Chapter 861: The Way of the Sail Swordsman (8)

Just watching someone eat is enough to fill you up.

It refers to the phenomenon where your own mental satisfaction is fulfilled by watching someone you care about eat deliciously, but—

Sometimes the opposite case also holds.

Of course, the Deputy Great Lord’s “meal” was more accurately described as drinking than eating, but.

Mm, what’s the difference between eating and drinking? If you chew, it’s eating, and if you don’t chew and just swallow, it’s drinking?

If it goes in through your mouth, it’s eating. There’s no need to be strict about separating “drinking” and “eating.”

The Deputy Great Lord’s eyelids trembled.

That was about all the reaction the Deputy Great Lord was capable of.

Because Gilun had driven chopsticks into the back of his neck, he couldn’t even turn his head, and because Qing had punched a breathing hole clean through his windpipe, he couldn’t even make a sound.

So the meal took place in a very peculiar silence.

Originally, forced feeding like this had a huge blind spot: when you open the esophagus, the airway ends up completely blocked—

But if you just pierce a single breathing hole in the windpipe, that’s the end of it. No problem at all.

And so, the enjoyable meal time (for the viewer only) ended.

“Alright, Mr. Blood Cult scum-whatsit—are you still not thinking of having a conversation? If you want to say anything at all—‘I want to talk,’ ‘I want to quit doing Blood Cult things and find the light’—raise your hand.”

Qing looked down at the Deputy Great Lord.

Eyes full of rage stared up at Qing.

Even though he looked like he had plenty to say, he didn’t raise his hand—was that a sign that he had a lot to say, but he wasn’t going to say it?

Of course not.

“Ah, right. You can’t raise your hand.”

His neck bone had been pierced, leaving him paralyzed from head to toe.

“Then, mm, if you have something to say, blink your eyes violently instead.”

But the Blood Cult bastard only kept glaring.

Qing clicked her tongue, then yanked up the Deputy Great Lord’s front lapel to cover his throat and poured water over it, glug-glug-glug-glug.

When the water-soaked cloth covered the breathing hole, the structure became one where air moved in and out through the throat again.

“Kill me. Just kill me.”

A voice came out that sounded like it was badly hoarse—almost like scraping metal.

It seemed air was leaking through the wet cloth covering the breathing hole, but there was no reason to care about his voice, so—whatever.

At that, Qing spread her arms with exaggerated flair.

“Oh, you want to die? You want to quit that tough, brutal life? Well then, an astonishing benefit just for you! If you spill everything you know right now, it turns out I can kill you! And—send you off in one blow, without pain! Wheeeeew, isn’t that amazing?”

“It’s useless. Stop the nonsense and kill me.”

“Aw, why say something so hurtful? Kill you? No way. I’m going to make you live a long, long time, suffering after you’ve been made to endure every filthy thing imaginable, and then die lonely and alone when you’re old. Kyaa. That’s what you call a long life with illness.”

A long life with illness—there was no curse like it.

“Y-you vicious bitch—your righteous-sect hypocrites only act pious in front of people, but what you do behind the scenes is exactly what a demonic master—”

“Hey now. Demonic master, my ass—where do you find a demonic master this kind? I’m delaying your departure as long as possible, when you’re guaranteed hell-bound the moment you die—”

“Evil man? Ha. Who are you calling evil? We only seek to liberate those oppressed by you Central Plains’ cruel, vicious scum. Who’s truly wicked, and who’s the evil man who’ll fall into hell?”

Yeah, the Blood Cult’s logic was always like this.

Qing smiled brightly.

“Then why did you kill the innocent inn waiter and the cook? Were they cruel, vicious scum too? Or were they those oppressors?”

“.......”

The cooking was the cook’s skill, but it had poison in it.

They wouldn’t have added poison voluntarily, so someone must’ve forced them to add it—something like, If you don’t want to die, then... something like that.

And then—SLICE.

To reach the cook, the inn waiter would obviously have tried to stop them, so the inn waiter got SLICE too.

But they weren’t people you needed to kill at all.

This was the Five Poison Sect’s front yard, and they were wearing Five Poison Sect martial robes, so if they’d just told them to keep their mouths shut, they probably wouldn’t have even dared to open them.

“Now that I think about it, I’m kind of pissed. Mm. I should pull out a few teeth. It’s not like you’ll be using them again for the rest of your life anyway.”

“W-what—wait—”

Qing has obtained four front teeth from the Blood Cultist!

With his front teeth gone, his face somehow looked more simple and harmless—like he didn’t even look like a Blood Cultist anymore.

She didn’t know much about teeth, but she vaguely remembered reading some novel where someone died after all their molars got pulled out.

