The Little Baby Snake of the Vermilion Bird Family - Chapter 2

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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 2
***
“Why…?”
Baeksa murmured, staring down at her own tiny hands.
“Why am I… back here again?”
Having only just woken up, Baeksa was shaken to her core.
The place where her eyes had opened was none other than her own residence within the Imperial Court.
It wasn’t Namto, where the black snow had fallen amidst the freezing cold.
How on earth did she end up back at the Imperial Court?
Could it be that her father had given her one more chance?
Had he picked up his abandoned daughter and brought her back to her quarters?
Yet, something felt entirely amiss for that to be the case.
There wasn’t a single black spot anywhere on her body.
Her skin was perfectly clean, just as it had been before her abnormal ability ever manifested.
The young girl spun around on the spot to take a closer look.
A plume of radiant, five-colored smoke billowed up, and from within it, a tiny baby snake appeared.
Having undergone her beast transformation, Baeksa looked back at her own tail.
No black spots could be seen anywhere along her long, clean torso, which resembled a white cylinder of rice cake.
Right at that moment.
“Hey! Snake!”
With a loud clatter and crash, a young boy barged into Baeksa’s residence.
It was Songra, the Second Prince born to the Empress and Baeksa’s half-brother.
Baeksa froze the moment she set eyes on Songra.
‘On Songra’s forehead…’
The dragon seal is still on his forehead.
That gleaming golden seal was something every dragon capable of using a blessing possessed.
However, Songra had lost his seal the year he turned ten.
‘You, you…! What have you done!’
It was because Baeksa had manifested her abnormal ability and absorbed a portion of his blessing.
Since he was stripped of a part of his blessing, the mark never reappeared on Songra’s forehead.
Because of that, Baeksa had been forced to endure harsh blame and torment from both Songra and the Empress.
Yet the seal was still intact…?
Could this mean, by some chance…
‘Have I really… returned to the past?’
An unbelievable hypothesis floated into Baeksa’s mind.
‘If that’s truly what happened.’
Then she must not react, no matter how much Songra tormented her.
While Songra grabbed her body and bullied her, Baeksa squeezed her eyes shut and silently endured the mistreatment.
“How ridiculous. Why won’t you even change into your human form?”
She didn’t harbor any desires to run away like she had back then, nor did she wish to become a splendid dragon like Songra.
If she allowed herself to think like that, ‘that incident’ might happen all over again.
“Tch.”
“…”
“Boring. What’s wrong with you today? Did you eat something bad?”
Finding no amusement since Baeksa refused to react, Songra finally left.
Only after Songra had gone did Baeksa cautiously crack her tightly shut eyes open.
After ensuring the room was completely empty, she slipped quickly through a hole in the door and made her way outside.
She bit down on a single blade of wild grass growing just outside her residence and tried using her abnormal ability.
Ssssshh—
“…!”
Just as Baeksa suspected, the grass lost all its vitality and withered away.
The girl’s voracious abnormal ability had already manifested.
Be it life, or be it death.
Be it a blessing, or be it contamination.
A dreadful abnormal ability that greedily devoured everything in existence.
Baeksa calmed her racing heart and forced herself to think through things rationally.
‘I really have returned to the past.’
To the time before she had manifested her ability and been utilized as her father’s tool.
If she had reacted to Songra’s bullying just a moment ago, the exact same sequence of events would have unfolded.
As that thought took hold, Baeksa lifted her head to gaze up at the sky.
Wait.
Was it truly so bad if the same events occurred?
Could she not let herself be used as her father’s tool just one more time?
Perhaps she could do a little better this time around?
If she could just become a slightly more useful child, she wouldn’t be abandoned, and then…
But the moment she recalled her father coldly casting her aside, Baeksa’s head drooped low.
‘What a foolish thought.’
If she truly had returned to the past, nothing she did would alter the future.
She would be forced to faithfully obey her father’s commands, absorbing the energy inside the body of the Owner of the Hand, and once that was done, she would still be discarded by her heartless sire.
She wanted no part of that.
If such a future was destined to await her regardless, she refused to go down that path again.
Exerting herself to the point of bleeding from her nose, desperately using her abnormal ability just to find favor in her father’s eyes.
Living a life of constant anxiety, terrified that she might be cast aside the moment her usefulness ran out.
She was utterly sick and tired of it all.
