Chapter 987: Tears, Drop by Drop (8)

The Priestess Order’s ingredients were delivered by the Seol Family Trading House once every three days—delivered all the way to the foot of Musan Mountain.

The Seol Family Trading House had even conveyed their willingness to organize a women-led trade caravan and deliver directly to the sect itself—really, the situation was closer to please let us do it, considering how many volunteers were overflowing.

But it was an old tradition for a disciple to personally handle food procurement, and it wasn’t right to make merchant-house women haul ingredients up a mountain just so they could be a little more convenient.

So in the end, they received it at the base of the mountain.

And at the Priestess Order, the one whose schedule was comparatively loose—loose to the point of being ridiculous—was Qing.

And who could possibly be more optimized for hauling things than Qing, a monstrous strongwoman who could overturn mountains and crush the world?

Every time it was her turn, she’d go down together and carry the supplies back up, so of course the merchant-house staff passed her short messages every time.

Our elder is counting the days until your visit. Ah, and please make sure you visit together with Lady Yeongcheon-geum.

The head wants to see the young miss so badly he’s practically singing about it all day—when do you think you might....

Ask when Elder Choi is coming.

Elder Choi is unbearably bored these days—he’s making a whole scene.

...and so on.

Up until now, it had all been Choi Ri-ong wailing about Jayeo, so Qing would sometimes bring Jayeo along for an outing and a meal.

And since they said they had something to tell her with today’s delivery too, Qing naturally assumed it would be the old man’s usual whining again—

But.

“My lady, the divine physician says he has something urgent to tell you.”

“The divine physician?”

“Uh—Senior Sasa, ma’am.”

“Senior Sasa is a divine physician now? Wow. Do good things and your fate really opens right up. But what is it? Something urgent?”

“Yes. It seemed like he was discussing it with the Grand Leader as well. He said it isn’t an emergency, but he’d like you to come as quickly as possible.”

“Mm. What could it be....”

“And Elder Choi—”

“Ah, I don’t think I even need to hear that part. It’s the same thing every day, right?”

“Yes, that exact thing.”

Since it wasn’t an emergency, Qing delivered the ingredients up to the sect first.

And since she’d be going to the Seol Family Trading House anyway, she might as well grant the old man’s wish too—

So Qing hugged Jayeo tight and went back down the mountain again.

Qing’s lightness skill had already reached the realm of soaring.

One step—and she sprang up into the air like she was flying.

Jayeo, clinging to her with her chin propped on Qing’s shoulder, seemed to find it truly entertaining.

“Kihihi....”

The child’s laughter ringing right by her ear didn’t sound very childlike at all.

Normally at that age, you’d expect a squeal—something like a dolphin screech.

But even if the laughter sounded a bit—a lot—gloomy and wicked, that didn’t mean it wasn’t laughter.

Either way, it carried delight, so it was fine.

Qing had been listening more closely to laughter lately because of her training in Skyward Laugh Kill.

To be honest, when it came to martial arts, Qing could engrave it into herself through imprint-training and then use it fluently right away with her absurdly developed body.

But even for Qing, there was one technique that stubbornly refused to improve.

Voice Transmission.

She still couldn’t control the volume, so it came out as a maximum-power Voice Transmission scream—if you exaggerated a little, you’d wonder if it was Voice Transmission or an eardrum-destruction art.

And of course, Skyward Laugh Kill was also a martial art that used the voice—

And not just any voice. It had to use laughter.

In truth, it wasn’t limited to laughter.

Anything that slipped into the ear and moved a person’s emotions without them realizing could be applied.

So instead of laughter, crying could work, or a sound of admiration—if you restricted it to women, even a moan directed at a man could work.

But if someone was crying loudly, their emotions were already too turbulent for combat.

Admiration sounds were too short to be suitable.

And moans... well. Unless she wanted a nickname like Lust Demon.

So Qing had been carefully collecting laughter sounds, thinking hard about what, exactly, laughter was.

All she could feel was, When I hear someone else laugh, my mood improves on its own.

Beyond that, it was maddeningly vague.

She even found herself thinking, So this is what it feels like for normal people who train martial arts without imprint-training.

Jagwi County, now that the hyenas sniffing around the seed-extraction demonic arts rumor had left, had returned to its usual state.

With the ominous dark-world martial artists gone, tourists had come back.

So had county residents working their trades.

