Chapter 663: Heaven-Earth Seeing Hound (2)

It was, in its way, understandable how the word “son” had come out.

Seol Iri was Jayeo’s mother.

And here she had met Qing’s hidden(?) little son-claimant, who thereby became Jayeo’s older brother.

Then what do you call my daughter’s older brother?

Correct answer: son.

Qing thought it wasn’t exactly a question too hard for Gunyeong.

But taking in an eight-year-old brat as your child and taking in a full-grown, black-clad man as your child feel nothing alike.

He was, at a glance, older than her, wasn’t he!

So Seol Iri’s voice was grave.

Still, she didn’t bother prying into the situation; the very resolve—not to ask, not to nitpick—was faintly commendable.

At that, Yeom Hwiyeong’s face soured all at once, as if he’d heard something intolerable.

Qing felt triumph and sympathy at the same time.

Half: See? Now you know what it feels like. Serves you right.

Half: If Gunyeong is stepping up as a mom-claimant, well, that tracks.

“What is this? Are you cra— no, no. Is she your friend, Mother? Is this perhaps a woman with a bit of a head problem?”

“Hey, not okay. Iri may be a bit slow, but not to the point of ‘problem.’”

“No.”

“See? Iri says she isn’t.”

“Not that. I’m not slow.”

“Hey now, Iri, not okay either. How do you lie without so much as a change in your face?”

Either way, Qing felt the need to tidy the situation.

Judging from how the son-claimant himself looked appalled, she could go ahead and delegate the mother role to Seol Iri and be done with it—

but what good comes of goading a Harmony-realm fighter who is uncommonly extraordinary on the crazy side—a total master and a dog of a master both?

If you’re going to poke something, it had better be someone you can handle the aftershocks from.

Bowing to the strong is no shame whatsoever; it is, rather, a law of nature.

“Mm, this is Jayeo’s mom, Seol Iri. You know Ice-White Divine Palm, right? Ice-White Divine Palm of the Five Beauties of the Martial World. And this is Yeom Hwiyeong—mm—my son—tsk—well, that’s what it’s come to.”

Qing’s expression openly curdled.

Yeom Hwiyeong, meanwhile, beamed.

“And Jayeo is my daughter; I am Jayeo’s dad. This is Jayeo’s mom. This is my son. And to this punk, I’m Mom. So Iri is Jayeo’s mom and I am Jayeo’s dad. As for me and this person, I could be his mom or not, but I have nothing whatsoever to do with Iri...”

A fine line appeared between Seol Iri’s brows.

A look that said, What are you even saying.

Indeed, if you strung together the family-claimants orbiting Qing, you got a splendid dog-genealogy—a world-class dog’s breakfast.

Anyway.

She seemed to have understood the part about not needing to play mom per se.

“Mm? Then how does this work? Does this little tyke become my half sister?”

“No—how would more additions make us full siblings?”

The “half” and “full” of half-siblings and full siblings both use the character for womb.

Brothers from different wombs and brothers from the same womb—terms Qing almost never used back home but that were very common in the Central Plains.

In a world where having several mothers was perfectly normal, how would that be a stain.

“Mm, that’s rather a hurtful thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Enough already. Anyway—Grandpa, Grandpa!”

Every culture has the saying that if you speak of someone, they appear.

That’s how common the phenomenon is.

Or perhaps someone waiting to come in, timing their entrance, hears them being called and thinks, “Now is the moment,” and shows up.

“If you’ve come, hurry and have a seat—khm—since when are you hanging around with some tramp?”

Choi Riong plainly didn’t like Yeom Hwiyeong.

Well, he was Choi Riong, Qing’s dad-claimant.

To a daughter he regarded as his, a full-grown man mewling “Mother, Mother” would, naturally, be like a bone in the throat.

“And who is that child?”

“Ah, this is Jayeo—Ximen Jayeo. I decided she’s my daughter.”

“Mm? A maiden not yet wed—what now—why do you keep picking things up? Well, she is rather pretty.”

“Grandpa, really. If you’re going to scold, start by closing that gaping mouth of yours.”

For all his words, Choi Riong’s face had spread into a full smile.

“You brat, why are you clinging to your mother like a sack of bricks? You’re full-grown, not an infant—sticking like glue like that—no good. Off you go over here, quick.”

Which only changed the cling-target from Qing to Choi Riong.

As for what part was “no good,” Jayeo had no understanding whatsoever.

And then came the customary time for a sumptuous banquet.

The moment Qing reached the Yangtze’s mouth, the notice had reached Seol Trading Company on the highest priority; without much waiting, freshly made, piping-hot dishes came out bang, bang.

Choi Riong’s face had now grown thoroughly benign; he looked every inch an ordinary grandpa.

As in: once he had a grandchild, he acted as if children didn’t matter anymore.

“Oh, pork ribs? You like this? Oh yes, you eat that so well.”

Nested in Choi Riong’s arms, Jayeo opened her mouth like a hungry baby bird and received the bites—yum-yum—working the old man with her fingers.

Mm, I know that one. It is convenient.

On one side, Seol Iri was groaning, cooling scalding egg porridge on her tongue.

“My little sister hasn’t learned any martial arts yet?”

“I’m still thinking it over. I should at least teach her a heart method, but if I force it she may come to hate it—and what should I teach. I know far too many arts.”

