"Red Chopstick Tip"—meaning blood on the tips of chopsticks. The moniker carried two meanings: first, it hinted at Zhu Xiaowan's line of work; second, it pointed to the weapon she wielded.
This woman... killed people with chopsticks.
Some might think chopsticks did not count as weapons at all, and even if pressed into service, they would be dreadfully inefficient.
That notion was not wrong, but it came with a prerequisite: this was the perception of modern people in our universe.
In a world without internal force, great sabers, daggers, spears, punch daggers, katanas, powerful crossbows, and the like were the cold weapons that delivered peak efficiency across diverse settings and distances—the crystallization of human killing techniques tested through countless battles.
Yet in this wuxia world where internal force existed, one could not use that logic to make taken-for-granted judgments about what made a weapon good or bad.
Here, whether chopsticks or spoons, wagon wheels, pillows, or hairpins... as long as you possessed the right martial arts to harness them, anything could become a deadly weapon.
Zhu Xiaowan was a woman who wielded chopsticks with formidable skill. Her manual kung fu rested on a three-year foundation of Gentle Fist and five years of training in Iron Sand Palm, followed by four years honing finger techniques... Only after mastering and blending all of these did she choose chopsticks as her weapon, practicing with them to this very day.
Even a pair of ordinary wooden chopsticks in her hands could effortlessly clamp through an opponent's clothes and flesh, or peck out an enemy's eyeball with pinpoint accuracy. Not to mention... she routinely carried a pair of custom-made iron chopsticks on her person; once those came out, never mind flesh and blood, she could even clamp down on blades, spears, staves, and clubs.
One could say that while Zhu Xiaowan's chopstick skill was not quite on par with the famous Lingxi Finger, it was more than enough to handle second- and third-rate figures in the jianghu.
Yes, when I mention "second- and third-rate figures in the jianghu," that naturally includes Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai. After all, their martial arts were still leagues away from first-rate masters, not to mention that first-rate masters in the jianghu would never stoop to cheap tricks like feigning bathroom emergencies...
Now, after slipping out of the tavern, the two jogged all the way to a latrine behind the trees a dozen or so meters away.
Latrines in that era—meaning "public toilets"—also came in different tiers...
The better ones were paved with stone tiles, walled with brick and wood, with doors and roofs, and operable windows; some even had horizontal slits high up on the wooden walls for ventilation. In addition, toilet spatulas (that is, strips of wood or bamboo) were provided beside each stall—luxuries like coarse paper never appeared in public latrines, as only wealthy households could afford them, while silk was reserved strictly for the imperial palace.
The worse ones consisted of a thatched shack erected over a cesspit, with no wooden boards between stalls, just bunches of thatch. The only difference between that and relieving oneself out in the wild was having a bit of cover around you and overhead.
Without question, the latrine beside this woodland tavern was of the worse variety. Back then, there was no such thing as toilet deodorizer; even if comparable incense existed, a place of this caliber would never use it. And even if they wanted to... what incense could overpower the stench of a cesspit?
Thus, the latrine and tavern had to be built apart; otherwise, whenever a summer breeze blew, the wafting stench would be unbearable.
Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai had deliberately hurried into just such a place. Hiding in two adjacent stalls amidst wafts of foul stench, they spoke in hushed voices... From a certain perspective, this truly was extraordinarily safe, free from any fear of eavesdropping.
"Brother Huang, this place... you get it, right?" Sun Yixie pinched his nose, his voice sounding muffled.
"I saw everything..." Huang Donglai's voice sounded normal; evidently, he had a much higher tolerance for stench. "The antidote is hidden in the proprietress's fingernails."
"Then when we head back in a moment, is there a way to take them down without shedding blood?" Sun Yixie asked.
"Heh..." Huang Donglai chuckled. "Brother Sun, you usually have so many ideas, yet now you're asking me?" He knew Sun Yixie too well; the moment the man opened his mouth, Huang caught the subtext. "Stop faking it. The second you said 'without shedding blood,' I knew you'd already thought of a plan, but wanted to coax me into saying it first, right?"
"Heh..." Sun Yixie gave an embarrassed laugh, continuing to play dumb. "What are you talking about? I don't follow."
"Oh, whatever, forget it." As Huang Donglai spoke, he slipped something through a gap in the partition. "Take this. Keep it in your mouth in a moment. When you drink, let the wine sit in your mouth for a few extra seconds before swallowing, and the drug will be rendered useless."
