The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 15

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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 Noble House’s Limited Spiritual Elixir – Episode 15

“It’s made by combining various medicinal essences I’ve purchased from the apothecary. I’ve named it Cheong Ryeon Water.”
As he tilted a small vial no larger than two fingers, a transparent liquid poured out.
True to its name, it looked like water, yet a sharp, refreshing fragrance bloomed into the air. There seemed to be something numinous about it.
As Dan Mok Cheon Ki applied the Cheong Ryeon Water to his fingertips and slowly massaged his temples, Dan Mok Hyun Woo suddenly shot up and rushed behind him.
“I’ve been experimenting, and I found that applying it to specific acupoints yields far better results. If you press the Heavenly Pillar Point

at the base of the skull…….”
“You brat……!”
“Father, please. Just hold still for a moment.”
Dan Mok Cheon Ki had been about to scold his son—who had long since come of age—for such audacious behavior, but the words would not leave his mouth.
Dan Mok Hyun Woo: born the gifted youngest son of a renowned noble house. Until his seventeenth year, he had been a spirited boy who knew nothing of being disliked.
Even when people lamented his lack of manners and wild, reckless behavior, he would laugh softly and cajole his father, brothers, and sister with endearments while kneading their shoulders—and they could only shake their heads in surrender.
When he begged for something he wanted, they pretended not to have the strength to refuse and bought it for him. When he pouted and stamped his feet, even as they rebuked the future brother-in-law for still being so childish, they would exchange glances with others and ask what had happened.
Then, in a single night, that lovable frivolity, that petulance, that playfulness—all of it vanished.
The loud laughter that had sent his voice echoing beyond the walls disappeared as if washed away.
It began when he came to believe that his nephew’s ruin was his own fault.
Unable to overcome his guilt, he could not stop Dan Mok Hyun Woo from entering Closed-door Training. And when his eldest son, Dan Mok Hyun Sung, finally died, the youngest withered like wet ashes.
“How is it? Does it feel better?”

“Father. That child’s brilliance is beyond compare. Hasn’t he already memorized the entire Thousand Character Classic?”

A cool, refreshing sensation spread slowly from the base of his neck.
The youngest son’s hands he remembered belonged to a seventeen-year-old boy, yet what now rested on his nape were the hands of a grown man—and his chest tightened at the realization.
“I watched him write and noticed he mimics my every movement exactly. His grip strength still lacks, so his penmanship differs, but I have never seen a child so keen-minded as that one.”
“No matter how brilliant—how could he create something like this overnight……?”
Dan Mok Cheon Ki trailed off, his words dissolving. The face of his son across from him had darkened once more.
“It seems I’ve caused you worry.”
“What are you talking about, suddenly?”
“When the only brother you have looks troubled, a clever child would perceive something is wrong. And being so clever, he would understand it all.”
Dan Mok Hyun Woo spoke in a heavy voice, lowering his eyes. He recalled how his nephew’s face had worn an anxious expression trying to comfort him.

─ Actually, the immortals were playing with me so delightfully that I forgot I had to return so soon.

The small boy had blinked rapidly and hastily added his apology.
Dan Mok Hyun Woo thought—if only that lie had been true, he could have laughed as much as he wanted.
He could have smiled and said: it’s not too late, and how wonderful it is that he’s here now, no matter when.
But he knew it was a lie. Celestial Realm where immortals dwell—watching his nephew spin that tale, Dan Mok Hyun Woo felt his chest splitting.
Even a three-year-old doesn’t believe such things anymore.
But his nephew had no three years. He had no seven years.
Because he had failed to protect him…….
“In any case, Dan Mok Ryeon has talent and exceptional instincts, so she cobbled this together quickly! She’ll learn well no matter what is taught. We’ve decided to continue studying medicinal substances together.”
“Hmph. Though you call yourself the proprietor of an apothecary, you’ve neglected it for years while doing Closed-door Training, so you’d better study now. Judging by what you’ve created, I doubt there’s much I can teach you. Unless we were to learn together.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking—to study together with Dan Mok Ryeon. And about the Cheong Ryeon Water she made. What if we sent it as a gift to those around you? Send one to the Hwasan Sect, one to the Sacheon Tang Sect, and one to the head of the Man Song Trading Company as well—wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Dan Mok Hyun Woo rattled on thoughtlessly.
Dan Mok Cheon Ki, who had been listening in silence, waved his hand dismissively.
“We cannot send anything to the Sacheon Tang Sect for the time being.”
“What? Why not?”
“If word gets out that the child has awakened safely and we’re sending gifts, what will the Sect think? They’ll believe we’re trying to reestablish the betrothal.”
Hearing this, Dan Mok Hyun Woo swelled his chest as if to unleash a flood of objections, but his shoulders slumped almost immediately.
Tang Yu Byeok and Dan Mok Cheon Ki had been intimate friends in their youth, and in their later years they had become the kind of brothers who entrusted their lives to each other, walking the path of true loyalty together.
Their hearts had matched so perfectly that, each sitting atop their own clan, they decided to bind their grandchildren in marriage—and so it was: Dan Mok Cheon Ki’s newborn eldest grandson Dan Mok Ryeon and Tang Yu Byeok’s four-year-old second grandson Tang Ye Seol.
In martial houses that take in bride-grooms even when daughters are born, and especially in one that cherished blood kinship so fiercely that there was Tang Ga Ta

