Chapter 975: It’s Me, You Fuckers (11)

An unprecedented reservation no-show in murim history!

The public sentiment of enraged martial artists crashes over something!

But what, exactly, will it crash over?

“This is a disgusting deception! Just because we aren’t what they call ‘righteous orthodox sects,’ just because we’re nameless nobodies—does that mean it’s fine to be treated with this kind of contempt?!”

“Right! Right!”

“We must demand an explanation for this immediately! There’s a limit to how much you can look down on people!”

“That’s exactly right!”

“Isn’t this truly an unjust course of action?! We can’t just sit here and be ignored like this!”

Suddenly, it turned into a Heavenly Flower Sword condemnation rally!

The martial artists took turns firing off bold lines and showing off their spirit—right up until that point. That was as far as it went.

Because what they were really thinking was this:

At this point, shouldn’t someone step up and lead the charge?

It’d be kind of awkward if I stepped up, but if we stoke the mood this hard, surely someone—in Qing’s hometown terms—will pick up the rifle and take point.

If someone stepped up, they’d gladly join in and follow behind.

But I stepping up is kind of......

Lead the charge and storm the Priestess Order Temple demanding an explanation? And then get carved up as an example by the number one woman under heaven?

So everyone righteously cursed the Heavenly Flower Sword and declared they couldn’t stand being ignored like this—

But they carefully avoided saying anything about the concrete method of what to do next. Because the moment they said a plan out loud, someone might go, Great idea. We’ll follow you—so you lead, and shove it right back at them.

So where did the public sentiment of enraged martial artists go?

The public sentiment of enraged martial artists crashed over... enraged martial artists!

We’re mad! HUFF HUFF! We’re really mad!

They just didn’t know what they could actually do about it.

Still, it was a bad situation.

Because humans are emotional creatures.

Even if your head understands the danger of an action and the backlash that follows, there are times your chest orders you to move—and you can’t hold it back.

So they kept condemning the Heavenly Flower Sword, gently feeding the embers, hoping that someone with a low ignition point would finally shout, I can’t take this anymore! and step up in front.

If this was left alone, it was only a matter of time before a crowd of cowards—pushing someone to the front—would surge all the way to the Priestess Order Temple’s mountain gate.

Maybe that was why.

A new piece of news began circulating through the city again.

On the twenty-second of this month, the Heavenly Flower Sword would appear.

There would be a detailed statement about the seed-extraction demonic arts, and she would also apologize and explain her deception in not coming on the fifteenth!

“The twentieth” was written using the character for twenty, so “the twenty-second” meant the twenty-second day.

In other words, seven days after that fifteenth she’d failed to show—she’d “rescheduled” to explain again.

But why seven days? Usually you pick the twentieth or the twenty-fifth, since people get confused. Why set a new schedule for an awkward “seven days later”?

Anyway, with the newly spread news, the condemnation wave calmed down a bit.

Well, she said she’s coming back.

And she says she’ll apologize for not coming last time.

You can hear what she has to say first, and get mad after. Waiting a few days was doable.

More than anything—surely the “holy symbol of the righteous murim” wouldn’t break a promise twice, right?

But.

There’s a saying in this world.

If you think maybe, then it’s of course.

*****

May twenty-second.

Right when the South Boulevard plaza was packed and buzzing—

Up on Priestess Peak, far away.

Qing sat cross-legged and entered meditation.

If Qing was at the top of Priestess Peak, that meant Qing wasn’t in the Jagwi County South Boulevard plaza.

Because there was only one Qing in the world.

Anyway, seated up there where all of Hubei spread out beneath her, Qing quietly inspected her mindscape.

Martial arts were climbing a high mountain.

Of course, some martial artists might disagree with that.

A mountain was just a vertical obstacle, they’d say—nothing but a convenient way to line people up by “high” and “low.” No matter how high your realm was, if you lacked real combat experience and got arrogant, you could lose to a lesser fighter. And depending on the special characteristics of martial arts and matchup advantages, outcomes could vary wildly—so what meaning was there in dividing people into upper and lower ranks by “level of enlightenment,” anyway?

Still, it was a minority opinion.

You climbed an endlessly towering, lofty mountain.

For martial artists striving toward higher realms, what image was more convenient than that?

It was also why so many martial arts built their inner mindscape as a high mountain.