‘Then what should I do…’
In that instant, she recalled the words her father had uttered before her regression.
‘I had intended to throw you away in the southern lands before long.’
She had learned thanks to Songra that those words were the absolute truth.
Songra, who had been stripped of a portion of his blessing by Baeksa, had screamed at her in a fit of venomous rage.
‘If it weren’t for that hideous abnormal ability of yours, you would have been abandoned ages ago! Do you hear me?’
‘Ugh, you would have been thrown away! If only Father had dumped you just one week earlier…’
‘He said one week…’
That meant exactly one week from now, the Emperor intended to cast her away in Namto.
After weighing her options for a moment, Baeksa made her decision.
This time, she would not struggle to be loved; she would allow herself to be abandoned.
Since the same future awaited her either way, she had no desire to remain in this dreadful imperial palace a moment longer.
Even if she could only survive for a single day, she wanted to live outside these palace walls.
In a place where no one would look at her with horror or find her unclean.
Furthermore.
‘I want to see what that thing was…’
The bead she had glimpsed at the very final moment of her life.
Though she hadn’t caught a proper look, it had undeniably possessed a shape remarkably similar to the Dragon Clan’s Cintamani.
‘If only I could see it just one more time.’
If she could just confirm what it was, Baeksa felt she wouldn’t mind dying a bit earlier in this lifetime.
To achieve that, she first had to keep her abnormal ability hidden.
***
If fortune favored her, she might manage to survive out there for at least a few days.
Her abnormal ability, after all, allowed her to absorb anything.
Since she hadn’t absorbed a single thing yet, it would take some time before her body became entirely riddled with contamination.
Even if she only had four days, it would be more than enough time to uncover the true identity of that bead.
Of course, there was a chance that the bead might not appear again…
Even so, Baeksa desperately wanted to return to that place.
Whether it appeared or not, she felt compelled to witness it with her own eyes.
Moreover, if she proved even luckier, she might run into the beast-kin rumored to live in that exiled territory.
Perhaps she could rely on their goodwill to survive for a few days more.
‘Though those people likely won’t be friendly toward me…’
Still, anything would be better than staying here.
Through her sole past experience, Baeksa had already learned that no place on earth was more sorrowful or lonely than the Imperial Court.
Yet, the moment she resolved to leave this place, one thing tugged at her conscience.
‘That hand.’
The hand from which she had absorbed energy day in and day out under the Emperor’s strict command.
What would happen to that person if she simply vanished?
The energy accumulated within that woman’s body had been powerful enough to destroy a young Baeksa’s physical form and drive her to the brink of death.
If she were to disappear now…
Baeksa stared blankly down at her own two hands.
During her days in the imperial palace, there had been a brief fleeting moment when she had drawn comfort from that hand.
Because the Owner of the Hand could neither speak nor move, she had never loathed Baeksa or pushed her away.
Yet at the same time, it brought a profound sadness.
To think that the only beast-kin in this entire place who didn’t shun her was the owner of this hand, who lay there as still as a corpse.
Because of that, Baeksa had sincerely wished for her to wake up quickly.
She had hoped that even after waking, the woman wouldn’t cast her hand aside, just as she hadn’t before.
But she was simultaneously terrified.
Fearing that the moment she awoke, her own usefulness would expire and she would be thrown away.
Terrified that the revived Owner of the Hand might violently push her away, just like her father had…
The moment her thoughts drifted that far, Baeksa shook her head vigorously.
‘No.’
Dwelling on such things would only make it impossible for her to leave.
Then, just like the past, she would end up being used as her father’s tool until she was discarded once more.
‘I’m sorry, nameless… young lady.’
Recalling the young woman’s hand, Baeksa coiled herself up with a sorrowful expression.
‘Even if I stay, I will only become useless to you soon enough.’
So please find another way to wake up quickly, and make a full recovery.
Baeksa truly, deeply hoped the woman could rise again soon.
It was an undeniable fact that she had managed to cling to life just a little longer by holding onto that hand.
Though she had abandoned even that hope now, it didn’t mean the feelings she had harbored back then had dissolved entirely.
It still felt as though the nostalgic scent she had breathed in by that woman’s side was lingering at the tip of her nose.
***
Inside the room where the faint light diffused softly.
The Emperor pulled back the long, draping bead curtain with his hand and asked.
“What is her condition?”

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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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