Chapter 872: On the Way Home (1)

The most convenient route from the Diancang Sect back home—meaning, back to the Priestess Order Temple—was to stop by Sichuan and take a boat.

And it wasn’t just convenient. It was also the fastest way.

Because if she boarded the Yangtze River in Sichuan, she’d end up practically right in front of her house.

It even turned out that the Seol House Commercial Guild, after nurturing Zigui County and getting recognized for the merit, had gone so far as to build a dedicated private dock. So the moment you got on a boat in Sichuan, you basically went straight to the Seol House Commercial Guild.

And the benefits of that return route weren’t limited to speed and comfort, either.

For one, Sichuan had the Tang Clan, and she currently had a cartload of materials she needed to hand over to them—so she could drop it off on the way, killing two birds with one stone.

Most importantly, though, there was this: she could stop by the giant sects of Sichuan, the Qingcheng Sect and the Emei Sect, and do a Broken-Sword Cliff circuit.

...Or rather, she could have.

Unfortunately, that most important part—the Broken-Sword Cliff circuit—had gone catastrophically wrong.

A truly serious situation had occurred: the Martial-Heaven Great Emperor had gotten sulky.

I mean, really. The Martial-Heaven Great Emperor senior was ancient, and he still got petty and sulked like that?

Though, honestly, old people were the quickest to get sulky in the first place. It was human nature—if anything, people got more childish as they aged.

Mm. But no matter how she thought about it, the Martial-Heaven Great Emperor her mental image had created... didn’t feel like her mental image at all. Which meant he probably wasn’t the Martial-Qing Great Emperor, either....

If nothing else, the part where he kept insisting he was the Martial-Qing Great Emperor was suspicious. And if he really was something her mental image made... wasn’t it strange that he knew things she didn’t know?

Or was this, too, that “non-attachment,” or whatever, from some bizarre, incomprehensible martial art?

She didn’t know.

Were immortals really not real?

If they really existed, then this stopped feeling like a martial-arts world and started feeling like something else entirely. But at the same time, in this mysterious, ancient, primal Central Plains... could there really be no immortals?

And if there were immortals, did that mean there had to be an afterlife, too?

Right now, no matter how hard she wracked her brain, it was something she simply couldn’t know.

So there was only one method.

Break through the Manifest Realm, evolve into the Natural Realm, and confirm for herself whether Ascend to Immortality really existed or not.

But that was a matter for the distant future, so... yeah. For now, she needed to go home....

That was how she wrapped up the wildly eventful Diancang Expedition and prepared to set out on the return journey.

And then, unbelievably, Daoist Master Gilun—who had personally come out to see her off—asked, carefully,

“About that... Close-Friends Society you’re running.”

Even gatherings in the Central Plains had ranks.

A group anyone could freely join, where you built new connections, was called a Banquet Society. If it was a little harder to join than that, it became a Companions’ Society.

And then the most closed-off kind—at the far end of the hobby-club spectrum—was a Close-Friends Society.

So Qing tilted her head.

A Close-Friends Society? Had she ever done something like that?

“Word’s spread everywhere, quietly. That, what was it... the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society? Don’t tell me the ‘Half-Sword’ part means ‘saber,’ and the ‘Twin-Blade’ part means ‘sword.’”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

“Hah. Whoever named it, it’s a name that’ll make both swordsmen and saber fighters grind their teeth. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to belong to a group like that. Still, it’s not really something worth bragging about in public, is it.”

“Mm.”

“Well, anyway, it’s not a request or anything. I was just wondering if you take new members.”

“Ah. Daoist Master, you’re trying to join?”

“What would I even do, mingling with you young ones? It’s good for seniors and juniors to be close, sure, but there’s such a thing as a difference in standing. From my perspective, there’s not a single benefit.”

It wasn’t exactly something you normally said straight to someone’s face.

But by now, Qing was used to Daoist Master Gilun’s way of speaking. She already knew he didn’t mean it maliciously.

“Ahem. It’s just... there’s a fellow in our sect named Olyang. Do you happen to know him? They call him One Cry, All Astonished.”

One Cry, All Astonished.

A saying from Han Feizi—about a bird that didn’t cry at all, so everyone mocked it, but when it cried once, it shook the world, and all under heaven was shocked.

A giant lying low, waiting for his moment.

It was also the sobriquet of the Diancang Sect disciple Olyang.

But the reason Daoist Master Gilun’s face looked sour was because it wasn’t attached to him with any flattering meaning.

Olyang was a famously lazy bastard—so famous that anyone in the Martial Alliance knew his name.

