Chapter 936: A Strange Bitch, A Strange Guy, A Strange Guy (21)

“Four! Five!” Qing kept counting. “Six!”

Her voice was so bright and lively that, if someone heard it without context, they’d think she was playing some friendly game—calling out numbers to a friend.

But that wouldn’t do.

The whole reason she bothered shouting her kill-count was to rattle the Sword Demon, even a little. If she just yelled numbers with swagger, how would anyone know whether they were real?

So she had to show proof.

“Seven!”

Qing shrieked it out—and scooped up a severed limb and hurled it as hard as she could toward the distant, crashing, howling chaos of the main battlefield.

At first she’d thought about chopping off those bandit-martial-arts disciples’ heads and throwing those instead, but her right arm was still acting up. Fighting with only her left arm, it was a pain in the ass to go out of her way and decapitate people.

No—“pain in the ass” wasn’t quite it.

The corner of Qing’s mouth trembled slightly.

Her face looked murderous—like some legendary butcher finally getting to massacre weaklings and smiling because she was having the time of her life.

But if her friends had seen her, they would’ve asked why she was forcing that smile. Or at least wondered.

She didn’t have time to cut throats.

Would Qing ever “pass up” the chance to slice an evil bastard’s neck? When it was that fun, that intoxicating?

But her internal power—her internal power was starting to run short.

How long had it been since she’d felt her internal power sag?

So she had to smile.

So nobody could tell she was tired. So nobody could tell she was strained. So it looked like she was bursting with energy, like she could keep slaughtering them forever.

More cruel. More vicious.

Qing’s fingertips punched into a Blood Cultist’s solar plexus with a hard shove. CRACK—bones caved, and the warmth of living flesh wrapped around her hand.

“Eight!” she screamed, yanking the heart out and crushing it in her fist like she was putting it on display.

The heart muscle was tough and resilient; when it mashed and oozed between her fingers, a dizzy, electric pleasure flickered through her—

But this wasn’t the time to savor it.

The enraged Blood Cultists charged.

Yes. Come.

There wasn’t much of her internal power left, and movement arts chewed through it. Better they ran at her than her running at them.

Three of them formed a triangle around her.

Qing swept them fast.

One sword aura, one saber aura, one sword aura edge.

TWEENG—she fired a Vacuum Palm with the Tathagata Divine Palm into the aura-edge user’s knee to slow him down, then rushed the one leading with sword aura and clamped his weapon in her left hand.

GRRRT—

The blade carried a sharp, bright sword aura, but it couldn’t breach Minor Water Demon Art’s near-indestructible body hardened into Harmonization Realm. The sword bent—Qing snapped it hard—

TICK—she broke the blade, then rammed the broken edge straight into his eye socket and dropped him to his knees.

A great saber swept through the space where Qing’s neck had been.

Qing sprang up like a rebound and grabbed the screaming Blood Cult swordsman by the collar—still clutching his eye—and shoved him forward.

The aura-edge Blood Cultist couldn’t bring himself to cut down his own ally in the way, and ended up catching him instead.

In that gap, Qing’s foot whipped up and kicked the Blood Cult saber-man clean under the jaw.

A perfectly drawn diagonal—supporting foot and striking foot forming a straight line, like a painting.

CRUNCH—teeth flew as the saber-man popped up.

Qing naturally ripped the great saber away, then hurled it into the open air on the other side.

It struck the net that had just unfurled mid-flight—

A heavy sinker swung as if a huge fish had been hooked.

The net, bunching up in the air, dropped uselessly farther away.

“Nine!”

And shortly after—“Ten!”

Immediately after—“Eleven!”

Then half a beat later—“Twelve!”

And again—

A Blood Cultist raised a wolf-fang saber.

He drew the saber back, arched his waist like a bow—an honest stance that put his whole body into a single downward chop.

Too slow.

No—Qing was too fast.

WHOOOM!

Black spores of Heaven-Sundering Demonic Aura scattered under her feet.

In that instant, Qing existed in two places at once.

Afterimage Displacement—moving so fast in a blink that it left a phantom behind where she’d been.

Qing’s left hand shot out.

A blackened hand-edge slammed into the Blood Cultist’s shoulder—BAM!

His shoulder burst apart. Black-Killing Demon Palm’s manifested thought was cruelty itself—destruction that broke the body with more force than the hit should have carried.

The Blood Cultist staggered.

Qing seized his collar and yanked him in—he spun, like a dancer in a Western round dance, and fell right into her arms.

