Surviving as the Terminally Ill Young Lady of the North Sea Ice Palace - Chapter 63

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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 63
To think such a vast space could be preserved beneath the earth.
Had an entire capital been buried here? If so, shouldn’t the ceiling have collapsed?
The space, presumed to be part of an ancient Formation, was deeply alien—yet the task itself was straightforward.
Following the map the seniors had prepared beforehand, we would navigate the traps, reach the designated sector, and clear a single chamber.
The first level had the map ninety percent complete, so there was little real danger on the way.
“Ceiling!”
“I see it!”
Of course, there were the classical traps—blades cascading from above, the floor giving way beneath—but nothing unexpected.
Maeng Ryeong Ji swung her Axe in broad, clean arcs, batting them aside.
She hurled stones to test the floor, made it collapse, then leapt across in one smooth bound.
“There’s… there’s a skeleton underneath?”
“Eyes forward. Just jump.”
In places where the Formation had grown old and the traps had failed, the floors lay open and exposed.
Somehow, where the pit yawned visible below, it felt all the more unsettling.
I glimpsed what might have been charred remains—but decided I’d misread it.
Why the seniors hated coming here became clear before we’d descended even a few turns of the stair.
At first, I’d thought it rather mysterious and grand.
Then the acrid smoke kept drifting across my vision, strange smells rose and fell, and at intervals I heard what sounded like someone screaming in agony.
“Seol. Ready yourself!”
The section where arrows rained down.
The mechanism was broken, so only half the designed barrage came, making it less difficult to dodge—or so we’d been told.
Since So Un was here too, the two of us could handle the defence easily enough.
Whoosh! Crack!
Maeng Ryeong Ji and I led the charge, scattering the arrows.
Unlike those bitter days at the Academy fighting Nam Gung Min and Myeong Seong with Qi reserves stretched thin, being able to channel Internal Energy freely made deflecting arrows trivial.
Just pour Sword Energy into a wide swing and the arrows scattered of their own accord.
“Wow, amazing!”
Gu Won clapped, hands free.
Gods, if I want to hide my strength, I shouldn’t show off like this.
“Is this where the palace begins?”
“Seems like it.”
The narrow passage widened steadily until it opened into a proper palace corridor.
Intricate carvings covered the ceiling; the walls on either side bristled with doors of unknown purpose.
According to the map, most of these opened onto ordinary chambers, but some led without warning to graveyards or markets.
“That looks like the Jade Throne we’re absolutely not supposed to touch.”
The Jade Throne sat not in some Hall of Audience where it belonged, but where the corridor bent—an odd, displaced thing.
Touching it or sitting on it would trigger a defense far deadlier than the usual falling-blade trap; whoever triggered it would have to fight for their life, we’d been warned.
Before the Academy was founded, Gujoong Hwangjeon did claim deaths now and then.
Except for a few unlucky commoners who wandered in by mistake and caught a stray arrow,
when Warriors or imperial soldiers died on the first underground level, it was almost always because they’d activated that device.
“I’d like to experience it once!”
“I’m curious too, but if we did that, Seol would kill us first.”
“Gu Won, you really do have the spirit of adventure!”
Though they didn’t actually touch it, Maeng Ryeong Ji and Gu Won kept glancing sidelong at the throne and chattering about it.
But wait—these two.
Why are they being so careless?
“You two… you don’t see it?”
“Hm? Of course we do! And like you said, we won’t lay a finger on it!”
“You… you see it too, Seol?”
“What? Are you joking?”
There’s a ghost sitting on the throne right now.
His face was slightly translucent—undeniably a spirit.
The man raised his head slowly, staring at something, then let it fall again.
He wore charred crimson-yellow robes and held what looked like an Imperial Seal.
By any measure, he was the master of this buried palace.
“So what exactly are you seeing?”
Gu Won, who’d been grinning just a moment before, asked again when he caught my expression.
“You and Ryeong Ji really don’t see it?”
“See what? What are you talking about?”
“Hold on, there’s something like a faint silhouette, isn’t there? Just as So Un said!”
“A silhouette?”
“Yes, that area has a strange color… dark yellow?”
I furrowed my brow.
Even in So Un’s eyes, which could apparently perceive something, only the color of the Crimson-Yellow Robes appeared dimly; the Emperor’s form itself remained unclear.
“I do sense something vaguely ominous about it though…”
Gu Won tilted his head.
“I see nothing at all. What are you talking about?”
Maeng Ryeong Ji perceived nothing—neither sight nor sensation.
I unfolded the guidebook to double-check exactly what was written.
The text merely noted that some people claimed to see an ominous atmosphere and a hazy phantom near the Jade Throne.
…So it’s only visible to me? Why?
Could I be closer to death than I thought?
“Come on, let’s move past this quickly.”
No, that couldn’t be it. Ha—it’s probably just naturally keen Qi Sense on my part.
Besides, that Emperor shows no reaction whatsoever, even if we talk loudly right here.
According to what we’ve heard, the throne hasn’t harmed anyone as long as they don’t touch it, so I hurried the group forward.
Right, if it’s a Formation with a palace as its backdrop, there might well be an Emperor’s ghost!
Hadn’t we already heard rumors of spirits appearing?
