Chapter 50 of 90
Martial King in Three Breaths
Everyone around the clearing was shocked.
Martial King. A full realm, in three breaths. And all at once, half the Poison Guards were looking at Li Yuguo very differently. Greedily. Because he had said there were three. And he still had two left.
"My brother!" wailed the King of Thieves. "You're so stupid! A medicine this good—why didn't you give it to me? If I were a Martial King, I'd be able to deal with this old poison easily! Martial Soul and Martial King—there's no comparison! It's a whole world of difference!"
Li Yuguo's heart lit up.
He knew what had really happened. It was not that Strong Brother was some magic elixir. It was that the Poison Emperor's Qi had been stagnant in his dantian for far too long—blocked up by all that overflowing poison, pressing on the meridians below his navel until it had caused, among other things, a certain functional obstruction. And when Strong Brother had forced the blood to rush back down there, it had blasted the blockage open.
Once the heroic wind rose again, the stagnation was gone. All that Qi that had been dammed up for years came bursting out at once, and carried him straight up through the next gate.
But Li Yuguo had no intention of telling anyone that. Because he still had two pills left. And they still had a job to do.
"Boy." The Poison Emperor rose to his feet. His robe was still tented. He did not seem to care. "This Emperor doesn't owe anyone favors. You've cured my stubborn illness and raised me to Martial King. That makes you this Emperor's benefactor."
He opened his hand.
Pills spilled out of the air above it—dozens of them, black and green and white—and he flicked his fingers, and they flew out across the clearing in little arcs, one into every hand. One to the King of Thieves. One to Li Yuguo. Two more, for Jun Xue and for Nalan Meng.
"Antidotes!"
The King of Thieves swallowed his at once. The mushroom on his head, which nobody had even noticed, shriveled and dropped off into the grass.
Li Yuguo did not hesitate either. He swallowed his own, and felt the weight on his skull shrink and lift away, and the fog go out of his head like a window being opened. Then he knelt, and held Jun Xue up against his knee, and pressed the other pill between her lips, and stroked her throat until she swallowed.
For a few breaths, nothing. Then, slowly, the purple began to fade from her skin. A little color came back into her cheeks. Her breathing deepened.
At the far side of the clearing, Nalan Meng swallowed hers, and sat down rather suddenly in the grass. The dark, branching shadow in her leg stopped spreading—and then, very slowly, began to drain away.
"Wait a moment."
The Poison Emperor had already turned to go. He stopped. He looked back over his shoulder with narrowed eyes.
"What? You want to provoke this Emperor again? This Emperor is thinking about kindness right now. This Emperor can't hurt you, after what you've done. But you'd better get out of this Emperor's sight at once."
The corner of Li Yuguo's mouth rose a little.
"These two miracle pills," he said, "have now appeared in the world. And as the saying goes—the common man is innocent until he carries a jade. If I keep these things on me, they'll bring disaster down on my head. So I'm thinking of borrowing a flower to offer to the Buddha…"
"Oh?"
The Poison Emperor's eyes lit up at once. Greed came into them, naked and immediate. Below his belt, the pavilion pole was still standing quite spectacularly—but his interest in the pills was far more obvious.
One pill, he was thinking. One pill raised me a whole realm. If I take the other two—wouldn't I go higher still?
"But," said Li Yuguo, "there are conditions."
And he opened his mouth wide and held one of the blue pills up in front of it.
"If you don't agree, I'll eat it right now. Once it touches my spit, the pill dissolves on its own—and it's gone. And I don't believe the Lord Poison Emperor is going to go and ask the Lord Medicine Emperor for another one in person. Am I right?"
"You brat!" The Poison Emperor's face went dark. "With your little Martial Teacher cultivation, if you swallow a pill that strong, you'll burst!"
"If I don't swallow it, I'll die anyway." Li Yuguo laughed. "Who knows whether the Poison Emperor won't come back halfway down the road, and kill me when I'm not looking, and take the pills off my body? Kill the man and take the goods. It's an old story."
"You underestimate this Emperor!" the Poison Emperor said angrily. "When this Emperor says he'll let you live, he lets you live!"
"And what about them?"
Li Yuguo looked around the clearing. At the Poison Guards.
The Poison Emperor was silent for a while.
He knew his Poison Guards. He knew them very well. And every one of them was staring at Li Yuguo with the eyes of a hungry wolf.
He hesitated. Then he thought: I'm in no hurry. I may as well listen to what this boy wants first.
He waved his hand. "Fine. Then tell me. What do you want?"
"Two pills, two things."
Li Yuguo held up one finger.
"First. You let your sister and the Thief Emperor be together. Truly. They love each other. Let her have her happiness." He did not take his eyes off the Poison Emperor's face. "And if I'm guessing right—your sister's already been poisoned. By you. Even though you're the Poison Emperor, when you came here to kill the Thief Emperor, part of the reason was to get the antidote to your sister. But you can't say that. Can you?"
