Surviving as the Terminally Ill Young Lady of the North Sea Ice Palace - Chapter 75

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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 75
The man who fell from the ceiling was dressed like any other traveler at the inn.
Blood from a blade wound in his buttocks began staining his robes crimson.
He gasped and writhed in pain from both the impact of the fall and the sword wound.
“This can’t be!”
“Infinite Heaven…!”
“Oh, merciful Original Heaven!”
“So there really was an intruder after all?”
The Taoists fell into chaos.
Ten days had passed without a single sign of an outsider.
They’d followed me to Jangggyeonggak with suspicious eyes, wanting to see what I was doing.
And now, actually finding an intruder, they couldn’t hide their shock.
“Fall back!”
Gu Won pushed them behind him and leapt forward, drawing his sword.
I too lowered my stance to counter any attack from the intruder.
“Nngh….”
But the man merely clutched his wound and groaned, unable to get to his feet or shake off the ground.
“…How… how did you see through the Guishidabeop?”
The man stared at me with trembling eyes and asked.
“Guishidabeop?”
The Guishidabeop was a grand technique where one reduced breathing and pulse to an extreme, appearing dead like a turtle in hibernation.
In martial lore, it’s typically used for infiltration, concealment, and ambush.
But occasionally it’s also applied to launder identity as a corpse, much like Romeo and Juliet.
Once I heard that, everything clicked into place.
It had seemed strange that no trace of an outsider appeared for ten days.
He’d dragged his body’s activity to an extreme—no eating, no defecating—just enduring.
“This is… so that’s why we couldn’t detect him hiding!”
“I thought even with a hibernation technique, he’d still need to relieve himself….”
“But deception doesn’t work at all in front of you, does it?”
“You must be a student of Cheonmu Academy!”
I hadn’t actually sensed anything the others couldn’t feel.
I’d simply intended to search every ceiling in sight.
But luck had it that I found him quickly, and now both the intruder and the Taoists misunderstood—thinking I’d deciphered the Guishidabeop and pinpointed his location at a glance.
Though for the intruder, finding a place to hide in a hurry near Samcheong Hall was no small feat either.
So perhaps it wasn’t purely luck after all.
“Let’s search for the Jade Seal first.”
“Ah, I’ll search him.”
Gu Won volunteered to conduct the body search himself.
So I pressed my blade to the man’s throat and threatened him.
Judging by the circumstances, he almost certainly had it, but either way—if it’s important, we need to recover it first.
“Kraagh!”
The fact that he resisted told me it was probably in his robes.
“Make one wrong move and I’ll run you through.”
Because he’d already been stabbed once, the man flinched at my words and stopped struggling.
“…?!”
But that wasn’t all.
Just as he was squeezing his eyes shut to scream, his gaze fixed on something.
“That… that sword…!”
Ah—he must have seen the characters inscribed on the blade’s surface.
The intruder’s eyes widened in shock.
“You know this sword?”
I asked whether he knew the true identity of the blade that Gwak Do Cheon had mentioned.
But he didn’t want to say more; he squeezed his eyes shut again and shook his head violently.
“Is this the Jade Seal?”
Shortly after, Gu Won found the Jade Seal in the man’s robes.
“That’s it!”
“Infinite Heaven…!”
“Ah!”
“We’ve been absolved of the sin of dereliction. What a blessing.”
The Taoists felt immense relief once they confirmed the Jade Seal was unharmed.
The Elder held the Jade Seal in his palm and brushed his chest as if to calm himself.
“I am truly grateful to you both. Had you not seen through the deception with such clarity, we would have lost the seal and turned our blades against one another.”
He expressed his thanks to both Gu Won and me.
“Ha, Seol did all the work. To be honest, I suspected an insider as well.”
“……I am ashamed. My apologies.”
“Yet the thief was crouching above the ceiling all along…….”
Truth be told, I had acted without real conviction either, so I felt somewhat embarrassed about it.
But the Daoist priests who had vehemently accused an insider—far more passionately than Gu Won—now hung their heads, and I lost my chance to demur gracefully.
“Tch! What weight does an apology carry from the very mouth that accused sworn siblings of theft!”
Ho Jang, the Daoist priest who had borne the greatest suspicion, said it was fine.
But the Elder rebuked the other priests sharply.
“Seon Yeon, unseal the gates and summon the gate keepers and guards. This one must be confined to the Closed Chamber.”
“Yes, Elder.”
He issued the order to the oldest priest after the Elder himself.
While that priest summoned the others, the Elder briefly interrogated the Intruder.
“Who are you?”
“Who sent you to steal the seal?”
“How did you know the seal was kept in Samcheong Hall?”
Several priests joined in the questioning.
“…….”
Ever since the Intruder caught sight of my sword, he had not opened his mouth once.
Well, he had attempted to steal a sacred treasure of Taeqing Guan, so the priests would handle the interrogation and punishment.
But what was his true identity?
The fact that he recognized the sword, and that he had hidden himself here and even used the Guishidabeop technique—it all suggested he possessed considerable martial skill.
“If you discover who is behind this, would you inform us as well?”
“Of course. I shall send word to Cheonmu Academy.”
The Elder answered readily that he would do so.
Shortly after, dozens of guards entered the inner hall and led the Intruder away.
