Chapter 908: Tripitaka Master and the Thief of Benevolence and Righteousness (1)

Unfortunately, on the way to Huanin County, there wasn’t a single village worth stopping at, so what could I do—camp out, that’s what.

So before the sun fully went down, I got a campfire going, perched a Mongol Pot on top, and was in the middle of boiling Seomun Cheong’s special slop—Heavenly Flower Antelope Porridge.

“Self-Determination Self-Reliance Blade Art is a far more marvelous blade art than Hundred-Refinements.”

It was the Plunderer Demon, blurting it out without warning.

Qing’s ears perked.

Hundred-Refinements... so the name of that martial art that fired off endless continuous attacks, with every afterimage being real, must have been Hundred-Refinements Saber Art.

She’d already read, in the Plunderer Demon’s manifested thought, a vicious resolve for training—mastered through countless repetitions—so the name “Hundred-Refinements” fit him like it was made for him.

But still, uh... what is this, a blue border...?

And then, all of a sudden, something swelled up in her chest.

No, seriously—if he already hit the Transcendent Realm with a blue-border martial art, what’s he lacking that he’s out here snatching other people’s martial arts and eating them?

“Mm. Yeah. It’s definitely on a different level of depth. Yeah. This—this is what you’d call a divine art.”

He’d said he’d never stolen a proper martial art before, and now he learned one red-border martial art and immediately started going on about “divine arts.”

Well, if he’d spent his whole life training only blue-border stuff, maybe that was inevitable.

Qing pretended she couldn’t hear and kept stirring the porridge.

He was the type who obsessed over martial arts, so if she got dragged into the conversation, she could already see it—So, about that, could you maybe teach me just one more?—something like that.

But what came next went beyond even Qing’s imagination.

“Alright. Then anyone who wants to learn it, come out.”

“Huh?”

In the dying sunset, masked people popped out in a flurry and snapped into formation with crisp discipline.

“Wait. Sir. This is a little different from what we agreed on. Why are you spreading my martial art around to other people?”

Life-Stealing Blade could feel wronged.

Since when is it yours, and why!

But Qing was shamelessly upright about it.

It was a manual a dead demonic bastard had left behind as his last scrap of conscience, so it was basically the same as that dogshit demonic bastard leaving it to the Heavenly Flower Sword—pure goodness incarnate—and asking her to use it for good.

So of course it was, fair and square, unmistakably, her martial art.

Unlike Tathagata Divine Palm or Emperor Sword Form—those were stolen. This one was hers, proudly.

Qing didn’t use Life-Stealing Blade Art in front of others, but maybe that was because she was too proudly upright about it.

And the Plunderer Demon was just as upright.

“Isn’t it better you know I’m teaching it, instead of me passing it on behind your back? Even if I promised I’d keep it to myself, you’d never stop doubting me for the rest of your life. It’s better to lay it out in the open. Your heart and mine both feel easier that way.”

“No, what kind of—”

It was a terrifying logic that could leave even the world’s most formless poison at a loss for words.

“And I’m not ‘spreading it around to others.’ They’re my disciples.”

Qing swept her gaze over those disciples.

They were already beyond saving just from the parts of their faces they’d covered, but sure enough, their karmic stench was crawling all over them—these little shits really did pick a great teacher, huh—if not for that, the moment one of them got caught, they’d be treated as a bandit pack and wiped out on the spot.

“No, even so, this isn’t okay. If you do it like this, then I can’t give you any more martial arts. What, are you going to scatter it to every corner of the world?”

“Mm. It’ll sound pathetic, but I have my circumstances. A power struggle, you could call it. I need to build up strength. Hm. Then how about this—if you have an internal method that pairs with Self-Determination Self-Reliance Blade Art, then next month, I’ll take that instead. How’s that?”

This was the Plunderer Demon who’d said he didn’t need internal methods.

Well, he’d already reached the Transcendent Realm, so there was no reason to tear down his lower abdomen and rebuild it just to match a martial art, and it would be a waste of internal power, too—and at the Transcendent Realm, even if the blade art and internal power didn’t perfectly match, he could still draw out the full might without issue.

But that wasn’t true for his disciples. And if you were going to tear down your lower abdomen, it was better to do it while you were as low-level as possible.