“I know of him, but I’ve never actually met him. I heard he doesn’t even show up to the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering. Come to think of it, I’ve never run into him at the Martial Alliance, either.”

“Ahem. I sent that brat all the way to the Martial Alliance thinking he might gain some motivation if he saw his peers. I knew it. I knew it would turn out like this. That fool’s got his head screwed on backwards. Tsk, tsk.”

Daoist Master Gilun shook his head, side to side.

“With him being that lazy, doesn’t it feel like my chest is going to explode? If he had no talent, fine, but he does. He needs to be around peers with some passion, so he’ll at least pick up a sword once in a while. So I thought—if you could drag him into that Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society... Ah, it’s not a request. I just thought, if you happen to see him later, maybe you could grab him by the hair and make him hang around. It’s not a request, but I’ve been thinking about a sword art lately, and it’s a bit different from the Diancang school’s martial learning, so....”

A “request” was, literally, asking and beseeching.

But in practice, it was a word used when you offered a bribe and asked for someone to do something for you.

And “I’ve been thinking about a sword art lately, and it’s different from the Diancang school’s martial learning” meant: since it’s not the Diancang school’s martial learning, he could teach it to an outsider.

So it wasn’t that it wasn’t a request.

“Ah, the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society isn’t a Close-Friends Society or anything. It’s just a training group. If someone wants to join, it doesn’t matter who they are.”

“Sure. I suppose so.”

Qing was only stating the truth.

But Daoist Master Gilun heard something else in it.

“Then pass on a message, at least. Tell him the Grand Master has issued a strict order for him to join the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society.”

Either way, she had to stop by home, and then this time she had to head far to the extreme northeast—toward Changbai Mountain.

The Martial Alliance was on the way, so she could just swing by and pass it along.

But wouldn’t he just become a ghost member?

Wait. Speaking of ghost members—Changbin, that bastard... what the hell is he doing that he never shows his face at all? He’s dead. Seriously.

So, leaving Daoist Master Gilun’s send-off behind—

At last, the Diancang Expedition was over.

She set off for home.

*****

She meant to stop by Kunming to pay her respects to the Lord Physician, but she heard he had left immediately—the moment the lockdown was lifted the day before yesterday.

If the lockdown had been lifted, that meant the prescription was complete, so it seemed he had gone off to find another patient.

It was a little disappointing, but... well.

If fate allowed, she would be able to meet him again.

So from Kunming, she headed straight north, toward Sichuan.

They said Yunnan land was scenic wherever your feet took you, but unfortunately, along the main road from Kunming to Sichuan there wasn’t really a single place you could call a famous sight.

With a cart to pull, and books to deal with, it naturally became a routine of riding the wagon—staying in a city when one appeared, camping out when one didn’t.

And most of the time left over on a journey was, usually, training.

The members of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society were already fired up about training, thanks to Qing constantly needling them and calling them “the Lower Five” and so on.

So they naturally threw themselves into it—and honestly, it wasn’t unreasonable that the elders of the righteous martial world believed the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society was some elite gathering of top-tier, hot-blooded young martial artists, sweating blood and striving for an even higher realm.

Seol Iri was a hardcase to begin with—she poured every waking moment into training, aside from the time she ate and slept.

Jegal Ihyeon, whenever he had even a sliver of time, did one of two things: lifted weights, or read. A bizarre combination, but apparently both were his hobbies.

Peng Daesan—well, he might roam around instead of staying home, but he trained steadily enough.

And the members who weren’t here were the same: people who were either obsessed with training, or sincerely diligent.

Sword-Freak was famously a lunatic about the sword, and Gongsun Yoye had already resolved to walk a single road in life—the road of the sword.

Moyong Juhee, too, had accepted her own shortcomings with humility, and after abandoning futile fixation on what she lacked... hadn’t she turned into a diligent training maniac as well?

And Qing herself—aside from a few truly hopeless habits—was actually a fairly earnest martial artist.

Things like her foolish meals, where she stuffed her body full of whatever strange things she found fascinating to watch, or how she liked to lie down on a bed the moment her belly puffed out.

Even so, Qing’s training time was, surprisingly, not small.

Either way, as the president, she had to set an example—and no matter how high your realm rose, there was always more you lacked....

Still, it turned out Tang Nanna had been serving as the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society’s delinquent member, actively and enthusiastically.

That delinquent-member activity went roughly like this:

While everyone was training, she’d complain she was bored and demand someone play with her. She’d spread snacks out right in front of Qing’s face and go nom nom right there while Qing trained. She’d say she had something to buy at the market and demand Qing come along. She’d say it looked like there was a crowd up ahead and insist they go see. A face-changing performer had come—let’s go watch. There was some “energy demonstration” from a medicine peddler—let’s go watch. She was low on herbs—want to go buy some together? And so on.

