Chapter 42
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 42
Chapter Title: Grabbing by the Scruff (2)
The Merchant Blade Wanderer had exactly four disciples. No more, no less. That was the reason he never founded a sect of his own.
These days, the Merchant Blade Wanderer and his disciples were collectively known as one of the Three Sword Schools, alongside the Yi Sword School and the New Moon Sword School.
Simply their existence was enough to rival any full-fledged sect.
Yet the Merchant's Four Swordsmen and the Yi Sword School had failed to prevent the Merchant Blade Wanderer's assassination.
The Yi Sword School had lost Hanbi. The New Moon Sword School had let Jaja slip away.
They had them cornered right up to the very end...
But the moment they heard the Merchant Blade Wanderer had been assassinated, they faltered—just for an instant. And that was the fatal mistake. Hanbi and Jaja, as if they had anticipated it, unleashed a furious barrage and vanished.
The Merchant's Four Swordsmen had let Vanguard and the assassin escape.
They too had been deeply shaken by the news of the Merchant Blade Wanderer's death. In their shock, they committed an uncharacteristic blunder they would never have made otherwise.
Everyone had made one mistake each, and those errors had proven decisive in letting the assassins get away.
"Don't guard the estate. Secure the perimeter instead."
Zhuge Xiaoxiao said.
"This time, we won't make a single mistake."
The Yi Sword School leader and the New Moon Sword School leader took her words as an absolute command.
Zhuge Xiaoxiao was the one who had coined the phrase "Northern Abyss, Southern Radiance."
It meant darkness in the north and light in the south—the "Southern Radiance" being her.
"Northern Abyss, Southern Radiance" was comparable to the famed "Crouching Dragon and Phoenix Fledgling."
Northern Abyss Pang Hui shared the same surname as Phoenix Fledgling Pang Tong, and Southern Radiance Zhuge Xiaoxiao shared hers with Crouching Dragon Zhuge Liang. That was likely why the comparisons persisted.
Southern Radiance Zhuge Xiaoxiao—she was Henan Province's foremost scholar.
Her thoughts were strategies unto themselves, her words a manual of war.
To find the assassin, they needed to search the estate immediately. Yet she called off the search and ordered them to encircle the outer grounds.
Logically, it made no sense. But because she said it, they obeyed without question.
"No one gets in, and no one gets out."
"Understood."
Disciples from the Yi Sword School and New Moon Sword School poured out of the estate and formed a tight perimeter. It was airtight—not even an ant could slip through.
A brief moment of mourning was granted to the Merchant's Four Swordsmen.
The master lay on his bed as he always did. His face was serene, as if he were simply sleeping.
The Merchant's Four Swordsmen faced their master.
The first among them was Wolf Soul Keenblade Hwang Su.
Wolf Soul Keenblade was a beast of a man. Cruel and ferocious, he would smash anyone who displeased him with a single palm strike. He was a rogue who had spent more days in the magistrate's cells than at home.
Yet in the prime of his bold youth, he stumbled upon the opportunity of a lifetime.
He met the Merchant Blade Wanderer.
The Merchant Blade Wanderer refined Hwang Su's savage nature into the keen edge of a blade. Without that fateful encounter, he would long since have become a demonic fiend or a murderer.
To Hwang Su, the Merchant Blade Wanderer was more than a master—he was everything.
He was the one who had dashed into the inner quarters, casting all else aside, upon hearing the news of his master's fall.
At twenty years old—a relatively late start for a martial artist—he had trained under the Merchant Blade Wanderer for over two decades and earned the praise of being a peak-level sword guest who truly embodied the ferocity of the blade.
The second was Yi Song, sobriquet Clear Water Frostblade.
A mild-mannered middle-aged man who appeared every bit the scholar, he had trained under the Merchant Blade Wanderer for over twenty years alongside Wolf Soul Keenblade.
He was said to have inherited the master's true arts most faithfully.
Neither more nor less, Clear Water Frostblade was like a perfect copy of the Merchant Blade Wanderer himself.
The third was Light-Splitting Wave Blade Geun Hak.
His beard reached his chest, always neatly trimmed. Silent and solemn, he was a heavenly sword guest who thought only of swordsmanship from the moment he opened his eyes until he closed them at night.