And the Seol Family Trading House employees—outside the merchant house, they smiled brightly and greeted her with a nod rather than anything too familiar.

Qing strode into the Seol Family Trading House, thrust out her arm, and shouted—

“Seomun Jayeo! I choose you! Go ask!”

“Kr-aaang.”

“Oh my, Jayeo is here.”

Choi Ri-ong’s face bloomed into a full-on flower of joy as he caught Jayeo flinging herself at him.

Qing left Jayeo with the old man for a bit, then crossed into Sasa Medical Academy through a side door connected to the inside of the merchant house.

A disciple of Sasa who’d come out to greet her at the side door looked oddly familiar.

Huh. Who was that again?

The answer was Bo-yeol’s eldest disciple, Yomin—but whether Qing recognized him or not wasn’t exactly important.

*****

“Senior Sasa, have you been well?”

Qing bowed her head politely.

Watching her, Bo-yeol found himself thinking—

The bastard he’d eaten from the same pot with for years had never once shown a shred of manners, and yet... even if it was the difference between righteous and evil, how could it be this different?

“Yes. You look like you’ve been well, too. Your complexion is good and proper—well, at your age, it’d be a problem if your face were already worn out. Come. Let’s start with a cup of tea.”

“I’m always doing great. Oh—what is this? The aroma isn’t ordinary.”

“You can tell just by smelling it, can’t you? Silver Needles. And not just any—White Tiger Silver Needles.”

“WHITE! TIGER! SILVER! NEEDLES!”

When an elder bought you something, you were supposed to react like this if you wanted to be loved.

For Qing—an elder-slayer by nature—it was so automatic she didn’t even have to try.

“Wait! That precious one! Teacher, how could you serve this without warning? You should’ve told me in advance so I could prepare myself.”

At Qing’s performance, Bo-yeol’s face lit up.

His hobby had evolved from drinking tea alone to serving tea to others, and there was no one more rewarding to serve than Qing.

Even if this meeting was meant to discuss something serious, it was a rule—an absolute rule—that you did not ruin it by rushing.

You enjoyed tea as tea first.

Only after that did you bring up the main point.

That was true tea etiquette.

“I heard people call you a divine physician these days?”

“A divine physician, my ass. Maybe poison, sure—but there’s no shortage of therapists with great skill. I don’t know why they’re gilding me like this and making a whole fuss. It’s embarrassing.”

“Come on. You like it. Your face is a happy face. Be honest. It feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Ahem. Even if it feels good, isn’t that fine? It’s not like I’m going around with my old mouth shouting ‘divine physician.’”

How could she be this pretty and admirable?

If he’d had a daughter, would it have felt like this?

If he hadn’t joined the Evil Path Alliance, would he have married long ago and built a family?

And once those thoughts surfaced, what Bo-yeol intended to do felt more and more obvious.

More and more like something he had to do.

Right.

He was old. And he was old after living disgracefully.

How could he grab the ankle of a young person with a bright future and ruin it?

“So—did something happen?”

“Well....”

Bo-yeol told Qing about what his damned bastard junior, Hyung Taejak, Iron-Fruit Grim Vulture, had come to do.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

“What a damned bastard. Where is he right now? No—if he’s in Jagwi County, I can ask Seolga-nom. He’s dead. Next year today is that bastard’s memorial day.”

“No—no. You can’t. You can’t be the one to do it. The Golden Hawk Unit Commander—meaning the commander of a special-grade combat unit under the Evil Path Alliance—if he dies by your hand, it’ll become a terrible mess.”

“Then... not me. Right. Would it be okay if the Wheel-Turning Witch attacked him?”

Bo-yeol was one of the few people who knew Qing had learned some of the Ten Great Demonic Arts.

Now it wasn’t “some”—it was all of them.

But aside from Ximen Surin, no one else knew that, so it didn’t count.

“No. That’s not what I mean. He can’t die here. Not in Jagwi County. If that happens, your sect will get dragged into it....”

From the perspective of someone who’d endured the Evil Path Alliance’s filth for a long time, Bo-yeol explained how he interpreted their scheme.

In the plaza statement, the Heavenly Flower Sword and her master had, in effect, openly humiliated Paejon—first among the dark world.

This was petty retaliation for that humiliation.

If Sasa handed over Sasa Medical Academy to the Evil Path Alliance, then the Priestess Order would be allowing a dark-world den into their own front yard.

If he refused, they’d label him a traitor and kill him.

