Chapter 704: Instructor Bureau (8)

It was the extreme of harshness, as if they were testing the limits of human endurance.

The cadets’ faces were flushed; some looked on the verge of tears, some on the verge of screaming, and those who had already been “wrecked” back at their own sects wore the resigned faces of people who knew exactly what was coming.

Second Horse Stance.

Second Lying Tiger.

And then, second Peacock Posture.

Maybe they were planning to insist that the name “Peacock Posture” came from the way their legs swung, like a bird shaking out its tailfeathers.

“One. Two. Three. Four. Again. One, two......”

Even though it genuinely felt like they were going to die, that serenely carefree voice just kept chanting numbers, and the cadets felt a deep, seething sense of unfairness.

What possible meaning could this continuous chain of nothing but painful motions have?

The pain in their waists felt like they had been wedged under a thousand-jin boulder; they’d rather have them cut off entirely. Whoever invented this damned calisthenic, ahhh, curse them. Let them be cursed.

Help. Somebody help......

Each cadet was swallowed up in emotion according to their nature.

The passive ones were feeling despair and sadness, mixed in various ratios according to their temperament. The more proactive ones, in line with their disposition, began to feel various degrees of anger rise up.

Which meant that the instant one person crossed their own threshold, it would be time for a violent reaction to explode out, tailored to that person’s emotion.

Back in Qing’s homeland army, the recruits would already be completely broken psychologically by this point, so it usually turned into tears of despair and sorrow.

Right now in Sword Hall, however, there was one person present whose “phase-transition threshold” was the lowest of all.

“AAAAAAH! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS BULLSHIT!”

FWOOOOSH!

Flames roared up from the drill yard.

Startled out of their minds, the cadets nearby tried to leap to their feet—only for the strength to leave their legs and waists, so they scrambled and dragged themselves away, shouting frantically as they retreated.

“Fire, fire!”

“Instructor, a cadet is on fire!”

“It’s a fire ghost—she’s possessed by a fire ghost!”

Qing was startled too.

What the—? Why is there suddenly a fire?

Then she realized that the person engulfed in flames—the person actually producing the flames—was none other than Vermilion Bird girl Chang Yohong.

Mm. What, are you a walking accelerant? My personal “fire-like rage”? I’m pretty sure something already caught fire once this morning.

If it’s a rage like fire, it ought to bring a peace like a river, but—

Someone moved before Qing could.

“Miss Chang, endure it! I—I’ll help you!”

Azure Dragon dancer Chae Seong-ha was already stomping out the steps of his footwork, doom-chit, doom-chit, gathering wind around himself and whipping up a gale.

Qing’s face twisted at once.

Seriously, this bastard isn’t just fanning the flames in a burning house—he’s literally blowing wind at a person who’s on fire?

Qing’s body cut through the air.

Belly Dagger traced the same trajectory, its sooty dark-steel color stretching out into an inky rainbow as it elongated.

And then—KWAANG!

“Gyaaaah!”

Chae Seong-ha grabbed his head and rolled on the ground.

It was an unavoidable, instinctive reaction.

When it feels like your skull has just been split in half, your body forces you to grab your head so it won’t open up any further. It’s the kind of response you simply can’t go against.

With that one savage smack, the fierce wind of the “fire scene” died down and Qing turned her body.

Mm. Fire.

If she was honest, she wasn’t exactly fond of fire either.

No matter how much of an expert you are, once you’re on fire, you cook just the same.

That was the limit of any lifeform made of meat.

But Qing was the instructor.

As the person responsible here, she had no time to hesitate. Whether it worked or not, she urgently spread the dizzying cold of Ice-White Divine Palm through her entire body and launched straight into her movement art.

Chang Yohong, for her part, was still currently on fire.

“You think! I came here! For this!? Just because I’m some country bumpkin! You think you can look down on me!”

“Cadet Chang Yohong!”

Calling someone by their full name has a small but definite effect in snapping them back to their senses.

Chang Yohong flinched and looked at Qing.

By then, Qing’s two arms—now frosted white with a layer of rime—were already flowing out toward Chang Yohong’s two arms with a strange, gentle sway.

No-Shadow Divine Hand, the secret art of seizing and controlling from up close.

Her fingers were thin, unusually long, and beautifully shaped. Those fingers slid into Chang Yohong’s clenched fists like water.