Since there was still plenty of time left before she went from the Diancang Sect to Broken-Sword Cliff after the job was done, she could just pull them slowly, right?

And so, today’s interrogation ended too.

There wasn’t much to show for it, but it had been really fun.

*****

When she came outside, the Jong brothers were squatting awkwardly, legs trembling.

You bend your knees, but keep strength in your waist so you consciously point your butt toward the sky, and drop your arms so they’re level with your thighs.

It was a Central Plains lower-body training method: the Horse Stance.

Surprisingly, the Jong brothers’ aptitude was pretty decent.

At this level, even if it weren’t for Qing’s request, they were the kind of talent you’d pick up off the road as you passed by, apparently.

“How is it? Did he open his mouth at all?”

“No. He said to kill him, so I just pulled out his front teeth. It was kind of funny, but it’s not like he’ll have any use for teeth anyway.”

“Now that I think about it, if you pull out all their teeth, there’s no need to go to the trouble of gagging their mouths. Since you were pulling them anyway, you should’ve pulled them all.”

“I heard if you pull too many at once, they can die. We went through the trouble of capturing him alive—if he dies over something like that, it’s a waste.”

It wasn’t something you should say in front of kids.

But if you’re doing the Horse Stance, nothing anyone says reaches your ears.

In the middle of your thigh muscles tearing thread by thread, there’s no way you have spare capacity to listen to someone else’s conversation.

Still, the way they were gritting their teeth and enduring made them pretty admirable—

SCURRY.

Before she could even finish the thought, the smaller one, Jong Munyeok, stood up, legs trembling violently, and came over to hug Qing around the waist.

“Hng, sis, my legs hurt.”

“Yeah, yeah. You shouldn’t push yourself.”

Well, what could a little kid do.

For an eight-year-old, even the Horse Stance would feel like punishment.

Jong Munun was pretty desperate about it, though. Well—mm, he was even more baby-faced than she’d expected.

At sixteen, it was a little late to begin martial arts, so if he had that edge in him, he had to work hard with it.

*****

By the time the Deputy Great Lord’s teeth that Qing had collected reached past the canines and arrived at the first premolars,

the Five Poison Sect’s First Poison-Squad—along with the Blood Guard Brigade detachment—also finished preparing the manor’s defenses.

The three elements of defending a manor were as follows:

Walls, formations, and traps.

In that regard, the Five Poison Sect was extremely advantaged.

The wall piled up to one zhang high had the imposing presence of a fortress rampart.

And the formation arts Jang Choeryang had learned “as a hobby” had already surpassed hobby level and reached a master’s realm.

In truth, it was called a hobby, but Jang Choeryang had a bit of a mental problem—so his hobbies were poison and formations, and he was the kind of person who poured every moment of his life into his hobby except for eating, sleeping, and taking a dump.

Finally, when it came to traps, poison was king.

Physical-impact traps were the sort of thing martial artists either endured with their bodies or avoided outright with their physical ability, so when it came to traps meant for martial artists, wasn’t the consensus that poison mattered most?

And the First Poison-Squad handled poison.

Even aside from that, the Five Poison Sect’s legacy remained piled high in the warehouses—there was poison everywhere.

And in that environment, Jang Choeryang squeezed every last drop of his ability and completed his masterpiece.

It was the moment a horrific absolute formation was born in the Central Plains once again.

Its name was the Absolute Annihilation Kill-Buddha Kill-Immortal Kill-World Eternal-Extinction Formation!

A naming packed with the utterly horrifying ambition of killing even Buddhas, killing even immortals, killing even the world—no, killing forever.

Even without that ambition, it was a horrifying name, but.

Jang Choeryang’s names were always like this.

“Heh heh. This— even if my master comes back, heh hehhk, he’s going to suffer, suffer quite a bit.”

Jang Choeryang was not a person who lied.

It really was such an absolute formation that even if the Poison Demon returned, they’d be caught in it and have to struggle for a while.

If, while his master was wandering around lost for ages, he went Ta-da and released him, wouldn’t his master praise him and say he made it well?

That was why Jang Choeryang kept letting out those heh-heh-heh chuckles.

It might make you wonder what kind of master would praise a bastard disciple who made even his master wander in a formation, but you could call it the Poison Demon’s fault for raising a disciple who was a child in a grown body with endless coddling and unlimited affirmation.

“Th-then... is it alright? I don’t know formations well, but......”

“Then, then, don’t talk. You don’t know—if you don’t know, don’t—don’t get cocky. Hee-hee.”

In truth, that Absolute-whatever Eternal-Extinction Formation was not a formation a real formation master would give high marks.

