Chapter 742: The Great Instructor Ximen Qing (14)

“G-greetings to the Demon Marquis!”

Jo Hyeonil threw himself flat on the floor and shouted.

It wasn’t exactly an unexpected appearance.

After the outing, he’d heard a day later that the Demon Marquis of Minor Water had deigned to visit. Cell Leader Dan had blurted that there was no way that could be true and said he would look into it, all flustered.

Since Heavenly Flower Sword’s injuries had been caused by that very thing, if he’d just thought about it a little, he could have guessed the Demon Marquis might be close by.

The Demon Marquis of Minor Water simply loomed there, gazing down at the top of his skull with a shadowed old face.

A wrinkled, grotesquely swollen old face with no emotion in it at all—so alien it felt less like a human and more like some kind of monster.

The sense that he was looking at something that wasn’t even a human face made Jo Hyeonil start shaking before he knew it.

Like a painted demon, like some strange thing wearing a human-mask over its head—truly the inhuman visage befitting one of the greatest fiends in the Central Plains!

Well, of course.

Because she was literally wearing a human-skin mask.

It was Qing, wearing a human-skin mask and binding her chest tight, demanding answers in a voice she’d specially faked for the Demon Marquis of Minor Water.

“You brat. Who the hell greets someone like that? You expect me to accept a full kowtow when I don’t even know who I’m taking it from?”

“Y-y-yes! I was born in Jo Hidden Valley, my name is Jo Hyeonil, Demon Marquis, sir! A-and, I! Belong to the Great Eating-Hearts Moon-Sealing Unit led by the Heart-Devouring Demon King!”

He made a point of emphasizing the Heart-Devouring Demon King, because he’d heard the stories of the Demon Marquis of Minor Water.

That she was generous to women, sometimes even showing mercy to Central Plains folk, but that if a man so much as rubbed her the wrong way, she’d cut him down on the spot—even if he was a Cult disciple.

So this was a cheeky attempt to use the Heart-Devouring Demon King as a shield to save his own neck.

The Demon Marquis of Minor Water—Qing, wearing a human-skin mask and binding her chest tight—felt her bare eyebrows twitch.

The mask was made from material she’d had on hand, so it wasn’t refined enough to mirror subtle changes on the level of eyebrow twitches; to others, it just looked like that shadowed, expressionless face staring him down.

Fuck me, this little shit really was Blood Cult.

How many times did she have to grab these Blood Cult bastards before they stopped oozing back out, and was there anywhere they didn’t stick their noses into.

Should I just wipe him out?

She could butcher him right here and now.

But, mm. Before that—

“Hmph. And what of it? Are you the Demon King? This Demon Marquis’s secret visit is something no one is allowed to know of, and the dead do not talk. Blame the fate that put you in my way.”

“N-no, you mustn’t, Demon Marquis!”

“And why not?”

“B-because I am in the middle of an important mission!”

“Oh? In the middle of a mission?”

“Y-y-yes, yes ma’am, that’s right, that, that’s right. My life isn’t worth much, but for the Cult’s great cause, for the sake of our long-cherished wish—please...!”

It was truly unconvincing.

A guy whose teeth were chattering and whose eyes couldn’t even settle from fear, saying that kind of thing.

Did the Blood Cult not have a single capable person left?

Their infiltration scheme was clever enough in concept, but they’d stuck a cowardly, dull, loose-mouthed idiot like this in as an infiltrator.

The Blood Cult might protest.

All the smart ones had been cut at the selection stage, and whose fault was that? The true culprit was Qing, who had written their evaluations based solely on bad karma.

She’d cut all the bright ones and only let the ones she’d planned to use as porters, gofers, and general grunt labor pass, and that was the one who’d slipped through.

Besides, the Eating-Hearts Unit really was short on talent.

The Hangzhou branch that had been its core had been wiped out, and with it, the outstanding blood-fiends and blood-hellfiends under production along with their makers and high-grade martial artists, all in one sweep.

And that, too, had ultimately been Qing’s handiwork.

So yes, the Blood Cult might feel this was unfair.

She’d chopped them in half with her own hands and now had the nerve to ask where all the talent had gone—what was the state of her conscience.

