Chapter 857: The Way of the Sail Swordsman (4)

Qing had never been the type to hold her tongue.

A natural talent. An inborn sense for reading people—how far she could push, how much she could dig her heels in before she crossed what was, so to speak, the line.

Of course, even without that, this wasn’t the kind of question you needed to read the room for.

“Elder, isn’t the liquor kind of... spicy? It’s like it keeps getting sharper. Did you order something special?”

“Hm? The liquor’s spicy to you? Did they mix in too much ginger? That’s because you’re young. Once you get older and spend your life suffering through a spicy existence, no matter how much ginger they throw in, it only tastes sweet.”

“Oh. Have you lived that spicy a life?”

“No. Of course not. My life has always been overflowing with love and pleasure. That’s why I don’t eat ginger. It’s spicy. I honestly don’t understand why people shove that stuff in their mouths.”

What even was this.

If he didn’t eat ginger because it was spicy, then why was he dumping it by the fistful into her liquor?

Well, ginger tasted good, so it wasn’t a problem.

When you spent your life as a beggar, stuffing anything and everything into your mouth whether it should be eaten or not, ginger was basically just fragrant.

Still... so he really was the type to say whatever popped into his head.

Qing suddenly understood, in a painfully heartfelt way, why the Diancang Sect Leader had supposedly begged this elder to keep his voice down whenever he opened his mouth.

“No, it’s not ginger-spicy. It’s... hm. It’s familiar, but what is it? Poison? No. That’s not it.”

It probably wasn’t poison.

If it were poison, she should’ve felt it the moment she ate something laced with it—there was no way the toxicity would keep thickening in real time while she was eating.

And more than anything, wasn’t there an elder in the Manifest Realm sitting right in front of her?

If it were real poison, the elder should’ve noticed first. There was no way he’d be sitting there peacefully picking carrots out of his food.

...So he didn’t eat carrots either.

A man with no taste. Carrots weren’t delicious, sure, but they weren’t tasteless. They were just less tasty than the other ingredients no matter where you put them.

Qing was thinking that as she neatly avoided the carrots in the stir-fry and plucked out a piece of lamb.

“Hm?”

Gilun’s eyebrow flicked—and then, in the next instant, he slammed his palm down on the table.

THUUUNG—!

A collision that left a deep resonance hanging in the air.

From Gilun’s palm, the impact spread outward like a round wave.

Like snapping a blanket high into the air and whipping it down.

The tablecloth ballooned in expanding rings, a huge, rippling pulse that shuddered outward—

And it flipped the plates.

In an instant, CLATTER-CLATTER-CLATTER-CLATTER—there was no meal left intact, only chaos.

A table flip that had literally reached divine mastery.

No, seriously—what was this? He used a refined Manifest Realm technique to flip the table, and she couldn’t even begin to grasp how he’d done it.

No matter how much he hated carrots, this was—

“Come here and sit. The food was poisoned. This is... mm. It’s vicious beyond words. How does poison like this even exist—khm, there’s no time. First, I need to drive the poison out of you.”

Gilun’s grave voice cleanly cut through Qing’s stunned disbelief.

Ah. Poison. So it really was poisoned.

But how?

“Now. Hurry. Show me your back.”

At the same time, a dense stench of liquor stabbed into her nose.

The reason martial artists could drink themselves sick was simple—they could expel the alcohol in their bodies and clear the drunken haze.

Of course, once you got properly drunk, you never thought to clear it in the first place, so even martial artists got plenty of nagging about watching their drink.

“Elder, I’m fine, so you should detoxify yourself first. And, um... this is presumptuous, but I’ve already reached a level with detoxifying where I can honestly say it’s comparable to the Manifest Realm.”

“It isn’t. This is the first time I’ve encountered poison this vicious—mm, I don’t have many points of comparison because I haven’t eaten a lot of other poisons. Hurry.”

Qing felt awkward.

She was grateful he was insisting on helping her first, but—

Driving poison out of your own body and driving poison out of someone else’s were not the same act to begin with.

Driving it out of yourself was simply an extension of circulating your energy inside your own body.

But cleansing poison from someone else?

That was a method of true energy transfer, an art so difficult and delicate that even a decent master would feel completely drained after doing it once.

And if you tried to drive poison out of someone else while you yourself were poisoned, then inevitably, you would have to neglect your own poison.

Poison wasn’t some instant-kill trigger that accumulated to a set threshold and then suddenly popped you like a balloon.

And a human life wasn’t a video game, either—where your health bar slowly chipped down until it ran out and you were done.

