The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 122

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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 Decline of a Great House: A Martyr’s Fading Days — Episode 122

Dan Mok Ryeon, mortified to be alone with her thoughts, suddenly caught the eye of Hwa Ryun across the room. Her gaze curved with amusement.
“But having my brother play with me against his will isn’t exactly a victory, is it?”
“Your brother won’t play unless you make him want to. You can’t have everything. You have to give something up.”
“If I were nicer, wouldn’t he play with me then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Your brother doesn’t seem like a nice person. If he played with nice people, that would make him nice too.”
In that instant, Nam Gung Seo Jin sprang to his feet and gave Dan Mok Bi a gentle shove.
“Hey! Our brother is… he’s kind….”
“Our sister is the nice one! Our brother isn’t!”
“No… wait… I mean… but our brother is nice too! He is, he is!”
Dan Mok Ryeon and Nam Gung Seo Geon, both eavesdropping on the children, felt heat flood their faces.
And in that same moment, Mo Yong Seol Ho abruptly pushed open the door. The children’s eyes widened like startled rabbits.
Mo Yong Seol Ho stepped aside with a gesture of his chin.
“Go. Run to your siblings.”
“B-Brother…?”
“Sister!”
While Nam Gung Seo Jin hesitated in surprise, Dan Mok Bi shot up from her seat and practically charged at Dan Mok Ryeon, hurling herself into her arms and whispering urgently.
“I kept Seo Jin calm for you.”
“You… you did wonderfully.”
Nam Gung Seo Geon glanced back and forth between the siblings and Seo Jin. Mo Yong Seol Ho gave him a light nudge.
“…Seo Jin, I’m sorry. I was startled. Let’s go back now.”
“Sniff…”
Nam Gung Seo Jin, still trembling, took hesitant steps forward, and sensing no resistance, finally buried the top of his head against Nam Gung Seo Geon’s chest. Nam Gung Seo Geon looked toward Dan Mok Ryeon, unsure and awkward. Dan Mok Ryeon tilted her chin downward in encouragement. Watching her brother pat the child nestled in his arms, Nam Gung Seo Geon’s eyes trembled for a long moment before he wrapped an arm around his sibling’s back.
“…!”
Nam Gung Seo Jin’s head jerked up in surprise, then he quickly buried it again—as though if he didn’t let on that he’d noticed, Nam Gung Seo Geon would keep comforting him.
The awkward, poignant reunion between the brothers continued.
“Don’t you smell something strange?”
“….”
“….”
All the children turned to stare at Mo Yong Seol Ho with expressions of disbelief.
“You always have to ruin these moments.”
“No, seriously. Don’t you smell something burning?”
“What?”
Nam Gung Hye Min, who had been watching the brothers’ reconciliation with an especially moved expression—being a retainer of the Nam Gung house—suddenly spun around in alarm.
The others startled at her urgency, and even Nam Gung Seo Geon looked at her with growing unease.
“What… what is it?”
“The sound of war weapons…. We should get inside the compound at once. We’re too close to the outer grounds….”
Her first words were low but clear. At the mention of “war weapons,” the children’s eyes widened in shock, and in that instant, Dan Mok Ryeon clamped a hand over her mouth. The nausea rising in her throat demanded it.
“Sister? Are you all right?”
“…There are intruders.”
“Pardon?”
“What?”
As those around her scrambled in confusion, Jung Young drew his blade the moment he heard her words.
And not long after, Nam Gung Hye Min likewise unsheathed her sword as if pricked by a needle and herded all the children back inside the room.
“Stay here!”
“W-What’s happening?”
Nam Gung Seo Geon instinctively pulled Nam Gung Seo Jin tightly against him, as if locking him away within his own embrace.
“The lord recently warned us of movements among suspicious elements. It seems they’ve come.”
“What? But that shouldn’t be a problem, should it…?”
Nam Gung Seo Geon glanced at Dan Mok Ryeon. The gathering of martial artists he’d witnessed—wasn’t that meant to meet with Dan Mok Cheon Gi?
“These are not those people.”

