Chapter 786: Bloodline (20)

“Hang on, don’t take this the wrong way.”

Qing quickly took a step back.

Because if she provoked Beom Yakgong right now, the only one whose situation got worse would be Qing herself.

First she had to get him to listen, right? If she wanted words to work, she had to make him actually hear her.

This was just laying the groundwork. A proper speech was supposed to open with something strong that didn’t sound weak, something that hit hard, so you jabbed his eardrums open first with some cocky line.

The art of war said that if you knew yourself and knew your enemy, you could fight a hundred battles without peril.

If you knew the enemy and knew yourself, you’d naturally avoid fights you were going to lose, and if you couldn’t avoid them, you’d at least work to minimize the damage.

And by barely rolling and scrambling through thirty-some exchanges, Qing had gotten to know her enemy.

Now she knew enough about Beom Yakgong’s level.

If this keeps up I’m actually going to die...

For the moment, since her eyes were adjusting more and more to his sword art, Qing felt like her movement was a little easier.

But that was all.

A fight wasn’t something you did alone.

Beom Yakgong would be getting used to her movements as well.

Qing’s body was superhuman in every respect, and on top of that, thanks to the insane torture of oil-soak training, she’d gained this freakish flexibility that let her pull off wildly creative evasive maneuvers.

But once the enemy got used to that?

Once he understood her speed and reaction time, how far her joints could actually bend, and all the human preferences, which way she tended to go in certain situations, that kind of thing?

Even if it felt easier right now, that was all.

This was a martial artist who’d reached the Manifest Realm—what kind of mediocrity did she expect? It was only a matter of time before he caught up.

So at this point, the only thing Qing could really rely on was the Forbidden City’s warriors.

I can’t do this alone. We need a mob to dogpile him.

God, so when are they getting here?

She had to buy time until then.

“Okay. I have now learned, down to the bone, that I can’t stand against you, so listen up. I’m only saying this once. Formless Art!”

“Wait—”

“All phenomena are born and die and undergo endless change so that not even a single instant remains the same, and thus we say all appearances are truly formless and do not exist. But I, the Formless One, say—are appearances truly formless and nonexistent? If something has changed into something else, does that mean its essence itself has changed? No. In change there still exists an essence, and if one can perceive the essence of all things in the world, then one can penetrate any change whatsoever.”

“You have put in the effort, but that is the Buddhist theory of impermanence, is it not? Formless Art is not that impermanence.”

“...Ah.”

Qing flinched.

She’d been pretty proud of that opening for a martial art, thought she’d done a good job tying it to that busted-cheat property of “see any martial art once, learn it instantly.”

And it wasn’t that kind of impermanence?

But she was already in too deep to stop.

“Hey, who learned Formless Art, me or you, Beom Yakgong? For all you know the Formless One studied Buddhist doctrine and came up with it that way, it’s not like I asked him how he built it step by step, and anyway, don’t you know Buddhism and Daoism all meet in the end? Uh—‘all rivers return to the sea,’ yeah, all rivers return to the sea.”

“That is exactly the face you make when you are bluffing. But there is no particular need to argue its truth or falsehood. I can simply confirm it directly—”

“Wait!”

Qing frantically waved her hands.

He looked like he was about to charge in right now.

So the “just shout some random martial art as Formless Art and stall for time” plan wasn’t going to work.

What is this thing, anyway? If I die does it automatically transfer or something? Why is he so desperate to kill someone without even a proper Q&A?

Then... what do I do?

Qing ground her brain for dear life—and then, in an instant, it felt like a light flicked on in one corner of her skull.

“Look, look at this!”

“If you would simply remain still, I could make this painless—”

Beom Yakgong’s words stopped dead.

Because the brilliant light blossoming from Qing’s hands, a shimmering, iridescent radiance of five colors he had never once seen before, and yet in colors you couldn’t pin down as any one thing—

It was a square horn that erupted from Qing’s hand.

The very moment you laid eyes on it, some instinct screamed that it was a sacred relic of some kind, a mysterious substance from some plane other than this world, something that acted directly on a person’s spirit and soul.

“You said you wanted Formless Art, right?”

Qing held out the Formless Art sitting on her palm.

Of course, it was absolutely not Formless Art.

It was Heavenly-Demon Soul, the mental parasite that had finally, after long unconscious torment, given up and chosen death so its ego had collapsed.

Qing’s killer trump card that hadn’t shown itself in a very long time—Heavenly-Demon Summon.