Of course, the training interference was limited to Qing. Whatever Tang Nanna did, the other members didn’t care.

But today—today, Nanna was different!

She wasn’t even looking at Qing. She was absorbed in a book, reading intensely. It seemed the Blood Cult materials they’d seized from the ruins of the Five Poison Sect were more interesting than expected.

And really, the thing that had captured Tang Nanna was an immortal work left behind by some unknown Blood Cult bastard:

How to Break Past the Limits of Poison Arts

Any poison-arts practitioner would find that title tempting, but what was truly shocking was the content.

Instead of using internal energy to dam up poison inside the body and store it—

The book proposed breaking it down into harmless components and distributing it throughout the entire body.

A revolutionary idea.

Of course, if you wanted to “use” the poison, you had to recombine those components inside your body first, so there was a downside: the reaction speed dropped.

But the advantages you gained once you got used to it—especially the way it massively increased your storage capacity for building poison inside your body while still guaranteeing your own safety—

And above all, once you got used to it, you could synthesize the components inside yourself and create multiple kinds of modified poisons.

As the direct line of the Central Plains’ greatest poison clan, Tang Nanna recognized the value of that revolutionary method immediately.

So it was only natural that she stared at the text like a madwoman.

And so, for once, a scene could have unfolded where every member trained with passion.

But in Qing’s homeland, there was a stunning scientific phenomenon called the Law of Weirdo Conservation.

If you observe an ant colony, they say some of the ants don’t work at all and just fool around.

So what happens if you execute all the fooling-around ants—if you remove them all?

Among the ants that remain—the ones that were working diligently—new fooling-around ants emerge again, in the same ratio as before.

And it wasn’t limited to ant societies.

Even in human workplaces, there existed people with atrocious temperaments, twisted hearts, and abysmal social skills—so-called weirdos.

And if that weirdo vanished for some reason, then a new weirdo would be born from among those who remained. (If you say, “Not our workplace, we don’t have any weirdos here,” you should be suspicious of yourself.)

That was the Law of Weirdo Conservation.

Likewise, while Tang Nanna was finally holding it together and devoting herself to research that opened a new horizon in poison arts—

In one corner, a layabout appeared: lying on her side, setting her head on a beauty’s thigh, sipping cold liquor, and watching other people train.

That layabout was the Heavenly Flower Sword, Seomun Cheong.

Because Qing had a new topic now.

Namely—

Letting go.

Yeah. Whatever her heart wanted.

She’d been clinging to the Manifest Realm so hard that lately, she couldn’t even tell what she was supposed to do anymore.

So she’d let it all go. Comfortably, however she liked—just like Daoist Master Gilun had said, a Manifest Realm master: don’t burden yourself. Do what you want.

“Here, little sister. Aaah.”

“Ahh.”

Qing chewed the snack Heema fed her, working it over slowly.

What was this? Potato cake? Something like that?

“Me too. Me too.”

“Okayyy, niece too—aaah.”

They said parents were a child’s mirror.

Lying with her head on Heema’s other thigh, Jayeo accepted the rice cake like a baby bird, opening her mouth wide and eating with fierce enthusiasm.

From the perspective of the people training in front of them, it was a truly demoralizing scene.

Sure, Tang Nanna used to do things like that.

But she was a poison-arts practitioner, and her personality was weird to begin with, so everyone just chalked it up to that.

But now the very person who kept the words “the Lower Five” glued to her lips and used them nonstop was acting like this.

In the end, Peng Daesan lowered his voice for the first time in a while.

It was a bass so low it sank with his annoyance.

“Instead of doing that, why don’t you spar?”

“Huh? No. Even if it looks like I’m slacking off, this isn’t slacking off, okay? Daoist Master Gilun said this is how you raise your realm.”

If Daoist Master Gilun heard that, he’d choke.

He’d told her to do what her heart wanted—when had he ever told her to relax and fool around?

If he had to put it into words, it was the difference between freedom and indulgence.

If he’d known it would turn out like this, Daoist Master Gilun wouldn’t have bothered giving advice at all.

“...Are you sure?”

“Of course. San’s only at the peak realm right now, so you don’t get it, but real masters have to take time like this. Ah, it’s hard to become a master.”

There was a saying: if you couldn’t even talk, you’d at least be less hateable.

This was exactly what it meant.

But really—if it’s unfair, then harmonize.

So, today too, another day drew closer to home.

Distance remaining to the Priestess Order Temple: roughly three thousand li.