Chapter 795: Diancang Expedition (6)

THIS MURIM DEVOURS HEAVEN AND EARTH! Previously on.

The most horrifying thing in the world is food.

So I’ll erase it from this world.

I’ll chew it all up, crunch-crunch, and swallow it down.

Six-Flower Seomun Cheong—the terrifying serial slayer-wraith who made every dish under heaven tremble with her grudge against food—had only that thought.

Burning with revenge against food, Seomun Cheong slaughtered the cuisines of the entire Central Plains, until at last she dared to raid the very heart of the realm, the center of Zhonghua—Beijing—going so far as to assault even the imperial cuisine of the Forbidden City itself!

But then came shocking news, a colossal twist!

This grotesque food-grub girl who ate like a beggar... was actually of noble imperial blood—an honest-to-gods princess!

Yet Seomun Cheong, possessed by a ferocious hatred of food, didn’t merely fail to uphold the dignity of her exalted lineage—she horrified the entire palace with table manners beneath humanity itself.

In the end, even the Son of Heaven, brimming with paternal love, turned pale and sick at those brutally atrocious eating manners and that endless eating capacity.

At last, the Son of Heaven declared:

You pig—

you are not my daughter.

And also, the imperial cuisine is tasteless. I will give you a top-tier guest token that lets you eat anywhere without ever standing in line, so please—please—get out of my palace.

And thus, the rampant gluttoness Seomun Cheong who even devoured the food of the imperial palace—no, who emptied the royal granaries in a merciless massacre—safely returned to the martial world!

From the martial world’s perspective, this may be deeply regrettable.

And so, Seomun Cheong, who gnawed through even the cafeteria meals of Righteous-Proper Martial Academy—her unfinished fate still unfulfilled—turned her eyes toward that distant frontier: Yunnan.

In every city she brushed past, inn clerks and head cooks, having lost every last product they meant to sell, wept thanks-filled wails—creating a dreadful flood disaster soaked in tears.

From Namso County of Henan to Deungju County.

Entering Hubei—Noha-gu County, Yangbeon County, Namjang County, Heungsan County...!

And at last, she reached the front courtyard of the Priestess Order, the martial world’s most famous mysterious sect—renowned less for martial skill and more as a sanctuary of beauties!

At that moment, a righteous band rose up and declared they would stop Seomun Cheong’s ceaseless slaughter of food!

Finally—at Jagwi County, at Seol House Trading Company, atop a super-extra-large dining table in a massive banquet hall, with dishes piled like mountains—they threw a challenge right into the face of the ghost-glutton Seomun Cheong:

If you can eat it, then eat it...!

...

“Ugh, I’m stuffed. Seriously. I’m gonna burst.”

Qing spoke while scooping up a halved fig with a spoon, yum-yum. (Astonishingly, a fig is also called a fig in the Central Plains.)

At that, the group’s gaze flicked back and forth: to Qing’s hugely swollen belly, to the mountain of figs on the tea table—literally piled up to eye level—and then to her busy hands, splitting another fig in half with her fingernail and even raising aura.

But Qing was righteous.

Fruit was fruit. It wasn’t a meal.

That meant no matter how full you were, you could still eat it, and it helped digestion and was healthy, and it even didn’t make you gain weight.

Wasn’t that a solemn truth guaranteed by all mothers and grandmothers in the world?

“Hey, old man. I’m staying the night today.”

“Staying the night, huh? So you really do think of this place like a restaurant. Usually you’re in a hurry to gobble one meal and bolt.”

“Come on. Old man. You’re like this even when I say I’m staying.”

“You only stay when it suits you. Tsk, tsk.”

Choi Ri-ong said that, but he couldn’t hide the reflexive reaction of his mouth corners curling up.

Maybe it was because of Jayeo, head buried against the old man’s shoulder, limp and drooping.

In truth, the kid hadn’t even walked that much on her own feet, so what was she so tired about—though kids were like that.

Jayeo had been nodding off—dip, dip—while eating, and Choi Ri-ong’s eyes had flashed.

At last, he was enjoying the late-life luxury of holding his “granddaughter” (to him) and putting her to sleep.

The old man had become gentler than before, but he looked so happy that... fine. One night.

Originally, the reason Qing ate dinner at Seol House Trading Company and then climbed up to the Priestess Order was because she couldn’t just loiter in the front courtyard without even paying her respects to her master—so with her master not present right now, well.