With her still-trembling right arm, Qing looped his neck.

With her left hand, she grabbed his remaining forearm and snapped it clean—CRACK.

“KRAAAAGH!!”

Against the backdrop of that desperate scream, Qing shoved the hostage forward and howled.

“Stop! You want to watch your buddy die!?”

“Jeongtae!” “Let Jeongtae go!” “You filthy bitch!”

“Heh... You want this bastard alive? Then throw down your weapons first.”

A hostage-taker drenched in blood, eyes flickering with a sinister gleam—and a crowd that had stopped, blades raised, for the hostage’s sake.

Amazingly, one side of this standoff was a righteous hero of the Orthodox path—

And the other side was the evil Blood Cult.

While the Blood Cultists hesitated, staring at their captured comrade—

The “righteous hero” tightened his grip on the hostage’s throat with a nasty smile.

“KHUK!”

And the “righteous hero” screamed.

“You want to see this bastard die!? Drop your weapons, now! My words not sinking in? Want me to pluck out an eye, huh? I’m counting to three—drop them.”

At the crude threat, the Blood Cultists exchanged frantic looks, then nodded.

“We’ll do it! We’ll do it—!”

And together they started lowering their bodies, slowly placing their weapons on the ground—

—pretending to.

Then they all rushed at once.

Of course, it wasn’t surprising.

That’s Blood Cult spawn for you. No mercy.

They surged from all sides.

And finally every kind of weapon—wrapped in its owner’s aura—condensed into sword aura, aura edges, aura strikes, and flew.

The first willow-leaf saber reached her—the aura edge a hair from touching—

Qing’s body split in eight directions.

Ripple-Wave Footwork.

And the only one left standing in the spot was the hostage—Jeongtae—no, maybe his family name was Jeong and his given name was Tae, maybe it was something else—

Either way, he stayed there.

And he was shredded by the techniques his own comrades fired.

Blood and flesh exploded outward. Severed body parts flew.

And over it all, Qing’s bright voice rang out.

“Thirteen!”

But Qing’s smile was noticeably stiff.

Maybe because these were the Sword Demon’s disciples—martial-arts bandits and training-addicts in one—because the people still standing here were no joke.

Out of twelve weapons, five had aura edges—

Among them, one that was truly dangerous.

Four Supreme Peak and one Harmonization Realm?

And the ones on the far side of the encirclement hadn’t even arrived yet.

Damn it. If her right arm were intact—and if her internal power were still full—she could’ve ground her way through somehow.

Endurance was a warrior’s lifeline.

The way you dealt with an unmatched master was either to bring another unmatched master—

Or pour bodies on them until they burned out their internal power.

Once internal power ran dry, what could even a master do? Their protective aura would crumble first, and then they’d die from a weakling’s blade.

And Qing burned through inner strength faster than most.

Her divine arts that carried power beyond Harmonization Realm demanded internal power beyond Harmonization Realm. Her degraded version of Nine Swords of the Lone Sword was so costly she could barely use it at all.

And Ripple-Wave Footwork devoured internal power too.

Qing’s lower abdomen held energy beyond Harmonization Realm, so as long as she wasn’t using Nine Swords of the Lone Sword, she’d never “run out” from simple spamming.

But now—

If she didn’t have it, she had to fight like she didn’t have it.

The enemies charged again.

Qing ground her teeth and met them head-on.

Anyone below Supreme Peak? Ignore them and tank it.

At worst it was skin splitting—something you could fix later with a little spit.

She slammed forward, taking two blades on her shoulder and back.

The Supreme Peak Blood Cultist’s face went wide-eyed—like he hadn’t expected her to run straight into it.

“Fourteen!”

A Blood Cultist’s life went out—and Qing let out a shrill scream.

“KYAAAH!”

Because if it really hurt, people didn’t even scream; only a single, miserable breath leaked out—

Meaning a loud scream meant she could still take it.

So which bastard was it? Which bastard stabbed her ass—one inch off and it would’ve been a complete catastrophe—

A sharp aura edge surged at Qing.

Behind it came five—no, six—afterimages of a short saber and the arm holding it.

They weren’t mere phantoms; each afterimage was a real strike.

The thought behind Hundred-Refinements Saber Art.

Compared to the Sword Demon’s strike—countless afterimages layered beyond counting—this looked pathetically small.

But comparing a Harmonization Realm’s thought to a Transcendent Realm’s thought was cruel by definition.

Qing twisted desperately.

