Even If Flowers Bloom on a Broken Branch - Chapter 101

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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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101.
There is a saying that things can happen as fast as an arrow.
An arrow released from the bowstring sliced through the wind, flying forward to pierce the stark white target. It truly happened in the blink of an eye.
Having been shot right through the shoulder blade, the deposed Queen collapsed onto the ground and could not get back up.
“Go and drag the criminal here,” Jinyul commanded, and the Imperial Guards rushed forward instantly.
The reason he had deliberately aimed the arrow at the criminal’s shoulder was because she was not a sinner who deserved a gentle death.
Originally, even when executing those belonging to the Royal Family, they would try their best to preserve the corpse as much as possible, but since she was a heinous criminal who had assassinated the King, her head would no longer be able to remain attached to her body.
“Grand Prince,” Jinyul turned his head slowly. Hong Ran was standing there, her face stark white with shock.
She forced herself to speak calmly.
“I believe the Grand Princess Consort was far too startled, so I would like to escort her back first. I worry that this is a very bad sight for prenatal care.”
“Please do so,” Jinyul nodded immediately. There was no longer any reason for Lee Yeon and Hong Ran to remain in this place.
However, an unexpected person objected.
“No, I will stay.”
It was Lee Yeon.
With a deeply bewildered expression, Hong Ran grabbed her hand.
“You are staying? You just saw what happened. No, did you not see? If you did not see it, it is actually a relief.”
Hong Ran spoke to Lee Yeon with earnest urgency.
“Nothing good will come from staying here any longer. You are not in a normal physical condition, so just coming all the way here was overexerting yourself. On top of that, you have witnessed something so gruesome, so the baby in your womb must have been terribly frightened as well.”
With a face full of worry, Hong Ran gripped Lee Yeon’s hand once more.
“It would be best to leave the rest to the Grand Prince and exit this place together. Please?”
She turned her head and looked toward Jinyul and Lord Seo as if seeking their help. They too seemed to share Hong Ran’s sentiment, nodding their heads.
But Lee Yeon shook her head.
“I am going to watch that woman’s end.”
Lee Yeon gently stroked her stomach.
“I feel sorry to the baby, but this is the only chance to completely tie up the loose ends of my twisted heart.”
She had lived through a whopping two lifetimes. During all that time, the very event she had wished for every single day was now unfolding right before her eyes.
Furthermore, the two arch-enemies had bitten into each other’s throats and perished together, so how could her heart not feel thoroughly vindicated?
‘I am not a good person.’
Lee Yeon thought to herself.
She was not a kind-hearted soul. She had wished for her enemy’s ruin and death, desired her absolute destruction, and hoped that she would meet the most cruel and gruesome end possible. More than twice as much as what she herself had suffered.
“So, please leave me be.”
For I will watch that person’s death clearly with these two eyes.
Faced with her unyielding attitude, Jinyul and Hong Ran could no longer dissuade her. Especially Hong Ran, who seemed to understand immediately because of what Lee Yeon had told her in the past.
“Then, you must stay right by my side.”
Hong Ran told Lee Yeon firmly. It was a resolute gaze that promised to protect her no matter what happened.
“Yes.”
Conveying her gratitude, Lee Yeon gave Hong Ran’s hand a tight squeeze before letting go, calmly watching Chae Eun-oh as she was dragged over.
She was being dragged along by the Imperial Guards, completely limp.
Instead of lifting Eun-oh up to carry her, the Commander of the Royal Guard dragged her across the dirt ground where jagged rocks jutted out everywhere, leaving a long, smeared trail of red blood behind her.
‘The scent of blood will truly reek between these graves.’
Ironically, those graves belonged to the palace maids who had met their deaths at Eun-oh’s hands. As if mocking the fact that the blood had returned to its source, the soil of the burial mounds crumbled down with a soft rustle.
Before long, the arriving Commander of the Royal Guard dropped Eun-oh onto the ground with a thud. At the merciless, cold touch, Eun-oh let out a painful groan and coughed up blood.
“Ugh…”
She seemed to regain consciousness as she lifted her head, and her eyes locked squarely with Lee Yeon’s.
Her pitch-black eyes, which had been stained with agony, instantly rolled back into a stark white glare.
“You!”
As Eun-oh attempted to lunge at Lee Yeon while letting out a solitary shriek, the Imperial Guards from all sides gripped her savagely.
Eun-oh screamed with pure malice.
“And you!”
The trembling tip of her finger pointed directly at Hong Ran.
“If it were not for you, I would never have fallen to such a state! If it were not for your lies, I would never have been locked away in this palace!”
It was nothing short of a vicious, spiteful outburst. Eun-oh bellowed at the top of her lungs.
“A lowly creature managed to snatch the position beside the King, and now you have lost all respect for your betters! How dare you place lies upon that tongue of yours to condemn me! This is a frame-up, it is all a lie!”
She truly behaved as though she had nothing left to lose now that death was right before her eyes. Looking at the raw, unmasked face of the Queen, the officials and the Imperial Guards shook their heads, at a complete loss for how to react.
It was at that moment.
“Honestly.”
Beside Hong Ran, who was bearing the brunt of that pure white fury all by herself, a small murmur could be heard.
“There should be a limit to blaming others.”
It was Lee Yeon.
