The Eldest Daughter Walks Down The Flower Path - Chapter 139

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Eldest Daughter Walks the Path of Flowers Episode 139

A small rustling sound came from nearby.

Eve Russel, awakening from a sweet dream, drowsily pulled at his eye mask.

“…Huh?”

In front of the open window, Radis stood with one foot up as if she was about to jump over it.

Eve blinked his eyes.

“Radis?”

“You’re awake? Sleep more.”

“What…? Is it really Radis? When did you come?”

“Of course it’s really me. Are there fakes too? I came at dawn yesterday.”

Eve, who had unconsciously looked down, let out a cry and pulled the sheet to cover his bare chest.

“What, what? What’s going on?”

Radis sent him a meaningful smile and said.

“Yesterday, don’t you remember?”

“What memory?”

“I thought so. If you don’t remember, that’s fine. Just sleep more.”

“I’m fully awake…!”

Eve got up from the bed with the sheet wrapped around his body.

As if worried that Radis might jump out the window at any moment, he ran over barefoot and embraced her.

At the warmth of his beloved touching his bare skin, he groaned softly and asked.

“Did I do something? No, did I not do anything?”

Radis gently stroked his cheek and said affectionately.

“You didn’t do nothing.”

“Huh?”

“You did something important.”

“Ah…?”

Looking at the bewildered Eve, Radis smiled with narrowed eyes.

She climbed up and sat on the window sill.

Naturally, she came to look down at him.

At that different angle, Eve felt his heart drop.

She pulled his nape toward her, kissed him lightly, then said.

“Let’s have breakfast together. Got it?”

“That’s… okay.”

Releasing him, she jumped down from the window sill as lightly as a bird.

Eve hurriedly looked down.

He saw her slip into the window of the floor below.

Eve cried out desperately.

“What did I really do? You’re not lying, are you? Where else in the world would you find a man as virtuous as me…!”

After having breakfast with Eve, who was expounding on his virtue and purity, Radis returned to her room and discovered a letter that had arrived while she was away from the lord’s estate.

Seeing the name Armano written on the envelope, Radis quickly checked the letter’s contents.

The letter was short.

[My most adorable and beloved disciple, wait for me at the place where we used to have our secret training.]

It was time to stand in the dead-end alley and face the shadows once again.

The Tilrod Family’s estate, Willingham, welcomed Radis with its unchanging appearance as always.

Willingham’s landscape was no different ten years ago and would be no different ten years later.

The people here were those who trembled in fear, believing divine punishment would strike if they left their village.

Children were born with unremarkable faces resembling their mothers and fathers, and when they grew up, they lived cultivating the land passed down through generations to raise children who resembled them in turn.

What they passed down through generations was not just their livelihood.

Similar appearances, unremarkable family traditions, trivial habits, and even their way of living – all aspects of life were passed down as similarly as bricks molded from the same cast.

They were happy to somehow patch up and rebuild houses that were crumbling under the weight of time, making them look the same as before, and they couldn’t tolerate change.

To protect a dead tree struck by lightning, they never even thought to widen the dirt road that barely allowed one carriage to pass, and spent their entire lives avoiding branches that drooped over the road and obstructed passage.

Riding her horse over the centuries-old dirt road, ducking her head to avoid those drooping branches, Radis thought that perhaps this scenery might not be much different from five hundred years ago either.

‘Alexis, did you also live here?’

She knew almost nothing about Alexis.

All she knew was that Alexis was an ancestor of the Tilrod Family and was called the ‘Sword of Flames’ as one of the king’s three knights during the founding of the nation.

Even that, if she hadn’t heard fragmentary stories about Alexis from Regia, she would have believed she was a man as depicted in fairy tale books.

‘Why are such lies known as truth?’

The world remembered Alexis Tillord as a hero born with special talents who sacrificed her life to save the world.

However, in the vision of Alexis Tillord that Radis had encountered in the Imperial Capital, she couldn’t find even a trace of such aspects.

She just… looked tired.

“…”

Radis swept her gaze over Willingham with distant eyes.

She could feel the people who had come out to the roadside recognizing the eldest daughter of the family that managed this small land.

Looking at Radis sitting on horseback wearing pants and a sword at her waist, they sharply drew in their breath as if making a point.

Most turned their heads away as if they had seen something they shouldn’t have, and the cantankerous old people muttered words that were surely curses through pursed lips.

Radis could easily predict that tonight, her name would be served as gossip alongside black bread at their poor dinner tables.

