The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 1

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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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A Declining Clan’s Limited Time with Spirit — Episode 1

To live in the Murim with an ailing body was not unlike having guilt planted in one’s chest in place of a heart, then breathing through its blood. That had been Dan Mok-ryeon’s brief life.
The backs of the adults were always distant, and the younger sibling who once stood behind her had, as time passed, moved ahead and left her behind.
Yet when the Hyeol-la-gok surged forth again and shook the Murim, when the family crumbled beneath its onslaught, there was no one who could stop it.
And when death drew near, it had almost been a comfort.
This suffering—the pain of countless awls boring holes through her body, watching her family endure hardships she could not change—it would all finally end.
It was ending at last…….
Or so it was.

* * *

“This doesn’t make sense…….”
A young girl sat upon the bed, her expression grave.
Though sickness marked her plainly—her complexion pale, her frame frail—her eyes held a luminous quality, sparkling like stars caught within them, shifting with each turn of her gaze.
‘How is this possible? How am I alive again? And not merely alive, but having rewound through time itself……?’
The girl, Dan Mok-ryeon, stared down at her shortened limbs, clutching at her head.
She had died. The memory of death was unmistakable.
The pain that had tormented her entire life slowly receding, slipping into that long sleep that would stretch forever. And then the earth had covered her, and for ages she had drifted through that dark realm.
Then suddenly she was pulled into somewhere, saw far too much, and the next instant her eyes snapped open—to find herself here.
All Things in the Universe.
She had glimpsed everything—here and there, past and future, the non-existent and the familiar.

‘And all that time, I…….’
As Mok-ryeon retraced her fragmented memories, searching her thoughts over and over, a gasp tore from her lips like a thunderbolt.
“Ah!”
But before she could dwell on what she had just recalled, someone entered from outside.
“Young mistress, you’re awake?”
It was Jang, the nursemaid who had cared for her since birth, stepping through the threshold.
Jang always smiled whenever she saw her, and her eyes bore soft creases from years of doing so.
“Nu…… rse.”
“Young mistress, there are yak-gwa today as well. Once you finish your herbal decoction, you may have them as a reward.”
Beside a white porcelain bowl holding a herbal decoction so dark it appeared nearly black sat a yak-gwa glazed thinly with sugar. But knowing the taste of the decoction well, Mok-ryeon made a face.
“……Must I take the herbal decoction? What if I skip both the medicine and the yak-gwa?”
“Do not speak such nonsense.”
Nursemaid Jang spoke sternly, and at her words, Mok-ryeon reluctantly accepted the bowl of decoction.
Nursemaid Jang had always been attentive to her needs. And she was the one who had never left her side during those seven years of bedridden stillness.
Knowing how much the nursemaid had worried and fretted all this time, Mok-ryeon could not bring herself to refuse the medicine.
As she gulped down the decoction, her brows furrowed against the bitterness, and the moment her eyes opened again, Nursemaid Jang was gazing at her with overwhelming emotion—tears glistening at the corners of her eyes.
And when Mok-ryeon opened her eyes fully for the first time, every member of the household wore much the same expression.
Whenever she parted her lips to speak, whenever she made a bitter grimace while drinking the medicinal brew, whenever her face softened at the sweetness of a dried persimmon—each gesture seemed to swell their hearts and bring tears welling to their eyes.
And no wonder!
‘Seven years without regaining consciousness. I have returned to this time.’
For reasons unknown, Mok-ryeon’s Soul had been severed from her body at the moment of her birth.
For seven years, her empty shell of a body lay motionless unless lifted and placed upright, ate nothing unless forced to eat. She did not weep, did not laugh, did not speak.
So the Great Family decided to attempt an extraordinary technique called Beolmo Sesu in a desperate effort to awaken her.
‘Mother truly is……she rushed headlong into that expensive technique without even knowing if Beolmo Sesu would work on me.’
Beolmo Sesu was a grand technique ordinarily performed on newly born children. It rapidly established the foundation of the Dantian, burned away Turbid Qi, and realigned the bones and sinews, tempering the body to be suitable for the study of martial arts.
It was not a cure for illness—more like grasping at straws—yet astonishingly, the method had worked!
When the grand technique ended successfully, Mok-ryeon rose miraculously from her bed.
Now that the small child finally made expressions and began to speak, what must the hearts of those watching her feel like?
Her mother, overcome with joy at seeing her daughter restored to awareness, had wept until she nearly fainted, leaving the nursemaid to tend to her in her stead.
Nursemaid Jang, too, felt her heart swell, quickly wiping her tears away before setting the yak-gwa before Mok-ryeon.
“Oh my. What a composed little thing you are.”
Mok-ryeon nibbled at the yak-gwa, thinking it preferable to bitter medicine, while cautiously studying Nursemaid Jang’s expression.
“Nanny, you know… I want to go outside. Just to the garden in front of the house.”
“Of course, Miss. I’ll ask the elders and bring back their permission.”
The nanny spoke gently, then lifted her into her arms and patted her back. The child who had spent seven years like a doll was far too small for her age of seven.

