The Survival Story Of A Fallen Lady - Chapter 48

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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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Fallen Noblewoman’s Survival Record — Episode 48
Seo Gon’s gentle voice carried an oddly chilling edge.
……
“Did you see it, then?”
When Mok Yeon fell silent, the grip of Seo Gon’s hand tightened around her shoulder.
At that, Mok Yeon parted her cracked lips.
“……I did not see it.”
Mok Yeon shook her head, her face buried in his embrace.
Seo Gon studied her intently.
Could she truly not have seen what lay beneath the mask?
Either the rumors were false, or Mok Yeon was lying.
Seo Gon turned the matter over in his mind.
‘Then again, had she seen that face, she wouldn’t have returned to the Wei Wang Estate in one piece.’
Those who had glimpsed Seo Heon’s face fell prey to madness.
“So the fourth brother had you cast out through slander?”
“Not the Muk Wang — it was Jin So-ah, that girl.”
Mok Yeon bit her lip hard as she spoke.
“Jin So-ah?”
“She swaggers through the Muk Wang Estate as though it were her own chambers, and she has insulted me!”
“……Jin So-ah?”
Seo Gon let out a short, sharp laugh.
“You cannot be serious.”
Jin So-ah insulting Mok Yeon?
A stray dog would scoff at the notion.
How docile and passive was that girl.
Always watchful, barely speaking, swallowing her tears even if struck — that was Jin So-ah.
“She did this to my hair, and at the refreshment gathering she snubbed me subtly, excluding me.”
“Mok Yeon, I understand you’re angry, but you’re laying it on too thick. You’ve likely treated that child with your usual disdain.”
“My lord, why do you take her side?”
“I’m not taking her side — but it’s the truth, isn’t it? Even if you asked Jin Dae-in, he wouldn’t believe Jin So-ah insulted you.”
Seo Gon drew Mok Yeon away from his embrace and shook his head.
At that, Mok Yeon’s lips began to tremble.
“That girl is no longer the Jin So-ah you knew, my lord. She obtained the court lady position and has grown arrogant, her head held high.”
“I understand you’re angry, Mok Yeon.”
Seo Gon patted her back gently.
“But it was not Jin So-ah who cut your hair and ordered your exile — it was the fourth brother, was it not?”
“That too was all that girl’s doing……!”
Seo Gon released Mok Yeon from his arms.
“Mok Yeon, compose yourself.”
As his gentle voice subsided, Mok Yeon closed her mouth.
Seo Gon smiled faintly once more.
‘She’s venting her anger on the wrong target.’
Clearly she was blaming innocent Jin So-ah for what she had suffered at Seo Heon’s hands.
Even when she dwelt in the Jin Clan, Mok Yeon had often taken out her moods on Jin So-ah.
“Still, it seems the fourth brother has taken quite a liking to Jin So-ah.”
There was but one reason Seo Heon had treated Mok Yeon so harshly.
He must have witnessed her tormenting and provoking Jin So-ah.
And there was also the matter of Cheonseong and Hyogyeong.
‘Yet to level such charges and exile her for it……’
Seo Gon stroked his chin slowly.
Mok Yeon watched him and asked.
“What do you intend to do about the Muk Wang Estate?”
“What else? I will not allow the fourth brother to have his way.”
“Indeed?”
“The Muk Wang Estate has held autonomous authority under the guise of demon defense and the Seonwi Guard for some time now.”
Yet here they were, barely maintaining a hollow Seonwi Guard.
Seo Gon murmured and tilted his teacup, pouring the remaining tea onto the garden soil.
“I should pay an overdue visit to my elder brother.”
A single peach blossom petal fell onto the dampened earth.
* * *
Days passed like that.
Every time Jin So-ah passed through the Archive Hall, she heard it.
Seo Heon’s desperate silence.
Jin So-ah swallowed his voice in her heart again and again.
Then one evening.
On her way back to her quarters later than usual.
The light in the Training Ground was different from always.
A hazy, precarious white radiance.
It was not Seo Heon.
‘That person….’
A martial artist with bronze-toned skin who always trained alongside Seo Heon.
‘Was his name Mu Jin?’
As the sun set, he repeated the same form over and over again.
Clothes drenched with sweat.
Breath grown ragged.
Three flower petals bloomed across the back of his hand gripping the blade.
Three-Petal Lotus.
It had been bound to that place for years.
Jin So-ah watched his sword quietly.
The harder he strained to open more petals, the more that force scattered them.
‘He clings desperately to a mind that should be empty.’
Just one more step.
One more step and he could bloom the fourth petal.
【Empty yourself.】
Seo Heon’s voice, which she had heard every day for days, surged up to the very edge of her lips as if it were her own.
Jin So-ah’s lips moved without her knowing.
“It is not the sword that….”
It was that moment.
“There.”
In the blink of an eye.
A cold blade barred itself across her throat.
It was Mu Jin.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve spied on a martial technique.”
His keen gaze bore down on Jin So-ah.
“Which faction sent you as a spy?”
His voice was low and steady.
The sharp force of the blade flickered near her neck.
Jin So-ah tore her gaze from the sword and met Mu Jin’s eyes.
“A spy, you say? That is too harsh an accusation.”
