Blooming even in the mud - Chapter 20

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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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Blooming Even in the Mud, Chapter 20
 
 
 
“…….”
“Commander, the Princess’s Residence was empty, but we discovered Buma Park Kwon-bok nearby. It turns out he knows Her Highness’s whereabouts.”
“P-Please spare my life! The Princess fled to the woods!”
Gyeong Won-ui’s eyes narrowed. Droplets of sweat pouring down the man’s face gleamed in the torchlight. According to reports, he was a believer in the Evil Cult who handled all their dirty work.
He was a petty-looking fellow. It wasn’t as if his face was exceptionally handsome or his physique outstanding. From his flat face to his servilely trembling lips, every single thing about him seemed lacking.
This was the man she had chosen while betraying him.
“To think it was for a man like this…….”
A low mutter, like a groan, was crushed under his breath.
Gyeong Won-ui tried to find what about this man could have possibly satisfied Yoo Seo-hwa. But he could find nothing.
It was disastrous and infuriating. Deep within his chest, where the blood had pooled and festered, it began to boil a furious red. The image of Yoo Seo-hwa stepping down from her palanquin in her beautiful wedding garments to marry this man blazed in his mind.
“To think this paltry man was what she chose.”
She had betrayed him just to go and be held by a man like this.
Through the years of endurance, through taking command of the attack on the Capital City, through breaching the city gates, and through facing the Inner City—the triumphant joy of hatred, the knowledge that he could finally exact vengeance on the woman named Yoo Seo-hwa, had spread through him like flowing blood.
His position leading the army was the only thing barely keeping his feet anchored here.
The gaze he directed at the man Yoo Seo-hwa had chosen was utterly savage. With a face slick with sweat, Park Kwon-bok kept stealing glances at him, trying to gauge his mood.
It was an incredibly groveling display. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. Would a servile wretch who valued his own life this much really not use a crucial card if he held one?
“How many groups have you told about the Princess’s whereabouts so far?”
“T-That is…….”
Park Kwon-bok’s obsequious face turned deathly pale. His intuition was correct. It was dangerous. The place where Yoo Seo-hwa was hiding must have already been exposed—to beasts who saw women only as objects to satisfy their lust and who coveted wealth.
The next moment, Gyeong Won-ui mounted his horse.
His shout ordering his lieutenant to take temporary command was delivered from atop the horse, which was already beginning to gallop.
During the not-so-short ride to the woods where Yoo Seo-hwa had fled, nothing came to his mind. Even the hatred that had consumed his life for the past five years was gone.
He simply rode his horse hard. To save Yoo Seo-hwa.
“He is a good person.”
……If he had killed him back then, he wouldn’t have had to witness such a sight.
The window frame he gripped shattered with a violent crack. Though crimson drops of blood dripped down from his palm where wooden splinters had embedded themselves, Gyeong Won-ui didn’t even feel the pain.
‘There was no absolute need to kill him.’
Even though he had licked the feet of the deposed emperor, he was nothing more than a small fry within the White Head Sect, a wretched nonentity.
‘I killed a wretch who wasn’t even worth killing.’
When Yoo Seo-hwa’s words—that Park Kwon-bok was a good person—pierced his ears, what surged up inside him was a violent emotion akin to hatred.
He couldn’t bear the fact that there had been another man by her side besides him. The imagination of Yoo Seo-hwa stepping down from the palanquin, flashing the same radiant smile she used to give him as she threw herself into Park Kwon-bok’s arms, scattered like shards of broken glass and stabbed into him.
He instinctively realized the true nature of this unfamiliar emotion. Yes, it felt exactly like jealousy.
‘……That’s impossible.’
Gyeong Won-ui couldn’t believe he was feeling such an alien emotion because of her. He couldn’t even forgive himself for failing to kill her in the end despite sharpening his blade of hatred, so to feel jealousy on top of that?
It made it seem as though he still had lingering attachments to Yoo Seo-hwa.
“I must have just been temporarily confused.”
He deliberately murmured aloud. As he whispered it repeatedly, it really began to feel that way.
There was no way it was jealousy. He had simply been thrown off.
Because her complexion, which should have been bright after spending satisfying days with her new man, was as dark and dead as a corpse. Because the neck he had gripped and her exposed wrists were as thin and gaunt as withered flower stalks. Because her tears upon confirming he was alive felt almost like joy.
All of it was just confusion.

