The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 145

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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 Declining Clan’s Limited Lifespan Remedy — Chapter 145

All that remained now was the raw materials, but she had the greatest herbalist in the entire Martial Arts World at her disposal. She’d already asked Yak Yeo Cheong for help. By the time she returned from the North Sea, he would have stacked medicinal herbs into towering piles, waiting to welcome her.
As for the clan’s martial techniques, she’d spent entire days reading through the library’s collection, learned by directly sparring with Dan Mok Cheon Gi, and spent her nights analyzing movements through Spiritual Perception and the Sword Discussion, completing ten small reference books tailored for the branch family children.
The moment the writing was nearly finished, Dan Mok Cheon Gi declared with unmistakable conviction that he must have these copied and preserved in the clan library, and took the originals with him. It seemed he intended to do the copying himself.
“Hngh…”
Dan Mok Ryeon let out a small groan as she felt a heavy warmth spreading around her eyes.
Seeing how much she was struggling, her nursemaid Jang had prepared a grain pouch, warmed it, and placed it over her eyes, but she too was busy packing supplies for the North Sea voyage and couldn’t stay long.
Instead, Hwa Ryun sat beside Dan Mok Ryeon, who lay stretched across the bed, and gently fingered the edge of the grain pouch as she asked.
“Do you really need to rush like this? You could take your time, you know.”
Dan Mok Ryeon kept her eyes closed beneath the warm darkness, rolling only her pupils as she answered.
“I’m studying at the same time, and I want to give them to the children before heading to the North Sea.”
“……But you could give them after you come back.”
With her eyes covered by the grain pouch, she couldn’t see Hwa Ryun’s face, but somehow she could picture it—that pouting expression—perfectly.
“The travel back and forth will take quite a while, so it’d be good if they could benefit in the meantime.”
Even as she said this, Dan Mok Ryeon sighed inwardly.
If it weren’t for the Luck Points she’d accumulated without understanding why at Gyeong Hang Un Ryeon, she might have lost someone.
Fortunately, after that incident, she’d regained a great deal of those points, but surely more is always better, isn’t it?
While the children studied from what she was leaving behind, the Luck Points would accumulate steadily in the background.
‘I burned through all the Luck Points I’d built up from that one fire incident… What if something else goes seriously wrong on this trip?’
At the Nam Gung Family Estate, there was simply no other way to describe what happened—the Luck Points had been burned.
Or perhaps melted. Or evaporated.
‘I wish I’d used fewer Luck Points when I faced the Blood Demon.’
Back then, she’d trusted only in the luck correction and swung recklessly, and the forgotten expenditure of Luck Points came back to haunt her belatedly.
That was a gap she could fill if she could wield her sword more precisely, defend perfectly without needing fortune, and counter and attack with deadly accuracy.
Add to that the ability to cultivate inner energy using this Spiritual Energy that flowed from her body, and it would’ve been truly perfect—but she couldn’t cling to what was impossible.
Dan Mok Ryeon thought of the book Nam Gung Hwan had copied for her, and suppressed the rising regret. She already knew why she couldn’t cultivate inner energy: maintaining her physical body with this surging Spiritual Energy was burden enough.
While the various methods written in Nam Gung Hwan’s book had been helpful, they couldn’t immediately address her current condition.
“Getting ahead on my studies helps too.”
As Dan Mok Ryeon was recalling in her mind the passages she’d read and the martial moves Dan Mok Cheon Gi had taught her, moving her fingers slightly to practice, Hwa Ryun suddenly seized her hand and pressed it down.
“Stay still.”
“All right, I will.”
Dan Mok Ryeon quickly drew in her body, as if she’d just been scolded.
Soon she felt something like thin cloth draping clumsily over her. Hwa Ryun must have brought a blanket.
“……You don’t need to worry so much.”
“What else would I worry about?”
Dan Mok Ryeon asked with a smile.
“The only thing I worry about is you.”
“That’s a lie.”
“If I’m not worried about you, what else would I be worried about?”
“……Blood Coral Valley.”
Dan Mok Ryeon held her breath for a moment, then tried to remove the grain pouch from her eyes and sit up, but a gentle hand pressed her back down. The grain pouch remained over her eyes.
“……It’ll work out somehow. There’s no need for my sister to worry so much about it.”
But Dan Mok Ryeon spoke in a tone heavier than before.
“No, it won’t work out on its own. That’s why I have to do something.”
Perhaps in the future she hadn’t seen, things might somehow resolve themselves, but until then, they wouldn’t.
Family members had been injured, had wept, had died. The Martial Arts World had been swept away.
After all those tragedies, she wasn’t hoping for things to somehow sort themselves out conveniently. Before that happened—before losing everything, before the people she cherished were hurt—she wanted to act.
“If someone needs to do something, it should be the adults, not my sister.”
“You wouldn’t know, but this sister of yours is already grown.”
“Yes, yes. I suppose I understand.”
“So you understand, yet you keep trying to climb out of bed?”
“I’m all grown up now?”
This time, Dan Mok Ryeon sat up with determination.
“You shrimp.”
Hwa Ryun yelped as Dan Mok Ryeon flicked her on the crown of the head, then rubbed the spot with one hand while catching the falling Grain Pouch with the other, fixing her with a look of utter disbelief.
“You’re faster than when you were dealing with blood demons?”
“That’s all the fruit of your studies, little one.”
“I’m taller than you are, actually. Truly.”
“Growing tall quickly isn’t everything. A person needs their heart to grow as well before they can be called an adult.”
“Ha. And whose fault is it that my heart grew at all? Thanks to you, I’m doing things I never thought I’d do in my whole life.”
“What things? Where have you gone? What have you been up to?”
“What do you mean where? What do you mean what? I’m right here waiting on you hand and foot!”
Hwa Ryun grumbled loudly, laying Dan Mok Ryeon back down on the bed, then gave the Grain Pouch a rough shake before draping it over her eyes again.
“Ah… it’s warm again…….”
Dan Mok Ryeon murmured, her voice soft and drowsy. Buried in that warm darkness, she didn’t see Hwa Ryun heave a great sigh and smile to herself when she thought no one was watching.

