Chapter 866: The Way of the Sail Swordsman (13)

It was a sound they’d never heard before.

A shriek of air being ripped apart—like dozens of tearing whistles braided together. Like dozens of whips cracking at the same time, or like thousands of birds chirping in frantic panic, or like a line of mosquitoes passing right by your ear.

When a First Poison-Squad member jerked his head up at the strange sound that stabbed straight into his chest on instinct, he suddenly saw black dots in the sky.

One dot, two, three? Four? What the hell is that?

They seemed to rise a little—and then, as if they were falling, they started growing, subtly, steadily, larger.

And then they dropped in an instant—THUD!

With the roar, the roof of the elder’s quarters ahead of him—tiles and all—burst apart, shingles exploding outward in every direction.

No, it wasn’t just the elder’s quarters.

With a chain of impacts, fragments of buildings everywhere leapt up with dust and started spraying and fluttering through the air.

What in the hell is going on?

Like cannonballs flying in.

“Uh...?”

A stupid sound slipped out of his mouth.

Cannonballs? Shells? For real?

In that moment, a black iron sphere punched through the elder’s door and dropped—THUD—into the room.

Even at a glance it looked heavy.

For something like that to bounce up to waist height, how high did it have to fall from?

The member stared blankly at the big iron sphere—bouncing off the ground, drawing an arc, coming closer.

Time felt like it had stopped. Like it was crawling, almost to a halt.

His mouth fell open.

“Everyone—”

The word run—didn’t even make it out.

.........!!!!

With a gigantic roar, his world shook and flipped over.

He went flying and slammed into the ground.

Like thousands, hundreds of blades had shoved him all at once—like he’d been hurled by an irresistible force he couldn’t fight.

EEEEEEEE.........!!

A roaring ringing filled everything.

He tried to push himself up, but the hand bracing him went slack and he collapsed. He flailed again, slipped, and ended up writhing on the ground in an ugly scramble.

EEEEEEEE......!!!!

The impatient ringing felt like it would tear his eardrums off.

It was as if someone had jammed a whistle into his ear canal and was blowing with all their strength—violent, savage—an awful kind of violence delivered by sound.

“......! .........!”

A comrade’s face was right in front of him, lips moving.

Before he knew it, a stream of blood was running down from the forehead, following the creases at the mouth and dripping from the chin.

The member opened his mouth to speak.

Hey. You’re bleeding.

Or did he say it? Or not? The EEEEEEEE ringing was so loud he couldn’t tell whether he’d spoken out loud or only thought it.

As he stared blankly, a rough hand clamped onto his shoulder.

The instant searing pain—like a red-hot piece of iron was drilling into him—snapped his mind awake.

“...Get... your head... out...!”

The voice was still hard to hear through the ringing, but the scattered words, the urgent expression, the harsh grip dragging him—what it meant was obvious.

Get out of here. Now.

But where? Outside—there was a formation—

That was when it happened.

In his field of view, the eaves of the building suddenly—without warning, without even a sound—burst apart.

No. There had been sound. He just couldn’t hear it—his ears felt plugged as if underwater, and the only thing that pierced cleanly into his brain was the ringing.

A rough force shoved him.

As he toppled backward, he saw the face of the person who’d pushed him.

Time stretched, endlessly.

Number Three.

The senior he hated the most, and feared the most, in the First Poison-Squad.

If you greeted him, he’d say, “That’s what you call a greeting?” and smash your shins because you thought he was a joke. If you greeted him loudly, he’d smash your shins because “Do you think I’m deaf?” If you missed him and walked past without greeting him, he’d line up the underlings and smash shins until he was satisfied.

That bastard.

Behind him, a brilliant light bloomed.

Backlit, the horrific face the member had never dared meet eye-to-eye slowly sank into shadow.

Then—SPLAT.

A pain like his tailbone had shattered.

But he forgot even that, sitting hard on his ass, staring blankly upward.

It was Number Three, wrapped in flames.

He’d taken a Fire-Rain Shell full on from behind—one of those primitive, ancient incendiary shells that scattered burning, sticky oil and set everything around it on fire.

Why?

Wasn’t that bastard supposed to hate me?

If I died, I’d thought I’d dry up and die because of what he did to me—not because of the mission. That was how much I hated him.

So why did he save me?

Was all that grinding just part of enforcing discipline—pick one guy, grind him down, make an example for everyone—no personal malice?