Qing was the same.

Qing closed her eyes and contemplated her inner self.

Meditation that retraced her realm.

A leisurely climb: slowly ascending again from the foot of that mountain, examining the footprints she’d left behind along the path.

The foot of the mountain was blurry and indistinct.

That was because Qing’s martial arts had no true foundation.

She’d eaten for free through the cosmic mystery of the martial-arts window—so there was nothing to be done about that.

Besides, in the present murim, wasn’t it true that anyone could reach the very edge of peak—as long as they trained steadily for a long time—before they died?

In fact, in the distant past, the peak realm was considered the last realm a person could realistically achieve.

Martial scholarship developed as eras passed. With the crude level of scholarship back then, this was seen as the last stage a human could touch.

So they called it “peak”—the top.

But even the people of the past didn’t truly believe peak was the end.

Because at the end of the peak realm in murim’s mindscape, they faced a massive wall.

And beyond that wall, there was a shimmering mirage—faint land, vaguely existent.

Dim starlight clearly illuminated a faraway paradise beyond that wall, a place you could go if you crossed it.

So martial artists of the past always hungered for what came next.

And at last, one martial artist forced a breach through that wall and stepped into the starlit mountain range.

The discovery of the realm beyond peak—Harmonization.

Then time passed again.

Martial artists standing at the end of Harmonization faced a gigantic cliff that rose endlessly upward.

And before it, martial artists willingly threw themselves forward and began climbing.

Countless people fell from the cliff.

It was also around this time that demonic arts truly emerged: traces of martial artists seeking other methods—trying anything to climb a cliff with no end in sight—remained behind as demonic arts.

Qing’s consciousness floated upward, retracing the tall ice wall at the edge of Harmonization.

And at its end, she stood at the entrance to Transformation and looked upward.

It was the scene the first Transformation master must have seen when they overcame the cliff and opened a new realm.

That great martial artist must have trembled in ecstasy.

The road ahead was ninety-thousand li. The road remaining was far longer than the road she’d climbed so far.

The vast mindscape of Transformation spread out—wider than every realm she’d trained through until now.

Yet far in the distance, she could clearly see the peak of martial scholarship rising straight up.

No wall blocking her view, no endlessly surging cliff—just the highest point, with sky visible behind it, appearing clearly even though it lay impossibly far away.

That was the summit—the end of martial scholarship.

And so, for a long time, the end of martial scholarship was Transformation.

To complete Transformation was to have no mountain left to climb—already standing at the highest point.

This was the highest place on earth, the highest point beneath the sky, the boundary with the cosmos.

Qing flopped down on that summit, limbs stretched wide.

Then, gazing up at the night sky above, she quietly sank into thought.

What kind of person had the first Mystical Realm master been?

At the mountaintop there was only sky—so who, standing at the very end of that peak, looked up beyond the sky and thought of flying into the cosmos?

According to her master, the first Transformation master piled stones.

They broke their own realm, shattered it, crushed it into fragments—and stacked those fragments on the mountaintop, higher, higher, pushing up a tower, destroying themselves and rebuilding, endlessly, in pursuit of even one more step toward the cosmos.

Toward that black, rippling sea of stars.

To the people of the Central Plains, the sky was originally black.

“Mystery” was written with the character for black.

And black—the color of mystery—was the color of the cosmos.

The cosmos held all things, so they called it “mysterious and wondrous.”

So when the first Mystical Realm master reached the cosmos before all other martial artists, people praised the astonishing feat like this:

A realm where a human reached the mysterious and wondrous by their own hand.

The Mystical Realm.

Lying spread-eagle and staring into the sea of stars, Qing suddenly let out a long, deep sigh.

No, seriously—how the hell do you get up there?

I mean, it’s apparently possible.

Mystical Realm masters exist.

But still—her master, and everyone else, must have stared at that endlessly distant cosmos from the end of Transformation and let out a heavy sigh.

Mystical Realm? I can’t even imagine it!

Saying it is easy, but you’re basically telling someone to break through the atmosphere with their bare body. Is that even a sentence? Even a fart would sound more convincing than that.

Whoever the first Mystical Realm master was, one thing was certain: they had to be completely, thoroughly insane.