The fourth was One-Flash Beautiful Blade Chu Hak.
Thick brows, straight nose, full lips—he exuded strength at first glance.
He was the genius sword guest of whom the Merchant Blade Wanderer had said, "Only Chu Hak can succeed me."
Not yet thirty, yet one of the Merchant's Four Swordsmen.
He had even clashed with Vanguard right up to the end.
They mourned their master. But they did not grieve deeply. They simply offered a silent prayer: "Farewell."
A martial artist was destined to die at any moment. No—everyone dies eventually. There was no need to mourn death. Instead, rejoice in the life they had lived, in the brilliant instant they had blazed across the world before fading away.
The Merchant Blade Wanderer had lived a full life.
And his body would not vanish.
No burial, no cremation. Like the successive heads of the Frostblade House, his remains would be laid to rest in a cave where the flesh did not decay, sleeping eternally in his usual form.
Whenever they wished to see him, they could.
Right now, mourning was secondary. Revenge came first.
"How did Master meet his end?"
Hwang Su stared piercingly at the master's body and asked.
"Poison."
Zhuge Xiaoxiao replied calmly.
"He wasn't the type to fall to poison."
"The toxin used was... Triple Triple Absolute Poison."
The answer came from a kindly old man with a gentle demeanor, like a neighborly grandfather.
He wore plain cotton clothes like a commoner and tied his hair back with a simple cotton cord.
"W-what? T-Triple Triple Absolute Poison? That thing actually exists?"
One-Flash Beautiful Blade Chu Hak exclaimed in shock.
One-Flash Beautiful Blade didn't doubt the middle-aged man's words. Especially not on matters of poison.
The speaker was one of the Three Elders of the Sichuan Tang Clan—the grandmasters of poison and hidden weapons—specifically the Lower Elder.
Poison Elder Tang Zhong.
He was a veteran well past seventy.
The same generation as the Merchant Blade Wanderer, they had called each other brothers in the past.
He had rushed here upon hearing of the public assassination but arrived one step too late—the deed was already done.
If Poison Elder Tang Zhong said it, it had to be accepted a hundred times over. They were merely stunned by the unexpected name: Triple Triple Absolute Poison.
"It exists."
Tang Zhong stated firmly.
Tang Zhong looked grave. His usual smiling face was creased with furrowed brows.
"Triple Triple Absolute Poison... Hah! Those vile bastards! They brought down a Blade Saint of an era with filth like that?!"
Wolf Soul Keenblade Hwang Su ground his teeth.
"You can't put it that way. Triple Triple Absolute Poison is... a poisonous technique even I can't employ. If the Merchant Blade had known it was this that undid him, he would have gone with a smile."
Tang Zhong shook his head slowly.
Triple Triple Absolute Poison referred to a poisoning method that mixed three poisons with heavy water.
It wasn't a poison itself, but a way of deploying poisons.
As far as was known... the individual poisons weren't fatal absolutes. They were common toxins available on the market. Yet mixing those three in the right proportions and administering them created something deadly.
Easier said than done.
First, no one knew what those three poisons were. All that was vaguely known in the martial world was "three poisons." There were no details on which ones or how they were combined.
Second, Triple Triple Absolute Poison had a fatal flaw.
It relied on dissolving in water to create a foaming dispersion that spread like steam in the air.
In the midst of fierce combat, or during a covert assassination, water was essential to kill the target. The poison had to be dissolved in water to produce that bubbly dispersion.
Was that practical for poisoning?
The bigger issue was that the dispersed poison couldn't be focused on a specific target.
Once it spread like steam in the air, everyone in the vicinity would be poisoned. It couldn't single out just the target. The poisoner themselves might even succumb, leading to mutual destruction.
Yet the assassin had overcome this impossible technique with ease.
The blood pouring from the slain victims... The three poisons had dissolved in that blood, creating the dispersion and foam.
The assassin killed three people.
The mixed poisons began dispersing from three locations.
This was why it was Triple Triple Absolute Poison, not merely Triple Absolute Poison.
It wasn't just mixing three poisons—it was dispersing them from three separate points.
The poisons rising from those three spots clashed with one another, forming a poison path.
