I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 66

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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 66

Park Dae-young noticed.
‘This can’t be right.’
Dan-bi tried her best to compose her expression into one of casual indifference, yet she couldn’t hide the tremor in her eyes that betrayed her completely.
His gaze followed her relentlessly, as if piercing through her very being, and it stole the breath from her chest.
What he had just said pointed to only one inescapable fact.

“I opened my mouth to speak, yet the words refused to cross my lips.”

This world was inside a game, and the man before her was nothing more than an NPC governed by the system.
The strange experience he had undergone was vivid proof that he was an entity bound to move according to his setting values.
The system had forcibly blocked the flow of words he’d tried to speak of his own will.
Yet that could also be interpreted differently.
‘Could it be that the NPC is beginning to develop self-awareness?’
It was a question she’d harbored since first arriving in this place—whether these beings truly possessed individual consciousness.
On the surface, they seemed to. Their appearance, manner of speech, and behavior were so intricate that they were nearly indistinguishable from people in reality.
Above all, that suspicion had hardened into near certainty during her time with Hyun.
For he alone retained memories of previous Resets, defying the system itself—too deliberate to dismiss as mere programmed data.
Yet this world adhered strictly to the rules of the game.
Quests descended from on high, and impossible reward items fell from the sky like clockwork.
She had to think within those constraints.
But Park Dae-young’s confession now suggested that the NPC’s will—which the system had been suppressing—was breaking the surface.
Dan-bi quickly assessed whether this was a variable working in her favor.
Her conclusion was far from optimistic.
The cruel irony was that the person who had begun to develop will was none other than Park Dae-young himself.
Whether in reality or here, he was Ha-rin’s father and the number one person of concern—a marked subject.
There was no chance that his awareness of this world’s inconsistencies would aid her quest completion.
Rather, he might become the most dangerous blade obstructing her path forward.
She would pretend not to know. Here, that was her only option.
Dan-bi relaxed her expression and opened her mouth.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand—”
“Do you know why I seek the Royal Seal?”
“…!”
Park Dae-young’s sudden words seized the breath in her throat.
She hadn’t misheard. He had just said that she was the one searching for the Royal Seal.
So Woo-sang wasn’t the only faction pursuing it.
The fact that both the Left Prime Minister and the Right Prime Minister—the two pillars of the Court—were simultaneously trying to seize control of the nation suggested the kingdom’s power structure was already twisted beyond recognition.
The forces behind this were far greater than she’d imagined, and the situation was spiraling beyond control.
Yet something troubled her.
She couldn’t fathom why he would divulge such dangerous information to her directly.
Park Dae-young was the Queen’s biological father and her most reliable backing.
If it were revealed that he sought the Royal Seal, it would be as good as saying the Queen herself was complicit with forces threatening the throne.
She couldn’t comprehend why he would so carelessly reveal information that could imperil his own daughter.
Just as she regarded him with suspicious eyes, Park Dae-young spoke again.
“There is a legend in Dohwa Nation.”
She knew it.
The Moon’s Tears Rain Legend—how the tears of the moon fall as rain.
But according to Hyun, it was a legend passed down in secret only to the kings of old.
“Should the Royal Seal exist, the Gates of Heaven will open.”
“The Gates of Heaven…?”
Caught off guard, Dan-bi’s brow furrowed slightly. Park Dae-young nodded and continued.
“The Royal Seal is an object that symbolizes the absolute power of the throne.”
For him, it was no mere idle legend.
Park Dae-young had not forgotten the sight he witnessed with his own eyes as a child.
The miraculous vision of the sky splitting open, torrential rain pouring forth from the rift.
Before such overwhelming majesty, human power was nothing but a sandcastle.
Even then, his father had continually whispered to him.
They say the king opened the Gates of Heaven with the Royal Seal. A power so magnificent that no one dared approach it—that very power dwelt within the Seal itself.
That was precisely why Park Dae-young had switched the real Royal Seal for a counterfeit.
His certainty: the king’s power originated from the Seal.
If he could seize it, he believed, he could bend the world to his will.
But the outcome defied his expectations.
Despite obtaining the true Seal, nothing changed. The Gates of Heaven he had witnessed in childhood never opened.
One thing alone was undeniable: the king’s power had begun to wane.
Not merely because the sovereign had ascended so young.
Strangely, from that moment onward, drought had ravaged the land, and all the flourishing life withered away, one by one.
Park Dae-young had believed it was only a matter of time before he held all under heaven in his grasp.
Yet just as he waited for the day he would shake the world while clutching the Seal, it vanished without a trace.
His desperation to find it now had a clear reason.
If that object returned to the sovereign’s hands, all his painstaking construction would crumble, and the world would revert to what it once was.
The terror of having to kneel at the sovereign’s feet again wielded him like a whip.
Then a memory brushed across his mind.

