The Little Baby Snake of the Vermilion Bird Family - Chapter 57

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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 57
Ju Jeokseo’s flame rose like a pillar, forming a barrier.
The Flame Barrier enclosed the Ghost Dragon on all sides, sealing it off from the world beyond.
The Flame of the Vermilion Bird, which incinerated everything into ash, now blazed as if to burn the Ghost Dragon to cinders.
Even as he contained the creature, his mind raced.
‘Yeonyeon must be inside. I have to be extremely careful.’
A reckless attack on the Ghost Dragon risked grievous harm to the child within its belly.
Learning that it was truly the Ghost Dragon from the Imperial Palace that had taken Baeksa—that realization set his thoughts ablaze with fury.
‘When I left her to die, where was this impulse to abduct her? Now it strikes?’
Ju Jeokseo had come perilously close to killing his own blood with his own hands because of the Emperor.
Had he been the sort of man who could overlook a child, he would have become someone far colder—a man who abandoned his beloved sister’s daughter to perish.
Even now, the thought made his blood boil and churn in his veins.
But an abduction? That was beyond the pale.
‘I won’t tolerate it. Not for a moment.’
Ju Jeokseo could not strike the Emperor directly. His own strength mattered little in this regard.
When the Haeseo Kingdom was first established in the beginning, the Four Symbols Divine Beasts swore never to betray the Yellow Dragon, pledging loyalty for all their days.
The Yellow Dragon was a being sent by Heaven itself.
A Celestial Being who inherited the power of Heaven.
Thus, the Four Divine Beasts could never betray the Celestial Dragon under any circumstance.
That oath remained binding even now, inherited by the current Family Heads who bore the Divine Beast’s power.
So while the Emperor could attack the Four Symbols Divine Beasts, the Family Heads of each house could never directly strike the Dragon they served.
But the Ghost Dragon was different.
This was no Emperor. It was merely a monster—nothing more than the accumulated resentment of countless dead dragons bound together.
In other words, whether he killed it or let it live, none would interfere.
He shot skyward, then descended at shattering speed, slashing through the Ghost Dragon’s form.
The creature’s body—murky as shadow, dense as fog—split apart for an instant before reassembling.
But he gave himself no moment to sigh or despair. He resumed his assault at once.
As the enormous Vermilion Bird—its wings vast enough to blot out the sky—charged toward the Ghost Dragon, its power wavered for a moment.
Ju Jeokseo seized the creature’s neck in his talons and burned its spirit repeatedly in the Flame of the Vermilion Bird.
The terribly cursed soul shrieked as it was scourged by the all-consuming fire.
He held fast to the Ghost Dragon’s throat and shouted with all his strength.
“Yeonyeon! Can you hear your uncle?”
He bellowed with every ounce of his power.
“I’m coming! Don’t be frightened! I’ll get you out!”
He conjured a massive inferno and crashed down upon the Ghost Dragon once more.
A deafening explosion tore through the air.
The Ghost Dragon’s claws raked brutally across Ju Jeokseo’s chest.
***
“Uncle’s voice…!”
Baeksa’s head snapped up.
She hadn’t misheard.
That was unmistakably Hwanya and Ju Jeokseo.
Baeksa pressed her lips together and scrubbed her eyes with her sleeves.
Without doubt, her uncle and Hwanya were fighting outside to rescue her.
But she couldn’t sit here like a fool and weep.
‘I have to get out somehow.’
The moment Baeksa sprang to her feet—
Shhhhswish!
Black hands shot out from all sides, seizing her legs.
Dozens of voices erupted around her at once.
“Stay with us.”
“Don’t go, little dragon.
“Stay, stay, stay with us. Your soul too.”
Dozens of discordant voices assailed her ears. Baeksa clapped her hands over them in confusion.
‘Little dragon? What do they mean?’
They must be mistaken. She was a snake.
All the spirits mingled here were dragon souls. She was a snake. Her soul could never be part of theirs.
