Chapter 718: When Going Out, Maintain Your Dignity (12)

Assassin ecology, second type.

“Me? I’m not an assassin.”

The kind who can’t show themselves openly, throws a rag over their head, and pretends to be a harmless commoner.

They pretend to run away, or pretend to be swept along in the crowd, brush past Mandarlo’s side—and suddenly whip out a knife or an awl and stab.

Thanks to that, Mandarlo was basically a doll in a child’s hand, only treated worse, since at least a doll gets held properly and swung around.

“Ghk.”

Qing grabbed him by the scruff and Mandarlo let out a choked grunt as he went rolling.

In his place was a single assassin, arm stretched out in panic, awl extended into empty air.

When his eyes met Qing’s, he slowly, very slowly, tried to slide it back into his sleeve like nothing had happened.

Of course, just because he acted calm didn’t make it convincing.

“Hehe, sir, it’s not what it looks like—”

If it’s not what it looks like, then what is it? You tried to shiv our dog-bone and missed, so how exactly are you planning to talk your way out of this with creative improv?

Qing was extremely curious.

Unfortunately, this was not the time to leisurely listen to his excuse, heart fluttering over what kind of unexpected innovation he might present.

So what do you do? You at least squeeze some fun out of him.

“Caught in the act! No questions asked!”

Qing barked, thrusting out her dagger—Number Three.

Dusk-colored Steel-qi flared in a fan that vertically split the world from bottom to top.

THUD—his forearm hit the ground and rolled.

For a moment, the arm felt much lighter. The assassin stared blankly at the space below his disappeared elbow.

“Aaagh!”

The scream came a beat late.

Just as he clutched at the bleeding stump with his remaining hand—

Things fall because that’s the natural order of what goes up.

Qing’s dagger, still raised, traced another streak of starlight.

Again—THUD. Beside the right forearm already on the ground, the left forearm joined it, rolling side by side.

The assassin’s arms were now half their original length. He flailed his stubby limbs helplessly; maybe his back was itchy.

Qing grabbed Mandarlo by the shoulder of his robe and yanked him upright, urging him onward just as—

Assassin ecology, third type.

The civilized assassin—the kind that uses tools.

CHARRRRRK. Another sound Qing hated, right after whistles: the clatter of weights on a net as they banged against each other.

A net snapped open wide and came flying.

Qing immediately grabbed Mandarlo and hurled him.

Straight at the net.

“Urk?”

A full-grown young man tangled in it—what a catch.

The weights clattered gleefully as they wrapped, and in an instant Mandarlo was neatly parcel-wrapped and SMACK, hit the ground.

Life wisdom: if a net comes flying—

You grab the nearest human being and throw them.

“Kyaaaagh, what are you—hiiik!”

Mandarlo started to protest furiously, then let out a shrill scream as he saw a squad of assassins dropping straight toward his netted self.

Each one was coming down gripping some weapon or other; their target’s terrified expression, tangled in the mesh—

And then, in that instant, the target turned into a pillar of flesh, stretching like candy taffy.

WHAM—blades slammed into the packed street stones where he should have been.

Just as one assassin tried to yank his weapon free—

A sting at his flank.

He glanced down at his torso and doubted his eyes.

A wrist, buried deep in his side; skin so pale and smooth it almost glowed, framed by the blood already spreading.

His gaze snapped upward—and there it was. The lethal beauty of a peerless woman, unmistakably colored by delight, and a savage smile that sent a wave of serious dread running down his spine.

“N-no...”

“Yes.”

SHRIP. Qing cheerfully ripped his guts out.

Red and blue entrails came sliding out in a thick rope.

“GGYAAAAH!” The assassin screamed in horror.

To Qing, it was the sweetest sound in the world.

Still gripping the intestines, she stomped in, closing the distance to another assassin who was gaping at the surreal scene.

Then she wrapped the guts once, twice, three times around his neck.

“Ghk—!” The assassin clawed at his throat an instant too late.

Raw innards are surprisingly elastic and unbelievably tough.

Thanks to that, the “two assassins bound in entrails” tableau made for a beautifully dramatic embrace.

“Die!”

A group of assassins pounced, timing their rush for that exact moment.

Qing shoved the assassin bundle in front of her.

THUNK—an assassin stabbed an assassin.

Tragic, you say? No—this was pest control, pests killing pests, a comedy.

Qing’s forearms swelled.