Poison ran through the body, collapsing organs, contaminating marrow, destroying blood paths and energy channels. The longer you left it, the larger and uglier the aftereffects became. That was why it was such a terrifying weapon.

And yet Gilun was still putting Qing first.

It was just that Qing’s constitution was a little... special.

To Qing, who treated poison like a spicy seasoning, it was honestly moving, but... he didn’t need to do this.

“Uh, I think I can hold it back, so you first—”

“Ahem! When an adult speaks, you come at once! This isn’t poison you can take lightly! Hurry—there’s no time!”

Gilun snapped at her in a strict voice.

This wasn’t the time for them to keep playing You first, no you first, and Gilun showed no sign of backing down.

“Elder, the truth is, I—”

Mm. I have no choice. I have to tell him.

The moment she started to speak—

DRRRT! BANG!

The door flew open roughly.

At the same time, a wave of that spicy smell rushed in, followed by a nasty, low laugh.

“Heh-heh, honored guests, what is all this commo—”

The deputy Great Lord’s words cut off mid-syllable.

It couldn’t be helped.

You couldn’t keep your face covered forever right in front of an elder, and this private room now held Qing’s beauty blazing like something brilliant.

Once you laid eyes on Qing’s beauty, anyone’s words would catch in their throat for a moment.

Thanks to that, the sentence continued a beat late.

“Ahem. What is the meaning of this disturbance? Even if our inn is lacking in guests, isn’t it still improper for you to make such a spectacle?”

It was the inn waiter, flanked by subordinates on both sides—an extremely theatrical reappearance.

“Y-you...! Kugh—w-what did you do?”

Bloodshot veins rose in Gilun’s eyes.

It looked like the poison had worsened all at once.

What had that spicy smell that swept in the moment the door opened done?

Qing was just starting to think furiously when—

“If you’re curious. The poison you consumed is an extreme toxin known as Immortal-Slaying Poison. Of course, its toxicity is toxicity, but what’s truly exquisite is the method of administration. Six harmless ingredients enter separately, then meet inside the body and are brewed into poison—then, at the very end, the finishing touch: you inhale a scent that triggers the poison you’ve brewed. Heh-heh. Isn’t it beautiful?”

There was no need to rack her brain. The inn waiter was babbling it all out himself.

She’d been talking about exactly this kind of thing earlier, and here he was, appearing right away.

The type who, once he thought he’d won, ran his mouth about things no one even asked.

Maybe it was more common than she’d thought.

And judging by how he was talking from the instant he arrived, he already believed he’d won.

Common sense said he had.

People didn’t usually imagine things that were insane on their face.

That their enemy had Myriad-Poison Immunity.

That their enemy’s companion might include a Manifest Realm martial artist.

Normally, you called those kinds of thoughts delusions. No one went around obsessively accounting for risk factors that approached impossibility.

And yet, that impossibility had happened.

“Tsk, tsk. I don’t know who that guest is, but how unfortunate. You’ve done nothing wrong, but isn’t there a saying? Stand next to a cruel one and you get hit by the stones meant for him.”

“You... you Blood Cult filth...!”

Qing sucked in a sharp breath.

Oh, Elder. You can’t just say that out loud like that.

You were supposed to ask something like, Are you one of the Five Poison Sect? Or who are you? If you say it like that, it’s basically confessing that we already know.

But not everyone’s mind turned as meanly and quickly as Qing’s.

If anything, the average righteous-sect person was closer to Gilun.

The inn waiter’s expression twisted sharply.

“So you’re the righteous-sect dog bastards. No wonder—I was thinking there’s no way Five Poison Sect disciples would be slaughtered around here. Dogs really do have an unbelievable nose. Come. Fine. You—just looking at that vulgar body, you must be that Heavenly Flower Sword, huh? They said you look like the kind of slut the world’s never seen—now that I see you, I get it.”

Qing’s face curdled.

No—why is my identity getting exposed here?

And what piece of trash said that, anyway? As if that three-headed beauty nonsense wasn’t enough, now what is this?

Well. People cursed even the Son of Heaven when he wasn’t around.

“Heh-heh. Fine. This is getting fun. So what will you do? With the enemy right in front of you, will you try to drive out the poison? Or since you’re dead anyway, will you try to take the Blood Cult vermin you keep talking about with you on the way out? Though I’m not sure you even know what Poison Blood Guard is.”

Taking someone with you—it was a simple concept. You die, I die. We die together.

Gilun exploded again.

“Poison Blood Guard! That cursed monster! Just how vicious are you Blood Cult bastards?!”

