Chapter 36
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: Fire - 3
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The flames raged fiercely even deep into the night. Thick black smoke rose endlessly into the sky.
Half-burned debris scattered on the wind. Whoosh. A smudge of soot landed on someone's cheek. He had been scooping up rice at the time.
"Take as much as you want! There's plenty of rice!"
Qinghua Pavilion had served as a warehouse in its own right. The treasures, riches, and seized food and delicacies stockpiled underground were now piled up without exception before the collapsed building.
The refugees swarmed in. They had scrounged up sacks from somewhere. Bulging pouches and beaming smiles.
What unfolded before the blaze was like a festival. A small banquet held atop the corpses of the Dragon Star Clan.
With Guangdong's Supreme Evil Faction crumbled overnight, no one dared make a move. Not the Iron Blood Fist King watching from distant Huangzheng Tower, nor the corrupt officials rotting away alongside the former emperor's illness. This night belonged solely to the refugees filling the streets.
And then.
A gap began to form little by little. People started pushing back from the end of the street. Pressing against the walls.
In majestic silence, a wave of humanity shifted. On the wide road leading to Qinghua Pavilion, where moments ago the avenue had been packed solid with people... a new path opened up.
Sabak.
The sound of skirts brushing the dirt stood out thickly. It spread far and wide on the night air.
A whisper rose. Is that her? The faint curiosity was quickly hushed by the person beside.
Shh! She'll hear you!
Sabak.
It was calm. Quiet. Neither thick nor fierce. No pressure like a storm.
The Girl advanced silently ahead. Toward the ashes of Qinghua Pavilion, she stepped with delicate feet.
"Holy Maiden..."
One refugee watching her naturally prostrated himself. The person beside him, then the next, one by one bowed low. Foreheads to the ground, not daring to lift their heads.
Through the spreading faith, the Girl pressed on. Bai Hui followed behind her like a servant.
At the end of that path, Zhang Ping bowed deeply at the waist.
"You've worked hard. Go and rest now."
At the Girl's voice, Zhang Ping felt tears welling up. Divinity dwelled in that voice soothing his heart.
As Zhang Ping, still bowed, retreated step by step, the Girl turned.
In the endless forest of humanity, she saw the fallen. Corpses not yet cleared away. Those slain by kitchen knives or with skulls crushed by clubs.
At her command to bring them forward, all obeyed. Those who had felt her pulse one by one emerged carrying the victims in their arms.
Slender, fragile fingers gently closed staring eyes. The resentment in the eyes of the departed faded. The Girl took their grudges into her own eyes. Stored them deep in her heart.
Thump. A pulsing energy circulated once along the reverse blood path.
"I'm sorry. I was too late."
It was absurd.
The Holy Maiden had brought salvation, granted them strength. No one harbored empty resentment.
Yet what words to speak? Who dared break the silence? The people only prostrated lower. Gazing at them, the Girl whispered softly.
"You don't have to grieve anymore. You don't have to suffer or resent anymore."
"You don't have to shed tears when anger or regret surges. I promise."
"From now on, I'll be there with you. I'll give you strength."
Her lovely voice rang out into the night sky. So warm was that voice that tears flowed from some eyes.
In the distant haze, dawn was breaking.
Amid the rooftops, Nangong Dan hid his form. Having flipped his black cloak to white, he watched the Girl's actions. And those following her.
From afar, they seemed merely a ragtag bunch. Disheveled stances and utter disarray in their auras. Even the one with the strongest martial arts looked no better than second-rate. Yes, from afar.
'A hasty judgment.'
What conclusion had he reached in Anhui? Assassinate the true culprit behind the Jiangming Blood Massacre and install a puppet in their place.
Through an artificially created scourge of the martial world, form the Martial Alliance, positioning the Nangong Clan at the helm. The Girl was merely a tiny cog in that grand scheme.
A mere killer ghost appearing in some rural village. Even with profound martial arts, village techniques couldn't overcome an elite group. Peak masters weren't invincible.
First orchestrate mutual destruction with the Dragon Star Clan, then have Nangong Dan finish off the survivors—it had seemed a natural plan at first glance. However.
'That's not important now.'
He had witnessed firsthand the feats of those pulse-taken by the Girl, how their leader, the executioner Zhu Lip, wielded his blade.
