Chapter 834: A Moment to Savor (9)

SHHHHH... The sound of the forest swaying and grinding in the wind was like waves breaking.

A flow brushing against her skin—Qing’s sensitive senses read a change in some vast current.

The wind was changing.

And it was changing in a profoundly unnatural way.

Her heightened senses warned her of something unknown, something unnameable.

Something... subtle. Something... what is it? Like the flow she was reading through the air and what she was seeing and hearing didn’t quite match, ugh, like she was about to get seasick...

Illusions and beguilement didn’t work on Qing.

But the Heaven-Net Sixty-Four-Gate Sealing Formation, which twisted the world’s channels and threw the senses into confusion, used a principle closer to obeying Heaven than defying it.

So Qing only took half the formation’s effect.

If she’d been fully caught, she would’ve accepted the warped five senses as normal.

If she hadn’t been caught at all, there would’ve been no effect.

But taking only half the effect made her sensitive senses turn into poison.

Well—“poison” was a weird word for it.

If getting carsick because her senses were too sharp to be properly caught counted as poison, then the people who built the formation would feel wronged.

Her head started to ache slightly, her stomach rolling, so she tried a shallow deep breath.

But the damp wind, heavy with moisture, only shook the chill of her Heart Martial and clung to her, smearing a dirty, stain-like warmth across her skin.

Gross. Stuffy.

Qing looked down at the Five Poison Sect old man’s head.

A head frozen into a grin at the very end.

Somehow... I don’t like it. Seriously.

What did you even do right, to be smiling like that?

What a damn “good funeral.” What a damn “good funeral.”

Qing lifted her foot.

One Heavenly Demon Stomp (very strong) and she could turn that head into a wreck like a smashed watermelon.

But then—haaa. Just one sigh.

Qing enjoyed the suffering of living evildoers.

She didn’t have much of a hobby for desecrating corpses that were already dead.

And yet that head kept getting under her skin.

If you’d begged to live, I might’ve let you live.

Sure, I’d confiscate your arms and legs, but I could’ve let you watch—front row seats—while the Five Poison Sect got shattered to pieces, without you getting the satisfaction of “luring” me.

Is that why it feels like this?

But you died smiling, so... I mean, in the moment of dying, you must’ve felt great, right?

Then... doesn’t that mean I lost?

Ugh. Gross.

Qing scratched the back of her head hard enough to make noise.

Whatever.

Let’s see just how amazing a trap you prepared.

Qing loosened up, calm as could be.

No witnesses means it’s an assassination. The dead don’t talk. If she killed everyone here, then the rice-eater and the Heavenly Flower Sword would both “exit”—and if she scouted as Many Summers, would that work? She’d already used Many Summers on the Blood Cult, though.

Hup two, hup two—roll the arms, roll the waist—was this that national calisthenics thing, or the safety calisthenics thing?

Safety’s good. Goodgoodgoodgood?

Qing kept stretching like she had all the time in the world, but her ears were pricked.

CRUNCH-CRUNCH, leaves trembling.

Presences were gathering from every direction.

And then it happened.

Qing covered her face with her hand.

A needle about three inches long was caught between her index and middle fingers.

At the needle’s pierced tip, a tiny droplet—hanging on surface tension—trembled finely.

“WHO ARE YOU! I am the rice-eater, the Supreme Thief Overlord, Elder Bandit Lotus! The strongest neither hides nor runs. Come out with your chest out!”

It was a stirring, righteous oration.

Instead of an answer, only needles went—

SWISH, SWISH.

“No—using foul arts! This kind of foul art—foul arts that only cowards and creeps and evil bastards use!”

Foul arts?

Even the Five Poison Sect would want to flip their clothes inside out hearing that.

Formless Poison stayed undefeated today, too.

“THERE!”

Qing stomped the ground.

Heavenly Demon Stomp—its effect was incredible!

Like a shell had landed, clods of dirt and dead leaves exploded up in every direction.

Master, please allow it today. Let a righteous thief become a Divine-Thief—let me harvest evildoers’ lives and benefit this world.

