Chapter 935: A Strange Bitch, A Strange Guy, A Strange Guy (20)

A person gets so dumbfounded that words stop coming out—but meaning doesn’t only travel through words.

Qing’s eyebrows crushed down like something had pressed them flat, a deep groove carved between them. Her eyes looked like she was staring at a half-chewed bug. Her lips parted with a “ugh,” teeth showing, and the corners of her mouth nosedived.

And since Qing’s features already stood out even when her face was blank, the emotions packed into that expression were obvious to anyone.

Shock! Contempt! Disbelief! Disgust!

At that, Kim Heojung hurriedly blurted out an excuse.

“But! If it isn’t now, when would I ever get a chance to sleep with an unmatched beauty like you! Even if a guy like me spent his whole life trying, and heaven’s luck backed me hundreds of times over, it’d still be impossible! Then how is an ugly bastard like me supposed to ever hold an unmatched beauty!”

It didn’t sound like an excuse at all, so Qing’s brows sank even lower.

Kim Heojung avoided her gaze and cleared his throat.

“A-Anyway, I’ll help you, so in exchange, if I could just touch your chest once, just for, um, one quarter hour—”

“No, what—now you’re just going full mask-off? You were trying to sound cool, acting all polite and refined.”

“Well, it’s all blown open now, so... you already know exactly what kind of bastard I am...”

“You’ve shown the whole bottom, so you’re not even going to wrap it up anymore?”

“Then—half a quarter hour. Just half a quarter hour! There are lots of women in the world, but women with a full chest are rare and precious among them. Please—just think of it as saving this miserable bastard, and I swear I’ll live the rest of my life on that memory, yeah?”

From “one night” down to “half a quarter hour of fondling”—the terms had suddenly dropped by a ridiculous amount.

Demand something huge, then offer something smaller. Demand something unreasonable, then offer something “acceptable.” Whether he knew that bargaining rule and swung it on purpose, or just blurted it without thinking... Qing couldn’t tell.

That was the moment.

The Sword Demon’s eyes flashed—like he’d been waiting for exactly this—and he cut in at once.

“Mm, little brother Kim. Our Blood Cult has plenty of full-chested women. What’s half a quarter hour? If that’s what you want, you can knead them for life, until your hands are raw—”

“SHUT UP!!”

Kim Heojung exploded before the sentence even finished, scolding him in a severe voice.

“If I were going to force it, I would’ve broken the Chaste-White Precept a long time ago! You can’t do that! What woman would ever give her heart to a man who took her by force? And what about the daughters born from that—how would they sincerely follow their father! You devil Central Plains bastard—just for a moment I almost fell for your honeyed lies and ended up miserable too. That’s the only shame here!”

It was... a statement of principles, at least.

Qing felt insane.

No, seriously—he just told her, I’ll save you so let me do you once. And that isn’t “forcing” it?

“Sleep with me or die” counts as mutual agreement?

Judging by his face, even the Sword Demon looked completely dumbfounded.

But like the old demonic monster he was, he recovered fast and offered a different proposal.

“Well, then it can’t be helped. Either way, little brother Kim’s martial arts—doesn’t Heavenly Flower Sword already have the secret manual? I’ve got nothing to regret. So why not step back here? If you make an enemy of our Blood Cult, you’ll only make things harder for yourself. And you aren’t even from the Central Plains, so you aren’t truly our enemy to begin with. There’s no need—”

In that instant—

BOOM! A rough, earth-stomping footstep.

The Sword Demon’s body shot off on a diagonal. A navy-robed streak carved a long tail through the air, and at the end of it stood Kim Heojung on a tree branch.

The Sword Demon’s vile sneak attack!

He was talking about letting him go, and then he lunged without warning—of course. A Blood Cult demonic monster was always going to be a trash heap with a talent for disqualifying himself as a human being.

The Sword Demon had already fought Kim Heojung once. He’d identified how thin his real combat experience was—so even a surprise attack like this, he wouldn’t be able to handle it.

And that was exactly what happened.

