Chapter 929: A Strange Bitch, A Strange Guy, A Strange Guy (14)

Qing stretched both arms out straight, side by side, and her torso skimmed low over the ground—

for a split second, at a violently sharp speed.

Of course, even in this knockoff Central Plains pseudo-ancient era, gravity still existed, so Qing’s long, extended body gradually traced a parabola.

Then she brought both arms together and dropped like someone diving into water. The instant both palms kissed the earth, her elbows folded with springy give to disperse the impact, and in the blink of an eye the back of her head quietly touched down.

The world spun.

Her contact point with the ground rolled from the back of her head to the back of her neck to her back—her smoothly curved back rolling past her generously padded butt—and the moment after, her soles slapped the earth again and she popped right up.

She had cleared a full four jang, yet rather than violence, it carried elegance—an absurdly perfect forward roll.

Qing sprang up and unfolded Heavenly Demon’s Army Descending Step again, kicking into a lively three-step acceleration as she darted on.

But her head was a mess.

Palm Wind—he’s using Palm Wind!

Palm Wind—more precisely, in proper martial theory it was called a qi projectile: a catchall for techniques that expelled and condensed qi outside the body to fire it as a tangible or intangible projectile.

It was a different flavor than Vacuum Palm, which skipped the distance and struck directly.

Palm Wind meant you were shooting something.

Among Qing’s arts, Heavenly Demon Death Ray and Blood-Hand Seal counted as Palm Wind, while Tathagata Divine Palm belonged to Vacuum Palm.

Honestly, in a fight, the advantage of distance was such a massive edge you couldn’t emphasize it enough.

If that was the case, then masters who could just go bang-bang from afar with Palm Wind or Vacuum Palm should have been the strongest.

But if it were really that simple, every martial art on earth would’ve evolved into ranged strikes.

Reality didn’t—because Palm Wind, qi projectiles, Vacuum Palm... all of them carried an enormous weakness.

They devoured internal power at a grotesque rate—and even then, their power was absurdly weak.

But that “absurdly weak” power...? Enough to blast a huge crater into frozen ground—ground that had been stomped and packed hard in the dead of winter?

Either he was using some art specialized for Palm Wind, or he had an obscene amount of internal power.

No, even if he was Transcendent, this was... seriously? And why do I keep running into monsters everywhere I go?

As Qing ground her teeth, the Heart-Eating Demon lifted his arm, twisting it up high like he was about to pitch a ball.

His hand hovered in an awkward shape, neither clenched nor open—and suddenly, a sinister black-red Soulflame gathered there and burned.

The Heart-Eating Demon snapped his arm.

The Soulflame shot out at a horrifying speed.

It drew a straight trajectory like a clothesline pulled taut—

FWOOSH! The sound of compressed aura slicing the air was brutally murderous.

Qing threw herself again.

Another flawless forward roll—if the gymnastics masters from her hometown saw it, they would’ve raised their TEN OUT OF TEN signs unanimously without hesitation.

“You rat-bitch! You roll real well!”

“What the hell does a rat have to do with rolling! Have you ever seen a rat roll!”

“You bastard! All mouth!”

“You stupid bastard! You’re only figuring that out now!”

Qing’s mouth had always been a living demon—still flopping and wriggling with fresh life even when she was cowering in front of a stronger enemy. So hearing the obvious didn’t give her any reason to feel bad.

But the Heart-Eating Demon, getting cursed out by some blue-young girl, felt very bad.

And she was fast—how fast was she? She’d fling herself, sure, but then in just a few steps she’d snatch her speed back and shoot forward again.

And on top of that, she dodged the qi shots like she had eyes in the back of her head, throwing her body aside at exactly the right moment—so all his “pressure” did was widen the distance.

Grinding his teeth, the Heart-Eating Demon shoved every last bit of internal power into his legs again.

He quit using Palm Wind to check her—

and went back to the main event: stomping the earth and charging in earnest.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! With every step, he accelerated harder and harder.

And the distance between Qing and the Heart-Eating Demon started shrinking faster and faster.