“I’ll hand it over, so back up. I’m going to chuck it.”

“This is fortuitous.”

Beom Yakgong took a step forward with those words.

Qing faltered and took a step back.

“No, I said back up.”

“This is fortuitous. I did not feel at peace at the thought of harming the princess. If you wish to live, you will hand it over before you die, will you not?”

“Oh for—wak, waaaahk!”

BOOM! The stomp that shattered Hwanggeuk Hall’s floor.

But before that, the figure of the old man was already right up in her face—what, did he just break the sound barrier and outrun his own noise?

But Qing had been braced the moment Beom Yakgong’s foot lifted.

His blade swung past just barely in front of her nose as she stomped hard and sprang back, the sword wind sharp enough that it made her skin sting like it’d been scratched.

Qing’s body stretched long as she flew backward.

Having just barely avoided getting her head cut clean in two, Qing smashed through the side gate with a splintering CRUNCH and shot out, tumbling onto the marble foundation outside the eaves.

And then—

“He’s out!” “Cut down the traitor Beom!” “Waaaaaah!!” “Long live! Long live! Long, long live!”

Shouts to rouse their battle spirit thundered from all sides.

At the same time PEEEEE, PEEP-PEEP, the shrill whistles announcing the enemy’s sighting blared everywhere.

Even as Qing rolled away, back and neck and head all bouncing in a pathetic tumble, in the madly spinning panorama of the world she picked out the faces of the martial men charging in.

The ones in gold uniforms were Golden Guard, and the ones not in gold but in flashy outfits with some of them even wearing makeup—those were eunuchs from Eastern Depot.

I never thought I’d be happy to see Golden Guard and Eastern Depot!

And the whistle, too!

Qing sprang to her feet and, with the happiest expression in the world, ran toward the Forbidden City warriors storming in to fill the vast courtyard of Hwanggeuk Hall.

SWOOSH, the fierce presence slamming into her back.

But Qing’s figure scattered into eight.

Beom Yakgong’s charge smashed through the silhouettes spreading in all directions, like he was cutting through fog.

Qing landed right behind a Golden Guard warrior charging toward her, then whipped around immediately.

The palace warriors, each one raising their cold blue sword energy high.

All at once they hurled themselves toward Beom Yakgong, the Golden Guard warriors’ internal energy drawing trails of starlight in the air.

It was then.

The palace warriors flowed left and right.

Like a stream of water parting to slip around a hidden reef, in a smooth, natural motion.

But for the palace warriors, it was a nightmare of an instant.

A huge, irresistible flow.

Swept up in it, their weapons thrust out on their own, spearing comrades in the side, slicing off arms, even turning and cutting their owners’ thighs.

Warriors who had been sprinting forward suddenly lost their footing, skidding as they crashed into the ground, spraying blood.

Holy shit, what even is that?

Good thing I only dodged—if I’d tried some half-assed counter, I’d be dead for real.

Qing had been able to barely avoid Beom Yakgong’s martial arts because his swordwork wasn’t aimed at annihilating the enemy, so his swings hadn’t been razor-edged.

But look.

Look at the power when his martial arts weren’t offense but defense, not killing but guarding the self, when the art unfolded exactly according to its original purpose, its original image—what kind of divine might it showed when a Manifest Realm hand brought it out.

“Exterminate the traitor!” “Kill him!” “His Majesty has commanded it!” “The enemy of His Majesty!” “Diiiie!!”

And yet, even in the face of that divine might, the palace warriors’ momentum was still savage beyond belief.

Their eyes all glowed with a dim red light that left long tails in their gaze, and with clearly unnatural ferocity they hurled their bodies forward without hesitation.

Beom Yakgong’s sword flowed on like a grand river.

A slow sword that never hurried, but a flow so immense no human could stand against it, like the waters of the Long River itself.

People flew through the air spraying blood, someone in mid-stride suddenly pitched into the ground and slid, a body without a head took three or four more steps and then fell.

Deaths beyond counting.

And yet it was just one old martial man with a single sword; no one could even touch him. It was a massacre like moths flying into flame.

In that instant, Qing saw Beom Yakgong’s expression.

Those eyes, rounded in something like surprise, then softening into a curve with a certain conviction.

Goosebumps raced up Qing’s back.

This old bastard really didn’t know until now how strong his own martial art was, or how he was supposed to apply it against someone.

But now, it seemed, he’d figured it out.