For the Sacheon Tang Sect, which rarely allowed its members outside its walls, it was an unprecedented betrothal.
The eldest grandson of the Dan Mok Clan, Dan Mok Ryeon, could not leave the clan, so the arrangement meant they would give Tang Ye Seol as a son-in-law instead.
The betrothal became complicated around the time Dan Mok Ryeon passed her hundredth day after birth. By then, everyone had noticed her condition was peculiar.
At the same time, Tang Ye Seol began displaying talent beyond the ordinary—frankly, remarkable even within the Sacheon Tang Sect itself—and everyone reconsidered the betrothal.
What on earth were they to do now?
The girl was neither alive nor dead, while the boy had become far too precious to release from the family.
Had the girl merely been well, they could have resigned themselves to the promise, difficult though it would be; but she was not.
In the end, the betrothal was broken.
Tang Yu Byeok provided all the secret formulae and medicinal ingredients needed for the Ceremony of Seven Stars for Dan Mok Ryeon, and Dan Mok Cheon Ki felt they had thus fulfilled their obligations to each other.
Having given so much, breaking the betrothal meant no one could accuse the Tang family of carelessly abandoning a promise out of late-blooming affection for their grandson.
“As you say, if Dan Mok Ryeon is so brilliant, we cannot give her to the Tang Sect, and if Tang Yu Byeok has taken Tang Ye Seol into his care, he will not part with him. Let us spare each other further difficulty.”
“Yes, well then… what of the Hwasan Sect?”
“There is no hurry to send anything to Hwasan Sect. We can do so after Cheong Yun Jin In finishes his closed-door training and emerges. What good is sending anything now—is it not merely an insult?”
“How could that be, sir?”
“If a bandit sends flowers saying he is grateful, would that bring joy?”
“But there is hardly such a thing as a bandit, is there…”
“The sect leader’s direct disciple lost his Internal Power because of a child from another family—how is that anything but banditry?”
The Ceremony of Seven Stars requires a secret formula passed down in utmost secrecy, made by mixing Spiritual Elixir and Extreme Poison, as well as at least one master who has cultivated deep Internal Power.
Since a portion of that master’s Internal Power is consumed and lost in the great technique, it often happened that one could secure the formula but not the person, or secure the person but not the formula.
Thus ordinary sects paid no attention to it at all, and only wealthy clans centered on blood succession could even dream of attempting the Ceremony of Seven Stars.
Yet this time, with Dan Mok Ryeon, circumstances had miraculously aligned.
One of the two masters who performed the great technique was Cheong Yun Jin In, the direct disciple of the Hwasan Sect’s sect leader.
Cheong Yun Jin In, who had been saved by Dan Mok Ryeon’s mother Wi Ji Cheong when he was young, had become sworn siblings with her and never forgot that kindness.
Yet even though he followed the greater duty to save a life, he was drawn by the bonds of the family and could not resist them; and so decades of the direct disciple’s Internal Power vanished into thin air—had the sect leader’s heart been benevolent, he would surely have long since ascended to immortality and become an immortal.
“Cheong Yun Jin In has entered closed-door training to restore his lost Internal Power, so it would be better to do something once he emerges from seclusion.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Since Dan Mok Ryeon, who created this, says it is well, let us send it as a gift to the Man Song Trading Company.”
Dan Mok Hyun Woo’s head snapped up.
“Yes! I shall prepare it at once. Then you will teach Dan Mok Ryeon martial arts now? You promised you would teach her once she finished learning the Thousand Character Classic from me.”
His youngest son’s eyes sparkled with brilliance. His face shone with joy and hope—thinking that the boy was so clever, surely in a few years they would be able to spar with the sword together, just as he did himself.
Dan Mok Cheon Ki gazed at his son’s face for a moment, then waved his hand dismissively. Dan Mok Hyun Woo jumped to his feet and rushed out at once.
But the wishes of Dan Mok Cheon Ki and Dan Mok Hyun Woo were not soon to be fulfilled.
Word came first that Dan Mok Ryeon had suddenly collapsed.

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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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