or a certain wench.

Is there no quick way to push someone to the Life-and-Death Boundary?

If that usually languid, graceful body started cavorting like a clown, flailing—

every time the flesh touches, it would sear and stick, tearing as it peels, right? The wench would shriek and bawl and beg for life, wouldn’t she?

It would be a spectacle the world will never see again.

But enlightenment isn’t something you can just go knock on its door and demand open up or I’ll break it down.

For now, all I can do is collect martial arts.

Which is why right now I was squatting in front of the bars of Cripple-Leg—

the guy who boldly tried to break out and got his legs taken—watching his wriggling demonstration.

Cripple-Leg twisted his arms around and explained—

“So here—send about thirty percent of your true-energy to here, and then—what’s the acupoint at the elbow?”

“Crooked Pool?”

“Ah! Right. Crooked Pool. First firm up Crooked Pool to gather internal energy, then send it along to here, here, and here—here and here, you know these?”

“Gentle and Kind?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Gate of the Supreme?”

“Ah! That’s it—Supreme Gate! And from Arm Three Miles you sweep outward into Yang Ravine...”

Cripple-Leg flailed as he annotated.

Cripple-Leg’s trade had been spirit-herb hunting.

He scaled cliffs, picked rare, vapor-infused herbs, and collected rock-honey—so all the precious elixirs roosting in nature were in his grasp.

The problem was, he also coveted the herbs other people had.

By his claim, he just picked up ownerless treasures for someone who knew their true worth.

When you remove the owner by hand and pick it up from their house—that’s called robbery in the common tongue of humankind.

So Qing did hesitate whether to call him Grass-Thief—but “Cripple-Leg” fit the tongue far better. Too bad.

He was doing his best to explain the Wall-Climbing Art, demonstrating energy flow and motions;

but with no legs he was just propping up his torso and windmilling his arms—so how is that supposed to scale walls?

In truth, the registration itself—just from hearing the mnemonic formula—had already been added under a new name in the martial vault.

“Fierce Bee Clinging to Cliff,” the Wall-Climbing Art—blue border.

Why watch the half-version demonstration of Wall-Climbing Art by a guy without legs even after provisional registration?

Because it’s fun.

And if you only hear the mnemonic and go, “Oh, I get it,” that’s a bit off, isn’t it?

For inner-energy methods, maybe. But for an external study, the mnemonic alone is half; you have to see the demonstration and view the forms in full to make a whole.

“Mm. It’s kind of... not it. I thought I’d be sticking to walls and racing around and leaping—like a lizard. You know, like a lizard.”

When you say a creature that clings to walls, nothing comes to mind but lizards.

And learning it sounded seriously fun.

Sticking to walls to roam—wow, how am I supposed to resist that.

But the reality of the Wall-Climbing Art was a letdown.

Cripple-Leg was dumbfounded.

“What are you even saying? How does a person stick to a wall?”

“I thought with inner-energy you can do everything. Don’t translucent-realm experts ride swords and fly? If you can fly, what’s so hard about sticking to a wall? Old-timer, did you ride a sword and fly, too?”

“If not for the orthodox dogs, this old man would have.”

Butcher Demon had put aside his pride, so he answered Qing’s question straight.

Which is just a way of saying he didn’t do it and blames the orthodox.

Sword-riding flight requires at least mid-Translucent specs.

He bragged of the Translucent Realm, but got smashed at the early stage, it seems.

Qing, who thought riding the sword looked cool, had asked Ximen Surin directly.

You can at early Translucent, she’d said, but only if you pour all your mind into just flying; you won’t be “moving,” just hanging in the air burning your inner-energy.

“Sure, once you’re at the Translucent Realm you can use the Adhering-to-Magnet Method to cling and crawl a wall. But what would a Translucent warrior skulk up a wall for? Superhumans who can hop thirty feet at a bound.”

“Pfft. If you can’t reach Translucent, that’s why you learn Wall-Climbing separately, no? I thought there’d be a secret to scamper up like a lizard—but it’s just clenching your fingers hard?”

“That’s the whole point, don’t you get it? Do you know how flimsy human nails are? If you jam fingers into a wall and climb, in less than a moment they’ll all rip out. The core is reinforcing the fingertips—”

“Meh. Nothing special.”

Qing already had fingers that easily fended off sword-qi that might as well be diamond—

so to her this was just a finger technique for efficient wall use, a finger-art against walls.

Well, my bad for expecting much from a blue border.

Incidentally, if she truly wanted premier Wall-Climbing Art, she could just ask her master—Cheon Yuhak—and be handed the finest method among wall-climbing arts.

Ropework and wall-climbing go hand in glove.

Cheon Yuhak had simply been busy and forgot, and knowing Qing’s monstrous strength, stamina, and light-movement, he hadn’t rushed.

Even without Wall-Climbing, this disciple can ascend sheer precipices by strength alone.

Anyway—

Qing tossed him a benevolent line.

“Well. You tried, at least. I’ll make sure you get dinner later, so you’re not losing, right? You’re leg-crippled and always lying there—nice to get your body moving for once, isn’t it?”

At that, veins bulged on both sides of Cripple-Leg’s forehead.

But he held it in.

“And Jeomsoi? You’re getting weaker by the moment. There—harder. Ahh, there we go. Ohhh, that’s good.”

Qing sat in the corridor, peering into Cripple-Leg’s cell with her back leaned on the bars opposite.

Two fists stuck out through the bars were pat-pat drumming her shoulders.

He was a cutthroat with a wart the size of a fingernail by his nose. Qing had weighed Wart versus Jeomsoi for the nickname and decided Jeomsoi felt more insulting.

“Heh heh, feels good, yeah? Back in the day they called me Stone Fist. One-Strike Victory—anyone in my hands went to the other side in a single shot.”

“Ugh—yeah, Stone Fist is right. The flavor of your punches is solid—top-notch. How about your grip strength? Up at the back of my neck—oh, there. Wow, that’s insane.”

At the firm knead of that hollow below the ear behind her jaw, Qing couldn’t help letting a pleased haaah slip out.

But in less than a moment, the kneading shifted back to pat-pat tapping.

“What is this—just when it starts feeling good. Why’d you stop kneading?”

“Nggh—when the sinews are severed, the grip just won’t hold. Have a little mercy.”

That hollow behind the neck gives relief, yes—but it also wrings the masseur’s grip to the limit.

Let alone Jeomsoi with his tendons cut.

He still had a basic frame, so he wouldn’t literally lose a fight to a ten-year-old, but in pure grip he was at rival level with one.

Enjoying the crisp shocks of the pat-pat on her shoulders, Qing drifted into thought.

Now it’s Day Four in the Repentance Hall.

She’d not only torn down their martial arts, she’d scraped the platter clean; just looking at the items provisionally registered in the martial vault was enough to feel full.

Mm—enough to feel full... though I’m peckish.

Anyway.

Tomorrow makes five—the day to complete the five days the Sect Leader ordered.

Then I’ll slip away.

But how do I disappear in a way that the Institutional Supreme King Deity, Molsal’s Dayeoreum, becomes a memory these dog-shit cutthroat bastards can never forget—something that makes them kick off their blankets at night for the rest of their lives?