The Survival Story Of A Fallen Lady - Chapter 62

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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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The Fall of a Noblewoman’s Survival 062
Seo Heon opened the door and stepped into the Archives.
The air was thick with the scent of ink and paper.
A single thread of lamplight wavered quietly in the stillness.
And beneath it.
‘So Ah?’
Before a desk stacked with several volumes.
So Ah lay sprawled asleep.
‘Why is So Ah here at this hour……?’
It was past midnight.
She’d been tormenting herself at the Training Grounds since early dawn with the Seonwidae members, so she must have been exhausted.
And that was not all.
Between managing affairs of the Byeokroe Trading Company, she was keeping a schedule busier than most court officials.
‘Come to think of it…….’
“Not long ago, the Jeongwang Territory sent word requesting a transaction of Byeokroe Salt,” she had said.
So Ah’s words had proven true.
Since rumors of Seo Heon’s curse had faded, more and more nobility had begun seeking Byeokroe Salt.
Visitors had also increased to the Mugwang Territory, once called the Cursed Land of the frontier.
Unable to manage the sudden influx of outsiders, Woo Je seemed to have his own headaches.
‘The inns are inadequate, it seems.’
It was true—being a place that rarely received guests, there was a shortage of sufficient lodgings and provisions to entertain them properly.
That was why, he’d heard, So Ah and Woo Je had met this afternoon.
‘Yet she came to the Archives at this hour.’
The small frame slumped over the desk tugged at his heart.
‘And her shoulder wounds aren’t even fully healed yet.’
Seo Heon removed his outer robe to slip it beneath her arm as support.
“Mm…….”
At his touch, So Ah shifted slightly.
‘Has she woken?’
In the moment he held his breath.
Fortunately, So Ah slipped back into sleep without stirring.
He slowly arranged the robe beneath her and exhaled the breath he’d been holding.
Her long hair flowed softly across the desk’s surface.
Beneath the dimly flickering lamp, her face was illuminated.
“Is she not herself a Celestial Lotus?”
Suddenly the words the Seonwidae members had been murmuring earlier that day came to mind.
The lotus of the immortals—the Celestial Lotus.
Among the Seonwidae, that epithet had quietly become her sobriquet.
‘A lotus, then.’
Crystal-clear luminosity and a subtle fragrance that drifted far and wide.
A flower that took root in muddy water, rose straight above its surface, and bloomed.
Seo Heon thought it a fitting name for her.
‘But what books could she have been reading until this hour?’
Seo Heon’s eyes moved to the volumes scattered around her.
‘These texts…….’
All records concerning Sword Qi and demons.
Beside them lay a notebook she had arranged.
─ The purpose of the Primary Form is to forget the Primary Form
─ The arms are the sword’s flexibility; the legs are the sword’s strength; the waist is the sword’s axis.
The traces of an effort to inscribe the unfamiliar were evident.
‘Could she really be working this hard for the Seonwidae……?’
He had thought it no difficult task.
It was merely a matter of conveying what he had taught her.
But So Ah had not stopped there.
‘She spoke so confidently of her talent…….’
Yet here she was laboring in secret like this.
No one in the Seonwidae knew that So Ah was studying the Sword Specialist arts through the night with such dedication.
He found himself uncertain.
‘Even though she knows she will leave this place in a few years.’
After all, it was only a place where she would stay briefly before departing.
Why does she pour her heart into this place she’s about to leave, why does she linger even as she goes?
Seo Heon gazed at the strands of hair fallen across her cheek and reached out his hand carefully, but then withdrew his fingertips inward.
【……If I let attachment take root like this, what then?】
Seo Heon turned his head away.
It hardly seemed like a night for reading.
He bent at the waist and blew out the lamp’s flame, which still burned bright.
Part of him wanted to carry her to her room himself.
【But I cannot afford to deepen this bond.】
Where the flame had been.
A thin wisp of white smoke curled upward.
Seo Heon turned and walked away.
The door closed, his footsteps faded, and in the darkness, eyelids that had been tightly shut slowly opened.
She sat up and saw his black Jangpo tucked beneath her arm.
His warmth still lingered in the cloth.
‘……How cowardly of me.’
So Ah lifted her head and gazed out the window.
She couldn’t say who was the more cowardly of them both.
* * *
The next morning.
The moment the Chief Steward entered, Seo Heon handed him a small note at once.
The Chief Steward was startled by how the note was thrust at him, as though it had been waiting.
This wasn’t a man given to such haste.
Had some grave matter arisen?
The Chief Steward unfolded the note hastily and read it again, adjusting his glasses.
[Deliver the Training Records from my private archive to Jin Jae-in.]
