Namgoong the Sword Ghost - Chapter 18

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 18. The Sword Ghost’s Bride
Swoosh!
The curtain swept open.
Shafts of light pierced into the darkened bedchamber.
A middle-aged woman in white martial robes, her brow momentarily furrowed, turned to look behind her.
“Gasp! Gasp! Gasp!”
On the bed lay a young woman, exhausted and trembling, reclined at an angle.
Her clothes clung to her skin, drenched in sweat, revealing the contours of her body beneath.
Even as she lay there, her long, graceful legs and pale arms possessed an easy elegance.
Her hair fell in disarray, yet her high nose and distinct brows marked her as an exotic beauty.
Her large eyes held a deep brown hue that only deepened the impression, though her gaze was unfocused, vacant and hollow.
‘Tch, what a waste of such a fine body. Truly a pity.’
The woman on the bed was Jeongal Ahyeon.
At last the child had appeared, so her father, the Jeongal Clan’s patriarch Jeongal Shinsan, had named her himself.
‘Long-limbed and strong-boned, her body was made for martial arts—and it had already reached its full potential by eighteen.’
Moreover, she possessed exceptional perception and resilient meridians, reaching the First Rank at a mere fifteen years of age.
Until then, the clan members had expected her to grow into an absolute master who would fulfill their long-cherished ambitions.
‘Yet for the past three years, she has trained not at all. Heart-Madness Disease, they call it?’
A sickness where the mind becomes fractured.
In other words, she had become mentally deranged.
Fits seized her without warning, and she locked herself away in darkened rooms, refusing to meet anyone at all.
Three years like this.
More than enough time for Jeongal Shinsan’s affections to turn away from her.
‘Tch, she should have seized the opportunity when it came. Now all she has left is that body, a passable face, and the surname Jeongal.’
Seo Seonrim, the Master of Jinlan Pavilion, looked down at Jeongal Ahyeon and clicked her tongue silently.
But that lasted only a moment.
She quickly schooled her expression and offered a warm smile as she coaxed the younger woman.
“Young lady, there is nothing here that will harm you.”
“…….”
“Do not worry. You have me, Seo Seonrim of the Seven-String Dual Swords, do you not?”
“…….”
Jeongal Ahyeon gave no response to Seo Seonrim’s words.
At her indifference, Seo Seonrim’s mouth twitched slightly, but she continued speaking with careful tenderness.
“Young lady, this evening at dinner, you will meet the Namgung Clan patriarch, his wife, and your betrothed. You should begin preparing soon.”
“……The betrothal was already cancelled.”
Then Jeongal Ahyeon responded for the first time.
Her voice was cracked and parched, like sun-baked earth.
“Not yet.”
“Not yet……?”
“The patriarch said he would defer the decision for the month he spends with the Moyong Clan.”
“…….”
Jeongal Ahyeon rolled her vacant eyes and looked toward Seo Seonrim.
The original plan had been to announce the betrothal’s dissolution at this evening’s dinner, then depart at once for the Moyong Clan Residence.
“Hehe, your betrothed, Namgung Hoyeon, has been called a New Dragon of late, or so I hear. Well, it’s just a childhood nickname within the clan, but it does suggest the high hopes placed upon him.”
“……So?”
“Perhaps the two of you will make a fitting pair after all? Sword Phoenix and New Dragon—hehehehe.”
Sword Phoenix was the title Jeongal Ahyeon had borne within the clan until she turned fifteen.
‘Of course, that wretch is now nothing but a broken sparrow.’
Seo Seonrim concealed her true thoughts as she continued, watching Jeongal Ahyeon.
“So then, bathe yourself quickly and dress beautifully. You may yet meet your future husband—best to make a good first impression, would you not?”
“……Leave me alone.”
“Pardon? Should I attend to your bath……?”
“Not necessary…… Ugh……!”
As Jeongal Ahyeon clutched her head again, seized by another fit, Seo Seonrim jumped back in alarm and quickly capitulated, trying to soothe her.
“Yes, of course! Do as you wish, young lady!”
* * *
The stone bathhouse, measuring roughly three meters on each side, was arranged in a well shape.
Since Namgung Sang-a had left on her first extended assignment with Feiyun Platform.
Steam rose gently from the bathhouse, which had remained unused for some time.
“Sigh…….”
In the bathhouse, Jeongal Ahyeon sat crouched with her knees drawn together.
She was far calmer than she had been that morning, and her vacant eyes had regained their clarity and spark.
“……It’s so quiet.”
Jeongal Ahyeon lifted her head.
Through the latticed window, a full moon hung in the sky.
Though lanterns burned throughout the bathhouse, their light was as faint as fireflies compared to the beauty of moonlight.
“Shhhhh. Haaaa…….”
With the moon’s aid, Jeongal Ahyeon repeated deep breaths, then began to wash her body in the bath water where flower petals floated.
Splash! Splash!
The bathwater, infused with the pulp of Beiju-ja fruit, bubbled and frothed as it rinsed away her sweat.
“…….”
