Surviving as the Terminally Ill Young Lady of the North Sea Ice Palace - Chapter 12

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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 12
Our team—arriving with this year’s cohort—likely ranks among the strongest, if not the strongest outright.
If we abandoned Jang Chang Gwan and chose to seize what we needed, it would be entirely possible.
Once the three of us turned predator and stripped someone of their Antidote, they would simply hunt weaker cadets in turn.
Hak Gwan would descend into chaos.
‘I doubt anyone would object to that. If anything, they’d encourage it.’
But there was never just one way to solve a problem.
The other two had made clear their confidence that we could find an Antidote within Jang Chang Gwan itself.
And since they’d written on the Name Plate that one existed here as well,
I thought that if we pushed through the Mechanism Array instead of taking the easy path, there should indeed be an Antidote hidden in this place.
‘I can slip away alone and steal one Antidote whenever I want. For now, let’s move together.’
Better to endure hardship as a team from the very start of the Entrance Ceremony than to wreck a friendship in the first place.
If we succeed, that is.
“I’d have sliced through it in one stroke if I had Inner Power.”
Namgung Min was already cutting a path forward without waiting for my help.
She gritted her teeth as she knocked aside the spears, rubbing her numb forearm with a quiet grumble.
“Perhaps we should switch positions?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Wouldn’t it be better to switch, though?
Even with Sword Techniques under my belt, without Inner Power to draw on, Myeong Seong’s sheer physical strength as a man would surely serve him better?
Not that Namgung Min didn’t know this herself.
She turned her head sharply away from Myeong Seong’s belated suggestion, refusing it outright.
Perhaps the pride of the Namgung Clan wouldn’t allow her to yield the vanguard to anyone.
“Fall back!”
Still, her Outer Strength was far from lacking.
Her Eye Power was remarkably keen—she caught the spears falling from the ceiling and deflected them before they could land.
“Wouldn’t it be better to dodge some of them rather than block every single one?”
It was impressive, the way she parried them so smoothly, but I worried she was wasting too much stamina from the outset.
She had more than enough reaction time to simply evade without committing so much force.
The last one, in fact, wouldn’t have hit her even if she’d stood motionless.
“…Compared to the training I did in the Namgung Clan, this is nothing.”
Was it?
If she was satisfied, there was no reason for me to press further.
Indeed, she continued forward incrementally, deflecting the spears as they came.
“The first came from behind, then front, left, right, ceiling… there’s a sequence! And the ceiling can’t launch the larger spears!”
Covering for her, Myeong Seong worked to analyze the pattern himself.
“Does Hwa San teach Mechanism Arrays as part of the curriculum?”
“No, not at all. This is the first time I’ve ever set foot in a place like this.”
Yet on a first visit, he could map the pattern at a glance.
His perceptiveness was extraordinary.
While there were occasional exceptions, the rules he discovered held true more often than not.
“The color of that wall is different!”
I only managed to notice where the spears emerged after hearing the mechanical grinding sound,
but he could anticipate where the array would activate before it did.
If this had been written out as a mathematics problem, I’d have found the pattern instantly.
But trapped inside the space itself, it wasn’t easy to even think of looking for such things.
In case we eventually took a course on Mechanism Arrays, I listened to his observations with genuine attention.
About an hour passed like this.
‘We’ve gathered enough intelligence, I think.’
I began to feel increasingly restless.
At first, naturally cautious because I knew nothing of Mechanism Arrays, I’d taken every precaution.
What if water suddenly flooded the chamber? What if the walls began to narrow?
What if poison gas was released, or corpses came lurching out of nowhere?
But none of that had happened.
There was no Formation Array, only mechanical devices.
‘At this pace, I could dodge them even if they came from all sides at once.’
Spears. Spears. And more spears.
Down the corridor ahead, into the rooms beyond—nothing but spears everywhere.
After navigating the same flying projectiles multiple times over, I’d stopped feeling any real sense of danger.
They were simply too slow.
A speed slow enough to react to even after watching it unfold.
And the spear blade wasn’t especially sharp—it had been designed to avoid inflicting fatal wounds.
Though it would certainly hurt a great deal if it connected.