Or did Number Three, as the top senior, see someone in danger and move without thinking—and it just happened to be me? If it’d been someone else, would he have acted the same? If he’d known it was me, would he have left me? Or did he know and still—

But fuck, does that matter right now?

Grinding his teeth, the member sprang up.

Water! He needed water! A well! The well—!

He ran.

Buildings were punched through, burning oil sprayed everywhere, flashing blindingly, and the ground kept vibrating as enormous explosions continued.

He half-circled the Sect Leader Hall and reached the well in the rear courtyard, yanking up water in a frenzy. He panicked, cut the bucket’s rope, and hoisted the whole thing on his head—

Hurry. Hurry.

He finally dumped water over Number Three, raising a thick cloud of steam.

But that was all.

Number Three just hung limp, dragging shallow breaths.

The member grabbed him, trying to haul him up.

In the next instant, Number Three snatched his wrist.

‘Go, you bastard. I’m done. Leave me. Go...!’

That was what his mouth looked like it was saying.

For the first time since joining the First Poison-Squad, the member defied that terrifying senior.

He looped Number Three’s arm around his own neck, stood up, and pushed forward—through the worst place in the world—under a sky that had already gone dim.

He didn’t know where, but toward somewhere safe. Toward the outside.

Tiles collapsing in avalanches, the explosions of Iron-Fire Shells announcing themselves like small earthquakes, flames spreading in earnest and turning the world into a boiling bath, the sky choked by smoke—and then, an arm on the ground, a leg, empty eyes staring into nothing...

One by one, two by two, more comrades started following behind him.

Some had come to their senses. Some were just terrified and chased the person in front of them.

Still—before this unprecedented disaster, they leaned on each other, pulled and pushed, dragged people upright, slapped faces to wake them up, and kept moving—outward. Toward the outside.

And it wasn’t just the Poison-Squad members.

The laborers—compatriots assigned to grunt work—supported each other too. Poison Blood Guards, loyal without will, threw badly wounded men over their shoulders. Poison Brutes—failures, but trained like faithful hounds—charged in front and tore open a path.

If there was any mercy, it was this:

The formation had already lost its function.

The core devices that held it together had been smashed. Buildings were burning, punched full of holes, pillars collapsing—some sections were already crumbling. From the very start, the formation had bled out its strength.

And a large portion of the traps had been broken as well, while whatever remained was rapidly cracking, burning, and vanishing.

Formation or traps—nothing could withstand a baptism of falling shells.

Of course, they couldn’t avoid every trap.

But even then, the Poison Blood Guards and Poison Brutes at the front took it with their bodies, and the members’ losses stayed small.

Supporting one another, clinging to one another, at last—beyond the smoke—the gate appeared.

A passage leading outside.

Joy, relief at being alive, rose in everyone’s eyes. The corners of mouths lifted sharply. Some reddened around the eyes. Some staggered as if their strength had drained out.

A few comrades rushed forward and yanked open the bar.

SCREEEEE—

The lower gate where carts went in and out—the door to the outside—the escape route out of this hell finally swung wide.

And outside—

“Blood Cult bastards are coming out!”

A line of martial artists blocked the road straight ahead.

That familiar, hateful robe—it belonged to the Diancang Sect.

“Damn it! Poison Blood Guards, Poison Brutes—kill them all!”

At that, the Poison Brutes burst out on all fours. Poison Blood Guards leapt after them, their strange bodies moving in unnatural bounds.

The First Poison-Squad members exchanged a glance.

Split up. Survive. We’ll meet alive.

They started to scatter left and right—

KRRRRAAANG!

A monstrous roar—like thunder crashing down right in front of your face—so loud even the air trembled.

In the next instant, a storm of blood swept through.

The First Poison-Squad’s creations, charging all at once, were—within the time of a single blink—transmuted into a thick red mist.

And it didn’t end there.

The member dropped to his knees, eyes shaking as he stared down at his own torso.

Already soaked red.

His whole body went slack and collapsed, his lower abdomen shattering—his poison core spilling loose with a horrifying pain.

How—how is this—

He lifted his head again.

Between the Diancang Sect martial artists, a huge muzzle was visible—still smoking at the mouth.

A Grand General Cannon.

The strongest weapon of the government army—spraying tens of thousands of metal fragments forward, grinding the space itself into pulp—had revealed its might.