In other words, he was openly saying he’d teach it to his disciples.

“Mm.”

Qing weighed it for a moment.

Hand another tool to a demonic master who’d already hit the Transcendent Realm.

Or let that demonic master’s underlings grow stronger.

Considering what the Transcendent Realm meant, the latter was clearly the better option.

And she had no idea how long the Changbai Mountain Range search would take, but even if next month was unavoidable, she could at least be back in the safe Central Plain by the month after that...

If she could just make it to the Priestess Order Temple—then there was that bastard Yeom Hwiyeong, too, and sure, he only had one eye, but a Transcendent Realm was a Transcendent Realm.

“Fine. But you can’t change your story later.”

Qing’s voice came out unusually bitter.

Playing along with the other side’s scheme... it didn’t sit right.

Honestly, the Plunderer Demon probably had roughly the same thought—did he not know that if she really kept her body low in the Central Plain on purpose, it wouldn’t be easy for a demonic master like him to come looking?

And yet they’d agreed on once a month anyway. In the end, it had to be thinking like—life is long, my life is even longer, and a Transcendent Realm’s life is also very long, so I’ll look far ahead.

But... since he clearly had no idea that Self-Determination Self-Reliance Blade Art was actually Life-Stealing Blade Art, if she twisted things just right, there might come a moment where that great demonic master, the Life-Stealing Blade, would have to step out...

Yeah.

Power. I need power!

Overwhelming power! I need big power!

Qing reaffirmed her fighting spirit.

Beside her, Gongryang Sayoon sat there with a spoon, watching her steadily the whole time as if smacking her lips—then, in the end, she scooped a bite and forced it into Qing’s mouth.

“Oho. It’s delicious. It looks like rotten dog slop, but was the Heavenly Flower Sword actually an astonishing cook?”

...Why does this one keep acting like we’re close?

*****

Huanin County might be the frontier, but it had abundant water sources and, thanks to that, fertile sedimentary land—so its population had grown to the size of a city.

And while it belonged to the Central Plain’s territory, it wasn’t a city of Central Plain people. It was a city of Jurchens.

Originally, it had been Jurchen land, but in the far past, the Son of Heaven at the time urged them to surrender, and the chieftain at the time accepted it without resistance and asked to submit.

So the Son of Heaven granted that Jurchen chieftain the official post of Jianzhou Guard and granted the right to govern Huanin County, generation after generation.

That was the birth of Huanin County’s ruling family: the Huanin Dong Family.

At the same time, to the Jurchen “barbarians,” the Huanin Dong Family were the second-worst kind of ethnic traitors—selling their land and their soul to live in comfort.

They were the second-most hated rebels in the world to the Jurchens!

Thanks to that, Manchus often invaded and fought the Jianzhou Jurchens, clashing again and again—while the Central Plain’s soldiers just watched, going CRUNCH CRUNCH on snacks.

They were using Huanin County as a buffer zone in front of Manchu land—like, in Qing’s hometown phrasing, a meat shield.

For reference, the Meng Clan Tribe only ranked above them on the Jurchens’ hatred list.

Which meant there was a separate, absolute worst traitor who sat at number one.

So who was the Jurchen number-one, worst-ever, sellout traitor that every Manchu hated?

That would be the Moyong Family—who surrendered first without even being asked.

Anyway.

So! Huanin!

It had already been over two hundred years since Huanin County submitted to the Central Plain, so after fighting the Jurchens and fighting and fighting again, what wouldn’t that resentment have become?

On the other hand, the Central Plain tended to provide generous support so that the Huanin Jurchens wouldn’t lose, so the feelings among the Han in Huanin weren’t too bad.

After settling into Huanin’s Number-One Inn, Five-Women Tower, the view outside the third-floor private room wasn’t just scenery—it was a spectacle.

At the peak of the eastern ridge, a tall cliff rose up at a right angle, towering like a fortress.

When the setting sun sank in the west and cast down its red glow, that magnificent natural stronghold on the eastern mountain also turned red, and it was a sight all on its own.

Qing stared, slack-jawed for a while, then started probing the waiter who’d brought the tea-and-sweets tray.

“Ah, guest, you’re going to Changbai Mountain? Those Manchu bastards are vicious as hell out there—no matter how skilled you are in the martial world, you don’t have more than one life.”

