Regressed by the Heavenly Demon - Chapter 13

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

I had been sent back by the Heavenly Demon.
Baek Ryung Mok (3)
Lost in thought, I rested my fingertips on the table and tapped—tap, tap—methodically.
“Why? I am the lord’s only daughter. Should I marry you, the Je Gal Family would grant considerable authority to you.”
Then I stopped tapping and brushed back my hair before answering.
“Even so, I’d become a puppet dancing to your whims. My life decided by the direction of your breath—here, then there. A transparent future. Why wouldn’t it be easier for me to swallow the Golden Chamber through my own efforts?”
“Ho ho, you are no ordinary person, are you?”
“You flatter me. But tell me—did the lord truly give you leave to arrange this marriage?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I doubt it. The Je Gal Family are as cautious as they come. They would never consider a man they’ve never even met as a suitable son-in-law without careful deliberation.”
This was born from experience—simple truth.
The Je Gal Family were inherently riddled with suspicion and worry.
Sometimes that was their strength.
Sometimes it became a weakness that limited their expansion of power.
In other words, Je Gal Lin’s actions here were nearly impossible by the Je Gal Family’s standards.
“Leave. Whether you hold the Golden Chamber in contempt or me in contempt, I cannot say. But to treat this matter lightly is to make a mockery of the Je Gal Family’s own code. I will not permit it.”
Je Gal Lin’s eyes hardened.
“How amusing—groundless suspicion.”
“If you wish to argue further, I have nothing left to say. But I am certain.”
“So when you lack the capacity to hold someone, you hide behind the family code? You have read me grievously wrong. Your vessel is too small to contain me.”
“Well considered. It will not go far. I am not so idle as to waste time on a reckless, hot-headed girl. My hours are too precious for such frivolity.”
I extended my hand toward the door.
“Take your leave.”
Then it happened.
Je Gal Lin, her lips pressed thin, drew two luminous pearls from a silk Treasure Pouch and rolled them across her palm.
“Listen to this sound, young master.”
As I unconsciously focused on the pearls, Je Gal Lin’s voice rang with unnatural clarity in my ears.
Tick-tick-tick—
The sound of the pearls meeting blended above like an accompanying chord.
As Je Gal Lin infused True Qi into the pearls within the dreamlike soundscape, their light deepened into an ethereal radiance.
As the light intensified, she began to chant something.
The strange syllables seized my consciousness with drowsy weight.
The light grew blinding, the sound wrapped tighter around my heart.
The resonance in the room coiled around me, centered on her.
“Now you will answer my questions.”
“No. You will answer mine.”
At the same instant, the pearls she held rolled across the table—clattering, tumbling—into my open palm.
“Yes.”
Je Gal Lin’s eyes had already lost focus—the telltale pupils of one caught in the Soul-Binding Technique.
“How careless. To deploy the Soul-Binding Technique outright. Your roots were rotten from the start. No wonder the men you wed in the future will die one after another under mysterious circumstances—all of them, I imagine, erased for opposing your will.”
I did not know Je Gal Lin’s childhood, but I knew well enough what she would become in the years ahead—something far worse.
Like a praying mantis devouring its mate, her future bore a striking resemblance to the Grand Madam of the Golden Chamber.
“Even as a daughter-in-law, you would never have thrived here. You are too much alike.”
But what mattered now was that Je Gal Lin had dared—dared to touch me.
“You had the audacity to unfold the Zhu Ming Soul-Binding Technique before me?”
“Yes, I did.”
The Zhu Ming Soul-Binding Technique was the Je Gal Family’s own Soul-Binding Technique.
Before my return, even at the Heavenly Demon Church, many had fallen to it.
To deploy it required several conditions.
A medium infused with spiritual essence—a Spirit Pearl held within my grasp—to serve in place of a formation array.
Beyond that, a sealed space like my chamber now, where the light and sound of the pearls could concentrate without escape.
And the final condition:
From start to finish of the Soul-Binding Technique, the caster must maintain the resonance within the room through the Spirit Pearl without interruption.
“Did you truly not think I would see through it?”
