Chapter 956: I Want to Watch (10)

The Azure Dragon Gate sect leader’s calculations get complicated.

If you asked whether he could win a fight?

Yes. He could probably win.

The Heavenly Flower Sword’s realm was Supreme Peak. The exact depth wasn’t publicly known, but considering the divine presence she’d displayed during the uproar with the Essence-Siphoning Demon Art—trading life-and-death exchanges—he could reasonably assume she’d already reached late-stage Supreme Peak... and not just late-stage, but a fully filled, perfected late-stage.

And the Golden-Yang Sword Blossom was also a Supreme Peak martial artist. The young lord had released Peak-level Sword Aura to prove himself.

And the masked boy named Kim Heojung was... well. Hmm. I have absolutely no idea who he is. Looks like the spectators don’t either.

Still, that’s only four people.

The Azure Dragon Gate sect leader had brought out all the elites—wasn’t the number close to thirty?

He could keep the Heavenly Flower Sword tied down with himself and the elders, and he could suppress the Golden-Yang Sword Blossom with a Supreme Peak elder and a coordinated assault from the first-generation disciples.

As for the two brats, there wasn’t even anything to say.

Of course... that was what the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader thought.

After getting burned for underestimating a woman, he was now underestimating a child—repeating the same mistake.

Then again, most mistakes came from complacency. And a fool who made mistakes tended to repeat the same ones.

Anyway, if he really wanted to win, he could win.

But then what?

Winning wasn’t everything.

This wasn’t a spar. If he so much as injured someone badly, he wouldn’t escape annihilation. The Heavenly Flower Sword, yes—but what about the Moyong Great Family, famous for valuing their hands?

And the opponent was a woman. Even leaving a scar could make her hate him as an enemy for the rest of her life...

So the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader just stood there, unable to go one way or the other, gripping his sword.

Meanwhile, Qing’s smile as she looked at him was pure evil.

This bastard—feels like I can hear his brain turning from here. No, why are you even thinking? You should be smashing your head into the ground instead.

He looks like he can’t make a decision at all. Guess I’ll have to help.

Qing tapped the flat of her blade twice to signal.

Go, Mr. Kim! Sparkle-sparkle Little Halo!

For some reason—hoo—with Qing’s sensitive hearing, it felt like she caught the sound of Kim Heojung letting out a long breath, almost like a sigh.

But anyway, Kim Heojung did exactly what she told him.

He lifted a Halo on purpose, and the number reached five.

Then, so everyone could see, he even spun them around in circles.

The problem was, Kim Heojung was short on internal power after stripping away his old arts and forcing in new study.

Halo was, by nature, pretty trash—almost useless in real combat while devouring an enormous amount of internal power, a purely decorative technique. So Kim Heojung’s thin lower abdomen emptied out fast.

But the effect was incredible.

First, there was the way the crowd erupted in shock.

“HALO! It’s HALO!” “So it is HALO!”

Then the so-called “people of discernment”—the professional commentators who were called that (or wanted to be called that)—all at once raised their voices and showed off what they knew.

“WOW! HALO! You know HALO! In case anyone doesn’t know, let me explain—this is a really difficult technique. Halo is a technique only a martial artist who has entered the Harmonization Realm can use—meaning only a Harmonization Realm master can use it—an art that shapes internal energy outside the body, a pure gathering of Aura—”

“Sir Kim is an unknown reclusive peerless master who’s been living in seclusion! Halo—what a magnificent spectacle I, Seong Mo, am witnessing today!”

And the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader’s mind went hazy.

Halo? That man was a Harmonization Realm master?

The moment the balance of power tipped even farther.

He’d been thinking that even if he couldn’t handle the aftermath, he could still try for a victory that ended in ruin... and now this.

He wasn’t even facing someone he could beat in the first place.

It was filthy.

What the hell do you want me to do now?!

Great masters came easily out of prestigious sects.

They had lofty divine arts and peerless teachings. They were wealthy, with good conditions for raising disciples. And they were famous—so even if they did nothing but breathe, talented people from all under heaven gathered to beg for instruction.

And that wasn’t all. Prestigious sects had another kind of strength: their firm ties with other prestigious sects.

So compared to the giant sects, minor sects weren’t even comparable in force. Their connections were at the level of desperately trying to cling to them somehow. And even in wealth—weren’t the giant sects the richest people in the Central Plain?

So when a disciple of a prestigious sect picked a fight with a minor sect...

What were you supposed to do?

