Chapter 765: Forbidden City Journal (11)

Qing’s eyes narrowed.

Qing’s expression was endlessly changeable.

It was because she used her whole face when she made them.

When her mouth was closed she looked faintly sulky, a slightly pouty, “won’t listen to reason” kind of prim beauty.

When she was happy, her face opened up in dramatic full bloom, the absolute peak of riotous splendor; when murderous intent sprouted in her heart, that world-best beauty vanished and her mouth split back to her ears in a vicious grin, turning her into something like a demon.

When she didn’t know what was going on, her eyes and mouth slackened to that face.

And when she put on one of those subtly awkward, faint smiles of the “Ximen Surin school of beauty behavior,” she could stop the hearts of every man and woman in the Central Plains regardless of age.

And at certain moments, some breath-stealing, sensual kind of innocence would surface—a face like a child cruelly, playfully poking and tearing at bugs, that cruel purity kneaded into sultry form.

It was a look that could make the heart of someone like Moyong Mo’s daughter, Moyong Juhee, one of the Five Great Beauties of the martial world, pound to the point of bursting, kindle a deep warmth in her lower abdomen, and make her unconsciously cross and rub her legs together.

Right now was one of those moments.

If one used a certain imaginary “direction method” only used in Qing’s homeland to cut away a cross-section of Qing’s head, one would see the image of the upper dantian, spreading out as a round chamber in the very top of the brain.

The upper dantian’s walls were covered in a bright, hot, vivid peony-pink paper, so bright it tipped over from gorgeous into downright lascivious.

If one looked closely at those peony-pink walls, one would see that this was not wallpaper but a flow of some kind of fluid, that what seeped from the walls and ran down them like paint was a thick, sticky substance.

The evidence of that was the peony-colored droplets that dripped, plip, plip, one by one from the ceiling of the upper dantian.

And beneath that, a tiny little Joy-Energy avatar, wearing nothing but a few gold threads and a couple of layers of transparent gauze.

The Joy-Energy avatar, with a serious face, stretched out a finger, poked the sticky peony-colored drug seeping from the walls, and popped it into her mouth.

Mmm. Mmmmm. Her fine little eyebrows wiggled and twitched.

After savoring it for quite some time, the Joy-Energy avatar nodded and nodded.

Then, delighted, she began to go SPLISH-SPLASH, running and jumping and dancing all around the inside of the upper dantian.

It was at that moment.

SQUEAK—the door opened and another tiny figure stepped into the upper dantian, this one wearing a Buddhist kasaya: the Tendon-Washing Water-Energy avatar.

At that, the peony-colored drugs retreated en masse as if they’d met their natural enemy, putting distance between themselves.

The Joy-Energy avatar scrunched up her little face and snapped her palm out flat with a firm, decisive look.

From of old, pleasure was a kind of mental liberation, a heat of passion that made one forget every impure thought and completely immerse oneself, bringing body and mind into a state of stability—the very best health regimen.

And right now the upper dantian was in an environment where murderous intent had saturated everything in the most vicious colors.

They needed to make active use of this opportunity.

The Tendon-Washing Water-Energy avatar frowned, but in the end she shook her head and turned back out of the room.

And after that, SPLISH-SPLASH, the Joy-Energy avatar’s path of running, spinning, and leaping inside the upper dantian continued without end...

Gabiya squeezed her eyes shut.

I should have anticipated this situation!

The women of the Central Plains were a people overflowing with modesty and stubbornness; unless it was for bathing, they were extremely reluctant to let anyone lay hands directly on their bare skin.

But Her Ladyship was terribly open-minded and on top of that, passionate.

And despite the fact that Her Ladyship had absolutely no resistance to these acts, she also apparently knew nothing about them.

Even as her breathing gradually grew rougher, with a certain tremor shivering through it, even as she twitched and jolted in response, her face was filled with nothing but puzzlement.

To think that with such an obscenely lewd body, with such an honest, dutifully responsive body, she could still be this guilelessly innocent!

A woman who has no idea what kind of pleasure she’s sinking into and is simply “sensitive,” nothing more!

That makes things easy.

Thus she had judged that it would be fine to boldly proceed just like this.

Originally, the perfumed-oil massage method was supposed to start by sending light touches from the hands and neck and back, a process of gradually extending one’s hands outward, dismantling vigilance and making it feel natural.

But she’d been in a hurry.

Because it had felt like this would make the job easy.

More than anything, she had wanted to see the disordered state of an exalted personage who wasn’t even aware of her own pleasure.

However.

