Chapter 724: When Going Out, Maintain Your Dignity (18)

Unlike Youngban’s frantic desperation, the Heavenly Flower Sword’s back just kept getting farther away.

As if everything up to now had been a light warm-up chase, and now she was saying she didn’t have time to play anymore, her back receded step by step.

Her feet stomped the ground so hard the earth caved in under each step. Dust burst up like exploded firepots.

It was impossible to even imagine how violent a footwork this was.

Youngban did not know this kind of lightness skill.

Footwork that pursued ascent was supposed to resemble the wind.

The higher the realm, the faster and lighter you became. Look at the phrases used to describe the higher realms of lightness skill:

Running across the tips of grass without bending a blade.

Leaping across snowfields without leaving a footprint.

Skimming along the surface of a river as if it were a wide, flat road.

But that solemn back, that unshakable back of the vanguard—what on earth was she cultivating?

Each step detonated with a boom, shaking the ground; pillars of dirt sprang up and crumbled, raining grit and stone chips.

It was nothing more than destruction, all for the sake of driving one body forward.

A tyrant’s stride that trampled the entire world to fulfill a single person’s purpose—the hegemon’s path among hegemonies.

Heavenly Demon Dominion Steps—Breaking the Precedent.

Shattering the earth so dust blots out the sky.

They all had to die.

Everyone tied to the imperial palace had to be killed.

Their skulls had to be pulped and scattered so finely that not even their identities could ever be confirmed.

Because—because—

This might well have been the first pure killing intent Qing had ever felt in the Central Plains.

Not because they were assholes,

Not because they were the kind of people you could kill,

But because they were the kind of enemy she had to kill.

Why?

Because not a single limb of that fucking traitor could be left anywhere in this world, not even a trace.

Because those beasts in human shape had to be wiped out so completely that it was as if they had never existed in the human world at all.

From Qing’s lower dantian, out of the dark corners of her lower, middle, and upper dantian, black demonic energy oozed thick and sticky.

Not just from the dantian.

From every blood vessel, every hidden corner of every meridian—the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and beyond—some kind of aura crept out.

Like sticky blood soaking the floor and spreading, except it never stopped, filled her insides with a massive, irresistible current.

At her ears, in her mind, from inside her five viscera and six bowels, from the heart pounding rough and hard, blood-choked whispers rose.

Tear those hypocrites apart.

We have not forgotten our grudge.

Chew the Zhao clan’s flesh to pieces—tear apart every last limb of that Zhao’s minions, that detestable traitor’s pack, without leaving a single one behind.

Images flashed through Qing’s mind.

Fleeting glimpses of common folk.

Bodies bruised head to toe, clothed in shredded rags, and through the wind-cut gaps in those rags you could see skin stretched thin over stark bones.

That past.

When the Mongol savages had conquered the Central Plains and treated all the peoples of the Central Plains like livestock.

No, harsher than livestock. That was why their dynasty had not even lasted a full century.

The images kept flashing.

A man raising his blade, declaring that if things went on like this, all the peoples of the Central Plains would face nothing but extermination.

At that time, a believer of the Bright Sect with the surname Zhao sprang to his feet.

To rise up against the brutal empire, that religious order called the Bright Sect answered his family’s great cause, mustering tens of millions who called themselves an army and took up spear and blade.

The blood of countless Bright Sect believers flowed.

The general was the one who gave the orders; the soldiers were the ones who charged to their deaths with blades in hand, so the vast majority of that blood belonged to the Bright Sect believers.

And at last, the Zhao clan won, and a new dynasty was founded.

The empire of today was a vast legacy built on the blood of the Bright Sect.

And then, the Zhao who had become Son of Heaven, the man whose army and comrades had been the Bright Sect, made his declaration to them.

You only bear the name “Bright Sect.” In truth, you peddle empty doctrines and deceive the people with delusions. You are wicked, crooked villains.

How dare you usurp the name of Brightness. You are a horde of dreadful demons—yes, a Demon Cult.

By the mandate of Heaven, I shall exterminate you Demon Cultists and establish justice throughout the world.

Qing’s heart burned with a dull ache.

It was the most grotesque scene of betrayal in the world.

The believers died.

They were trampled to death under the spears and blades of the Central Plains peoples they had tried to protect.