After a hearty dinner, Qing went looking for the greatest intellect among the Three Cities—the Three-Cities-tier greatest intellect: that Seol House bastard.

That Seol House bastard was a beauty now.

A broad-shouldered, tall kind of beauty—handsome in a way that made him look like he’d be good at sports.

But with that bold, dashing face, the sight of him hunched under lamplight, absorbed in sewing, felt strangely mismatched.

And the thing he was diligently stitching together was—an artificial breast from the Divine-Thief secret manual.

“What is this? Cross-dressing turned into a hobby now? You finally found your gender identity?”

“Don’t say something that horrific. It’s just work. Work came up.”

“Huh. Another honey trap?”

At that, the Seol House bastard gave a bitter smile.

“Men are that sort of creature. Their brain’s attached to a cock-club, so the moment they see a woman they lose their mind thinking about fucking. You know that too, don’t you?”

“I’ve seen plenty of bandits like that.”

“Ah, I don’t mean stabbing with a blade. You know, with women, there’s something men want to stick—”

“I know too, okay? Do you think I’m the type to hear ‘bandit’ and assume ‘wants to stick a knife’?”

“Hey. At least pretend to be embarrassed.”

It was teasing as natural as breathing, like always.

And Qing was immune anyway.

“So. What’d you come to ask this time? I don’t know why you keep coming to this ignoramus when you’ve got that Zhuge guy, but.”

“Ignoramus? If that Seol House bastard is an ignoramus, then the whole world is a nine-fenneled monkey. Humility goes too far and it becomes a ratio, you know? The greatest intellect of Three-Cities-tier shouldn’t say stuff like that.”

“...What kind of half-baked nonsense is that?”

“Whatever. Half-God Long-Tribulation Saber, Upward-Heaven Slaughter, Heaven-Shattering Reverse-Blood Hand-Heart Piercing Formula—ugh, why is this so long. Anyway, do you know anything?”

The Seol House bastard’s expression hardened.

Back in the Tian Shan Divine Market, too, she’d come every night to ask—so when you looked back on it, wasn’t she the vicious woman who stirred up blood tribulations and dragged home martial arts?

“No matter what, even I have to draw the line at the Ten Great Demonic Arts Under Heaven. And if you’re going to learn them, it has to be those three? Every last one is the kind that makes you go bad.”

“Go bad how?”

“Here. Here.”

The Seol House bastard tapped his own head.

Then, with an expression like he couldn’t believe it:

“...If you don’t know, just say you don’t know. Don’t do it with your face. Your only good point is that you’ve got a peerless beauty of a face—if you use it like that, what are you doing?”

“Hearing it from you makes me even more pissed off. You’re a Three-Cities-tier intellectual and you’re still a peerless beauty, so I can’t even compare. Wow, I feel shabby. Me? I’m like, the youngest Transcendent Realm or something? Nothing worth bragging about...”

“Ahem. You really are something.”

The Seol House bastard slowly shook his head.

No matter how he was the greatest intellect of the Three Cities, he couldn’t stand against the wicked tongue of Formless Poison.

“I’ll tell you only what I know. Half-God Long-Tribulation Saber is a saber art that feeds people to the blade to make a demonic saber—and you don’t wield the demonic saber so much as you get wielded by it. When a person is wielded by a blade, what do you think happens?”

Qing hadn’t been curious what the martial art was—she’d been asking where it was, and whether he knew any demonic heads who’d learned it—

but it was still interesting, so she listened.

Upward-Heaven Slaughter—also called Upward-Heaven Howl—was a sound art: it made the mind muddled and shook up the inside by producing a huge laughing sound.

It didn’t have some grandiose power like bursting heads with laughter alone, but if your lung capacity held up, it was a powerful art that let you laugh through an entire fight and keep the advantage.

The problem was that such an evil laugh couldn’t come from a sane mind.

The more you trained it, the more you had no choice but to become a madman.

“Heaven-Shattering Reverse-Blood Hand-Heart Piercing Formula is a heart method. I’ve heard it reverses your internal circulation. Meaning it goes up from the lower dantian along the Conception Vessel to the upper dantian, then down the Governing Vessel to the perineum. Hm. Perineum. Do you know where the perineum is?”

“What am I, ten? Why are you obsessing over the perineum point?”

For reference, the perineum is the acupoint between the legs—specifically between the genitals and the anus.