When Myeong Seong said earlier that the Hak Gwan had assigned us to a place we could overcome by joining our strengths, I’d felt doubt.
But it truly seemed they’d allocated disciples with sufficient regard for their actual skill level.
‘Both of them seem far too frightened…….’
Was it because they were young?
Lacking real combat experience, never having suffered serious injury?
Though to be fair, aside from my death in my previous life, I hadn’t taken any terrible wounds either.
Even at the Entrance Ceremony I’d observed, several students had been cut by Eun Hyeon’s blade.
And with the Recovery Pill the martial instructor provided, that disciple Dan Ri-hyang recovered quickly enough.
I felt certain they wouldn’t let anyone die—they’d take similar precautions.
‘Can’t I go a bit faster? If I can’t find the Antidote here and just waste time, it’ll be a problem if the situation ends before I get out.’
I still had a backup plan in mind—stealing the Antidote from another student if I failed—so impatience gnawed at me.
As if my own nose weren’t getting in the way.
If I couldn’t use Inner Power for a whole month, how could I possibly demonstrate some ability and earn Spirit Medicine as a reward?
“Listen.”
I opened my mouth, trying to urge them forward.
“…….”
“Ah, yes. Is something the matter?”
“No, that’s not it.”
But Namgung Min simply stared ahead as if boring holes through the space with her gaze, and said nothing.
Myeong Seong too remained taut with tension.
If I, riding safely on the bus, told them to move faster, they’d resent it.
‘Do they really have to be so cautious…… wait. Could it be that I’m superior to Namgung Min only in Eye Power and Outer Strength?’
A hypothesis emerged from my frustration.
If Namgung Min and Myeong Seong could perceive the spear at the same speed I did, they wouldn’t be this tense.
Honestly, it looked like they couldn’t see how to dodge no matter what.
Because of the Nine Yin Severed Meridian, I’d trained Outer Strength for years without using the Yin Cold Qi I’d accumulated over that time.
I’d gathered some Inner Power without that cold nature and used it for Lightness Skill and such.
Naturally, I’d become extremely adept at dodging or deflecting opponents who were stronger and faster than me, using far greater quantities of Inner Power than I did—I never clashed with them head-on.
So perhaps seeing the spear and evading it didn’t feel especially difficult to me.
Once I thought of it that way, suddenly everything made sense.
Unlike me, these two relied heavily on Inner Power, so they perceived the spear’s speed as faster than I did.
And because of that, they struggled to assess the situation objectively!
‘Well, I am the First Prodigy of Bekhae Binggung. The Nine Yin Severed Meridian is itself a kind of genius constitution.’
Perhaps father hadn’t exaggerated after all.
Perhaps I really…… was quite strong…….
In the Entrance Ceremony test, was Eun Hyeon not holding back at all—was she giving me her full effort?
Am I somewhat, or even considerably, exceptional?
I knew I possessed physical abilities far beyond ordinary, incomparable to my previous life.
But since I hadn’t been a martial artist then, I’d had no proper basis for comparison until now.
‘It really does seem like I’m genuinely strong……!’
Watching Myeong Seong barely dodge a spear thrust that Namgung Min had missed only deepened my conviction.
A top student in a rural school might be equivalent to one of many in Daechi-dong.
But sometimes that top student could graduate first in their class at Seoul National University.
I steeled my resolve.
“Look here.”
I called to the two of them, who were gripping their swords tightly, every muscle tensed.
“Besides the spears coming at us, let me go check ahead alone to see if there are any other mechanisms.”
And I pointed toward the far end of the long corridor.
The three of us had been moving slowly, examining the corridor and the rooms on either side together.
At this pace, we’d be here all day.
“Wait, that’s dangerous!”
Myeong Seong started in alarm.
“Breaking formation and acting alone is problematic.”
Namgung Min warned coldly.
All they were doing was holding out their swords together.
Was this what they called a formation?
“I think I can see and avoid them easily enough. Don’t worry about me—couldn’t you two stay together and watch the front and back?”
Though I’m admitting to some fear now, these two aren’t so weak that I need to carry them through this.
Besides, I haven’t actually been doing anything up until now.
If I move slowly like this, staying alert to our surroundings, they shouldn’t come to any real harm.