If they told you to die, did you have to die?

Was a small sect just supposed to die?

So the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader’s eyes could only tremble, wronged and furious, brimmed with grievance.

Qing let out a long, heavy sigh.

“It looks like you have something you want to say, Sect Leader. Do you?”

Translation: Why do you look like you’re at a funeral? Feel wronged? If you’ve got something to say, go ahead.

The Azure Dragon Gate sect leader’s face twisted.

And then he spat out something like a wordless scream.

“Why?! For what grudge—why are you taking it this far?! Why are you cornering my sect like this?!”

“Cornering you? Didn’t you walk into the corner yourself? This was something a single apology could’ve ended from the start. The one who blew it up into this... was you.”

“If you’d just revealed who you were from the beginning, that would’ve been that! Who would dare be rude to someone like you?! If I’d known earlier, do you think I would’ve come out like this?!”

“You’re speaking strangely, Sect Leader. Being rude to someone ‘like you’—someone like the Heavenly Flower Sword—is something you can apologize for without difficulty. But being rude to some nameless bitch... that’s something you can erase by threatening her and screaming at her?”

“I had no choice! You dragged the entire city’s crowd here—so from the start you were set on making this big!”

Sure. That might feel unfair.

If she hadn’t bothered hiding her strength, she could’ve gotten an easy, polite apology. She wouldn’t have been ignored in the first place.

But—

Qing answered calmly.

“If you’re asking whether I deliberately made it bigger—yes. I did.”

“Hah. So? Was it fun? Must’ve been hilarious. Watching some guy who doesn’t know his place act like a big-shot sect leader and yap in front of you.”

Qing stayed silent.

Silence often meant yes. She didn’t need to open her mouth; it was practically an admission that it had been pretty funny.

And then the temperature of the crowd’s gaze changed.

Warmth seeped into the eyes looking at the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader—because people were creatures that instinctively cheered for the weak.

It also meant everyone had decided Qing was, beyond question, the strong one here... and the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader had become the weak one.

And inside that warm, pitying stare, it looked like the sect leader found a new escape route.

“Certainly, you are a noble figure whose name shakes all under heaven, and I am merely the head of a local sect. Even if the elder there hadn’t raised a Halo to display force, how could we ever have dared to think of opposing you?”

Looks like he wanted to wrap himself up as a pathetic victim and slip past this crisis.

Back in Qing’s hometown, they called this kind of cheap move power-tripping—pretending you’re the victim of it so you can dodge responsibility.

“I... and my sect... are the weak. We’re in a position where even resisting your trampling isn’t easy. So I can only beg. I only ask that you show great magnanimity and grant leniency. I will apologize for my rudeness like this, so I earnestly beg you.”

And then he bent at the waist hard—putting his upper body parallel to the ground—putting on a shocking public display.

At that point, there was only one reaction a “righteous” martial artist could make.

They had to tell him not to do that, lift him back up, say it was fine, forgive him, and move on.

A demonic master walking the crooked path—someone whose infamy was their reputation—could sneer, “Yeah? Then hold still. Where should I start cutting?” and go vicious.

But someone walking the righteous path had to care about their reputation.

But Qing’s lips curved into a clean arc.

Why did Qing bother admitting, “Yes, you’re right. I did power-trip you, and you were pretty funny”?

Because she’d been expecting this exact reaction—and quietly steering him into it.

A master of argument. A grandmaster of argument. A hell-mouth. Formless Poison itself.

And if you were that, then you could steer the direction of your opponent’s attack.

“Sect Leader, don’t do that. And the Azure Dragon Gate is never the weak. In a city this prosperous, how could the foremost sect be called weak? It must be an achievement built through bone-grinding effort passed down by your predecessors. Everyone in the world should acknowledge it.”

The sect leader slowly straightened up.

And the expression he made—ah. Yeah. That exact expression exists.

Like politicians back home when they’re just starting to look moved. Politically exaggerated out of necessity—the kind of face that’s a prelude.

He probably thought Qing was praising his sect and the mood would seal up warm and neat right here, but—

“And more than anything... the Azure Dragon Gate isn’t some great sect where wanderers can’t dare resist even when they’re treated unfairly—where they don’t even have a way to resist. Right?”

In an instant, the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader’s face froze solid.

“Maybe the martial world is cold, and maybe this is simply the world’s profit-and-loss. People say the purpose of martial arts is to protect oneself, or to cultivate toward completion... but isn’t it really about gaining power and raising yourself up? If that’s so, then it’s only natural for the strong to crush the weak and stand above them. What do you think, Sect Leader?”