The Poison Emperor's whole body went still.
Then he sneered.
"Good boy. You really have some skill." His voice was very soft. "Yes. When I left, I gave my sister a swamp poison. It makes a person die in their sleep within thirty days. Now she has only seven days left to live. If I don't save her, she'll certainly die."
"But you weren't planning to save her," said Li Yuguo. "Not really. You were planning to give her the antidote—and then poison her again. Because you want to use her to catch the King of Thieves. He's a man who can't be caught. If you chase him with your own two legs, you'll never lay a hand on him. But through your sister—because the two of them love each other—you'd be sure of him. He'd come to her. Every time."
He said it slowly. Word by word.
The Poison Emperor turned half away.
I never expected the King of Soft Rice to be this sharp. The boy had guessed all of it. All at once. All of it. "So what?"
"So the first condition is this," said Li Yuguo. "Give your sister the antidote. All of it. Let her and her husband be. After all, the only reason you wanted her was so she could help you use your Poison Sutra on someone else—I don't know who. But now that you're a Martial King, I think that person isn't a threat to you anymore. Is he?"
The Poison Emperor's eyes were as cold and flat as a snake's.
"That's right," he said. "Now that this Emperor is in his prime, with the Poison Art of a Martial King—I'm not afraid of that man at all."
"So you can agree?"
The Poison Emperor looked at the King of Thieves.
He thought: He's a thief. But he's a righteous man. He knew that the King of Thieves would rather starve himself than let his sister go hungry. He had seen it. And if he tore the two of them apart by force—would his sister ever forgive him?
He thought of her tears. Of the last time he had seen her, in the doorway of their mother's house, white-faced. His sister had always been so gentle, so obedient. But because of this thief, she had nearly turned her face against her own brother.
And the poison he had given her most recently would let her wake up soon. If he chose.
"Maybe I really have been beating the mandarin ducks apart," the Poison Emperor sighed. "Enough."
He pointed at the King of Thieves.
"But if you ever wrong my sister by so much as a hair, I'll chase you to the ends of the earth and poison you to death!"
"Big brother!"
The King of Thieves flung himself at the Poison Emperor's feet and wrapped both arms around his thigh and sobbed.
The Poison Emperor kicked him off in disgust. Then he turned back to Li Yuguo. "And the other pill?"
"Help me go to Ling Snake Mountain," said Li Yuguo, smiling. "And help me wipe out the bandits there."
"Bandits?" The Poison Emperor raised his brows. "Are you sure? If it's only bandits, take the old thief with you. He's enough to deal with that."
Li Yuguo laughed. "If it were just bandits, it wouldn't be frightening. But what about the overlord beast of Ling Snake Mountain?"
Nalan Meng spoke up at once, from where she sat in the grass.
"No." Her voice was hoarse. "There are a great many bandits there. And the reason Nalan City has never sent troops after them is that they hide in the depths of Ling Snake Mountain—and in the depths of Ling Snake Mountain, there's a monster. A terribly powerful one. Even I'm no match for it."
She was right.
The bandits of Ling Snake Mountain were not what made it terrible. What made it terrible was the true master of the mountain: the giant beast that guarded the Ling Snake Cave.
That beast guarded the Demon Tomb day and night. Even the original Ye Qiong, with all his halo, had very nearly capsized in that gutter. It was no ordinary monster. And it was precisely because of that overlord that Nalan City, for all the soldiers it had, had never once been willing to send them up the mountain.
The Poison Emperor frowned. "It seems you know about the overlord, too."
"Every wild place has its overlord," said Li Yuguo. "And the overlord of Ling Snake Mountain is one of the most powerful of them all. The leader among them."
The Poison Emperor muttered to himself.
The overlord was strong. Even with his new realm, he could not be a hundred percent sure of beating it alone. But if the King of Thieves came—and the Ninth County Lord with her golden dragon—they might be able to fight it.
And besides—the stronger the overlord, the more valuable its body. Its hide could be cut into dozens of suits of armor. Its bones could be forged into weapons. Its flesh and blood could be refined into blood pills. Every piece of it was a treasure. Even if he did not use any of it for cultivation himself, it would sell for an enormous fortune.
The more he thought about it, the less it seemed like a loss. After all, the boy only wanted the bandits gone. If they ran into the overlord, he could let the Ninth County Lord and the Thief Emperor take the brunt of it, and step in at the end to collect the cheap part.
He looked at the two blue pills in Li Yuguo's hand.
That medicine is powerful. If he took both of them—
Then the name of the Poison Emperor would be rectified in the eyes of the world. Not just the Poison Devil King, the man who melted cities. A true master of cultivation, standing among the strongest.
"Fine," said the Poison Emperor. "I accept. But if the overlord is killed, I want my share of the spoils!"
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