Chapter 810: Our Wish Is Slaughter (1)

Where, exactly, and how, did Taepyeongja sell off all those people?

In truth, human trafficking was never something a mere medicine peddler could do easily.

What was the point of gathering up a bunch of slaves? Where was he going to sell them, and how?

It was hopeless to go digging around on his own to find a place that needed slaves in the first place, and he couldn’t exactly show up out of nowhere and go, By any chance, are you suffering a labor shortage? I’ve got some fresh slaves here, interested? and start haggling.

Even if he did run around like that, a person was something you had to keep fed, clothed, and asleep—every process of simply breathing cost money—so how could a mere medicine peddler shoulder that?

So there had to be a set delivery destination.

The bastards who had the prescription for the strange-plague cure, the bastards who’d hatched this wicked plan—meaning, the nest of pests you could kill without a shred of guilt, animals so beneficial to the world it’d be more like extermination—

With Qing’s anticipation climbing higher and higher—

“Th-that’s... it isn’t that I send them somewhere in particular. There’s a slave broker who handles the trades at the black market.”

“Damn. No one-trip ticket, huh.”

Slave broker.

Among the five lowest professions in the Central Plains, the lowest of the low.

The bastards who buy and sell people.

Back where Qing came from, they were called human traffickers.

Meaning: it wasn’t direct delivery. Distribution was involved.

For Qing, whose body had been itching for a massacre for the first time in a while, it was a deeply disappointing piece of news. But—

No. Wait. If it was the black market?

Wouldn’t it be packed with slave brokers?

Either way, human traffickers—wouldn’t this be a chance to wipe out a whole pile of trash in one go?

Qing had a history of kicking up hell at the black market.

More precisely, she kicked up hell and ran.

Back then, though, Qing’s level had been pretty pathetic.

And her friends were even more pathetic—nowhere near able to stand shoulder to shoulder and fight with her, nowhere near trustworthy enough to leave her back to.

Yeah. Right.

The reason I ran back then was because these “friends” weren’t reliable, because they were too fragile and I had to run so they wouldn’t get caught up and hurt.

But now?

Who am I? A Transcendent in the Transformation Realm. A Transcendent among Transcendents. The Heavenly Flower Sword.

And her friends now were... roughly, real masters (true), or at least master scraps—meaning they’d earned the minimum qualifications for the honor of guarding this body’s back.

With this strength, she could butcher every last filthy slave broker......

A rare flash of murderous starlight gleamed in Qing’s eyes.

*****

The date the black market opened was, originally, four days after Taepyeongja was supposed to stay put.

Now that she thought about it, that “quality guarantee” period—his promise he’d stay until they could personally confirm whether the medicine worked or didn’t, until the patients recovered—looked like it had been forced to overlap with the date the black market opened.

If he took them early, he’d have to feed them and house them until the black market opened anyway, so this was a thrifty little trick: guaranteeing the medicine was real while also posturing without spending his own money.

Lord Physician first selected the patients who would try the cure, making sure to include a good spread of ages and sexes, and detailed variations of the strange plague.

So they could find out whether it truly worked, whether it had side effects if it did, and how it acted depending on the patient, or something like that.

And in the meantime, Qing sharpened her blade with massacre in mind.

She literally sharpened her blade.

“Hm.”

“What?”

“I was thinking about why it looks so awkward when a martial artist sharpens a blade. So you did know how to maintain a sword.”

It was Peng Daesan’s commentary.

Well, Qing used weapons like disposable tools.

Even Moonlit Night had met hardship after meeting the wrong owner.

If she was bored while walking, it became a cane; if she saw mountain fruit, she’d stab it and eat it; if she found kudzu vines, she used it to dig into the ground; if she built a fire, she used it to poke at the kindling; if she hunted, she used it to dress the carcass; she stabbed meat, grilled it, ate it......

The Moonlit Night she was using now (Number Ten) was a famed sword, forged by a smith who poured gratitude into it—along with an enormous cost in materials.

And as Qing’s realm rose, it had somehow endured by the principle that a weapon reinforced its toughness through its owner’s energy.

But was it really Number Ten?

Every time she sent it out, they heated it red-hot, mixed in rare metals collected by the Seol House Commercial Guild, removed impurities, and hammered it again.

If, like the Ship of Theseus, repairs continued until none of the original material remained, could you still say the ship was the same ship, with continuous identity?

The closest answer was this:

Whatever the owner says.

