Chapter 980: Tears, Drop by Drop (1)

The expressions on everyone’s faces at that moment.

A face twisted by a half-and-half mix of disgust and fear—though, to be exact, it was three parts disgust and seven parts fear, because physiological disgust manifests as a kind of fear.

Because of the Heavenly Flower Sword’s vivid description.

People, by nature, might struggle to imagine good things, but they have an innate talent for conjuring bad ones—so they shuddered at the extreme filth that they’d heard with their ears yet felt as if they’d seen with their eyes.

“Gaaah, Heavenly Flower Sword!”

“Why would you do this to us?!”

“Why would you tell us something this horrible?!”

“I didn’t want to know! I seriously didn’t want to know! I want to rip out my ears and eyes!”

But Qing could feel wronged, too.

You think you’re the only ones hurting? I’m hurting too!

If the listeners were like this, what about the person saying it out loud? And it wasn’t even like they were real people for you—those two were an imaginary Plunder Demon and an imaginary Heart-Eating Demon Emperor. I’m the one who knows what the two of them actually look like. Ugh—BLEGH.

It was pain like wringing her heart out—or splitting it apart and dividing it—so who would have wanted to put that kind of thing in her mouth for fun?

This malicious intent—injuring herself internally just to whip others into a frenzy with false slander—really was the kind of murderous star-sign you could call “born under the Thousand-Kill Ancient Star.”

Anyway.

By now, everything had been accomplished.

She’d told them to go ask the Jurchens if they were curious about whether it was true, but—

Who was actually going to go and ask?

The Central Plains were vast, but Liaodong was the frontier. To get to Liaodong, you’d have to run hard without rest—six months, a half-year journey. Was there really some blessed soul out there who’d waste half a year just to verify a single rumor?

Honestly, it didn’t matter if they went and asked.

What would they even ask when they got there?

Did you really help the Heavenly Flower Sword suppress the Blood Cult? Even if they asked, they’d get a yes.

If they asked about the Blood Cult’s sexual preferences, they’d be told they didn’t know—and even if some “Martial World great detective” showed up and uncovered some hidden truth, so what? What changes?

It’s still half a year round-trip.

If she estimated when the Blood Cult had started spreading the rumor, even stretching it as long as possible, it was about three months.

In only three months, this many people had already piled in. In six months—half a year—that was enough time for the Blood Cult to be branded a same-sex mating collective and have it fully set.

Qing knew very well how powerful that brand was.

Back home, hadn’t there once been a military organization with a decent reputation that became the whole world’s laughingstock from a single such brand?

And that was the Blood Cult’s future here.

You dare frame me as someone who uses seed-extraction demonic arts—so vicious they’re called Slay-in-Slay—paint me as a witch who uses such an evil demonic art?

Sure, it’s true I learned demonic arts. But what of it? I only learned the Minor Water Demonic Art, the Purple-Spin Witch, the Soul-Seizing Art, the Black-Slaughter Demon Palm, the Wheel-Turning Demon Calamity, the Heaven-Crushing Reverse-Blood Water-Heart Thorn Formula, the One Hundred Eight Asura Sword, the Radiant-Dazzle Grasp-and-Slay Aura, the Heavenward Thousand-Kill, and the Half-God Long-Calamity Blade, that’s all.

And you call me a seed-extraction witch who learned evil demonic arts? How can you slap me with such a horrible false charge?

You bastards. My Moonlit Night is hungry.

I need to give each of those nasty mouths a stab—oh, come to think of it, the Half-God Long-Calamity Blade is exactly the kind of martial art where you feed blood to your blade to make a demonic sword. Perfect. The Blood Cult bastards just walked right into it.

Anyway, the public statement was a huge success.

Qing swept her gaze over the crowd and dipped her head in a small bow.

Now it was time for them to part ways. Preferably never see each other again. Thanks for nothing. It was disgusting being together. She was about to start easing into her closing remarks—

And that was when it happened.

“Thousand-Year Murder Ghost! Don’t you recognize me?!”

A sudden, crazed scream exploded out.

It was a raw shout with no internal energy behind it, and it sounded thin and weightless, like the man wasn’t used to shouting in the first place—less a roar than a tantrum or a fit of hysterics.

What. Now what. Thousand-Year Murder Ghost.

Of course, Qing had years of experience and a solid understanding of how martial-world sobriquets were constructed. Even hearing it once, she could guess the intent.

“Thousand-Year” used the character for ugly—meaning the ugliest under heaven—probably a deliberate inversion of her own sobriquet, Heavenly Flower. And “Murder Ghost” meant exactly what it said: a killing ghost.

A word coined with hatred and malice because someone had a deep grudge against her.

But... yeah.

So who are you?

Qing looked toward the source of the screaming.

