Chapter 719: When Going Out, Maintain Your Dignity (13)

Throwing weapons flew in.

Sneak attacks from assassins disguised as merchants and farmers. Masked assassin squads charging from above, from the front, from behind, from the sides.

It was also why Qing could still be striding around perfectly fine in this batshit situation that would make even a worn-down veteran lose his mind.

And they weren’t even aiming for Qing.

The assassins’ target was Mandarlo. It was a swarm of moths, charging in with the thought that if they could just somehow punch one hit through Heavenly Flower Sword and into their target (poison is an assassin’s best friend), they’d flip their life overnight.

Protecting someone else is much harder and more exhausting than protecting yourself.

An attack aimed at me, in the end, converges on my own body. But an attack aimed at someone else—his body itself blocks my line of sight.

And someone else’s body doesn’t move as freely as my own limbs, or exactly in line with my thoughts.

Which was why Qing’s movement, in this moment, wasn’t the least bit lacking even if you called it divine.

How?

Because she was hypersensitive.

Qing could be hypersensitive when she needed to.

Even before she ever set foot in the Martial World, Qing had always been good at reading people’s faces, reading their state of mind on the spot, and quickly grasping their temperament. She was thoroughly trained in what you’d call social sense or social skills, “reading the room.”

It was the ability that later turned her into an old-people slaughterer.

But what good is an ability if you don’t use it?

There’s a kind of line, a limit to her own indifference.

In front of someone she doesn’t know well but has to know well, or someone she has to impress, she’ll pierce their weak spots like a ghost and win their favor.

But once someone has become comfortable—she’s totally comfortable and doesn’t bother reading the room at all.

Or if she figures, I’m only going to see this guy once or twice anyway, or, to be a bit mean, this bastard’s someone I can treat like crap, then she just shuts her mind off and stops paying attention, dealing with them lazily, without any particular tact.

But a person’s abilities show their true colors in a crisis.

Back in her homeland, before she ever set foot in the Martial World, a “crisis” meant something like making a mistake and getting an earful for it, or getting roped into a company dinner she didn’t want to attend.

But here in this primitive, ancient Central Plains, it was different.

A “crisis” here really meant a crisis of life. To live or die—that was literally the question, and she ended up standing on the edge of a blade with her life on the line.

And more than anything, Qing was being treated as an obstacle, a gatekeeper at best. The target was Mandarlo.

Precisely because of that, her sense of crisis shot up tight.

Me, even if I get smacked around a bit or stabbed somewhere, I can just lie around sick for a few days and that’s that.

But a fragile little chicken-bone body like his, if it takes even one hit from a needle dipped in poison, will be hanging between life and death. He’s literally a guard target who’ll die if even one blow lands.

In crisis, her sensitivity bloomed wide open and explosively expanded its range.

Left, right, up, down—her eyes swept her surroundings at a speed you couldn’t mimic even if you tried on purpose. Terrain, people’s movements, their expressions—she didn’t miss a single thing as she stamped it into her mind and spun her thoughts.

That bitch, that one sneaking glances around—look at that, why is that girl who’s pretending to run scared slowly closing the distance in this chaos?

Why is the soup-seller’s carrying rack on the main street to the right in the middle of this mess? If he wanted to protect his precious soup, he’d first drag his rack into a back alley or someone’s yard.

The flow of air. One arrow, two daggers, a whole bundle of things like needles. Order of impact: back-left, rear, back-left, right side.

And assassins charging in: two—no, three.

Qing dropped the net bundle wedged under her arm, the neatly wrapped Mandarlo, just as he was.

A dagger barely grazed over the top of Mandarlo’s butt.

Qing hooked the instep of her foot into a mesh of the net and kicked.

Wasn’t it that your leg strength was three times your arm strength? Qing didn’t know if that was true, but she did know that legs were stronger than arms.

Before Mandarlo even had time to clutch the nose he’d smashed on the ground, he traced a huge circle and swept across the floor.

A sweeping kick, using someone else’s body.

Mandarlo’s body, rotating around Qing’s ankle as a pivot, collided with the shin of the assassin in front of her.