“Hmph. Let’s hear that grand talk of yours, then. I’ll listen, and if it really is an important mission, maybe I won’t have the heart to be too harsh.”

“I-it, it’s infiltration of the Martial Alliance! I am to rise to a key post in the Martial Alliance and spread gu-poison, addicting them to it—that is my mission. If this mission succeeds, then we could wipe out those Martial Alliance bastards all at once, could we not!”

“Hah. Don’t make me laugh. And how exactly are you going to rise to a key post in the Martial Alliance? You can’t even keep people on your side in a little Academy like this, but sure, you’re going to rise to some lofty post. Rather than let you fail and only sharpen the Martial Alliance’s vigilance, wouldn’t it be better if I cleaned this up myself right here?”

“Nnngh! No, Demon Marquis, ma’am! I’ve already offered a precious spirit medicine to Heavenly Flower Sword, so surely those orthodox bastards will at least make you work as much as they’ve taken, won’t they? We have spirit medicine set aside for the Director and that Shining Wise Flower too, so wouldn’t that be enough to secure a position?”

This was what made the orthodox “orthodox.”

If you fed bribes to civil officials or unorthodox bastards, you rarely got much back, and if anything went the slightest bit wrong they’d shut their mouths and pretend they knew nothing nine times out of ten.

But orthodox martial artists?

True orthodox chivalrous heroes that they were, if they accepted a bribe, they made sure to repay it properly—what more splendid, upright gentlemanly conduct could there be?

Isn’t a gentleman not supposed to accept bribes in the first place? was a question that simply didn’t fly in the Central Plains.

In the Central Plains, bribes were an aboveboard means of conveying one’s intentions, an expression of money power to match military force, and also a natural show of sincerity and etiquette.

The state itself encouraged bribery.

Because an official’s salary wasn’t enough to keep his family fed, it was the Son of Heaven’s profound will that they make up the difference by accepting bribes.

Qing was silent for a moment.

The Director was the Director, and Chunbong had proudly boasted at the entrance ceremony, as one of the Five Flowers’ retinue, that she was the central pillar of the Academy’s administrative operations.

If you were going to bribe someone, those two were perfect.

But if the bribe contained gu-poison—

That wouldn’t do.

Qing worked her brain for a bit, then raised her voice in feigned anger.

“You little shit, are you telling me you were planning to help the enemy? Feed them spirit medicine? Now I see you’re not the one infiltrating them—they’ve infiltrated you as their spy, haven’t they?”

Her anger came a beat too late and was faintly awkward.

But even that kind of awkward anger, when it came from an impossibly lofty master who held your life and death in their hand, did not feel out of place in the slightest; it became a dizzying terror that made your heart fall away.

“N-no, that’s not it, you misunderstand. It is spirit medicine, but it has gu-poison in it, that’s what I was told—that it was something graciously bestowed by the Venerable.”

“What an excuse. Tsk. Enough. Hand it over.”

Qing extended her hand.

Jo Hyeonil’s face went blank.

She’d stuck out her hand so suddenly; she couldn’t possibly mean for him to grab it and stand up with her help, so why was she holding it out?

“What are you staring at? I will administer it personally. Are you going to make me ask twice?”

“B-but, Demon Marquis, ma’am, our mission—”

“You idiot. Do you have any idea how suspicious those Martial Alliance bastards are? You’re going to give them spirit medicine as a bribe? What, they’re just going to accept spirit medicine from the likes of you and think nothing of it? They’ll obviously find it strange. You’re not actually thinking of barking some ridiculous nonsense like ‘it was handed down as a family heirloom,’ are you?”

Jo Hyeonil flinched.

Hadn’t he already barked that nonsense.

Qing clicked her tongue.

“Tsk, tsk. So you’ve just stepped into Second Rate and you’ve been hoarding spirit medicine as a family heirloom? Dogs are more likely to quit eating shit, gamblers are more likely to stop gambling. You’d be better off leaving a fish shop to a cat and a mill to sparrows than trusting you with that. If you had a family heirloom like that, do you really think you’d manage not to eat it?”

“Uh, well, it did work on Heavenly Flower Sword, though...”