And he’d become a hypocrite who preached benevolence in their front yard while failing to protect even his own vow.

And if the Priestess Order—starting with the Heavenly Flower Sword—took active action in response?

It would look like they were openly stepping forward to defend and protect a traitor of the Evil Path Alliance.

In other words: a declaration that they were prepared to go to war with the Evil Path Alliance.

And harming a high-ranking Evil Path Alliance executive who came on official business would also count as that “active action.”

Unless Hyung Taejak gave them a pretext first by causing trouble, they must not block the perfectly legitimate justification of “executing a traitor.”

“But that bastard looks like a bear, but inside he’s slippery as hell. He’ll never give you a pretext.”

“What the—. Who was it that dragged in some bandit bastard waving ‘Sell the body to bury the father’ and picked a fight first? Retaliation, my ass.”

“That’s how dark-world bastards are. They never remember what they did. They’re always the wronged ones.”

Bo-yeol let out a long sigh.

“So I think I have to leave. If you’re being strict, I don’t have much right to feel wronged. I lived with dark-world bastards and lived like that myself. This is karma. Karma. Still... I don’t want to live that way anymore. So I have to untie what I tied....”

Qing jolted.

“Don’t tell me you’re going back to the Evil Path Alliance? To go to the Grand Leader and settle it face-to-face? Absolutely not. The scheme they’re pulling is petty beyond belief—if you go there, there’s no way you come out safe.”

Bo-yeol scratched near his left forehead with an awkward expression.

“No, not that far.... I mean—what would I do by going back? It’s not like there’s anything waiting but death....”

“Huh?”

“I’m just going to disappear somewhere quiet and live in seclusion. And you can tell them Sasa couldn’t break his habits and stole all the precious spirit medicines before running. Then they can say the academy was a victim too and let it pass....”

Bo-yeol trailed off, embarrassed.

Because life was precious.

If he stood in front of the Grand Leader and begged forgiveness, saying he’d go back and die—

It would be dramatic. Noble. Impressive.

But did being impressive mean you got to keep living?

If being impressive meant your life ended... was that acceptable?

Sasa still wanted to live....

Either way, he wasn’t wagering his life, but it was still a tremendous resolve.

When you got old, the only thing left was reputation.

And the divine-physician reputation he’d barely earned would turn into groundwork for “stealing big”—

Which meant people under heaven would curse Sasa and point fingers at him.

But Bo-yeol didn’t want Qing and the academy to take damage.

Not even if it meant that.

“Either way, no. You can’t. You’re not going. You’re being called a divine physician—and now you’re going to go where?”

Even so, Qing couldn’t accept it.

Paying off karma mattered. Untying what you tied mattered.

Even if Senior Sasa had become a good person and was being called a divine physician, Qing had no intention of blocking “karma” if karma truly came for him.

If friends, family, children, teachers, disciples of someone Sasa had killed in the past came—

She could offer a little defense, or a mediation proposal like could we resolve this with compensation?

But if those people truly wanted revenge, Qing had no intention of standing in their way.

But this?

No.

How was dark-world scheming “karma”?

Evil people deciding to execute a reformed evil person as a “traitor” was not karma.

It wasn’t the past returning.

It was just—

An evil act that had to be stopped. Period.

“...Thank you,” Bo-yeol said softly. “Truly.”

“Mm. For now, stay here. I do have someone I can ask, but... I’ve got a few ideas, too.”

In truth, she already had many.

The easiest was to just kill him.

They said he couldn’t die in Jagwi County?

Then kill him somewhere else.

They said he’d stay quiet and never give them a pretext?

Then make him give one.

When the Thousand-Kill Ancient Star held malice—when it came to questions like how should I slaughter him, or how should I torment him, or how do I make him so thoroughly screwed that the whole world hears he’s truly screwed—

Her mind would spin so fast it felt like it might ignite.

So-called slaughter intelligence.

The Thousand-Kill’s trait: her intelligence skyrocketed when she was killing or tormenting someone.

But even if she killed him and made it all “nothing happened”...

Would that be enough?

The Evil Path Alliance kept poking people, again and again.

Because they thought she was easy.

So what do you do when someone thinks you’re easy?

What do you do?

You carve it into them so clearly they can’t mistake it—

That you are someone they must never touch.

This time... she really had no choice.

It was disgusting. It made her skin crawl.

But just this once—

I’m going to have to benefit from being a “son.”