A young man whose boyishness hadn’t fully faded yet—by her hometown’s categories, more like a teen—an unfamiliar whelp.

“Didn’t I ask if you recognize me!!!”

He screamed again.

Qing rubbed her chin, furrowed her brow hard, and sent back a wordless message: I’m thinking, so wait a second.

But no matter how she thought about it, she didn’t recognize that face.

Who is he? I genuinely don’t know.

His eyes were already swimming with venomous resentment, so he was definitely one of the people who hated her—

But people who hated her weren’t exactly rare.

If you lined them all up in a long row, it felt like they’d reach from here all the way to Wuhan.

Still, Qing had a clear conscience.

Because anyone who held a grudge against her probably wasn’t an upstanding person. She hadn’t slaughtered anyone except villains.

“Uh. Um. Who are you?”

“I’m Wang Daeyang! You’re not going to pretend you forgot that name!”

Qing’s expression changed dramatically.

Her eyebrows sagged into a miserable curve, her pupils went oddly dull and unfocused, and her mouth fell open a little, showing neat teeth.

It was the face that embodied the answer “I don’t know.”

Wang Daeyang? Who is that?

Qing’s face was an outpouring of genuine emotion—something you couldn’t fake. Pure ignorance. The essence of truly not knowing.

Feeling that sincere not-knowing—this real not-knowing—Wang Daeyang’s face flushed beet-red.

“H-how! You slaughtered my family and brothers so brutally, and you can forget me?! How...!”

“Huh. Me?”

“Yes! You did it, you bitch!!”

“Even if you say that... I seriously don’t know, no matter how much I think. Are you sure you didn’t come to the wrong person?”

“Wang Cheolgun!! You still can’t remember anything after hearing that name?!”

“Wang Cheolgun? That sounds familiar... Everyone—does anyone here know who that is?”

Something was right on the verge of surfacing, like it would only pop into her head when she was lying in bed under a blanket, drifting off to sleep. So Qing asked for the help of collective intelligence.

At that, murmurs spread—“Grand Stockade Lord,” “Notorious Greenwood Bandit,” and the like.

Only then did Qing clap a fist into her palm.

“Ah. That bandit leader! I remember!”

Back when Qing had been sent to support Guangxi, there had been a time she suppressed a pack of bandits who picked a fight with her at Tianzi Mountain in Zhangjiajie.

The bandit leader in particular had been a demonic-energy warped man. She hadn’t bothered remembering his name, but—so that bastard was Wang Cheolgun. Now that she thought about it, maybe she had heard the introduction. Notorious Greenwood Bandit... yeah.

“So then, young hero, you are...?”

“My name is Wang Daeyang! I am the son of the Grand Stockade Lord you killed—and the one who bears the Greenwood Bandits’ oath!”

All around them—

GASP. HUH— Sharp intakes of breath. What? The Heavenly Flower Sword killed the Greenwood Bandits’ Grand Stockade Lord, the Notorious Greenwood Bandit Wang Cheolgun?

Of course, there were plenty who nodded like they already knew—but Qing’s suppression of the Greenwood Bandits wasn’t something that had been widely publicized.

“Heroes of the martial world! I will expose that witch’s atrocities! That witch brutally murdered my brothers and sisters—and she fed my father an extreme poison, took him hostage while he couldn’t even hold up his own body, slaughtered the Greenwood heroes, and in the end burned them alive!”

“How awful...” “Ghk.” “That’s horrific...”

Qing’s face darkened.

The only parts that were correct were that she brutally killed his siblings, and that she fed his father an extreme poison and burned him alive.

Everything else was pure fiction—he was sitting there writing a whole novel.

(And no, you are not allowed to say, “Then the only lie is the hostage part, and the rest is true—doesn’t that mean it’s basically true?” Ban that evil mouth.)

Anyway. Was fabrication and agitation just everyday life for Evil Path scum? Honestly, no matter how those bastards died, it would count as dying of natural causes—natural, inevitable. If someone who deserved to die died, then anything was a good death.

Qing drew in a huge breath—HNNNGH.

A bug she’d missed last time had crawled in on its own two feet. That meant it didn’t want to live.

At the same time, an immense surge rose from her lower dantian and raced through her meridians.

“No matter how much the righteous martial artists of the orthodox path look down on our Greenwood, this has gone too far—”

DEEEENG...!

A sky-filling sound—like the very teaching of the Buddhist path—spread out with the majestic resonance of a great temple bell.

But—BLOCKED.

A middle-aged man had somehow stepped in front of Wang Daeyang. He held a huge blade forward and was shoved backward, feet dragging—SKRIIIIK—until his group hurriedly braced him from behind and stopped him.

“KUH—HAK!”

The middle-aged man coughed—HACK—and spat out a mouthful of bloody phlegm.