The assassin’s body tipped sideways and floated up. Qing reached out with her fingers neatly pressed together and—PWUUK—there was that thick, clammy sensation of pushing into the inside of a human body, that ecstatic pressure of foreign tissue squeezing her hand, and then the feeling of her fingertips passing through mushy entrails and piercing something hard before ripping through the skin of his back, the blood-soaked flesh meeting open air with a refreshing burst.

Qing, who had punched straight through the assassin’s belly all the way up to her elbow, twisted her body.

SWEEEK—an arrow scraped past and buried itself in the ground.

The overly large ornament hanging from her elbow smashed into the assassin charging from the left, and gobbled up all the oncoming needles with that same body.

In that chaos, the soup rack revealed its true nature: the man swung the rack in a big motion, trying to splash its contents.

But Qing had already been watching him, so by the time he moved, the moment she hurled the dagger she’d taken as spoils—a keepsake from some assassin or other, she’d lost count of which number—aimed at the soup-seller’s lower abdomen, she realized her mistake the instant it left her hand.

And the thrown dagger rammed in hard just below his lower abdomen, in an absolutely horrific spot.

They say it’s the greatest pain a man can feel. The soup rack, which had been tracing a big arc, slipped free before its trajectory reached the endpoint and—SSSHHH—hot oil splashed in the wrong place with that distinctive sound.

“GYAAAH!”

Thanks to that, one assassin got drenched and rolled on the ground.

For a moment, Qing’s guts turned slightly cold.

Oh, come on, hot oil too? Are you insane?

Still, since it worked out, whatever.

In that instant, the last throwing weapon she’d marked earlier—a single dagger—struck Qing’s back with a THUD.

Not PWUUK, but THUD. From the beginning it had been a slow projectile, and it didn’t have enough force to pierce the compressed muscles packed with her personal body-protection qi, so there was a sting and it seemed to have scratched her skin, but that kind of thing heals if you just spit on it.

Even in the middle of that, Qing focused on the one remaining bastard, and on the aura of the woman who’d been screaming.

The charging assassin frowned and twisted his direction; looked like he was planning to leave it for later.

And the woman who’d been supposedly running by in a panic, screaming “Kyaaaah,” suddenly hooked her heel behind her own foot and flopped forward.

And right where she was going to land was the net-wrapped Mandarlo. As she fell, the woman assassin had, at some point, drawn a short spike—

Qing yanked her foot back.

The net jerked toward her, and Mandarlo’s body, scraping the ground, was launched backward. The woman-assassin stabbed the empty ground instead of her target and flopped.

TTAANG—the twang of a crossbow string.

Two more assassins charged in, even in the middle of all this.

For fuck’s sake, it just never ends, never.

Qing clicked her tongue and stomped her left foot down with a THUNK.

Mandarlo, who’d been sliding backward, came to a stop when the net caught under Qing’s heel, right above his head.

Then she hefted him up again and tucked him back under her arm, took one light step—tap—and then one heavy step—KWAANG!

Those two steps, packed with a sky-shaking demonic stomp, came down squarely on the ass of the woman assassin who’d been trying to spring back up. That terrifying footwork, which could carve deep craters even into solid bedrock, was now trampling a person—chunks of flesh and shards of bone burst out in every direction.

Leaving that explosion behind her, Qing picked up speed again.

****

Mandarlo was out of his mind.

What else could he be, when his body was wrapped in a net and all he could do was squirm, being thrown and shoved and dragged, sweeping the ground, spinning, dropping, and getting picked up again...

His view kept flipping with a WHIP, WHIP. He couldn’t fix his focus on any single point, and the only images slicing through the scenery flashing by out of any grasp were blood, streams of blood, exploding blood.

At first, Mandarlo had screamed at the top of his lungs, Let me go! Easy! Please! Start with the net, the net!! and so on.

But if a person keeps getting swung around, their mind can’t help but get shaken right out of them and go hazy.

Once he got there, he was just dragged when he was dragged, thrown when he was thrown, lifted when he was lifted. He no longer even knew what state his body was in.

And in that foggy consciousness, he heard a sound.

“Haah, huhk, huh, hff, huuk.”

Irregular, ragged breaths.

When someone gets so out of breath that the inhale and exhale slamming through their body collide in their windpipe, that kind of sound leaks out.

Which, of course, made sense.

No matter how brutal Instructor Ximen might be, where in the world is it easy to fight off enemies while swinging a grown man around?