But—

if you could run fast just by kicking the ground hard, why would lightness skill even exist?

Running by violently launching yourself off the ground was the same as sprinting full speed downhill.

The more speed you built, the harder it became to change direction—no, even slowing down became difficult. Past a certain speed, you couldn’t even maintain constant velocity anymore.

To avoid falling, you had to kick harder and faster—and the result was even more speed.

Then you had to move your feet even faster and harder—

and your speed kept climbing and climbing...

It was the trap of infinite acceleration.

It was exactly what lightness-skill masters warned against: get drunk on speed until you can’t control it, and you’ll destroy yourself instead.

Qing, who had received proper training as a thief-in-training, knew that danger well.

The Heart-Eating Demon, swept up in infinite acceleration, drew closer and closer to Qing.

The distance that had stretched past ten jang while he was shooting...

ten jang, nine jang, seven jang—

and then four jang—

and then that ominous, evil presence pressing up behind her back!

The Heart-Eating Demon drew his arm again.

Black-red Soulflame blossomed in his grip—a lump of aura packed tight with pure killing intent. And when the qi shot finally finished forming, he held it floating over his palm and thrust his arm out.

The instant that extremely compressed lump of aura bored toward Qing’s back—

Qing’s mouth split into a grin that tore all the way back to her ears.

With that motion, Qing suddenly dropped—hard.

She planted both feet and just slammed herself flat onto the ground.

Her legs slid as she lay there—SSSSSK—

and above her, the Heart-Eating Demon, arm fully extended, had leaned forward with all his momentum.

Qing’s eyes flashed. At the same time, she lifted Moonlit Night with both hands and heaved it up with everything she had.

A sunset-colored aura speared upward, standing straight—

drawing a vicious trajectory between the Heart-Eating Demon’s spread legs, straight toward the most precious place a man owned.

In that moment, Qing saw the Heart-Eating Demon’s expression.

Eyes bulging like they’d burst out of their sockets; teeth grinding between parted lips; nostrils flared wide—

a clear, vivid wash of fear, and an equally dense shade of desperation.

This is why you use lightness skill. Not this brain-dead “I’ll just pay for it with internal power” crap.

The Heart-Eating Demon suddenly remembered his mother’s face.

A face from a very long time ago—the mother who said she’d be gone for ten nights.

But that gaze—so sharp with guilt.

Back when people swapped children and ate them, the look on his mother’s face as she left him in someone else’s house.

Then scene after scene followed.

A trembling kitchen knife held before people whose eyes burned with hunger close to madness.

A Blood Cult warrior he met by chance.

The first time he ate a heart.

The warriors he’d once looked up to—now, somehow, kneeling, looking up at him.

His master’s daughter, once so lovely and beautiful—

and someone staring at a threshold, pacing the courtyard endlessly—

and the sound of a child’s crying wrapping around his ears—

that small little body—

those tiny fingers that had clenched his finger so tightly...

No—was this a death reel? Me? A death reel? Don’t make me laugh!

The Heart-Eating Demon clenched his teeth so hard they screamed.

A massive force erupted from both palms—and from his soles as well. His shoes didn’t just burst; they shattered into fragments and vanished.

As Palm Wind exploded beyond its limits and the entire area detonated, the recoil wrenched his waist sideways.

He twisted his body and wrenched his pelvis with desperate force to evade the vicious aura flooding into his center—

the most desperate, earnest effort of his entire life.

And finally—

Moonlit Night swept past the front of his pelvis, as if it would graze.

The difference was the width of a single hair.

In truth, the Heart-Eating Demon’s “attainment” was shallow—so thin it didn’t even reach the level of Sword Demon, the weakest among the Transcendent.

And yet, Sword Demon had still judged the Heart-Eating Demon to be two moves ahead of him.

Because the hearts raised through that special method carried qi as massive as a famed elixir—

and the Heart-Eating Demon, guzzling those hearts like water, had possessed internal power that had surpassed the Transcendent Realm by a ridiculous margin for a very long time.

