I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 42

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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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Episode 42

The night had grown late, yet the lamps in Yuhwa Hall showed no sign of dimming.
It had been several hours since the King’s departure on his hunting expedition, and his whereabouts had become entirely uncertain.
Among the assembled ministers, anxiety had been replaced by something stranger—a glimmer of peculiar anticipation.
“To have heard nothing for so long—surely something has gone amiss?”
Kim Panseo set down his teacup and spoke first.
He affected a grave expression, yet an undercurrent of certainty threaded through his voice.
“He ventured into the forest himself to gather offerings for the Rain Prayer Ritual, and it seems the sacrifice was not a beast after all, but His Majesty himself.”
One minister chuckled and poured more wine. Park Daesin accepted the cup with a thin, mirthless smile.
“Better that His Majesty meet a tiger in the mountains than ascend the altar with a counterfeit seal—far cleaner for the realm, would you not say?”
“Indeed. The people would readily understand it as the final fate of ‘a king abandoned by Heaven.'”
Among them, there was no courtesy toward the King—only the banter of gamblers waiting for an inconvenient chess piece to be swept from the board.
All eyes naturally turned toward Woo Sang, seated at the head of the table.
“Minister, you need only make the decision. The true seal rests in your hands.”
As the urging continued, Woo Sang set down his teacup slowly.
“Should His Majesty not return, it means Heaven has designated a new master.”
He regarded the silk box on the table with a cold gaze.
“So long as the Royal Seal remains in my possession, this realm’s course depends entirely upon our will.”

***

Deep within Bigyeon Hall.
The sealed chamber was suffocatingly silent.
Whether from the grip of drought, even the night air hung thick and stifling, as if choking off breath itself.
Woo Sang stared at the flickering candlelight without speaking, while Kim Panseo observed his expression with a subtle smile.
At last, Woo Sang turned his head slowly. Kim Panseo bowed respectfully, yet spoke with unwavering confidence.
“Minister, the game at Yuhwa Hall was executed flawlessly. The Rain Prayer Ritual draws near, yet not a single messenger has arrived—soon it will be time to……”
“The Royal Seal is gone.”
Woo Sang’s low voice cut through Kim Panseo’s words like a blade. The minister’s face, drunk on unseen victory, went slack and pale.
“……What? Minister, what did you just say?”
“The genuine Royal Seal has been stolen!”
The silk box in Woo Sang’s hand hung open and hollow.
Only moments before, it had deceived every court official with the weight and presence of the authentic seal it supposedly contained.
Kim Panseo’s face drained of color as if bleached by sudden shock.
“This cannot be! Did you not conceal the Royal Seal here in Bigyeon Hall? Three locks stood upon it, and your seal was impressed upon them with utmost rigor—how could such a thing occur?”
“There is no sign of intrusion, no mark of forced locks. It has vanished without a trace.”
Woo Sang splashed water on his face and exhaled a low groan.
The cool touch of jade he had felt with his own eyes a mere month ago seemed now like a phantom.
“If that is lost, our only justification for calling His Majesty an impostor disappears! Should His Majesty recover it and appear at the Rain Prayer Ritual……!”
“I know. This is why my vision has darkened. In all my years, I have never known such humiliation.”
Woo Sang looked down coldly at Kim Panseo, whose legs had given way and who clung desperately to the edge of the table.
The disappearance of the Royal Seal meant that some unseen hand was seated above him, toying with this treason as if it were a game.
More than that—it was a declaration that the very blade they wielded now turned toward their own necks.
“Could His Majesty have acted in advance? Or perhaps we harbor a spy within our ranks?”
“If that fool of a king possessed such acumen, I would have lost my head long ago.”
Woo Sang cut him off sharply.
“This is clearly the work of a third party.”
“Then—what are we to do going forward?”
“If we do not recover the seal before the Rain Prayer Ritual, we shall be branded not with the Mandate of Heaven, but as the architects of treason. Unless you wish to have your head displayed at Cheonhwa Gate as carrion for crows, you must search with all your strength.”
Woo Sang fell silent and stared out the window into the suffocating darkness.
In the grip of the harsh drought, only dust swirled across the black ridges of distant mountains.
“Yet Minister, the Rain Prayer Ritual is already upon us! What do you intend to do?”
“If the seal cannot be found, there is but one course.”
Watching Kim Panseo pace with growing panic, Woo Sang slowly drew his lips into a smile.
At that grotesque expression, Kim Panseo’s face brightened, and he ventured cautiously,
“Surely you have already sent someone?”
Woo Sang did not answer, only gazed out at the black mountain ridges unfurling beyond the window.
“If the living find the Royal Seal, it becomes a calamity. But if the dead have simply lost it…… what cleaner funeral could one ask for?”
Woo Sang’s single utterance—casually rewriting the King’s fate as he saw fit—pressed down upon the darkened room like a weight grinding everything to dust.
“So Your Highness must never return alive.”

***

Rang fled through the forest as though chased by the sound of his own footsteps.
His lips had cracked and withered until he tasted blood, yet panic drove even that sensation away.
Drought-twisted brambles raked across his shins like blades.
His clothes tore and skin was torn away, yet he felt no pain—only the harsh breathing of the Gold Guard behind him stirring the forest’s chill.
Hyeon had been missing for several hours now.
If the assassins who attacked had left reinforcements, and if their blades had been aimed at Hyeon……
The thought sent the world spinning before his eyes. By now, the situation might have already spiraled beyond recovery.
Rang pressed down the pounding in his chest and threw himself between the dense trees.
But that wasn’t all that weighed on his mind.
‘Her swordplay was clumsy, but her eyes—they were genuine.’
The strange woman who had vanished alongside the King.
A foreigner whose identity and origins remained unknown.
The fact that Danbi was at Hyeon’s side filled him with an unmistakable dread.
From the moment Hyeon first mentioned bringing her to the hunting grounds, Rang had opposed it vehemently.
It was treacherous terrain where blades flashed in all directions and beasts ran wild. There was no telling what calamity she might invite.
And his fears had come to pass.
The instant she arrived, an unprecedented crisis erupted. The timing was too perfect to dismiss as mere chance.
Rang could not shake his suspicion of her.
‘What if all of this were carefully orchestrated……’
As he tore through the forest with increasing violence to banish the dark thought, his gaze suddenly snagged on a single point in the earth below.
A fleck of yellow protruding from the parched ground like something pushed up from within.
When he bent and retrieved it, it was a Yellow Ornament covered in a fine dust.
A small, vivid splash of color resting in a rough palm. The moment Rang looked down at it, something sharp thrummed through his skull.
‘I know I’ve seen this somewhere.’

“No, but—did you just scale that wall?”
“Pardon?”
“It seems you’re someone from the palace.”

A memory flickered at the edge of his mind, and Rang’s brow deepened into a furrow.
What could it be?
Just as he was forcing the hazy face of someone hidden in mist to surface in his mind, a sharp voice cut through the air.
“We’ve detected movement in the Thatched Cottage below the Cliff, beyond the forest!”
At the urgent report from the searching Gold Guard, Rang thrust the ornament into his breast and hurled himself forward without hesitation.
A shadow cutting through the trees sliced through the bitter wind.
The moment the dense undergrowth parted and his feet cleared the forest’s edge, his vision opened suddenly—and a single dilapidated Thatched Cottage came into view, isolated and plain.
To any eye, it was an abandoned ruin.
But that silence would not last.
Clang!
A sharp metallic cry rang out from afar—the sound of blades meeting, of flesh being severed and bone split, of life driving against life.
“Your Highness!”
Rang drew his sword and bolted toward the Thatched Cottage.

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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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