I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 78

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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 78

“Your Highness!”
A man burst through the roaring flames, cutting a path through the inferno.
“Are you unharmed?!”
“Rang.”
The moment Rang stepped inside, he froze, his gaze sweeping the hall. His eyes widened at the sight of crimson fire consuming the entire pavilion.
“What—what on earth is this……?”
“I understand your shock, but we must leave this place at once.”
Hyeon cut off his words, gripping Rang’s shoulder.
Rang’s eyes naturally found Hyeon—a young girl clung to one of his shoulders, and Dan-bi lay cradled against his chest.
Blood trickled from the hem of her skirt in an unbroken stream, tracing a crimson path across the floor.
Without a word, Rang took the child from Hyeon’s arms.
He forged ahead, cutting through the flames, while Hyeon followed close behind with Dan-bi still held protectively against him.
The moment they stumbled beyond the reach of the fire, a breath they’d been holding burst forth.
“Cough!”
“Your Highness!”
Yun and the palace attendants came running, their faces drained of color.
Hyeon lowered Dan-bi carefully to the ground, then barked orders at those gathered around him.
“Bring water, now!”
“Yes, yes!”
The attendants scattered in panicked haste. Within moments, Hyeon snatched a bucket drawn from the well from their hands.
Without hesitation, he poured the entire contents over his own head. Cold water streamed down his drenched robes and pooled at his feet.
He then dropped to his knees beside Dan-bi without hesitation.
Rolling up his soaked sleeves, he trickled water across her face, washing away the soot and ash that stained her cheeks, leaving clean rivulets in their wake.
“Gui-in, Gui-in!”
Hyeon gently tapped her cheek. He placed his wet palm against her flushed forehead, burning with fever.
At her continued stillness, his eyes darkened with deep concern.
He cupped small amounts of water in his palm and let it trickle past her parched lips.
“Gui-in! Come to your senses!”
Hyeon steadied her shoulders firmly, fighting back the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm him.
But Dan-bi’s eyelids remained heavy and shut.
He drew her cooling face into his embrace.
It was a sensation he’d never known before.
He couldn’t find his bearings in the desolation that burned at the core of his heart.
How could she wake? What could he possibly do……?
“Cough!”
Then her lips trembled slightly. Soon after, a harsh cough came, and her eyes began to flutter open.
Her unfocused gaze, obscured by hazy smoke, slowly rolled toward Hyeon.
“Are you coming to? Gui-in!”
Hyeon gripped her shoulders and asked urgently.
Instead of answering, Dan-bi exhaled with labored breath. Even speaking seemed to take all her strength.
“Barely… alive…… Cough!”
“Don’t speak anymore. I already know everything.”
Only then did Yun and the attendants release the breath they’d been holding.
Hyeon tightened his grip on her, keeping her supported in his arms as he issued a stern command to those gathered.
“What are you all doing? Take the Gui-in to the Royal Medical Office at once. There must not be the slightest negligence!”
“Yes, Your Highness! Bring a stretcher, quickly!”
The attendants moved with precision, making their preparations. Hyeon bent his head close to Dan-bi, still cradling her in his arms.
“Can you tell who I am?”
“Your… Highness……”
“Yes. It’s me.”
Hyeon watched her lips as they whispered his name, and he clasped her hand firmly in his own.
One by one, he gently massaged her fingertips, cold and stiffened from the fire, until warmth gradually began to seep back into them.
Only then did his heart settle, and he pressed his forehead against hers with infinite tenderness.
His chest constricted so fiercely he couldn’t think straight.
All he could think was: what if he lost her like this?
As the terror that she might truly die swept over him, his heart plummeted to the depths.
Then a fragment of conversation brushed through his mind.

“If you kill me here, you’ll return to that moment again.”
“How can you be certain of that?”
“I told you. This is a game.”