At the icy, razor-sharp voice the likes of which she had never heard before, Hong Ran turned her head in surprise.
Eun-oh also looked as though she could not believe her own ears.
“W-What did you say?”
“I said there should be a limit to being foolish.”
There was no longer any reason to use honorifics.
Grand Princess Consort Lee Yeon looked down coldly at Chae Eun-oh, who had been reduced to a Deposed Commoner.
“Your crimes are completely transparent under the heavens, so why do you blame others? It is a fact that you sought poison to harm Suk-ui Hong and me, it is a fact that you walked into Yeongsongjae to force that horrific thing upon Suk-ui Hong, and it is a fact that instead of being grateful that a traitor who deserved to die long ago was kept alive until now, you dared to assassinate the King.”
A voice as cold and merciless as a frosty gale echoed through Yeonghangung.
“If even one of these were true, an immediate execution would be fully justified, yet you have committed all three and are still riddled with other unrevealed crimes. And yet, you are still busy blaming others, which is truly sickening.”
Eun-oh’s eyes went wide.
Sickening—she looked deeply shocked by that single phrase.
Lee Yeon moved her lips slowly, enunciating each and every word clearly for her.
“Furthermore, you are the lowliest creature among everyone here, so how dare you raise your voice in this presence?”
“…!”
Eun-oh’s pitch-black pupils darted from Suk-ui Hong, the King’s beloved concubine, to the Grand Prince, and finally to the Grand Princess Consort. Her bloodshot eyes trembled violently.
Watching this, Lee Yeon let out a sharp scoff, twisting her lips into a smirk.
“You used to enjoy saying things like this so much that I tried copying you… but I find absolutely no enjoyment in it. It only dirties my tongue.”
At the blatant mockery, Eun-oh bit her lip savagely.
“You bitch!”
While her body remained pinned down, Eun-oh kicked her legs out with all her might. Her white mourning skirt, stained with mud, fluttered wildly.
“I should have stabbed that stomach of yours. I should have targeted your womb from the very beginning! If I had done that, I would not be feeling this resentful!”
At that, Hong Ran and Jinyul immediately stepped forward to block Lee Yeon.
As if he could no longer endure it, Jinyul glared down at Eun-oh with eyes full of rage and shouted.
“From the very start, the object of your hatred was wrong, and the target of your resentment was mistaken.”
He rebuked her.
“It was your responsibility that you were not loved, and it was your responsibility that you poured it out in such a twisted manner. Since the compass of your life was broken from the beginning, who could ever understand you?”
Following him, Hong Ran gave a sharp command.
“What are you doing? Make the criminal kneel this instant!”
At the sharp order, the Imperial Guards grabbed both of Eun-oh’s arms and forced her to her knees. Then, they pressed her head down onto the ground.
Finding the arrow in the way, an Imperial Guard snapped the shaft that was embedded in Eun-oh’s shoulder.
“Aaaagh!”
Faced with excruciating pain, Eun-oh shrieked as her eyes rolled back into her head. Only then did the strength drain from her entire body, allowing the Imperial Guards who were pinning her down to finally catch their breath.
“Your sins have come back to claim your own head.”
Lee Yeon slowly took a step forward. Sangseon stepped up to her, holding out a white bowl resting on a small tray.
Contained inside it was a black liquid that Lee Yeon knew all too well—the Royal Poison that would completely burn away one’s internal organs.
‘The very thing I had to drink down in the past.’
As if instinctively realizing what the bowl in Lee Yeon’s hand was, Eun-oh let out a beastly cry and threw her upper body backward. She shook her head violently and screamed like a madwoman.
The guards gripped her tightly from all sides to hold her still.
“No! Nooo! Get it away from me!”
Watching the spectacle unfold, Hong Ran stepped forward. She grabbed Eun-oh’s face and forced her mouth open by twisting it back.
Through her ruthless handiwork, Eun-oh’s parched lips split wide open, revealing the inside of her mouth like a dark cavern.
“Ghaaa!! Ghaaa ghow ghare ghou!!!”
Even in the midst of this, her trying to scream ‘how dare you’ was incredibly laughable.
With a face full of resolve, Hong Ran looked at Lee Yeon and spoke.
“I will do this. Please leave it to my hands.”
She meant that she would be the one to dirty her hands, so Lee Yeon should take a step back.
Hong Ran must have possessed a distinct animosity toward Eun-oh as well, so Lee Yeon looked down at the bowl for a moment before silently handing it over to her.
Without a shred of hesitation, Hong Ran poured the black liquid into the wide-open, bright red mouth.
“Aagh, aaaagh!!!”
Faced with the agonizing pain of her throat burning up, Eun-oh foamed at the mouth, her eyes snapping wide open. Her fingernails scratched frantically against the dirt ground.
Yet Hong Ran did not even blink an eye as she completely emptied the bowl. The black liquid rolled down Eun-oh’s throat in relentless gulps.
Hong Ran threw the empty bowl to the ground. Along with a sharp, clinking sound—
“…Cough-urgh!”
Blood erupted forth.
With her face twisted in a bizarre contortion, Eun-oh vomited several clotted lumps of blood before collapsing like a beast, her body trembling violently.
Her stark white mourning clothes were covered in blood and mud, and her face was truly grotesque. And before long, even that movement ceased entirely.
It was the wretched end of the deposed Queen Chae.

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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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