Since I’m a Time-Limited Princess Who Has No Tomorrow - Chapter 52

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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 52
I confirmed the golden-haired girl had returned to her original position and answered through our mental connection.
[Did you handle it well?]
[Yes! I snapped Geuseon-dae’s neck cleanly and fed it to the fish! Such a creature is nothing to An-si, your phoenix!]
[Good work. No one saw you?]
[There was no one around Geuseon-dae. The sorcerers will have noticed when I tore the sealed talisman, but it seems the Thousand-Year Fox has them thoroughly enchanted.]
[Enchanted?]
[To be certain, I watched everything the Thousand-Year Fox did myself! It was luring all the gathered sorcerers with fox fire and splashing them into the river one by one.]
[Wait, you said you’d just drive them away—did you drown them all?]
[Fear not, I confirmed that the Thousand-Year Fox thoroughly soaked the sorcerers in the river water and laid them out on the opposite bank! No one actually drowned. Though they may freeze to death lying there.]
[…Freeze to death… No, never mind. Yes, well, they’re criminals anyway—if they freeze to death there, that’s just karma.]
My anxiety dissipated. Looking toward the altar, I saw that Seok-ran had returned to her true form rather than a clone and now sat quietly with her hands folded.
Meanwhile, the Crown Prince had presented wine to the final ancestral tablet.
“Bow in reverence!”
Following the Ritual Official’s call, the Crown Prince performed two slow, deep bows.
I returned the tray to the Ritual Official beside me and stole another glance at the Left Prime Minister.
‘Even his beard is trembling now.’
“Remove the altar!”
The final step of the ancestral rite. Before clearing the offering table, the Crown Prince burned the memorial prayer with incense, and the thin paper blackened to ash as it crumbled.
Just as the solemn ceremony was about to conclude.
“Sacrilege!”
Someone suddenly burst forth with a shout.
‘Well, well.’
It was Wan-eon. Behind him, flushed and trembling, I could see the Left Prime Minister wearing a meaningful expression.
‘How delightful.’
Just as it seemed the ancestral rite would end safely and public sentiment would smoothly shift in favor of the Crown Prince, the Left Prime Minister had apparently decided to make one final desperate move.
‘The fake possession never even manifested, so he’s just going to summon the spirit directly.’
Sure enough, Wan-eon recited the exact lines the Left Prime Minister’s faction had prepared.
“Sacrilege and heresy—how dare such corruption conduct a rite at this sacred Altar of Heaven! The Dragon of Yun shall surely be angered!”
Though the stammering recitation lacked any real authority, what happened next sent everyone into turmoil.
“Wh-what is that!”
“The clouds…!”
Above the Altar of Heaven, the sky churned with swirling clouds. The clear blue sky darkened in an instant. Seeing this, Wan-eon’s trembling shoulders suddenly stiffened with confidence, and he raised his hand triumphantly.
“Behold! The Dragon of Yun is truly angered!”
Impossibly, lightning struck at that very moment. Thunder roared like the anguished cry of an enraged dragon, rumbling across the sky.
And the people cried out in shock.
“A dragon!”
“Aaahhh!”
“The Dragon of Yun descends!”
“The Dragon of Yun is angered at the Dark Prince!”
Why specifically call it the “Black Water Dragon”? There’s someone spreading rumors among the people.
In any case, a true dragon’s form emerged from the center of the swirling clouds. A dragon with deep blue-green scales descended slowly toward the Altar of Heaven, coiling through the mist.
The King and Queen rose abruptly from their seats, the Crown Prince’s face drained of all color. Wan-eon’s expression grew triumphant, while the Left Prime Minister’s face relaxed with relief.
“It’s, it’s the Cloud Dragon!”
“The Cloud Dragon has truly descended!”
Among the panicked humans, I had to raise my sleeve to hide the twitching corners of my mouth.
‘I wondered who was orchestrating this performance…’
That’s Gwang-chul, isn’t it?
Not the Cloud Dragon, but the well keeper of the dragons’ neighborhood—in other words, the famous troublemaker of the Heavenly Realm who’d been demoted to well maintenance after causing countless disasters, was descending to the Mortal Realm in full splendor.
* * *
The Cloud Dragon is a deity who commands the clouds. In the Heavenly Realm, the precise title is Cloud Master. The Cloud Master, along with the Wind Count and Rain Master, serves as a core official of Jami Palace, and the three of them together manage the weather between the Heavenly and Mortal Realms.
Their superior is the Dragon God, a tremendously powerful deity who governs all water. Under the Dragon God’s authority are not only the three masters but also well deities, river gods, lake deities, and the Dragon Kings who rule the seas.
Among the Dragon God’s children was a dragon named Kang-chul. As befitted the Dragon God’s son, Kang-chul possessed innate divine power of tremendous magnitude and was an exceptionally strong dragon, but he despised both cultivation and the studies required to become a Heavenly Official, spending his days playing instead.
Had he merely played, it might have been overlooked, but Kang-chul caused a catastrophic disaster while gallivanting about. He punctured the sacred well at the center of where dragons gathered in the Heavenly Realm and secretly descended to the Mortal Realm.
