Chapter 840: A Moment to Savor (15)

It was a pretty shocking entrance for a blood-feud enemy.

The Five Poison Sect elders surrounding Qing, and Five Poison Sect Leader Hu Cheonchi himself, could only go silent.

I mean—what were they supposed to say in this situation?

In the dead center of poison smoke, she was standing there in beggar rags, a porridge pot tucked against her side, shoveling mouthfuls down like her life depended on it.

What could anyone possibly say to that?

So when Hu Cheonchi finally managed to spit out a single line, more than ten spoonfuls had already disappeared since Qing’s dramatic appearance.

“...What are you trying to do right now?”

Qing’s face twisted hard.

“What, what—did you just call me a beggar because I’m eating while standing up? Seriously? You can disrespect someone like this? Who do you think you are? Some big shot? If you’re a big shot, you can just disrespect people on first sight? WAAAH. MUNCH MUNCH. Mm, GULP. It’s good, though.”

“......”

Hu Cheonchi pressed a hand to his forehead.

The things he wanted to say were all fighting to come out at once, clogging his throat like a plug.

So he forced himself to hold it in.

“What? Never seen a person eat before? Something to stare at? Or are you hungry too? Hmph—this is mine, okay? Handle your own business yourself. Figure it out. Don’t know how? If you’re hungry, cook for yourself.”

“......”

Hu Cheonchi forced himself to hold it in again.

He wanted to unload a stream of filthy curses and beat her to death on the spot, but he couldn’t.

Because it would lower his standing.

You could say, Who cares about standing? But to martial artists, standing is a serious matter.

For example, if someone is your sect’s enemy, then they should at least have the standing to match.

Whether they’re overwhelmingly powerful, or they’ve reached that level of vile cunning—either way, a sect’s enemy should be extraordinary.

But your sect’s enemy is some beggar-looking freak in rags?

With no shame at all, hugging a huge iron pot by the roadside while making loud, disgusting eating noises—no, while standing there and shoveling it down?

If your enemy is someone that ridiculous—

If the opponent your sect has to grind its teeth over and sell off its entire future just to kill is some weird, absurd woman like that—

Then doesn’t the sect itself become something even less than her?

Even killing her right here would be a problem.

Because then they’d only become something worse than that.

In the way Qing’s hometown would put it—

A mid-sized corporation pours everything it has into revenge. Sells the business, sells the office building, sells the cars, betrays the country, abandons the family—burning with hatred, going all-in on total war for revenge.

But then it turns out the “enemy” is just a homeless alcoholic who’ll die alone of isolation if you leave him alone.

In that case, even if you win, you’re a clown. If you lose, you’re an even bigger clown.

Everyone in the world would just point and laugh.

Who would call that a glorious revenge story where an entire group invested its future without holding anything back?

So the Five Poison Sect Leader saw straight through Qing’s intention.

Every time she used an alias, her speech and behavior became so ridiculous it was lighter than a feather.

And if someone got killed by a person like that?

It was just a stupid, laughable dog’s death.

If Hu Cheonchi threw away his dignity and lowered his standing, he could even make the opponent’s end itself wretched and empty—turn it into a truly pathetic dog’s death.

But... hm. He was holding up pretty well.

Should she scratch harder?

Qing flicked out her “tongue from hell” again—Formless Poison, Tang Clan-certified.

“Man. What is this—what, you aren’t even beggars, you’re beggar bastards. I’m eating and you’re crowding me like this, making me go soft. What, you want it that bad? You lose your mind the second you see food, huh? Didn’t know the Five Poison Sect was a beggar convention. Here, I’ll share a little, so—bowls, hm. You’re beggars, so you don’t need bowls, right? Come on, hold out your hands. Form a line.”

It was an insult so vicious it didn’t just make an individual a beggar bastard—it made the entire sect a beggar-bastard sect.

And she was going to hand it out?

And they had to hold out their hands?

Like she was going to drop it onto their palms?

“You—YOU BITCH!”

In the end, one of the elders exploded.

Qing’s ears perked up. She kept a calm face like she hadn’t noticed, focusing quietly while thinking, If he charges me, I’ll beat him to death with the pot. That’ll be a great picture. Come on—

The plan was good, but the Five Poison Sect was a poison sect.

Meaning, naturally, they specialized in filthy long-range attacks from a distance instead of charging in.

The elder whipped both arms around wildly.