She didn’t know exactly what, but by nature that kind of martial art was probably meant to stay planted in one spot and collapse approaching enemies using their own force.

Qing stomped down with a BOOM, shaking the ground.

She couldn’t just stand here and let some old man, only now having his first real taste of actual combat, have an enlightenment.

Even if that didn’t happen, she had to finish him before he got any more used to this.

On top of that, what was wrong with these Golden Guard bodyguards?

Every single one of them in gold was just charging without a shred of concern for their lives.

Watching it, all she saw was a pile of pointless, miserable dog deaths stacking up.

Granted, nothing good had ever come from getting mixed up with Golden Guard bodyguards, and since they took the Son of Heaven’s orders as reason enough not to care about their own lives, they obviously saw commoners’ lives as nothing but tools to burn.

But even so, they technically had come to help her.

On a basic human level, she couldn’t just let them die.

And more than anything—

That had to be killed right now.

While there were still crazy people who’d charge a Manifest Realm master like lunatics, while there were still lunatics willing to hurl themselves at him in a mob, she had to crush his windpipe.

DENG!

The shockwave of Tathagata Divine Palm crossed the air in tandem with the temple bell’s toll.

Beom Yakgong’s flowing swordwork wavered ever so slightly.

They said you couldn’t cut water with a blade, but for that briefest, fleeting instant, even water split into two halves when the slash passed.

DENG! DENG! DENG!

Twin palms fired one after another, shockwaves rushing in.

At a glance they didn’t seem to do much damage.

But the Golden Guard blades, which had been curving toward each other, as if throwing off some kind of binding curse, only barely brushed as they passed and managed to slip free of the tragedy of mutual slaughter.

And then—CLANG, CLANG-CLANG!—the Golden Guard bodyguards’ internal energy finally collided with Beom Yakgong’s sword, spraying fierce sparks.

“Go! Get him!”

Qing dropped her body low and snatched a sword from the hand of a bodyguard still coughing up blood.

She sprang up like she’d been snapped off a bowstring, her waist bending like a drawn bow.

Her right hand, sword tip forward, drove her elbow as far back as it could go, and her left hand pointed straight toward the enemy, marking the target of her killing intent.

BOOM! Her front foot hammered the ground.

The recoil from that heavy stomp traveled up her ankle, past her knee, across her pelvis, and through that bizarre circulation steadily amplified as it surged upward, toward her sword.

She couldn’t do it like that old Martial Celestial.

Back then he’d been born overwhelmingly gifted, the center of the world, striking down like Heaven, rising up like earth, and in between, the Martial Celestial would stretch out his sword as if it took no preparation at all and punch holes in cliff faces.

That one move from the Lonely-Without-Equal Sword—No-Poison, No True Man.

But she couldn’t do it like that.

The Martial Celestial would show off, setting his blade right in front of his nose then sliding it out with a smooth thrust, but if someone at her level tried to copy that, she’d just end up bedridden.

So she’d do it her way.

Just thrash with everything she had, however she could.

Qing’s right arm shot out like a bolt of light.

The massive internal energy in her dantian blasted out in one go, and under that load every meridian in her body screamed at once.

At the far end of that, the sword she let go of turned into a beam of light wrapped in sunset-yellow internal energy, a single ray piercing through the world.

Beom Yakgong clenched his teeth so hard the muscles under his ears bulged, and his hastily drawn circle with the sword warped as he whipped the blade in a rush.

In that wild motion, the Golden Guard bodyguard’s internal energy grazed his shoulder and torso, but the ray he absolutely had to block right now—

Qing’s one move, fired at him from practically arm’s reach, that was damn near a thrown sword—he barely managed to bring his blade up to it.

KRA-KOOM!!

With a deafening roar, the straight line of light veered off at a sharp angle.

And even then, it didn’t slow down.

The flying sword of light slammed into the first roof tier of Hwanggeuk Hall—

KWA-ROOOOM!! With a massive explosion, roughly a quarter of the roof collapsed with a crashing rumble as a cloud of dust billowed up.

In that moment, everyone froze at once and stared at Hwanggeuk Hall with appalled eyes.

On that golden roof of Hwanggeuk Hall, it looked like a boulder had dropped straight through, taking a whole chunk down in a roar.

And then, as if they’d rehearsed it, countless gazes swung to Qing.

Qing opened her mouth and shouted.

“How dare you! You treacherous bastard! How dare you bring down Hwanggeuk Hall (Hall of the Supreme Pole)! Unforgivable!”