I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 53

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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 53

Dan-bi’s breath caught as her weakness was laid bare. Hyeon continued speaking with perfect calm, watching her falter.
“Why. Did you not expect me to see through even that?”
Dan-bi closed her mouth without finding a reply. In the silence that followed, something flickered strangely in Hyeon’s eyes.
“That day—why did you save me?”
“Why, you ask……”
“Why did you lower that blade you had aimed at me? That is what I am asking.”
“……!”
Her heart dropped.
He knew. He knew that she had withdrawn the sword she’d raised against him of her own accord. His gaze, cold and settled, traced slowly across her throat. She understood what that meant.
The moment he sensed that Woo-sang was extending killing intent toward him, there could have been only one conclusion he reached.
‘Woo-sang does not have the real Jade Seal.’
She had some inkling of why Hyeon had accepted her bargain so readily in the previous cycle—offering his noble rank in exchange for the Jade Seal’s location.
He had already known the Jade Seal he possessed was false. He had merely pretended to play along with her bargain in order to find the real one.
By the same logic, Woo-sang’s attempt on Hyeon’s life before the Rain Ceremony made sense.
The Jade Seal was indispensable for the Rain Ceremony, no matter the circumstances.
Yet if Woo-sang—the one who should be holding the Jade Seal—was trying to kill Hyeon, it paradoxically proved that the seal’s location remained unknown.
He had already pieced it all together.
In the end, it was she who had been dancing in the palm of his hand. Dan-bi swallowed hard and barely managed to part her lips.
“The reason is simple enough. I thought there was no longer any need to cross blades with Your Highness.”
“What?”
Hyeon’s brow furrowed, but Dan-bi did not retreat. She had not spoken carelessly about bringing rain without any plan.
Dan-bi’s gaze turned toward empty air, where a Status Window still flickered with its cold, crystalline light.

「A new Sub-quest has arrived.
Open the Rain Ceremony and bring down rain.
Hint: Wollu Seongwu.
Deadline: the night of the next full moon.」

Dan-bi studied it for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Hyeon.
“My purpose is also to open the Rain Ceremony.”
Only upon seeing the newly opened Sub-quest did Dan-bi finally understand. She finally grasped why her past self had made such an absurd bargain, demanding that rain be brought down.
Perhaps the scenario had unfolded along the same course even then.
Though everything had come to nothing when the Rain Ceremony robes were ruined and she found herself crossing blades with Hyeon.
Still, the math was clear: to clear the Main Quest, it would be to her advantage to succeed at the Rain Ceremony as the Sub-quest instructed.
At least, for the moment, her interests aligned with Hyeon’s—and that was fortunate.
But there remained an unresolved problem.
“Ha.”
Hyeon let out a scoff of exasperation. His shadow fell over her completely, pressing down.
“You speak such things without knowing where the Jade Seal is?”
Yes—the Jade Seal’s location was the crux of it.
Everyone seemed desperate to find it before the Rain Ceremony, which made clear that it was essential to the ritual.
But Dan-bi did not know where the Jade Seal was. As things stood, her promise to bring down rain was mere empty words.
How could she dispel this suspicion?
Dan-bi deliberated for a moment, then slowly opened her mouth. She drew out the phrasing from the system window that had been nagging at her.
“……Wollu Seongwu.”
Dan-bi looked directly at Hyeon.
“Do you happen to know what it means?”
In that instant, Hyeon’s face hardened. In one swift motion, he seized her by the shoulders and growled low.
“How do you know that phrase?”
Dan-bi exulted inwardly.
The ‘hint’ written at the bottom of the quest had been bothering her, but his reaction confirmed she had struck the right note.
In a moment of crisis, a frontal assault was the answer after all.
“I told you—this place is a game… or rather, I came from another world.”
For a moment she considered explaining the Status Window’s existence to him, but thought better of it.
No matter how different Hyeon was from the other NPCs, he would never accept that his entire world was false. Her previous confession had already been dismissed as a lie.
It would be better to use the ‘outsider’ framing instead, to establish herself as someone valuable enough to keep at his side. That way, she might survive this suffocating web of suspicion.
“It’s a saying passed down from ancient times. If you want rain to fall, you cannot be ignorant of it.”
It was, of course, an outright lie.
Wollu Seongwu—she’d never heard the term before in her life.
The tears of the moon become rain?
She couldn’t even begin to fathom what it meant.
Yet the mere fact that she seemed to understand it was enough to produce an effect; Hyun fell into deep thought and fell silent for a long stretch.
At last, he spoke slowly.
“It was a legend passed down only to the royal house since the beginning of time. A legend that when Do-hwa-guk faced calamity, only then would it become the means to save the nation.”
“Is that why you insist on the night when the full moon rises?”
Originally, the Rain Ceremony was to be held immediately after returning from Sa-nyang-teo. But the assassins’ attack had thrown the schedule into chaos, and the Rain Ceremony was postponed to a month later—the night of the full moon.
She’d always wondered why that particular day was necessary. Could it truly be that the moon weeps?
“If you already know that legend, then there is little left to conceal.”
Hyun opened his eyes and met Dan-bi’s gaze.
“I am the sun. And the moon…… represents the Jade Seal.”
If the moon symbolized the Jade Seal, then at last she understood why Hyun had been so desperate to find it before the Rain Ceremony.
The tears of the Jade Seal become rain. Then this Rain Ceremony absolutely required the true Jade Seal to be present.
“I said I would bring rain.”
Hyun continued without taking his eyes from Dan-bi. A chilling pressure bore down upon the air.
“Yes. Come now, tell me. Do you have a way?”
A way.
Dan-bi fixed her gaze directly upon his. His eyes still held suspicion.
Hyun would only listen to her because the pretext of legend had worked.
If she could not prove it now, all her efforts would come to nothing.
‘What do I do? How on earth could I……’
Then it came to her.
A thought flashed across her mind, and Dan-bi leaped from her seat. Without hesitation, she bolted from the chamber.
“Where are you going!”
Hyun’s startled voice chased after her back. Dan-bi crossed the corridor and burst into the attic.
She opened the chest that lay within.
A Reward Item Box—white background with a blue pattern carved into its surface.
“Where exactly……”
Hyun had followed her in and entered the room. Dan-bi turned to him, held out the box, and spoke.
“You asked if I have a way?”
Hyun’s brow narrowed. Dan-bi paid no mind and withdrew something from the box, lifting it with both hands. A weighty substance filled her palms.
His gaze caught on the strange object, then shifted back to Dan-bi. She lifted it before his face with a flourish.
“Here it is. Your way!”
In Dan-bi’s two hands lay a single stone—plain, even crude.

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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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