If Cheon Yuhak heard that, he’d probably scream, You crazy bitch—since when does a Divine-Thief steal lives!?

But Cheon Yuhak wasn’t here.

The only thing here was the smiling old man’s head—ripped up with the skin of the earth as it erupted.

Whether it was coincidence or fate, Qing’s eyes and that old head’s eyes met dead-on.

Ah, so you’re giving permission after all!

Not that you’re my master, but you’re an old man and a man, so you share—what—three quarters of the same traits with my master, don’t you?

Then mathematically, that’s basically permission equal to three quarters, right. (It isn’t.)

CLANG CLANG—hidden weapons slammed into her forearms crossed in front of her face, metal ringing as it struck.

These are bulletproof forearms! Where do you think you’re hitting!?

The instant she tore through the brush, she met a Five Poison Sect disciple with a thoroughly panicked face.

Long needles were fitted into every knuckle of his raised hand—something Tang Nanna did, but hey, throwing hidden weapons was all basically the same, right.

Qing’s body spun in midair—WHIRL—

and the cheap hat flew off and bounced away.

Then, in a moment, her back foot snapped straight out, her heel dropping like an axe-blade and smashing down into the disciple’s shoulder.

CRACK!

A sweet sensation transmitted through her heel, something like electricity snapping up her spine—brushing past the hollow behind the knee on the way—

ahh, the knee hollow!

The disciple dropped onto his ass, clutching his shoulder, and spoke in a trembling voice.

“H-how—”

“GOOD! And—you—become my comrade!”

“What—”

Instead of answering, Qing shot out her hand.

She grabbed the disciple’s left arm and, this time, rose without a sound—an elegant motion.

Anti-gravity walking from Moon-Maiden Steps.

Feeling countless presences all around, CRUNCH CRUNCH, Qing barked out loud.

“LOOK! This bastard is my shield now! Can you still shoot? Do you have the confidence to shoot your own man!?”

“SHOOT, S-SHOOT! I don’t care—ugh.”

Astonishingly, the one who answered was the Five Poison Sect disciple who’d just been re-employed as a meat shield.

If he hadn’t bitten his tongue, he might’ve sounded cool.

“I DON’T CARE! My master’s vengeance—!”

As if answering him, iron arrows came screaming in from every side—

WHOOSH!

Qing swung the disciple’s left arm.

The torso attached to it swung with it, and suddenly arrows sprouted everywhere—THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD!

“No, that’s literally your sect member, if you really shoot—”

WHEE-WHEE! WHEE, WHEE!

The whistles from all directions cut her off.

Qing’s expression turned savage in an instant.

These damn whistles! Who’s blowing whistles!?

It seemed the whistles were the signal.

BOOM! Fireworks—then tiny shattered objects fanned out across a huge area and flew in.

Hidden-Weapon Canisters—needle buckshot, exploded by powder.

Qing recognized them instantly: it was the same hidden-weapon device Tang Nanna had already shown her.

Qing shoved her human shield forward.

At that moment—

BOOM! From both rear flanks.

Shattered needle fragments covered Qing’s back—

PRICK! PRICKPRICKPRICK!

“OW! THAT STINGS!”

Qing yelped—almost a scream.

Because the raw power of Hidden-Weapon Canisters wasn’t that strong unless you fired them point-blank.

The canister itself was big, and if you were packing it with needles and powder, there were physical limits—you couldn’t make it massively powerful.

No way it was punching through a Transformation Realm martial artist’s flesh.

Half of it couldn’t even pierce Qing’s grimy, oil-soaked rags.

Still, some of it scratched her skin, and a very small number actually managed to stick in like bee stings.

And in the first place, Hidden-Weapon Canisters weren’t about impact power.

They were about poison on the shrapnel.

Bee-sting depth was all they needed.

But tiny poison needles like that also meant the poison itself was tiny.

No matter how vicious a poison you used, hitting from far away didn’t put the target in danger.

That was why canisters were always treated as a last resort—why the usage instructions were always: close to point-blank range and fire while glued to the target.

