Senior Brother Qu finally grew terrified. "He means to use this little wooden stick to beat me to death!"
He truly wished the other held a knife, even a blunt one.
The little stick's power was naturally not great, but beaten this long, his head and face were swollen with bruises and pustules of pooled blood, his eyes reduced to two slits, his sight dimmer by the moment.
His skin was black and blue, several muscles turned to paste, while his joints had received Qin Mu's special attention—not their bones, but their ligaments and sinews, every binding snapped by the little stick, so that the merest movement brought a tearing agony.
To be beaten to death bit by bit by a little stick: this was the most frightful thing of all. The pain and terror were drawn out countless times, and yet death refused to come.
By now the herd galloping overhead had vanished. The two had fought their way out of the gate of the ruins, and the beasts had scattered.
Qin Mu's strength, too, was failing. Having "swung his blade" who knows how many times, he could hold out no longer. Racing and fighting beneath the beasts' bellies, he had to dodge both the other's sword and the creatures' hooves and claws, his endless footwork leaving both legs sore.
When he trained under the butcher, the butcher tempered him with measure, never leaving him spent.
Now his strength was gone; only sheer will carried him on.
He knew that the moment he stopped, so long as Senior Brother Qu had a shred of primal qi and could still stir, his head would leave his body.
He could only keep beating, until Senior Brother Qu was beaten to death!
Plop.
Senior Brother Qu could hold out no longer and pitched forward, his treasured sword clattering down.
Qin Mu cast aside the stick and seized the treasured sword, yet could not lift it; his arm held no last strength.
He raised his foot and nudged the pommel, turning the blade's tip toward Senior Brother Qu, who could just barely make out the sight and, with desperate effort, tried to wriggle clear. But his bones and sinews were almost wholly rotted, and he could not move a hair of muscle.
He could only watch Qin Mu laboriously adjust the blade's angle, then kick the sword, driving its edge inch by inch into his own throat.
At last the sword pierced his throat through. Blood gurgled in his gullet, bubbles rising in it, and before long he breathed his last.
Qin Mu relaxed and collapsed, utterly spent. Never had he worked so hard. A corpse lying beside him was not easy to bear, but he could not shift his body, and gave up the thought.
This was not the first corpse he had seen. The woman who crawled out of the oxhide beside the river, and Senior Brother Qu's two junior brothers, had all turned to corpses.
Once Grandma Si had taken him to a neighboring village to deliver a child—besides her tailoring, she usually served as a midwife.
When they arrived, the villagers were all dead, young and old, including the woman about to give birth.
Qin Mu's mind went blank; he felt himself adrift and weightless, floating over the village, gazing at the carnage below. Grandma Si later woke him, saying he had been so frightened his soul fled his body, and that she had dragged it back and stuffed it into his frame.
Grandma never told him who had slaughtered them, only that such things were common in the Great Ruins. And so—
"Never leave your enemy the least chance." This she said with great seriousness.
Senior Brother Qu's corpse unsettled him, but the Great Ruins was such a place: the strong devoured the weak, and only the fittest survived. Raised here, Qin Mu had grown used to beasts rending one another, and this corpse was no different from any dead beast's.
He was still catching his breath when footsteps sounded. He forced his head around, and his heart jumped. There came Junior Sister Qing, limping toward him, a treasured sword in hand, her face swollen like a pig's head, utterly unrecognizable.
Qin Mu struggled to his feet, every limb aflame with pain, and could only stop, panting, silently urging on his Overlord Body Three-Pill Art.
His primal qi slowly grew lively, surging toward his aching muscles. Wherever it passed, the swelling eased, yet his senses sharpened and a searing pain followed.
In their earlier leg-duel, her legs had been crippled to near uselessness, and her face had taken who knew how many kicks; the fiercest was the last, when Qin Mu used all his strength—the flick of a venomous dragon's tail, crushing her fair features flat. They now swelled like dough left to rise overnight.
Her teeth were likely all gone, and a bloody drool kept dripping from the corners of her lips.
But her hand was steady, the sword still glinting coldly. The hatred in her heart ran deep; she meant to carve Qin Mu into a thousand pieces.
Qin Mu urged his art all the more, seeking strength. Only, the high-intensity battle had worn his body out too far.
Only by opening the Spirit Womb Barrier and absorbing the Spirit Womb Divine Treasury could one truly be called a martial artist. He was not yet one, yet he had beaten a martial artist like Senior Brother Qu to death—a feat beyond all remark. But that was all; he had no strength left.
She finally reached his side, tried to speak, but her mouth and throat were too swollen to make a sound. She raised her sword and stabbed down fiercely!
"What a lovely little girl. Grandma takes such a liking to her."
Junior Sister Qing's body froze. Her sword met an invisible obstacle and would not drive down.
Terror dawned in her eyes as she saw a little old woman, basket on arm, walking over on bound feet.
Junior Sister Qing trembled and slowly fell back. From behind her came a thunderous voice: "Mu'er, my butchering knife-art you turned into a little wooden stick, needing five thousand four hundred and seventy-six strokes to knock this lad down, and in the end the one who killed this little bastard was a sword!"
She turned her head with great difficulty. Approaching was a band of grotesque figures: a blind man probing with a staff, a cripple short one leg, a monster robbed of all four limbs, and a burly man cut down to just his torso, his face a mass of flesh.
The torso-only man had been loaded into a bamboo basket and carried on someone's back, while the limbless one was borne along by others. All were miserable beyond words. The only normal-looking one was the middle-aged man carrying the basket—save that his face was utterly destroyed, the most hideous of them all.
The one who had spoken was the torso-only burly man. Sitting in the basket, he blew his beard and glared, berating Qin Mu even from afar: "It seems you've trained too little! Don't tell me there was no blade—if your knife-craft were superb, you could have slain him with a single bare-handed stroke!"
Qin Mu let out a breath and said hoarsely: "Grandma Si, Grandpa Butcher, Grandpa Herbalist, you've all come?"
Grandma Si giggled: "We toiled to raise you. The first time you leave home and spend the night out with a strange girl, of course we had to come and see."
Qin Mu blinked and probed: "How long have you been here?"
The butcher snorted: "We arrived while you were fighting beneath the bellies of the herd. How else would I know you struck exactly five thousand four hundred and seventy-six blows?"
Qin Mu's face darkened. These old folk had plainly arrived long ago, yet had let him fight for his life. Only now he understood: no wonder the herd had not attacked them—the butcher and the others had driven it off.
"The outsiders say Grandma and Grandpa Chief are villains. Could it be true? But I think they're good people—they believed I could win, and so only watched…" he comforted himself.
"As an Overlord Body surpassing all spirit bodies, that you were beaten into this state disappoints us." The blind man, leaning on his staff, smiled at the empty air.
Qin Mu coughed: "Blind Grandpa, I'm over here."
"I know you're over here."
The blind man turned, smiling: "You beat that lad with a stick, which shows mine is the teaching that prevailed. But don't grow proud—you are an Overlord Body, so beating him was only natural! Your training shall be doubled from now on. And no long face…"
The butcher said coldly: "Blind man, what he wielded was my knife-art. What are you so smug about? And why mutter at a corpse?"