“Heh-heh. No matter how vicious we are, we can’t be more vicious than you Central Plains bastards.”

“Central Plains bastards? I am of the great Dali people, and the Dali people are not the same as the Central Plains.”

“Dali has been subordinated to the Central Plains since when—”

“Subordinated? You Blood Cult bastards call it subordination when someone lowers their head because they lack strength?”

“...? Isn’t that what it is? If you lower your head because you lack strength, that’s subordination. What else would you call it—”

“Then haven’t you Blood Cult bastards also been subordinated to the Central Plains?”

“No, we’re different! We never submit! We are liberators who dream of wiping out all Central Plains people and freeing everyone oppressed beneath them!”

“Then the Dali people are Central Plains people?”

“You Bai bastards are collaborators clinging to the Central Plains—now you want to claim you aren’t—”

“Then what about the other barbarians? Great Yue, Burma, the Jurchen—they all send tribute to the Son of Heaven. Are they collaborators too? So you’ll kill not just the Central Plains people, but every barbarian as well?”

“That’s different! They’re merely suffering under the Central Plains oppression—”

“Then what about the Dali royal house? Isn’t it the same?”

“It isn’t! You—uh—fine! You collect taxes and send them to the Son of Heaven—”

“Don’t the barbarians do the same? Does tribute fall out of the sky? It’s all taxes barbarians collect from other barbarians, isn’t it?”

“No, that’s not—It’s different!”

The deputy Great Lord shouted in frustration.

What is this? Gilun’s got hands.

Does he really have hands? Or is he just saying whatever because he’s the type who says whatever?

Qing was getting confused when—

A Voice Transmission slipped into her ear, Gilun’s voice.

—It’ll be hard, but endure it just a little longer. When I give the signal, drop flat immediately.

Ah. He really does have hands.

He was provoking an opening, then planning to sweep everything away in one stroke with a profound Manifest Realm method.

When a Manifest Realm master stood against you, you felt like the whole world’s unreasonable cruelty was crushing you—hopeless and terrifying.

But thinking of that kind of master as her ally?

It was absurdly reassuring.

So Qing sent her reply.

—Senior!! I’m fine!! Shouldn’t we listen to what they’re saying!! He seems like the kind with a loose mouth!! This is a chance to figure out what the Blood Cult is planning!!

—Tsk, lower your voice a bit. Your voice is thunderous. Still... you do look fine. You said you cut down the Five Poison Sect leader—did you pick up something to eat from his corpse?

Gilun’s Voice Transmission came barreling in with a volume that felt like it would rupture her eardrums, and Qing flinched—

But at the same time, she felt moved.

Even for someone in the Manifest Realm, this poison was brutally hard to endure. How much pain and suffering must a child in the Transformation Realm be in?

And with enemies right in front of them, wasn’t it pain piled atop pain—fear of death itself?

Yet she was worrying about the world’s safety before her own body. How admirable. How precious. How moving. He wished she were his disciple. Truly a child called the righteous sect’s great blessing.

Even while being moved, Gilun kept talking nonsense.

Because contrary to Qing’s assumption, Gilun wasn’t actually trying to scrape at his opponent’s nerves.

In Qing’s words, he wasn’t “playing” them at all.

He simply thought he was stalling for time in a normal way.

And in his mind, he was thinking, why is this Blood Cult bastard getting angry? This is why Blood Cult bastards are—

The Diancang Sect Leader hadn’t begged him to keep his mouth shut for no reason.

“Then what about the Miao people? I heard your Blood Cult joined hands with the Five Poison Sect—so you joined hands with the same vicious Central Plains people you keep talking about?”

“The Miao people are victims! The oppressed! They groan under the tyranny of you Central Plains people!”

“Hm. Is it really that bad? They looked like they were living well to me. Someone I know is Miao—made a fortune, and his tea fields are spread out across the ridgelines like—”

“KRAAAH! The ones living well are you Bai bastards! The ones monopolizing Yunnan’s wealth!”

“Well, that’s because we’re capable, aren’t we. Our Dali people are great. Fine. Let’s stop here. You refuse to understand words. There’s no conversation to be had. As expected of Blood Cult filth.”

“Who’s the one who can’t understand words—did you shove a donkey’s dick into your earhole?!”

“Hmm. Let’s call it that, then. So, continue what you were saying. You brought up Poison Blood Guard earlier—so what exactly are you telling us to do? You didn’t just ramble on and on about how we should die for no reason.”

“Ghh...!”

The deputy Great Lord let out a pained groan.

Qing gave a quiet nod.

Yeah. She had a feeling she’d get along really well with this senior.