The Price of Trying to Kill Me
Who is it? Who dares try to kill me?
"Go and tell that wench who calls herself Hoian. Anyone who tries to kill me will pay for it, and pay dearly."
The head maid nodded. She nodded hard.
Weak before the strong and strong before the weak—she was nothing short of a worm. Born into an age where the strong devour the weak, one ought to stand unyielding before the powerful and show boundless mercy to the powerless. This woman didn't even have the basics.
Thud!
The Heavenly Demon kicked her in the stomach.
"Filthy wretch."
The moment she outlived her usefulness, he would kill her anyway. Until then, he would make fine use of the puppet.
Clear air and a blue sky. Great trees and thickets stood everywhere.
Very fine.
Set beside this place, even the Central Plains were not so bad. The air there was only a little thick—sand and dust mixed through it, so one could hardly call it clean. Here, it was different.
The concentration of qi suspended in the air is far higher.
Perhaps three times that of the Central Plains. Three times was an enormous figure. Put simply, it meant that in Lilith's body he could reach the realm the Heavenly Demon had once attained three times as fast. Of course, that was a wild exaggeration.
To think even sitting upright would be this hard...
He tried to settle into a lotus position and nearly ruined his back. The fat was part of it, but with no flexibility to speak of, holding a proper posture was torture itself. Lilith barely managed to arrange herself. She closed her eyes and began to feel the qi drifting through the empty air.
Here, they call qi mana, don't they...
Martial artists of the murim gathered qi in the dantian; here, they said, one gathered mana in the heart. Where there were martial arts, this place had magic. The methods differed, but the fundamental framework was much the same.
This could be amusing.
If the chance came, he would test himself against someone who wielded mana. Ah—and for the record, he had no intention of learning magic. He rejected any method so shoddy, so wasteful in its handling of qi.
To be born the Heavenly Demon and awaken the Heavenly Demon Divine Art to its absolute peak. That was a realm even he, in his past life, had failed to reach. Perhaps the reason he had not died properly and passed into blissful rebirth was that this life was meant for him to grasp the ultimate.
Hm... damn. I've started thinking like those Daoist bastards.
He drew a breath in. He let it out. The Heavenly Demon's great nostrils flared. Take in the good energy; expel the bad. A breathing method as simple as it was difficult.
So quiet. Perfect.
The maids had come in the early evening, so night had already fallen deep. An hour when everyone slept suited the Heavenly Demon perfectly for moving as he pleased. And so his time rushed past like madness. When he opened his eyes, it was the next morning.
"Huu..."
He had vented so much turbid qi that the room was thick with a foul, rank stench. Even so, he still had not expelled every poison in the body. He threw the window open and looked at himself reflected in the glass.
A slightly changed figure. Bones and cartilage long warped beneath the weight of heavy flesh had returned to their proper places. Thanks to that, an already tall frame felt a little taller still. And, if only a little, the fat had come off.
"Mm... At last, something like a human body."
There was still a mountain of turbid qi and fat left to shed, but at least moving was no longer such a burden.
No fewer than four maids clung close, working diligently at her hair. The length was considerable, and the strands looked remarkably soft. Seated with her legs elegantly crossed, she stared the head maid down.
"Tell me again what you mean, that Lilith isn't dead."
An elegant, silken voice. Beneath all that loveliness, more than a few thorns were set.
"Why is Lilith still alive?"
If her plan had gone as intended, Lilith should have been found as a corpse yesterday evening at the latest—this morning, if things ran late. Poison fed little by little, the body worn down by degrees. A perfect assassination, one no one would even think to blame on poison. Yet Lilith, far from falling ill, had only grown healthier. Until lunch yesterday she had been so unwell she could not leave her room, and then she had suddenly recovered her vigor? Impossible, unless someone had betrayed them.
"I gave every instruction to you..."
That was the order Lady Hoian had given the head maid. But Lilith had not died, and so the head maid knelt before her as if she had committed a capital crime.
