The Morning Star Baby Wants a Family - Chapter 17

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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 17
After I sent off my newborn brother and held my mother’s funeral, the first person to seek me out was a middle-aged man.
He did not comfort me with honeyed words. He merely gestured once to those standing behind him.
Sixteen was an age in full bloom.
Unfortunately, I bore my mother’s beauty.
The man operated a large Gibang. On the first floor, he sold alcohol and food; on the second floor, he sold laughter.
Dragged to that place, I fought for my life to escape. In my hands was a sword I had seized from one of the guards.
After that day, I learned the blade. Naturally, I could not receive proper instruction under a good master.
Mercenaries sent from the Gibang, bandits who coveted me alone, guards of merchants who sold humans instead of goods—they became my teachers and my opponents.
I survived like a beast. As my sword grew fiercer and sharper, my body accumulated scars both deep and shallow.
As my beauty faded, the grasping hands of desire gradually withdrew.
What remained for me was still a single sword.
At nineteen, I became a cheap mercenary. Pointed at as a human butcher, I did whatever work paid.
Then my circumstances improved somewhat. I no longer went hungry, and I could even afford a new sword.
I thought this was enough. I did not even hear laments about my squalid existence. Living was sufficient.
The news that the Previous Tamrang Seongggun, one of the Seven Star Army, had passed was merely a distant tale to me.
Until, on a moonless night, the Warriors of the Yul Clan came seeking me.
They separated me from my companions like herding beasts, then surrounded me.
It was an attack aimed at precisely one person.
I did not recognize the Yul Clan’s crest embroidered on their garments, nor did I understand why they sought to kill me.
As I gripped my sword with my deeply wounded arm, a middle-aged woman emerged from among the Warriors.
She appeared exceedingly noble. Grace emanated from the tips of her fingers as she held the hem of her robe fluttering in the night wind, and even the fine lines around her eyes were beautiful.
“So it is you. The last seed my husband scattered.”
In a voice as refined as if she had never spoken an unkind word in her life, the woman spoke.
Her name was So Yeon-hwa.
She was the lady of the Yul Household and the legitimate wife of the deceased Previous Tamrang Seongggun.
The Previous Tamrang Seongggun was a lecher. He not only took multiple concubines but visited the Giru every single day.
Naturally, the Yul Residence overflowed with illegitimate children. There were not only the children of concubines but also those who came knocking at the Main Gate claiming the Previous Tamrang Seongggun as their father.
The power of the Heavenly Person was inherited randomly among those who carried the Previous Seongggun’s blood.
Since Yeon-hwa bore only one legitimate son, the prospect of that child becoming the Heavenly Person seemed remote.
Watching the arrogant concubines and their children, Yeon-hwa held her one and only son close and whispered to him.
“Do not worry. This household will be yours in the end.”
From some point onward, the Previous Tamrang Seongggun began to waste away.
And his children, who had overflowed the Residence, began to die one by one.
Some coughed blood and died while eating; some became cold corpses in their Bedchamber the next morning.
Some disappeared without a trace, and some were found with ropes around their necks.
On the day the last illegitimate child of the Yul Household went missing, the Tamrang Seongggun lying on his sickbed also breathed his last.
Yeon-hwa watched all these events unfold with a quiet smile.
The power of the Heavenly Person passes to the heir after the Previous Seongggun’s death.
Now only her one son remained as the direct line of the Yul Household.
All that remained was for my only son to inherit Tamlang’s power and become the head of the Yul Family.
Yet no matter how long I waited, the power of Tamlang Fortress never manifested in my son.
Throughout the Marketplace, rumors spread that Heaven itself had brought divine punishment upon the Yul Family because of my cruelty.
But Yeon-hwa paid no heed to such baseless gossip.
Instead, she uncovered a single, ancient truth.
Nineteen years ago, a courtesan named Moo-hee had borne a child after spending one night with my husband.
Moo-hee was dead, but the child lived. It had taken considerable time to find him, as he had wandered without settling in any one place.