Did the Five Poison Sect—poison specialists—really not know even this most basic hidden-weapon doctrine?

Of course not.

If a small dose was less dangerous, you just kept adding more until it became dangerous.

A brute-force plan—emptying the entire sect’s resources, soaking everything in poison, pouring in the sect’s future itself.

And “the sect’s resources” included the lives of its sect members, too.

“How dare you! My precious skin!”

She’d never once treated it as precious in her life, but Qing still snapped, ready to charge again—

when—

WHAM—something wrapped around her leg.

She looked down.

The meat shield—his left arm twisted from being swung around—had shoved her ankle into his armpit and locked it down.

When his eyes met hers, he coughed up black blood thick with poison and made a wheezing, giggling sound.

“COUGH, BLEGH—KEH—can’t go... can’t go...”

“AAAAH! DISGUSTING!”

Qing recoiled.

This bastard—where do you think you’re vomiting blood, and why are you rubbing your armpit like that—

In the meantime—

WHOOSH—CLANG!

Every time she tried to shake her leg free, iron arrows kept flying in, forcing her to bat them away.

“Fine. If you like ankles that much, then yeah—keep doing that.”

Qing started dragging forward with the Five Poison Sect disciple attached to her ankle.

He was viciously stubborn—being dragged along the ground, bouncing like a fish out of water, smashing into rocks and tree roots, and still sticking on like a leech.

But people said leg strength was triple arm strength, right?

Which meant Qing—already a monster who no one could contest with arms—could put out triple that power with her legs.

Qing ran.

With a man hanging off her leg.

“THERE!”

These dirty bastards—if she closed in they ran, and from far away they threw hidden weapons, and if she closed in again they ran again. They’d made up their minds.

With veins bulging on her forehead, Qing’s arm shot out in a smooth arc—

but with force.

DONGGG...!

A Buddhist temple bell echoed through the tropical rainforest—projected palm force from the Tathagata Divine Palm.

But it missed!

The compressed force tore through empty air and only burst the bark of an unlucky tree—

RIP—CRACK!

Qing was speechless.

No, how is that guy moving like that?

The Five Poison Sect disciple’s escape was strange.

His running posture was straight, clean, without a wobble—like a line shot forward—

but he kept changing directions in a lightning-fast zigzag, left-right-left-right.

So between the dense trees, he appeared and vanished, came out and went in—mysterious, uncanny.

What is that, some kind of step-shrinking art?

Normally, to jump side-to-side and whip direction changes that violently, wouldn’t your upper body tilt, and wouldn’t your legs have to shoot outward and kick hard?

So the idea that he could change direction freely without changing posture meant the enemy couldn’t predict it at all.

A truly bizarre divine art.

Of course the Tathagata Divine Palm would miss.

Did the Five Poison Sect have a Lightness Art that insane?

It’s seriously incredible—so why have I never heard of it?

If I loot the Five Poison Sect, can I learn it too?

Qing’s eyes gleamed.

Of course, it was a misunderstanding.

The disciple was only running in a straight line.

It was the formation twisting directions, making him seem like he was moving left and right unpredictably.

A miraculous divine art seduced the martial world.

Qing—now that she’d “drunk some martial world water” and started acting like a real martial artist—lost focus for a moment to that lofty technique.

WHOOSH—A savage sound with a different grain than the iron arrows.

This—this is a javelin—

Qing’s toes snapped up.

Joints pushed to the limit of flexibility by Flowing-Willow Soft Training.

Her left leg, unbent, lifted high over her head—

and the meat shield still clinging to her ankle rose with it—

THUNK!

The javelin punched through the meat shield and lightly tapped Qing’s steel chest brace.

“KHUK!”

The meat shield spat one final mouthful of blood and met a glorious end.

The strength drained from the armpit clamped around Qing’s ankle, and he slipped off the raised foot—

THUD.

With the meat shield spent and falling away after taking the javelin, Qing was revealed—

drenched in the blood he’d vomited up.

“Ha...”

Qing wiped her blood-soaked face.