Chapter 53

염사래달 came rushing back, panting like a dog.

Three rookie members of the team, totally oblivious, greeted the captain with big grins on their faces.

Just as he was about to blow a fuse, 염사래달 paused at their next words.

“Captain! We found it! We found it!”

“It popped out right at the ninetieth mark!”

염사래달 felt like he was basking in the sun on a cloudless day.

Mission accomplished!

Even if the Forward Blue Wave Unit had taken a massive hit, he finally had something to say.

After all, the real master—aka himself—had survived, and the Deputy Lord would deal with Wang Son-man at Great Justice Gate and come back in one piece.

That was more than enough to cover his tracks.

“What about the Magic Flute? Did you find the Magic Flute?”

“Huh?”

“I said, did you find it?”

The rookie members exchanged sheepish glances.

염사래달 let out a string of curses.

“Didn’t you check? Damn it, you clueless idiots!”

The rookies felt unjustly accused.

“Where is it? Hurry up! Move, move!”

염사래달 urged them on, anxious as he was not sure when those guys from Great Justice Gate would strike.

They’d realize quickly that the smoke wasn’t poisonous and could climb the mountain to reach them.

염사래달 knew the way back, but the idiots from Great Justice Gate would be lost, unless, by some bad luck, they stumbled upon them first.

Seeing his urgency, the rookies quickly guided 염사래달 to the dig site.

The tomb of 천후, marked by a mound with no burial mound of its own, was not easy to find, even with a Treasure Map.

Plus, a tree had grown over it, with its roots all tangled up, making the digging a serious pain in the backside.

How desperate had they been to even resort to kidnapping to get hands on some shovelers?

Of course, the elite fighters of the Divine Sect didn’t want to be wasting their time just to dig.

Under the disturbed soil, a gray stone wall emerged.

Clearly, it had been constructed with brick by human hands.

That’s when 염사래달 realized his mistake.

There’s no way digging would lead them to the exact entrance.

They’d been at this task of searching for 천후’s tomb for eight months.

Just finding the tomb beneath the ground was already a feat.

Normally, they would have had to gather all available laborers to dig sideways and find the entrance.

But there was no time.

Returning with the Magic Flute was their only lifeline.

“Step back!”

염사래달 raised his pickaxe.

If there wasn’t enough time to dig, then he’d just have to break through.

With all his strength, he swung the pickaxe against the stone wall.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Each thunderous crack sent jolts of fear down his spine.

염사래달 gritted his teeth.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

How many times had he struck the wall?

Finally, a shower of bricks collapsed inward.

A pitch-black void gaped wide within.

“Torches.”

“Huh?”

“Give me the torches!”

“Oh! I’ll get them right away!”

“Damn it! Shouldn’t you have been prepared beforehand? Didn’t you see me breaking down this wall?”

염사래달 shouted in exasperation.

The rookies felt totally crushed.

But if they wanted sympathy, they should’ve gone and ranked up before whining about it. That’s just how it worked in the Martial World.

After one rookie scrambled back with a torch, he hurled it into the darkness, revealing a tomb about a foot deep.

In a rush, 염사래달 leapt inside.

All they had to do was find the Magic Flute and escape quickly.

But then, 염사래달’s expression froze.

In his mind, he had pictured a magnificent chest of treasures sitting in the center of the tomb.

Yet what he found in the middle was a stone grave.

Well, of course; it was a tomb.

Instead, the spacious tomb was lined with an endless array of drawers, neatly organized like something out of a pharmacy.

It looked as if it dared him to find something.

“Damn……!”

염사래달 tore at his own hair in frustration.

—-

He knew the effects of the Blood Poison Body.

Poison-proof. A perfectly clean effect.

At this point, he couldn’t remember the title, as his playtime had been zero hours; in the game, enemies used poison liberally.

So it all made for a comfy experience.

But then reality got muddled in with whether it was primitive China, the game world, or an alternate dimension.

That simple effect of being immune to poison turned out to be a lot more complicated than he thought.

Just where does the poison start, and where does it end?

Clearly, the stuff that you could label as poison was fine.

But what about mold? Spoiled food?

Alcohol? It’s a primary carcinogen and causes countless alcoholic diseases—definitely sounds like a poison to him!

The early survival of Qing was also a journey of discovering what was safe to eat.

Mushrooms? Fruits? Grass? Any of that would do.

Bugs were fine too—once you got used to the taste.

Sure, they felt gross, tasted bitter and had a nasty aftertaste, but hey, you had to eat a lot to fill up!

Rich in protein and touted as the future’s food source, or something like that.

He couldn’t help but wonder if this future world was really a nice place to live.

Hey, rotten and spoiled food was fine too?

From then on, he didn’t even need to fill his belly from the woods and mountains; he started digging through trash in the city.