* * *

Nam Yu Pyeong stepped into the inner courtyard of the Estate, his expression one of disbelief, clutching the bundle in his arms as though it were precious treasure.
He had spent his entire life as a master gemstone craftsman, only to be completely cast out in Hang Zhou and reduced to making a meager living mending bowls and dishes.
When he heard that the Dan Mok Clan was summoning master artisans and merchants to purchase ornaments for the eldest grandchild, Nam Yu Pyeong recalled the last work he had ever crafted: an ivory sphere.
A sphere no larger than a child’s fist, carved from the outside inward, with five nested layers of carved ivory spheres inside—
(Ivory Sphere)
.
But he had assumed that even if he dared show his face, the Dan Mok Clan would never allow him anywhere near them.
He had been cast out of Hang Zhou’s streets for a reason: he had damaged a commission.
He had considered adopting an alias, but the craftspeople in this line of work all knew each other too well to hide anything.
Yet when the gatekeeper heard his name, she let him through without hesitation.
“Tsk, tsk…… anyone who tries to cheat a Martial Arts World clan won’t survive, and yet he has the nerve.”
Someone had bumped his shoulder as they passed, muttering the words.
Nam Yu Pyeong flinched and shrank back, but he didn’t dare lift his head, terrified that his Ivory Sphere might be damaged.
“That…… never happened.”
He mumbled quietly, but no one acknowledged his protest.
“So they’ve taken in a swindler. The Dan Mok Clan must be remarkably generous.”
“Well, his craftsmanship was good enough…….”
“Yet he destroyed a precious Jade Hairpin—how can you speak of his craftsmanship as good?”
“Didn’t he also swap out gemstones for fakes?”
All of it was false.
The Jade Hairpin his local official cousin had asked him to repair had already been cracked at the gold binding before he ever touched it; by the time he noticed, it was too late.
The more he denied it and raged, the worse the situation became. Eventually, rumors spread that he had deliberately replaced the gemstones in other pieces with fakes, and no one commissioned work from him anymore. No one bought anything he made.
Coming to this gathering where the Dan Mok Clan was summoning master artisans was his last act of courage.
If he could only sell this ivory sphere—carved from ivory he had scraped together with money saved from eating just one or two meals a day—at its true worth, he would have been content even if his soul burned away to ash.
Nam Yu Pyeong was hunched over, lost in such thoughts, when—
A small girl suddenly appeared at the head seat of the gathering and sat down with a thump. Beside her stood a boy slightly taller than the girl, and the sharpness in his gaze as it swept across the assembly left Nam Yu Pyeong feeling subtly intimidated.
Several others stood in support of the girl, and while the men were all strangers to him, there was one woman whose refined appearance he recognized.
‘The Manager Gyeon from the Man Song Merchant Guild?’
That the Guild Master’s second daughter had risen from a lowly manager position to become the successor, surpassing the eldest son, was remarkable enough; and since Gyeon Wi Un often made personal rounds of the merchant streets, there was hardly anyone among the shopkeepers who didn’t know her face.

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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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