Chapter 263: A Nightmarish Life
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
Li Chong’s face instantly changed and he explained, “Blade… Boss Yan, we’re here today to pay our respects…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Meng Qi interrupted with a gentle voice. “This case involves the death of one Assistant Arrester. Our Six Fan School prioritizes this case greatly, so it’s only reasonable for several arresters to inquire you. As a citizen of the Great Jin Dynasty, I hope you can cooperate with us.”
Li Chong looked at him in shock. Meng Qi’s smile remained innocent and his words were gentle and reasonable as if he was speaking to an ordinary satin shopkeeper instead of a notorious gangster of Yangxia.
Didn’t they agree that he would be the one responding while Meng Qi used Secret Voice-sending? For a moment, Li Chong was stunned.
Blade Scar laughed heartily and all the meat on his face jiggled with the motion. He finally turned around and glanced at Meng Qi without any humor in his eyes.
Never mind his undoubtedly good looks, it was Meng Qi’s refreshing temperament and pure smile that impressed others the most. It was as if he was sunlight in the winter, and a clear spring in the summer.
“A citizen of the Great Jin Dynasty!” Blade Scar laughed. Having spent many years murdering his way around Jianghu, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t met someone with similar temperament. Not quite concerned about Meng Qi, his voice became colder and his chilling eyes emanated a hint of cruelty.
Suddenly, he felt everything before his eyes went dark and Arrester Little Su also disappeared. His surroundings turned into a dilapidated room with holes on the walls. There was only a worn-out bedding on the bed.
This scene was so familiar to him that an already disappearing terror once again rose in his heart. He painfully screamed two words,
“Help me!”
“Oh, you’re pretty delicate. Stubborn and vicious! You’re just my type.” The voice that he resented and feared for half his life once again appeared beside his ears. The former gangster of Yangxia climbed over him, pressing his body down.
With his jaw and hands dislocated, Blade Scar’s struggle was in vain. He could only suffer the humiliation and severe pain that made him long for death.
He felt as if there was no part of his skin that was left unscarred. He stared ahead in a daze. Suddenly, he felt someone watching him at the door. The man looked clean-cut and his smile was pure. His eyes weren’t cold but they didn’t contain a shred of emotion, as if he was a deity watching upon the miserable mortal world in disinterest.
After a fit of pain, he fainted. When he woke up again, he vowed that he would gain power at any cost and slaughter the pervert who liked men.
Thus, he became brutal to others and even more so to himself. He curried favor with the gangster and secretly learned the gangster’s kungfu, until he eventually killed him on a dark and windy night.
“You!” Blade Scar looked at the comrades that had been fighting their way up with him all along and couldn’t believe that they wanted to kill him.
A sword sliced cleanly through his stomach, cutting open his lower abdomen and stirring his intestines. An unbearable pain rushed to his head. A steel knife scratched his face, leaving a lasting mark on his face.
“Who gives you the right to be the boss?”
He was ambushed by the traitors, and was wounded heavily. That moment was the most despairing time of his life, so bad that he didn’t dare to reminisce about it.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of footsteps coming his way. A middle-aged man dressed like a scholar walked out of the darkness, wearing a grin. Everything around him seemed to be frozen, including the traitors.
“Do you want to survive? Do you want to learn the true Divine Skill?” the man whispered in Blade Scar’s ears.
Blade Scar only saw the man as the Skyscraping Devil described in Buddhist Sutras, enticing him to reject his own degradation. “I do!”
As he spoke, he noticed the young man standing behind the middle-aged scholar. He had a clean-cut appearance and a pure smile. The man looked at him emotionlessly, with the air of a heavenly being removed from the mortal world. It made him feel intimidated.
In the blink of an eye, all the traitors became mummified and a piece of martial art conjured in his mind.
The pain strangled him as he cultivated the kungfu. His mental was constantly at the edge of collapse. Blade Scar didn’t know how he managed to survive this difficult time.
His life was replaying before his eyes, yet he was powerless to change it. Everything that kept him going in life – powerful, beautiful women, and murder-all passed in a flash. All the pain and despair he felt were crippling yet exceptionally clear. He experienced them over and over and over again.
Each time he relived his torturous days, he would see the young man looking coldly at him. It was as if the man was the symbol and root of all his pain.
The minute he felt like he couldn’t take it anymore and was about to collapse, he seemed to have reached the end of his pain. He would obtain the support of the aristocratic families and sects and become the gangster of Yangxia. He would no longer need to practice that distressful kungfu anymore. He could gorge himself until he could snuff out the comment about his delicacy in his younger years. He could bask in the company of beautiful women and do everything he wanted to do in his youth.
Just then, someone threw the door open. It was a handsome man with a handsome appearance, fresh temperament, and a pure smile. The man’s eyes seemed to see through his entire life.
He instantly screamed in pain. The beautiful women had transformed into muscular men that pricked him with fine needles.
When he wanted to use his kungfu, he could only experience the severe pain that he suffered during practice.
Everything that was wonderful disappeared, leaving him in hell once again.
Everything before him changed once again. He found himself in the dilapidated room with holes dotting the walls. There was only a worn-out bedding on the bed.
“Oh, you’re pretty delicate. Stubborn and vicious! You’re just my type.”
“No!” The scene continued to play before his eyes, over and over. It trapped him in a never-ending cycle of suffering. Blade Scar broke down entirely.
Tears and snots streamed down his face. He was so scared that he urinated on the bed. The disgusting stench spread. He curled his body into a ball, his weight bending the bed. His throat made strangled noises but no scream escaped.
Blade Scar could clearly see Meng Qi on the opposite side. He was seated straight and looked at him with the mild temperament and naive smile.