The Sword Demon’s saber flashed up—then chopped down—and beneath it, Kim Heojung could only stare blankly upward, eyes wide, watching the trajectory of the aura edge dropping on him.

That was the moment.

The Sword Demon’s heart clenched hard.

Every hair on his body stood up one by one. A chill crawled through his joints. The tendons clinging to his bones felt like they might slacken on their own.

In that split second, the Sword Demon’s eyes whipped around.

Heavenly Flower Sword, standing off in the distance.

The Sword Demon had expected she wouldn’t just watch a sneak attack.

He’d crossed blades with her—her strength didn’t come from “knowing many techniques,” but from a fight-shape that was too practiced to explain. Whether it was something she was born with or something forged through countless real battles, he couldn’t say.

But the distance was enough. With her injured arm, she wouldn’t be able to hit her real speed—

And the Vacuum Palm of the Tathagata Divine Palm was annoying, sure.

Still. He could just take one hit.

Without Kim Heojung, Heavenly Flower Sword was already a fish caught in the net. And the Vacuum Palm’s power was never so threatening to a Transcendent Realm warrior that he couldn’t eat it once.

But it wasn’t a Vacuum Palm.

A strange posture—blade turned upright in front of her face.

It didn’t fit real combat at all. If anything, it looked closer to a ceremonial way of acknowledging someone with a sword.

And yet—some instinct born from an unfathomable level screamed at him.

Block it.

That is truly dangerous.

His heart’s clamp, the gooseflesh across his body, the warning bell in his bones and tendons—

The old warrior did not ignore his intuition.

He forced his waist to twist, used the recoil to wrench his body, and unleashed the same Hundred-Refinements Saber downward chop he’d repeated until it lived in his marrow—

At once, multiplied into countless strikes.

Hundred-Refinements Saber Art, First Form—Endless Rolling Waves.

Continuous training, like waves that never stop coming.

The Sword Demon’s saber chopped through the air—and at some point, it met a line of starlight that had already arrived.

The collision kicked his blade off, violently.

CLANG!

But the countless downward strikes followed right behind it, and his saber began hammering over and over in afterimages as it met that straight aura surge boring in.

RAT-A-TAT-A-TAT-A-TAT-A-TANG!!

Like a crowd pounding on an iron plate.

The thrusting aura was shattered, scattered, and snuffed out.

The Sword Demon landed, shoved back by the recoil.

And his face—was lit with ecstatic delight.

“Splendid! Just now—what was that!? That move, that martial art—what kind of method was it!?”

“Oh, this?” Qing replied.

She let out a long, deep breath—HOOOO—and lowered her left hand holding the sword.

“If I’m going to explain that move, I’ll have to tell you about the time I wandered the world in the past. Where was it again... around Cheonja Mountain, I think? I was originally searching for a rare medicine deep in the mountains and got lost, and back then I had those fasting pills, you know, the ones I split into six portions and packed up—I had bought those, and I figured if I couldn’t find my way out before I ran out, I’d just die for real, because if I couldn’t find the rare medicine, then what was the point, so I decided I’d sleep just tonight and tomorrow I’d sleep forever, so I went into a cave, and—”

“I don’t care about that story! What martial art is it!?”

“No, this part is important though? I went into the cave, and when I looked closer, the pattern was actually letters, so I was like, ah! I’ve gotten a fated encounter! And there was a secret manual there, and on the cover it had words written big and clear!!”

“Yes, and!? And what!”

Qing answered with a deadly serious face.

“Not telling you.”

The real answer was Nine Swords of the Lone Sword—No Poison, No Man.

It’s nothing special. You stand there in a pointlessly cool pose, then suddenly fire off a venom-packed surprise strike like a destruction beam.

Why would she tell him?

And she’d dragged out enough time.

“What?”

“You—how dare you!”

Qing saw Kim Heojung up in the tree take a bizarre stance.

He spread his legs wide and bent his knees to right angles. His arms stuck out left and right, elbows bent to right angles too.

No—what even is that?