*****

In truth, even as Prefectural Magistrate Jihyeon cooperated immediately, he hadn’t believed the premise—that they truly needed to cleanse a Blood Cult den.

As Jihyeon understood it, His Majesty regarded the martial world as a national disease that had to be uprooted. So the Royal Censor, receiving those words, was simply “serving Heaven’s will” and using that as a justification to smash something.

And wasn’t the Five Poison Sect a sect of those impure Miao barbarians?

Weren’t they the ones who dared to say horrific things about “Han people” and “reclaiming Sichuan”?

So even if they got smashed, there wouldn’t be much backlash from the martial world—no, rather than backlash, wouldn’t even the Diancang Sect mobilize those famous Sun-Shooting Sword masters and help?

That’s what it was.

Just another common power struggle from the center.

That’s what he’d thought.

Until the Five Poison Sect’s gate opened—and he saw monsters running on all fours, and others sprinting with their spines bent backward, flailing as they came.

“T-They’re real Blood Cultists! Fire! Fire!”

Jihyeon shouted in panic, spurring on the yamen troops.

And then—

BOOM!

Normally, Jihyeon wasn’t the kind of man to stick his head into a dangerous scene.

Honestly, even when it wasn’t dangerous, he was the kind who didn’t show up at all—a power behind the scenes that existed yet didn’t, practicing a governing philosophy of “rule, but do not administer.”

But when you’ve got a power-holder who can make even that stiff commandant snap into discipline like a new recruit—are you going to tuck yourself into a corner to save your own skin?

A man like that has no right to hold office in the Central Plains, and couldn’t hold high office even if he wanted it.

So Jihyeon stayed glued to the Royal Censor’s side—and watching Blood Cult monsters burst out in real time, he had no choice but to be horrified.

Which was why Qing, listening beside him, tilted her head.

Real Blood Cultists?

Then are there fake Blood Cultists too?

Anyway.

The simultaneous volley from four Grand General Cannons was—

Those Blood Cult monsters... honestly, Qing couldn’t tell whether they were dangerous or not. Poison didn’t work on her, so she didn’t really “get” poison monsters.

Anyway, those four Grand General Cannons had more than enough firepower to sweep away the Blood Cult remnants that had crawled out through the rain of shells.

...Mm.

Back when it happened in Sichuan, she hadn’t really realized it, but seeing it like this—

Yeah. This is, once again, horrifying.

“Reload! Reload the cannons, now! Hurry! We don’t know when those traitors—those monsters—will come out again!”

Hearing Jihyeon bark at the gunners, Qing watched the Five Poison Sect engulfed in flames.

Watching a Blood Cult den get smashed to pieces was satisfying.

But at the same time, it was chilling.

What if that hadn’t been the Five Poison Sect?

What if it had been the Priestess Order?

Once you reached the Transformation Realm—and once you became skilled at protective aura—fear of shells usually started to fade.

If it didn’t explode right in front of you, mere fragments—fast, but nothing more—weren’t that much of a threat to a Transformation Realm master.

So when shells started falling, you tightened your aura to protect your body and, at the same time, got out of the area as fast as possible.

But Transformation Realm masters weren’t common weeds you could pull up by digging a little.

Even in the Nine Great Sects and Ten Great Families, how many true masters existed inside a single sect?

Then what about everyone else?

The memorial tablets that enshrined the seniors? The shrines?

The documents that recorded the sect’s history, and the manuals that organized and studied the sect’s martial arts?

If someone committed to pouring shells down like this, individual masters might survive—

but the sect itself would be no different from ruined.

A sect’s defensive measures, refined over generations to protect itself, were fundamentally designed to fight other sects.

And even then—how could there ever be some way to block a rain of shells in the first place?

At best, like the Sichuan Tang Clan, you’d build shelters underground in preparation.

...Mm. Shelters.

Obviously, the Five Poison Sect had prepared them too, right?

And if there’s a chance to get a proper feel for it—no, it’s not like she’s starving for combat or anything—if the one poison doesn’t work on can slice them up clean, then the Diancang Sect folks won’t be put in danger, right?

Qing stroked the hilt and grinned.

What she hadn’t considered was this—

when the Five Poison Sect handed their estate over to the Blood Cult, they hadn’t handed over their most critical secrets along with it.

Blood Cult nest, completely destroyed.