Short saber and trailing afterimages skimmed past her chest by a hair—

Then—

THUD!

Her vision flashed white.

A clean blow smashed into the jaw under her ear. Her head snapped, her brain rattled, and her mind went blank. Her legs gave out and she collapsed.

If there was any luck here, it was that most martial arts weren’t built to fight someone stuck to the ground.

She’d fallen in the middle of a chaotic melee; if they tried to chop down with weapons, their own bodies would block each other.

So what came first was frantic kicking.

Qing curled into herself.

A reflex, half-conscious—built from a year in the world of martial artists and getting hit too many times to count.

Curled tight like an armored pangolin, shielding her vital points, she took a storm of kicks—

And then—CRUNCH.

Someone’s toe drove straight into her right forearm.

“H—huk—”

This time a real, painful breath burst out. Tears surged instantly, wetting the corners of her eyes.

And then a shout thundered, ringing out like a bell.

“You morons! Move! MOVE! You’re in the way!”

That shout snapped Qing’s mind back awake.

Between the feet jerking back in alarm, a short saber flashed up—its aura edge shining like cold starlight.

Qing shot a hand out, grabbed an ankle, and yanked—hard.

SHHK—

Hot, wet weight dumped over her body in a rush.

She didn’t even have time to feel disgusted.

Qing flipped and rolled wildly across the fallen leaves.

Lazy Donkey Roll.

People mocked it for looking ugly, like a lazy donkey rolling in the dirt—but when your life was on a razor’s edge, what warrior wouldn’t roll?

Left roll, left roll, right roll—she snapped her lower body up and over her head, rolling backward like a nursing infant—one, two—then stretched out and rolled left, left, left, left—

Weapons kept smashing into nothing but ground. Leaves and shattered clods of dirt bounced and flew.

It looked like they couldn’t even hit a rolling target—

But martial arts simply weren’t built around someone crawling and rolling on the ground.

Qing’s fist stomped down on someone’s instep—BAM.

Her fist was blackened with Black-Killing Demon Palm’s trait. The instep crumpled instantly, and its owner finally let out a truly painful breath and collapsed.

Qing’s left arm swept the ground hard.

A huge, twisted, pallid hand—those giant fingers, those sharp nails—raked across the earth.

The nails punched into a right shin and tore out through the left—

Then surged into another shin on the left—

CLANG!

A great saber stabbed down into the earth and barely blocked Minor Water Demon Art’s tearing claw.

“Ground-Crawl Fist! It’s Ground-Crawl Fist! Fall back! Nets! Bring the nets!”

Ground-Crawl Fist—an umbrella term for ground-fighting arts.

But Qing didn’t know any Ground-Crawl Fist. Her right arm had zero strength, and getting up was hard, so she’d rolled like her life depended on it.

Now, though, the enemies’ legs had backed off.

Qing snapped her knees together, bowed like she was prostrating to someone, and sprang up.

Blood Cultists—some dragging their feet through leaves searching for nets they’d thrown aside before. Others leveling weapons.

Qing’s right arm trembled violently.

The blood and qi in that arm was twisted. The protective aura there was pathetic.

And the forearm that had been kicked was pulsing with pain that felt ominous.

Shit. This is bad—

That was the moment.

KWOOM!

Something huge dropped right in front of Qing, and a cold chill brushed her skin.

A human turtle on all fours, an ice mountain jutting from his back—

Kim Heojung.

Qing’s face lit up.

Why would Kim Heojung be here?

Because in the meantime he’d crushed the Sword Demon and the Heart-Eating Demon, and came to help her clean up the remaining trash.

Seriously—she couldn’t believe she’d ever live long enough to be this happy to see a crude, incel-adjacent bastard.

Qing’s voice came out genuinely thrilled.

“Sir! You came to help!”

Kim Heojung answered.

“No. We have to run. Get on. Now.”

“No, what—run? The Sword Demon isn’t even a match, and the Heart-Eating Demon’s half-dead. Even if they slip away, you can’t possibly lose to them. Why would we run?”

“It’s—those half-dead things, weird monsters swarmed in and started ripping out their hearts and feeding them, and then he suddenly completely lost his mind—”

—GRAAAAAAAAH!!! I’LL KILL YOU!!!

Kim Heojung’s words were cut off by a roar so huge it shook the world.

Sixfold Voice Resonance.

A massive internal power—packed with overwhelming aura—

Qing didn’t hesitate.

She immediately slapped herself onto Kim Heojung’s back—right against the ice mountain.