If Qing said it was Number Ten, then it was Number Ten.

And so, thump-thump.

How long four days felt, when you were counting them on your fingers.

What if they recognized me at the black market?

What if the filthy criminals with heavy evil karma—the ones on the black roster, in Central Plains terms a kill list—came rushing in? Wow, just imagining it made her heart race.

And then, at last, Qing left the quarantine zone with Taepyeongja bound tight in rope, parading him in front.

You couldn’t leave a quarantine zone whenever you wanted—but Qing was already being treated as a precious personage who, though her identity couldn’t be revealed, absolutely must not be offended, thanks to something like the prefectural magistrate’s pleading request.

So instead, the guards opened the way for her like automatic doors, even giving her a military salute laced with discipline.

Past Kunming’s south gate, following the lake.

She left the city gates at dusk to match the black market that opened at night, and—just like when she’d first entered the city—there was a long line stretched out, and a procession that looked like it would settle in today as well, each group spreading out mats and building fires, deep into preparing their meal.

Going against the flow of that line along the main road, before long the road climbed into an uphill slope and turned into a long mountain path.

She crossed one mountain, and behind the lakeside hill of Museon Lake, a huge night market came into view, hung with a ton of red lanterns.

On the lanterns wrapped in red cloth, a single character had been painted thickly in bold strokes: SHADOW.

She could grasp the meaning immediately.

[Welcome to Shadow Market.]

It was written plainly on the canopy hanging at the entrance.

“What, I thought you said black market?”

“Th-the black market collapsed, didn’t it? So the assassins gathered and made a new market. Using a dead name is unlucky, so they changed it. But isn’t it basically still the black market? Shadow Market is kind of a lame name, so everyone just calls it the black market.”

“Mm. Something. It’s something.”

Qing’s brow creased slightly.

Somehow, she had a slightly bad feeling—why, why? Something-something... what was it?

Something felt... really lively.

Wasn’t this just a night market?

The black market she’d visited before had been... sharp, you could say. Whether customers or vendors, everyone was suspicious of each other, and a strange tension-like silence hung over everything.

But Shadow Market?

“C’mon, poppy resin here, poppy resin! Nine-nine-nine purity—poppy resin with not a single drop of water cut into it!”

“Fresh stolen goods that came in today! Hey there, ladies, take a look before you go. I’ve even got a decent amount of jewelry that looks real fancy, too.”

“Monkshood, fly agaric, jimsonweed—c’mon, take a look at Yunnan jungle-mountain poisons!”

At that, Tang Nanna’s ears perked up, and she immediately grabbed Qing by the elbow and tugged.

“Oh, Qing—let’s look at the poison herbs. Yunnan jungle poisons are famous for being vicious, you know?”

“Nanna, we didn’t come here to sightsee, we—mm, didn’t we? Should we take a quick look?”

Qing changed her words mid-sentence.

Thinking about it, it kind of did feel like they’d come out for fun.

Massacre was play to her, so wouldn’t it be fair to let them enjoy themselves a little, too?

Qing let herself be dragged along like she couldn’t win.

Tang Nanna stood in front of the poison-herb vendor and confidently thrust out a finger, stabbing the air in accusation.

“Hey. Which mountain are these from? When’d you pick them? They look the part, but still.”

“Haha, you’ve got a real eye, ma’am. Now, these over here are from Dali Mountain, these are from Ailao Mountain, and these are from Wenshan Mountain.”

“What, you said jungle poisons?”

“Those places have small jungle patches down by the water, so the toxicity is definitely different. Ah—how do I explain it... I can’t exactly tell you to eat it.”

“Hm. They’re solid, for sure. Hey, Su—no, Summer, look. Which one looks best?”

Which one looked best?

To Qing, they were all just dried plants.

“Oh, come on, they’re totally different. Look—this one has stiff thorns all along the stem, this one’s tip is a little sharp, and this one grew in a swamp—see, it’s kind of damp.”

“No. They all look the same.”

“They’re different, okay? Come on, look harder. If you look at the spacing of the leaf veins—”

Whether the veins were neat or crooked, poison herbs were just poison herbs if they were poisonous. Even with the explanation, they all looked the same to her.

“This customer’s got deep expertise. Th-then... might you be interested in poison herbs from the Yurak Jungle Mountains?”

“What? Really? Those herbs are where the Five Poison Sect—”

“Shhh. That’s why I only show them specially to people who can actually tell, like you.”

“Hm? You sure? How am I supposed to trust you?”