Then he bobbed his head forward and back, alternated lifting his right foot and left foot, swayed side to side, clenching and unclenching his fists—sparkle sparkle.

A set of motions performed to a beat.

Ah. This was what people called a dance.

Mm. The Azure Dragon Dance of the Azure Dragon Dancer had a graceful elegance that contained an azure dragon. And the Leopard-Skin Girl’s Vermilion Bird Dance had a fierce momentum that flared like fire.

But this Black Warrior Dance...

Well. If he was representing a turtle, then sure, she could kind of understand it, but how had something that ugly survived as a tradition until now?

Anyway—right as Qing declared she wouldn’t tell, white shards of ice began bursting up all over Kim Heojung’s body.

“You despicable bastard! I’ll kill you!”

KRA-BOOM!

A thunderous crash came from behind.

It was “behind” because Qing spun and sprinted at the same time.

A shocked Blood Cultist’s face rushed closer—someone she didn’t even recognize—then the cultist gritted his teeth and yanked up the net in his hands.

The moment it flared wide—

SHHHHK!

Qing’s body split into eight.

Maybe he’d already seen Ripple-Wave Footwork—because without hesitating, the cultist immediately turned back.

A Sword Demon disciple.

But Qing had expected that much.

Once the net spread, the backlash of Ripple-Wave Footwork would be far worse—so why had she waited, stepping her angles on purpose?

Because right now, the Blood Cultist in front and the Blood Cultist to the front-left were forming the same angle.

Qing appeared behind another cultist.

THUD! She stamped the ground and vaulted high—then spun her body up and down in midair, tucking into a crouch as if sitting in the air.

Heaven-Shaking Great Sage Demon Staff Art—Falling Meteor.

Then she kicked back like she was throwing herself backward, arching hard—head flung back, belly up toward the sky—

An inverted Falling Meteor surged into the Blood Cultist.

KRA-KOOM!

Qing slammed down on her back, bounced twice, and sprang up.

Ripple-Wave Footwork always made her appear with her back turned, so she’d tried this as a countermeasure.

...Yeah. Not easy.

The Blood Cultist who’d been in that trajectory listed sideways—his waist cut at an angle.

THUD.

His upper body spilled out, along with the hot contents inside, steam blooming as it hit the cold air.

CLANG! CLANG! BOOM! BOOM!

Behind her, unnameable booms kept detonating.

Qing glanced back—and saw something like a turtle crawling with an ice mountain on its back.

Kim Heojung was shirtless now, face-down, and his back had turned into a transparent blue ice mountain.

Ah. So that hump was literally a chunk of ice.

No wonder he never acted hurt no matter how hard she hit him.

Palm winds and saber auras poured down like rain, ice spikes erupted—an otherworldly battle that didn’t feel real.

Wow. Her chest felt... majestic...

“Mr. Kim! Just hold on a little longer! I’m gonna carve these bastards up first!”

Qing screamed.

The Sword Demon flicked his gaze over for a split second—and in that opening, a spinning, whirlwind ice turtle slammed into him with a BOOM and sent him flying.

Yeah. His disciple, huh?

Looks like it bothers him.

Qing’s mouth split wide, almost to her ears.

Now it’s slaughter.

Finally. Slaughter!

“First one!”

Her right arm was shredded to rags—so what?

Qing had always enjoyed slaughter fairly, alternating right hand and left hand.

She didn’t use a sword with her left hand, but then she just wouldn’t use the sword.

From Qing’s left hand—from the back of her left hand—a huge, twisted, pallid palm emerged, and four streams stretched out like blades.

The Blood Cultist tried to resist, raising saber aura—

But saber aura aside, mere aura energy wasn’t enough.

And the owner was a man—

So the vicious manifested thought forged from a woman’s grudge only bit harder.

“Now two!”

The Blood Cultist’s short saber fell to the ground in five pieces.

So did the man holding it.

Ah. That feeling in her hand.

It had been rough, staying all shriveled up and restrained for so long.

Honestly, fighting weaklings really was the best—

A bright smile bloomed across Qing’s face.