A thousand-jin of brute force to shove one assassin plus one more—BANG BANG, the assassin who stabbed and the assassins he stabbed tumbled together, tangled up as one and crushed under the heap.

“Waaah! Waaah! Wah! Wah!”

Urgent screams hammered Qing’s ears.

Crap. She turned—and there was Mandarlo, net-wrapped, managing to roll left and roll right and roll right again, barely dodging the assassins’ blades.

Qing raised her knee high and—BOOM!

Martial-will surged with the dust, Heavenly Demon Dominion Steps’ “Three-Steps-Hundred” high-speed maneuver.

A speed so vicious it left a phantom behind, as if she’d slipped between spaces.

Mid-flight, Qing’s long leg folded.

Her heel drew tight enough to touch that plump rear—

And then, like an arrow loosed from a bow, it snapped out in a savage arc.

SWEEEESH—the sound of her leg cutting through the air like a blade. No—worse than any blade.

CRAAACK!!!

Qing’s instep smashed into the assassin’s pelvis.

CRRRRSH, the exact point of impact turned half his pelvis into a handful of tiny bone chips.

The leftover force shoved his body.

His spine bent sideways like a hinge, his body forming the “long-bend” shape, and he went flying off into the distance.

Qing hurried to retrieve Mandarlo, grabbing the net and yanking.

Mandarlo’s body floated, dangling in midair.

Of course—on the other end of the net, a masked man was holding on, staring at Qing in utter disbelief.

“Kill him! Ignore Heavenly Flower Sword! We only need that brat dead!”

At that shout, the remaining assassins all charged into the gap between the two.

Qing heaved the net up; Mandarlo’s legs pointed straight skyward.

SWEEESH—throwing knives sliced past Mandarlo’s underside and slashed into another assassin’s thigh.

Chaos erupted—

“Don’t throw, damn it! I said don’t throw!”

But whoever shouted that clearly didn’t have much team spirit; SWEEESH, SHUKK, things kept flying anyway.

Qing raised and lowered and pushed and pulled the net.

When she raised it, Mandarlo went up. Lowered it, he went down.

Push, and his rear sagged toward the ground. Pull, and he stretched flat again.

Up, down, left, right—

Bolts, daggers, knives, throwing blades—all kinds of projectiles sliced wildly past.

“Waaah, wah, aagh, hff!”

And through it all, Mandarlo actually twisted and kicked and used the recoil to dodge surprisingly well.

Some assassins still had the nerve to charge Qing directly.

But you know what they say—if you just stand still, you’ll at least end up in the middle of the pack.

Throwing yourself into a raging fire like a moth at night is probably safer than what they were doing.

Damn it, I really wasn’t planning to take lives today.

But when things get this urgent, there’s nothing for it. All she could do was grant them a far too comfortable death, one well above their station.

Qing’s elbow shot out like a thunderbolt.

Outer-Gate Upright Push—the move that looks like you’re just shoving someone away saying, “Don’t.”

Her elbow sank deep into the assassin’s ribs.

Then the back of her hand shot up from that pivot, smashed into his philtrum, and yellow tooth fragments flew.

She didn’t stop there.

Her wrist turned, spinning half a circle with the easy looseness of oil-drill training.

Her forearm wrapped around, grabbed the assassin by the hair, and whipped him.

With broken ribs already stabbing his organs, what strength did he have to resist?

He flopped, dragged helplessly, while Qing swung him like a flail to block the path of the other assassins—fellow professionals in the same line of work—forcing their blades to bury themselves in his body instead.

“Waaagh!!! WAAAAH!!!”

Then came a particularly frantic scream from Mandarlo.

Seriously, this brat—use words. Why is it always screaming?

Not that she didn’t understand; when people get truly desperate, speech breaks down and all they can do is wail.

Qing turned her head.

The assassin holding the net had raised a dagger high.

Qing had the leg side; the assassin held the head side.

Mandarlo’s neck line was perfectly exposed.

Qing shoved hard on Mandarlo’s soles.

Qing’s “hard” was in a different league from a normal person’s.

Mandarlo’s body launched like a bolt from a crossbow, his crown of the head aimed straight at the assassin’s solar plexus.

“Gk—!”

Mandarlo screamed as he rammed into the man’s chest like a battering ram pounding a city gate.

The fact he could scream at all was something.