As she bathed, Jeongal Ahyeon looked down at her own arm.
No matter how much she scrubbed, her skin gleamed with a lustre that far exceeded that of the Han Chinese around her.
This was because her mother had been born Jurchen.
It was said that her mother had endured the bitter, slashing winds of Heilongjiang Province in winter precisely because of this radiant, luminous skin.
“……Mother. I miss you.”
Crack!
Jeongal Ahyeon gripped the traces of her mother that lingered on her own body, her teeth clenched.
Her mother had left her a pair of chestnut-brown eyes before departing this world.
She had been fifteen years old.
The very day she stepped into Ilryu.
“We were simply…… tools to be used. No one in the three clans ever looked upon us mother and daughter for who we truly were.”
Jeongal Ahyeon’s eyes glinted with fierce intensity.
People believed her Heart-Madness Disease, the madness that had consumed her, was born of her mother’s death.
But they were wrong.
Her madness came from something far different…….
“Did you think I wouldn’t know? I feel it! I feel it all……! All of your filthy desires and base emotions……!”
Bang! Splash!
As Jeongal Ahyeon struck downward with a spasm of fury, the bathwater erupted skyward before crashing down.
She swept her water-soaked hair back, then pressed hard at the space between her brows.
“Stop! Please, stop! I don’t want to feel any more of this!”
Three years ago, when she turned fifteen.
Many things happened to her.
She stepped into Ilryu.
Her mother died.
Her Yintang Acupoint began to burn.
“Curse this Simseo Gamhwa! If only I had never known! If only I had remained ignorant and been used!”
Simseo Gamhwa.
It was the name she herself had given to her awakened spiritual ability.
An ability to sense the currents of hearts and emotions and be transformed by them.
For her, it was a curse.
‘Everything was false. Until I was fifteen, I was a foolish, naive girl wandering through a world built entirely around me.’
Simseo Gamhwa was not a controlled ability.
It activated constantly, indiscriminately drawing in the emotions of those around her, until she was consumed by them.
This was why she had named her spiritual gift Gamhwa—Transformation—rather than Gamji, mere Perception.
‘They all praised me with one voice. Called me Sword Saint. The future of the Jeongal Clan. Said the child they had been waiting for had arrived. But the filthy emotions I felt behind those words……!’
Jealousy, hatred, rejection, resentment, envy, hostility, mockery, contempt, despair—endless others.
All these dark emotions gnawed at her heart and poisoned her mind.
And most shocking of all was…….
“Heh heh, Father. Or rather—Jeongal Shinsan! I have never met anyone so two-faced as you!”
Jeongal Shinsan was the most duplicitous person she had ever encountered.
Compared to him, Heavenly Minor Master Seo Seonrim seemed almost endearing.
Seo Seonrim had served the Jeongal Clan for thirty years before finally mastering the Seven-String Shadowless Sword and reaching perfection.
How contemptible must Jeongal Ahyeon appear to her—born already trained with the Eight-Hair Generation Rite, having already mastered the Profound Source Complete Severance Divine Technique.
“Jeongal Shinsan. You treated us mother and daughter as mere instruments for your own purposes. All for the Sleeping Dragon Body—a phantom physique whose very existence is dubious!”
Sleeping Dragon Body.
The ultimate form Jeongal Shinsan claimed to exist—a body that unified martial and literary prowess.
Solely for this fantasy, her mother, who had lived in Heilongjiang Province, was dragged to the unfamiliar Jeongal Clan Residence and forced to become Jeongal Shinsan’s wife.
Wife in name only—in truth, a concubine, or more aptly, a brood mare brought in to bear superior offspring.
Because her mother was descended from Salgeukdal, a great general long ago known as the Human-Faced Beast, a figure feared and reviled by all.
“Heh heh, what’s this now? You’ve created another defective product.”
Jeongal Ahyeon laughed at herself.
She was not the Sleeping Dragon Body that Jeongal Shinsan had wanted.
By some bitter twist of fate, through the awakening of her Heart-Emotion Transformation, she’d come to know his true intentions.
‘You think I’ll dance to your tune? I’d rather be sold off to the farthest corner of the world than submit to that.’
Her value, marked as defective, rested on a single thing: the Jeongal name.
If she could be used in a political marriage, she might escape that dreadful Jeongal Clan—and that was her secret calculation.
And sure enough, it came to pass.
Jeongal Shinsan decided to sell her to the Moyong Clan.
“Since Liaoning, where the Moyong Clan lives, is close to Heilongjiang Province, perhaps I can tell myself I’m returning home. Heh heh…….”
Splash!
Jeongal Ahyeon rose from the bath with a hollow laugh.
The quiet atmosphere of the Namgung Clan Residence was not unpleasant, but she knew the truth.
Jeongal Shinsan was an ambitious man.
Rather than marry her to the paper-tiger Namgung Clan, he would sell her to the Moyong Clan, which held sway as the true head of the Baekga Alliance.
* * *
The Jinlan Pavilion was a quiet place, mainly used by the Namgung Clan to receive guests.