Beyond Huanin County was truly a lawless land, a region beyond the reach of state power.

“Mm. More than that—have you heard of the suspicious figure in Changbai Mountain? They say it screams and has black veins all over its entire body.”

“You mean the Masquerade Troupe? A bandit pack that imitates ghosts. But I haven’t heard of any ghost like that.”

“Mm. Then is there someone who might know? Or—where can I see those Masquerade Troupe bandits?”

“Around here, the Masquerade Troupe doesn’t even dare to show its face, but, hm—if you just follow the Yalu River all the way up, you’ll run into them at least once.”

...Yalu River.

I’ve been in the Central Plain this whole time, and then suddenly a place name I actually recognize pops out, and it feels kind of weird...

Like, mm, it makes me think of home again, after a long time.

Qing, thinking of that home ground and that other world for the first time in a while, stared blankly into empty space.

The waiter seemed to take it a different way.

In that direction, there was the mountain’s natural stone wall—what you’d call, in foreigner-speak, a mesa-like landform.

Maybe he thought she couldn’t take her eyes off the scenery, because the waiter started explaining.

“Isn’t it magnificent? That right there is Huanin County’s famous sight, Five-Women Mountain Fortress.”

“Five-Women Mountain Fortress? What is it? Why does it feel familiar—huh, a chronicle? It’s popping into my head all of a sudden. Why? What was it again?”

“In the far past, it was a sacred land where the dynasty of a country called Goguryeo was born. They say it used to be called Jolbon Fortress.”

“Ah. Jolbon Fortress. Scatter the squirrels. Mm.”

“Pardon—squirrels, guest?”

“No, I’m just saying things. Ah. So that’s Jolbon Fortress. Goguryeo...”

Is that Goguryeo the Goguryeo I know?

Even if it is, does it have anything to do with me?

If it were the Goguryeo from that other world, sure—but this is the Goguryeo of this world, and this body... doesn’t it have none of that blood mixed into it at all?

Then, in this world... what am I?

It felt like her heart dropped straight down.

A sudden sense that the world had become unfamiliar—an alien, raw sensation.

A bitter, icy loneliness, like she was alone in the world—she’d thought it had gotten better, but of all times...

Qing’s hand began to twitch in a thin spasm.

And then it happened.

“You ate all that, and you’re still putting more in?”

“Mm-mph’s good.”

It was Gongryang Sayoon, puffing out both cheeks like a squirrel while she chewed cookies—MUNCH MUNCH—and, wow, she knows how to eat. Yeah. That’s how it’s supposed to taste. You need your mouth packed full so you can really chew.

“What taste. It’s so sweet my mouth’s totally coated—coated. Ugh. You eat it.”

“Thang oo.”

The Plunderer Demon slid his own plate over toward Gongryang Sayoon with a smooth push.

Come to think of it, what’s the relationship between those two?

Looking at it, she didn’t seem like a disciple, and the way the Plunderer Demon took care of her while acting like he wasn’t was like a blunt father.

Are they father and daughter? They don’t look alike at all.

And then, all of a sudden, a face came to mind.

Mm. Jayeo. I miss Jayeo. What’s she doing right now—studying? Mm, “just grow up healthy” is starting to feel kind of dangerous, too.

Still, if someone’s going to live like a person, they can’t stay illiterate. If all she does is grow up healthy and run wild, what’s the difference between a person and a beast...

Warmth swelled up through Qing’s chest.

Somehow, even though she hadn’t touched dessert yet, it felt like her stomach was getting full.

Is this what parental love is? They say you can be full just thinking about your kid?

Even though Qing had already finished five full dishes, anyway.

When I think about it, what’s there to be lonely about?

If I go home, Jayeo is there, and Jangmyeong is there, and by now, it feels like Master should be about ready to come back soon, too.

On the way back, I could stop by the Moyong Family, then hit Hebei, then the Martial Alliance, then the Zhuge Family—no, maybe drop down from Hebei to the south instead, stop by the Gongsun Family in Nanjing, then swing by the Namgung Family, then the Zhuge Family on the way?

It’s been a long time since I last saw the Gongsun young lady, too, so maybe it’d be good to visit Nanjing once while I’m at it.

A soft, contented smile settled on Qing’s face.