Chapter 1063: That Creature Is a Harmful Creature (18)

Late at night.

Qing sat quietly in meditation, legs folded in full lotus.

It was truly astonishing beyond words.

Full lotus, in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping? Qing, of all people, in that uncomfortable full lotus posture?

Full lotus was far more uncomfortable than it looked.

The pose called “sitting cross-legged” in Qing’s homeland was different from proper full lotus.

True full lotus required both legs to be twisted together like a knot. The right foot had to rest atop the left thigh, and the left foot atop the right thigh.

It was a posture that drew infinity with one’s own body, a bodily imitation of the most complete principle. In origin, it had been part of a Buddhist practitioner’s process of tormenting the self—in other words, ascetic training.

And since the Taoist sects of the Central Plains had accepted—plagiarized—Buddhism, this was Qing showing a properly orthodox Taoist-cultivator-like side for the first time in a very long while.

Enough to make one newly realize the astonishing truth: oh, right, this girl was a Daoist too.

Qing’s lightly closed face had her natural stubborn set to it, her full lips jutting out as if she would refuse to listen even if a horse died in front of her. She looked like an incomparably beautiful woman, prim beyond belief.

As long as she did not open her mouth, no one would object to calling her the most beautiful woman under heaven. In truth, even when she did open her mouth, move around, and commit every kind of bizarre act, her appearance was still one that could be forgiven.

In any case—astonishing!

She was not even sleeping at this hour?

This from a girl who, when bedtime came, stripped off her outer shell like someone who would die without sleep, flung herself onto the bed, sprawled all four limbs any which way, and let out soft little snores?

Qing might have felt wronged.

She might have protested, asking what kind of person people took her for, insisting that she too was the kind of person who could stay awake if she put her mind to it.

At that very moment, Qing’s head went into free fall.

Her neck bones, made flexible through long training, bent with a sharp snap to such an alarming degree that anyone watching would have cried, “Wait, what—did that girl just break her neck?” Her beautiful head dropped with an impressive fall distance, then shot back up in fright and returned to its place.

Then she wiped the corner of her mouth with her sleeve.

Flinch!

“Whoa. You scared me.”

“Yes.”

“Iri? Why are you sitting there like that?”

“Yes. Training.”

“Do you absolutely have to sit that close?”

“Yes.”

Anyone would be startled, even Qing, if someone was sitting in full lotus right in front of them like a mirror image, their knees almost touching.

Seol Iri’s obsession with building qi—that is, with gathering qi—had always been like this.

But why are you doing this on my blanket?

“Have a good trip.”

“Ah, right. If anything happens, wake the others.”

“Yes.”

Apparently, when Qing had said she was stepping out for a bit in the middle of the night, Seol Iri had stayed awake just in case.

But a master was sensitive by nature.

People woke easily from uneasy sleep to begin with, and masters were even more sensitive. If any commotion broke out, they could spring upright at once regardless.

But still.

Well, it was Seol Iri.

Just the usual Gunyeong.

Qing carefully opened the sliding door leading outside.

A fairly cool, damp wind blew in with a whoosh, and fine moisture touched her skin like mist sprayed from a bottle.

She had thought the rain had stopped, but apparently it had not stopped completely. Thanks to that, the night sky was hidden behind thick black clouds, and the world was pitch-dark, swallowed in utter darkness.

But was Qing’s night vision ordinary night vision?

Even on a night this black, her eyes could faintly, dimly distinguish the outlines of objects.

One might ask whether that was so impressive, but even the tools that lit the nights of Qing’s homeland were useless in complete darkness. Their principle was to gather what little light existed and amplify it as much as possible.

On a night this dark, vision that could make out even the faint outlines of objects was miraculous night vision indeed.

Qing launched herself lightly.

She descended slowly, as if defying gravity—an elegant fall like a drifting blossom.

Then, just as she seemed about to touch the ground lightly with the tip of her foot, she felt the sloppy squelch of mud beneath her toes. She immediately sprang back into the air and twisted around.

She caught the roof tiles under the eaves, calmly lifted her body with one arm, and climbed up smoothly.

Then she leapt again, catching the tiles of the second-floor eaves with light, effortless movement.

Once she climbed onto the roof of the Main Ring’s second floor, a steep slope of tall tiles rose one level higher like a hill.

To the right, the keep’s main castle tower rose like a tall skyscraper. To the left, some small watchtower or other protruded above the Main Ring.

Qing walked lightly across the tiles barefoot.

Wet roof tiles were slippery, but Qing’s level was Qing’s level.

If a Transformation master, and not even in the middle of combat, slipped and fell while merely walking, she would never be able to show her face anywhere again.

At last, Qing approached the small watchtower above the Main Ring—a small keep—and quietly held her breath before the little opening that opened upward from below.

Qing had roughly memorized the second-floor layout while visiting the second prince—prince, as if—no, the second son of a pirate house.

But she did not yet know the hidden third floor beneath the roof tiles very well.

