Chapter 646: Joint March (2)

The child was quiet.

No—rather than quiet, what should I call it?

Closer to unresponsive.

When held, she nestled in, but if set down, she only stared up blankly.

If Qing stepped away, the child only moved her head to follow; only when Qing beckoned did she drift over, then stare up again, vacant.

So what else—carry her around in her arms.

Qing didn’t know the exact age, but kids this small usually have ants in their pants—bouncing off the walls, right?

And their mouths go chitter-chatter. Come to think of it, Hyang is probably about the same age. Thinking of that made this one look almost like a doll.

“Heyy, cute. What’s your name?”

“......”

“Wanna come to this big sister?”

“......”

But she was ignored!

Gyeon Pohee’s shoulders slumped after her attempt to chat the child up.

“Mm, does she hate me?”

“Maybe she doesn’t understand speech? No—she shows almost no response at all. Could be her hearing’s impaired.”

Peng Daesan spoke with a pained look.

Even a shy kid will usually show some hesitation if someone calls to them or fusses at them.

But the child only stared off at something in the middle distance like she hadn’t heard a thing.

Ah—maybe it was that.

If you’re born without hearing, muteness often comes with it.

Qing stroked the child’s head with pity.

The instant Qing’s hand touched her hair, the child flinched; but that was all—she stayed in Qing’s arms like a doll, barely moving.

So three pairs of pitying eyes looked on.

Just then—

“Lady Ximen? Ah, there you are. The Master is asking for you.”

“Ah, yes. I’ll go see him now.”

As Qing stood with the child in her arms, the Kunlun disciple who’d brought the message spoke carefully.

“Um—he said to leave the child with your friends and come.”

“Ah. Right. Mm. Hee-mae?”

“Mm. Mm.”

Hee-mae smiled white and held out her arms.

If the absolute empress of pedestals, the peerless pedestal of the world, the One True Pedestal Hee-mae was taking her, surely even a child wouldn’t object.

Qing handed the child to Gyeon Pohee and, all the way out of the nameless Buddha hall, felt that stare prickling the back of her head.

Mm. Honestly, this was a bit hard.

A child needs some childlike charm if you’re going to pour on the doting.

And those visions from the rescue made it plain she was a child with a broken mind; it felt reckless to fawn over her carelessly.

Besides, Qing’s doting was, by nature, extremely rough.

The type to tease like the rotten uncle who always makes the niece cry.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do that to a hurt child; she’d settled for holding her quietly and ruffling her hair.

If only the kid had been a little more social.

Though, really, after living like that, being social would be the strange thing.

When Qing entered the room, the three elders of the Translucent Realm were gathered, waiting.

Only—the air didn’t feel harmonious.

Just one look said the topic would be heavy; Qing offered a brief salute and sat properly on a cushion.

The Central Plains live at tables, but Blood Thunder Sound Temple was a monastery; they clearly lived seated on the floor.

“Is the child well?”

“Yes. Too quiet for a child, but... she may have trouble hearing.”

“That will not be it. Amitābha...”

Martial Buddha Muhak invoked the Buddha, face filled with pity.

The three elders traded difficult looks. Then Ximen Surin let out a long sigh and spoke.

“The Great Blood-Annihilating Heaven Array borrows the baleful power of the star. The child, through vile deeds, has inherited the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters karma. Pitiful, poor thing.”

They lock the child in a room.

The child must not be harmed, so it isn’t filthy—but they put animal droppings and rotting carcasses behind iron bars in a separate space to raise a stench.

In the locked room there isn’t even a light—only a small eye-hole.

All the child can do is stare blankly out through that hole.

And the child sees the world through the hole.

A world where everything she doesn’t have unfolds.

Beloved children walk holding their parents’ hands, wearing the happiest faces in the world.

Children titter and race with friends, and sometimes lay out mountains and seas of delicacies and throw grand feasts.

The child has to watch all that—people enjoying every last thing she does not have.

Sometimes she’s brought outside.

What she gets in return is absolute neglect.

A refusal so complete it’s as if her very existence has been erased.

The making of the array vessel happens in a Blood Cult village; everyone there is an accomplice.

Thus the child’s world becomes hatred.

A child infused—so she will seethe with hatred and loathe the world to the marrow.

“In the old days, they say, all children born in the year when the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters baleful star bared its tail and fixed itself in the sky were put to death. Because the Master of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters was that terrible a being.”

Hearing those grim words spoken before the present Master of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters, Qing’s heart lurched downward.

“In the past, every time the Blood Cult ran wild, how many times do you think that Great Blood-Annihilating Heaven Array was used? And how many times was the poor child used as its core rescued?”

If the child is {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} found alive, it’s a coin toss.

The ones whose hatred—their killing aura—has not yet reached the baleful star’s pitch cannot endure the horror of the formation and die.

So if a child is saved, it means she is at least incomplete-yet-able to withstand the malice of the baleful star—her heart already stained jet black.

“In our long martial history, there were seniors who pitied such children and tried to take them in. And each time, without exception, a great murder-fiend appeared in the martial world and shook the land. A child who learned martial skills grew up to be a famed killer; even if they learned nothing—yes, even children whose cores were broken and sinews cut so they were feeble—some used poison and wiped out entire villages.”

“Uh—then the child...?”

“Mm.” “Mmm.” “Namo Amitābha...”

The utmost experts under Heaven—those with no one left to fear—looked away in unison.

Qing’s brows drew a 八.

“But that’s too much. What did the kid do wrong? And by your own account she’s never had a single thing—how could you...”

