A Baby Cat Who Commands the Dog Clan - Chapter 229
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 229
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Nestled upon crimson silk, the Ten Thousand Year Ice Peak gleamed with blinding brilliance.
This was the Northern Sea Ice Palace Master’s Cultivation Chamber.
The Ice Peak, which should have been enshrined in the forbidden sanctum, would henceforth be kept here.
It was the Northern Sea Ice Palace’s solemn vow never to lose the Ten Thousand Year Ice Peak again.
Hong Seol sat alone across from the Palace Master in this chamber.
“So a thousand-year-old water serpent stole the Ten Thousand Year Ice Peak from the forbidden sanctum where it was enshrined.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“How did you come to know such a thing?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Hong Seol answered honestly.
Having heard the circumstances, the Palace Master spoke.
“The Twelve Beast Martial Art… So you truly are a direct descendant of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace.”
Hong Seol nodded.
Now that I had confronted the Ice Dragon and recovered the Ice Peak, I felt immense pride in my bloodline.
‘Surely the Palace Master will now praise the martial arts of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace.’
But the words that followed were entirely unexpected.
“Yes, so you are the daughter of our So Wol.”
“Pardon?”
It was something I had never considered. I blinked in confusion.
‘So Wol…? Could he be speaking of the former Sub-Palace Master who vanished in the past?’
I quickly recalled the story I had heard from Seol Eung.
‘She said So Wol found her lifelong companion and secretly left the Northern Sea Ice Palace in the dead of night.’
And there was one more thing.
‘But those around her never once saw the Sub-Palace Master alone with a man… Wait?’
Realizing something, I sprang from my seat.
“…Could it be!”
“Your suspicion is correct. So Wol met a man from the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace. That is why no one ever saw her in the company of a man.”
The Palace Master continued with a bitter tone.
“So Wol was always accompanied by a single cat instead.”
“But… still…”
I lowered my head.
Part of me had always wondered who my true mother was.
But there was a reason I had never actively sought her out.
“…It might not be true, after all.”
I was content with how things were now.
Bing Yu Hua, the Medicine Master of the Nam Goong Family, cherished me as her own daughter.
‘If I carelessly dig into the past and discover that my true mother abandoned me…’
One Je Gal Seon from the Myo Family Estate was more than enough of that suffering.
I did not wish to endure any more anguish from false mothers.
“How can you be certain that I am the daughter of the former Palace Master?”
Hong Seol spoke with measured precision.
“I do not possess silver hair, nor do I have blue eyes.”
“Heh heh.”
The Palace Master chuckled softly.
Then he raised a finger, pointing to Hong Seol’s arm.
“This mark. This crimson snowflower birthmark is the proof.”
“Pardon?”
The Palace Master suddenly rose to his feet, gazing toward the Ten Thousand Year Ice Peak.
“My So Wol was truly a brilliant child.”
“…?”
“Yes, as clever as you are now. She was formidable. And above all, she mastered numerous grand techniques.”
Hong Seol was familiar with grand techniques.
The Yin-Yang Meridian Opening Grand Technique.
In my childhood, the Poison King and Tian Tong Gai taught me this method so I could wield martial arts.
‘Such techniques exist in the Northern Sea Ice Palace as well?’
As if reading Hong Seol’s innermost thoughts, the Palace Master continued his explanation.
“Separated from the Central Plains, the Northern Sea Ice Palace has inherited numerous grand techniques. Among them, the most secretive and wondrous is the ‘Celestial Time Resurrection Grand Technique.'”
The Celestial Time Resurrection Grand Technique?
The unfamiliar words captivated Hong Seol’s attention.
“So Wol was the sole inheritor of the Celestial Time Resurrection Grand Technique.”
According to the Palace Master’s explanation, the practitioner first condenses ten years of inner cultivation into a single point and embeds it within the target’s body.
“And if the recipient recites the incantation set by the practitioner…. they can return to the past.”
“Such a technique truly exists…!”
One point allows for one journey.
The exact moment to which one could return remained uncertain, he said.
Hong Seol’s heart began to race wildly at the Palace Master’s words.
‘Wait. Could this be…!’
“And the evidence that So Wol embedded her inner cultivation is precisely this crimson snowflower birthmark.”
Only then did Hong Seol understand how I had returned to the past at Dae Chuk Mountain.
‘Mother saved me when I was young…!’
Through the snowflower-shaped mark inscribed upon my wrist.
My mind went blank, as if struck by a hammer.
‘Then the tender voice I remember truly belonged to Mother.’
“I love you, Hong Seol.”
“This snowflower-shaped mark signifies that Mother loves Hong Seol more than anyone else.”
The voice that must have whispered endlessly to a newborn who could barely open her eyes.
‘Thank goodness. I was not abandoned by Mother.’
The maternal love I had always doubted was real after all.
Truly, I am grateful.
“M-Mom….”
Before I could stop myself, hot tears began streaming down my cheeks.
No matter how hard I tried to hold back, my voice cracked with sobs.
“W-Well, I originally had three marks…. But….”