“I did not. Once the Soul-Binding Technique completes, you will be implanted with the memories I desire. It seemed safe enough—your guards remain far outside, and only you and I are in this room.”
She had naturally constructed the environmental conditions necessary for the Soul-Binding Technique and created circumstances that would lower my guard.
She had every reason to be confidently arrogant.
She had simply chosen the wrong opponent.
Having anticipated the Zhu Ming Soul-Binding Technique, I brushed back my hair and stimulated several vital points along my meridians.
Then I severed the light and sound emanating from the pearls and shattered the foundation of her technique.
Her fingers drumming against the table were not an absent gesture born of thought.
It was the process of Reverse Vibration — severing her Resonance with my True Qi, thread by thread.
Once the wave oscillations canceled and their flow settled into my grasp, I would twist the blade of dominance and seize control of her Soul-Binding—lock it utterly in place.
That was the greatest weakness of the Zhu Ming Soul-Binding Technique.
From now on, the reversed Soul-Binding Technique would not break free.
Of course, I had no intention of wasting such an opportunity.
How convenient—she had walked straight into my grasp of her own accord.
“An reckless attempt at Soul-Binding, a wedding arranged without your family’s consent: I find it hard to believe you held me in such high regard. What is your true intention?”
“I….”
…
“I intended to seduce you and exploit the financial power you command. If conversation flowed well, I meant to secure funds from you. If not, I planned to extract your hidden reserves through the Soul-Binding Technique.”
“What could the Je Gal Family’s precious daughter possibly lack? The family’s not collapsing anytime soon, after all.”
“There is a matter I undertook in secret, without the family’s knowledge. That matter… has failed.”
Well, well.
How it deepens with each revelation.
“Go on.”
“An investment in Nan Zhou fell through. Every reserve I possessed and even promissory notes I diverted from the family—all of it went into that venture.”
“How much capital was committed?”
“Roughly one Gold Chest’s worth of funds was invested. I must replenish that sum without the clan discovering it.”
A single Chest of Gold.
It was double the scale of any transaction I’d handled recently.
No matter that she was the family head’s daughter—if this were exposed, she would face at minimum confinement, likely far worse.
“What manner of investment?”
“Through a partner, I established a nameless Ghost Trading Company and attempted hoarding and speculation with Baek Ryung Mok in Nan Zhou. I also invested my partner’s capital.”
Hoarding and speculation is deceptively difficult.
It demands perfect timing, fortune’s favor, and failure means the loss of every coin invested.
“Nan Zhou… You mean Baek Ryung Mok?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
Baek Ryung Mok was timber that grew only in the rocky terrain of Nan Zhou.
Though hardy and versatile, it served in Gan Su Province as the bark remedy for Tu Gu Du—an endemic illness that spread predictably each year—and no other region possessed an adequate substitute.
There was no suitable alternative herb available elsewhere.
“Yet Baek Ryung Mok grows only in designated rocky zones. Monopolizing and purchasing it all would be far from simple, wouldn’t it? An established power already controls those rights.”
“Yes. The Yong Chul Ryeon holds ownership of the Baek Ryung Mok supply. It is one of their primary revenue streams.”
“Then how did you manage it? You never moved the Je Gal Family directly, and alone you’d have no strength to manipulate the Yong Chul Ryeon, would you?”
“When Baek Ryung Mok inventory was at its peak, I spread rumors that a similar medicinal herb existed elsewhere. I deliberately depressed the Baek Ryung Mok price and rapidly purchased all market supplies through the Ghost Trading Company.”
“Every last quantity?”
“Yes. Since Baek Ryung Mok ordinarily accumulates over six months, I intended to secure the entire stock when Tu Gu Du was at its most prevalent.”
“You used that business partner.”
“Yes, though he too had been ruined by the Yong Chul Ryeon—his entire fortune lost. After that, I discarded him as worthless.”
“So a substitute herb for Baek Ryung Mok actually existed after all.”
“Yes. They released their prepared herb to market and destroyed the value of my Baek Ryung Mok beyond recovery. So now both he and I sit with our stockpiles in warehouse storage, unable to sell them.”