“But reversing your internal circulation—does that even make sense? You’d get qi deviation and go insane on the spot.”

“That’s why I said it makes you go bad.”

Did it make sense? No.

You’d get qi deviation and go insane?

You did get it, and you did go insane.

“So those kids who went bad—any news? Like, they showed up somewhere?”

“People who’ve properly gone bad don’t know how to live quietly. If they appear, rumors would spread instantly. Have you heard any?”

“I’m always bad at rumors. Seol House Trading Company’s everywhere, so you’ve got to hear stuff here and there.”

The Seol House bastard let out a long sigh.

“If you truly want it, I’ll look into it once.”

“Don’t go asking around everywhere, though. If a rumor spreads that Seol House Trading Company is hunting Ten Great Demonic Arts Under Heaven, then what?”

“You say that while asking... fine. You must have your reasons. Hm. You do have reasons, right? Yeah. You have reasons.”

“It’s true I don’t think much, but you don’t have to emphasize it that hard.”

“I feel like I have to emphasize it...”

Because no matter how much you emphasized it, it still wouldn’t be enough.

Qing had just asked without much thought—big trading company, sensitive to rumors; and if he was the Three Cities’ greatest intellect, maybe he’d picked something up.

But the members of Seol House Trading Company didn’t see it that way.

The Supreme One has given an order!

A glorious order bestowed by the Supreme One!

Half-God Long-Tribulation Saber! Upward-Heaven Slaughter! Heaven-Shattering Reverse-Blood Hand-Heart Piercing Formula!

Find them! Search the entire world if you must!

The believers, who had been quietly working their honest trades, all burned with zeal at the stern guidance of the sage-god who had descended upon the mortal world.

...

The next day, Seol House Trading Company felt oddly chilly.

“Mm. Doesn’t it feel kind of empty?”

Normally, when she wandered through Seol House Trading Company, staff would run into her and enthusiastically share their snacks. Not that she particularly wanted to be given anything, but today it was strangely quiet.

“Mmm. It’s usually like this. It only gets crowded when sworn little sister comes. Normally it’s like this.”

Gyeon Pohee’s “mmm” meant yes, and “mmm-mmm” meant no.

According to her, Seol House Trading Company wasn’t usually crowded.

After breakfast, Qing climbed up to the Priestess Order together to drop off Jin Jangmyeong.

“Great Ancestor, you’re here? And Martial Uncle Jin too.”

“Ah—then where’s Jayeo?”

“Jayeo’s down below. I’m going to greet the sect master for a moment, then I’m heading to Yunnan for a bit.”

“What—right after you get here, you’re leaving again?”

The front gate of the Priestess Order was strangely calm.

Without the noisy nonsense, it felt empty—like something had been scooped out.

Of course.

Because those two weren’t here.

“Hm? Then where are Sarang and Yeonseo?”

“Since yesterday afternoon through the night watch, they’ve been on duty the whole time. They said they had a feeling you’d come today, Great Ancestor. But I guess their feeling was a bit off? They’ll be sleeping now—should I call them?”

It wasn’t a “feeling,” really—those two always got Qing’s visit date in advance through Seol House Trading Company’s ingredient-delivery roster.

But this time, Qing had stayed the night.

“No. If they stood watch and they’re sleeping, there’s no need to wake them. I’ll see them later.”

Qing stopped by her small quarters to straighten her clothes, then headed to the Sect Master’s Hall.

She paid her respects to the Priestess Order’s sect master, Wang Juhee—who now carried a warm, generous presence that didn’t match the sobriquet Heaven-Escape Sword at all.

She stayed briefly, looked over her disciples’ faces one by one, ate one hearty meal of the Priestess Order’s delicious food for the first time in a while—

And only then did Qing head back out through the mountain gate again.

If it were up to her, she’d rest at home for a few days before leaving, but... well. If she was going anyway, she could just go and come back quick.

“Travel safely. Don’t stay out too long.”

Jin Jangmyeong saw Qing off.

Unfortunately, Wang Juhee did not permit Jin Jangmyeong to go out again and again.

He’d been gone for over a season.

If he kept wandering around, when was he going to train?

Or was he going to become like someone else—at least reach the Manifest Realm?

If it was unfair, then the only solution was to become strong.

And so, after a brief return home, Qing set out once more on the roads of the martial world.

Distance remaining to the Diancang Sect: about four thousand five hundred li.