Chapter 785: Bloodline (19)

Qing leaped through the twisted space using the true array-footwork of Ripple-Stepping Footwork to cross the empty air.

So by the time she reappeared, she had taken up position behind that nameless high-ranking official.

But honestly, who else in the world besides Qing could pull off this kind of absurdly miraculous stunt?

In other words, for Beom Yakgong to follow, he either had to punch through the officials blocking his way, or the officials had to have the sense to scatter and open up a path for him.

And Beom Yakgong chose the former, of course—he blasted straight forward without a second’s hesitation.

The sight of Beom Yakgong charging through and cleanly splitting apart the unarmed ministers was, in every sense, like a killing chariot, a runaway heavy carriage barreling down a steep slope with no way to stop it.

The problem was that the runaway chariot came flying in.

A flying murder-chariot.

The figure of the old martial master, who stomped the ground once and drew a straight line, filled her vision in an instant.

Qing immediately rolled across the floor.

Landing on your ass was a disgrace for a martial artist, but honestly, in the face of immediate mortal danger, what martial artist wouldn’t roll?

“Wak! Waaahk! U-wak!”

The fact that she was screaming while she did it was admittedly a little pathetic.

It wasn’t a scream of pure shock.

It was a tactic to scatter the enemy’s focus as much as possible, to shake his concentration.

It was a habit that had been beaten into her body through long, real combat.

WHISH WHISH—the world spun rough and wild, ceiling, side gate, pillars, floor, old man, the leg that had just snapped up.

Qing’s left arm smacked the innocent floor of Hwanggeuk Hall, and from the violent rebound of her breakfall, she shot off in the opposite direction.

BOOM!

A thunderous roar that seemed to rip her eardrums, the floor bucked up all at once like an explosive charge had gone off, the wooden structure of Hwanggeuk Hall trembled in a shuddering cascade, and countless splinters hammered against her whole body with a RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

“Ghk!” “S-someone save me!” “Secretary, sir!”

Hwanggeuk Hall filled with curses and screams.

Ministers spun around in a panic; some shouted and tried to bolt, only to trip and go sprawling, aaagh, others tried to climb over them and went tumbling in a pile.

“Secretary! You have to get out of here!”—someone who still thought to shield his superior even in the chaos.

“Hey, get up, come on!”—someone hauling up his subordinate and trying to support him...

The men who ran the nation’s machinery showed themselves, in the disaster-like chaos, as just another scatter of human figures no different from the masses.

DENG—!

Over that chaos boomed the sound of a massive temple bell.

THUD, the sound of a body being hit, and Beom Yakgong’s body floated up and flew back.

But even as Beom Yakgong’s body lifted away, his posture—his sword held out front, those blazing eyes staring straight at Qing, his waist straight and his body upright—never wavered.

Qing jolted to her feet and flung out her hands wildly.

Her stance itself was sloppy, her palms flapping out as if she were just swatting at the air—frivolous and ugly to look at.

But if you added in the performance of each palm print painted in blood-red in the air with every strike, the overwhelming dignity of a divine art unfolded that would draw admiration from anyone.

The wildly stamped blood-red handprints finally formed into one enormous palm.

Qing thrust both hands forward and shoved that palm with all her strength.

Twin palms shot straight out.

And then, the Great Blood Maitreya’s gigantic blood-red handprint fired out as a massive red column!

The divine art of a Tibetan Esoteric lineage—the Great Hand Seal.

Beom Yakgong’s sword angled toward his back.

Even in the face of the Great Blood Maitreya’s colossal judgment falling upon him, he did not waver at all. He inhaled once, long, then in that instant, his blade cut the space diagonally.

A technique that had no sequence of preparation and execution, where the thought and the slash were one, a skill where the moment the mind decided, the sword went forth—the realm where the mind itself is the cut.

In that instant, Qing’s fully extended twin palms clenched on empty air and yanked.

The Great Blood Maitreya’s enormous blood hand seal dissolved all at once, scattering into countless small handprints and drifting back.

Beom Yakgong’s slash carved through empty air.

The small blood hand seals locked into place in a half-circle around him, fixing that position, and the moment the blade slashed through and passed out—

Qing once again shot her twin palms out, straight.

Hundreds of blood hand seals that had already taken positions on all sides came crashing down toward Beom Yakgong’s entire body.

Seven seconds of the Great Hand Seal.

As You Wish and Not One Missed.

The Buddha’s intent misses nothing.

It was that very moment.

