Chapter 867: You’ve Fallen for It (1)

Over the ruins that the shells had swept through and the firestorm had burned down—the ruins of what had been the Five Poison Sect—several figures wandered.

The Five Poison Sect was a poison sect.

So there might still be traps or poison left that could activate, and though the surface had been scorched into wasteland, there was no telling what might be lurking underneath, in the underground.

So masters who could handle that kind of danger had gone in to search the interior.

“Mm. Here too.”

Daoist Master Gilun tapped the ground with his blade.

A faint ripple of aura brushed past Qing’s feet.

Daoist Master Gilun wasn’t just poking at rubble—like a droplet falling onto water, he was spreading his aura outward in all directions.

It looked like some kind of detection. No—what in the world is he even doing, and how?

No matter how she watched and thought about it, she couldn’t even begin to understand the method.

It was an astonishing skill.

How far did the ability of the Manifest Realm go?

Well—if it wasn’t a Manifest Realm master, no one could know that.......

And Gilun’s astonishing skill didn’t end there.

After sensing the underground space, Gilun went and opened the entrance in a way only a true master could.

With a single finger.

He merely extended a finger and pointed, but the pointing of a supreme martial artist, all by itself, carried enough destructive power to punch through a sealed underground entrance.

“Kids. There’s one here too.”

Diancang masters rushed over at once, drove shovel heads into the ground, and started digging out the rubble.

It was, truly, an unbelievable sight.

Because considering the danger, no one under the Transformation Realm was allowed in—every Diancang Daoist searching for remnants here was a Transformation Realm martial artist.

Where in the world could you watch masters of the Transformation Realm digging dirt?

Once you’re around the Transformation Realm, even shoveling is violently fierce.

SCRA-SCRA-SCRAPE—ash and dirt sprayed up in every direction, and before long a square vertical shaft revealed itself.

“Let’s see. Doesn’t seem like there’s anyone inside.”

Gilun jumped down first.

You could ask if he was really jumping down without knowing what was below—but really, what would a Manifest Realm master have to fear?

In truth, it was a process they’d already repeated several times.

In the primitive ancient Central Plains, underground rooms were cool—perfect for use as storage.

Gilun would tap the ground to find an underground space, the masters would dig and expose the entrance, and then the Flash Sword would take point.

The other disciples would guard outside.

It looked like a natural process, but in reality, this was the decisive difference between the Righteous Sect and the demonic outsiders.

For demonic outsiders, why would “high and mighty” people ever go first into a dangerous place?

In the first place, masters wouldn’t even be the ones cleaning up something like this at all.

—Hm? Heavenly Flower Sword, come down here.

Gilun’s calm voice floated up from the burrow in the ground.

Qing hopped down—and the thick, damp air unique to a sealed underground space hit her, along with a rich, fishy stench of blood that stabbed into her lungs.

So Qing drew in a big breath.

Mm. It’s kind of... a little fragrant?

“Ugh. Looks like this guy got unlucky.”

It was a small room, and roughly a person’s worth of debris had been blasted out in one direction.

The walls were lined with bookshelves.

One side had half-collapsed, but the opposite side still held the shape of a storeroom—splattered with blood and chunks of flesh, but intact.

A blind shell must have rolled down from above into the center of the room, and some guy standing in front of it happened to block it.

Thanks to that, half the books had been protected intact.

For the guy involved, it was bad luck—but for these books, you’d have to say it was good luck, wouldn’t you?

“Looks like a library storeroom. But underground?”

Daoist Master Gilun muttered, puzzled.

An underground space was damp and clammy by nature—full of moisture—so it was a terrible place to store books.

Qing’s eyes brightened, and she slowly dragged her fingertips along the spines.

It was the nasty habit of a martial-arts thief—someone who could learn immediately just by touching a complete manual.

But unfortunately, there was no “news.”

What is it—these aren’t manuals?

Not manuals, but they still hid them underground? Or fake manuals? A trap?

Qing pulled one book out and looked down.

It was dim and not a good environment for reading, but Qing’s body had long surpassed humanity, and her night vision was good enough to slap nocturnal beasts across the face—so she had no trouble.

She opened the untitled booklet and skimmed.

It was just a list of contextless information.

...Mixed compound of Jangryeon and Dokmichae. Half a don.

Age twenty-seven, male, sturdy build, weight one hundred forty geun.

After one two-hour watch, blood spots. Complains of pain, itching from extremities.

After two two-hour watches......

Qing had skill recognized as “one person’s worth” of women physician capability, but even without that, it wasn’t hard to understand what this was.

She pulled another book and skimmed.

And another.

And another.

A deep furrow carved into Qing’s brow.

You crazy bastards—these are human experiment records.

One book logged injected poisons—sex, age, constitution, and results.

Another recorded slowly draining blood and noting when death came.

Another was bound with detailed drawings modeling a heart, with the original owner’s traits annotated as notes.

Booklets like that filled the shelves.

A baleful color flickered in Qing’s eyes.

You Blood Cult bastards—

That was when it happened.

CLAP!

A strangely brisk sound of applause snapped Qing back.