It was her confession, buried in the corner of memories long past.
Dan-bi had said it clearly. That all of this was merely a false world.
That if he were to die, this world would return to that moment when memories repeated endlessly.
He had never entirely dismissed her words.
After all, only by believing her could every question he harbored find its answer.
Even the reason why only he remembered those vivid fragments of a past life that no one else recalled—the answer lay in her words.
Yet for all that, he could not fully accept that so vivid a world was nothing but a fabrication.
‘If her words were true, if we could return like that…’
In the moment Dan-bi lost consciousness, Hyun prayed desperately.
That her seeming lie of a confession would prove to be the truth.
It was absurd. He could scarcely believe it himself.
Just moments before, she had been the woman who raised her blade and sought his life.
Yet the instant her eyes closed, a suffocating tightness seized his chest, and he could not master it.
No matter how hard he denied it, the truth remained: he had wished for her to live, to open her eyes once more.
“Why…… did you save me.”
So when she asked with such difficulty, he could not bring himself to answer.
How could he tell her that even seeing you try to kill me, I somehow wished for you to live.
When he himself could not grasp such a feeling, how could he explain it to another.
Instead of answering, Hyun rose and roughly brushed the soot from his Dragon Robe.
With the acrid smoke billowing from the burning hall at his back, he turned away.
“Lang. Let us go to the Sa-jik Altar.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Hyun gave the brief command and began to move.
Then Dan-bi’s limp hand trembled and desperately grasped at the torn edge of Hyun’s sleeve.
He stopped and turned back, and she spoke in a whisper, her face deathly pale.
“I must… go too.”
Her voice, hoarse and broken, trailed off pitifully.
Even as she coughed weakly, the grip of her fingers remained white with strain.
Hyun looked down at that frail hand for a moment, then turned away coldly.
“In your present condition as Gui-in, you cannot take a single step properly.”
“But the moon…”
“Enough. I shall manage the rest. You need only focus on your recovery.”
Hyun pried Dan-bi’s fingers from his sleeve and continued forward.
Dan-bi could only stand and watch his retreating figure, never once looking back.

***

Moments later, within the Sa-jik Altar.
“A fire at the Abandoned Palace Hall? Is that truly so?”
As the hour for the ceremony drew near with no sign of Hyun, murmurs spread like wildfire among the officials standing in neat rows.
“They say His Majesty himself threw himself into that Fire Demon.”
“He has not yet escaped, you say? Can this truly be?”
The officials’ faces drained of color.
Some clicked their tongues, calling it an ill omen, while others gazed at the rising smoke with expressions of despair.
Woo Sang seized the moment and raised his voice.
Though it remained unconfirmed whether the ruler was actually trapped in the Fire Demon, there could be no better opportunity to strike down the legitimacy of the Gi-u-je under cover of this chaos.
“A Fire Demon has descended upon the palace before a sacred rain-summoning rite! This is surely a warning from heaven itself and a sign of defilement!”
“Most righteous words! We cannot proceed with a defiled ceremony, so we must cease the Gi-u-je at once!”
Kim Pan-seo seconded Woo Sang’s words, crying out loudly.
At his sharpness, even the concubines grew anxious, exchanging only nervous glances.
It was then, as opinion tilted toward the cancellation of the painstakingly prepared Gi-u-je, that a voice cut through.
“Who has ordered the Gi-u-je to cease.”
A low voice stilled the clamor of the Sa-jik Altar at once.
The officials turned their heads in unison, their gazes rising to the end of the steps.
There, Hyeon stood.
“Your Majesty!”
“What… what is this…!”
Bewilderment flickered across the faces of the officials who spotted him.
His figure, standing atop the steps, was nothing short of arresting.
The Dragon Robe that had symbolized his authority hung in tatters, its hem fluttering in shreds, the sleeves scorched black at their cuffs.
Water dripped steadily from his sodden garments, pooling at his feet, and though ash clung to his frame, his eyes burned with an intensity sharper than ever before.
“Your Majesty! Your person is in such a state—how could this…!”
The startled ministers threw themselves prostrate, competing to abase themselves first.
Hyeon swept his gaze across the officials blocking his path with an icy stare, then ascended the altar without hesitation.
The torn Dragon Robe rippling in the wind instead gave off an aura of such command that none dared approach.
Standing before the altar, Hyeon gazed down at the blazing torches. Then, in a voice that commanded the assembly, he spoke his order.
“We shall begin the ceremony.”

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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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