“Since you orchestrated the hoarding yourself, the family has no pretext to suppress them. And purchasing Baek Ryung Mok on mere rumor—that would be a stain on the Je Gal Family name. Your hard-earned reputation must be shaking.”
“It would be better to die.”
I laughed.
What I’d taken for a nuisance had instead become a windfall—a useful opportunity, tangled roots and all.
That was when Je Gal Lin’s lips began to tremble.
Her remaining consciousness was fighting the Soul-Binding.
Time was running short, but I had already gleaned all I needed.
“From now on, you will remember events exactly as I say them. First: you and I conducted a transaction. On favorable terms for you.”
Je Gal Lin’s trembling lips stilled.
Even bound by Soul-Binding, some residual awareness persists.
Gain and loss—those, the conscious mind always registers.
The moment benefit appeared, her resistance weakened.
“Yes.”
“You concealed your truth and threatened to place a genuine Soul-Binding on one of my brothers to impede my path—this was our supposed conflict.”
“I understand.”
“I fell into your trap of acquiring the Baek Ryung Mok rights and, after haggling over price, the agreed sum was set at roughly thirty percent of your investment. How does that sound?”
“It is favorable. Fresh capital for new ventures gives me the means to invest elsewhere. That way I can replenish the family funds.”
“Good. I’ll draft an official contract. Once this meeting ends, transfer all warehouse locations and authority to me. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Yes, the location is….”
I leaned back quietly against my chair, watching Je Gal Lin spill everything she wanted to say as freely as water from a pitcher.
An unexpected journey to Nan Zhou, then.
“It promises to be quite the pleasant trip.”
It seemed an opportunity had arrived sooner than expected—one that would let me funnel the capital Baek Moon Gyu needed at a faster pace.
Of course, before I left, there was one more person I needed to see.
*
*
*
“Have you heard? They say the Second Young Master’s movements are anything but ordinary?”
“I was quite startled. Is it true the First Young Master got humiliated? And at the Sacheon Yongbong Assembly, no less—where all manner of noble sons gather?”
A small inn near the compounds of the Golden Chamber.
The clerks of the Gold Flower Bureau, having finished their lunch, were huddled together in one corner, sharing the afternoon tea that had been served.
Especially these days, with the Second Young Master Geon A Seong’s audacious behavior generating a constant stream of incidents and gossip, anyone working in the Golden Chamber found themselves talking about him.
“Is that all? I heard the Je Gal Family’s young lady is even pushing forward a marriage proposal to the Master?”
“To the Five Great Families? Wow… can a person’s life really change that much in one moment?”
“Shh, someone might hear.”
The clerks’ gazes drifted quietly toward Ju Cho Saeng, who sat absorbed in his meal. The head clerk, who had been leading the conversation, let out a snicker.
“Ju here doesn’t care about such things, does he?”
“No, sir. As long as I eat well and collect my monthly wages, that’s enough. I’m content to throw myself into the comfortable life of a mere clerk—good food and full belly. Ha-ha.”
“Come now, that won’t do. As they say, you must stand in the right line and show your face early if you want to rise in the world. Will you really just spend your whole life shuffling through ledgers until you keel over?”
Unlike the head clerk, who had begun to lecture, the other clerks who had been chattering away were gradually falling silent, their mouths working like those of gasping fish.
“Um… um… Head Clerk, sir.”
“What? Every time I see you lot without any ambition, I feel my blood pressure rising. Just wait. Soon I’ll go visit the Second Young Master myself, show my face, perhaps share a meal with him, and then—”
At that moment, a voice from beside the head clerk cut in.
“How?”
“Well, I’ve got connections everywhere, don’t I? You think I’ve been spending all that money on drinks for nothing?”
“Seems you’ve at least been skipping on meals.”
“Huh?”
The head clerk felt the temperature of the room plummet. Only then did he grasp the situation, rolling his eyes toward the shadow seated beside him.
“There’s no need to use connections at all. We could just talk about it here. But tell me—what connection of yours arranged this dinner?”
…….
Geon A Seong, disguised as Ju Cho Saeng, let out a low chuckle.
“I have no close acquaintances.”

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