Chapter 627: Kunlun Sect vs Blood Thunder Sound Temple (3)

First, the candidate—Option One:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream ending.

Of course, it’s midwinter, not midsummer.

The plan: finish my five-day Repentance Hall tour and slip away quietly in the night.

The pièce de résistance is the morning letdown—waking to find Dayeoreum gone without a trace.

Then I ask Master Danlun to announce: one of you attempted a breakout, so collective responsibility.

Until the Spring Festival ends, two meals a day.

No lunch—actually, no dinner. Intermittent fasting is good for your health, so be grateful, I say, smacking the sick one for good measure.

A Midwinter Night’s Dream, truly. And yet—“summer”...

But it’s dull, and I can’t watch the reactions of the ones left behind.

At best I’d eavesdrop through the Repentance Hall wall. If I can’t see those hollowed-out faces with my own eyes... meh.

More than anything, I should curb the collateral damage.

It would plant the belief that the Repentance Hall isn’t an unescapable iron fortress.

Then the prisoners would lie in wait for chances and act stupid.

Even if not, the ones meant to rot listlessly must not regain vitality.

So: the Vanished Dayeoreum—rejected.

—

Second candidate:

“The friends game sure was fun” ending.

But I hate being tied as “friends,” however briefly, with this sort.

Mm, how to put it?

Know your place, worms.

Anyway, Option Two.

Reveal my identity plainly and, for a day, take over managing the Repentance Hall and tease at leisure.

Not Dayeoreum the cutthroat, but Ximen Qing—the young expert who rewrote martial history, the only true “young” expert in the annals—makes her entrance.

I could taunt them literally all day.

Your martial arts—sold off for a few dishes at bargain-basement price.

Now this martial art is mine.

I can shelve it in the Library Pavilion.

I could buy a mountain of Spring Festival snacks and munch all day in front of these dog-shit bastards, giving tasting notes.

But Option Two is rejected as well.

There may be others after me who come to “experience” the Repentance Hall.

These cutthroats have been conditioned, over long years, to view it as their inescapable grave.

Thanks to that, even though the newbie was suspiciously favored, they’ve become such dunces they don’t dare suspect.

If I set the precedent by revealing myself now?

I’d be making things much harder for those future visitors to the Repentance Hall.

—

Third candidate:

“Even the Kunlun Daoist is yours?” ending.

The Institutional Supreme King Deity, Molsal’s Dayeoreum—her connections are the strongest as well.

Dayeoreum even threw open the stiff heart of a Kunlun Daoist; with a collaborator inside the Kunlun Sect, she mocks the prisoners and strolls out!

“How about it? Not bad, right?”

Master Danlun cocked an eyebrow.

I’d been slipping out at night anyway, sneaking baths and late-night snacks, then coming back.

If you can’t sneak out while prisoners with deadened senses and no cores are asleep, toss your Ropework candidacy in the trash.

Master Danlun answered my ridiculous proposal like it didn’t even merit thought.

“Why on earth. Morning will do.”

He’d volunteered as Repentance Hall attendant because it sounded fun.

Truth was, under the pretext of seeing to Kunlun’s honored guest, he wanted a break from endless decocting in the medicated bathhouse and to sit in the guard post reading all day.

But this method would cause serious blowback, too.

First, Master Danlun could get dragged into needless gossip; afterward, prisoners might bat their eyes at Kunlun Daoists—also bad.

Above all, it would pump useless hope into the prisoners; and prisoners with a duty to hunker down with fish-dead eyes shouldn’t be revived.

“I don’t mind,” he said—apparently a bit disappointed.

Anyway, the third is rejected.

Qing, who takes righteous joy in tormenting villains, mulled countless other ways: how to needle harder, sap more strength, stoke more rage.

“How about this?”

Suddenly Dayeoreum’s cell wall collapses and a masked intruder on a white horse appears, shouting—

No time to explain—get on!

“We cannot damage the facilities,” Master Danlun said.

“Mm, it’s an empty cell anyway. We could cover it with a tent sheet, right? The prisoners would be a little cold, but—”

“Someone would have to work through the Spring Festival. If you’ll personally restore the wall, I shall procure a white horse.”

He feigned indifference but showed a sly hint of eagerness.

Of course, rebuilding a wall isn’t impossible—but let’s see. Triple-layer brick, thick with insulation.

...Ah. Master Danlun is barely—just barely—Super-transcendent.

Meaning he’s a journeyman who’d struggle even with the demolition. I can’t ask him to do heavy lifting.

“Your eyes look impious,” he said.

“Nooo, not at all.”

My acting only comes alive in front of villains; in daily life, what I’m thinking shows clear as day.

At Master Danlun’s narrowed gaze, I giggled and changed the subject.

“Could we get some blood tomorrow? Ah—are they slaughtering a cow or pig in the morning by chance? The Spring Festival feast will keep running, so they might, right?”

—

Do you know the softness of morning?

The haze that drifts between dream and waking drains away without regret; consciousness clears by degrees until the self naturally becomes aware of itself.

Open your eyes to that bluish morning.

Your mind oddly refreshed, your body without a single catch—vitality begins to rise.

A morning of unalloyed freshness.

Butcher Demon lay in that afterglow, thinking.

How long has it been since I greeted a morning this crisp and splendid?

Since he entered the Repentance Hall, he had not, even once, met a whole morning.

Before his capture, what power did he wield?

He slept like an emperor on the softest silk in a luxurious chamber with costly incense curling in the air.

But the Repentance Hall’s pallet jabbed straw into the flesh, and there wasn’t enough of it; it was so hard the body ached.