* * *

The moment the nanny, believing her asleep, slipped quietly out of the room, Dan Mok-ryeon bolted upright, seized the mirror, and fed a pale blue energy rising from her fingertips into it.
At the same moment, characters began to bloom across its surface. Had anyone witnessed this scene, they would have collapsed in shock at such inscrutable sorcery.

[User confirmed: Dan Mok-ryeon]
[Display mode adjusted for convenience…… ■■□□□]

Below that, a single line of text scrolled slowly from right to left.

[Displaying information the user can comprehend.]
[Output in the display mode for fastest understanding.]

The boxes indicating the display mode change began to fill one by one, until all five were complete.

[■■■□□]
[■■■■□]
[■■■■■]
[Change complete!]
[The Immortal Mirror

begins to appear!]

‘The fastest way the user can understand this…’
It meant the system had adapted itself so she could grasp this situation quickly.
‘Damn. This is all I’m capable of?’
That… she couldn’t deny.
“Coming back from the dead has its merits, then.”
While her soul drifted through the nine heavens, she had seen much and learned even more.
To know is to understand, and to understand is to be able to manifest it anew.
Though returning to the past had meant forgetting most of what her body couldn’t bear, just as knowledge once ingrained in flesh never truly fades, Dan Mok-ryeon could perceive through the wisdom carved into her soul—only as much as was possible for her, only in ways she could comprehend.
And this—this was exactly that way.
That was precisely what this method was.
Dan Mok-ryeon suppressed her embarrassment and stared hard at the mirror. Soon, characters as if written in ink began to shimmer across its surface.
Like this, precisely.

Dan Mok-ryeon
Traits: Limitless Spring of Spiritual Energy / Half-awakened / Mourned by Evil / Hothouse Blossom in Decline
Harmony: 7 Stars
Heart Eye: 2 Stars
Purification: 1 Star
Vitality: 3 / 100
Internal Power: Cannot Acquire
External Power: Not Acquired
Aptitude: Measurement Error
Five Stars: Measurement Error
Spiritual Energy: 76 / 100
Warning: Maintain Spiritual Energy at 50 or below. Prolonged exposure exceeding two months in this state will result in death.

‘A mirror that shows only what’s possible, only in ways I can understand…’
But seeing and possessing are two different matters. Most of her stats were painfully sparse. Vitality at three out of one hundred, External Power not yet acquired.
‘And Internal Power is impossible to acquire.’
Dan Mok-ryeon clutched her head. Yet the Spiritual Energy column alone soared to heaven-piercing heights.
This was the greatest obstacle of her life.
In a Murim where one could never reach the highest peak with External Power alone, she could not cultivate Internal Power.
No matter how she escaped death from her vessel shattering under the weight of such inhumanly excessive Spiritual Energy, could she truly survive as a Murim master like this?
In my past life, I’d never learned martial arts, so I never knew such things existed.
Aptitude and Five Stars were said to be measurement errors, so I couldn’t know those either—but in the meantime, Spiritual Energy flickered in a vivid red. Below it, a warning appeared.

Warning: Keep Spiritual Energy at 50 or below. If this state persists for more than two months, death will result.

Right. The most pressing concern now was my own life—with two months remaining.
‘Keep Spiritual Energy at 50 or below?’
Still, seeing the numbers clearly displayed gave me some small comfort amid the dread.
It meant I just had to lower it to 50 by whatever means necessary. Though how I’d actually do that was another matter entirely.
“What on earth is this trait…”
I couldn’t make sense of things like “Blessed by Malice” or “Half-Awakened,” but I understood “Infinite Wellspring of Spiritual Energy” and “Sickly Flower in a Hothouse” perfectly.
The reason she’d finally met death before her regression—a body unable to contain the overflowing Spiritual Energy, creaking endlessly under the strain.
But that would not be the case now.
My hands clenched into fists. I didn’t understand why, but somehow I’d returned to the past.
I understood now why I’d been in pain all that time. And now I knew how to become healthy again.
“From now on, I’ll live without accident, without disaster, without sickness—I swear it!”

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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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