Yet the spirits paid that no mind, extending their terrible hands toward the small serpent.
“Don’t go. You cannot leave.”
“Little dragon, you can live here forever with us.”
“With us….”
“No!”
Baeksa thrashed with all her might and cried out. She tore herself free from the force clinging to her.
“I have to leave! I can’t stay here!”
Yet even as she spoke those words, the small serpent felt an unexpected loneliness wash over her.
‘Oh.’
The countless memory fragments she’d glimpsed just moments ago came flooding back.
In those memories, no one had wanted to remain in such a place of their own will.
‘These dragons don’t want to be here either.’
No one desired to become this.
These spirits didn’t truly wish to be together—rather, the truth was….
‘They want to escape.’
They were all trapped within this place.
But that didn’t mean she had to trap herself alongside them.
Her family waited for her outside.
Her uncle had come to rescue her. Hwanya had come. She couldn’t ignore them and remain here.
She couldn’t merge with these spirits.
Yet having glimpsed their memories, she found it difficult to regard them with pure revulsion. That too was part of Baeksa’s nature.
It had always been harder for her to despise others than to despise herself. Since childhood, self-hatred came more easily than hatred of another.
The small serpent reached out carefully to caress the aura that coiled around her.
“Listen… I promise I’ll come back to help you later.”
The girl gently bit her lower lip.
“I mean it. Right now I’m still too young and powerless, but….”
Surely if she found a way, couldn’t she free the spirits trapped within this place?
But first, she had to leave.
“So please, let me go now.”
The moment Baeksa murmured these words, something glimmered inside her clothes.
She reached in as if mesmerized, and her fingers found something soft and downy.
“This is…!”
The Guiding Feather that Hwanya had given her.
The very feather she’d promised to return later.
“Could it be…?”
Ju Jeokseo had told her: this Guiding Feather was a Sacred Object of her mother, one that showed the way home.
Which meant, perhaps….
‘It might let me escape from here.’
The moment she grasped the feather in both hands, the small bird still locked in fierce standoff, still protecting Baeksa, turned to look at her.
With a joyful trill, it flew up and slipped directly into the feather she held.
And then, the next instant—
Burst!
An overwhelming light exploded outward, seeming to annihilate everything in its path, and a warm, enveloping power enfolded Baeksa.
***
Where the Ghost Dragon’s claws had raked, deep gashes remained.
The wounds were dangerously close to his heart.
‘I have to finish this and return quickly.’
Delay any further and victory was no longer certain.
It would have been easier if his goal were to obliterate the Ghost Dragon entirely.
But his objective was not its destruction—it was to rescue Baeksa safely from within.
That meant he was expending twice his normal strength and stamina.
Even as he bled and gasped—
Burst!
A blinding light erupted from within the Ghost Dragon’s body, consuming everything.
Recognizing whose power this was, Ju Jeokseo’s eyes flew wide.
‘Ju Myeongyeong…?’
This light was hers.
The Supernatural Ability of the one who guided all home—Ju Myeongyeong’s power alone.
A gift possessed only by the White Vermilion Bird herself.
‘How could her power…?’
As Ju Jeokseo looked up, he saw a small form separating within the light.
The Ghost Dragon’s body split in two, and between the halves, a small girl descended with aching slowness.
It was Baeksa.
“Yeonyeon!”
Wounded as he was, he flew swiftly toward her falling form.
The enormous Vermilion Bird caught the girl safely before she struck the ground.
But Yeonyeon was so small and light that there was almost no sensation of catching her at all.
Even knowing he’d caught her, Ju Jeokseo felt a flutter of fear when he couldn’t feel the serpent’s weight.
He landed swiftly and released his Beast Form, gathering Baeksa into his arms.
“Little one?”
But it was no mistake.
It truly was Yeonyeon.
She’d been there the whole time, light as thistledown against his back.
Baeksa stared up at Ju Jeokseo with wide, astonished eyes. The moment he saw her face, he pulled her close in a fierce embrace.

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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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