Excessive visual stimulation dulls a person’s sight. Whether something is in front of their eyes or not, they stop seeing it.

And when a person shuts down one sense, the attention they’d been pouring into it gets reallocated somewhere else.

And since his body was naturally focused on the sense of hearing, being slung in a net on a body that kept whipping around...

Instructor Ximen’s breathing—her breathing was beautiful, with not a single grating note to catch the ear.

There’s something sensual in a woman’s panting.

That bold, hard instructor was completely unraveled now, unable to suppress those breaths that were like a climax she couldn’t hold back even if she killed herself trying.

Why?

Well.

Mandarlo’s expression settled.

In this moment, the shaking of his torso and the immobility of his bound body drifted far away; what remained was a mind clearer than ever.

With a tragic expression, he opened his mouth—

“Lea—ghk.”

He bit his tongue, hard.

And then he heard her voice.

“Haah—shut your mouth. Huff, huff, at this rate—hah—you’ll bite your tongue.”

He already had.

Because when you’re being swung around like luggage, you really shouldn’t open your mouth carelessly.

****

“He’s clearly exhausted. Let’s get started. We’ll overtake them and block the road ahead. Yeon Baekho, move to the front and find a suitable spot—somewhere we can herd them into an alley. It’s a beast hunt.”

Unlike those petty assassins, this was a group who couldn’t carelessly reveal their identity. There was no benefit if people saw them. They meant to draw their quarry into a deserted place.

If they overtook, blocked the road front and back, and left one back alley open, then—as prey on the run always did—the quarry would flee that way.

He wouldn’t even know they were shepherding him there.

And even if he did know, what could he do? All a mere beast could do was get driven to flee that way and hope for some kind of miracle along the way.

That was what “beast hunt” meant.

It was also a shortened bit of jargon within the group, a near-coded order.

“Understood, Youngban.”

At that, the man called Yeon Baekho abruptly picked up speed.

And when most of the group followed and accelerated after him, it was like the sprint so far hadn’t been fast at all—they whipped away in a blur.

The rear would be blocked by the middle-aged man himself, so it was only natural that more manpower was assigned to blocking the front.

Watching the men racing ahead, the middle-aged man looked down at the scene below, the still-unfolding carnage soaked in fresh blood.

At this level, you had to say that the rumors about Heavenly Flower Sword were no lie—in fact, that she’d been underestimated.

He gave a bitter smile.

Evaluating someone like that woman in terms of martial realms and achievements?

This wasn’t about “realm” at all; this was a completely different axis—divine skill.

She knew how to fight, how to battle. How to wage war.

What were the so-called martial artists like?

In truth, what they called “battle” wasn’t battle at all. Wasn’t it all about announcing their names, pretending to be dignified, and putting on a properly formal sword-duel?

The higher their realm, the worse the tendency got.

It was only the rabble who fought anything like an actual fight. And even then, when a higher master stepped in, didn’t they always clear a big space to set the stage and hold some grand “life-and-death duel” at the top?

But that woman—Heavenly Flower Sword—was not like that.

She had no hesitation about slaughtering her enemies, and she had zero interest in maintaining the ridiculous face that came with calling oneself a martial artist.

She picked up enemies’ swords, threw them, discarded them, abused the weapons. She swung her enemies around and went for vital points, using the kind of “vile methods” martial artists liked to sneer at. She was someone who didn’t care what means she used, as long as she won.

She knew how to wage war.

And a martial artist who also knew how to wage war was too dangerous.

Especially if that person was a talent of the world, one wrapped in rumors of being the next number one under heaven.

A sticky killing intent filled the middle-aged man’s eyes.

She was a woman who absolutely had to die.

****

A strange light flashed in Qing’s eyes.

It was a look you couldn’t have if you were truly gasping with exhaustion.

To say someone was “short of breath” meant their heart was beating so frantically, circulating blood so hard, that their body still couldn’t get the breaths it needed.

So the lungs strained harder to drag in air, and even that wasn’t enough, so the heart worked even harder to circulate the blood.

It was a process that only got worse. Once you reached that point, a person’s mind went hazy, and their gaze could only grow murky.

But Qing’s eyes were perfectly calm.

Because, in truth, she was fine.

So inside, she was only thinking:

Look at these fuckers.

The moment I pretend I’m having a hard time, that’s when they finally decide to try something, huh?