And more than anything—

Japanese bastards had that kind of feeling, did they not? Ninjas hiding here and there all over the place?

The Central Plains was a whole fraudulent madhouse where people flew around carrying lightsabers. Would it really be strange if the Japanese pirates had real ninjas?

But had that worry been pointless?

Inside, there was one breathing sound from someone sleeping well—soft huffs and snores—and one breathing sound from someone failing to sleep well.

Qing carefully peered into the watchtower opening. One man had even spread out a sleeping mat and was lying down asleep. Another sat leaning against the wall, hugging his helmet, with a towel laid over it and his chin propped on top.

It seemed military work was the same in every age, and for Central Plains people and Japanese bastards alike.

A senior soldier sleeping outright while a junior slept nervously while watching the mood—this could be called a natural human phenomenon transcending east, west, past, and present.

Hm. Should I kill these guys, or not?

If it were now, she could dispose of them instantly without a sound, but if possible, the later picture would be much prettier if she did not kill them.

Suddenly, Qing’s gaze turned to the single small lamp burning on the lower level of the small keep.

Perhaps to prevent fire, it had been placed atop a brazier filled with sand.

Oh, I just need to put that out.

Even if the Japanese pirates wake up, it’ll be pitch-dark. Until they relight it, they wouldn’t know even if I were standing right beside them.

Qing slipped smoothly through the watchtower opening.

A moment later—

Whoosh.

The lamp went out.

The interior, which had been wavering under the faint lamplight, was now covered in complete darkness.

This was the result of being too stingy to spend precious oil on watch duty and sending them up with only a single lamp.

Their own doing. Their own trap.

Qing moved through the darkness under the eaves. Whether this should be called the third floor or an attic, she did not know.

In the pitch black, she counted inwardly with each step.

One, two, three, four, five.

Twenty steps inward. Ten steps to the right.

Then she drew a knife from her chest, its blade sharpened blue.

It was a Japanese kitchen knife called a slicing knife.

During the kitchen raid, she had pocketed several of them just in case. This one was the kind called a sashimi knife.

“Piercing” used the same character as in “assassin,” and “body” meant body, while the knife itself was a kitchen blade. Combined, the name meant a kitchen knife for stabbing the body—a rather savage name.

For reference, if one read “piercing” the Japanese way, it became “sashi.” Read “body” the Japanese way, and it became “mi.” Put them together?

Wow! Sashimi! A fish-slicing knife!

Qing lay flat on the floor and carefully began cutting into the wooden flooring with the sashimi knife.

It was not an object meant for that use, and if the needlessly discipline-obsessed cooks of Japan had seen it, they would have foamed at the mouth.

But the sashimi knife had already been sharpened well, and Qing added a bluish starlight resembling the Northern Dipper to its edge.

How could mere wood hold out?

She cut along all four sides at an angle, then used the blade as a lever and lifted.

Ta-da.

In an instant, a lid was complete.

It looked terribly easy, of course. Then again, in any field, when a master handled a job, it always looked loose, clean, and easy.

Qing lifted the astonishing section of floor that had transformed into a lid.

A snore rumbled up.

Qing lowered her head and examined the floor below.

From downstairs, it would have looked like a terrifying scene: hair like a black waterfall spilling down, and a pale face hanging upside down, like an evil spirit extending its claws.

Though perhaps the evil spirit was too beautiful to be very frightening.

And so Qing discovered her target, lying in a luxurious silk quilt—

No, she did not.

Damn it. It’s the first one. Wrong room.

Qing put the lid back and went ten more steps inward.

A faint starlight of aura floated once again beneath the roof, and another lid was soon added.

And then—

The grand opening!

An empty room.

It seemed no one was there.

Unfortunately, another miss.

What the hell? I thought the pirate boss’s room would be around here. Do I have to go farther in?

Qing did not know this, but Japanese bastards had no trust or loyalty and could not be believed. That applied even among Japanese bastards themselves.

So the lord of a castle did not keep a fixed bedroom. Today here, tomorrow there. Every day, he changed the room where he slept in order to prevent possible assassination.

Thus: one lid. Two lids. Three.

She checked the whole right side, but all were misses.

This time, she went down under the roof tiles on the opposite side.

One lid. Two lids.

And finally.

After confirming the face of the pirate boss lying beneath his blanket, the head vanished upward with a slip.

Soon, both legs came down, followed by both arms gripping the edge, and then Qing dropped. The moment her feet touched down, she bent her knees sharply.

She absorbed the impact of landing with perfect flexibility, not making the slightest noise.

It was the Divine Thief’s astonishingly stealthy infiltration art.

Why was Qing using the Divine Thief’s infiltration art?

Because Qing was a prospective Divine Thief who was in a somewhat ambiguous position—whether a later generation or the current generation—somewhere around the transitional stage between generations.

Qing crept forward and carefully grabbed the foot end of the blanket covering the king of Ippen.

Then, holding the lower edge of the blanket, she slowly, carefully worked her way toward his head.