So it was about Jin Jae-in.
The corner of the Chief Steward’s mouth twitched with a suppressed smile.
“You wish to show His Lordship’s personal records to Jin Jae-in?”
Those were records he rarely showed even to other members of Seonwidae.
Yet he was going to grant Jin Jae-in access to such precious documents.
Then Seo Heon turned his gaze to the window and gave a low, hollow cough.
[I thought it might aid Seonwidae’s training.]
The Chief Steward nodded at the brief brushwork.
“Indeed. A wise decision, sir.”
The Chief Steward’s mouth curved in a pleased smile.
So he truly did think of Jin Jae-in as one of his own now.
The Sword Specialist was a treasure of Mugwang Territory.
To give her the training records written by someone who had reached the Five Lotus Petals realm carried enormous meaning.
“Then I shall retrieve them from the archive at once and deliver them.”
The Chief Steward withdrew with light, quick steps.
Seo Heon watched his retreating figure and exhaled softly.
‘With that record, perhaps she’ll lose a little sleep.’
Seo Heon thought so and returned his attention to his duties.
[Report on Yadalfolk Southern Movement]
He took up the report that had come from the Northwest Frontier Line.
It was an uncertain time, with both creatures and foreign peoples beyond the border growing restless.
The strengthening of Seonwidae was essential.
After some time attending to his affairs, Seo Heon moved to his private archive to locate the texts he needed.
But one section of the shelf was empty.
‘The Chief Steward must have taken the record.’
As Seo Heon lightly ran his hand over the vacant space, he discovered that the records on the lower right had also vanished, and he turned back in alarm.
It was gone. That record.
【Did the Chief Steward take this one too……!】
Seo Heon pressed his hand to his forehead.
* * *
Young Gyo’s eyes lit up when she saw the box arrive at her quarters.
The box the Chief Steward had brought personally was crafted from precious Jadan Wood.
“His Lordship has instructed me to deliver this to you, Jae-in.”
“His Lordship?”
So Ah had not expected such a gift.
“Please, open it.”
The old administrator urged her forward with a satisfied expression.
When she lifted the lid, several worn books emerged.
They were marked with fingerprints—volumes she’d never seen in the Archives.
No covers, sewn together carelessly with thread, they seemed at odds with the precious Jadan Wood chest that held them.
“These are training records that Seo Baek wished to share especially with you alone, to aid your Seonwidae training.”
The old administrator’s face shone with self-satisfaction.
The expression of someone watching their designs come to perfect fruition.
So Ah found his expression puzzling, but she accepted Seo Heon’s records with gratitude and withdrew inside.
‘Ah, it must be about what happened in the Archives last night.’
So Ah opened a drawer and saw the carefully folded Jangpo laid inside.
She’d slipped in before dawn to place it there—if Young Gyo saw it, there would be no end of fuss.
‘If the administrator knew, she’d surely have much to say about it too…….’
So Ah decided to return the records along with the robe in the box later, and she laid out Seo Heon’s journals on her desk.
Among them, one book stood out—noticeably older than the rest.
Likely the first record he’d ever begun to keep.
So Ah carefully opened the first page of the most worn volume.
‘An unfamiliar hand…….’
Writing from fingers far younger than those that held the brush now—letters still unrefined, uncertain.
The flow of Sword Qi and the interpretation of Gugyeol.
Page after page was filled with the painstaking process of self-taught mastery.
Before Seo Heon had even turned ten.
Small hands scrawling clumsily across the paper.
So Ah read through the young Seo Heon’s words, line by line.
Around twenty pages in,
a crooked note appeared in the margin.
[Still couldn’t do it today. Why can he do it?]
The handwriting trembled with frustration.
So Ah let out a soft laugh—a complaint she’d never heard from the Seo Heon of the present day.
‘He must mean Seo Baek.’
So they said Seo Baek had taught him swordplay in those early years?
The current Seo Baek wouldn’t be able to keep pace with Seo Heon’s blade.
But back then, when he’d first grasped the sword, things must have been quite different.
And a few pages later,
[Tenth day and still nothing. I hate him.]
So Ah burst into laughter at the furious scratching of the letters.
The man who became Lyre Empire’s only master of the Five Lotus Petals.
At twelve years old, he’d already bloomed his fourth petal and earned reverence as a Sword Specialist—yet even he had known such a time as this.
She noticed the blur of ink where tears had fallen.
She could picture young Seo Heon, sniffling quietly as he scrawled, unmasked and voicing his curses at his brother.
A Seo Heon before the mask, before silence.
So Ah laughed for a long time.
And as that laughter faded, strangely, her eyes grew hot.

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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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