Sun Yixie took the object and examined it in his hand. It was a small bead with a metallic sheen, roughly the size of a tooth—easy enough to conceal in one's mouth.
"What is this?" Before putting it into his mouth, Sun Yixie naturally had to ask.
"This is good stuff—a poison-warding bead developed exclusively by my Huang Clan. Before I set out on this long journey, my father made sure I brought one along just in case," Huang Donglai replied. "Oh, right, be careful not to swallow it. It doesn't digest well. If you swallow it, you'll have to shove your fingers down your throat to gag it back up; otherwise, over time, it'll perforate your stomach."
"Holy crap~" Sun Yixie's face instantly dropped. Good thing Huang Donglai had warned him, or he might really have been careless. But two seconds later, another thought struck him: "Wait, how do you know the consequences of swallowing it in such detail? Sounds like your Huang Clan ran quite a few unethical scientific experiments on living people."
"Bullshit!" Huang Donglai protested. "Those were thoroughly wicked scoundrels! Just killing them would've let them off too easy. What's wrong with having them do some toxicology experiments before they die to contribute to society? It's called putting things to good use, alright?"
"All right, all right, you win, Brother Huang," Sun Yixie said. "Wait, if you gave the bead to me, what about yourself?"
"I'll be fine," Huang Donglai replied. "When I looked and sniffed earlier, I saw the wine had a murky yellowish tint and detected a faint bitterness and pungency mixed into the aroma. That told me they slipped in some kind of knockout drug—and not a particularly potent or pure batch, either. Presumably... this establishment is used to butchering victims right after drugging them senseless, so they don't need the effects to last long. It just needs to incapacitate someone temporarily." He paused briefly. "Heh... against a drug of this grade, even without the poison-warding bead, I'm immune. Don't worry."
"Oh?" Sun Yixie asked skeptically. "Did you gain some superpower of total poison immunity after transmigrating?"
"How could that be?" Huang Donglai said. "It's just because I was born into the Huang Clan and underwent systematic training and physical conditioning from childhood, so I excel past normal people in many ways. Take smell, for instance: even masked by strong liquor, I can still catch the faint scent of a knockout drug. That's the fruit of training... Another is poison resistance. Since I was young, I've been taking the Huang Clan's secret antivenoms while ingesting microdoses of various toxins, scopolamine, and the like. Over time, my body grew immune to mild poisons and knockout drugs, and even if hit with a potent toxin, I can hold out far longer than ordinary men."
"Naruhodo~" Brother Sun nodded solemnly, pretending he understood, and tossed out a bit of Japanese. Then he changed the subject: "In that case, this will be easy. In a bit, we'll go back, drink, and fake passing out. Once their guard is down, you take the man, and I'll take the woman."
"Brother Sun... that woman's kung fu is far higher than the man's. Even I might not beat her," Huang Donglai reminded him.
"What's there to panic about?" Sun Yixie said. "I have lime powder."
"All you ever use is lime powder, groin kicks, eye gouges, and toe stomps... Pulling this stuff all the time, aren't you afraid word will get out one day and disgrace you?" Huang Donglai asked.
"What of it?" Sun Yixie retorted unhappily. "Isn't winning all that matters? Why preach jianghu chivalry to wicked scoundrels like them?"
"Sigh, fine," Huang Donglai sighed. "I won't argue with you about that." He paused for half a second before continuing, "Actually, I have a better idea—when we go back in a bit, I'll counter-poison them."
"Oh? You can poison her right under her nose?" Sun Yixie asked.
"Of course!" Huang Donglai said. "Are the Three Wonders of the Huang Clan just for show? Poisoning is my bread and butter, all right? An innkeeper of a black inn dares play with poison against my Huang Clan?"
"Nice! As expected of Brother Huang." Sun Yixie stood up and prepared to walk out. Since he hadn't actually needed to use the latrine in the first place, he had only been squatting without pulling down his trousers, needing no wiping. "Then there's no time to lose. Let's get back quickly; any longer and they'll get suspicious."
Unexpectedly, Huang Donglai replied, "Hold on, let me wipe."
"Holy shit?!" Sun Yixie was flabbergasted. "Brother Huang, you were actually taking a dump?"
"Damn it, since we're already here, I figured I'd handle business while I was at it," Huang Donglai replied with complete justification.
At that moment, Sun Yixie instinctively shifted his gaze to the poison-warding bead in his hand: "You bastard Huang! The First Shitter of Qin! Tell me, did your hands touch anything filthy before you handed me this bead?"
