Chapter 844: If You’re Going to Kill One Person, Dig Two Graves (2)

A beggar is a pretty decent job.

You never work your whole life, you sleep when you want to sleep, you play when you want to play—though when you want to eat, you can’t always eat.

Well. There’s no perfect job in the world.

The problem is, even though being a beggar is such a good job, you don’t need even the minimum qualification to become one.

A door open to anyone—if you want, you can become a beggar immediately.

So everyone’s screaming that they’ll be beggars.

But a beggar is a job where you live by begging.

You don’t produce any value yourself, so what beggars can enjoy is inevitably limited in each city.

In the end, beggars are the kind of breed where when one takes something, another can’t.

Even the handful of coins people toss out of charity doesn’t get divided evenly and fairly among all beggars.

So even though they all live by begging, the way they keep each other in check—and the way they envy each other—is unbelievably ugly.

You could tell just by looking at begging territory.

A route that sells well, a prime spot on a busy street—those “golden seats” might as well be made of beggars’ blood.

For a few extra coins, for a spot that begs better, they really do kill each other—beggar bastards don’t have knives, so they can’t do knife-fights, but they beat each other to death with rocks and clubs, don’t they?

Anyway, the beggars Qing had personally dealt with were trash you couldn’t associate with.

Just look at that bastard with the club.

He looked like a beggar, sure, but those thick limbs and those clear white sclera—wasn’t he obviously a healthy grown man who could use his strength just fine?

In the Central Plains, if your arms and legs are intact and your body’s healthy, there’s work everywhere.

Farming always lacked hands, and even if not that, there was always day labor—building houses, carrying loads—work lying around everywhere in the Central Plains.

So why was he begging?

Because a strong beggar can live easy, ordering weak beggars around.

Even now, this was probably part of that ordering-around. Part of his “rule.”

The young beggar who’d taken the fall hurriedly scooped up the slop that had spilled from his sack when it burst open on the ground.

Qing felt bad for him.

Come on—food or not, you run first. Is this really the time to be picking that up?

Sure enough, beggars had quietly taken positions across the street.

His retreat was blocked.

Meanwhile, the beggar with the club—looking at him, he was clearly the boss beggar holding that area—TAP, TAP, he smacked his palm with the club, making a sound.

Qing rose slowly from her seat.

That club in the beggar’s hand wasn’t “just a club.”

Because—

Actually, being a beggar is a pretty decent job, if you give up a few small conveniences.

Meaning: if you can give up cleanliness and live filthy, give up delicious food and live on trash, give up a good bed and close your eyes in uncomfortable, stinking, filthy places crawling with bugs, give up resisting snow and rain and cold and heat and just accept nature—snow if it snows, rain if it rains, cold if it’s cold, heat if it’s hot.

And if you get sick or injured, you give up treatment and just die.

That’s right. You just die.

In the Central Plains, a Therapist who treats beggars for free almost doesn’t exist.

Almost—because if you looked hard enough there probably was someone, like a Lord Physician.

And the Central Plains’ medicine was already at the level where a minor wound festers and kills you. (The limits of the era—same anywhere in the world.)

So if you get beaten badly with a club, that beggar wastes away and dies.

And do you think beggars don’t know that?

They don’t cut off the breath with their own hands, but beggars know better than anyone what happens to a beggar who gets beaten properly.

Even the reason they don’t cut off the breath themselves is selfish to the extreme.

Officials are lenient to the strong and brutal to the weak. To the weak, they’re a truly terrifying group.

So even if it’s beggars on beggars, if you kill someone in broad daylight, the authorities come and beat you down. So they don’t kill directly—they let you die.

And if the one who got beaten dies?

They sling the corpse over their shoulders, wander around crying, and use it to beg. And when winter comes, when beggars starve—

Well. Yeah.

“You damn plague wretch bastard—because I didn’t want your filthy sickness spreading, I let you live, and this sewer-rat bastard even puts his hands on people’s food? Then should we let this plague-ridden rat bastard live?”

“W-who’s a plague wretch! I’m not a plague wretch!”