“Don’t hate them too much. Isn’t what the Blood Cult does always like this? So there’s no need for you to hate them. Those wretched bastards—those dogfucker trash—there’s not even satisfaction in just grinding them down and making them drink it. You ought to skin them and throw them into brine.”

“Uh.”

For someone saying “don’t hate them,” it sure was full of rage.

What is this?

Don’t hate them.

Because I’m the one who should?

Qing blinked, dumbfounded.

As the baleful color vanished from her eyes, Daoist Master Gilun smiled faintly—a Daoist smile.

“A person crushes fleas, and kills mosquitoes, but doesn’t hate those pests. They’re harmful things, so you kill them. That’s all.”

“Isn’t there someone who hates mosquitoes?”

“Once there was someone who suffered and suffered from mosquitoes until the hatred sank into his bones. Well, he lived beside a reed field, so mosquitoes couldn’t help but be fierce.”

Reeds grew in wet land—so of course a reed field would swarm with mosquitoes.

“So starting one day, didn’t he quit farming and live only to kill mosquitoes?”

But no matter how hard one person killed mosquitoes, mosquitoes wouldn’t disappear.

Because the reed field existed.

With a mosquito breeding ground sitting there, no matter how many you killed, it could never end.

“So he thought: if I want to wipe out these mosquito bastards, I have to set fire to the reeds and burn them all. He did—and as the fire spread through the reed field, he too couldn’t escape, and he burned to death with it.”

Gilun put on a solemn expression.

“You can hate. But if you keep hate in your heart, someday it overflows and becomes hatred. And when that hatred grows heavier than yourself, you stop living for yourself and start living for your hate. Like how he quit farming.”

And in the end he burned to death—trying to kill mosquitoes, he ended up killing himself too.

“You’re born with ominous killing-star energy, so you shouldn’t pour hate into matters like this. When you catch a mosquito, you can burn it, or tear off its wings and dunk it in water and play with it to vent—but you must not spend your whole life chasing mosquitoes.”

Qing tilted her head.

Gilun spoke again.

“It’s what I always tell Diancang disciples. Hate and gambling. Gambling is exactly like that. If you gamble for fun, then even if you lose, you shouldn’t feel wronged. Because whether you drink alcohol or tea or play around at all, spending gold and silver is only natural—and if gambling was fun, then you simply paid the price, didn’t you?”

Gambling.

Lose money gambling, but if you had fun, you paid for the fun.

“But if you gamble not to enjoy it, but to make money, then the trouble begins. A person goes mad in an instant. When someone is mad for gambling, it’s common enough for him to sell even his wife and children to raise stake money. There’s a reason people say you shouldn’t treat a gambling addict like a person.”

“Mm.”

It was exactly the kind of thing a Daoist would say.

Meaning: it sounded deep and meaningful, but when you really chewed on it, it was subtly vague and ambiguous.

“So, what should we do with these? Send them to the Priestess Order?”

“Huh. These?”

“Then what? Burn them? They’re horrific books, but skimming them, they’re not just ‘useful’—they’re extremely useful. If it were up to me, I’d throw them to the Medical Office of our sect, but since Diancang didn’t do anything, wouldn’t that be embarrassing? You’re the one who caught the trail, and you’re the one who had the shells poured in. What did Diancang do—other than swarm in and watch?”

“Uh... mm.”

“It’s unpleasant, I understand. But these books are already written. Throwing them away only turns this into a pointless mess, doesn’t it? This isn’t something a Daoist ought to say, but what can you do about what’s already happened? Using what remains is... for those pitiful people too—mm, that’s a terrible thing to say. Well. Anyway.”

“Then we can send them to the Martial Alliance for now. If a sect wants them, they can copy them and research—no, should we send them to the Tang Clan first? That kind of thing is the Tang Clan’s specialty. The Martial Alliance is too far, so before that, we can have them make copy sets too.”

“Mm. This is material on poisons the Blood Cult uses, but even aside from that, it’s about the human body—if you open it up and take it apart, its value is no small thing. Not only poison sects or medical sects. But it’s not something you can comfortably hand off to others, is it? In the first place, there’s no one as thoroughly versed in medicine and poison as the Tang Clan. The Tang Clan stands to gain a great deal from this.”

“Ah, come on. They’ll share the important parts anyway, and they can keep the side profit themselves. Even just getting prescriptions for the poisons the Blood Cult uses—what more could you want? Besides, mm—no, never mind.”

In the first place, the Priestess Order wasn’t a big sect—wasn’t it to the point that they didn’t even keep a separate Medical Office?

There was a reason Tang Nanna always worked so hard checking pulses every time she came to visit.

So even if the Priestess Order got these, there probably wouldn’t be anyone to properly research them. Better that the specialists got it.

What was the point of hiding it tightly?

“Still, we’re one family in the righteous martial world. It’d be good if everyone looked and anyone got something out of it.”

Gilun smiled softly.

If a Diancang disciple said something this naïve, it would make him explode inside—but at the same time, he’d feel deeply pleased, joy swelling up.

Wasn’t this precisely the Great Way—a path where private interests did not come before the greater cause, or the world?

So Gilun steeled his heart again.

Yes. Earth Slaughter Star. I must find the Earth Slaughter Star......!

It was the moment the old-man slaughterer hammered another wedge into his heart and sounded his victory trumpet once more.