As his arms drew huge circles and he spun his body like he was dancing, he flicked his hand—and hidden weapons shot out in all kinds of trajectories.

Except it was an old middle-aged man’s dance, so... uh...

When Tang Nanna did it, Qing always thought the lines were really pretty, but this was what—some kind of corny talent show...?

Qing gripped the iron pot with both hands and swung it around.

No matter how low-level the elder was—by Qing’s standards—he should still be able to pierce something like a cast-iron pot without much trouble.

But that was an angle problem.

If you drove the hidden weapons in so they hit the curved edge of the round pot at a slant, they slid along the curve and slipped right down into the thick rice porridge.

Of course, she didn’t forget to rotate the pot so the porridge wouldn’t spill, either.

CLANG CLANG CLANG—along with the sound of iron being struck, the hidden weapons vanished one after another into the porridge.

“Enough! Elder Sang—stop it!”

Hu Cheonchi’s roar stopped the elder.

The instant the hidden-weapon bombardment ended, Qing tucked the rice porridge pot back against her side.

Then she calmly scooped up another spoonful.

“WAAAH—oh. With poison in it, it’s spicier. MUNCH MUNCH, GULP. Honestly, just rice porridge gets a little old, so thanks. Even seasoning it for me.”

Qing heaped up a massive spoonful with the extra-large spoon again, opened her mouth wide—WAAAH—

Then MUNCH MUNCH, MUNCH MUNCH, GULP.

PTUH!

A small throwing knife, about as long as her finger, dropped out and rolled on the ground with a CLINK.

“But the chunks are kind of hard. Can’t eat this. Mm... it’d be better if it was even spicier. Anyone else want to throw more?”

“......”

An uncomfortable silence drifted through the group.

They were furious—furious enough to bite through teeth—but what Qing had just displayed was, truly, skill worthy of being called divine.

Not only did she catch hidden weapons flying in from every trajectory with the edge of an iron pot—

She ate porridge that had been stabbed full of hidden weapons coated in extreme poison?

Was she seriously Myriad-Poison Immune or something?

Hu Cheonchi broke the silence.

“Heavenly Flower Sword.”

“I’m not the Heavenly Flower Sword, though? I’m the Supreme Thief Overlord, Elder Bandit Lotus. I’m the rice-eater. You don’t see me eating rice right now? WAAAH. Mmm—so good.”

“Enough with the meaningless mockery. I already know what you are, so there’s no reason to keep throwing tantrums.”

Hu Cheonchi dropped his voice low and flat.

Qing hesitated for a beat.

That expression—like he was about to carve SERIOUS into his face—meant no provocation would really work here.

It was the instinct of a Formless Poison owner.

She had to drag the other side down to her level by being ridiculous and absurd—

But if the other side showed a firm will not to react and refused to be pulled down, then... mm.

She thought his eyes would flip and he’d charge her immediately, but he was surprisingly calm...

“The poison has already seeped to your spine. How much time do you have left? Are you going to die like that, putting on some ridiculous act?”

That poison was currently being enjoyed at a grand feast by a pet parasite sitting in her bottle, sucking it down with glee, but—

Who on earth could predict something like that?

It wasn’t even a joke she could make.

Qing let out a deliberate, heavy sigh.

Fine. If that’s where he was stabbing, she’d stab somewhere else.

“Seriously, why are you going this far? You’re pulling out your sect’s foundation just to catch me—no, forget that, you basically set the whole sect on fire, didn’t you? You kept clinging like a disease no matter how many times I killed you.”

“I only did what had to be done.”

“Oh, nice line. You know what? I’m the one who did what had to be done. I’m the one who’s pissed off. I just cleaned up a bunch of trash who spread poison through innocent civilians, and that’s enough for you to light your fuse and chase me like this?”

Qing fired off words in a rush.

“Honestly, shouldn’t the Five Poison Sect be grateful to me? If I cleaned out your sect’s trash, you should be treating me like your benefactor. Put up a statue behind your main gate and bow every time you see it. ‘Thank you for cleaning up the idiots who were going to shove the Five Poison Sect’s future into a latrine.’ Huh?”

“Trash, you say.”

“What, isn’t it true? You agree? You have to admit this one like a human being. If you were keeping those guys around as your first-generation disciples, it’s a miracle you haven’t collapsed already. I saved the Five Poison Sect once. Do you acknowledge it?”

But Hu Cheonchi swallowed a bitter smile.

“Trash. Fine. You could think that.”

“Huh?”