Because there was no Life Gate at all.

A formation is complex and difficult because it has to be terrifying and dangerous to the enemy, but a safe space for you and your allies.

But if there’s no Life Gate at all?

It meant that regardless of friend or foe, once you entered, there was no way out.

Especially in a defensive situation like this.

They gathered everyone into the central building, the Five Poison Hall, and then built that Absolute-whatever formation in a ring around it—so they’d ended up trapped inside a formation that was dangerous to both the enemy and themselves.

Of course, since the formation’s center was the Five Poison Hall, if they wanted to dismantle it, they could dismantle it at any time.

But that wasn’t the part the subordinate was worried about.

“If we do this, aren’t we isolating ourselves......”

“Even if the Diancang Sect comes—if the Flash Sword comes—we can’t stop him.”

That was the formation’s fatal flaw—its weakness.

If someone just used brute force and smashed everything around them, sooner or later the components that made up the formation would be destroyed and it would have no choice but to collapse.

Either the formation killed the martial artist before that happened, or the martial artist got lucky and destroyed a key component before they died.

But if an out-of-spec master at the Manifest Realm decided to smash it, it would turn into a wasteland in an instant.

“But even if the Flash Sword comes, once he breaks the formation, he’ll be poisoned, so everyone has to fight together. Then we might win. Right? We can win, can’t we? Can we win?”

“We will win, no matter what.”

At that, viciousness returned to the subordinate’s eyes.

The battle plan itself wasn’t bad.

At an old sect, they typically stocked food in abundance, and there was a well, so they could hold out for a long time.

And no matter how delayed things became, within a month, the Poison Demon would return.

If the righteous-sect bastards stormed in before then?

If there was no Flash Sword, it would be a chance to annihilate the Diancang Sect elite.

And even if the Flash Sword was there, they could still inflict meaningful damage.

Revenge would be completed by the Poison Demon and their Blood Cult comrades, and afterward, their deaths would remain not as dog deaths, but as a noble resistance staked on their lives.

But why did this foreboding feel refuse to go away?

*****

Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon’s waist bent like a bow.

Not backward—forward.

He was so close to touching his head to the ground that at this point it was basically a bow in all but name.

Of course, he couldn’t actually bow.

If you bow carelessly, it becomes treason.

“Heh heh heh... for you to grace this place with your presence—this is truly the glory of three lifetimes.”

The official’s shameless laughter was a kind of etiquette.

Originally, it had been a survival technique for eunuchs—to hide masculinity before the Son of Heaven and be regarded as harmless.

But now it had become a way for officials to display submission before someone far above them.

It was essentially the same as a dog flopping onto its back and exposing its belly before a higher-ranked dog.

If you wrapped it up nicely, you could call it the act of lowering yourself ridiculously to elevate the other person’s dignity, but—

And a Royal Censor was someone far above.

They were one of the terrifying supreme power-holders who could turn the lord of an entire county—who was called Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon with that “magistrate” appended—into mere “just a county magistrate,” or “a nobody magistrate.”

“Come on. Three lifetimes is too much.”

“Then I shall say it is the glory of this lifetime. Heh heh. Th-that... it ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) seems you wish to hide your precious status, so previously I did not dare to treat you with the proper ceremony......”

“Aw, you don’t have to make it so hard on yourself. The beggars are a bit fierce, but the way the neighborhood’s running didn’t look bad, so it seems like Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon has governed well.”

“Heh heh heh heh, you overpraise me.”

Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon swallowed a deep relief inside.

It didn’t seem like she’d come because there was a problem, so... she must’ve come to collect sincerity.

“Sincerity,” in other words, a bribe.

But rather than feeling dread at being in a position to have “sincerity” wrung out of him, Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon’s mood actually rose.

Because it was a good thing.

In this backwater, when would he ever get another chance to offer sincerity directly—face to face—to a Royal Censor?

“Th-then, I should first serve tea, but a valuable Pu’er tea has come in, so if I briefly leave my seat to prepare it personally...?”

The important parts here were “valuable,” and “personally.”

In official-language, it meant: I’ll bring you a very valuable sincerity, so please wait.

But the Royal Censor shook her head.

“No. I came because I have something I’d like to ask of Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon, so I can’t impose that kind of trouble on you.”

Ask.

To an official’s ears, this word sounded different—once it entered an official’s ear, it turned into the word request.

So Jihyeon lowered his voice.

“Of course. Please, just speak. If it is something this humble one can do, I will help in whatever way I can. But if you say it is an ask—”

Then Qing lowered her voice as well.

“Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon, I’m really sorry to ask you this, but... could I borrow a cannon?”