Chapter 841: A Moment to Savor (16)

Silence sank over the clearing.

It was the hush before the decisive battle.

Qing’s thoughts, sword leveled, were messier than she liked.

I don’t know if this is right.

People always said the dramatic line—how it wouldn’t end unless one of them died.

Under-One-Sky Blood Feud: as in, you can’t exist under the same sky. At minimum, one of you has to die.

Everyone said it easily, but the number of people who actually kept that vow was rare. Among everyone Qing had dealt with so far... hmm. Was there even one?

Because in reality, nobody had the slightest intention of dying.

I want to live, but you have to die.

So they’d scream about a blood feud under one sky, then the moment things turned against them, they’d start looking for a way out—busy justifying themselves by bringing up people like Han Xin or King Fuchai, who crawled through danger with humiliation in the past.

And yet.

Why did Jing Ke become the name people used when they said knight-errant?

Whether his attempt on the First Emperor of Qin succeeded or failed, he knew he couldn’t survive—and he still hid a blade and stepped into that grand hall.

He held revenge in his heart and offered up his own life first.

That was what it meant to face an Under-One-Sky Blood Feud.

Even so...

Did these bastards deserve respect?

It happened in an instant.

The kind of “instant” that was too vague to describe any other way.

A thin, delicate point—when an inhale ended, the exhale began, and about a third of a breath had passed.

At that moment, the enemies moved together.

Breath-wise, it was a “theoretical weakness,” and in the first place, it really was the best timing for them to strike.

Hidden weapons surged in from all directions—truly a Four-Sided Chu Songs situation, killing intent raining from every side.

But it was shallow.

Just throwing hidden weapons.

In truth, poison-coated hidden weapons were hard for even a master to deal with.

But when poison didn’t work on you, what word was there besides pathetic?

You could load internal energy into hidden weapons to increase their force, but the moment internal energy left the body, it decayed rapidly and lost strength.

That was only natural.

If it didn’t, then every martial art in the world would’ve evolved into throwing weapons instead of holding them.

And poison artists... their poison was vicious, yes, but aside from poison, their pure skill was noticeably lacking even at the same realm.

Qing swung her sword.

Round sword-energy gathered along the blade.

It was the clear sunset-colored sword-energy of the Day-Sun Heart-Washing Scripture, like she’d jabbed the tip into a full moon and lifted it.

When she swung, the full moon became the tip of a brush, drawing thick strokes that wrapped around her.

A gigantic full moon rose on the ground.

The thick lines formed into a sphere—a dense sword-barrier, fully enclosing her.

Qing saw the Moon-Maiden spreading her sword-barrier.

In her left hand, clenched so hard it went bloodless, was something—a man’s forehead band.

A Hero’s Headband.

A crooked, poorly made thing.

When had it been?

The Moon-Maiden—who had been turned into a “person,” into a “woman,” by one man—had once grabbed a needle instead of a sword and made it for him.

A token of love.

And when the man went to war and never returned, it became the keepsake that came back in his place.

The furious Moon-Maiden stepped onto the battlefield, but the battlefield was nothing except death and death and more death.

Resentment chained into resentment—countless people who hated others simply because they were “the enemy nation,” because they were “the foe.”

Then, suddenly, an endless emptiness settled inside her.

The man who had left would never return.

In the past, only she had been happy—but because you existed, I existed, and we existed, she learned the world could be a happier place than that.

Then you left, and she became alone again.

If she’d never known, she could have kept being happily alone.

But because she lost you, all she felt now was emptiness.

The Moon-Maiden on the battlefield stopped swinging her sword at enemies.

She only blocked the world away with her blade.

The world and the Moon-Maiden severed and separated.

The Moon-Maiden Sword Art, seventh form—

People Fade, Feelings Empty.

Hidden weapons that had been pouring in from every direction struck the sword-barrier and bounced away.

A firm wall that refused all hostility.