From east and west, and south—three directions—the poisons collided at once, surging toward the empty space in the north.
A method to target a specific individual.
At the time, two people had been in the northern position.
Either the Merchant Blade Wanderer or Zhuge Xiaoxiao could have died. Both were at extreme risk. But the poison concentrated more heavily on the Merchant Blade Wanderer, so Zhuge Xiaoxiao awoke, and he perished.
The positions they took when exiting the room had decided life and death.
That was Triple Triple Absolute Poison.
Poisons rising from three spots clashing to form a poison path... A bizarre poisoning method no one had ever heard of.
"If even you, Uncle, can't deploy it... who the hell is this guy?"
Clear Water Frostblade asked.
Poison Elder Tang Zhong furrowed his brow and shook his head.
"I never dreamed I'd see Triple Triple Absolute Poison in the current martial world. Our clan looked into it too... but concluded it was impossible to realize."
"..."
Everyone fell silent.
If the Sichuan Tang Clan deemed it impossible, that was the end of it. What more was there to say?
"This isn't the first time Triple Triple Absolute Poison has appeared."
Zhuge Xiaoxiao, who had been silent, finally spoke.
She hadn't fully shaken off the poison—her face was pale, her lips blackened. Yet she was still beautiful.
"What do you mean?"
Tang Zhong looked at her.
"Four years ago, the evil physician Ha Su in Suzhou was poisoned to death."
"Evil Physician Ha Su... Ah!"
Poison Elder Tang Zhong smacked his knee as recollection struck him.
For the Merchant's Four Swordsmen, who still didn't understand, Zhuge Xiaoxiao explained in detail.
"There was a physician named Ha Su in Suzhou—or rather, he could hardly be called one. He killed far more than he saved. Anyway, he died, and the scene was bizarre."
Zhuge Xiaoxiao sat up, and Tang Zhong gripped her wrist to check her pulse.
She continued.
"Evil Physician Ha Su was clearly poisoned—his face had turned pitch black. But in front of him were three pigs, throats slit and dead."
Three pigs!
The Merchant's Four Swordsmen recalled the three assassins dead in the courtyard.
East, west, south... blood pouring out...
"Could it be?"
"Exactly. Back then, the scene was so grotesque we thought it some strange ritual using the dead pigs. But now it's clear—it was the method for deploying Triple Triple Absolute Poison."
"You said Ha Su's face turned black, but Master's didn't change color."
"The poison evolved."
Tang Zhong released her wrist from the pulse check and said.
"You'll need to rest for four or five days. It sank deep. Push yourself, and you'll suffer later."
"Got it, Uncle."
Tang Zhong turned to the Merchant's Four Swordsmen.
"The poison that killed Ha Su and the one that assassinated the Merchant are entirely different."
"Hm! So the assassin's poison arts have advanced since then."
"You could say that, or not... Haha! It's embarrassing to admit, but this old man can't even identify the poison that killed the Merchant."
"..."
Once more, jaws dropped, words failed.
Then the assassin was a master of poison arts beyond imagination.
"Who killed Ha Su?"
One-Flash Beautiful Blade asked Zhuge Xiaoxiao.
"No idea. Vanished without a trace. The victim was there, but no killer—that kind of case."
"Lady Zhuge, one question. Can you catch him?"
"I'll do my utmost. I've seen him."
Zhuge Xiaoxiao tried to stand.
"Hey! You need four or five days of rest!"
"As you see, I can't afford to. I'll move as little as possible, so don't worry."
Zhuge Xiaoxiao smiled.
In that instant, it was as if ten thousand lilies bloomed... The dark, stuffy, heavy air in the room brightened.
"I gathered you four here specifically to catch him. This time, he used poison and hidden weapons. The poison was Triple Triple Absolute Poison. The weapon? Tiger Needles. Odd, isn't it? Someone wielding a fearsome absolute poison like Triple Triple Absolute Poison resorts to mere tiger needles."
"Hm!"
"And the even stranger part... The New Moon Sword School disciples struck by the tiger needles didn't even scream. They died without a single cry."
A clear light gleamed in Zhuge Xiaoxiao's eyes.
She was peering into what others had overlooked.