Standing before the child she had finally found, Yeon-hwa smiled.
At that smile, Seowan lunged forward. But the blade he drew with his last ounce of strength could not even sever a single strand of her hair.
Clang!
The chipped sword clattered to the ground.
Pinned down by the Warrior, Seowan stared up at Yeon-hwa with eyes filled with terror and confusion.
“Is this the one?”
The Warrior nodded at Yeon-hwa’s question.
Yeon-hwa spoke in a voice as light as a gentle breeze.
“Then kill him.”
Seowan knew nothing.
Not who his father was, nor what this woman before him had done all these years.
Yet one thing was certain—she intended to kill me.
“Please, spare my life.”
Seowan ceased his resistance. His body bent low until his forehead touched the ground.
“Cut off these presumptuous hands if you wish, and I shall accept it. Sever my tongue so I cannot speak of today’s events, and I shall obey. Gouge out my eyes so I may never recognize your face for the rest of my life—do as you please.”
It was a base and pitiful plea. Yet Seowan felt no shame.
I had never once stood upon pride. What mattered had always been one thing alone.
“Only let me keep my life.”
At that entreaty, Yeon-hwa gestured. One of the Warriors restraining Seowan roughly lifted his face.
“Child.”
Yeon-hwa’s voice was gentle.
“Do you know what the greatest wisdom I have gained in all my years of living is?”
Her tone was as tender as a mother soothing a child, yet her eyes were piercingly cold.
“When killing an insect, one must always cut off its breath with certainty.”
Yeon-hwa had witnessed the final moments of all the illegitimate children.
She had etched into her memory the instant their breath ceased, the light fading from their desperate, thrashing eyes.
“Even if I were to cut off your hands as you say, sever your tongue, and gouge out your eyes—”
That is why she had come to this Dirty Place today.
She needed to witness with her own eyes the death of the last remaining bloodline of the Yul Family.
“What if, by some chance, you yet drew breath and brought harm to my son?”
Yeon-hwa laughed. Her composure was impeccable, not a single hair out of place.
“The living cannot be trusted. Only the dead are certain.”
Having spoken these gentle words, Yeon-hwa raised her hand lightly—a gesture laden with unmistakable intent.
Blood vessels burst across my eyes. The glinting blade hurtling toward me seemed to move in slow motion—impossibly, agonizingly slow.
I wanted to live.
To do that, I had to kill.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
In that instant, the Warrior who had been about to pierce me exploded.
Blood and flesh scattered in all directions.
The Warriors restraining me recoiled in horror, but they met the same fate.
Freed from my bonds, I rose slowly to my feet. My eyes, drenched in blood and burning crimson, began to glow a deep, terrible blue.
Tamrang Fortress had chosen a new master.
With each step I took, the Warriors collapsed in grotesque ruin.
Yeon-hwa, her face drained of all color, tried to flee, but a curtain woven from blood barred her escape.
“Hah… hah…”
Yeon-hwa collapsed at the sight of the horror before her.
I gazed down at her in silence.
“Ahhh, ahhhhhhh!”
The agony began at her feet. The blood flowing through her body began to desiccate, starting from her toes.
“P-please… spare me… spare me…”
Unable to use her withered feet, Yeon-hwa crawled forward on her arms, grasping at my legs.
“I accept my fate. It is only what I deserve. But my son… my son, I beg you—spare him.”
In the blink of an eye, the positions of supplicant and judge had reversed.
How cruelly ironic this was.
I gazed down at Yeon-hwa, mired in filth, and recalled her own words.
The living cannot be certain of anything.
The next moment, her body stiffened instantly. She became a desiccated corpse without even a final scream.
I looked down at what remained in silence.
I could instinctively understand what this power tearing through my body was.
A hollow laugh escaped me.
It was a power I had never desired, yet I knew exactly what I must do with it.
I moved forward slowly.
The Yul Family Residence. There, Yeon-hwa’s son and the servants bound to him awaited.
Those who might become the “one in a thousand” still remained.

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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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