And because the Moon-Maiden did not extend her sword toward the enemy, it was also severance.

We are empty.

But this wasn’t the Moon-Maiden’s despair.

The Moon-Maiden who rejected the world was expressionless, yet she wasn’t sad or hollow.

She simply wasn’t joyful or happy either.

Reject the outside world.

Only me in this world.

Therefore, a complete me.

In that moment, Qing lowered her sword.

Even so, that isn’t the part you’re supposed to feel empty about, is it.

If her master, her teachers, her friends, her Priestess Order family died—

Qing would scour the entire world if she had to, just to give the killer the most horrible death possible.

And then Qing understood.

Now she finally understood why the way these Five Poison Sect bastards threw themselves at her had felt so disgusting.

Their viciousness was the viciousness of men who’d decided on revenge.

But at the same time, they were already walking corpses who’d thrown their lives away.

Even if you cut off their arms and legs, they’d cling with whatever limbs remained—there was no will to live in them at all, so how could you call that “alive”?

Qing only wanted to give a living villain a miserable end and enjoy it with a satisfied heart.

She didn’t have a hobby of cutting up corpses that were already dead.

Still... she got it.

Maybe that was why she’d tried to act cool without realizing it.

Because the one thing worth acknowledging was their grit—how completely they’d devoted themselves to revenge.

But she was curious, too.

What if all that grit, all that stubbornness—

What if this “revenge” was nothing but suicide?

If they realized that with their pitifully insufficient capability, they couldn’t even scratch her—couldn’t accomplish anything at all—

Would they still be able to say, calmly, I have no regrets because I devoted my life to revenge?

If, at the very end, they suffered and mourned—

That was fine, too.

She could go right back to being the rice-eater and savor it.

And if, until the last breath, they stood proud and accepted that devoting their whole lives mattered more than the result—

Then maybe her little whim had been worth it.

The full moon settled on the ground dissolved.

And from within it, an unrivaled beauty appeared—beautiful as Chang’e.

The Five Poison Sect disciples faltered for a moment.

A sword-barrier that raised a wall out of sword-energy was already a lofty, elevated method.

But a technique that fully wrapped the body in a sphere?

How monstrous did your internal energy have to be to make that possible?

In that moment, Moonlit Night moved again.

A great sword, lightly swaying up and down, left and right, as if weightless.

The flow traveled from arm to shoulder—grew more brilliant as the shoulder rolled.

From shoulder to waist—the waist turned and snapped into larger movement.

From waist to knee—the knees bounced to a rhythm.

From knees to toes—lightly planted toes moved forward and back, spinning and spinning, sometimes advancing, sometimes retreating—

The sword-swing spread, and the whole body responded, moving into dance.

A single dance.

A sword dance, performed with a sword in hand.

Confusion mixed into the Five Poison Sect disciples’ eyes.

Surrounded by enemies on all sides, and she starts dancing?

But it was also a spectacle so rare you couldn’t see it again in a lifetime.

In the darkness, that pale face looked as if it shone alone—beautiful enough to force your gaze.

A beauty’s dance, whether you were man or woman, young or old, carried the kind of bewitchment that stole the soul.

Then—

WHOOOOOOOSH—

A wind.

A huge current loaded with clear energy surged toward Qing, as if being sucked in.

“What are you doing! Attack! Block her, now!”

Hu Cheonchi roared, and only then did the Five Poison Sect elders—and the disciples farther out—panic and shove their hands into their clothes.

And then, flowers bloomed and swept the world.

Following the blade the beauty swung, flower petals of every color—red, yellow, blue, white—whirled and stormed.

From Qing’s lower abdomen, all the true energy burst out at once, each revealing itself to the world in its own color.

One was golden—yellow gold, tinged slightly red under sunlight. A radiant gold brilliance that somehow resembled the sheen of a Buddha statue.

