Surviving as the Terminally Ill Young Lady of the North Sea Ice Palace - Chapter 68

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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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Episode 68
If a mountain settlement were a religious order or martial faction, having only one gender would make sense. But this was an ordinary village.
The marks of cleared farmland, burned and cultivated, were unmistakable.
The other work the villagers might do—hunting, gathering, perhaps some animal husbandry—couldn’t amount to much.
“Hm, hnngh…….”
“Sigh…….”
Had some tragedy befallen the village recently?
The women were either lost in sorrow or eyeing us strangers with wariness; not one of them spoke to us.
“Wouldn’t it be better to pass through and camp elsewhere rather than stay the night here?”
The atmosphere felt wrong, so I suggested we forget about a bed in the inn and simply move on.
Given the chance, I do prefer sleeping in a proper bedroom with a roof overhead.
But this village was strange.
“……All right. We can cross once we get to that bridge.”
Gu Won seemed curious to investigate further, but since he’d only offered to guide me along my Near-Walking route in the first place, I didn’t stop him.
He pointed in one direction and led the way.
“……So what you’re saying is we need to cross this gorge? With that broken bridge?”
But when we actually tried to pass through the village, we found the bridge severed.
The gorge was extraordinarily deep.
Both sides dropped away in sheer cliffs, and the rapids below ran with such force that if my eyesight weren’t unusually keen, I wouldn’t have been able to see the bottom at all.
The width was certainly too great to jump across.
Without a bridge, there was no way to cross the gorge.
“Ah…… this is a problem. This is the shortcut. If we go back, we’d have to descend and then cross three mountains over there.”
“There’s no way to repair the bridge? It’s not shattered to pieces—just severed. If we could lash it together and throw it across, wouldn’t it reach?”
“Seol, you know carpentry?”
“I don’t. You?”
“I’m just an inn server by trade—how would I know? I’m confident about juggling many plates at once or reciting orders, but that’s about it.”
We stood there thinking for a moment, then decided we should find a carpenter in the village.
Fortunately, we had enough money.
If there wasn’t a single carpenter in the village, we’d have no choice but to turn back.
But if someone with the skill existed, I wanted to hire them even if it meant paying extra.
“Excuse me.”
“Eek!”
Yet for some reason, whenever I tried to speak, the village women would startle and flee.
Hm?
My expression is perhaps a bit cold, but surely not frightening enough to send them running like that.
Wondering if it was because I was a foreigner, I asked Gu Won—who stood at a distance and had the most ordinary appearance—to make inquiries instead.
But they seemed wary of outsiders as a whole.
“This won’t do. Let’s head to the inn first.”
“Ah, there’s an inn, you said?”
“Yes.”
We were getting hungry anyway, and it seemed the best place to gather information.
Gu Won, who had known of this village’s existence beforehand, walked toward the inn without hesitation.
If such a place had existed long ago, perhaps merchants crossing the mountain or wayfarers had once passed through here regularly?
Of course, the inn was less a grand multi-story establishment like those in Luoyang and more of a simple tavern.
“Is anyone here? ……No one?”
When we pushed open the door, the interior was empty.
Without even an inn server to cry out “Welcome!”, I was looking about when someone finally emerged from inside.
“Oh, are you guests?”
“Yes.”
Well, if a stranger appeared at an inn, they’d be a guest, wouldn’t they?
A young woman who seemed unusually timid for an inn server trembled slightly and listed the menu.
“How did you find this place……? Ah, please sit over here. We don’t have much, but…… we have bean side dishes, simmered tofu, vinegar soup, and noodles. Would you like some liquor as well?”
“No liquor.”
It would be best to get food in front of us first, then talk.
There seemed to be no choice of options—just a single fixed menu—but the selection wasn’t bad.
A short while later.
Everything except the noodles appeared to have been prepared beforehand, so the meal came quickly.
Well, to be honest, the taste was poor.
“Has something happened in the village?”
In any case, it tasted better than a Grain-Avoidance Pill, so I ate what was set before me and broached the subject naturally.
“Ah… yes.”
Surely all inn servers possessed the passive skill of chattering about this and that as a matter of course, didn’t they?
Gu Won, who came from an inn server background, was like that, and most of the other servers I’d met on the road from Buk Hae to Luoyang had been the same way.
But this girl only answered—she offered no elaboration.
Wondering if she wanted a tip, I reached for my travel pack, and her shoulders suddenly hunched up.
Her gaze was fixed on my sword.
“You two… you’re not Righteous Wanderers with Nok Rim, are you…?”
“Can ‘Nok Rim’ and ‘Righteous Wanderer’ even be used together in the same sentence?”
“Eek! I’m so sorry!”
