Blooming even in the mud - Chapter 40

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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 40
 
 
 
“Y-You are…….”
Startled, Yoo Seo-hwa snapped her eyes open, her pupils instantly coloring with sheer shock.
“…….”
The man holding onto her in silence, looking down at her, was none other than Gyeong Won-ui.
She could not fathom why Gyeong Won-ui, who was supposed to be performing the Buddhist Ritual, was here. What was even more incomprehensible was the fact that he was saving her from nearly falling off the Cliff.
“Young Master…….”
Her trembling voice reached out to him. Yet, the silent gaze looking down at her remained unchanged. It was the same cold look that had never once softened since their reunion after five years.
Could it be, she thought, as a vague premonition washed over her. Her heart churned with anxiety.
“…….”
When Gyeong Won-ui’s arm moved after staring down at her for a moment, Yoo Seo-hwa squeezed her eyes shut instinctively. But in the next instant, Gyeong Won-ui pulled her up onto the Cliff with a surge of strength.
The moment her feet barely touched the dirt ground, Yoo Seo-hwa collapsed into a heap.
Her chest, which had forgotten to breathe while hanging from the Cliff, thudded and pounded wildly. Her belatedly startled heart raced so fiercely that even her voice trembled pathetically.
“T-Thank y…….”
But before she could even offer her gratitude in that shaking voice, a chilly tone cut her off.
“Why didn’t you even ask me to save you?”
“……Pardon?”
Failing to understand his words immediately, Yoo Seo-hwa blinked a couple of times before biting her lip firmly. Her cheeks, flushed with a faint heat, burned.
‘Must I truly resort to such wretched words…….’
She hesitated, but his frigidly downward gaze demanded an answer.
Ultimately unable to meet his eyes, she lowered her head. The voice that slipped through her lips, faint and broken, was as pale as her state of mind.
“How could I……. How could I beg the Young Master to save this life of mine. With what face.”
How did we end up like this. Yoo Seo-hwa brooded over her sorrow.
The lips that once knew his love and whispered affection to him were now uttering the grief of being unable to ask her former lover for her life.
Gyeong Won-ui quietly looked down at Yoo Seo-hwa as she avoided his gaze. An unrefined dampness seeped from her low, sunken voice.
He knew a woman who would accept death if he chose to kill her.
Even when he bared his hatred and murderous intent, even when he aimed a blade at her fragile neck, Yoo Seo-hwa had never once resisted. She merely maintained her feeble, labored breathing.
As if it were a price she rightfully deserved to pay.
Would the woman who had always been that way, the woman who couldn’t even ask to be saved because she lacked the face to do so, truly betray him so cruelly?
Would she have forsaken his love?

The Emperor’s words throbbed inside his heart. His heart, faintly embroidered with memories of profound love, exhaled a twisted thumping.
Simultaneously, his father’s blood-drenched screams and the horrific Interrogation under Torture rose to mind. The scattered afterimages of her, from whom not a single shred of news had reached him in the end. The woman who had worn beautiful Wedding Robes embroidered with white flowers and become another man’s wife instead of his.
……Did that man hear her damp voice too?
“I see. It is indeed a shameless thing. For you severed our bond yourself by becoming another man’s wife.”
As he spoke, Gyeong Won-ui realized it. The most secret emotion that had been inside him all along.
Along with the petty jealousy toward the man who had possessed Yoo Seo-hwa in her Wedding Robes—a sight he had yearned for so deeply but never got to see—it was precisely this.
“Now that I have saved your life, what will you pay me as a reward?”
It was a scalding desire erupting for the daughter of the enemy who had betrayed him.
Gyeong Won-ui scoffed with deliberate coldness. The desire mixed within what couldn’t fully become hatred boiled over. He couldn’t even define what this was himself.
This had now become a distortion that could not be labeled as affection, hatred, or lust.
“You are already a woman who knows a man. I presume it is not too difficult a price.”
Would the woman who would die if he wished to kill her be able to offer even this kind of price?
Failing to comprehend his words for a moment, Yoo Seo-hwa raised a blank gaze. A woman who knows a man, and a price. The moment she instinctively realized the resonance behind this combination of words, her complexion turned deathly pale. She could feel the blood draining from her face.
‘Could I have misunderstood?’
Thinking it couldn’t be, Yoo Seo-hwa cautiously looked up at Gyeong Won-ui, and this time, her face flushed crimson. It was embarrassment.
What appeared on his face was a distinct, undeniable desire.
‘I didn’t mistake it. It’s a look I encountered in the past, though very rarely…….’
There were times, few and far between, when the deep desire Gyeong Won-ui couldn’t entirely conceal would prominently stand out despite his excellent self-control. Because he would rein it in immediately, it had only been a fleeting, brief instant to her.
Whenever it showed, she had pretended not to notice out of maidenly bashfulness. It was because she had never doubted that they would have their Grand Wedding and become husband and wife in the near future.
‘Right……. There is no reason to be bewildered. I intended from the bottom of my heart to live as the Young Master’s wife for the rest of my life.’
Even though she steeled her heart like that, an unknown sorrow stained the corners of her eyes red. It was a deep pain of a different form from when Gyeong Won-ui had directed his murderous intent at her.
“If you wish.”
Yoo Seo-hwa took a slow, deep breath so that her trembling voice wouldn’t be detected.
“Then do so. I am—no, your servant is the General’s slave.”
It was an obedient and compliant answer. Hearing her calm reply, Gyeong Won-ui’s heart grew even more entangled and distorted instead.
Even though he received the answer that she would willingly offer it, he could no longer tell what kind of answer he had wanted from her.
Even as he pulled the woman who bowed her head telling him to do as he pleased, throwing her onto the ground, Gyeong Won-ui could not find the answer.
 
