A Guest (5)

"Hey. Keep it down."

The girl said it with her foot pressed firmly into the intruder's neck. Something seemed to give with a soft snap — had she broken it? The man who had been swinging his severed arm and flinging blood in every direction was reduced now to the occasional twitch, and whether that was the haze of having bled too much or something else entirely, I couldn't tell.

"So. What are you going to do?"

"...Do about what?"

I could usually keep my face in order in front of an expert. Right now, I couldn't be bothered. My clothes were hardly what you'd call new, and still I washed them and boiled them with care every time; before I put them on, I dried them fluffy in the sun and pressed them crisp. Those clothes were soaked. It wasn't only the clothes, either. I'd cut him down hard beside the main gate, so of course the blood had sprayed inside as well. The ground ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of my manor was packed firm and laid with stone. A stain like that would not come out with a little shoveling. This was going to take a while.

The skin beneath my right eye twitched.

There was a reason the bamboo ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tube in my sleeve was packed, on purpose, with a thick paralysis powder. There was a reason, too, that I went out of my way to poison anyone who made it inside.

"Miss Wang?"

"..."

Creak.

Even under my flat stare, the girl didn't look particularly frightened. Well, of course not. She had every reason to be sure of herself.

"This one doesn't seem to have come alone."

"If he had companions, wouldn't they all be dead already, from this morning? I went and took care of them."

"No. I don't think that's it."

She said it still beaming.

"How many corpses did you handle this morning?"

"...Two."

"Think about it. With skill like this, would they really send only three people to hit this stronghold? And look at the clothes."

"The clothes?"

"They're torn here and there, sure, but nothing's worn through, is it? That means when they set out this morning, the outfits were still neat. And not just clean — tailored not long ago. What about the corpses you saw this morning?"

Thinking back, they seemed to have been wearing clothes not so different from this man's. Both sets were so full of holes I couldn't be sure.

"The three of them were one team, most likely. This is a sect. The clothes are clean, but they're not fine goods, so it won't be any great sect — and they drew their blades the moment they saw you, so it won't be an orthodox one either. Mind you, it's not as if an orthodox sect is guaranteed to open with a conversation. Still. The look of them? That crooked squint? Roughly that feeling?"

My eyes narrowed.

Up until this morning, I had been living days that were perfectly peaceful. Intruders hadn't been so common lately. Guests still turned up now and then, but the ones who came these days were rarely people who had simply lost the path. I didn't particularly care for the arrangement, but take their gold, hand over the goods, and they left — which suited me. And then, out of nowhere, this.

"Oh — are you suspecting me? Don't tell me you think I'm in the same faction as him?"

"...I've never thought that."

I looked down again at the man, a breath short of choking out entirely. The arm that had gone slack was flailing once more, clawing and striking wildly at the girl's leg. His lips had turned a deathly blue. So the neck wasn't broken — he'd only been suffocated for a moment. Had his mind snapped clear just shy of death, and now he was thrashing to live?

"If not that, then what?"

At her question, I asked one of my own.

"Have you ever made an enemy of anyone?"

"About the same as you, Miss, I'd imagine."

She answered with a bright, easy smile.

"Never had one of those? You know — 'I'll back off this time, but next time I'll have my revenge for sure.' That sort."

"It's not that there weren't any."

But had anyone actually come looking for that revenge? Not that I remembered. Even if they had, I might not have known. As a rule they fell into a trap and turned up as corpses, and I only went through a body when it looked to be carrying decent poison, or something that might become poison.

"Or maybe word got around, little by little."

"Word?"

"The things you raise, Miss. Lingzhi, ginseng, that sort of thing. Ingredients for spirit medicine, aren't they?"

"How do you know that?"

"Haven't you sold them?"

I had.

But were the experts who bought spirit medicine off me the sort to go around spreading talk like that?

"Even if the expert themselves doesn't, there are plenty of ways for a story like that to leak."

Honestly, I couldn't tell whether this woman was babbling however she pleased, or whether she was actually working something out. Even so, if they came as a group, I would have to prepare. If they were made up only of fighters at about this level, most of them would die in the traps — though there had been bandits who walked over the corpses, used their own companions as shields, and still made it all the way to the gate.

"The surest way is still to question him."

"Ghk—!?"

The moment she lifted her foot from his neck, he dragged in a breath. Before he could feel so much as a flicker of relief, she bent and seized him by the hair. He shouted something. It didn't come out as words — his throat had been stepped on too hard for that. Probably telling her to let go.

"Ah — wait. Wait."

Seeing she meant to drag him inside, I waved her off at once.

