Chapter 629: Kunlun Sect vs Blood Thunder Sound Temple (5)

The time in which Qing exists is still the ancient age before a proper human civilization has been raised—an era wretchedly primitive, where inferior savages live.

The level of civilization, people’s perceptions and ideas, and the state of society differ little from those of ape-like proto-humans, which proves it.

Even communications show as much.

Unlike Qing’s homeland, where information can be sent and received anywhere on earth with no time lag, this era’s communications rely on human feet.

Yet even these ancient primitives had a kind of secret weapon: a cutting-edge technique that let dispatches fly through the sky on their own.

Carrier pigeons!

Catch a clever pigeon, let it breed, and raise the chicks with care from the start; no matter how stupid a bird is, it learns to remember its home.

You take it out of the house and, first from about 6 miles, then 12 miles, then 18 miles, release it progressively farther away and train it to return home.

It’s less “training” than catch-and-release—a process that mostly weeds out the truly hopeless birdbrains.

Only the pigeons that return home without fail earn the right to become the Central Plains’ elite couriers: carrier pigeons.

Release one of these elite birds from afar and it will wheel through the sky and return straight to its loft. That’s the principle by which dispatches “fly” on their own.

It simply wasn’t widely used.

First, training the birds cost a small fortune.

Second, there’s the hard limit of avian stupidity: leave them out in the field too long and they often forget where “home” is.

And the people of the Central Plains eat pigeons!

So even a near-spirit-grade pigeon that understands human intent and can fly two thousand miles back home is nothing but a meal to a starving Central Plains resident.

So in truth the carrier pigeon’s reliability ends up abysmal for the cost and trouble.

The most urgent dispatches are the very ones you send by pigeon—and the problem is, you have no certainty it will arrive.

Even so, if it’s urgent, you have to use them.

Just in case, you send a runner too, even if it’s late.

You make up for lack of reliability with numbers.

For a single dispatch you send at least ten pigeons, and maybe—maybe—one will scrape through.

So roll time back ten days: on the twenty-fifth day of the Twelfth Month, twenty pigeons launched from Kunlun Mountain, each on its own adventure.

One forgot its home—or the way to it.

Another succumbed to the charms of a sleek, lovely pigeon and became a pigeon dad.

Some were taken by hawks, owls, or wildcats.

Worst of all were the people of the Central Plains.

Their ferocious appetite—devouring every winged thing without exception—was far too cruel a fate for a mere bird.

And flap—of the twenty, only one drops onto the Martial Alliance’s Pigeon Tower.

Another straggler shows up later, but the world only remembers first place. No one cared; it was found pecking grain in peace.

Behold the primitive’s resplendent technology!

Handlers—who are at once loft-keepers, lightness-skill experts, and cryptographers—immediately open the codebook and decipher the dispatch.

The carrier pigeon’s worst nightmare, after all, is the Central Plains appetite; without encryption the contents spread to the four winds.

“An invasion from Tibet is imminent. Requesting top-priority support from Translucent Realm experts. Details will be delivered by a disciple arriving later. —Kunlun Sect Leader.”

Such is the greatness of the carrier pigeon.

From Sun and Moon Mountain in Qinghai to the Martial Alliance in Kaifeng Prefecture in two days—speed like light itself.

And expensive, unreliable, with a transmission payload so tiny you can barely write a handful of characters besides!

The reduced character count sharpened the urgency of the message.

The cryptographer rushed this thunderbolt straight to the Alliance Chief’s hall.

“What!? Tibetans? Those bastards—saying it’s not yet New Year on their side...! We must call for cooperation at once!”

Of course, the Orthodox masters of the Central Plains can’t all vacate their posts.

They first send Translucent Realm experts nearby; those farther away are told to watch developments, redeploy, and hold for mobilization orders.

Specifically, they request aid for Qinghai from Shaolin, Divine Lady’s Gate, and the Namgung House.

The Martial Alliance Chief cannot lightly leave; if the Moyong Head comes down to Anhui for a while...

As for Mount Emei—hm—inform them, yes, but the Flashing Sword should remain at Emei to hold the line...

It was a mere three days before the New Year.

So the poor Pigeon Tower staff were dispatched nationwide on urgent errands with New Year’s Eve at the doorstep.

They would miss that one night when the year turns, when families gather over dumplings and watch fireworks.

But whom to blame?

Naturally—blame the Tibetans.

——

Even with the prisoner experience over, Qing is still listless and bored.

Why is everyone suddenly training so hard?

Since when did they ever train like their lives depended on it?

I felt it before: the kids who are bad at studying are the ones who study while everyone else plays—and play when everyone else studies.

During the Spring Festival you’re supposed to go look around town, stroll the night market, shake down street stalls, shake down inns, shake down taverns.

Well, Iri does need to train some.

So Qing is bored.

At this rate I should’ve just extended my stay in the Repentance Hall and kept watching the prisoners’ little talent show.

It really was a talent show.

The game where they plucked each other’s nose hairs and the one who cried first lost—that was pretty fun.

The slapping match, too—by the end the cooking was forgotten and it turned into pure grudge, and the spectacle was worth watching.

Stone Fist’s massage—about “Hee-mae grade five” in power—was decent for a demonhead.

