I Am This Murim's Crazy Bitch-Chapter 242: Even a Ronin Has the Loyalty of a Ronin (15)

Foreigners, upon learning this, would exclaim "Big Brother!" in horror, but Koreans themselves had no idea why that was alarming.

Read 𝓁atest chapters at fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm Only.

Not even the Chinese government managed to fully register all its stateless people — those called "rats" — who had no official identity!

So, back in Qing’s homeland, unless the police were deliberately turning a blind eye due to ties with the kidnapper, nobody could get abducted and enslaved.

Along with the voluntary surrender of personal information, every citizen carried a real-time communicator and GPS tracker.

Thus, if someone suddenly went silent, everyone would immediately sense something was wrong and suspect a disappearance.

You didn’t have to go far—if someone’s location tracker turned off, it would already send a jolt of dread through the heart.

But what about primitive, uncivilized Zhongyuan?

If someone left home to watch the Murim Tournament, it would take one month to get there, one month to watch, one month to return, and nobody would bat an eye at three months without a word.

After about half a year, you might start wondering where the kid had gone, and after a year, you’d simply accept that they'd probably been stabbed somewhere and died.

Even the postal system in Zhongyuan was monopolized by government offices, and sending a letter relied heavily on personal wealth or close connections with someone traveling the same way.

If you had no money or no network, you couldn't even send a single message!

So even if Qing disappeared for three or four days, no one would be particularly worried.

People would just assume she'd gone somewhere or gotten delayed.

Even if Moyong Juhee hadn't left a letter saying she was going home first, her family wouldn't have worried for at least a week.

They’d think: "Oh, she's caused some trouble again and is too embarrassed to show her face."

Likewise, Gyeong Damgan’s claim of not having seen someone since morning fit perfectly into that context.

Maybe he was off playing alone somewhere, or maybe his superiors had assigned him a special task.

If a Vice Lord vanished, people would just click their tongues and move on; it wasn’t seen as anything serious.

"Hmm. Just asking, but would you be willing to remove the Gu parasites infecting the others?"

"Kkeuhuk, just kill me. Might as well drag a bunch of comrades down to the underworld with me."

"Comrades? Aren’t they your enemies? You’re gonna get your ass beat on the way to the afterlife, you know."

"When you're dead, it's over. Who the hell cares about the afterlife?

If heaven wants to punish the wicked, it should damn well do it while they're alive.

Otherwise, it’s just some bullshit about karma after death for people to cling to."

"Mmm. Fair enough."

If punishment fell immediately upon evil deeds, there wouldn't be a single villain left in the world.

All that talk about suffering after death was just the desperate self-consolation of the living, wishing it were true.

"Kkeuhuk, so what now? If you kill me—"

"Oh, by the way, the wanderers already took some heavy sleeping drugs and are snoring away.

So threats like 'if I die, the Queen Gu will go into unlimited self-detonation mode' don’t work anymore."

Gyeong Damgan let out a snorting laugh at that.

"I’ll get rid of the Gu. Just let me live."

"Mmm. Glad we’re on the same page."

At Qing’s response, Gyeong Damgan's expression brightened.

Qing continued brightly, laughing with a sparkle in her voice.

"Of course, you don’t have to remove the Gu.

But Grandpa Eunuch, I’d really love it if you lived a very, very long life.

Please don’t die, okay?"

****

It was said that the Iseon Blood Core Vice Lord, the Blood Wheel Demon Ghost, had already surpassed the Haegyeong realm.

Even the informant didn’t know his exact cultivation stage.

In the Jianghu, hiding your true strength was standard practice; openly declaring yourself early, mid, or late stage was seen as foolish.

Qing had planned to leave the Blood Wheel Demon Ghost to her Master, but since he was absent, it was truly a shame.

Thus, she grabbed the patchy hair of the unconscious Mad Demon of Accusation and dragged him outside, bumping and scraping along the way.

While dragging him around the underground Blood Sect base, Qing spotted Ximen Surin patrolling and immediately beamed a radiant smile.

"Master! Your disciple caught the Mad Demon of Accusation!"

"Are you hurt anywhere? There’s not a single spot on you not covered in blood."

"None of it’s my blood. I mean, come on—

Would I really get injured just taking down a petty early Transcendent Realm punk?"

"Indeed. So you now handle early Transcendents effortlessly. Good, very good."

Even seeing Qing drenched in blood from head to toe, Ximen Surin merely smiled gently and praised her.

If anything, it brought back fond memories — the joyous days when she herself soaked in blood, slaughtering the enemies of the women of Jianghu.

"The Blood Wheel Demon Ghost seems to have left.

They’re not sure whether he just stepped out or disappeared for longer."

"Then I’ll need to stay here a while longer.

But that degenerate—what are you planning to do with him?

Aren’t you going ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) to hack off his limbs and toss him into a pigsty?"

The Mad Demon of Accusation’s filthy hobbies were infamous.

Had they not been, he wouldn't have earned that epithet in the first place.

"Mmm, I’ve got a little experiment in mind.

It might help with my training too.

But where is Master right now? We were supposed to do this together."

"Hmph. You think Divine Thief Cheon Yuhak would just be sitting around?

He must’ve found another artifact to steal somewhere.

Wouldn’t surprise me if he discovered another woman who wears innerwear made from silk ledgers."

"Or a man, maybe."

Qing quipped back, and Ximen Surin playfully tapped her forehead.

"You little rascal. How dare you joke about your senior sister like that?"

The "woman wearing undergarments made from ledger silk" was none other than Wang Juhee, Sect Leader of the Divine Maiden Sect.