At present, three people sat around a round table there: Namgung Baek, Peng Xiaohua, and Namgung Hoyeon.
On the table lay a simple but elegant meal.
“Are you looking forward to it, Hoyeon?”
“……Well, I’m not sure.”
Hoyeon answered Peng Xiaohua’s question with an uncertain expression.
“Ha ha, nervous, are we? I’ll tell you, when I first met your mother, my heart nearly burst from my chest.”
“My goodness.”
At Namgung Baek’s words, Peng Xiaohua’s cheeks flushed and she covered her mouth.
“It’s true. No matter how it was a promise made by our forebears, I worried whether the most beautiful woman in Beijing would consent to meet someone like me.”
“Ha ha, is that why you stammered so much?”
“Ahem, how embarrassing.”
As Namgung Baek coughed in embarrassment, Peng Xiaohua’s eyes curved upward like crescents.
Hoyeon, watching this scene with an expressionless face, asked a question.
“A promise between the previous generation? So you and Mother were betrothed in the womb as well?”
“Indeed we were.”
“……Really?”
When Hoyeon asked again in disbelief, Peng Xiaohua laughed with amusement as she stroked his tousled hair.
“Ho ho, what’s the matter? Surely you don’t think that those betrothed in the womb would have a poor relationship?”
“…….”
As Hoyeon fell silent in agreement, Namgung Baek burst into hearty laughter.
“Ha ha ha! My Hoyeon, you put on such a mature air, but you’re still just a child after all.”
“…….”
“Fate is something you build together. Whether it’s a betrothal in the womb or not, that remains an unchanging truth.”
“Ha ha, your father was so pure—I thought he was angry at first, you know? The way he sat there with his mouth firmly shut, saying nothing at all?”
“Ahem, how could one not feel nervous standing before such a beauty as you, madam?”
“So you picked up the dragon’s well tea with chopsticks?”
“Ahem, ahem hem.”
This time Namgung Baek’s face turned red, and Peng Xiaohua gazed at her husband with affection.
Watching this sight that stung to behold, Hoyeon clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘Hmm, was I wrong about this? Is it just natural in this world?’
He had thought it problematic when a betrothal in the womb didn’t reflect the will of those involved.
But seeing Namgung Baek and Peng Xiaohua, clearly a devoted couple, also betrothed in the womb, it seemed difficult to call it a problem.
‘Perhaps I’ve been viewing this through too orphaned a lens.’
In the slums where he’d spent his childhood, there was no concept of ‘betrothal.’
When two people’s eyes met, they lived together starting the next day—that was the norm.
A betrothal was a kind of promise about the future.
The people living there had no circumstances to expect a future.
‘True, rarely a dragon emerges from the gutter, but such cases are so scarce that people gossip about them.’
Most dragons come from influential and wealthy families.
‘Well-fed and well-lived, they grow robust, their complexions healthy, and they take beautiful spouses, so their descendants look respectable too.’
One might think it terribly unfair.
But it was the unavoidable way of the world.
And this time, it seemed that unfair balance had tipped in his favor.
‘Jeongal Ahyeon…… Hmm…….’
A fiancée, they said.
It was an odd word, truly.
During his years as the Sword Ghost, he had encountered women—that much was true.
But most had been fleeting encounters, and even those were meetings shrouded in deception.
‘Well, I was a Martial World Criminal, after all.’
He’d lived a hunted life from fifteen, and by twenty he’d made his grand debut under the epithet Dark Expert Killing Ghost.
‘The bounty on my head kept climbing. By the end, it must’ve been close to a thousand gold pieces.’
As a result, most women who approached him were anything but ordinary.
They threw themselves at him with seduction schemes as if they were courtesans.
Women with Coral Bow Poison smeared beneath their fingernails were common enough; cases involving Spring Medicine or Enchantment Incense were routine affairs.
There had even been instances where he’d neatly severed the neck of some old hag versed in the Harvesting Yang to Supplement Yin technique who’d dared to seduce him.
‘Ugh, just remembering it makes my stomach turn.’
Hoyeon shuddered at the ghastly recollection.
“Hehe, don’t worry, dear. From what your mother’s heard, she’s a virtuous woman.”
Interpreting Hoyeon’s trembling as nervousness, Peng Xiaohua squeezed both his hands reassuringly, offering him courage.
At that, Hoyeon decided to take comfort in the thought.
‘Right. Just think of all those women who approached you during your Sword Ghost days. Whatever Jeongal Ahyeon is like, she’d be a celestial immortal descended from heaven compared to them.’
Born into the direct line of the Namgung Clan, he’d enjoyed every privilege that came with it—yet he couldn’t very well whine that he disliked this arranged marriage.
The one thing he could hope for was that she’d be an ordinary woman.
‘I don’t want a legendary beauty. Just someone ordinary, with whom I might at least have decent conversation……’
But then.
Hoyeon’s brow furrowed sharply.
And before he could stop himself, his inner thought spilled out into the air.
“……This woman?”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————