* * *
While the priests debated amongst themselves—about storing the sacred treasure elsewhere, about posting guards in the inner hall, and other such matters—
the Elder retrieved Wang Yak Ro’s Diary from Jangggyeonggak, which had been my original purpose for coming.
It had been stored on the second floor of Jangggyeonggak, in the section where ancient documents were kept, so dust lay heavily upon it.
The folded book had not been well maintained, and the paper had faded considerably.
It could hardly match the condition of the papers that had been sealed within the Formation.
Still, more than ninety percent of the characters remained legible, so there would be no difficulty in understanding the contents.
“Ah…… it’s more than I expected?”
“Take it with you. When I examined it before, there was nothing of great importance.”
I hesitated, uncertain whether I could read it all in this place.
Perhaps owing to the assistance I had provided in capturing the Intruder, the Elder readily permitted its removal.
“Thank you!”
“We are the grateful ones. Had you not arrived when you did, my disciples might have been injured, or we might have unsealed the gates and let the thief escape.”
There was a brief exchange of conventional courtesies—offers of a meal, promises of further reward—but
the priests were already occupied with the aftermath, and
Gu Won and I needed to return to the Academy as soon as possible to attend classes the next day.
Having resolved the matter peacefully and obtained the folded book, we left Taeqing Guan without delay.
“Whew, the innkeeper always blamed insiders when something went missing, but there really was an outsider hiding here. That’s shocking.”
“It is.”
“How did you find someone using the Guishidabeop? Do you just have sharp perception?”
“No. This time I was genuinely lucky.”
I explained how I had looked at the ceiling’s shape and decided to examine every sealed building, and Gu Won nodded while remaining half-skeptical.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
On the way here, I had not known the path and could only follow Gu Won, uncertain how much farther we had to go.
But retracing our steps felt much faster.
Using the Lightness Skill to dash along, we crossed the bridge and soon arrived at the village at the valley entrance.
“We don’t seem to be running late. Want to eat before we go? Better than Grain-Avoidance Pills, surely?”
“Yes, far better.”
I had broken my fast on pills that morning and declined the meal at the Guan, so it was time to eat again.
We sought out the same inn where we had eaten supper the night before.
“……But is it just me, or are there still no men on the road today either?”

“He must have collapsed at home after spending all night fixing the bridge the moment he got back.”
Is that so?
He didn’t seem to lack stamina.
I found it oddly suspicious and entered the inn.
“Oh! You’re the students who came yesterday, aren’t you?”
Jeom So Yi, who had been quite reserved the day before, recognized me and welcomed me warmly.
It wasn’t that her nature was particularly introverted to begin with.
Perhaps because her father had been kidnapped the previous day and she’d been more withdrawn then, today she spoke to me with much greater ease.
“You look happier.”
I placed my order and asked lightly, and she broke into a bright smile.
“Actually, after you all left, an old master named Hyeol Sa No Gu saved our village last night! My father and all the other adults came back safely without a scratch!”
I see… so something like that happened.
I was choosing my words carefully, unsure how to respond naturally.
Jeom So Yi suddenly tensed.
“Oh, um, I’m not sure if he’s orthodox or… not.”
She seemed belatedly worried that she’d praised Hyeol Sa No Gu, who appeared to be a master of the heterodox path, in front of Cheonmu Academy students.
“Wow, something like that happened?”
I waved my hand to show I didn’t care at all, and only then, reassured, did she continue.
“Yes, yes! I even caught a glimpse from a distance, and he was incredibly impressive. He apparently defeated all the bandits by himself. He said he would show no mercy to anyone who blocked the path of a great hero!”
Hmm, since she hadn’t heard it directly herself.
The story about Hyeol Sa No Gu was somewhat distorted.
It was Gu Won who had spoken, and we’d only explained that we came looking for the villagers because the path was blocked.
“…But come to think of it, I didn’t see any men in the village on the way here either. Where did they all go?”
“That’s…”
Jeom So Yi scratched her cheek with an awkward expression.
“They went to help build the fortress.”
“What?”
I was startled.
Wait, they were beaten down just last night and barely a day has passed.
Those men who were begging so eagerly switched their stance that quickly?
“Oh, the men just hit it off with each other, you know?”
But the innkeeper who happened to come out with the food—Jeom So Yi’s mother—told a different story.
“They’ve all become sworn siblings! The bandit leader insisted on treating Elder Ho Jang as his elder brother. Well, it’s not much work, but since he said he’d pay wages, I told them to go help.”
“…”
So they say there’s only a fine line between slash-and-burn farmers and bandits.
They became that close without even a full day passing.
Well… I suppose if they went willingly.
The atmosphere did lighten a bit when we were fixing the bridge.
And it seems like the villagers weren’t treated harshly when the fortress was being built in the first place.
“I see. This looks delicious. Thank you for the meal.”
I said nothing more and ate my rice gratefully.
“We’re running late. Let’s head back.”
Gu Won and I left the inn together.
Surviving as the Young Lady of Buk Hae Bing Palace with a Time Limit (Serialized)
Author │ Sah-hyang No Ru
Publisher │ Kim Ju Hyung
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae Hyuk
Address │ 401, Ace Techno Tower 8, 11 Digital-ro 33-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Sah-hyang No Ru 2026
※This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder, and the contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
Violation of this 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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