The frayed hem of her clothes flapped in the air. A fierce growl descended upon Yoo Seo-hwa’s eyelids, which she had closed because she couldn’t bear to watch her clothes being stripped away without a shred of consideration.
“Open your eyes.”
The growl swept over her eyelids and bit her lips.
“Look clearly and engrave who the man holding you is. Just because you close your eyes and turn away……”
A rough hand swept up her disheveled skirt, leaving marks on the inside of her thigh. Yoo Seo-hwa swallowed a groan at the violent force digging into her tender flesh.
“Does this hand feel like your dead husband’s hand?”
“It’s not…… Ah!”
She tried to voice a faint denial, but the tongue digging in as it bit her lower lip stole her answer away. He used to not be like this. The kisses with him that she remembered were never this wild and violent.
Their altered relationship cut her heart chillingly even at a time like this.
It was a First Night as sorrowful as that sorrowful kiss. The twisted eyes looking down at her hurt more than the pain of the hard, frozen dirt ground piercing her back.
Though the weather had been clear for the past few days, it was winter in the Mountain. The moment her bare skin was exposed, goosebumps broke out instantly and her body shuddered, met by hands fiercely rummaging through that trembling and a biting kiss.
For Yoo Seo-hwa, who was swallowing her sorrow, time flowed incredibly slowly, but in reality, it wasn’t that long. As the heat that hastily pushed her thighs apart tried to pierce her lower abdomen, a dull pain beyond imagination assaulted Yoo Seo-hwa.
“Argh!!”
Her body was not properly prepared, and neither was her mind. The scream she tried to hold back eventually tore through her lips and burst out.
Gyeong Won-ui, who was pressing her down so she couldn’t budge, paused.
“Did that man hold you very tenderly, unlike me?”
“Sob!”
“What a pity it isn’t your dead husband.”
Failing to realize that his low sarcasm carried a sharpness uncharacteristic of his usual self, Yoo Seo-hwa groaned. A heavy groan unable to withstand the pain turned into a sob.
“Ah, it hurts…….”
“…….”
“Just a little, slowly……. Young Master, just a little……”
Tears welled up in those pupils that had commanded her to look clearly at who the man holding her was.
“……Tsk.”
Swearing under his breath, Gyeong Won-ui pulled his body away.
“Do not show tears in front of me.”
The lips that came down, carrying the chilly winter air, swallowed her tears. Because the sensation of his lips lingering around her eyes as they licked her tears evoked past memories, Yoo Seo-hwa regretted it.
It was better when she was oppressed by the pain of her body laboriously opening. Rather than having the illusion of him being tender like in her old memories tear her screaming heart to shreds.
She knew it was an illusion brought about by futile sentiments.
Even so, the tongue entering as it opened her groaning lips was gentle. The touch sliding deep inside as it caressed her rounded breasts and lower abdomen was careful. The lips pressing against her knees, which were bruised from kneeling all night long, were tender.
Finally parting her prepared flesh, passion poured inside.
“Ah!”
There was no severe, dull pain like the first time. Nevertheless, her vision was blurred, preventing her from seeing the man holding her clearly. His lips, which had told her to engrave him into her pupils, licked the corners of her eyes and covered her eyelids.
Catching the passion, her body was also scalding hot as if it would burn. Yoo Seo-hwa instinctively clung to his back to chase after the unseen man.
‘If this is a time we cannot return to, I would rather you be heartless all the way.’
Because they shared passion rather than pain, it was an even more sorrowful First Night.
 
Having fallen asleep as if fainting from utter exhaustion, Yoo Seo-hwa did not wake up.
Even though he had closed the hem of her clothes, her exposed skin looked cold. Staring at her skin, which was past white and frozen pale, he took off his Fur Coat made of sable skin and wrapped it around her. Yoo Seo-hwa’s neatly closed eyelids still did not move.
Even when he had spotted her climbing the mountain path and started to follow her, driven by an unknown impulse, he hadn’t intended for things to turn out like this.

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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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