Beom Yakgong’s arm extended up and down.

To the naked eye, it was clearly a single arm, yet it moved quietly, tracing a soft circle together with two opposite directions that both existed and did not exist.

An inexplicable, and yet gentle and natural rotation of blade-work, a vast cycle of a light thing rising and growing heavy as it falls, then again the reverse, revolving along the proper order of things.

The blood hand seals ricocheted away in all directions.

POP-POP-POP, the sound of hundreds of firecrackers going off.

The most precious grand hall in the Central Plains, Hwanggeuk Hall, bloomed with exploding blood-red internal energy, leaving uncountable handprints everywhere.

What the hell is that busted-ass cheat-tech supposed to be again?

And that whole “the Buddha’s intent misses nothing” line is bullshit—none of it is even landing, it’s all bouncing off!

If Amukhaprab had heard that, he would have gone, you stupid milk cow, of course it’s bouncing off, because you’re not the Buddha, and then he’d preach about how if she reached the Buddha’s realm with that, she’d turn him into a blood mash in one go, that this was her chance to enter the Esoteric Way right now and touch the Buddha.

Qing flung out her palms again.

DENG! DENG! DENG!

The long-tailed sound of the temple bell clanged on and on in a ridiculous, overlapping echo, turning into nothing but noise no real bell could ever make.

In her right hand, Tathagata Divine Palm; in her left, Great Hand Seal.

Invisible rough force and the blood-red, slow-swimming force drifted forward toward the enemy in a syncopated rush.

But Beom Yakgong just lightly waved his sword.

One step, then another, slowly drawing closer. His blade swaying as casually as if he were just shooing away flies.

Yet every single time, behind Beom Yakgong, the side gates shattered with a CRACKING crash.

Because he brushed aside both the shockwaves of Tathagata Divine Palm and the blood-red handprints with ease, turning them aside.

Like that—one step, then another.

Qing’s heart lurched.

Wow, fuck, so this is what they meant by a Manifest Realm monster in the human world.

“Wait! Can we... talk about this?”

At that, Beom Yakgong paused. Then he smiled.

It was a smile that looked immensely satisfied, yet as fierce as a predator baring its teeth.

“Tathagata Divine Palm and Great Hand Seal. Two divine arts of the Buddha’s way from one person’s hands. Splendid.”

“Uh, mm... ah, right, then how about I go to India or something? Since we’re collecting anyway, I could go learn the divine arts of Indian Buddhism too and use them all together, you know, in a nice little trinity. Wouldn’t that be even more splendid?”

For now, Qing was just saying whatever came to mind.

Beom Yakgong nodded.

“That is a fine idea. Let us do that.”

“Oh, seriously? Then I’ll just pop over to India right n—”

“I mean I will do that. With Formless Art. My body will be leaving the Central Plains anyway, so I might as well—”

“Wait! Wait!”

Qing cut him off, shouting over his words.

Beom Yakgong’s eyebrow twitched.

“How dare you interrupt my words? No matter how noble you may be, palace protocol—”

“No, you were going to launch a sneak attack while you finished talking. Just now, too.”

“Your perception is quick. Or is that also one of Formless Art’s abilities?”

“Come on, let’s not do this. Let’s just talk it out, yeah? Formless Art? I can teach you every single thing.”

“I told you before. Formless Art is the legacy of a mysterious sect that possessed terrifying power and was wiped out long ago by internal strife. If Formless Art could be shared, a sect with such a tremendous divine art would never have had cause to slaughter each other in such a tragic calamity.”

Qing’s heart dropped again.

There had been that Heavenly-Demon Soul thing too, so it made sense that there could be martial arts passed on by some kind of absorption.

Which meant he wasn’t planning on capturing her and forcing her to cough up martial arts, but actually planning to straight-up kill her.

It was that very moment.

Qing’s knees folded.

She bent her knees and dropped until her body lay horizontal with the ground—that technique, Iron-Plate Bridge.

SWOOSH—Beom Yakgong’s blade carved a huge line through the space where Qing’s waist had just been.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, this old bastard fights dirty as hell.

It was exactly the kind of crap Qing herself always pulled, but humans, by nature, were creatures incapable of viewing their own behavior objectively.

At the same time, Qing’s right foot snapped upward.

Her toes, shooting up faster than anything in the world, speared between Beom Yakgong’s legs and—THUD!

Ack! An excruciating pain crashed over her like every single toenail had shattered from the rebound of his Body-Guarding Energy, and Beom Yakgong’s center of gravity got kicked out from under him and his body floated up.