The young beggar screamed.

Oh. He’s got some attitude, doesn’t he?

Of course, it did nothing.

“What? Where’s this rat bastard squeaking from?”

When the boss beggar asked while picking at his ear, a burst of vicious laughter exploded among the beggars.

“Hey—grab him. Today we’re breaking his legs for real. Heh-heh, that bug-like plague wretch bastard—I’m going to make him crawl like a bug.”

“Nngh—let go, let go!”

The young beggar thrashed while being held.

Qing let out a long sigh.

Cruelty sometimes becomes authority.

Looks like he intended to beat one down right here and show off how terrifying he was.

And even now, people only watched and didn’t step in—because if beggar bastards kill each other, it just means fewer beggars.

And if you mess with people who have nothing, it doesn’t end well for you, either.

“Stop.”

The voice spread flat with pressure, but more than “pressure,” it was a beautiful, clear tone that clung to the ear.

The beggars froze.

In the martial world, they tell you to be careful of children and women and the like, but that advice only applies to martial artists.

For people who aren’t martial artists, if it’s a child or a woman, if they’re wearing a proper sword at the waist, you have no choice but to tense up.

And if that sword is big, on top of it—

“If you’re beggars, then beg like beggars—hide in a shadowed corner and live by begging. How dare you strut around in broad daylight.”

The °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° boss beggar went stiff.

If Qing had provoked him the way she usually did—cursing crudely and acting low—he might’ve been less afraid.

These days in the martial world, it was fashionable for female martial artists to cover their faces—people called it the Heavenly Flower Lady trend—so a face-veiled woman martial artist wasn’t some novelty.

But a woman’s voice is a thing you can’t easily gauge age by.

If her face was covered and her tone was stern, she could look like a martial artist with real years on her.

“Th-this, Hero—this isn’t that, it’s—it’s a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding? What misunderstanding is there here?”

“Th-this is... that one is Bai people, a Bai people bastard, and there’s that disease going around lately, Bai people smallpox, and—that’s how it is. So what we’re doing is cleaning—good work, right—trying to clear out a rat bastard that spreads sickness...”

A deep crease cut into Qing’s forehead.

No wonder—he looked dirty, but for someone they called a plague wretch, his face was strangely unscarred and fine.

That Bai people smallpox.

They’d intended to pin the blame on the entire Bai people and make everyone reject them—only now did she realize the Blood Cult’s trick wasn’t some ordinary little trick.

Qing let out a snort.

“So you don’t understand my words. Didn’t I say a filthy bastard with intact limbs who still lives by begging has no right to strut around in broad daylight?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t care what you low trash does. But you crawled out and made me look at your filthy state, and you made me smell your rotten stench. The crime of daring to ruin my mood—this is the crime I’m calling to account.”

In other words, your existence itself disgusts me.

Why did you show up and spoil someone’s mood?

It was a pure, unreasonable picking-a-fight.

So what, beggars have to hide forever so they don’t offend people’s eyes?

But the voice of that swordswoman carried such real sincerity.

Anyone could hear it—an icy, blood-edged snarl from someone who truly hated beggars.

The boss beggar’s face hardened.

We got caught. Properly.

To martial artists, people nag that they should stop underestimating women martial artists and be careful.

But to ordinary people, women martial artists were someone you had to be even more careful with than other martial artists.

They were always being disrespected, so they often acted more viciously, and they’d flare up over tiny things, claiming they’d been slighted.

So what would the boss beggar do?

Would he try to talk back?

Unfortunately for Qing, the boss beggar immediately dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead down.

“Ah—Hero, I was wrong! This low thing didn’t even know a noble person was here—if I’d known, I wouldn’t have done it, I swear it. I committed a sin deserving death! Please, mercy—”

“It’s not a sin deserving death.”

“Then... can we leave now—”

“That doesn’t mean you’re without sin. Let’s see—since you ruined my mood, all of you can leave one arm behind.”

If you cut off an arm, people usually die.

Maybe not in Qing’s hometown, but in the Central Plains, it wasn’t easy to survive after losing an arm.