I’d thrown out the remark as a joke, trying to lighten the mood.
But the server took it in earnest and went pale with fear.
“We’re just Cheon Mu Academy Cadets running an errand, so you don’t need to be scared. We did run into a bandit named Huk Woo Chae on the way here—did they do anything to the village?”
When Gu Won lowered his voice, the girl’s pupils trembled.
“Did you… fight and kill them?”
“No. I drew my sword to see if they wanted to fight, but they just told me to move along.”
“Oh…”
She opened and closed her mouth several times, as if unsure what to say.
But soon, once she seemed assured that we had nothing to do with Nok Rim,
she began to speak slowly about what had happened in the village.
“That’s… actually, a few days ago, bandits attacked and took away all the able-bodied men from the village.”
“What?”
I was startled.
I’d assumed they were the sort who just collected tolls, so I’d let them be—but they’d kidnapped people?
“It was Huk Woo Chae, right? Wait—but why would they take the men specifically? Ah, to use them as bandit conscripts?”
I wondered if the new recruit I’d seen threatening everyone with barely any proper weapons was one of those coerced men.
That would explain why he was so weak!
I was about to feel sympathy for the one carrying the club.
“Huk Woo… yes. That name, I think it was. They said he’s a big, strong bandit fortress recognized officially by Nok Rim, and they’re going to build a fortress…”
“So they took the men from the village to build this fortress?”
“Yes…”
The server went on to explain further.
So the kidnapped people were being exploited for construction labor,
and the ones doing the threatening were just ordinary bandits, it seemed.
“No one was hurt, then?”
“Well… yes… for now anyway… They said they wouldn’t hurt anyone as long as people didn’t resist…”
When I patted her back, she finally let her guard down and began to cry quietly.
The girl’s father was among the able-bodied men dragged away by Huk Woo Chae.
Unlike the city inn servers who earned wages, she was the daughter of this inn’s proprietors.
Originally her father farmed while her mother worked at the inn serving guests,
but since her father was taken by the bandits during planting season, her mother was out in the fields, leaving the daughter here alone.
That explained why her work seemed so unfamiliar.
Gu Won and I comforted her, assuring her that her father would return safely,
and we added a few extra coins to the bill for the meal.
Of course, while comforting the girl and patting her back,
I made sure to confirm that there was a carpenter among those who’d been taken.
* * *
In any case, once I heard the full story, I understood the situation in the other houses as well.
They were worried about their kidnapped family members but could do nothing about it.
They had to go on working to make ends meet, desperately clinging to the belief that their people would be returned unharmed.
Since the bandits had torn through the village not long ago, it was natural that outsiders had become objects of suspicion.
Back in Buk Hae, when common folk facing hardship came to the Bing Gong, the palace masters would go and resolve their problems.
But this remote mountain village in the Central Plains seemed to have nowhere reliable to turn.
According to Gu Won, people living in places like this had no household registers and paid no taxes, so the government didn’t pay them any attention either.
Hmph—so that’s why Righteous Wanderers were always the heroes in martial arts novels.
“I think it would be best if we raided Huk Woo Chae’s fortress tonight and rescued the kidnapped people. We can repair the bridge and cross over.”
After deliberating for half a quarter hour—more than five minutes, mind you—I reached my decision.
Those bandits seemed like the type that would just crumble if we pressed them.
It would be faster than going all the way to the Academy or the Murim Alliance to bring back martial artists to help,
or taking a long detour around the mountain.
“It’s a coincidence, Seol. I was thinking the same thing.”
I asked Gu Won if he knew anything about Huk Woo Chae’s strengths.
Gu Won replied that he’d never heard of the bandit fortress before.
“Even if the fortress master could fly and crawl, there’s no way he’d be stronger than the Black Spirit Sword. I’m certain of that.”
Which meant I could suppress them easily using the Red Dust Turbid Yang Gong.
When facing the strong within Cheon Mu Academy—figures like Jin Young Hu—I’d deliberately avoided using heterodox techniques.
But when truly risking my life against genuine heretics, I couldn’t afford carelessness. I had to commit my full power.
To use the Red Dust Turbid Yang Gong, then?
Like in Seok Gyo Village, it would be better to hide the fact that I was a Cheon Mu Academy student.
I took out the Veiled Hat that Eun Hyun had given me as a gift.
I’d brought it just in case—just in case—we had to break into Noggun Mountain Tae Cheong Temple because they wouldn’t willingly show us the diary.
I never thought I’d use it like this.
Surviving as a Temporarily Doomed Young Lady of the Buk Hae Ice Palace (Serialized)
Author │ Sahyanggnoru
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 8)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Sahyanggnoru 2026
※ This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder. The content may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
Violation 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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