Pfft!
A smooth sound rang out, and everyone was stunned by Zhang Qingyuan's move.
An idiom involuntarily surfaced in their minds-old-fashioned chivalry and warm guts!
The butt passage?
Warm guts!
The Dragon Lord slowly turned his head. All his earlier composure was gone, and he dared not move a muscle.
"You... how could you... think of... such a... low-down... move?"
Zhang Qingyuan chuckled. Who said you couldn't stab someone to death without a spearhead?
"Old Seven, see that? The throat and crotch aren't the only places to break the Golden Bell Shield. You can burst the chrysanthemum too."
At the sight of his handiwork, even the solemn Old Seven could no longer quite keep his composure.
What decent person would go for that spot?!
Zhang Qingyuan had feinted straight for the chest and belly. Just when the Dragon Lord thought he meant to clash head-on, little did he know that his own tough ass was Zhang Qingyuan's true killing move.
The Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt could indeed be trained to withstand blades and spears, but that only meant nothing could penetrate from outside. I refuse to believe he could make even his old chrysanthemum blade- and spear-proof.
Shhk!
The Dragon Lord remained crouched, a sword stuck in his backside. He dared not move-if he moved, he would leak.
Zhang Qingyuan walked around in front of the Dragon Lord, and Zhu Zizhao and the other two gathered close as well.
"Well? Simple, wasn't it?" Zhang Qingyuan clapped his hands.
Old Five couldn't help swallowing. When he looked at Zhang Qingyuan's face again, his expression held something impossible to put into words.
Zhu Zizhao stared blankly at the sword hilt sticking out of the Dragon Lord's backside and asked with great curiosity, "How did you think of that spot?"
Zhang Qingyuan circled the Dragon Lord as he spoke. "A few months ago, I wiped out a branch of the Black Lotus Sect. There was a Black Lotus Holy Envoy there who raped, looted, and committed every evil imaginable. He disgusted me, so I made his death even more disgusting. I skewered him just like this with a bamboo pole."
Everyone pictured the scene and hurriedly covered their mouths. "Enough, stop. We can see it."
They had thought it would be a contest between a swift sword and external body conditioning, a struggle of attrition and endurance. Who could have imagined it would end with such an unexpected, miraculous method?
Old Seven in particular had been ready to tell Zhang Qingyuan some common ways of breaking external body conditioning when he flew forward to stab the Dragon Lord.
But before he could speak, Zhang Qingyuan had ended the fight with this decidedly uncommon method.
A "motherfucker" kept hovering in his mind, though he didn't know whether to say it.
"What are we waiting for? Kill him."
The Dragon Lord couldn't move at all now. He knew his internal organs weren't blade- and spear-proof. On the contrary, his stomach and intestines were no different from an ordinary person's.
His eyes shifted back and forth as they spoke. When he heard someone suggest putting him out of his misery, a trace of gratitude actually welled up in his heart.
For the mighty Dragon Lord of the Dragon Gate to face the world in this position was truly humiliating.
"Yes, yes, kill me quickly."
"Wait."
Zhang Qingyuan stopped Old Seven just as he was about to act. Zhu Zizhao asked in confusion, "What else is there?"
"Shouldn't we interrogate him some more?"
That reminded Zhu Zizhao, and the two exchanged a glance.
"Right! However big the Dragon Gate is, it isn't a top-tier sect. How would it dare defy the condemnation of the whole world and do something so utterly devoid of conscience?"
Not bad. His mind isn't slow.
While climbing the mountain, Zhang Qingyuan had already wondered whether the Dragon Gate, behaving so outrageously and making a fortune off a national calamity, wasn't afraid the imperial court would settle accounts after the harvest.
What was more, there were no secrets in the jianghu.
Such conduct would also draw scorn from their fellow martial artists.
So who could believe they had no big shot behind them?
Everyone scrutinized the Dragon Lord, making his skin crawl.
Zhang Qingyuan picked a pebble off the ground and gave the Dragon Lord an ill-intentioned look. The burly brute was actually frightened into displaying the bashful air of a young maiden.
"You... what do you want?"