Qing’s strength was, in every sense, the very definition of Qing.

She had turned the strongman Xiang Yu into “Nanqu,” so as far as raw power went, her name was what you had to use as the byword for the Number One Under Heaven strongman.

So of course the old body that had just been kicked between the legs went floating up.

However.

TAP. Beom Yakgong landed lightly on the ground.

Because he hadn’t felt anything at all.

Even though the bones lay close to the groin, between those bones and the impact point, there was supposed to be a man’s fatal weak point that no Body-Guarding Energy could fully shield.

There was supposed to be that crunchy, ecstatic sensation of it being crushed, of smashing the natural mission of reproductive propagation, grinding it out of existence—

Is this bastard a eunuch too?!

A Manifest Realm eunuch! Is this actually historically accurate or something? Whatever!

In fact, of course it was.

Qing had never even thought of it, but the person in charge of guarding a princess obviously had to be a eunuch.

“To stoop to such a filthy trick... you have picked up a bad habit.”

“C-can’t we really just talk this out? Even if I don’t die, there has to be some way to pass the art on, right? That sect that got wiped out wouldn’t have had their disciples stand in front of them and commit suicide just to ‘transmit their martial arts’ or something.”

“It was a mysterious sect that sealed even its own sect name by rule, so the world would not know it. Even if such a method had existed, who would know of it?”

“Come on, don’t be like th—”

“Dragging out the time will do you no good.”

Beom Yakgong’s figure was suddenly right in front of her again.

A sudden strike like the slashing lines of a rainstorm.

Of course, Qing’s goal was to drag things out.

Back when the Son of Heaven was being hauled away, hadn’t he given the decree to grab that man and kill him if you must?

The high-level experts of the Forbidden City were definitely going to be on their way to capture this insane old eunuch bastard, so she was trying to stall for time until then somehow.

And Beom Yakgong, who knew that, was pretending to play along while he kept up a constant stream of ambushes.

“Wak!”

Qing shrieked and forced her body to move.

She lay down and rolled and sprang up and tumbled, sprang up and ran, scattered into eight shadows, then, feeling the killing intent closing in on her back, flung her whole body into it to land face-first, unable even to rub her stinging nose before she scrambled on all fours and bolted like an animal.

“Wak, wa-wak! Uagh! Aagh! Stop! No violence! Stop the violence! I hate violence! U-hik!”

She let out shrill cries to break the enemy’s concentration, but maybe it was a shame that her voice was so naturally pretty it made the effect weaker.

As she kept on screaming like that, contorting her body in every imaginable way to slip out with a ZIP-ZIP here and there, Qing’s figure was, in every sense, the very embodiment of ugliness.

Only—

Hm? What is this? I can... kind of dodge?

For something that was supposed to be a Manifest Realm sword strike, it was... weirdly not that brutally lethal.

It wasn’t a fast, lightning sword that she absolutely couldn’t handle, nor a heavy, crushing blade aimed at shattering everything it touched, nor a massive sword carrying the weight of a mountain.

Instead, it was a soft blade, a gentle sword style.

Closer to a living sword than a killing sword—in other words, a sword art that wasn’t primarily aimed at killing the opponent, but focused on self-defense, on guarding oneself, on training to advance along the Way, a very orthodox, pure-blooded Daoist-line style.

Of course, from time to time, a slash slipped in that felt like it was trying to carve straight through space itself, making her heart jump into her throat.

But those were actually out of sync with the sword art he was using, a frantic improvisation, swings born of a mind that had gotten too impatient.

Every time he tried such a thing, the flow that was supposed to stay soft and continuous broke apart, so if she just predicted those moments in advance and dodged big, that was that.

And after that, there would be this tiny sliver of breathing room where she could finally suck in one big lungful of air.

This isn’t just about sword art...

A little at a time, the desperate edge faded from Qing’s face, that breathless urgency draining away.

In contrast, Beom Yakgong’s expression grew more and more rigid.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

Then her seductive lips began to move, and that wicked bit of flesh inside her mouth leapt about, exploring her teeth and palate as the breath that came out shaped itself into words.

“Beom Yakgong, when was the last time you actually went into real combat? No, no, that’s not it. Did a princess’s bodyguard ever even have cause to fight a life-and-death battle? Aren’t you just a sheltered gentleman who swings his sword at empty air in safe places? Is this really the best you’ve got? Seriously?”

At that, Beom Yakgong’s eyebrows jerked hard.