* * *

Although he had become a Meritorious Official of the Rebellion, Gyeong Baek-jong’s false charges had not yet been officially cleared. He had only been able to reclaim his confiscated old estate.
It was the Gyeong family mansion, which had been seized and left abandoned because they were the clan of a traitor. Having been eroded by the wind and rain of the past five years, the mansion was no different from a ruin.
For an estate that hadn’t seen human hands in five years, everywhere one looked required repair. Yoo Seo-hwa, who had been bestowed upon them as a Government Slave, also had an immense amount of work to do.
“Cough! Cough!”
Dark smoke billowed out in thick clouds from the furnace. With her face covered in soot, Yoo Seo-hwa reflexively waved her hands.
“Oh dear, you girl! How could you just stuff wet firewood in there like that!”
Deok-sun, the head slave who managed the laborers, snatched the poker away. He pulled out the logs that had been blindly shoved in and skillfully poked around to help the embers catch fire properly.
Standing there awkwardly, Yoo Seo-hwa followed the other slaves in airing out the kitchen.
Only after the stinging smoke finally cleared did Deok-sun yell at her.
“Did you come here to ruin the master’s property? You look like you’d have nimble fingers, yet you can’t do a single thing right!”
“I am sorry.”
None of the household chores, large or small, were easy, and since everything was a first-time experience for Yoo Seo-hwa, she was extremely clumsy.
When she was tasked with ironing, she burned the clothes and left a huge hole; she didn’t know how to light a furnace, and she couldn’t do kitchen work either.
Yoo Seo-hwa had to repeat her apologies several times a day.
“If you hadn’t been bestowed as a Government Slave, I would have sold you off long ago.”
Talking any more would only make his mouth sore. Deok-sun chased Yoo Seo-hwa out, telling her to just go sweep and clean.
“Count yourself lucky that there are plenty of places to repair and clean! If you couldn’t even do that, you’d really be useless!”
Clutching a broom and a rag, Yoo Seo-hwa headed toward the detached villa where repairs had just finished this morning. Although it was cold weather that made one’s breath turn white, slaves were never given the luxury of warming up and resting.
As she swept the room where wood shavings had piled up like powder and dirt was everywhere, and then began to wipe it down with a wet rag, she suddenly looked down at her hands.
“They’ve become so rough…….”
In just a few days, hands that were dry and rough—as if they had been swapped with someone else’s—were resting there.
Since there was no mirror around, she couldn’t check, but her face probably wasn’t much different.
She didn’t feel upset, nor did she cry.
‘It’s actually easier to exhaust my body without a moment’s rest by doing chores. The more fatigue accumulates in my body, the less room I have to fall into thoughts.’
Even now, just looking down blankly at her hands for a brief moment caused a single thought to instantly whirl around in her head.
‘Why did Master Gyeong bring me to his residence……?’
Was this his way of expressing his hatred? She didn’t know.
Before her mind could be completely consumed by the thought, Yoo Seo-hwa submerged her rag into the water bucket and rinsed it.
While she was wiping the floor for a long time without even being able to straighten her bent back, someone quietly opened the door and walked in.
“Hey, So-and-so. Take a little break before you continue.”
It was Kkot-bun, who had been bestowed as a Government Slave just like her.
‘So-and-so’ was the name the slaves used to call Yoo Seo-hwa. Since her name was not written on her slave registry, and Yoo Seo-hwa had hesitated, unable to give her name which didn’t suit a slave, she had remained nameless.
In the meantime, the name ‘So-and-so’ that Deok-sun had used out of convenience stuck, and now everyone called her that.
“I snuck this out from the kitchen. It’s a bit undercooked, but it should be edible.”
What Kkot-bun held out was a single potato. Working in the Banbitgan, she would occasionally bring over leftover food.
Yoo Seo-hwa gratefully accepted the single undercooked potato, a food that wouldn’t have even made it onto her dining table in the past. She was even more grateful for the kindness of Kkot-bun, who must have been hungry herself but took care to set something aside for her.
“It is very hot.”
“It’s because you don’t have calluses on your hands and they’re soft, so it’ll feel even hotter. I don’t feel a thing.”
Giggling to herself, Kkot-bun peeled the skin of the potato as steaming hot vapor rose from it. Yoo Seo-hwa also blew on it with her mouth as she peeled the skin. As the warm potato entered her starved stomach, a sense of warmth circulated through her body.
Although it was undercooked, it was a magnificent feast for a slave’s lot in life. Having wolfed down her single potato in a flash, Kkot-bun glanced sideways at Yoo Seo-hwa, who was carefully rolling the hot potato around to eat it.
‘It’s only natural that she’s clumsy since she’s trying to do work she’s never done in her life.’
Though she didn’t seem to remember, Kkot-bun had actually met Yoo Seo-hwa once in the past. At first, she had wondered if a heavenly fairy had descended from the skies.
Even now, wearing shabby clothes and messily covered in soot and dust, she was exceedingly beautiful. If she just washed her face properly and put on clean clothes, she would look lovelier than any noble family’s daughter.
‘I hear many nobles had their property confiscated when the new ruler arrived? Just thinking about the days when those damn phony cultists held the state affairs in their palms makes me shudder.’
Since Kkot-bun was a Government Slave bound to the bureaucracy, she had been slightly better off, but despite being mere cultists, they had been so greedy for wealth, women, and power that the wailing of the common people had never ceased.
The nobles who colluded with the cultists of the White Head Sect were not just one or two either.
‘I heard those people were punished by the new ruler. I guess So-and-so is in a similar plight.’
Even when she tried to fix it, her speech patterns carried an air of addressing social inferiors, her skin was stark white, and there wasn’t a single callus on her palms. Even though Yoo Seo-hwa kept her mouth tightly shut, the other slaves could roughly guess her background.

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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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