The lined-up refugees. People whose tripled pulses and marrow were clogged with impurities, unable even to form a dantian, let alone circulate the great heavenly cycle... wielding profound supervisory inner arts.
A sight he himself had witnessed yet could scarcely believe. Reason enough to fall back the moment Qinghua Pavilion ignited.
No more handling this at the fringes. At minimum, within the clan's domain, in discussions of the grand plan, she posed a variable.
Someone mass-producing first-rate external art experts with a mere touch—who would believe any report? Swoosh. Resolved, Nangong Dan drew a letter from his bosom and scrawled a message in one go.
Soon after, a small hawk flew in from Mount Fire, departing with a tiny envelope tied to its leg.
Glancing at the hawk, Nangong Dan landed with indifferent lightness and turned toward the Huangfu Clan. To discuss future countermeasures.
For the time being, caution was needed.
In the morning, Zhang Ping headed to a spacious thatched hut with writing brush and ink in his bosom. As Qinghua Pavilion turned to ashes and the Holy Maiden's name began to spread slowly through Mount Fire, everyone bustled about, but the hut in the slums was even busier.
Books salvaged from Qinghua Pavilion, countless volumes pulled out without knowing their contents, were ceaselessly washed in a designated corner. Soaked in starch water, the paper transformed like new.
While the Girl healed the sick and Bai Hui guarded her, Zhang Ping gazed into the distance.
Leading more people, from farther away, to the Holy Maiden. That was his role.
"Scholar, have you finished copying?"
"The replication?"
"Proceeding as planned."
Hundreds of sheets washed in water, moved, handed to busy hands. They wrote ceaselessly. Not knowing the words to write them. Even the illiterate, if quick and precise of hand, could 'copy' the originals. No different from repeatedly drawing the same picture.
What was the content?
What Zhang Ping had devoted himself to since meeting the Girl and receiving her power. What he, after leaving the Hanlin Academy, had plunged into martial arts yearning for.
"Martial arts are like a vast tree," he said.
If the roots aren't firm, they rot quickly. Martial arts were inherently unfair.
By age ten, the muscles and bones begin to set. After that, even starting early means slow progress. Not only that—even timely initiation requires learning ascent methods.
Five years to enter, ten to achieve. Inner power doesn't build overnight.
p>Orthodox heart methods demand bone-carving ordeals, yet five years minimum for decent results. Not granted to those merely enduring daily hardships.
Is the unorthodox any different? If the righteous judge by time and effort, the wicked judge by bones and marrow to extremes. How many died rotting from wounds rolling on broken porcelain to learn Iron Skin Elixir? Thus, no escape for the weak's wretched lives.
Daoist sects select elite disciples and lay ones. Clans take in food guests and sons-in-law.
In meticulously closed shadows, they hoarded benefits among themselves. Only the rigorously selected could enter.
Yet the mysterious Reverse Heaven True Qi the Holy Maiden passed on discriminated against none. Like the legendary Shaolin Yijin Jing, no limits to initiation.
Until now, only after experiencing the acupoints she imprinted directly in their minds could they operate it.
"Not anymore."
Zhang Ping picked up one book from the mountain of stacked volumes. The reverse blood path from Baihui to the heart—he had deciphered it staying up nights.
He had unraveled the Girl's heart method in writing. So even first-timers with qi sense could wield it. Without needing her pulse touch, even men in distant Shinkang far from Guangdong could learn it. The Holy Maiden's gift must spread wider.
Then, a child approached Zhang Ping. One he had noted for quick wits and sharp mind.
"Have you decided on a title?"
"A title. Yes, it needs a name."
"Something like the divine art passed from the Holy Maiden, right?"
"No."
The heart method the Girl transmitted used no pure qi of heaven and earth. Not the heavenly arts of the Daoists.
Not the earthly arts of clans building thick inner power on terrestrial qi and nourishing with elixirs.
This was a human art burning churning emotions as fuel. Thus, unfit to call divine.
Ordinary humans don't seek gods. Those desperately wandering in search of gods, fervently crying their names...
"Demons, rather."
"Pardon?"
"It's decided. Let's call it a demonic art."
Zhang Ping thought. The martial forest, woods of martial trees.
Time to release poison into that forest.
A fatal, irreversible poison.