……
When Sun and Huang returned to the tavern, Huang Donglai looked as if he had shed a heavy burden, while Sun Yixie looked as if he had just eaten shit.
Evidently, Brother Sun had popped the poison-warding bead into his mouth after all.
Once the two sat down, Zhu Xiaowan immediately wore a seductive smile and offered them another round of wine.
By now, the two had already settled on their plan, so they didn't care; drink, then drink.
Gulping down the first cup wouldn't knock them out immediately—that would be too fake. While knockout drugs were exceptionally potent when dissolved in liquor, they still took time to take effect, depending on the dosage.
And so, urged on by the proprietress, the two drank a few more rounds before pretending to grow drowsy, slumping onto the table one after the other, motionless.
Seeing this, Zhu Xiaowan sneered, pushed back her stool to rise, and turned toward the kitchen. "Husband, come out to work."
Hearing her call, her butcher-cook husband soon poked his head out from the back kitchen. Seeing that both men had "passed out," he strode into the room.
Naturally, they would never kill anyone in the dining area. Human blood had a pungent stench and was notoriously hard to wash clean; if traces remained, seasoned jianghu travelers would spot them at a glance, making it impossible to explain away. Therefore, they usually drugged people senseless before dragging them down to a hidden cellar beneath the kitchen to butcher them.
That secret cellar was truly hell on earth, an asura realm. The entire room reeked of thick blood, with beams and walls hung haphazardly with strips of meat "cured" through special preservative methods. In the corner was a pit specifically for discarding offal and draining blood, beside which sat an enormous chopping block lined with all kinds of rust-stained butchering tools...
Seeing this, everyone can likely understand the reason behind the savage aura on the cook's face—it was not simply because he had killed many people, but because he had "worked" in such an environment for far too long...
Of course, before hauling someone into the cellar, there was one necessary step: searching the bodies...
First, the bodies had to be carried into the kitchen; searching them out front was definitely unwise, as it would cause serious trouble if a patron walked in. Next, they had to untie the baggage carried by their "distinguished guests," leaving Zhu Xiaowan to pick through the contents, while her cook husband was tasked with stripping their clothes to see if any valuables were hidden on their person.
And this step... they were naturally destined not to finish.
Because Brother Sun's lime powder was tucked right inside his robes; how could he let them find it?
Thus, just as Zhu Xiaowan was engrossed in rifling through the baggage and her husband reached a hand toward Sun Yixie's lapel, Sun Yixie snapped his eyes open and, at point-blank range, suddenly threw a vicious hook punch.
The blow landed squarely against the cook's temple. That hulking man of one-eighty-five was struck so hard by the surprise punch that his eye sockets flooded with blood, and he toppled sideways.
Yet before his knees could even touch the floor, Huang Donglai moved as well... Huang planted one hand against the ground, his body swinging horizontally into the air with both feet thrusting outward together, soles slamming directly into the cook's falling head.
Crack—!
At that instant, a sound broke from the cook's neck. Though not particularly loud, the consequence was fatal... his cervical spine was snapped.
By the time Zhu Xiaowan realized something was amiss and whirled around, her husband had already been killed in a split second. Yet in truth, she felt little sorrow over the man's death; at this moment, rather than grief, she was filled with shock and fury.
Whoosh—!
In the next second, Sun Yixie sprang up with a kip-up and hurled the lime powder straight at Zhu Xiaowan with zero hesitation.
Unexpectedly... this time, because she was on guard, it was blocked.
Women's sleeves were long (actually in Da Ming, many men also wore long sleeves, but that was limited to scholars, wealthy merchants, officials, and the like; the clothing of jianghu wanderers or working folk did not typically feature wide, billowing sleeves, as they got in the way of labor). With a sweep and flutter of her wide sleeves, Zhu Xiaowan brushed aside most of the lime powder. Apart from a few specks on her hair, her face was largely untouched.
"You little bastards... playing dead!" Zhu Xiaowan reacted swiftly. Between that toss and block, she had fully come to her senses, realizing that neither Sun nor Huang had succumbed to the knockout drug. They had clearly come prepared, scheming to launch a sneak attack.
Things having reached this point, there was nothing left to say; the only path forward was to test martial arts against martial arts in a fight to the death.
Yet, just as she channeled her internal force, she suddenly felt something wrong with her body... It was as though a knot of qi and blood was jammed in her chest, stalling her circulation and leaving her hands and feet numb...
Chapter 28