And when a rat is cornered, it bites.

The boss beggar showed his true face.

“This—shit—what the hell is this—boys, hit her!”

The beggars charged all at once.

But the direction—

They weren’t charging at Qing.

They were charging in the opposite direction, at some unknown enemy that existed somewhere else.

Of course, the first one to turn his back was the boss beggar.

While his gang stalled for time, he was trying to run—an obvious beggar trick.

And the underling beggars obviously knew what their boss was like, so they’d all flee without a shred of hesitation, too.

Mm. Scattering in every direction in panic, like bugs scattering when you lift a rock.

You really look like vermin.

What is it with beggar bastards?

Of course, Qing had no intention of letting them go.

At minimum, she had to smash the boss beggar.

If she let him go, he’d keep his head down for now, but with that pointlessly healthy body he’d gather another beggar gang and keep doing evil.

Qing stomped the road—

BANG.

A beggar who doesn’t know martial arts can run all he wants. So what.

In an instant, Qing’s body shot forward, stretching long.

Then swordlight flashed—

SLICE.

A satisfying tactile feedback ran up her hand, and a smile formed on its own.

“AAAAAAARGH!!!”

That scream was truly thunderous.

So this is what auditory pleasure is.

Yeah. A bad bastard should run no matter what, should try to live a useless life full of sins, should beg and grovel and cry snot and tears and act pathetic.

That way, the one doing the cutting feels rewarded.

In that sense, the Five Poison Sect bastards—

Tsk.

Qing leveled the tip of her sword against the boss beggar’s nose bridge.

Maybe his mind snapped back, because the boss beggar forgot the pain of his severed arm and—

HIC!

He hiccuped in shock, looking up at Qing with shaking eyes.

“Get lost. And don’t forget your filthy arm—take it with you and roast it or bury it. If you don’t—”

A vivid blood-red sword-energy gathered along the blade.

“Y-yes! Yes!”

The boss beggar hurriedly scooped up his arm, then stumbled and took a brutal fall, then sprang up like he couldn’t feel pain and sprinted away somewhere.

Qing’s face bloomed into a bright smile as she watched.

Hah. Took out one big piece of trash today.

Seriously—beggar bastards should be wiped out, every last one—

Qing turned around.

With everyone fleeing, the young beggar who’d been freed was staring at Qing blankly.

Then when he realized Qing was looking at him, he jolted, sprang up, and ran away.

Because right now, Qing wasn’t a knight-errant saving a boy in danger.

She was a foul-tempered swordswoman who hated beggars.

The kid’s judgment has been terrible since earlier.

He fell and picked up food instead of running.

He even talked back, yelling he wasn’t a plague wretch, in a situation where he’d live or die depending on how well he begged.

He just stood there watching until the terrifying swordswoman finally turned to him.

How’s he supposed to survive a hard beggar life like that?

Even if you’re quick on the uptake, it’s hard to survive in the beggar world—a Hungry Ghost Hell where they fight and devour each other.

Wasn’t the first thing a young beggar learned the knack for survival and the art of being pathetic?

A kid who doesn’t seem like a beggar.

Does that mean he hasn’t been a beggar for long?

Still.

That was exactly why Qing got interested.

And “plague wretch,” too?

Once that plague mark sticks, even if you want to do odd jobs and live a solid life, you can’t.

A non-voluntary beggar like that isn’t included in the “beggar bastards” Qing was talking about.

Even if the healthy boss beggar ran, Qing caught him instantly.

No matter how hard a not-yet-grown boy beggar sprinted, there was no way he could escape her grip.

Qing grabbed the boy beggar by the back of his neck and lifted him high.

The boy dangled, kicking frantically.

“WAAAH! I’m sorry! I won’t do it again! P-please—please spare me!”

Looks like he could talk back to the boss beggar, but not to a martial artist.

Qing spoke in a gentle voice, like she was telling him not to worry.

“Hey. You’re hungry, right? Don’t eat slop—no, leftovers that someone threw away. And if you pick up just anything and eat it, you’ll get in big trouble, you know?”