The assassin’s solar plexus had caved in almost an inch under the noble crown of that young lord’s skull. His eyes rolled back and he crumpled.

Mandarlo, still net-wrapped and held at both ends, suddenly lost his head-side support and dropped in a very natural free-fall.

CLONK! His nice flat back-of-the-head, so perfect for knocking, hit the ground with a dainty collision.

Then SCRAAAAPE—he left a long trail as he was dragged across the street.

Naturally, Qing still had the leg side and had started another mad dash with no fixed destination.

“Get her!” “Aim for the brat!”

With shouts rising all around, Qing scratched at her own slender white neck.

Seriously, what was this, a swarm of bugs? How had this little city been hiding this many assassins?

Lift a damp rock on a mountainside and a family of insects comes pouring out... or a summer night campfire drawing every moth in the forest.

Still, Qing had set aside her “don’t kill” mindset for now.

For enemies charging in with death in their eyes, there was nothing she could do but hand down appropriate punishment.

GONG!

Out of nowhere, a Buddhist temple bell sounded, and an assassin’s shoulder exploded.

Blood, flesh, bone fragments scattered; his arm, minus the shoulder, hit the ground.

Then his knees slammed down with a rough thud and he howled.

That was the start.

From every direction, assassins in a variety of outfits, each expressing their personal style, came surging in.

****

Rooftops overlooking the chaos in the street below.

A line of men with masks pulled up to just under their eyes pounded across the tiles with crisp, sure steps, following the pandemonium beneath.

The one in the lead clucked his tongue.

He’d thought that, given the nature of his work, he’d already seen every kind of ugly sight there was.

This, though—this was true horror, the very definition of “too gruesome to look upon.”

The target, wrapped in a net, was being dragged along the ground, then yanked and tossed into the air, then hoisted up and tucked under an arm like luggage, then hurled skyward again whenever assassins attacked—and between all that, she swung her blade.

She leapt up, grabbed the netted target again, and whipped him, using the soles of his feet as a bludgeon against enemies, then kicked off the ground once more.

The whole sequence flowed so smoothly, without a hint of awkwardness, it looked like something they’d choreographed.

One of his subordinates clicked his tongue.

“That woman’s raw strength is something else. Does Divine Lady’s Gate have a cultivation method for brute force?”

“Hardly. You think a Heavenly Beauty Art, prized above all for its cosmetic benefits, would waste time on building muscle? She was just born with that kind of raw power, and now she’s dumping her internal energy into it without holding back.”

“Even then—damn, she’s got a real killing aura, doesn’t she? How does a woman get that vicious? With a temper like that, what good is being the most beautiful under heaven?”

Dusk-colored sword-qi flashed, three streaks of starlight at once, chopping bodies into six or seven parts and spilling their contents.

Sometimes she ripped out organs with her bare hands. Grabbed arms and legs and tore them off alive.

When she held a weapon, her strikes were so vicious blood geysered out of people and whirled into a mist around her.

Sometimes, when the time was right, she threw that weapon and skewered a target, then went back to ripping them apart barehanded, then snatched up another weapon and swung and threw and shredded...

Wherever she went, blood flowed like a river.

Mountains of corpses and seas of blood—that was exactly the scene.

“She isn’t just good at real combat. She’s cunning too. Who enjoys cutting people down? If she’s going out of her way to butcher them that cruelly, it’s standard military doctrine—shock and awe, break the enemy’s morale, isn’t it?”

The man watched Qing with hollowed eyes.

She was deliberately choosing the most horrific methods—tearing off limbs, flinging entrails—to crush their courage and will to fight.

Otherwise, the only explanation was that she was a killing fiend who took personal joy in shredding and slicing people to death.

But that couldn’t be.

She was supposed to be a righteous heroine of the orthodox sects, and a Daoist priestess at that, clearly schooled in the sanctity of “human life” and such.

Even now, just look at that face.

Teeth clenched. Clenched tight...

His gaze shifted to Qing’s face—that wicked beauty universally hailed as the greatest under heaven.

Her expression was one of tightly clenched jaws, ferocious anger.

And yet, somehow, she looked like she was desperately holding back laughter, forcing herself into a “serious mood.”

Sure enough—her mouth corners kept twitching.

A frown creased the man’s brow.

Did he imagine it? No, that couldn’t be.

Surely a woman who claimed to be an orthodox heroine of a prestigious sect wouldn’t—couldn’t—be...