Even though she had known that Her Ladyship was a martial artist of the martial world, a proper expert whose name was known abroad, she had not properly understood what that meant.

When people got excited, they tended to forget their pain and grow rough and bold in their movements.

Even if the women of the palace lost their reason, they were the sort of opponents that a true yoga practitioner like Gabiya could easily subdue.

But a martial artist? And an expert on top of that?

And on top of that, what on earth was the identity of this reassuringly solid palace maid?

How was she managing to subdue a true yoga practitioner using nothing but pure physical strength?

However, Gabiya had not closed her eyes out of resignation or surrender.

Quite the opposite.

It was to gather her disordered body and mind, and stretch her energy out through her seven chakras.

That’s right. For all that, Her Ladyship is only an ignorant outsider to the perfumed-oil massage method, someone who’s just roughly copying something she’s experienced once.

Of course, even for herself, pouring on that much perfumed oil could be dangerous.

This perfumed oil warmed the circulation of the blood, raised body temperature, and awakened slumbering senses, making them sensitive—and it was a top-grade oil personally compounded by Lady Ryeongju.

But for a yoga practitioner, pleasure was part of the training that led to Nirvana; the very essence of Heavenly Maiden Order cultivation was that pleasure did not rule the body, but was controlled by the mind.

To be stimulated physically and yet not be driven to arousal.

No clumsy, amateurish touch could violate the defenses of a true practitioner!

And so Gabiya calmly began building walls in her heart.

The body was finite but the mind was infinite; everything one saw, heard, and felt was up to the mind, and her spirit was clear and transparent and thus could not be invaded...

Before she knew it, Gabiya was standing in a quiet garden.

A tranquil garden with a lotus lake in bloom.

The high walls encircling her rose up toward the sky, solid and unshaken by the slightest tremor.

The sunlight was warm and the cool breeze brushed her cheeks—

It was then.

BANG! RRRRUMBLE!!!

With a massive shock, the walls shuddered.

Stone dust BURST up in clouds, and Gabiya’s body reeled, a short, ragged breath—h-haaah—tearing out of her.

W-what? How?

BANG! BANG! The deafening crashes of something hammering at the walls came again and again.

The surface of the lake heaved, water geysered up, and the lotus blossoms rose all at once into full bloom, painting everything around her in red and white.

Gabiya, who had lost control of her body and fallen, saw, in her wobbling vision, eight tall pillars rising beyond the wall.

Eight long, unusually white and elegant fingers stretched out without end, casting their shadows.

What in the world is... what is this!? How!?

Gabiya made another attempt to observe her own body.

Eight fingertips danced across her skin; the way her own life-energy rampaged in response to them as it pleased was resonance—this was resonance of prana.

Everywhere they touched, her own energy moved on its own, meeting theirs as if craving them from within, and it felt as if those touches were directly stroking the chakras connected there—an electrifying ecstasy.

Gabiya’s heart dropped like a stone.

Union. It was the stage of Union! The stage of Union where one accepted the other’s prana, their mind, and embraced it with one’s chakras!

But why! How! I never opened my heart to Her Ladyship!

Gabiya twisted her body violently.

But with her limbs pinned above and below, she could not resist; the walls collapsed, the garden shook, thunder and lightning roared, and her consciousness reeled.

Suddenly, she remembered the ancient training of primordial yoga, the more primitive yet which had produced countless Nirvana-attainers—the basics of that archaic yoga training.

Sincerity.

If one met the other with true sincerity, it connected mind to mind and led one into true pleasure.

Don’t tell me... Her Ladyship... feels that strongly for me?

I... this heavenly maiden... I can’t possibly endure...!

If Qing could have read Gabiya’s inner monologue, she would have said, the hell do you mean “true sincerity,” what the fuck are you eating.

She simply had her own trump card.

The health-art she had learned to defeat the monstrous destroyer of worlds, Eo Nyeonyeong, with absolutely no ulterior motive and purely from the single-hearted desire to beat Eon Yeonyeong.

The Vitality Palace’s health art!

Ultimate weapon, Joy-Yoyo Art!

And she was running that Joy-Yoyo Art with the internal energy of the Maiden’s Joy Art, whose own ability was said to be enough to make even a stone woman faint.

On top of that, she had slathered on the perfumed oil crafted by India’s top manufacturer; this was an astonishing scene in which the best health art of India and the best health art of the Central Plains were dramatically combining in one place.

Gabiya’s face was a mess, the distinctive lethal eye makeup melted by tears and running in streaks.

“M-My Lady, haaak, p-please, enough.”