The sect leader’s mind snapped clear.

But what good was that?

Only his mind was clear—his tongue might as well have been paralyzed, stiff and locked.

Because what could he possibly say?

If he agreed, then Qing’s crushing the Azure Dragon Gate with her authority became justified—and no matter what unfair demands she made afterward, he’d have to follow in silence.

But if he disagreed—

If he said that being strong didn’t give you the right to pin down the weak and despise them.

If he argued that a person’s rank wasn’t divided by martial strength, background, or status.

Then what did that make his own actions?

A man who preached the right words with his mouth, but never practiced them with his body.

“Of course, people call this law-of-the-jungle, strong-first way... the tyrant’s path. It isn’t something the righteous heroes of our martial world—those who guard the proper path and seek peace under heaven—should pursue. So of course, Sect Leader, you wouldn’t agree with it.”

“...”

“So if you’re going to apologize, you should apologize to the wanderers. The overturned table, the dirty martial clothes—those can be unpleasant in the moment, but to me they’re trivial. Food can be ordered again. And my martial clothes are plain to begin with. But for the wanderers? Was it trivial to them?”

Honestly, she didn’t care about getting an apology.

Qing’s temperament, at its core, was absurdly easygoing. An inn uproar was just... something that always existed in this primitive, ancient, knockoff Central Plain.

You lived long enough, you got splashed by collateral damage. If it wasn’t intentional, then whatever.

But that wasn’t why Qing had gone as far as kicking off a “Divine Thief” operation and deliberately making it huge.

It wasn’t because someone knocked over food or dirtied clothes.

It was because she couldn’t let that slick bastard—hiding behind his sect and refusing to show his face even after things blew up like this—slide.

And it was lucky this was the martial world.

Before she stepped into the martial world, back in her hometown, she’d always felt suffocated.

Anytime she heard news—papers, broadcasts, rumors—about villains, rage would ignite inside her, but there was nowhere for it to go. Like it burned her from the inside.

Those bastards. Those fucking bastards. Those dogshit bastards. They should all just die. People whose living and breathing is poison to the world. People whose oxygen is a waste. Why do they get to live? Can’t we just kill them all?

But here, in the martial world, you could.

You could even be praised for it. And you could confirm, through your Merit, that it was something beneficial to the world.

Now this knockoff ancient martial world had become home—more home than her hometown, now that she’d grown attached to it.

But back when she’d been wandering, even when everything else felt like shit...

That one thing?

She’d liked it.

Anyway.

The Azure Dragon Gate sect leader looked like he’d aged decades in an instant. To the entire crowd, he looked that way too.

Strangely, a person’s impression changed depending on the height of their status.

The halo of authority shone on them, hiding wrinkles, reflecting in their eyes until they flashed. A man of power always looked younger, his gaze too sharp to meet.

But what happened after that authority vanished?

Once that brilliant halo disappeared, only then could you look at them straight.

And that’s what the crowd saw.

A facial expression was made by the muscles in the face pulling and pushing each other. And moving muscles took strength.

In the end, people spent a surprising amount of vitality just making expressions.

So when someone was exhausted to the point they couldn’t even tighten their face...

Every part of their face sagged weakly.

Drooping brows. Drooping eyes. Drooping lips...

And in a martial artist—someone who usually overflowed with vitality—the change was even more dramatic.

So the Azure Dragon Gate sect leader disappeared, and in his place was an old man worn down to nothing.

But, hmm.

It’s not like he committed some unforgivable crime.

And it’s not like that bastard stabbed a wanderer and ran.

His evil was borderline, but still human-level. He wasn’t someone who had really crossed the line.

...Come to think of it, after coming to the martial world, I really have gotten less harmful.

Maybe it’s because this is a world overflowing with people who actually deserve to die?

Anyway.

If she kept pressing him like this, all it would do was spark resentment. And sure—the gap in weight class was obvious enough that even if he swallowed it now to survive, nothing would really change later.

Because a man pushed into a dead end never reflected.

After he reached ruin—put bluntly, after he was fucked—he might regret it, but he wouldn’t reflect.

Regret wasn’t reflection.

Regret faded with time, and when the same situation came again, he’d make the same choice again.

So she needed to wrap this up warm and neat right around here—so the sect leader might actually realize something.

So Qing cleared her throat, as if to gather her voice—pulling everyone’s attention in.