When the Heavenly well’s water poured out, it caused a massive flood in the middle of an otherwise clear night, and as the water drained away, there wasn’t enough left to bring rain elsewhere, causing droughts in distant lands. Meanwhile, Kang-chul stole and drank potent liquor from goblins in the Mortal Realm, and while stumbling about in a drunken stupor, he vomited so violently that his breath—influenced by the goblin spirits—became flame, igniting a catastrophic wildfire. Then, attempting to return to Heaven, he flew up drunkenly, fell to the ground, and was seen by humans in all directions.
‘Because of that, legends spread among humans that an imoogi who failed to become a dragon was angered and set fires everywhere…’
Even the Dragon God threw up his hands at his son’s massive blunder, and the furious mother demoted Kang-chul from dragon to imoogi and punished him to manage and clean the well he’d destroyed for three hundred years. The Dragon God clicked his tongue at his son, now assigned to well-cleaning duties, and scolded him: “You’re no longer a dragon but an imoogi, so your name isn’t Kang-chul anymore—it’s Gwang-chul!” From then on, Kang-chul was called Gwang-chul.
But now that infamous troublemaker Gwang-chul had escaped from the well where he was serving his punishment and was descending to the Mortal Realm, pretending to be the Cloud Dragon.
Though his rank had been demoted to imoogi, his true nature as a dragon made Gwang-chul’s descent from Heaven quite convincing in every way. A long, massive body covered in deep blue-green scales, sharply extended golden horns, a fiery mane and whiskers that fluttered brilliantly, and golden eyes that gleamed like lightning.
‘With clouds as backdrop and lightning and thunder summoned besides… he seems absolutely thrilled about this.’
An ordinary deity would maintain dignity and rarely cooperate with human theatrics, no matter how many offerings they received, so I wondered what kind of deity would involve themselves in such a scheme.
‘Now that I know it’s Gwang-chul, it makes sense. In a situation where he wanted to escape well-cleaning duties anyway, this must have seemed like a godsend.’
Even so, given his innate status, the cost of his descent must have been considerable—it seems a tremendously skilled shaman stepped forward.
‘This must be the work of the Chief State Councillor’s Gwae-ryeok-nan-sin faction.’
By using the Three Corpses technique to observe the Left Prime Minister, I could determine in advance where the shaman or sorcerer might be located. However, I couldn’t ascertain the location of the possession ritual or which deity would descend, because the Left Prime Minister himself didn’t know.
‘The Observatory Official from the Wan-eon Faction conducted the possession ritual alone.’
The Observatory, the government office responsible for astronomy, geography, and meteorological observation, naturally has deep connections with shamans in its work. That official stepped forward actively to prepare the possession ritual, while the Left Prime Minister simply waited for the signal and sent out Wan-eon.
‘…Now that I think about it, the head of the Observatory, the Director—that’s a position concurrently held by the Chief State Councillor, isn’t it?’
I saw this when studying the Yun Kingdom’s system. My suspicions about the Chief State Councillor grow increasingly solid.
While I contemplated these matters calmly, Gwang-chul descended from the sky and alighted upon the prominently raised flags.
The clouds that descended with Gwang-chul transformed into thick mist, enveloping the area around Sacrifice Heaven Island.
“My Lady!”
The little Crown Prince came rushing over and wrapped himself around me protectively. His arms trembled as he positioned himself behind me, pushing me back to shield me.
‘…The little one is acting like my husband, trying to protect me even in this chaos.’
Even trembling from his own shock, I could feel his resolve to protect me at all costs, and I found myself somewhat moved.
‘Though the wedding itself was a disaster and full of schemes… I seem to have married well.’
Suppressing the urge to pat my young groom’s head, I peered at the situation from beneath the Crown Prince’s sleeve. People who had been trying to flee in fear stopped when they saw the mist covering the Red Wooden Gate, frozen in indecision.
‘I hope no one was injured…’
As I watched with concern, Wan-eon shouted boldly toward the people.
“Fear not, everyone! The Cloud Dragon has come to punish the Black Water Dragon, not you!”
The Crown Prince standing in front of me trembled violently. Did this boy truly believe he would receive divine punishment from the dragon? Wasn’t his self-reproach far too severe?
“Your Highness.”
I grasped the Crown Prince’s trembling arm with both hands and hung onto him. Before I could even comfort him, the Crown Prince looked down at me, and his expression hardened with resolve.
“My Lady, please escape with the attendant.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I alone shall accept whatever punishment the Yun Dragon bestows. You are innocent….”
“No, Your Highness must not fall for such things! That is—”
I was exasperated, trying to explain to the Crown Prince, when the jade-green dragon roared thunderously and opened its maw.
“Foolish and feeble mortals!”
Gwang-chul lifted his head so his whiskers and mane rippled magnificently, continuing in a sonorous voice.
“I am the great Yun Dragon! A supreme deity of the heavens who commands the clouds, and one of the three celestial officials who govern the weather….”
As the dragon’s voice continued, the Crown Prince squeezed his eyes shut as if he had already resolved himself to death, his expression solemn. Even so, he gestured behind his back for me to flee.
How dare that serpent frighten my precious husband like this?
I clenched my teeth and hurled a mental message at the dragon.
[Hey, Gwang-chul.]
“The reason I have descended today is… Huh?”

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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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