A soft flow slipped irresistibly between her fingers, worming its way through every gap.

In another moment, Qing had laced their fingers together, both hands clasped tight, and that ice-blue chill was being delivered straight to Chang Yohong’s skin.

Chang Yohong’s eyes whipped sideways and shrank, and for an instant, the light of rationality came back into them.

“Instructor? I—I’m dangerous, I can’t control my anger—”

“Oh dear, anger-control disorder? It’s all right.”

Heat creates rising air currents the way strength creates light; the flames’ updraft made Qing’s veil flutter up, so the face underneath—somewhere around “world’s number-one beauty” level—was suddenly laid completely bare.

On that face rested a decidedly gentle smile.

Qing went on in a soft voice.

“In that case, you just have to control your anger well.”

“Huh? What do you—”

From of old, there has only ever been one way to turn “anger-control disorder” into “anger-control mastered.”

Strength. Even stronger strength. Violence. Even stronger violence.

“KYAAH.”

Ximen-Qing-Style Unique Secret, Finger Pillory.

Her fingers had been tempered to something approaching Diamond-Indestructible, and on top of that, Minor Water Art had left her with terrifyingly thin skin and flesh and bones close to the surface. The frame of those fingers was harder than ten-thousand-year cold iron.

And Qing’s grip strength was the greatest power the human race had possessed since its emergence on this planet.

The strongest fingers in the world and the strongest grip in the world, used to crush the opponent’s fingers—this was Ximen Qing’s finishing move.

“Urk.”

When pain goes past a certain line, you can’t even scream.

Chang Yohong’s back bowed like a drawn bow.

Her own hands convulsed as she desperately tried to shake off the foreign object crammed between her fingers, that awful something that was stuffing itself between every knuckle and pouring hideous pain into her.

Anyone who has experienced it knows: when joints are jammed together finger-to-finger, they never come apart.

In a moment, Chang Yohong’s eyes rolled back toward the sky, showing the whites, and the flames streaming off her body vanished without a trace, as if nothing had ever happened.

If some half-baked pain had stirred up her anger—

Then all you had to do was cool it down with overwhelming pain.

“Cadet Chang Yohong. Are you all right?”

“Huff— I, wh—what...”

Chang Yohong came back to her senses.

What was that? She had the feeling she’d just gone through some kind of monstrous pain, the kind that turned her mind completely blank and left her unable to even think.

But all she could see now was this: because Qing’s veil had flipped back over her bamboo-hat brim, her whole field of vision was filled with a pair of big blue eyes, brimming with worry.

“Ah?”

Chang Yohong suddenly felt like flames were shooting up from her head—

(And in fact, fwoomp, a small tongue of fire did spurt up from the crown of her head.)

She hurriedly ducked her head.

And what she saw was hands. Two hands clasped together, fingers threaded between fingers, gripped so tightly it felt like they’d never be released.

That delicious coolness, like it was cooling down the blood boiling inside her—

Because of her martial art, Chang Yohong had always kept her skin covered.

Thanks to that, she was weaker to physical contact than anyone else in the world.

“Are you all right, Cadet Chang Yohong?”

“I—I’m fine, I’m f-fine.”

“Do you feel like you’ll catch fire again? Do you think you can control it?”

“I can, so, um, your—your hands, could you...”

She was suddenly seized by a grave premonition that they ought to let go.

With their hands joined like this, her heart was pounding like it was about to burst; cold sweat was oozing out of her without her realizing it. Her heart felt both chilling and dizzy at the same time, like her whole body was falling through empty air.

What, what even is this feeling......? I—

Of course, the correct answer was fear.

She had just been put through the kind of pain that knocked you out with Qing’s first personally named special technique, her unique finishing move, Finger Pillory.

On an unconscious level, her body was still screaming that it was in danger. It was warning her: the figure standing in front of her wasn’t just a human, but a human-shaped instrument of vicious torture, and if she felt like it, she could crush your fingers alive into boneless meat, or rip them out from your palm entirely.

“Cadet Chang Yohong. Is it really that hard to control your fire?”

“Wh-when my emotions get riled up, when I get angry, it just comes out on its own, I absolutely can’t hold it back...”

Qing smiled faintly and thought to herself.

As expected, she’s claiming anger-control disorder.

There are countless people in the world who claim anger-control disorder, but ten out of ten are fakes.