“Tsk, tsk. She’s still young and doesn’t know how the world works. But do you really think that’ll fly on the worn-down Director and that allegedly oh-so-smart Shining Wise Flower? And what, these family heirlooms are going to keep appearing out of nowhere so you can keep delivering them?”

“T-that, the three of us each have one heirloom...”

His words trailed off.

Now that he actually thought about it, it did sound strange.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

The three of us—that meant there were still two more.

Lately the three of them had been glued together, and all three had suddenly had a big jump in skill.

So that meant Chu Johun and Jang Seolkwon, right?

The two outside right now were those two, weren’t they?

“You mean the two outside right now?”

Only then did the other two hurry in, heads ducked.

“G-greetings to the Demon Marquis.”

“Jang Hidden Valley’s Jang Seolkwon pays his respects to the Demon Marquis.”

“Ah! I’m Bang Hidden Valley’s Chu Johun!”

Mil-valley meant a hidden ravine, a concealed valley; stick a surname in front and it turned into a village of people living in hiding.

On the same principle you got places like Zhangjiajie, Yuanjiajie, and Yangjiajie near Mount Tianzi.

Classic rebel villages, places where the descendants of rebels lived huddled together, unable to go out into the world.

The two had come creeping over to handle the “target” by Chuk Hour as agreed, only to find the terrifying Demon Marquis of Minor Water present, so they’d been hovering, unsure what to do.

Then, hearing themselves brought up, they’d thought, What do we do, well, we start with a bow, obviously.

Honestly, there was no way a master at the Demon Marquis’s level hadn’t already sensed their clumsy presence, so they should have come in right away.

If they were capable of that kind of judgment, they wouldn’t have been tapped as porters for the infiltration team in the first place.

Qing inclined her head calmly and asked,

“Are you all of them? What about the rest?”

“Cell Leader Dan is currently staying in Nosan County—uh, is staying there, and the rest of the team has returned to Guizhou.”

These bastards were being awfully mild and obedient in their answers.

Of course, Qing personally preferred to wring things out of people through pain and fear, but she couldn’t make a scene here.

And since they believed without question that she was the Minor Water Witch, they wouldn’t dare spew nonsense.

Which meant this was exactly her chance, wasn’t it?

“Returned? You mean they left you behind?”

“T-that, Cell Leader Dan decided there was no need for them to stay any longer...”

The Blood Cult’s original plan had been to have the Eating-Hearts Unit’s elite combat squad enter the Academy, then, timed with a large-scale assault, use their support from the inside to wipe out the entire Academy.

But since only three had gotten inside, and none of them were up to the desired combat standard, Dan Joya had judged that internal support was impossible and instead chosen to poison the Martial Alliance with gu-poison.

Qing agreed.

Trusting a raid to idiots like these would be rough, yeah.

Just look at them now—give them a nudge and information came gushing out.

Like water pouring through a hole in a dike.

So what did that mean? When the tide comes in, you row.

She ought to squeeze every last drop of value out of this.

There was a gleam of strange light in Qing’s eyes.

*****

Qing looked down at the two small wooden caskets in her hand.

The spirit medicine she’d confiscated from the other two—the spirit medicine containing gu-poison.

But now it was her spirit medicine.

The gu-poison would just end up being a special meal for Bottlesnout anyway, and once he’d eaten it, only the pure spirit medicine would remain.

She already suspected she was a little short on inner power if she wanted to hit Harmony; now masterless free spirit medicine had come rolling her way.

You didn’t get many windfalls as obscene as this.

Mm. When Bottlesnout crawled back out of his cocoon, she’d eat them.

For now she’d sent the three idiots quietly back to their dorms.

She’d laid it on thick: if they casually blabbed about her existence, she’d make them beg her to kill them, so unless it was to the Demon King himself, they were never to tell anyone.

Mm, and even with that, they really weren’t the sort of bastards you felt great trusting.

Well, it wouldn’t really matter even if they did talk.

The Minor Water Witch they believed in didn’t actually exist anyway; what did it matter if they got found out.

Besides, there was still plenty of time before the next outing.

They were like rats in ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) a poison jar.

It’s not like they were going to run away or anything.