“You want to argue right and wrong? Do I need to explain to you that Sichuan was originally our Miao people’s land, and your Han people invaded—do I need to explain how brutal your massacres were, how our ancestors were driven into this miserable barren jungle, how much blood they spilled just to barely carve out a place to live?”

...He said all that himself, and then—

Qing stared at him like he was unbelievable.

“So because it used to be your land, everyone living there now is an invader and you can kill them? The people in Sichuan deserve to die because they’re descendants of invaders?”

“To us, yes. To your Han people, maybe not. So even if you curse us as trash, I won’t deny it.”

“So you’re going to make excuses?”

“Excuses. If this were a dream and I went back to that moment, I would make the same decision. Of course, it would be after you left Sichuan.”

“So what? What are you even trying to say? It’s not an excuse, it’s still trash, what is it?”

“I’m saying the world is like this.”

Hu Cheonchi’s eyes were clouded with poison, yet a bright sharpness still shone inside them.

Hu Cheonchi was a half-finished Poison Person.

A realm where poison had seeped into his spine, and all the blood in his body flowed as lethal venom.

But because he was only half-complete, the balance was nothing but unstable—like a cracked jar that could shatter at any moment.

And now, he couldn’t turn back.

There was too much rage, and he’d already forced his poison energy up and broken the balance—wasn’t poison smoke already streaming out of his eyes?

Hu Cheonchi couldn’t escape death either.

No—he was already close to being dead.

And he’d accepted becoming a half-finished Poison Person anyway, knowing that.

Hu Cheonchi swept his gaze over the faces of the Five Poison Sect elders one by one.

Under that gaze, a cold calm slowly settled into the elders’ expressions as well.

“I tell you to survive to the end and accomplish revenge. But I will not survive in humiliation and cling to revenge at any cost.”

For the families who’d fallen away, he wouldn’t scrape out life and crawl—he would charge fiercely to the end and die.

If there was an afterlife, even if it was a hell where villains suffer, he would meet them there, smile proudly, and tell them—

That for their revenge, they did everything they could.

And whether it succeeded or failed, what reason would a Five Poison Sect member who went first have to be angry?

“Our Five Poison Sect chose this end. Right and wrong are not important here.”

It was simply resentment.

Hu Cheonchi continued in an even voice.

“Martial artists are creatures that pile up resentment, and that’s why we stake our lives on revenge. This is how we live. The yoke of resentment—the chain of revenge—is what keeps the martial world alive. What, exactly, is the problem with that?”

Only then did Qing finally understand the Five Poison Sect’s viciousness—how they didn’t fear death, how they clung on blindly and interfered even while dying, driven by obsessive poison energy.

The Five Poison Sect didn’t deny the endless cycle where revenge gave birth to revenge, and that revenge called forth yet another revenge.

Maybe, like the sect leader said, the progress of martial arts—the martial world itself—had evolved into something stronger so people could protect themselves and the ones they cherished from others’ resentment.

Qing didn’t say the yoke was evil, or unjust.

She didn’t say the kind of empty line anyone could toss out without thinking—like how you should forgive to break the chain.

They simply accepted it.

And for that, they simply spent their lives.

“Then you—if your master, your senior brothers, your disciples were slaughtered horribly—would you ask about how they behaved, or would you hunt the killer and take revenge?”

“That’s...”

Qing trailed off.

Then—

Qing scratched the back of her head hard.

“Man. I don’t know if this is right.”

Qing set down the porridge pot she had tucked against her side.

Then she untied the waterskin at her waist and dumped the water she’d filled in the cooking barracks over her head—SPLASH SPLASH.

With one hand, she scrubbed at her face, and the sound of skin grinding—SCRAPE SCRAPE, SCRUB SCRUB—rang loud and clear.

It was already fully dark around them.

And yet, it was like the sunset-dim barracks grounds suddenly lit up bright.

Because an unrivaled beauty, fighting for the top under heaven, had stripped away the filth smeared over her face—and her beauty was so bright it felt as if the world itself was shining.

Qing let out a long, long breath.

“Hahhh...”

“I am the martial artist Seomun Cheong. What happened in Sichuan was rightful punishment, and I do not regret it by even a single speck, because it was the right thing to do. So step back. If you do not—”

Of course, people who had already vowed revenge through death weren’t going to step back just because she told them to.

Qing drew Moonlit Night from her waist and leveled it.

“Then we’ll have to settle it the martial world’s way.”