No chance of infections either.

Deep wounds healed cleanly without needing to be sterilized, probably because bacteria got treated like poison.

After gathering some training points, he got a bit of swordsmanship down, and started taking out bad guys to loot their coin purses and even snagged bounties from time to time, slowly beginning to live a human life.

He discovered that alcohol wasn’t all that harmful either.

It just made him feel slightly good; he never got so drunk he lost his mind or had hangovers.

If it tasted good, fine, but if not, whatever—there was no addiction either.

After that incident, he found himself feeling rather bold about drugs.

He had a hunch that anything that got in his body and had some harmful effects would just be treated as poison and would be nullified.

But there was one exception, so he couldn’t let his guard down. You never know.

That was the reason Qing didn’t hesitate when someone shouted “poison.” Unlike the other ambiguities, he was sure that poison wouldn’t touch him.

Through the mist, Qing appeared like a comet.

It was the result of a few powerful leaps from the moves of the Moon Lady’s Step.

As he scanned the woods for the panicking members of the Forward Blue Wave, he favored the trio moving together.

After all, two is better than one, and three is better than two.

Only when they entered the mountain did the enemies recognize their pursuer.

When they saw a lone girl running towards them, they mistakenly thought they could turn the tables.

Qing’s hairpin flew, piercing one guy’s wrist, followed by the sound of a bell ringing as another one dropped.

While the remaining three had intended to take on one opponent, they were instead left facing a frightened foe.

Qing smirked.

“Yeah, it feels empty. My Moonlight Sword……!”

Just when hunger was about to hit him, the enemy was already right in front of him.

The last move of the Moonlight Sword Compilation was a fatal strike made up of five sections, each a climax of sheer skill.

In a split second, he aimed three strikes and, in the blink of an eye, executed it all over again—a finale that reached ultimate sharpness.

He slashed nine times through, leaving a crescent-shaped blade gleaming as brightly as day.

The enemy’s wrist was severed, and as the blade returned, it took off another bit.

Pieces of the wrist plummeted down like falling leaves.

From the thin wrist through to the thicker forearm, the anatomy was brutally revealed.

With blood spraying everywhere, the enemy desperately tried to retreat.

Just then, an enemy with a hairpin stuck in his palm lunged for Qing, dagger first.

She reached out her hand, pale as a sheet.

Gripping tightly, she shattered the blade between her fingers.

“Wha—what? Huh? That was a Dagger Technique?”

The Dagger Technique was meant for catching a blade safely instead of just crushing it without thinking.

But if she’d known that, she would’ve laughed at the ignorance of it—but it turned out she was just as ignorant.

“No. It’s the Moonlight Palm.”

The enemy froze for a moment.

Moonlight Palm? Why not the Moonlight Technique?

And they’d pay dearly for their moment of distraction.

Thud! Qing’s hand plunged right into his chest.

Halfway down the wrist, her hand squeezed gently around his heart. The pulsating muscle beat rhythmically against her palm, regardless of its owner’s will.

It was a sweet song of life.

Wow, so I can do this too!

What if I squeeze it? Let’s see!

“Gah! Gah….”

The enemy croaked out a sound as the adjusted heart convulsed.

His eyes rolled back, foaming at the mouth as agony overcame him.

Qing’s lips curled upward as her hand pulled away,

only to be met with a squishy, blood-soaked ball of muscle in her grip.

A sudden flood of drool welled up as she instinctively brought the heart close to her mouth before—

Yikes! What the hell?

She jumped back, shaking off the grossness as she snagged her hairpin from the corpse and pinned it back on her head.

Turning around, she saw one of the arm-less guys still flailing about.

She stepped closer and placed her foot on his head,

gently pressing down.

Ahh, the resistance of his skull is surprisingly solid!

Oh, it’s holding up pretty well!

Adding just a bit more pressure, the bones creaked before cracking completely, leaving only the remnants of what was once a head.

A tingling sensation shot through her foot all the way to her ankle,

and before she could even relish the moment—

“W-witch…!”

Qing turned at the voice.

The guy who got hit by the Buddha’s Physical Body was sitting there, frozen in fear, just staring.

When their eyes met, he jumped in shock.

“A witch? You wanna see if I’m a witch? Want me to give you a show? I can dangle your guts around your neck, you know? How does that sound? Huh?”

She quirked an eyebrow.

“Wait, that sounds pretty good, actually. Yeah, let’s go with that!”

The guy’s pants turned dark as he trembled.

Qing’s face contorted in disgust.

“Ugh, what the hell? Am I that scary? Come on, man! A real man goes down with dignity. Even if you’re gonna get strung up, at least do it right! What are you so scared of that you’re pissing yourself? HA! Just cut it off already. If you’re gonna die anyway, why drag down that heavy weight?”