When Jin So-ah replied calmly, the tip of Mu Jin’s blade pressed even closer to her throat.
“Then why have you been spying on the Training Ground every day?”
“I was not spying….”
Boom—!
The moment Jin So-ah opened her mouth, the earth trembled with a deafening sound, and a bell tolled.
Clang, clang, clang—!
“Demons!”
The cry of the soldiers atop the City Wall echoed through the air.
Mu Jin’s head turned toward the wall.
Shadows crossed the City Wall, tearing through the darkening sky.
Creatures that seemed like beasts and spirits both, sometimes like monsters.
There were not merely one or two of them.
“Wretched demons daring to….”
Mu Jin gripped his blade.
Celestial Energy surged at its tip, and the three lotus petals on his hand shone brightly.
The demons pouring over the City Wall that touched the Training Ground spotted him and charged forward as if to mock him.
When Mu Jin swung his blade wide in a horizontal arc, the beast-eared demon split apart and scattered.
But that was all.
‘There are too many of them.’
From the front, and from the side.
Jin So-ah bit her dry lips.
Mu Jin alone would have difficulty holding the line against this.
‘Where are the other Seonwi Guard members?’
Jin So-ah glanced around her surroundings.
Their forces were stretched thin.
The clash of blades against demons and cries of alarm echoed from all directions.
As Mu Jin thrust his sword forward, his teeth clenched, the demons tightened their circle around him and Jin So-ah both.
“Get back.”
Mu Jin spoke low, his blade sweeping in an arc.
But Jin So-ah didn’t move.
Or rather, she couldn’t move.
There was no space to retreat into.
The demons had already encircled them both.
Tension coiled through Mu Jin’s jaw.
Jin So-ah studied the back of his hand.
‘His strength is draining away.’
The petals were trembling.
The tighter he gripped the sword, the more unstable the lotus form became.
At last, Jin So-ah spoke.
“Release the sword.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you to release the sword.”
Mu Jin ground his teeth and whirled around sharply.
“What nonsense are you spouting now—!”
“Look at your fingertips, not the blade. That’s what he told you, didn’t he? The young master.”
At those words, Mu Jin’s hand froze for an instant.
Jin So-ah recalled Seo Heon’s voice and stepped closer to Mu Jin.
“The petals crumble because you’re trying to hold them through force.”
Jin So-ah pointed to his sword with a quiet gaze.
“You must empty your mind. Release the thought of victory and the thought of protection alike.”
Mu Jin stared at her.
In a moment this desperate, was she in her right mind?
“And the thought that you cannot win.”
Mu Jin ground his teeth.
‘Easy to say.’
Yet the words felt familiar somehow.
No—he heard them every day.
Only never in a voice. Only in letters.
Mu Jin’s eyes shut reflexively.
Just for a moment.
“Empty your mind and hold only the sword at your fingertips.”
Her quiet voice cast a sharp ripple through his consciousness.
In that instant, the sensation at his fingertips struck him like lightning.
No thought of winning, no thought of protecting.
Only the cool weight of the hilt beneath his grip.
The sound of demons shrieking and rushing from all sides reached his ears with crystalline clarity.
Then Mu Jin’s eyes opened slowly.
At the same moment, a pure white light blazed along the blade.
Jin So-ah squinted against the blinding radiance.
On the back of his sword hand, the fourth petal had bloomed.
Faint and trembling, yet undeniably open.
White brilliance poured along the edge of the blade, sweeping away the demons that had charged forward from the front.
Mu Jin himself seemed startled; the hand gripping his sword trembled slightly.
The petal trembled as well.
Then a soft whisper brushed his ear.
“Draw the Celestial Energy through your empty fingertips.”
……
Mu Jin drew a deep breath.
The petal bloomed dimly again, then withered, bloomed again.
“Now from your fingertips to the blade’s point.”
As the blade ignited with brilliant light once more, Mu Jin swept his sword in a great horizontal arc.
With a sound beyond description, light poured forth and the demons scattered.
A brilliant bloom and a meteor.
Even the shadow rushing from beyond the Training Ground dissolved like dust in that radiant arc.
All that remained was a cloud of pale earth.
Then silence descended.
Mu Jin lowered his sword and gazed at the back of his own hand.
Four petals.
Four-Petal Lotus.
A realm that had eluded him for years was blooming there on his palm.
“Ha……!”
Copying the Sacred Incantation that Seo Heon had written for him, memorizing it, gripping the blade differently, standing in a new stance.
A realm he could never reach despite years of effort.
Days when fear bloomed—perhaps this was the limit of his talent.
As if a single blood meridian had been blocked, a realm that had refused to yield despite decades of striving suddenly opened from just a few words by this woman.
“…….”
Mu Jin said nothing for a long time.
Only after a while did he look up and meet Jin So-ah’s eyes.
His black pupils trembled.
Awe and bewilderment tangled together.
“You are…….”
Mu Jin’s low voice echoed across the empty ground.
“What, exactly?”
How do you know the incantations of the Way of the Immortal, read the flow of Celestial Energy, and awaken his blade with mere words?
Then Jin So-ah laughed softly.
“First, let me assure you—I am not a saboteur.”

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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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