A space like this hidden underground is far stranger than any ghost.
Unlike Hwa Mu Yang back in the Stone Cave, it won’t attack unprovoked—no need to panic.
I persuaded myself of this and passed through the corridor.
Though I did feel a slight chill and hung back a little.
Maeng Ryeong Ji adeptly disarmed the remaining traps on her own.
Not long after, we finally arrived at our target location—the unexplored sector.
“So we just need to clean this place!”
The chamber was slightly smaller than a lecture hall in the Mushak Chonggang.
Given the lack of particularly ornate treasures, it didn’t seem to be a royal chamber—more likely a servants’ quarters.
Well, if it had looked impressive at first glance, the seniors wouldn’t have left it as an unexplored sector.
Fire had scorched it, and some wood had fallen from the ceiling; ash and dust had accumulated.
Yet it wasn’t truly filthy in the way hundreds of years of neglect might make it.
Gujoong Hwangjeon itself is a kind of Formation, so perhaps time froze at some point.
“With four of us, an hour should be plenty.”
“Wait—there might be a Formation hidden here. Let’s scout first.”
I reached for the cleaning tools So Un had brought, but Gu Won stopped me.
Right, good point.
Appearances were deceptive.
One of us could suddenly spring a trap while cleaning—better to check thoroughly first.
“Touch everything you see, test the floor by walking on it, and press the walls.”
“Yes!”
“Got it.”
Maeng Ryeong Ji stomped across the floor, Gu Won moved various objects and repositioned furniture, and So Un and I did likewise.
We touched this and that, checking methodically.
“Will they even credit us with treasure for something like this?”
“Probably won’t award extra Merit Points.”
Though nothing we’d call true treasure, we collected anything with ornate decoration for safekeeping.
“Nothing in the floor!”
“The walls are the same.”
I found nothing of note either.
So we were about to begin cleaning in earnest—
“Um, would you all come here for a moment?”
So Un had found something and called the rest of us over.
“Hmm?”
What she pointed to was a drawer in a cabinet that looked rather sophisticated.
The interior was divided into nine compartments in a three-by-three grid.
In some of those compartments lay stones inscribed with trigrams.
“Is this a Formation too?”
Until now, the Formations I’d seen were the Stone Cave where Hwa Mu Yang had been, the boulder masking the entrance to Gujoong Hwangjeon, and Gujoong Hwangjeon itself.
All of them had felt almost magical.
But this seemed to be merely stones placed in a drawer—I wasn’t sure what it was.
“Ah, so when you sit on the Jade Throne, does something shoot out like a defense mechanism activates?”
Gu Won proposed the hypothesis.
“Hmm…… In last week’s class, Master Jegal said that trigrams inside boxes or bottles like this are usually called the Sumei Formation.”
“The Sumei Formation? What’s that?”
“It’s an array technique that imprisons worlds within objects or dharma treasures.”
“Is it named after that saying about putting Mount Sumeru inside a mustard seed?”
“Yes, exactly!”
So Un explained in impressive detail, having paid close attention during the mechanical lock-and-mechanism lectures, and Gu Won’s eyes showed he’d grasped something important.
Hmm.
I’d never heard of Mount Sumeru before, but in the martial arts and cultivation novels I’d read in my past life, I’d occasionally seen array techniques that compressed space like this.
People got trapped inside bottles and suddenly found themselves in forests or battlefields, fighting hordes of soldiers in desperate combat within.
“So could it be dangerous?”
“Well…… seeing only four trigrams, it doesn’t seem like a complicated array. The Sumei Formation wasn’t just used to imprison intruders—Master Jegal said it was also used to hide things. I suspect that’s the purpose here.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve only learned the Eight Trigrams, but there are only the Four Trigrams here. Master said if you place each trigram in its correct position, you can escape.”
Amazing. So Un really is the most capable person in our party!
If he hadn’t attended those mechanical lock-and-mechanism classes, we either wouldn’t have found this array at all, or we’d have accidentally touched a stone and gotten trapped, wandering lost inside.
I was wrong to think of him as just an F-rank porter……!
“So Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire—we place them by cardinal direction?”
“Yes, yes. North, south, east, west.”
Gu Won stared at me intently.
He clearly wanted to go inside.
“Let’s finish this and head back!”
Maeng Ryeong Ji, as always, brimmed with curiosity.
So Un, who’d explained the Sumei Formation to us, looked toward me with readiness to follow my judgment.
“To use an inn as an analogy, they’re like guests renting a private room for a secret meeting. Suspicious, sure—but land a guest like that, and you can make in a few days what you’d normally earn in months.”
I was thinking much the same as Gu Won.
……Cleaning alone only nets us 25 points per person anyway.
Since the array isn’t dangerous and we’ve found it, we might as well explore all the way through.
Especially if it’s an array designed to hide something.
When this palace burned, they might have sealed precious treasures inside it that needed to be hidden.
“All right, let’s go in.”
The four of us picked up the stones almost in unison.
Surviving as the Buk Hae Ice Palace’s Limited-Time Young Lady (Serialized)
Author │ Sajhyang Noru
Publisher │ Kim Ju-hyung
Published by │ J-Plus Media Co., Ltd.
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ⓒ Sajhyang Noru 2026
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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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