“No!” He completely lost himself and curled himself even more tightly on the bed. To him, Meng Qi was none other than the Skyscraping Devil, an evil demon dressed in human clothes.
His screams weren’t loud enough to attract the attention of the guards stationed outside. The women dressed in white lace were so shocked that some even fainted. But oddly, no one cried for help or went out to seek assistance.
Li Chong was watching open-mouthed, not understanding why Blade Scar suddenly fell ill. He was quivering with tears and snots covering his face. He even peed on the bed, staining the sheets dark yellow and giving off a horrible stench.
Suffering a complete mental breakdown, Blade Scar looked at Meng Qi cautiously. The latter only tapped the sword hilt with his hand and smiled warmly. “Boss Yan, where’s the sailor?”
“H-He’s dead… I killed him!” Blade Scar’s voice trembled greatly as he curled up in bed. He simply wanted to send this demon away.
Having just recovered from his shock, Li Chong wanted to take Meng Qi away and allow Blade Scar to rest. But he actually heard such an answer. It was his quick intuition that compelled him to control his impulse.
Blade Scar watched as Meng Qi pinched his temples and continue to ask with an amiable smile on his handsome face, “Why did you kill him?”
“I-It’s Old Zhong’s order. I don’t know the specifics.” Blade Scar had suffered a complete breakdown and answered every question honestly.
“Old Zhong…” Meng Qi frowned. He hadn’t seen this name in the confidential file.
On the contrary, Li Chong’s expression changed completely as if Old Zhong was a fearsome monster.
“What do you know about Old Zhong?” Meng Qi asked.
Blade Scar shivered as he replied, “Not much. I only know he’s very scary. He once helped me and he told me to return the favor. I didn’t dare to refuse.”
With the same pure smile on the face, Meng Qi looked courteous and harmless. “How did he help you? What on earth did the sailor see?”
“He saw Arrester Cai get off the Qiu family’s ship, jump into the river, swim to the shore, and walk to the mass graves some distance away. When the sailor passed him by, Arrester Cai was in so much hurry that they collided. They both fell to the ground. But the sailor then realized Arrester Cai was no longer breathing. From his appearance, he looked like he had just died. But rotten pus was coming out from his nose.” The more innocent Meng Qi’s smile was, the more wary Blade Scar was. “Old Zhong once saved my life 20 years ago.”
“The Qiu family from Yangxia …” Once again, this information wasn’t recorded in the confidential file. This meant it wasn’t yet investigated. Meng Qi believed that Blade Scar had been obstructing the other arresters before him.
Li Chong swallowed with difficulty. The case was becoming increasingly nefarious. Not only was Old Zhong involved in this, so was the Qiu family. He really hoped Blade Scar could be as tight-lipped as he was before!
Meng Qi asked Blade Scar a few more questions before comforting him with a smile. “I’ll stop bothering you now, Boss Yan. Since you’re ill, you must seek a doctor. Don’t hide your illness just because of you’re afraid of treatment.”
Li Chong followed Meng Qi out of the room. Outside, he heard Blade Scar’s quiet and joyful cry. He became even more confused.
“Don’t you think I need a handkerchief? Had I wiped my lips or hands while questioning him, I think he’d be even more terrified,” Meng Qi suddenly said. That way, he would look even more gentle but ruthless!
“Ah?” Li Chong was baffled. “You want to get a handkerchief, Arrestor Little Su? I know several good shops.”
He then turned around to look at Blade Scar’s room and sighed. “I didn’t think Blade Scar would have a concealed illness. No wonder he’s so self-indulgent. But it’s fortunate that his illness suddenly reared its head, otherwise we wouldn’t have found out anything useful.”
There wasn’t any point using violence against Blade Scar! That man was stronger than any arresters in the Six Fan School of Yangxia.
It was only after his sigh that Li Chong realized that Meng Qi had quickened his steps. “Arrester Little Su, wait for me!”
Meng Qi looked up at the sky speechlessly. He felt an inexplicable sadness.
“There are always people with me, yet Brother Wang Zai isn’t often around…”
When he had entered the room, he activated his Immortal Pressing Art and genuine Qi to check out his enemy. He discovered that genuine Qi was flowing smoothly in Blade Scar’s body, without any indication of weakness. Further, Blade Scar’s genuine Qi would change every now and then, preventing others from predicting when he would make his move. His martial arts had already reached the peak of Nine Acupores and it wasn’t ordinary martial arts either. It was no wonder that he possessed strength great enough to place him in the top 30 of the Ranking List of Young Master a decade ago. If Meng Qi didn’t use Eight Nine Mysteries to control his actions and genuine Qi or adopt a deceitful appearance, Blade Scar would likely be able to determine his true cultivation.
If he had to resort to a fight, he would likely need to use an Exterior move to defeat Blade Scar. And the latter didn’t seem like he would cooperate, so the investigation had to end here. With Blade Scar ‘hiding’ the sailor and refusing to hand him over to any arresters who come, there would simply be no new clues.
But when he saw how self-indulgent Blade Scar was and how much he dropped his guard, Meng Qi knew there was an opportunity for him to take advantage of. Thus he tried his new Supernatural Power of Shaking Heaven and Hitting Earth and see if he could get any valuable information.
With his experience in cultivating Ananda Oath-breaking Bladesmanship, Meng Qi spent only a month to achieve the primary level of the supernatural power. Though he was still far from awakening the dormant Samsara memories in another person’s mind and lacked the cultivation to do so, he could use the Peace Quietude Split to make others recall their misery and relive those moments over and over.
The spirit expended in using the Supernatural Power of Shaking Heaven and Hitting Earth once would be half that of using the Peace Quietude Split. But due to his lack of cultivation, he still needed to practice more until he could fully demonstrate the Peace Quietude Split against more vigilant enemies.