“Then who…….”
Nam Gung Hye Min shook her head with a rigid expression, but she said nothing about the attacker’s identity, instead slamming the door shut and bracing herself against it.
At the same instant, the sound of furniture shattering erupted through the door frame, along with the thunderous footfalls of rushing figures. Heat and the stench of burning swept in with them.
“You barbarians! Do you have any idea whose house this is, barging in here with your filthy feet!”
Nam Gung Hye Min, who had never raised her voice loudly before, bellowed so sharply the words seemed to ring off the walls.
Dan Mok Ryeon pressed her face to the crack in the door and peered outside. The intruders showed no reaction whatsoever to Nam Gung Hye Min’s cry, simply surveying their surroundings with an eerie, deliberate calm.
Their faces were uncovered. Their hair was bound loosely, and they wore tattered clothes as though they’d just come from working the fields, yet their eyes glinted with unmistakable madness.
Their sword hands were clumsy, yet from each of them radiated a formidable inner energy and a viscous murderous aura.
‘Tremendous inner energy paired with laughably inadequate external technique, eyes clouded and dull, and that strange stench of rotting flesh…… Blood Coral Valley!’
Their eyes swept across the room as if searching, and in that moment their gaze locked directly with hers.
The instant it happened, the foremost among them adjusted their grip and charged straight at her.
“There!”
The martial artists defended skillfully, but the intruders outnumbered them by far more than five. Blades clashed with a bone-chilling ring, and the smell of blood suddenly filled the air.
Starlight flickered across Dan Mok Ryeon’s eyes.
‘Those who just burst through this door. The air is slowly warming—is the fire getting closer? Wait, and there’s one more……!’
Dan Mok Ryeon glanced toward the thin window, then seized Nam Gung Seo Geon and Nam Gung Seo Jin, who stood nearby, and dragged them toward the center of the room.
In the same motion, she met Mo Yong Seol Ho’s eyes. When she rolled her gaze toward the window, Mo Yong Seol Ho seemed to catch on, swallowing hard.
Dan Mok Ryeon whispered rapidly to Mo Yong Seol Ho.
“The opponent’s inner energy is at a Yi Hwal Do Master’s level, but the skill is worse than yours. You can use what you just realized a moment ago.”
“What? What…… what are you talking about?”
Ak So Hyeong, who had come with his friends intending to search for his younger siblings and explore the Nam Gung Clan’s estate compound, but found himself caught in this instead, interjected with a bewildered look, glancing nervously outside.
“Huh?”
Then, as Dan Mok Ryeon’s eyes swept across the more than ten children filling this room, her gaze suddenly brightened.
“We’ve got everyone here.”
“I’m not Mo Yong Seol Ho! Speak clearly so I understand!”
“You remember when we fought against the Yi Hwal Do Master?”
“Are you seriously suggesting we take down one of them the same way we did back then…… all of us together?”
“You’re sharp, aren’t you?”
Ak So Hyeong’s eyes widened in disbelief, but at the same time, something fierce kindled in his gaze.
Growing up as blood of the martial arts clans, who among them had never imagined building a martial reputation

for themselves?
“Wait, but—why do we have to face one of them?”
Ak So Hyeong was already reaching for the wooden sword at his waist when Peng Ju Ran grabbed him, asking urgently.
“You’re saying those outside won’t be able to hold them?”
But time was running short, so Dan Mok Ryeon foregoed further explanation, instead linking Dan Mok Bi and Hwa Ryun’s hands together and pushing them toward Nam Gung Seo Geon, then seizing Dan Mok Seong and Dan Mok Wan.
“Seong, watch the younger ones.”
“What about you?”
“One of them will be coming soon, and I need to intercept them. Just to be safe, you go with Wan and Seo Geon.”
“You…….”
Dan Mok Seong’s lips trembled as if she wanted to say something, but she closed her mouth again and nodded.
“Are we really fighting? Why? They’re holding up fine out there!”
Peng Ju Ran spoke urgently, and Geum Jong Ha glanced at him with a murmur.
“Ah, chattering away.”
“What? I’m not Ak So Hyeong, so why are you talking to me like that?”
“Why am I what!”
Ak So Hyeong, suddenly called upon, grumbled at first, but then, in a way unlike him, he pulled Peng Ju Ran close and whispered quietly.
“Hey…… we’re young, sure, but when we gotta do something, we do it…… We’re still the future of the Habe Peng Clan and the Shandong Ak Clan, aren’t we? This much? If we all pool our strength like this.”
“Yeah, we gotta do it when we do, but I should at least know what’s going on…… how this turns out…….”
But he was helplessly pulled along by Dan Mok Ryeon’s grip.
“We’ll do exactly what we did with the Yi Hwal Do Master. The front line is what matters. Seol Ho, I trust you.”
“Of course, of course…… yeah.”
Real combat could not help but be tense. Even Mo Yong Seol Ho’s voice trembled slightly.
“Ju Ran, Sin Yu, we’ll hold the front, so you two go behind and attack. Remember what we did?”
“Damn it, all I remember is that we barely lasted a few exchanges before we were all sprawled on the ground…….”
Peng Ju Ran muttered.
“Dodge any attacks infused with inner energy. Once the opponent appears, I’ll slip to one side or the other and attack. The goal is to buy time and protect the younger ones.”
“What exactly is coming?”
“Here!”
“You literally just said that!”
At that same moment, something shattered with a thunderous crash—the window and wall crumbled away. The scorching heat from outside rushed in, bringing with it the sickening stench of burning decay.

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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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