The blanket lifted in the process. Perhaps because he suddenly felt cold, the king shifted in his sleep.

At that exact moment—

Qing gauged the thickness of the blanket in her grip.

She folded it once, folded it twice, folded it three times, and then slapped it over the king’s head.

At the same time, she flipped the king’s body over, pinned him down, crushed him beneath her, gathered the blanket edges that had escaped to either side of his head at the back of his skull, twisted them like a braid, and gripped them tightly.

The king, who had been sleeping peacefully before disaster struck in an instant, snapped his eyes open.

But his head was wrapped in a blanket, so opening his eyes showed him only darkness.

Even if that had not been the case, nothing would have entered his eyes anyway.

When a person suddenly had his breath cut off, nothing reached his eyes.

“Mmph—mmph!”

The blanket, folded three times, blocked his nose and mouth tightly. Even if he tried to shout, that was all that came out. Worse, as his breath choked off, even if he wanted to squeeze out a cry, his lungs would not obey.

His two arms were held in place by monstrous strength and would not move. When he tried to kick his feet, something clamped down on them at once.

All the king could do was writhe.

All he could do was struggle desperately to draw breath somehow.

The thin summer blanket had been folded three times, but air still entered, barely, in tiny amounts.

And above him, Qing was in a truly unbelievable posture.

With one hand, she gripped the blanket wrapped around his head tightly. With both legs, she coiled around his torso and pinned his arms. With her remaining hand, she hugged both of his ankles.

In that position, Qing wore a strangely loose, bewitching smile.

The feel transmitted through that desperate writhing—

Wow.

Such vivid, pitiful resistance.

Perhaps this was the true reason people became obsessed with fishing.

The feel.

Because of this feel.

After all, what was that “feel” to begin with?

Was it not the vivid sensation of a fish caught on a hook thrashing desperately, shaking the line with all its strength because a thing like itself wanted to live, had to live?

Only, the object giving that feel was not a fish.

It was something lower than a fish, something near the edge of not being anything at all—a hideous evil creature below even a beast.

Still, it was a little disappointing.

This was not someone who deserved to die this comfortably.

At the very least, he should have died in as much pain as the number of lives threaded onto the trophy necklaces Nakamura and Yeongsi proudly wore.

The king might have felt wronged.

Because he was already suffering more than enough.

If a thick blanket had blocked his nose and mouth completely, his breath would have stopped before long.

But because air passed through poorly, barely, somehow, his chest felt as if it would tear open from his desperate attempts to inhale, and his lungs burned with pain while that precarious thread of breath somehow continued.

Like that, about one il gak passed.

At some point, the king’s body, which had been held down by brute force, went limp.

One il gak—well, that should have been fairly painful.

You know, relativity? Time did not flow fairly.

Fun time passed quickly. Boring time passed slowly. And among all kinds of time, time spent in pain seemed to stop altogether and not flow at all.

One il gak of suffocating pain must have felt as long as a year.

She hoped it had.

Qing untwisted the blanket and examined the king’s face.

The king’s face was twisted hideously in agony.

Qing took something out from her chest.

Something wrapped in a large leaf.

If one asked what it was, it was a rice ball. In Japanese, onigiri.

This was no ordinary rice ball.

It was a strong and mighty rice ball, one fully capable of killing a person.

Qing tore off a large piece of the rice ball, kneaded and squeezed it firmly together like rice cake, then shoved it into the king’s mouth.

Right into the airway beneath the root of his tongue.

Tightly. Without a gap.

Then she roughly stuffed the remaining rice ball beneath the king’s corpse, pressed it down, and crushed it messily.

As the finishing touch, she spread the blanket out, wrapped it somewhat around the corpse, and adjusted the posture a little.

Then Qing looked down at the sprawled corpse of the Japanese pirate boss and suddenly made a shocked expression.

How could this be!

A man who called himself king of a country had died in the middle of the night, choking on a rice ball he had been stuffing into his mouth!

Truly, was this not a genuinely honorable end befitting a Japanese pirate boss?

Qing nodded and nodded.

Mm. It suits him. It really suits him.

It was a thought that would have made the dead king howl in that inferno.

You wretched girl. Are you planning to make even my death this ridiculous, this laughable?

Well, yes.

That was exactly her plan, which was why she had brought the rice ball along untouched even though she had been hungry in the middle of the night.

Truly, the appearance of Seomun Cheong, the greatest assassination genius in history, who even desecrated death itself.

If his underlings learned this truth, would they grieve, or would they feel utterly bewildered and dumbfounded?

Well, what loyalty could Japanese bastards have among themselves? It seemed more likely to be the latter.

Soon, Qing sprang lightly from the spot.

She climbed back up to the third floor, closed the lid again, passed the two soldiers who were still sleeping peacefully with their soft breaths and rumbling snores, and slipped out through the observation window.

A subtle rain fell like mist sprayed from a bottle.

Should that be called rain? Rain powder? Rain dust?

Into those truly damp surroundings, Qing silently slipped away and vanished.