No matter how high you stacked stones, how did you expect to reach that distant cosmos? How could you be sure you’d reach it, even if you shattered every mountain you’d climbed until then?

Or maybe there was no certainty.

Maybe it was desperation—the idea that if you kept stacking and stacking, maybe you’d see something you couldn’t see before.

But that’s even crazier, isn’t it?

That grit—continuing to pile it up even though what you were doing might have no meaning at all, not knowing the result...

Haa......

Qing sighed deeply again.

The Mystical Realm felt completely out of reach.

How the hell are you supposed to climb that?

That was when it happened.

—Do you...... desire power......

A sinister color suddenly seeped into the night sky.

A color that existed nowhere, yet was endlessly ominous and filthy—chaotic, impure, the most disgusting and evil color spreading outward.

Stars hid themselves, avoiding it.

And above her head—now dyed only in bloodlight—something began to slide down from a cosmos stained with every kind of bloodlight: red and blue and white and transparent and greenish, fishy hues all mixed together.

It looked like a throbbing organ.

Like tangled nerve fibers.

Like twisted joints of bone.

An impure rope hanging down from beyond the cosmos.

If she grabbed that rope, she could reach the cosmos with ease.

Then the lone, impure moon floating in that blood-colored night sky began to rotate slowly.

An impure moon turning toward the far side of the moon—something no one in this era of the Central Plains had ever seen.

—If you...... desire power......

“Hey, no thanks, alright? I’m not buying. Not buying. What—my mindscape is some kind of bargain market? No peddlers allowed, okay?”

—......

The moon that had been turning toward Qing began to rotate the other way.

The ominous color draped over the night sky flowed away, restoring clear blackness, and the impure rope that had been dangling began to slide back up into the sky.

“What the hell—leave the rope there, at least. You never know. If it turns out I really can’t do it, I might have to grab something like that.”

—......

The impure rope seemed to reel up faster, somehow.

What, did it sulk?

But it’s the Thousand-Kill Ancient Star and......

Anyway, it was a “if it comes down to it, there’s a way” kind of thing.

That was when it happened.

—Do you...... desire power......?

All at once, something began flowing out of her lower dantian—an absolute current that filled her blood vessels and energy channels and still had more left over.

A vast, oceanlike surge with no visible end—an omnipotent feeling, like she herself was the sea, like she was infinite true energy itself, like she could do anything.

Then something fell from the sky.

Corpses.

Corpses rotted black—thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of bodies, drawing slanted lines as they fell from all directions, crashing down.

No—what is this now?

Corpses are falling from the sky like rain?

Qing frowned hard, half dumbfounded and half curious as she watched.

Before long, a new mountain peak began rising in front of the summit cliff where she sat.

A mountain of people stacked from corpses.

Countless people scrambled upward on all fours from below, reaching the top, lying down, grabbing each other, tangling together—while Qing watched, it kept surging higher and higher, piling endlessly toward the far end of the cosmos in the night sky.

—Release our resentment...... and we will gladly support you and lift you above the heavens......

Qing let out a long sigh.

Now even Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy is trying to sell me something.

They said when the mullet jumps, the squid jumps too. (It’s not squid, it’s gobies, but whatever.)

Sure, the squid that doesn’t know its place and jumps along is a problem—but the mullet bastard who started the precedent by flopping around in front is a problem too.

And then—

GRRRRRRUMBLE...!

With a sound like heaven and earth trembling, the ominous moon started turning again, the night sky somehow stained with that ominous color again, and right in front of Qing’s eyes the filthy rope dangled down like it was showing off.

The corpse mountain squirmed and slid between Qing and the moon, and the blasphemous rope lashed it with a loud—

SWHAAK! SWHAAK!

Blackened bodies exploded—

BANG! BANG!

And chunks rained down—

THUDTHUDTHUD!

Even though the person who was supposed to “ride” was thinking absolutely none of this, the Thousand-Kill Ancient Star—pure malice of the cosmos itself—and Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy—human resentment blotting out the sky—were putting on a ridiculous spectacle, fighting over who would “take her” to the Mystical Realm.

A pathetic fight that was hard to watch with eyes open—no, even with eyes closed.

It really, truly made her chest feel small and cramped.

Qing snapped her eyes open atop Priestess Peak.

Then she let out a long sigh and muttered,

“Seriously... this is a complete mess....”