“I heard that when your daughter recently called herself a Foreigner, Your Majesty accepted it without question. If one considers that…”

It was what Dan-bi herself had said—she who claimed to have come from a foreign land.
At first, he had dismissed it as reckless words meant to escape danger, but as time passed, his suspicions crystallized.
He had spent a lifetime at the pinnacle of power, every move calculated with precision. Yet this time, he sensed an anomaly—an exception beyond reason—that was shaking his carefully arranged board.
Looking back, his meticulously laid plans had begun to unravel from the moment Dan-bi set foot in the palace.
From the appearance of an Antidote of unknown origin to the strange phenomenon where his whole body would stiffen whenever he tried to obstruct her.
Her movements—hovering near the sovereign as though she had forgotten her original purpose—defied all logic.
But what if that claim about coming from a “foreign land” were true?
What if those mad words Geum-gun had relayed—that “this entire world is false”—spoken on the day Dan-bi clashed blades with the sovereign, were actually fact?
It was an absurd hypothesis, yet if that single premise held, all these illogical situations would unravel at once.
The sudden shift in atmosphere as though a person had changed, the impulsive actions that defied his commands—
Having witnessed the miracle of the Gates of Heaven opening with his own eyes, he could not dismiss even such variables as impossible.
Whatever the reason, one thing was certain: an incomprehensible disturbance now stood before him.
Park Dae-young’s eyes trembled as he tried to gauge where this unexpected anomaly might lead.
If this strangeness became the sovereign’s wings, the sandcastle he had built with such care would crumble in an instant.
As this thought took hold, his conviction deepened regarding the sovereign’s relentless push for the Rain Prayer Ritual.
The true Royal Seal, which he had searched for in every direction without even catching its tail, had fallen into the sovereign’s hands.
As far as he knew, the only key that could open the Gates of Heaven was the Seal. Without it, there was no way the sovereign would push forward with such a reckless ritual.
If the sovereign truly opened the Gates of Heaven, Public Opinion would rush toward him like wildfire, and divine authority would be trampled mercilessly.
Was it not the reason the previous Rain Prayer Rituals had failed—that the true Seal had not been in the sovereign’s hands?
The sovereign could not be unaware of this fact, so surely this time he meant to prove his authority by wielding the true Seal.
“That’s right.”
Then Dan-bi spoke. She fixed Park Dae-young with an unwavering gaze.
“The true Royal Seal is with Your Majesty.”
His assumption had been correct after all.
The Seal was with the sovereign, and Dan-bi had seen through it as well.
If that were so, had she already learned everything and cast her lot with the sovereign?
Yet it was too early to conclude.
If she had truly sided with the sovereign, she would never have revealed the Seal’s whereabouts so readily.
A glimmer of hope rose in him—perhaps there was still a path to victory.
“There is one thing I wish to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
Park Dae-young paused to steady his breath, then spoke in a low voice.
“Would you not entrust the Royal Seal to me?”

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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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