"Outside."

I pointed past the main gate. Her eyes blinked.

"Huh? You don't have an interrogation room in there? A torture chamber?"

"Why would you think I have something like that?"

"Mm, no reason? You just seemed like the type, Miss. Honestly — don't you feel good after you've taken care of someone?"

"I feel good?"

"You know. Satisfied? Refreshed? Like you've finished the one thing you absolutely had to do today?"

Well — once the work was finished, that feeling did come. In a place like this, you had to be diligent if you meant to eat. Clearing people away wasn't so different from keeping the paths in order.

"I don't have anything like that."

"Oh. You don't?"

"And I don't enjoy killing people. If you want to do it, do it outside. Outside."

"Huh? That's not it? I was sure that was how it was. Hmm."

I wasn't sure what, exactly, she had been so sure of. I put a hand to her back and pushed all the same. That filthy thing was not coming one step farther in.

"Ah, fine, fine. I just have to do it outside, don't I? Outside."

In the end she went out smiling, dragging the man behind her.

Just in case, I tried closing the gate.

"Ah."

Of course. Shut, and still a dark crimson stain showed on the inside. It had already sunk deep into the ground. However long I scrubbed, it would keep showing for a while.

My shoulders sank.

Phantom Jianghu was a randomized roguelike, but it did have rules ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of a sort. The place a player started, for one, began with nothing but weak enemies. Even among those "weak" enemies, of course, some were freakishly strong, with a difficulty that was downright filthy — while others were such easy marks that the correct play, the instant you saw them, was to shake them down to the bone. In that sense, bandits were generally easy marks. The developer had already said as much.

Bandits, mind you, were not all the same. The strongholds that appeared at the start, half a tutorial, were a different matter from the Green Forest forts tucked away somewhere deep in the mountains. Those you only met if you went looking, once you had grown enough to farm them on purpose. When I cleared out the bandit stronghold, a year had just passed since I came to this world, and my poison arts had more or less taken root.

Poison arts had their strengths and their weaknesses. The weakness, first: they required knowledge. To build them, you had to ingest poison, and in a game with survival elements, eating poison was the sort of act where game over shimmered right before your eyes. So you played through again and again, praying for a fated encounter on the Sichuan Tang Clan's side — or you cleared the related quests and unlocked the chance to start the next run born into the Tang Clan itself. Or you hoped the Five Poisons Sect, or one of the hidden hermits the game spun up at random, happened to hold the knowledge. Or you genuinely combined every poison there was, ate your way through the lot, and found the answer yourself. Played the proper way, in any case, it was a skill tree you could not even begin until very late.

And the trouble with starting then was that your opponent's realm sat far above whatever poison you had managed to stock. Yes. Poison arts begun ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠late did very little against the people you actually had to face — unless you had committed to the poison tree from the very start and become a poison cultivator outright. By that point you also had plenty of other arts already learned. Pile poison into your dantian for no good reason, and it only backfired.

But that was only the story if you played the proper way.

The advantage of poison arts was that knowledge was all you needed. Other martial arts required a master before they would even open. A technique's name appeared in the skill tree only when you read a manual that recorded it, or learned it from a teacher, and building the art itself went far faster under instruction. Poison arts were not like that. Poison sat closer to a status ailment. Take that ailment, the buffs from other medicines, and the internal-energy system, and you could hold a state in which poison lived in the body while your health did not drop — that was how poison arts worked in Phantom Jianghu. Which combination of poisons to take with which medicines, and in what order, if you wanted to stack venom in your body without dying; how to treat it afterward so that immunity built in you while your blood itself turned toxic — the guides had all of it written out. There was even a route already posted on the community boards, more optimized than the tips you could earn from a fated encounter in the game.

So all I had to do was train my internal energy until I could hold a measured dose of poison in my body. The rest was simply cultivating, compounding, and swallowing, the same way I had in the game. That training in internal energy had been the greatest wall in the world for someone who had lived an ordinary life, and getting over it had taken me some time. That was why the poison-arts work before I cleared the stronghold had run a little over a year. I'd had to learn something I had never known how to do.

But once I had internal energy, and could quiet the poison in my body with internal qi, I could build it up from there as hard and fast as the knowledge allowed. At this point — if a first-rate came at me in full, couldn't I handle them well enough?

I was thinking that, laying out the bamboo tubes and needles I had brought up from the underground storehouse, when the manor gate opened and the girl came in.

"I found out!"

"Ah — wait!"

No — she was covered in blood. Walk around without so much as wiping the soles of your shoes, and you leave blood all over the floor!