In other words: smashing through his lacking understanding of martial theory with sheer output.

But this move was different.

This was a miracle born from him detonating his potential—so subtle and profound that if he could observe his own body and recreate what he had just done, he could instantly patch his shallow attainment and raise his realm.

But the Heart-Eating Demon couldn’t.

Because the blade had grazed past the front of his pelvis.

He had been running at an uncontrollable speed, then pulled off a miracle turn in midair—so his body spun like a top and bounced, tumbling away five times or so.

And then came a howl more miserable than anything in the world.

“GRAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

When the Heart-Eating Demon lurched back up, the black in his eyes was gone.

He looked completely snapped.

But even more than that, everyone’s gaze dragged downward.

Between his legs—soaked in bright red blood.

No, a red stain spreading in real time.

A true, undeniable attention-grabber.

Qing’s eyebrows bent into a helpless arch, and an involuntary little groan slipped out.

I did it, but... ugh. I can’t look. I can’t.

Honestly, it was worse than if he hadn’t dodged at all.

Qing’s aura couldn’t pierce the protective aura formed by internal power so massive it surpassed the Transcendent Realm—so if he’d taken it straight, he would’ve lost either the left or right “jewel.”

But he twisted his body, twisted his pelvis—centrifugal force yanking that dangling pillar outward—

and when the blade grazed past the front of his pelvis, Qing, gripping Moonlit Night, felt an extremely subtle “hand feel.”

Still, dodging had been the right call.

The pain of damage, between jewel and pillar, was hundreds—thousands—of times worse on the jewel side.

If a jewel shattered, the pain alone could kill you. If even one side had gone, the Heart-Eating Demon would’ve blacked out on the spot.

No matter how outstanding his internal power was at the level of a Transcendent Demon, if you lost consciousness, you were helpless.

Qing could’ve earned the achievement of killing a Transcendent alone.

But the pain of a pillar injury... could be drowned under rage strong enough to go beyond even that.

Qing checked the Heart-Eating Demon’s fully flipped-over eyes and turned her back without hesitation.

Yeah. Look at that glare. If I deal with him right now, I’ll actually die.

And in a way, her goal had been accomplished.

He looked like he’d lost all reason—so if she kept running and forced him to burn internal power, eventually a real chance to kill him would come.

And from the way he’d been spamming Palm Wind, he’d tire out sooner rather than later.

Besides, in complicated terrain, Palm Wind wasn’t something to fear.

If she dove into the forest, how was he supposed to land hits?

Qing slipped into the woods—

and the Heart-Eating Demon, the man the Blood Cultists called the Soul-Seizing Demon Emperor, who might now end up being called the Eunuch Demon Emperor—

no, the one who had been a man—

came after her.

“Stop right there!! GRAAAH! I’ll kill you!”

“Would you stop if you were me! You’re saying you’ll kill me!”

“DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

Whether it was rage fueling him, or something else, he fired qi shots the size of a child’s head from alternating palms, left and right, in time with every “DIE!”

But this was a cold-region conifer forest—thick, tall evergreens packed tight.

Qing zigzagged through the thick trunks freely, like she owned the place.

An unlucky pine took a qi shot—

CRACK! It snapped and fell with a massive explosion.

After that, a blameless fir’s trunk vanished into a circular hole at the center and toppled.

Then an aspen trembled like an aspen—

but in the end it took a qi shot and broke with a violent splintering crack, collapsing.

It was a terrifying scene of natural destruction.

And in the middle of it, Qing waved mockingly.

“You tree murderer! Nature destroyer! Trees are alive too—alive! Hit me instead, hit me! Don’t take it out on trees!”

“GRAAAAAH!! You bitch! YOU BIIIIITCH!!”

Seeing the Heart-Eating Demon foaming as he raised both palms and lit two qi shots at once, Qing went “EEK,” and scampered even faster.

But Qing’s eyes sparkled.

Maybe—just maybe—

this time, she could really pull off the feat of soloing a Transcendent.