One was painfully white, cold enough to cut—while a less-white one carried a cool, soft freshness.

One held the deep loneliness of the sea’s blue.

Peach-blossom pink contained a suffocating allure.

And then there were reds—blood-red steeped thick with the cruelty of iron stench, another blood-red with the wickedness of an innocent child, and another blood-red that—

Well, demonic arts tended to be red anyway, so they all kind of blended together.

Solitary Nine Swords.

Eighth form.

Ten Thousand Changes.

Of course, if the Martial Heaven Great Emperor saw it, he’d probably snort.

What the hell is Ten Thousand Changes? I never made a form that shitty. If you’re going to copy me, at least copy me properly.

And don’t say you learned it from me—because that makes me embarrassed.

Call it something else.

Yeah. “A Hundred Changes, A Thousand Blossoms.” No—“Ten Changes, A Hundred Blossoms.” That fits perfectly.

What could she do?

It was a discount version.

She couldn’t unleash it at full power like before and then go GAAAH and collapse with full-body fractures, full-body muscle ruptures, and multiple organ damage.

She could imitate even “Ten Changes, A Hundred Blossoms” only because this body was already beyond Transformation Realm.

And even then—wow—her lower abdomen felt tight, and it felt like her energy channels were on fire.

How the hell did she use this back when she was at a lesser peak and live?

Her internal energy was draining in thick chunks.

But she was scattering aura rings in the hundreds—purely for lighting and misdirection—so it would be weirder if she wasn’t draining.

Death rained down from all directions.

Not enough petals to fill the whole world the way the Martial Heaven Great Emperor would do—

More like kicking a flowering tree once and making petals fall in a rush.

And even that couldn’t maintain the flow; once they passed a certain radius, the petals just shot in straight lines like arrows.

An elder could raise a weapon and knock them aside, but for the disciples outside?

It was pure disaster.

“Damn it—elders! Let’s go!”

Hu Cheonchi shouted and charged.

The distance they’d opened up to throw hidden weapons was becoming poison to them now.

Each petal was flashy, but the power in each one was something you could block even at the peak.

Of course, if you tried to knock away petals one or two at a time, you’d never finish.

But that was the nature of a discount Ten Thousand Changes.

Even in Qing’s hometown, wasn’t it obvious that wide-area skills were weaker?

So this was the moment when experts had to close in and block her up close.

They had to stop that dance first—because if they only blocked, they’d have no chance once the enemy recovered.

In truth, only blocking would’ve been correct.

Because her internal energy was getting sucked dry.

Wow—half of it vanished in an instant.

She didn’t have the strength to stop on her own without looking ridiculous, so the fact they were charging in was perfect.

The Five Poison Sect could feel wronged, but how could they know how long this form lasted?

In a situation where they didn’t know, they couldn’t gamble by just enduring while their disciples died.

CLANG!

Multiple weapons blocked the flowing blade.

The weapon types were different, but they were all held in the left hand—apparently a feature of the Five Poison Sect’s martial arts.

Qing stopped her spinning body immediately, then stretched out her left hand and gave the nearest elder’s solar plexus a light little push.

The result wasn’t light.

BOOOOONG...!!

Like a giant bell, the sound rang out—and the elder spasmed, spraying blood as he flew back.

His chest caved inward, and he vomited fresh blood mixed with torn organ fragments.

At the same time, Moonlit Night’s momentum changed completely.

The airy, drifting weightlessness from before vanished.

In an instant, it became a great sword carrying the weight of Mount Tai—crashing down brutally, cutting left, swinging right, and smashing with the flat of the blade.

It was the tyrannical momentum of Ximen Surin’s Priestess Sword.

Like it was saying: You think a woman must be weak? Never look down on a woman swordsman again.

Qing swept her eyes over the enemies quickly.

Eleven besides the sect leader. One down, so ten—

No.

Eleven left.

(There was no warmth in her gaze as she counted.)

And then she moved.