They would chew over curses about the eldest daughter of the Tilrod family who had kicked out of the house without fulfilling her filial duties or getting married, ‘acting like a man despite being a woman,’ for a very long time.

She asked inwardly.

‘Alexis, did you also live here? What kind of person were you? What made you decide to save the world? You saved the world, so why have you been suffering for such a long time?’

As Radis rode her horse over the scattered quagmire, enduring the unpleasant gazes from the familiar faces of the land where she was born and raised, she suddenly caught sight of someone familiar.

‘Father…?’

It was her father, Jade Tillord.

He was like a clock whose hands stopped at exactly three places, regularly moving between only three locations.

One was the Tilrod estate, one was Flora’s house where his mistress lived, and the other was the very old tavern that was the only one in this village.

What Radis saw was the scene of that hand moving from the tavern to Flora’s house.

She called out to him without realizing it.

“Father…”

However, Jade didn’t recognize his own daughter’s voice.

His limping gait carried a cheerfulness enhanced by intoxication, and in his hands was a small bundle that likely contained gifts for his mistress and the children she had borne.

Radis’s brow furrowed slightly.

She believed she was already past the age of being hurt by such trivial and petty things.

She could have just passed by.

But she didn’t want to.

‘There’s no need to either.’

Radis pulled the reins to block his path.

Jade, whose path was suddenly blocked, frowned unpleasantly and looked up.

“What? Who do you think you’re in front of…!”

Radis cast a cold gaze at her father without dismounting from her horse.

Jade’s eyes widened as he recognized her.

Radis could feel her father’s gaze lingering on the official uniform of the Black Knight Order she was wearing and the formal knight’s insignia made of jewels that Eve had stubbornly attached.

And even the sword sheath with golden decorations that she and Regia had decided on after countless negotiations, compromises, whining, and concessions.

The expression that appeared on her biological father’s face at the end was disbelief and subtle displeasure.

Jade made a grumbling sound.

“So you came.”

“…”

Radis looked at Jade with even more sunken eyes.

Her father, whom she met after a long time, looked too small and shabby.

His appearance, showing how long he had been rolling around in the tavern, was not much different from David when she had last seen him.

Jade looked up at her horse’s back, which carried nothing much besides simple luggage, and grumbled.

“Didn’t you bring any gifts or anything?”

“….”

“Your mother is very angry because of you. If you want to appease her, you’ll need at least one baggage cart full of gifts following you.”

Radis opened her mouth.

“I won’t be going to the Tilrod Estate.”

“Not going home? Well! Then why did you come here?”

“….”

Jade frowned and shook his head.

“If you left home and abandoned your family to live well on your own, then you should keep doing that instead of loitering around here.”

Radis spoke coldly.

“Back then, how much did you receive?”

“What?”

“Didn’t you receive money for sending me to Lord Russel’s Estate?”

“…!”

“If I had really left home and abandoned my family on my own to live well by myself, then I wouldn’t feel wronged hearing such words.”

Jade’s face crumpled as he sighed deeply and muttered.

“Because you act so unfriendly, the family is in this state… no, never mind.”

Radis looked at Jade with fresh eyes as he did whatever he wanted while pretending otherwise, said whatever he wanted while pretending he didn’t.

She could somewhat understand where David had inherited his habit of blaming others.

Radis looked over her father with cold eyes.

There was once a time when she believed he was generally a harmless person, and perhaps even a good person.

Even at the end of her previous life, she never gave up her faith in Jade until the very end.

She had believed that if Jade saw her miserable state with his own eyes, he would help her.

But Jade never appeared until the end. Even though he couldn’t have been unaware that his daughter was dying.

Only after stepping back several paces and viewing the Tilrod Estate with objective eyes could she finally realize.

That he was the most unjust one.

That he was the most cowardly.

Radis jumped down from her horse and grabbed Jade’s shoulders tightly.

“Why, why are you doing this!”

She dragged him toward Flora’s house, ignoring his resistance.

Then she positioned him behind the horse and opened her mouth.

“Here it is.”

Jade struggled and shouted.

“What? Why are you acting like this!”

Realizing he would never stay still, Radis drew Regia and struck her father’s forehead with the blade, making a sharp sound.

Jade, caught by the spell, instantly became stiff as a wooden block.

Radis looked into her father’s face and said.

“You don’t deserve to have anything. Look at the Tilrod Estate. Look at your own blood who were wounded inside that broken vessel that is you. Do you think someone like you could protect even a more insignificant family?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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