The comrade who had fought beside them drove a spear into their chests.

The friend who had talked about a bright future amid a war with no end violated their wives and daughters without mercy.

Spectators sat on the corpses of the believers’ fathers and sons, cackled, and raised cups of wine.

The resentments of countless dead howled.

Fine, if you say we are demons, then we will become true great demons—demons that blot out the sky.

The angriest man among them carved all that resentment into his own heart.

The grudge of tens of millions congealed into the most horrific energy in the world, the most destructive power.

A true demonic crystallization that covered the sky.

Heaven-Breaking Demonic Qi.

Of all the hatred in the world, the thickest, blackest kind, congealed into a sticky, unshakeable lust for revenge.

Qing’s pupils lost their color.

The blue that had been there—the clear, sky-bright irises—were stained in nothing but pitch-black darkness, even the ominous baleful star vanishing, leaving only a dull, lusterless abyss that gaped like a bottomless pit.

When human resentment reaches up and covers the sky, naturally no starlight can shine through.

And now.

What in the world had changed?

The barbarian dynasty of the previous era had treated the peoples of the Central Plains as nothing but property and objects—cheap cotton cloth and dishes easily torn, easily broken, easily replaced.

How was the present imperial dynasty any different from them?

They dammed up a mountain without hesitation, slaughtered common folk, and in the end set it on fire to burn it down; even if hundreds of thousands of innocent people died, it didn’t matter to them.

Their palace intrigues had assassins flooding the city and buildings going up in flames, and the common folk were nothing but property anyway, endlessly replaceable.

If our end is betrayal, then we can only blame our own eyes for failing to recognize people for what they are.

That is the way of the human world: in this brutal secular world, those who deceive are evil, and those who are deceived are stupid.

But if our blood was for nothing—

If all that has changed is that the beasts on the throne went from being barbarians to being Han, if the empire built on our blood is no different from before—

Then for what, exactly, did our blood have to flow?

Qing’s lower dantian swelled as if it would burst.

The massive qi formed from tens of millions of souls erupted inside a single person, overflowing the dantian, filling every meridian, filling the middle dantian and the heart, until every drop of blood in her body was stained black with thick resentment.

Somewhere in the upper dantian.

In the center of that darkness where all the dantians and meridians had sunk, there was a narrow cavity guarded by a faint bluish membrane.

All the various streams of qi were jostling and crammed into a tight space; their usual petty squabbles and petty frictions had vanished. Now they all shared the same uneasy eyes.

Every strand of qi stared at one back.

The back of the Moon Maiden qi, arms spread, blue barrier unfurled, one hand stretched straight forward.

The Moon Maiden qi’s face was always hard to read, usually expressionless, but now she simply stared into the darkness beyond, where nothing could be seen.

There was a smell.

The unpleasant smell of the Zhao clan—that vile fixer’s stench, the stench of a traitor who deserved to be smitten by Heaven.

Not at the nose, but as something that seeped into her spiritual sense, into her soul, an unbearable stench.

And at last, a knot of figures appeared up ahead.

The horrible stench rolling off the ones who dared to raise blades and advance in her direction hit all at once.

The corners of Qing’s mouth curved.

Yes. You. It’s you.

The black veins that had swelled up all over her body ballooned as one, howling for her to wipe that foulness away.

Qing yanked both arms back hard.

You couldn’t call it “Little-Water Hand” anymore—not when “little” used the character for pale, plain white.

These demonic hands were already pitch black, like holes in the world, so deep and dark they were no longer any kind of “little” water hand.

Qing tore at the world.

A massive black water surged overhead, and four gigantic black blades of qi rode it, slashing across space.

One of them raised his sword.

The energy gathering there—sword-qi? With that pathetic level of sword-qi?

The corners of Qing’s mouth curled in scorn and, just like that—SHRAAAK.

Four of the demonic fingers slipped into him as naturally as breathing—and just as naturally slid back the other way.

The sword shattered into five chunks, and the man—no, the bones and flesh that had been a man—collapsed in far more pieces than that.

“W-what in—”

Someone screamed.

Qing stood still and only rolled her eyes toward him.

Then she snapped the arm that had dropped all the way to her waist up in one motion, clenched her fist, leaving only the index finger extended to point straight at him—

“Look out!”