Muhak asked back, heavy-voiced.

“Then what should be done? A child who will surely become a great harm to the world—”

“That’s not known yet.”

Qing cut clean across Muhak’s words.

It was terribly rude—but did the Martial Buddha speak easily of this?

Even so.

Even if the red letters of evil karma are already carved into her, even if she’s piled up the karmic weight of eating flesh, taking human flesh—

That isn’t her fault.

Qing straightened her posture.

“The Master said: ‘Hear much, but if you doubt it, do not accept it; see much, but if you doubt it, treat it as unseen.’ How can a person, judging with human ears and eyes, rashly decide a matter this grave?”

“Yet does not long experience speak to the same conclusion? If it were one man’s word, as you say, I would set it aside; but this has happened many times under Heaven. Will you add one more to a precedent already made?”

“Wang Chong said that even sages often speak in ways that contradict themselves, and when something is unclear, one should question even the Master.”

Qing swallowed.

“He added: When a spider spins a web, some insects are caught and others slip through; when a hunter lays a snare, some beasts are taken and some are not; when a fisherman casts a net, some fish are caught and some escape. There is no necessity in such things—so we cannot treat the child’s future as fixed, as if she is already determined to be a killer.”

“Isn’t it only your immediate pity that wants to save the child? And if that brings on some great calamity? Would that be right?”

“Zhuangzi said: ‘In the face of profit, forget righteousness.’ Hurting a child may feel like blocking a future calamity—satisfying and convenient. But trying to harm an innocent child for something that has not happened cannot be called right.”

Isn’t that not what’s right, but what’s easy?

Because there’s no precedent of anyone overcoming this killer nature, aren’t you trying to give up at the outset? That was the accusation.

Muhak’s brows twitched.

“Hah. You can quote your classics. Fine. Then what do you intend? If you say the child lives, will you personally teach her humanity and duty and make her into a person? Or will you just dump her at Divine Lady’s Gate and let her grow there?”

You call the easy road easy and demand we choose the hard and uncertain—but then what will you do?

“That’s...”

“Unacceptable. If the child grows and cannot overcome her killing heart, then at best the world will point at Divine Lady’s Gate and say you sent a killer into it; more than that, once that killer nature is in her bones, our disciples’ safety will be in immediate danger. I resolved not to turn away the women who come, but I can only treasure the ones already in my care all the more.”

It was the Master’s voice.

Qing bit her lip.

Honestly, she’d had that thought.

Wouldn’t Divine Lady’s Gate be all right?

Might it not be a good place that could embrace and cradle one child?

But the Master was right.

To Qing, the family of Divine Lady’s Gate was far more precious than a child she’d never known.

And that would be the same for anyone.

Even if they let the child live—who would take her in?

The Martial Alliance? Shaolin? Shaolin is closed to women to begin with; impossible.

Even so—

“...I’ll take her.”

“You?”

“I’ll take her and raise her. If she cannot overcome the killer nature, I’ll take responsibility and—”

“Enough. That’s enough.”

Qing’s grim declaration cut off.

Because Martial Buddha and Ximen Surin were looking at her with smiles full of pride.

“I understand my disciple’s heart; leave it there. A still-green disciple taking a child in—does that sound like sense to you?”

“Eh.”

“I met one who bore the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters karma and still walked upright; how much more can a man not overcome the killer nature he himself has planted of his own will?”

“...Pardon?” “Pardon?”

Two questions.

One was Namgung Daero’s.

“Senior? What do you mean by that?”

Muhak looked to Ximen Surin.

When she nodded, Muhak smiled and spoke.

“Boy, the Heavenly Flower Sword is the present Master of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters. Your realm’s too short yet; you didn’t notice.”

“Come on, Senior. ‘Too short’?”

“Hmph. If your eyes can’t recognize the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters right under your nose, then yes—you’re short.”

“I did think her killing aura was thick, but, well, mm. I suppose that could be.”

Namgung Daero smoothly omitted the part about “because she’s our grand senior’s disciple.”

The cane knows the right answers. After so many beatings, he’d naturally attained the Dao of survival.

Only then did the surprise hit.

The Heavenly Flower Sword is the present bearer of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters?

This kid?

From all the rumors he’d heard, she was a young rising star with both skill and righteousness.

Of course, mixed in were nasty stories—her hand was cruel, and so on. He’d written those off as the usual smears that trail the excellent.

Maybe they were true.

Yet what had just played out before his eyes was, no matter what anyone said, the conduct of a righteous orthodox swordsman.

Cruel hands? Far better than being too soft.

The rivers and lakes are ruthless; a martial man must also know when to be ruthless.

Especially in times like these, grim times, when the omens of the Blood Cult’s rise keep showing.

So Namgung Daero accepted it.

To be honest, he already liked that junior; it greased the forgiveness.

If the Heavenly Flower Sword had been the Heavenly Flower Saber or the Heavenly Flower Spear, he might have thought more seriously.

Is it all right for the present bearer of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters to belong to orthodox martial society? Her achievements are fearsome even now—if she grows stronger still, becomes truly the Sword Empress or the Foremost Under Heaven Sword, and one day flips—who could stop her?

But a sword is a weapon and also, since antiquity, a ritual implement—a symbol of sacrifice that communes with Heaven, and a tool of cultivation.

A swordsman with that much sword-power can, of course, overcome her own nature. Of course.

The Sword King keeps pouring drinks while grumbling about his son, but children, in the end, grow up watching their parents.