The blanket was merely sturdy—coarse hemp cloth stuffed [N O V E L I G H T] heavy with cheap cotton.

The rancid stench of never-washed bedding came free.

And?

In summer it’s hot and damp; in winter it’s cold and dry—both the facilities and the climate make the Repentance Hall a den of discomfort.

On top of that—

These bastards ring the bell at dawn to wrench people awake, twined thick to rasp the nerves—unbearably loud—

Butcher Demon’s eyes snapped open.

So that’s why this morning felt so fresh—he realized the reason.

They didn’t ring the bell!

The worst way to wake is being shaken up and forced to sweep away the remaining sleep. For the first time in decades he’d woken without disturbance.

But why?

Are the Kunlun lackeys lazing off for the Spring Festival?

Just then—

“Oh, Old-timer. Early birds get the feed. Or do you wake early because you’re decrepit?”

That brazen brat’s insufferable voice.

He pretended not to hear.

“I know you’re awake. Not answering? Don’t want breakfast? Old and lost your appetite?”

“...I have only just risen.”

It hurt his pride—but he wanted the food.

But the “breakfast” Qing meant wasn’t food.

“I was thinking of serving in order of who’s awake. Today’s breakfast is a special—tonic soup with plenty of human blood. Old-timer, weren’t you the one who said human blood smelled fragrant? Or was that the cannibal bastard?”

Thunk.

Something large flew to the bars of his cell and sloshed down—a thing with a silver conduit attached to a cap.

The kind of thing Kunlun Daoists wear on their heads.

Butcher Demon rushed up, clutching the bars in shock.

By the food cart at the entrance—Qing sat spattered in blood.

He cried out, aghast.

“You—you!”

“All right, time for breakfast. Rise and shine!”

Qing stuck a ladle through the bars and rattled it left and right—clang clang clang clang—noise as loud as any bell shook the Repentance Hall.

“What the hell—” “Did they change the bell?” “Shit—fuck! Sleep! Let us sleep, you motherfuckers! Just one day!”

Howls under the forced reveille.

But they were cutthroats trained for at least a decade; at the metallic racket they sprang up and—

Finally they spotted Qing, blood-smeared, lounging proudly against the food cart.

“What is this—” “You—what!” “You did it!”

Gasps and cries of awe.

Qing grinned—

“Eyes up here. Sparkle, sparkle.”

Violet steel-qi flicked and blinked over her palm—

made all the more vivid in the Repentance Hall’s dim pre-dawn.

“The truth is—this body, the Institutional Supreme King Deity, Molsal’s Dayeoreum—never lost her core!”

The qi already flaring was proof enough.

Qing watched their jaws drop and curled her lips into a wicked shape.

“Honestly—how do ‘martial men’ keep living after losing the core? Pathetic—lower than maggots. If it were me—core gone, living on miserably in a pigsty like this—I’d bite my tongue and die. Ptooey. Filthy trash.”

“Wh—”

“Enough. I wasn’t captured. I let myself be captured. Why? Anyone know what this is?”

She flicked her right hand.

Behind the violet steel-qi a white, twisted silhouette—a demon’s claw—overlaid itself, half transparent.

“Black-Slaughter Demon Palm—no, before that—Small-Count Demon Art! You’re the current Small-Count Witch!”

Butcher Demon barked.

“Small-Count Witch? Wrong.”

She swept her left hand.

Another warped silhouette overlaid—a pitch-black claw this time.

“Black-Slaughter Demon Palm! But your hand—ah, right—Black-Slaughter Demon Palm comes from the Small-Count Demon Art, and the ‘small-count’ drains the palm’s side effects!”

“Oh. Old-timer. Smart.”

For all his sins, he’d once been an expert; his eye wasn’t bad.

“Then what’s this?”

Spines sprouted on her steel-qi and spun savagely; at once, purple thunderbolts sprayed in all directions.

“Turning-Wheel Cataclysm with Self-Driving Demon-Energy—how many of the Ten Great Demonic Arts do you—huh. Of course. Your target is my Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi!”

“Correct. I decided to gather the Ten Great Demonic Arts into one. I heard the washed-up Butcher Demon was penned up here—so what could I do? I gambled.”

“Khaha! You’re completely insane! You got yourself caught to obtain a demonic art?”

He genuinely looked amused.

Why should Qing indulge that face?

“Uh-huh. Except—Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi turned out to be a reservoir method, not a steel-qi method. Useless. Waste of time.”

“Wh-what!?”

“So I figured—if I don’t need it, better to smash it.”

“You—”

“So Light-Roaring Murderous Steel Qi ends here. Once I properly take the stage in the rivers and lakes, I’ll say: after hearing the mnemonic, I realized it’s third-rate—nothing but getting drunk on killing-intent, burning your true origin to vomit out power beyond your realm—so I didn’t learn it. Butcher Demon was just a madman sunk in the Entering Demon state.”

It was a declaration to negate his entire life and make it void.

For all his monstrous deeds, Butcher Demon was also a great martial who had reached Demon-Heart State.

But if things go as Qing said—

he’ll remain a lunatic intoxicated with killing-intent—

a slaughter-ghoul who killed for the taste of it, burning his true origin—

thought to have reached Demon-Heart, but only faking it with a trick of martial art.

Butcher Demon’s face contorted.

Half fury.

And the trembling pupils proved fear.

Yes—that’s it.

Turns out you don’t have to kill to get that thrill. How did I go this long not knowing something this fun exists?

Haven’t I wasted half a martial lifetime?

Humming bubbled out of Qing on its own—

hm hm hm—her spirits rose all by themselves.