Ximen Surin often teased Wang Juhee about whether she liked wearing the world's most expensive underwear.

Leaving behind Ximen Surin, who chose to remain underground just in case the Blood Wheel Demon Ghost returned, Qing headed above ground.

Along the way, she occasionally stumbled upon Blood Sect warriors with severed limbs, bizarrely not bleeding, writhing and groaning.

Qing thought about finishing them off but decided against it, feeling it would be disrespectful to kill those her Master had deliberately spared.

Besides, they were living transmitters for the Queen Gu’s unlimited self-detonation protocol.

It was better to leave them alive for now and wipe them all out at once later.

****

Inside the bathhouse of Mucheon Pavilion, there was a device—no, a torture rack—originally meant for Qing’s Lingering Oil Torture training.

And now, someone else besides Qing was strapped tightly to it: none other than the infamous Mad Demon of Accusation, Gyeong Damgan.

After Cheon Yuhak had bound his limbs with the same cursed artifacts he'd once used on Qing, she promptly brought a blazing torch to Gyeong Damgan’s severed wrist.

"Uuuuph!!!"

"Now, now. Stay still. Just squeezing the blood vessels shut isn't enough—you’ll start gushing again. I'm treating you so you can live a long, long time."

"Uuuuph!!"

"Come on, it’s just a little cauterization. Acting like you're about to die over a tiny sting. Old men are such babies."

Qing roasted Gyeong Damgan’s wrist without hesitation.

She pressed the torch directly against his skin—if you had to categorize it, it would definitely be "open-flame grilling."

Ah. I want samgyeopsal.

It wasn’t really the kind of thing you should be thinking while roasting a man’s wrist alive, but the smell of cooking meat filled Qing’s nose, and she couldn’t help herself.

Having experienced it firsthand, Qing knew all too well—once you were properly tied to the Lingering Oil Torture Rack, you couldn’t move a single muscle.

Because if the patient moved during the delicate process of slicing tendons and joints, they could be crippled for life, it had been designed with impeccable anatomical precision.

Thus, Gyeong Damgan, who could only scream through his gag, soon slumped lifelessly.

"Ah! Did he die!?"

Qing hurriedly checked his pulse.

A high-level martial artist wouldn’t die just from some medical cauterization.

Relieved, Qing let out a deep breath.

When she returned to Mucheon Pavilion, she saw a familiar and welcome face she hadn't seen in a long time.

"Ah, Grandpa! How have you been?"

"Oh-ho, have you been well, little one?"

The kindly smiling, gracefully aged man was none other than the Grand Elder of the Tang Clan—whom Qing affectionately called Grandpa Dok (Poison Grandpa).

Grandpa Dok asked casually.

"Hmm. So, I hear Surin is around?"

"Ah. Master is downstairs, tidying up the Blood Sect's leaders."

"Is that so?"

At that, the Grand Elder's face lit up like springtime.

Even now, whenever it rained, his shin would ache—the same shin that Ximen Surin had once broken with a kick after catching him brewing aphrodisiacs.

Ever since then, he hadn’t even dared glance toward Mucheon Pavilion.

But now that there was a chance to capture the Iseon Blood Core Vice Lord, what did an aching shin matter?

Removing someone else’s Gu parasite was no easy task.

Qing had simply stabbed and ripped hers out because she had intended to kill the host anyway.

Punching a hole through someone's intestines was fatal enough, but trying to forcibly remove a Gu would cause it to release its venom, flooding the host's body with deadly toxins.

Qing only needed the body alive for a few minutes, so she didn’t care.

But when it came to Moyong Juhee and the wanderers, she couldn’t afford that.

Thus, she needed the help of a giant who was a master of both poison and medicine.

And so, late that night—

Grandpa Dok gleefully packed away jars full of living Iseon Blood Core parasites and left in high spirits.

Qing watched the master surgeon’s deft movements from up close—truly a wondrous display worthy of a healer specializing in anatomical dissection.

And surprisingly, the Iseon Blood Core parasites were... well, kind of cute?

Qing had imagined something like a worm or a flea, but what came out looked more like a semi-transparent salamander.

It had a wide, rounded head and two horizontal slashes across its body—ah, so that’s why it’s called Iseon (Two-Line) Blood Core.

Tilting her head in curiosity, she wondered whether such a creature could even exist.

But then again, this was a world where people shot laser swords out of their hands and literally flew around using Qi.

A parasitic salamander wasn’t that strange by comparison.

Now all that was left was for her Master to return.

Since she’d gotten her hands on such a good "teaching aid," she thought she might as well learn the Lingering Oil Torture technique properly.

After all, she would need to perform it on her own disciple someday.

Besides, the idea of slicing tendons and joints right to the brink of sensory destruction—

just imagining it filled her with giddy anticipation.

However, Cheon Yuhak did not return.

Instead, an unfamiliar errand boy showed up, delivering a message that Cheon Yuhak was delayed but told her not to worry.

Hmm. Why did Master send the messenger cash on delivery?

He’s rich—he could’ve prepaid the fee.

Sending ten words like "I'm running late, don't worry, disciple" and getting charged five silver taels felt a little steep.

In the end, all she learned was that Cheon Yuhak was delayed for some unknown reason.

Meanwhile, Gyeong Damgan, still bound to the rack, was growing weaker by the minute, and Qing feared he might die.

Plus, the Blood Sect warriors—the living relay stations for the Queen Gu’s self-detonation—needed to be detonated while still alive.

Well, if she played around with the handles and controls herself, she could probably figure it out without her Master teaching her.

After all, hands-on learning was sometimes the best teacher.