“If you wander off alone and get hurt, I won’t be able to help.”
Namgung Min narrowed her eyes and turned her body toward me.
At the same moment, the blade of her sword swung in my direction.
Really, if you’re going to look at someone, you should at least sheathe your sword or strap it to your back.
She had a rather basic lack of courtesy.
“Fine. I don’t have anything to worry about.”
In any case, she’d just given her consent readily enough.
I left the two of them where they were and strode ahead.
Tap, tap-tap, tap!
Until I’d put some distance between myself and them, I deliberately widened my stride to keep the spears from flying in my direction as much as possible.
Unlike Namgung Min, I dodged what I could reasonably avoid, and deflected the spears aimed at my back by changing their trajectory.
“Young lady!”
Rather than moving cautiously as I had been.
I ran at full speed down the corridor to its end—it took less than a minute.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about.”
I answered Myeong Seong’s question as I raced down the hallway.
‘Ah, nothing here either.’
But unfortunately, there was nothing at all at the end of the corridor.
While the other students’ Name Plates had the Antidote’s location written in straightforward terms, ours simply read “within,” so I’d half-hoped that if we just made it through the corridor, the Antidote would appear.
It seemed the conditions weren’t that simple after all.
So in the end, we’d have to search through all these rooms?
We’d be better off splitting up and searching, like we originally planned.
“There’s nothing in the corridor! Why don’t you two check the rooms over there? I’ll start from this end!”
They’d still be a bit slow, but that would be better than just standing around.
I shouted so they could hear me.
“Will it be all right to do that?”
After a brief moment, I heard Myeong Seong’s voice.
“Yeah! Let me know right away if you find anything!”
Namgung Min said nothing in return.
But it was she who had first suggested dividing up the sections.
Since she offered no objection, I took that as tacit agreement and opened the nearby door.
“Whoa.”
The floor gave way the moment the door opened.
I used the door I was holding to propel myself and leap across the pit.
Sometimes there were spears lodged in the places where I would have stepped.
Other times, massive spears would burst from the ceiling, breaking through Myeong Seong’s predictions.
In any case, the traps were slow and simple.
“Not here either.”
After opening a few more doors, I came upon a room that looked like a lecture hall.
Was this really where they taught Spear Techniques?
Setting aside the fact that it posed no great danger to me, I felt no particular desire to take a class on Spear Techniques.
“What’s this?”
Since there were bookshelves and drawers in the lecture hall, I opened each one hoping the Antidote might be inside.
And then I discovered a Name Plate with “功” written on it.
Had someone forgotten to put it away after class last year, or had it been deliberately left here?
Thinking it might prove useful later, I put it in my pouch for now.
“Wow, there are a lot of books here too.”
I came across what looked like a library, its walls lined with bookshelves on all four sides.
Surely they wouldn’t make us dump out each book one by one, searching for an Antidote that might be wedged between them?
With an uneasy feeling, I opened a few of the volumes.
Ah, were they all about Spear Techniques? I was surprised at how many martial arts manuals on spear methods filled this room.
Yet no matter how much I wandered around, not a single spear emerged in this room.
Until now, without exception, every other room had been fitted with some kind of trap.
I deliberately ran around and pressed on different spots on the floor.
Still nothing triggered.
Hmm.
A strong premonition seized me—there had to be something hidden in this place.
If not the floor, then the wall?
Since the walls were lined entirely with bookshelves, I tested them with enough force to ensure nothing would fall.
Even if something did, it would be the fault of whoever sent us here from Hak Gwan.
What school actually operates by the book?
Still, they might very well order me to reshelve every volume afterward.
‘Ah!’
As I continued searching the shelves with careful precision,
Click.
I discovered two bookcases sliding apart on either side.
“Well, fortune smiles upon me.”
Surviving as the Fated Heiress of Bekhae Binggung (Serialized)
Author │ Sa Hyang Noru
Publisher │ Kim Ju Hyung
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae Hyuk
Address │ 401, 11 Digital-ro 33-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong, Ace Techno Tower 8th)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Sa Hyang Noru 2026
※ This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder. No part of this work may be used in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher and author.
Violation of this restriction may result in criminal and civil legal liability.

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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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