“Yes, it seems So Wol poured all thirty years of her inner strength into you.”
The Palace Master’s voice trembled with regret as she gently stroked my wrist.
Only two marks remained visible there.
“Seeing this, my dear Hong Seol, you must have suffered greatly all this time….”
At her touch, I could no longer hold back—I burst into tears like a child.
“Sob!”
And without thinking, I rushed into the Palace Master’s embrace.
Into the arms of the Northern Sea Ice Palace Master, whose face was as cold as a blizzard.
Yet that embrace was remarkably warm.
I wept there in her arms.
“There, there….”
The Palace Master said nothing, only patting my back for a long time.
A single tear glistened on her cheek as well.
With my nose flushed red, I lifted my face from her embrace and pleaded.
“P-Please tell me about Mom!”
“Of course, I will tell you everything.”
The Palace Master and I talked for a long, long time that day.
Our shared longing for the same person filled the Cultivation Chamber completely.
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“So that’s it—So Wol was the child’s mother….”
Bing Yu Hua murmured, her eyes completely red.
She had already wept and caressed my cheeks several times over.
The two of us sat together in the Inner Chamber, holding hands.
We were piecing together the circumstances surrounding my mother, Bing Xiao Yue.
“Then it must have been the Myo Family Estate who harmed her.”
“Likely so.”
I lowered my eyes bitterly.
“My mother and father, who fled the Northern Sea Ice Palace together, must have continued southward.”
They would have eventually reached Henan, where Shaolin stands.
All while evading the pursuit of the Demonic Cult seeking the Golden Cat Sect and the Northern Sea Ice Palace hunting the Palace Master.
I suspected that around that time, my mother became pregnant with me.
The fact that my father entrusted the Golden Cat Sect to Shaolin was proof of this.
‘Once a child arrives, one wishes to protect one’s family more safely.’
For that reason, my father would have gladly surrendered even the treasures of the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace to Shaolin.
‘If my father had a fault, it was underestimating human greed.’
Because of that, his life was stolen away so futilely by the monk Won Gwan.
Generations of fleeing had meant proper martial arts were never properly passed down to him either.
‘Mother must have waited desperately for Father at an inn nearby.’
Hong Seol’s expression grew clouded.
With money running out and her belly growing heavier by the day.
After enduring and enduring, on the day when pursuit drew dangerously close.
Mother must have left Henan Province with her heavy burden and headed toward Anhui.
“Perhaps she was trying to seek refuge with the Myo Family Estate?”
Hong Seol spoke weakly.
“After all, they were the same feline-human clan, so she must have believed they would help.”
Not knowing that the matriarch of Myo Family Estate was a woman consumed by inferiority and greed.
She must have thought it far better than raising the child elsewhere entirely.
“And Je Gal Seon must have grown covetous upon hearing that the child to be born carried the bloodline of both the Northern Sea Ice Palace and the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace.”
That foolish woman from a cadet branch of the Je Gal Family was always blinded by thoughts of elevating the Myo Family Estate’s prestige.
“Ah! Now that I think about it, there was a strange rumor.”
Bing Yu Hua suddenly spoke as if something had dawned on her.
“Back then, there was talk that that woman from the Myo Family Estate suddenly became pregnant and went into seclusion.”
And then, not even three months later, word came that the child had been born.
“Everyone gossiped about it. They said the physicians of the Myo Family Estate must be quacks if they couldn’t even detect a pregnancy in time. But then…”
Bing Yu Hua let out an exasperated sigh.
“I heard that the physicians of the Myo Family Estate were actually handsomely rewarded.”
“…It must have been the price of their silence regarding the false pregnancy.”
Bing Yu Hua nodded.
With those words, a brief silence fell between them.
The thought of Bing Xiao Yue’s final moments—torn from her child the moment he was born and living out her days in the Myo Family Estate—weighed heavily on both their hearts.
Drip, drip.
One by one, two hot tears fell upon the crimson snowflower-shaped mark etched on Hong Seol’s wrist.
Perhaps Hong Seol’s mother had also etched that crimson snowflower mark along with her tears.
Desperately praying and praying that her child would never have to use the Heavenly Substitute Life-Prolonging Method.
“Then, perhaps Mother was…… handed over to Je Gal Seon the moment I was born……!”
Unable to continue speaking, Hong Seol’s voice broke as she buried herself in Bing Yu Hua’s embrace.
“Cry, cry as much as you need until your heart finds peace…….”
Bing Yu Hua’s own eyes were reddened as she spoke.
After crying for a long while, Hong Seol finally lifted her head and spoke through her stuffy nose.
“Medicine Master, I’ve made a decision.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m going to fight the Demonic Cult to the very end.”
“…!”
“Je Gal Seon must have definitely sought refuge with the Demonic Cult. I will find her someday and repay this debt of vengeance.”
There was no stopping her with words.
And Bing Yu Hua had no desire to stop Hong Seol’s vengeance either.
Bing Xiao Yue was a precious existence to her as well.
“Yes, I too shall aid you to the extent of my power.”
The eyes of the two women grew cold and resolute with unspoken sorrow.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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