Jang Cheonho was shoved aside by the force of someone’s push, rolling across the ground.

He had been about to shout, What the hell are you doing, but the words froze in his throat.

A pitch-black line cut through the air.

THUP. A small dull sound.

The sight of Guard Officer Oh’s skull exploding apart into pieces, flying in all directions.

What the hell was this?

Jang Cheonho’s thoughts stopped.

Oh Wisa was a first-rate fighter at the very threshold of peak level. And such a man lost his head to a simple pointing gesture, a single finger aimed from afar?

As Jang Cheonho blinked stupidly, Qing cocked her head.

Then it kept tilting, didn’t stop, her whole body leaning until she was lying flat, and Guard Officer Oh’s headless corpse toppled over with a thud beside her, hitting the ground as if to stare back up at her, his body jerking in little spasms as the last nerves sputtered out.

As if to say even he didn’t understand what had just happened.

And she truly couldn’t understand.

What was this? Why would that maggot throw himself in the way and die in his comrade’s place?

There was no way the Zhao clan’s lapdogs would show that kind of loyalty.

Their master had betrayed and butchered the believers who were like his own family—how could his limbs, those mere lackeys, show a loyalty like this?

Then why not us? Why not us?

As Qing stood there, frozen, a sword wrapped in vivid violet sword-qi fell toward her head.

Jong Baekho’s Imperial Grace Purple-Descending Slash.

“Dieee!”

Jong Baekho’s shout was not some stupid attempt to announce his surprise attack and warn his foe.

Sometimes a person had to make a sound to screw up the courage to move.

But even if he hadn’t shouted, the result would have been the same.

THMP—without even looking back, Qing stretched her left arm straight behind her where she stood, and the massive demonic hand clamped down over Jong Baekho’s face.

Jang Cheonho recoiled in shock and shouted.

“Wait—”

CRACK.

As the sound of a life ending went, it was pitifully thin.

Jong Baekho’s headless body spilled forward onto the ground—SPLAT—then trembled, his nerves still firing uselessly as his body twitched.

Jang Cheonho swallowed hard.

At that moment, the demonic figure wavered in his vision.

KA-THOOM—half a beat later, the sound hit his ears.

By the time he realized it, the huge demonic hand that had been raised high was already crashing down into his field of view.

Jang Cheonho’s sword gathered starlight.

A straight line of black light rushed at him.

He drew a somewhat slower circle of sword-qi and barely managed to meet it above his brow, where they collided.

The result was Jang Cheonho’s body being flung away, bouncing twice along the ground.

Fitting a man who used sword-qi, he sprang back up at once—but his face showed that he had absolutely no idea what had just happened.

“Formation! Now!” “Now!” “Now!”

In that brief span, the Guard Officers had already formed a sword formation around the demonic foe.

Even though they didn’t have enough numbers to fill all five inner points, just filling the five outer points was enough to multiply the efficiency of this variant of the Five-Elements Sword Formation.

Jang Cheonho clenched his teeth and hurled himself forward.

He slipped into the open spot in the formation, taking the Wood-Yang position and adding his sword power, and with a peak master joining in, the formation’s pressure grew even heavier.

Sword formations were arts devised for many to fight the few.

They hemmed the enemy in; their assault never ceased, their attacks chained together, their mutual reinforcement and mutual concealment of weaknesses embodying the fruits of long, meticulous training, so that many bodies moved as one.

With two blades coming in at each beat, you could not focus on only one.

If you tried to meet one weapon and test strength, another sword would thrust in.

If you tried to knock one away, another ally would catch your back and push you forward, doubling the impact of each charge.

Whish, whish—the straight and curved lines of the Five Elements traced their patterns as they coordinated, and within that circle Qing swung both demonic hands over and over.

CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG—there was not a heartbeat of breathing room as the air filled with nonstop, deafening impacts.

It was a sword formation that pounded her like a torrential downpour smashing a tent top.

But their faces—the contrast in their expressions was grotesque.

The assassins’ faces were twisted with desperation, straining with every last ounce of strength.

But in the eye of the storm, the “enemy” standing alone in the center was just staring at them with those half-lidded eyes, pupils soaked in pure hatred.