Qing’s eyebrows twitched. Oh? He blocked it?

But here was the surprising fact!

The Tathāgata Divine Palm could be fired in succession!

A person had two palms, so if you alternated them, you could go DING DING DING DING at a pretty fast rate.

“Wait! Wait! I’m a patrol officer of the Evil Path Alliance!”

That desperate shout saved his life.

Even Qing could judge that, in a situation packed wall-to-wall with Evil Path people, she shouldn’t kill a patrol officer on the spot.

Damn it—if I’d just snapped that bug bastard’s windpipe—

Qing pressed down her regret and spoke in a voice as stern as judgment itself.

“Why is a patrol officer of the Evil Path Alliance shielding and blocking for a mere thief?”

“Your hand is far too heavy. How can you reach out with a killing strike immediately?”

“Because that one is a thief. And thieves are the most famous bandit packs under heaven—trash who live by squeezing the blood and pus out of the innocent. Filth who killed other people’s children, other people’s sisters, other people’s fathers, and lived by roasting and eating their flesh. You—young bandit. You lived by killing and eating other people’s families, yet you scream because your family died? You truly have no shame at all.”

“Shut up, you witch! Don’t disgrace the Greenwood heroes!”

“Heroes? Hooo—heroes? If Greenwood bandits are heroes, then earthworms on the ground are azure dragons, and trash-scavenging rat bastards are tigers. Since when did ‘hero’ become a word for man-eating bandit scum?!”

Wang Daeyang didn’t back down. He screamed right back.

“The Greenwood heroes! They clear the mountains, drive out bandits and fierce beasts, and benefit the people’s livelihood! They are brothers bound by faith and righteousness! May travelers on the Greenwood road be at peace! That is the Greenwood spirit!”

“No. What. What.”

Qing’s words failed her. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish.

Since stepping into the martial world, she’d heard countless piles of bullshit. Even before that, back home, she’d heard countless piles of bullshit—lowest-price guarantees, half-off discounts, special limits, “we’ll do politics for the people,” and so on.

But had she ever heard bullshit worse than this?

“No—everyone, did you hear that? The Greenwood benefits the people’s livelihood? And they’re calling themselves heroes?”

At that, the crowd’s gazes scattered all at once, wandering around with nowhere to land.

Eyes rolled here and there.

Yeah. They all knew it was bullshit. But they couldn’t say it was bullshit—so they had no choice but to pretend they didn’t know, pretend they didn’t hear, and act clueless.

Because most of them belonged to the Evil Path Alliance, or were wanderers with Evil Path leanings—and now that a patrol officer of the Evil Path Alliance had stepped in, they couldn’t openly take Qing’s side.

“No, everyone, isn’t it funny? They say they keep faith and righteousness. They’re calling it the Greenwood spirit.”

In fact, plenty of people were clenching their teeth and desperately holding back laughter.

“Ha. This is absurd. So what—revenge? How? Oh, you’re trying to kill me with laughter? Planning to make me die because I can’t breathe from laughing too hard? Not bad.”

PFFT—little bursts finally escaped from here and there, but that was it. It ended with people slapping hands over their mouths—HUH, HUH—forcing it down.

Thanks to that, Wang Daeyang’s face turned beet-red. Whether it was shame or rage, Qing didn’t know—but it probably wasn’t shame.

Because someone who knows shame can’t spew bullshit with a straight face.

“Ahem. Heavenly Flower Sword. Calm yourself. No matter how heinous a criminal someone is, there is no law that blocks a man who declares vengeance for his father, is there?”

It was a fair point.

In the Central Plains, vengeance for one’s father was treated like a sacred thing. In the past, even when Zu Ti declared vengeance for his father and slaughtered tens of thousands on the Xuzhou Great Filial Piety Road, how did the Confucian scholars of the time evaluate it?

“A bit excessive, but it’s vengeance for his father.”

“It’s all because his filial heart was too deep.”

“If he’s a man, shouldn’t he show filial piety to that extent? Truly a grand minister.”

And so on.

Of course, that had been possible because, in that ultra-ancient, primitive Three Kingdoms era, mass slaughter after taking territory was considered one of the arts of war—so now people evaluated him as Zu Ti.

Anyway, the justification of “for my father’s vengeance” was something Central Plains people found very persuasive.

To Qing, it just sounded like something to get punched for.

Qing’s eyes narrowed.

No—these bastards. This.

Just looking at it, it felt like someone had designed a whole little scheme.

In the meantime, a huge flagpole suddenly rose high—then mounted itself squarely onto Wang Daeyang’s back.

The letters flapping on the flag were rough and red, like a blood-written oath.

Sell the body to bury the father.

Selling one’s body to pay for the father’s funeral.