“How about the Mixed-Heaven Art? It takes a lot of elixir, but that’s nothing to worry about—we can get one person’s worth ready fast.”

Qing gave Mixed-Heaven Art a quick scan.

Mixed-Heaven Demon Art, gold frame.

But it was demon art.

Not even purple—just gold—hardly a reason to saddle a child with demon-art status; rejected.

Still, it had been offered in goodwill, so Qing declined politely by way of detour.

“There’s Day-Sun Fine-Heart Sutra, or Dragon-Throne Prajñā Guard-Heart Art, or Myriad Forms as One Sun—One Intent Primordial Heart Art.”

Up to this point, she could speak confidently; these were arts she was allowed to know and allowed to teach Jayeo.

Qing lowered her voice a touch.

“Or would you say it’s better than Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing?”

Yeom Hwiyeong’s face said he was flummoxed.

“What on earth have you been doing? Did you roam the rivers and lakes scooping up divine arts? Mm. If it’s orthodox Confucian–Buddhist arts, then fine, whatever. But if you have that last one, what’s there to agonize over? Learn it first; switch later if you like.”

“Isn’t that a bit brutal for a kid?”

Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing had a major issue: unlike other inner-heart methods where you could obediently chant sutras and breathe, it ran on a different track.

Perhaps because it was an old art, Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing used a primitive, benighted training mode called movement-arts.

Movement-arts require you to keep the body moving without breaking proper breathing; that “most ideal shaping of the body’s muscles, bones, and bloodways”—where do you think that efficacy comes from?

Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing is also the true starting point of Central Plains martial study; isn’t Shaolin’s art said to come from it?

That is, most of the crude external training Shaolin monks do derives from Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing.

Start with horse stance; lift heavy things; twist with ropes tied on; stand on tiptoes in narrow places and endure; climb rough mountain paths up and down; take some waterfall pounding—

to see that training is to think, well, this will just make you truly healthy.

One might even think the function that sets muscles, bones, and bloodways is cultivated less by the inner-heart method and more by the movement-arts’ intense physical conditioning.

So if I set her to this—Jayeo is such a watchful child she’ll do as she’s told.

For fear that the mom who appeared in her life would hate her, be disappointed, that the good fortune that came one day might vanish.

But it is a brutal training.

And after finally shaping the body to a degree, she switches to another heart method?

“We said we’d start from the beginning”? Sure, well, this time you can just sit quietly and breathe?

“That’s what you’re agonizing over?”

Yeom Hwiyeong looked incredulous.

Because it was an incredulous thing to say.

Having the world’s divine art—the archetype of martial arts—that others lack and can’t teach, and the stance is:

“It’s too rough and hard for a kid; what if she loses motivation?”

“Isn’t this where you just beat it into her and teach it? She’ll be grateful later anyway.”

“That isn’t the problem. I’m worried she’ll go crooked.”

“Wait, Mother? And yet with some people you taught this sharply.”

He tapped his eyepatch.

Qing thought to herself: if I’d just burst both eyes back then, I wouldn’t be watching this.

Then again, thanks to bursting only one, another Harmony-realm master came on his own to support us when Master stepped away.

You never know about the world. Truly.

“What is this—do you discriminate between daughter and son? Even if that’s the custom in the Central Plains, this feels a bit much.”

“No, that’s not it. Mm—”

Qing used her signature loud full-projection voice.

The child wasn’t just a child; she was a manufactured Master of the Ten-Thousand-Slaughters, one who had seen and suffered brutal things; if she went crooked, it wouldn’t end at the level of storm-and-stress.

If it were only turning into a mere delinquent girl, you could correct that with a simple flick on the forehead;

if that wasn’t enough, there was the Ximen Surin–style guided-instruction final ultimate—Nuclear Forehead-Flick Bomb as last resort.

But the three leaders of the orthodox martial world already knew the child’s identity and publicly supported the adoption, did they not.

That meant: the moment she caused trouble enough to become a public calamity of the martial world, the three would deploy and take responsibility.

Yeom Hwiyeong smirked.

“Then we have no choice but to take care. As her big brother, I can manage that much understanding. Mm. These things usually get solved by running several people together.”

When you suffer alone, it feels unfair, like only you suffer; when everyone suffers together, you simply think, oh, it’s supposed to be hard—such is the human heart.

Of course, we can’t transmit Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing to others.

So he meant: find companions who will suffer together purely to share hardship with Jayeo.

Truly the thinking of a former overlord of a demonic crowd.

“Oh wow. How did you come up with something so wicked.”

“Why, can’t you do it?”

“No, it’s a good idea—let’s do it at once.”

Even without teaching the Bone-Reversing & Marrow-Washing oral formulas—that is, the breath-cultivation process—

the hardship alone corrects muscles and bones, draws out latent potential in the body, and inwardly broadens the meridians and scours the grime from capillaries to pierce them through: a very healthy movement-arts regimen.

So if we just find training helpers to endure together—no, it sounds like it’ll only be suffering, so endure-and-endure together—then we’re set.

Where to find them?

Of course, since it’s training that’s tremendously good for the body, we could just assemble the Divine Lady’s Gate’s top three cohorts of disciples and, while we’re at it, do good all around.

Qing’s deliberation was crossing into a new phase.