A bright little smile, far too fresh for her years. Only Lady Hoian could manage it. What ruinously expensive care must she have received, to be beautiful without a single wrinkle even at forty? To others it might have looked like a lovely smile. To the head maid, it felt entirely different. She could see the wickedness hidden inside it.
"That Lilith is still alive means either you failed to give her the poison properly, or you brought her an antidote. It would be fair to call it one of the two, wouldn't it?"
"I... I don't know anything about that! How could I ever defy my lady's words? I don't know how Lilith neutralized the poison, but I... I did my very best!"
"Then what went wrong?"
"There's a... a traitor among us!"
She blurted whatever she could to stay alive. At least the head maid herself was not the culprit.
"Ah... So one of the maids is the culprit?"
"Yes...! My lady!"
Sincerity soaked the head maid's eyes and voice. Even that plea did not change Lady Hoian's expression by a hair. The way she refused to withdraw her suspicion showed just how venomous she was. Lady Hoian beckoned a servant waiting by the door.
"Bring the poison."
"Yes, my lady."
The servant fetched it at once, just as ordered, and set it in her hand.
"You know what this is, don't you? The poison we used when we meant to poison Lilith. What do you suppose would happen if you drank all of it?"
Swallow that much, and she would surely drop dead on the spot. The head maid trembled, bowed her head, and bit her lip.
This isn't it. This isn't what I wanted. I never thought Lady Hoian would go this far. Die like this? After the life I've lived? Twenty years of doing every filthy thing you ordered, climbing all the way to this seat—and now you kill me? Just because I failed to kill one Lilith?
"...A head maid ought to at least know which person betrayed her, shouldn't she?"
She had thought this was the end. Contrary to every expectation, the words that slipped from Lady Hoian's mouth were something else entirely.
She bought it...!
Only then did her face ease a little. She had to produce a sinner to take the blame, and she had to do it now.
"Yes...! Of course! Absolutely!"
"Who?"
She was asking who. The truth was, she didn't know. Fail to answer quickly, and it might well backfire.
What do I do...?
The head maid had never even considered betrayal in the first place. Who would take a risk that great? There wasn't a soul here with the nerve for it, and no such thing as an antidote had ever existed. At last, her finger pointed. There stood a young maid who had been tending Lady Hoian's hair.
"Yes?!"
The young maid startled at the gesture. She was a child who had been here for less than a year. As the youngest she had worked hard, and she had also turned a blind eye to the poisoning of Lilith. That made her the perfect traitor. No—the perfect thing to throw away.
Sorry? I won't say that. It's only natural that you die, being the youngest.
Lady Hoian flicked her fingers. Come here.
"I... I don't... I don't know anything..."
The youngest maid shook before Lady Hoian. She truly knew nothing. If she had a sin, it was only the sin of working hard at whatever she was told.
"Drink."
Lady Hoian held out a glass bottle the size of a grown man's palm, full of a murky purple liquid.
"B-but... th-this is... poison..."
"Hold her."
At the lady's command, the maids seized the youngest by the arms and legs. Camaraderie among coworkers? Pity for a girl from a house so poor she had had to work from a young age? Pitiable, yes—but there wasn't even time to care about that. It wasn't them. They had to live. They were only grateful the head maid's finger hadn't landed on them.
"Make her drink."
The youngest's resistance was rougher than expected. Struggle all she liked, she was only a young girl. Before the strength of several people, she was helpless. Their hands caught her jaw, forced her mouth open, and held it so she could not close it. The liquid trickled in.
"Guhk... khk... gaaah..."
Agony began the instant the poison touched her mouth. Palate, gums, tongue—everything it met began to melt. They had diluted a tiny amount again and again before feeding it to Lilith little by little, and yet the poison's power was so terrible that one could only marvel at Lilith, who had taken it over so long a time.
"The traitor has been dealt with. Now think about how you're going to kill Lilith. I won't wait long."
A person was dying before her eyes. Even so, Lady Hoian did not so much as blink as she looked at the head maid.
If I can't kill Lilith... next time... I'll be the one who dies...