Zhang Qingyuan toyed with the pebble and chuckled. "Tell us. Who's backing your Dragon Gate?"
"What backer? There's no one behind us."
Seeing that he still dared to act tough, Zhang Qingyuan flicked his finger, sending the pebble straight into the sword hilt protruding beneath his crotch.
The pebble knocked the hilt back and forth, making the blade vibrate inside him as well.
The sharp edge sliced through his intestines, and blood dripped from his chrysanthemum onto the ground.
"Hiss..."
Zhu Zizhao and the other two sucked in a breath. What a brutal punishment.
Picking up another pebble, Zhang Qingyuan continued, "Speak properly. Look at the state you're in. You're certainly not escaping death today. It's just a choice between humiliation and a quick end. What do you still have to act tough about?"
"You... just kill me. Fucking kill me!"
"Oh, still fucking tough, are you!"
Thump.
The next pebble he flicked made the Dragon Lord feel as though the sword had shredded all his internal organs.
Sweat instantly drenched his forehead. He clenched his teeth, veins bulging on his neck.
"Who are you trying to impress?"
Zhang Qingyuan wore a half-smile, like a demon.
"You know, in my eyes, rapists, collaborators, traitors, child traffickers, and people like you who profit from national calamities don't deserve a good death. Killing you with one stroke wouldn't be a punishment in my eyes. It would be a reward.
"People like you have to face the people's judgment, be paraded through the streets, burned on red-hot pillars, and flayed alive before you can atone."
After hearing him out, not only was the Dragon Lord terrified, but even Zhu Zizhao felt a chill.
"Well... brother, that's going a bit far. Where you can show mercy, show mercy. Doesn't your Daoist tradition urge people toward goodness too?"
The Dragon Lord once again felt grateful to Zhu Zizhao.
Yet Zhang Qingyuan turned to Zhu Zizhao and said, "Mercy?
"Forgiving him is the Dao Ancestor's business. My responsibility is to send him to meet the Dao Ancestor with repentance!"
"Countless disaster victims outside have been driven from their homes, yet these people are making fortunes off the nation's suffering.
"So many families can't fill their stomachs. They starve to death in the streets and become food for wild dogs and vultures, unable even to find peace in the earth, while these people enjoy fine clothes and lavish meals.
"Why the fuck should they?!"
Zhu Zizhao fell silent too, recalling the wretched scenes he had witnessed when entering Kaifeng.
People selling their sons and daughters, even exchanging children to eat...
Zhang Qingyuan remembered watching the news in his previous life, when a bunch of bleeding hearts said criminals shouldn't be treated too harshly. Criminals were people too and should be treated equally, given a chance to turn over a new leaf.
Fuck!
They grew softhearted just seeing criminals live in humiliation. Why didn't they stop to think whether the victims and their families were even more humiliated, even more helpless?!
"You're right," Zhu Zizhao said. "Old Seven, if he won't talk, cut off that baton between his legs and feed it to him!"
"Huh?"
Still seething with indignation, Zhang Qingyuan suddenly froze and glanced back at Zhu Zizhao. This youngster has talent!
"Now, are you going to talk or not?"
The four glared viciously at him.
The once-insufferably arrogant Dragon Lord finally relented, because he knew that if he refused to talk, they wouldn't use proper methods like those upright gentlemen.
He silently recited, I'm sorry, Lord Dragon King. Your brother really can't hold out anymore. If it were only conventional torture, I certainly wouldn't fear it. We brothers value dignity and loyalty above all.
But they...
They,
They have no honor!
The Dragon Lord raised his head, tears brimming in his eyes. "If I talk, will you give me a quick death?"
"Yes."
"I have one more request."
"Hey, you sure fucking ask for a lot," Zhu Zizhao cursed.
The Dragon Lord said, "My request is that after you kill me, please bury my body right here. Destroying it to erase the evidence is fine too. Just don't let anyone know how I died. This is my last shred of dignity!"
The corners of Zhang Qingyuan's mouth lifted. "All right, as long as you talk."
"You guessed right. There really is someone behind us-the prefect of Kaifeng Prefecture, Liu Xiangquan!"