It would be a bit odd for Dayeoreum, who “disappeared,” to show herself again.

If I ditch the face veil and go barefaced, would that be fine? Maybe they won’t recognize me?

Thus she idles.

Strictly speaking, she is increasing her cultivation-meter through the Accumulation process in her inner method, but Accumulation is half-automatic; her head is full of idle thoughts, and she’s dead bored.

New Year, day ten.

Qing sits cross-legged again today, sunk in idle thoughts.

If only Hee-mae were here, we’d go out together.

But the Training Hall opens only once every ten days, they say; even if she wants to beg for an outing, she has no pretext to meet.

Sure, if I threw a tantrum I could pry her out—but what would that make me?

I’d be the thoughtless younger sister who interrupts her sworn sister’s training.

All-Forms-as-One Inner Art has a peculiar trait.

When you circulate, a gentle golden radiance rises like a halo, shining like dawn light, and the corners of your mouth naturally form the Buddha’s wondrous smile, the open, compassionate expression of the Original Honored One.

Since in India and Tibet martial arts are instruments of governance, maybe the art was designed to do this—or maybe it’s just a side effect.

Sitting there in meditation like an enlightened high monk, wearing that faint smile, Qing thought:

Mm. I want to touch Hee-mae’s breasts.

Ugh. I’m craving Hee-mae’s breasts. They’re mine—how is it that I can’t even touch what’s mine?

That fullness that fills both hands, that soft give that slips between the fingers—there is no substitute.

If someone could read those innermost thoughts, they’d click their tongue: what a depraved Buddha—call her a lecherous Buddha and be done with it.

But how could anyone read a person’s inner heart clearly?

That realm is not granted to humans; even a superhuman whose personal martial skill is outstanding and whose comprehension is profound—a Translucent Realm expert—cannot do it.

In other words, even to a Translucent Realm expert, Qing looks pure and absorbed, wandering within enlightenment—admirably focused.

So Kunlun is Kunlun, but a certain heart sprinted straight here with worry for the disciple staying there, even flying through the sky—Ximen Surin’s heart—and could not help but be deeply pleased.

Suddenly Qing feels a lack.

More precisely, a lack inside.

Her already vigorous digestion has grown more active under the influence of Birth-Heart Vitality; though there’s quite some time before the evening offering, hunger gnaws.

Qing snaps her eyes open at the pang.

She’s just thinking to go find a snack when—there before her, smiling with satisfaction—her master.

“Ah—Master!”

“Come now—only now do you notice?”

“If you’d sent word ahead I would have greeted you first. Have you been waiting long?”

Ximen Surin smiles.

“So absorbed that even an outsider wouldn’t have noticed entering—seeing my disciple so absorbed, I forgot the time. Good. Your body seems fine now. Nothing untoward happened?”

“Hehe, what could happen? Your disciple is a proper expert now.”

Qing sidles over and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, sets her little head down on Ximen Surin’s thigh.

It’s not how a disciple should receive a master.

But water boiling slowly is worse than water boiling fast. Ximen Surin has long since seen too much of this hopeless disciple’s antics.

When Qing was at Super-transcendent she was starved for affection; she had to be held, like it or not.

By the time Qing entered Harmony, Ximen Surin had grown too used to it; her hand begins to stroke Qing’s hair without thinking.

“Good. I watched my disciple’s circulation—the golden radiance isn’t an ordinary inner art. Picked up a new martial art again, did you?”

“Yes. They called it All-Forms-as-One Inner Art.”

“Ho. An Indian Buddhist art. Good. You picked up something excellent.”

She’s even used to the reports that whenever her disciple goes out, she “picks up” other people’s martial arts. So what’s a lap pillow next to that?

“Actually, on the way to Kunlun, your disciple met a mad monk—ah, you know the mad monk? Oh, you do. So then...”

Happily bored Qing even forgets her hunger and chatters away about what happened.

Ximen Surin has already heard the whole account from Cheon Bija and seen the mad monk’s face besides.

Listening to the same story twice, she hums along—then suddenly realizes: hold on.

This girl—how can she dare stretch out on her master’s lap without fear? Come to think of it, I haven’t even received a single full prostration of greeting from my disciple.

Where did this go wrong?

Only now does Ximen Surin feel a jolt.

Still, the disciple is dear, so she lets it pass.

All-Forms-as-One Inner Art is no ordinary art.

And this time, she hears, it wasn’t obtained by some scheme but as payment for righteous conduct—so Ximen Surin is all the more pleased.

Of course, this is exactly how you ruin a child’s manners.

“Ah, Master. Would you care to go to the night market? Since it’s the Spring Festival, Sining has a big one. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever strolling cozily with Master. The word ‘master’ even uses the same character as ‘mother’—what a pitiful unfilial child I am. Hehe. Your disciple has been terribly remiss; allow me to serve you with utmost devotion this time.”

So she did attend the Royal Academy at least—she can put on the airs of someone who can read and write.

Of course, someone who can read and write doesn’t usually rest her head on her master’s thigh.

“Alright. In my later years I should enjoy the benefits of a grown disciple. I’ve never walked about the city of Sining either; if my disciple will be my guide, I’ll gladly stroll.”

The bean pods over Ximen Surin’s eyes begin to thicken at last.