HDCLSSRS Ch 135

Chapter 135 Let’s go back(1)

 

Baek Ryeoil said nothing. He merely stood there, quietly looking down at him. Under that gaze, which seemed to demand an explanation, Seong Muyeon let out a long sigh.

“…That day, I learned I was ill.”

For the first time, Muyeon spoke aloud words he had never told another. He wasn’t even sure Ryeoil really wanted to know. Maybe he was simply watching in silence, nothing more. But Muyeon did not stop.

“Stupid as I was, I hadn’t realized until that day.”

“….”

It was only a few years after Damcheong’s death.

Having failed the martial examination, Muyeon had returned to live with his mother, Lady Mi-mi (the Seventh Consort), just the two of them. Though he had not been granted magic arts to study, he didn’t want to abandon his training either. So he spent day after day holed up in the study, struggling through on his own.

It was around then that his body began to fail him more and more. He tired quickly, often needing rest. Yet Muyeon brushed it off as nothing serious.

Until the day he finally collapsed.

He thought it was only because he had pushed himself too far.

“When I collapsed, my mother was terrified as if she’d seen death itself. Because she knew—my father would never tolerate a weak son.”

How could he not have realized?

Looking back now, it seemed absurd. He had always been different from others. Sometimes he would shiver with unexplainable chills, sometimes his head clouded over as if filled with fog. But Muyeon thought everyone lived that way—that everyone simply endured and carried on, and so could he. He had never lived inside a truly healthy body, so he assumed suffering like that was simply normal.

That delusion was partly Lady Mi-mi’s doing.

“She told me she had known immediately upon giving birth. She recognized that I was born with Jeolmyeok disorder. And… that the cult leader would soon kill me for it.”

At those words, Ryeoil’s fingers, which had been absently brushing through Muyeon’s bangs, gave a small jolt.

“Isn’t it strange? The cult leader had seven sons, and each one was born with exceptional talent. How could that be?”

The cult leader had begotten children from different women. If he didn’t like the child that was born… that child was discarded.

“My father, with a body uniquely suited to learn demonic arts, spent years researching how to ensure the Demonic Cult thrived even after his death. He discovered that, exceptions aside, disorders like Jeolmyeok and martial aptitude were inherited through bloodlines. My mother was Jeolmyeok-born. Same as me. So the cult leader gathered women with such unique constitutions, bred with them, and if the child was born with genius aptitudes, he raised them. If not, the child was killed.”

“….”

“My mother told me she only realized in her final month of pregnancy. That the child she carried might be killed before it even drew its first breath. As you know, I was born with the Jeolmyeok disorder, but somehow, my mother deceived my father. Neither I nor he knew anything.”

Muyeon exhaled a sharp breath.

“Not until I collapsed that day.”

The image of Lady Mi-mi’s pallid face on the day he collapsed came vividly back to him. She had tried countless times to flee with him, but each attempt fell through until at last that day arrived.

No longer able to conceal his infirmity, Lady Mi-mi planned one final escape. She knew if the cult leader discovered it, he would never let them be.

“We weren’t imprisoned, but guards shadowed us everywhere, making it near impossible. So when father was away, we went into the village under the pretense of visiting a cloth shop. That’s how we escaped the escort’s eyes. But to truly leave the Demonic Cult’s influence, we had to cross Xinjiang’s1 vast forests and plains…”

But in the forest where they fled, the cult leader himself was waiting.

You’ve mocked this seat, Mi-mi. Did you think I didn’t know what you were up to? Still scheming even now?

Behind him, dozens of his men stood arrayed in deadly formation.

P-please, just let us go…

Oh, how pitiful. Did I lock you away? Have I chained you? You’re free to roam anywhere you wish. Just not with my son.

The cult leader wasn’t angry. He was calm, even affable.

That boy is my flesh, my blood. He only borrowed your body to be born. He is my heir. Bring the Seventh Young Master to tonight’s banquet, promptly.

Then he turned away leisurely, as if nothing more than an afternoon stroll, and added,

The Seventh Consort… do as you please with her.

Even after all these years, Muyeon trembled like the child he had been. That was the day his entire world turned upside down. Not only did he discover his hidden illness, but worse—the father he had thought of as family turned his back on his mother.

“We ran as if out of our minds. But not long after…”

Once the words spilled out, memories long dammed up broke loose, flooding his consciousness.

“Huff… huff…”

Muyeon ran clutching Lady Mi-mi’s hand. Her palm was slick with sweat and kept slipping from his grip.

Behind them, a score of demonic warriors gave chase in chilling silence. They were the cult leader’s personal guards—the fiercest in all the cult. Against them, sixteen-year-old Muyeon was no more than a toy.

And burdened as he was, dragging along Lady Mi-mi who kept stumbling, he had no chance of winning. Especially when even he, having collapsed that very morning, was barely standing.

Still, in that state he cut down several pursuers. His lungs screamed, his vision swam, his sword nearly slipped from his grasp.

At last, they doubled back and fled into the cult’s own village. Families of cult members clustered around the main palace lived there.

As dusk fell, they managed to slip into the bustling crowd buying goods in the market. For a brief while, they lost their pursuers. Muyeon found an abandoned warehouse tucked away in a side alley.

“H-hurry, inside!”

Cobwebs draped the storage, filled with discarded, dust-laden junk.

Muyeon laid pale-faced Lady Mi-mi on the dirty floor. Pressing his hands hard on her bleeding abdomen—wounded when a demon guard struck as they halfway left the forest.

Breath ragged, Muyeon darted anxious eyes around.

‘What do I do?’

For the moment it was quiet, but the guards could burst in at any time. And her condition was worsening fast—she could no longer run.

But pretending nothing had happened and going back was impossible. The cult leader had already ordered she be treated as nothing. Even if they returned in surrender, punishment was inevitable.

As Muyeon bit his lip, Lady Mi-mi spoke.

“Yeon-ah…”

“Please don’t speak. I’ll get us out alive.”

Seeing that fierce determination, Lady Mi-mi said nothing more. But the truth was dire. Even if they slipped past the cult guards, the cult leader would not let them leave unpunished. By now, soldiers likely blocked every exit.

‘I need to take a path outside the roads.’

Tracing possible escape routes in his mind, Muyeon felt a grim irony that the home he had always known had suddenly twisted into enemy ground.

Then—he felt weight against his throat. Looking down, his mother had slipped her necklace off and was fastening it around his neck.

“Mother?”

“This pendant… it’s one of a pair given to me and my younger brother by your grandfather. He made us keep them so we’d stop quarreling and learn brotherhood instead…”

“Why are you saying this? I don’t need it.”

Muyeon tried to remove it, but she clasped his hand tight.

“Listen carefully. Never go back. That man will never forgive me for deceiving him. And he will never forgive you. You must leave here and go to your mother’s family. I hid it from you out of fear they might suffer, but your maternal family—”

CRASH!

The warehouse door exploded inward with a deafening crash. Dark-robed demon warriors poured in.

Lady Mi-mi seized Muyeon in a desperate embrace.

“M-mother!”

Suddenly, energy roared in his veins, surging out of his body into hers. Essence that had filled him, tearing at his meridians, now spilled uncontrollably into her.

 

Footnotes:

 

1. Xinjiang (신강): Northwestern frontier region of China with vast deserts, mountains, and grasslands, often depicted in wuxia as a far, remote land to flee into.