Surviving as the Terminally Ill Young Lady of the North Sea Ice Palace - Chapter 98

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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 98
“Eh? I thought that boar had completely vanished in winter. Where did it show up?”
Like Jegal Muyu, Geunhaeng Gakju was also familiar with that boar.
Apparently it had caused quite a stir last autumn when it trampled farmers’ fields.
“I hear it’s in the mountain next door. The bounty’s still up, right?”
“Yes. It was originally set at twenty points, but last year several cadets went searching and couldn’t find a trace of it, so the reward was raised to thirty points. Not that anyone had managed to find it by the end of last winter break, mind you.”
Geunhaeng Gakju rifled through a stack of notices, pulling out one that lay beneath the others.
Soon he found the notice about the boar and handed it to me.
“Let’s see, here it is. It’s about twice the size of an ordinary boar, and so fast that common folk can’t keep up with it at all. It only moves at night and before dawn, so very few people have actually seen it. One man loosed an arrow at it, but it was so quick the shaft never came anywhere near.”
The notice showed a fierce-looking boar and carried a list of assorted details.
Aside from being enormous and fast, though, it didn’t seem to have any notable traits.
On top of that, only three commoners claimed to have actually seen it, which made me doubt how reliable the reports were.
Aren’t ordinary boars faster than commoners, too?
“Fine. I’ll go catch it for you!”
“Ha ha, if it’s you, Cadet, you’ll find it in no time!”
Thanks to how quickly I’d resolved every near-walking request so far, Geunhaeng Gakju assumed I would make short work of this one too.
* * *
But the truth was, I wasn’t really that well-versed in hunting.
Especially when it came to boars, which don’t live in Buk Hae. I knew nothing about them at all.
So I sought out the Academy student I knew who seemed most likely to be an expert at boar hunting.
“Ryeong Ji, there’s supposedly a boar as big as a house on the East Mountain, near the Academy…”
“What?! You want to go boar hunting?”
I’d meant to ask Maeng Ryeong Ji for some advice and, if she was willing, invite her to join the hunt.
“Seol, you’ve finally discovered the joy of hunting! Let’s leave right away!”
Before I could even finish explaining why I’d come, she had already agreed.
…I’d expected as much, but Maeng Ryeong Ji really did love hunting.
“We have afternoon classes. We’ll go after they’re over. Besides, I heard they move at night?”
“Right! Boars move at night!”
Oh, so they’re nocturnal?
An experienced hand really is different!
She seemed to know her boars well, and I nodded in satisfaction.
“How do you usually hunt boars?”
“We face the boar head-on with our whole bodies!”
The answer that followed was rather bewildering, but…
After spending nearly a month with Maeng Ryeong Ji, I had learned how to phrase my questions so that I could actually get the answers I wanted out of her.
“Tell me separately how ordinary commoners and Beast Palace disciples do it, and then how you do it.”
“Commoners? If commoners want to hunt boars, they use snares or drive them into traps. They dig pits along the paths the boars use and plant sharpened stakes at the bottom.”
“Oh, and how do they do the driving? Do several people do it together?”
“Of course. They shout, beat drums and gongs, and herd the boar in one direction. Then hunters lying in wait at the choke point come out and strike it with spears or shoot it with arrows. Usually they use spears.”
Oh, so an expert really does know the details.
I nodded with keen interest.
“But we don’t need to bother with that sort of tedious business. Beast Palace disciples all face boars bare-handed! You draw the boar out with a loud shout, then meet the charging brute with everything you’ve got and bring it crashing down. Boar is the most entertaining prey in the whole forest!”
Apart from the fact that they charge straight at you, aren’t they a lot like bears?
With bears, though, you can release your internal energy, make a threatening display, and make a loud noise to drive them off, so I was a little puzzled.
“They don’t run away when you shout, they come toward the sound? Are boars really that aggressive?”
“Ah, the boars of the forest get startled and run the other way!”
“…Then how do you catch them?”
“Two hunters move together. One shouts or beats a drum and drives the boar toward the other one!”
“You’ve caught them all on your own until now, so how did you manage that?”
“Huh?”
When I pressed her on the details, Maeng Ryeong Ji trailed off mid-sentence and fell silent.
Then, as if working through an extremely difficult problem, she clutched her head, and after a moment she clapped her hands.
“I see! The boars of the Central Plains charged at me whenever I shouted.”
It seemed she had shouted without a second thought, never once considering the driving at all.
By common sense, the boars of the Central Plains shouldn’t behave all that differently from the ones in Yunnan.
If anything was strange here, it was the Academy itself.
“Hmm… maybe it’s not the Central Plains, but only the boars on this mountain that behave differently?”
“That could be the case!”
Perhaps the animals on this mountain had been affected by the spirit energy of Gujung Hwangcheon, which is why they didn’t flee and instead charged at her, and why the hunts had gone so smoothly until now?
In any case, I had gained information both on the general method of boar hunting and on the peculiarities of this mountain.
“Anyway, fine. Let’s meet at the mountain gate after afternoon classes. We’ll go to the next mountain together and provoke it.”
As we walked to the training grounds, I explained what kind of wild boar she was after and why I was so set on catching that particular one.
Maeng Ryeong Ji wasn’t interested in any of that. She was just thrilled at the thought of hunting a big boar.
“Boar hunting!”
Honestly, we have to sit through class first.
Of all days, this afternoon we had Oegong training, so I strapped on my Cheol-hwan and ran laps around the academy grounds until my legs gave out.
“Good work today! Next period, you’ll have a Qinggong session with another Martial Instructor!”
“Haah, haah…”
Oh, finally, something other than running and weight drills in basic Oegong training?
Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t help feeling a little excited.
“Boar hunting!”
Maeng Ryeong Ji didn’t care one bit about Qinggong, which wasn’t even a duel.
She’d spent the whole Oegong session pounding around the academy grounds, and it seemed her mind had been on nothing but the hunt.
“Right, let’s go.”
Together with Maeng Ryeong Ji, I crossed the river and made my way over to the East Mountain.
She kept craning her head in every direction, saying this mountain had plenty of beasts too, but…
The boar I was looking for wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Where do boars usually live? Do they sleep in caves like bears?”
“They don’t dig dens. Boars like to loaf around in the underbrush or wallow in the mud.”
Ah, I see.
Then again, if it’s an animal that likes caves, maybe it never came out of the Stone Cave.
Picturing a boar rolling around in a muddy puddle, I felt it suited the image rather well.
“Should we try shouting first?”
Searching by looking around like this didn’t seem likely to turn anything up, so I suggested a wide-area provocation.
If it’s nearby, it might come to us, and even if it runs away, we might get lucky and hear it crashing through the brush.
“WOOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!”
Maeng Ryeong Ji let out a roar.
She flung both arms toward the sky and let loose a beastlike howl.
I braced myself and waited for the boar.
“…”
Unfortunately, the target didn’t show itself so easily.
Grazing animals tend to bolt at the first sound, so the surroundings instead went eerily quiet.
“KRAAAAAH!”
“WOOOOOOH!”
Maeng Ryeong Ji paced back and forth across the mountain, shouting a couple more times, but…
No boar appeared.
“Hmm…”
Could it not be on this mountain at all?
Or is my theory wrong, that a boar touched by the academy’s influence will come out when you shout?
“Should we try over there?”
“No. I don’t think that one’s coming out just because we yell.”
If I went with the first option, we’d be lost for good, so for now I wanted to side with the second.
If it had survived even after the senior students had torn through this mountain last autumn, it must be a fairly cautious creature, mustn’t it?
Maeng Ryeong Ji’s brother must have been around too, so there’s a good chance he’d already tried methods similar to hers.
A spirit beast with an Inner Core might be smarter than the other boars, regardless of how aggressive it is.
Sensing we needed another approach, I racked my brain.
Should we lure it out? What does a boar like to eat, or what kind of place does it favor?
“Have you ever seen Beast Palace disciples raid a habitat, or seen what villagers use as bait when they set traps?”
“I’ve never been the one who tracks and drives them. For bait, they use acorns… and sometimes roasted rice…”
Are there any acorns around here?
“Ah, there’s that smell from the bait!”
While I was still scanning the area, Maeng Ryeong Ji pointed in one direction and sprinted ahead.
Eh? The scent from the bait is coming from here? Did a squirrel stash a pile of acorns somewhere?
I couldn’t catch any particular smell, but Maeng Ryeong Ji had grown up in a jungle full of every kind of scent, so her nose had to be sharper than mine.
For now, I decided to follow her.
“Huh? A barley field?”
And where we ended up was none other than—
Cheong Hye’s field, the one the boar had trampled through the day before.
“Ah…!”
As we drew close, I could smell the faint, sweet scent of grain that clung to the crops.
That’s right, the boar was drawn here by the scent in the first place, wasn’t it?
It must have raided the farmhouse precisely because it loves grain.
“Will it come back to a field it’s already visited?”
“It will! That’s why some farmers who suffered at the boar’s hands once asked the Beast Palace disciples to set an ambush.”
“…I suppose so. It didn’t tear everything apart; there’s still plenty of grain and beans left behind.”
An ordinary farmer, after suffering a boar raid once, would put up a fence or post someone on watch to keep from being cleaned out again.
Cheong Hye lives right next door and still left the beast alone, so there’s no reason it wouldn’t come back.
It isn’t like a thief who carries off the whole harvest in a basket.
It’s the sort that eats as much as it likes and rolls around to its heart’s content before leaving, so it can easily come again.
“Right, let’s lie in wait here!”
I doubt there’s a more tempting spot for a boar than this one.
I decided to wait out the night right here.
“…?”
Meanwhile, Ryeong Ji and I hovered near the edge of the field.
Cheong Hye did step out of the thatched hut for a moment.
“We’re here to catch the boar. We’ll hide nearby.”
He gave a single fist-over-palm salute, then went right back inside.
I couldn’t tell whether he was praying or simply greeting us.
“How about behind this tree? Ah, let’s spread out. You wait over there.”
“Fine!”
Ugh, are we really going to have to stay up all night here?
If I split the merit points between Ryeong Ji and myself, the boar has to show up within five days for this to be worth it.
Frankly, the payout was a borderline one.
And I’d already gone and helped plant the beans here yesterday.
I felt like I’d lose out if I didn’t do something.
Since it had come to this, I hid my presence, burning with resolve to catch that Spirit Beast boar no matter what.
And thankfully, we didn’t have to lie in wait for days on end.
Just as the moon reached the very top of the sky.
Thundering-thundering-thundering!
With a sound that shook the ground, the Spirit Beast boar appeared.
Surviving as the Limited-Time Young Lady of the Buk Hae Ice Palace (Serialized)
Author │ Musk Deer
Publisher │ Kim Juhyeong
Publishing House │ Jay Pl Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jaehyeok
Address │ 401, 11 Digital-ro 33-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong, Ace Techno Tower 8-cha)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
©Musk Deer 2026
This work was published by Jay Pl Media Co., Ltd. under a contract with the copyright holder. No part of its content may be used in any form or by any means without the permission of the publisher and author.
Violations may result in criminal and civil 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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