Even in Qing’s homeland alone, anyone who truly couldn’t control their anger had long since been sent to prison; and in the martial world, where people settle things with blades instead of words, what do you think would happen?

They’d have crossed the River Jordan ages ago and be burning forever on the other side.

In both the literal, clinical sense and the metaphorical sense, they’d be blazing away quite nicely.

“If you ever feel like you’re going to spew fire again, do not hesitate. Call this instructor at once. Understood?”

“Uh, okay, y-yes...”

“In that case, Cadet Chang Yohong?”

“Huh? I mean, yes?”

“Lie back down. Continue what you were doing.”

Continue what she’d been doing.

Chang Yohong’s face went utterly black.

****

There had been a brief bit of commotion, but—

Thanks to the early suppression, there were no casualties.

Fortunately, there were no lingering embers either, and Chang Yohong did not spontaneously combust again.

Though with her beyond-human hearing, Qing could clearly pick up the constant stream of curses she muttered under her breath.

She was willing to let that slide. Even if it wasn’t Chang Yohong, there were curses leaking out here and there all over the place.

The original intent of Ranger Training Eighth Move was that it should make you start swearing; that’s how you knew it was working.

You could call it a kind of praise and flattery, really.

Thanks to that, the sparring class that followed was an enormous success.

Having completely wrecked every major muscle in their arms, legs, waists, bellies, backs, and chests, the cadets were all wobbling like jelly.

Any time they put strength into a particular muscle, a stabbing pain shot in immediately, so they naturally swung their swords in whatever posture hurt the least.

As a result, the level of their sword-qi shot up dramatically.

On top of that, since many of them weren’t used to sparring, the Gentle Sword practice group, which had taken a defensive stance, got pummeled nonstop.

There were plenty of wails, but no injuries.

You could say the warm-up had more than proved its effectiveness; it had surpassed its objective.

With results this good, well, what can you do.

Honestly, it broke her heart. She genuinely didn’t want to hurt her precious cadets.

But there are times when you have to bear your own pain for the sake of human lives. If they needed someone to hate, they could hate her, but she hoped they would remember this one sincerity at least, that all of this was for you, dear cadets......

“Ximen, you seem to be in a good mood.”

“Huh? Me? No I don’t.”

“But you keep smiling, and even humming under your breath. Your face looks really refreshed, too.”

“Hey now. Moyong. You can’t go around slandering people like that.”

“......?”

It was at that moment.

“Gaga!”

“Oh! That voice!?”

Qing’s head whipped around.

A very very cute creature had appeared straight ahead!

Three times the normal cuteness!

It was Jayeo and Jegal Hyang, clutching Jin Jangmyeong’s hands on either side.

For the record, the cuteness values were as follows: Jegal Hyang one and a half, Jayeo one, Jin Jangmyeong half. Total, three times.

Sure, Jayeo was her daughter, but she couldn’t allow herself to make a biased ruling.

That said, there was no comparing her to Hyang, of course.

As for Jangmyeong... hm. Honestly, even half might be a bit generous.

The reason the three of them were together was simple.

Jin Jangmyeong had taken on the role of Junior Division teaching assistant.

She had applied for the sword curriculum and, in a bit of a daze, ended up in charge of the Junior Division. Apparently, she’d been deeply moved watching Abbot Wolbong playing with Jayeo.

She supposedly “seemed like she’d get along well with kids.”

Well, with how short and stumpy Jangmyeong was, anyone would take her for a kid at first glance, mm.

In the meantime, the two little ones came toddling over on their short legs, do-do-do-do, and then launched themselves at her with surprisingly fierce momentum.

But it was still too little mass to bring Qing down. With just the combined weight of two little brats, it was impossible to deliver any real damage to the strongest, most monstrous powerhouse in existence.

Qing scooped Jayeo and Jegal Hyang into her arms, one on each side, and rubbed her face back and forth between their soft cheeks.

Cheeks to the left and right—this kind of happiness!

“Is class over? How was it? That nasty baldie didn’t act nasty, did he?”

“It was fun.”

“Heehee, it was fun.”

“Eh.”

Their expressions were bright—

Or more precisely, Jegal Hyang’s was bright, while Jayeo was wearing a somewhat gloomy smile.

For Jayeo, that much was basically the same as a full, beaming grin, so it really did seem like she’d had fun.

Really? And what happened to the youth hardship training with Marrow-Washing & Tendon-Changing Classic?