“Come on, you still think you can hold out like this? What is this stuff? What the hell have you been smearing on me? Want to explain properly what kind of drug this is?”

“It’s, it’s perfumed—perfumed oil, and, haaak.”

Gabiya broke.

According to her desperate explanation, gasping on the verge of losing consciousness, the perfumed oil’s effects were as follows.

One: It dissolved and expelled the impurities that had seeped into the skin and replaced them with its medicinal properties.

It refined the skin, making it clearer and stronger, erased scars, and had wondrous effects on all kinds of skin diseases.

Two: It warmed the blood and sped up its circulation, raising body temperature.

Thanks to this, the body brimmed with vitality, the roots of illness were burned away, it erased muscle pain and added resilience, protecting the body from injury.

Three: It awakened the senses and made them sensitive.

It carried the function of bringing much greater results to practitioners seeking to awaken the Pleasure Chakra through pleasure.

“T-that’s... that’s... a-all. That’s everything.”

“Eh. That’s it? What about side effects? Any addiction? If you’re still lying to me...”

“N-no, no, none, there are none.”

“You sure you don’t want to say that again more clearly?”

“It’s really... really the truth.”

“Wow, look at this woman, she’s tough.”

“Uuugh, I, c-can’t, I can’t any, any mo—uuh.”

And time passed.

Time passed and passed.

Qing quietly shifted off Gabiya’s thighs.

Gabiya just lay there limp, fine foam dribbling from the corner of her mouth, her eye makeup smeared and only the whites showing as she drifted in and out.

“...Huh. Mm...”

Guess it really is good stuff.

Mm. Well. Mm.

In that case it’s not like I did a bad thing, right?

I slathered her with something that’s good for the body, and, uh, I gave her a big boost in her Pleasure Chakra training too, so?

Gabiya had spilled everything.

Not just the effects of the drug, but also why she had used it on Qing.

She had wanted to seize Qing’s heart through pleasure.

She had wanted to become a precious maidservant who could make Her Ladyship more delighted than anyone else, and afterward ask her to take care of Heavenly-Maiden Temple’s reconstruction and revival.

Haeryu was outraged.

At first she had thought, is this really okay?

And what happened to our princess to make her end up like this?

In the past, even when she was playing around, she had been a tightrope-walking master who never crossed the line, and Haeryu couldn’t help thinking, just how brutal must life in the martial world have been, for her eyes to look this far gone now, what do we even do...

But once she heard Gabiya’s confession, her whole expression turned vicious.

This low barbarian bitch dared to what about our princess?

“My Lady, what shall we do with this woman? Shall I go report her to Her Majesty right now and have her strung up and hacked to pieces?”

The first “Her Majesty” was Qing; the second “Her Majesty” was the Empress.

“Eh, leave it. It’s a bit galling, but it’s not like she had malicious intent...”

That part about wanting to make her crave pleasure was kind of galling.

But Qing already understood that for Gabiya, “pleasure” was a concept that overlapped with training.

Mm. The purpose was somewhat impure, but I guess you can’t say it was out of malice?

“How can you say that about this kind of woman. My Lady, you’re too kind.”

The unconscious Gabiya might not have agreed with that assessment.

No, but what was with her, anyway, that she’d gone all the way to full-on collapse?

Even if Qing had used Joy-Yoyo Art, she hadn’t touched any “embarrassing” parts even once, just a flapping, quivering, poodle-trembling—mm, to be fair, the results were pretty spectacular.

Mm, but this bed... well, it’s summer, so if I hang it outside it’ll dry fast. What am I going to do about tonight, though.

“Tsk. What do you mean, kind.”

At that, Haeryu whipped her head around, vigorously shaking it as she protested.

“Truly. You were like that before, too. Back when you were bitten by that damned mutt during sword practice, even while you were bleeding so much you were dripping, you said animals might bite and secretly told the physician—”

“Eh. Hold up. What’s that about?”

“It would be wonderful if your memories came back. It was, how many years ago? There was a lion pup being raised over at Taewang Hall, and its snack, what was it again? Anyway, you were trying some of its snacks...”

Lion pup? Qing’s ears perked up. There are dogs in the Forbidden City?

Of course there were. The Forbidden City not only had dogs, it even kept a single elephant—but there was no way Qing could have known that.

But more than the lion pup, there was something else that had snagged her attention just now.

Cutting off Haeryu’s rambling old story—a tale about stealing a dog’s snack and getting badly bitten—Qing asked again.

“No, I don’t mean the biting story. You said sword practice? Princess Yeonsul learned swordplay? I thought royals weren’t allowed to learn martial arts or anything like that?”