“If I fake the place of origin, I can’t do business in Shadow Market. If I get kicked out of Shadow Market, where would a decent poison-herb merchant like me do business?”

Could “decent” even attach to a poison-herb merchant?

No, more than that—

Kicked out if you faked origin?

Wasn’t the black market supposed to be: if you got scammed, it was your fault—an utterly vendor-friendly den of bastards, back home the kind of place you’d call a den of swindlers and frauds?

In the meantime, the poison-herb merchant went inside the canopy and unrolled a bundled pack.

It was poison herbs identical to what was on the mat.

Nanna wore a skeptical expression at first, then tore off a leaf and ate it, and after that she went EEEK, EEEK—It’s real, it’s real! and her eyes sparkled with excitement.

She bought the whole bundle and plopped it onto Jegal Ihyeon’s pack like it was the most natural thing in the world, looking so pleased she could burst.

Something... mm. This.

With how loud everything was around them, wasn’t this just a night market where you covered your face to get in?

“Interesting, sis. It looks like they’ve built quite a system. Do you see that skewer stall over there?”

“Yeah. I’ve been staring at it this whole time. Mm. I heard you shouldn’t eat anything at the black market—ah, was that something you told me, Jegal?”

“Because you don’t know what kind of meat it is. But look—they’ve marked the raw meat on the skewers? That’s a label even the city’s markets don’t do. Though I can’t guarantee the raw meat is actually what they claim.”

A black-market skewer that said beef could be sewer rat, or something rotten sucked clean and roasted, and at worst—even human flesh.

Qing swallowed her regret hard.

I’ll fill this hunger with my own blood.

Those human-trafficking bastards are dead. I’m going to cut them into a pretty star shape—seventeen pieces, all at once.

Suppressing her fervor for slaughter as hard as she could, Qing pushed forward—today was the day she’d hang rows of mourning banners for human traffickers—

“Wow, Heema, look at this! It’s pretty, right? Look, our niece—look at this. How is it?”

“O-oh. Ooh.”

“You like it? Mmm, is this gold...?”

“Hehe, no, it’s not gold—it’s pyrite. But if you wipe it clean with a nice cotton cloth after you go out once in a while, it’s basically the same as gold.”

“This. I want this.”

“This? Niece, you like this one? Excuse me, how much is this?”

“Ma’am. That’s grave goods—are you sure?”

“Grave goods?”

“It means it came out of a grave. A baby grave.”

“Mm... no. That’s gross....... Niece, we can’t do that.”

“WAAH.”

Qing tilted her head.

Wasn’t that... subtly conscientious?

Of course, a truly conscientious merchant wouldn’t deal in stolen goods or grave goods in the first place, but still.

Maybe because of that, the market’s atmosphere wasn’t bad.

Faces were covered, but nobody was trying to hide their voices, and customers’ footsteps somehow felt lively.

Mm. This is kind of a bad vibe for going on a stabbing spree......

Distracted now and then as they advanced for quite a while, at last they arrived in front of the slave broker’s canopy—the distributor Taepyeongja had contracted with.

In front of the canopy, a man with his arms crossed—his eye corner carved with a long sword-scar—sat there with his arms still crossed, staring blankly.

I’ve thought this before, but do human traffickers get bonus points if they look nasty at interviews? Why do they all have faces like this?

Is it that nasty-looking guys become human traffickers, or is it that this is why they say faces are science?

While Qing was briefly pondering, the man shook his head and spoke.

“One silver ingot.”

“Hm?”

“His back’s hunched, he’s got fat on him, but not a hint of muscle. Who am I supposed to sell this weakling to? So one silver ingot. It’s the same anywhere you go. No—at this rate, I’m paying generously.”

Just like a human trafficker, he looked at the bound Taepyeongja and assumed Qing had brought him to sell.

“Listen here. Ahem. It’s m—”

“What, who the hell are you, acting like you know me—hm, Therapist Tae? No way. Therapist Tae, you, fu—”

The man sprang up, and the chair went THUD! as it flipped back roughly.

Good. Great reaction. Now, wait until he calls all his lackeys, do a nice clean sword-dance, make him spill where they moved the people—perfect.

Qing’s mouth was just curling upward—

THUD.

The slave broker dropped straight to his knees.

“Everything he brought in was sent straight to the Jeong Family Manor in Gaegu County! We didn’t touch a single hair on them! It’s true!”

And then, without anyone even asking, a booming answer burst out right after.