The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 160

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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 Fallen Noble Clan’s Limited Lifespan — Episode 160

“No, no, no! Gyeo On! Wait a moment!”
Ryeon hurried to cut off Hwang Gyeo On’s words.
“This estate is truly magnificent, but I’m fine. I have my own manor back in Hang Zhou! So really, I’m fine. Your gratitude is… you becoming healthy, learning Martial Arts, growing strong, and becoming the Estate Master of this place—that’s all the gratitude I need!”
“…….”
Hwang Gyeo On pressed his lips shut with a disgruntled expression. No one had heard more empty consolations dressed up in the voice of coaxing a child than he had.
Dan Mok Seong, who had been sitting silently beside him, suddenly spoke.
“Ryeon and I have much work to do, so it would help if you became Estate Master and lent us your strength.”
“Work?”
Did we have something like that? Ryeon turned to Dan Mok Seong in surprise. Dan Mok Seong lifted his chin and spoke.
“Yes, our goal is to unite the Martial Alliance completely and annihilate Blood Coral Valley.”
Ryeon’s eyes widened. That was indeed her goal. But she hadn’t known Dan Mok Seong was aware of it, nor that he would speak of it as ‘our’ goal.
Hwang Gyeo On’s eyes gleamed brilliantly. He gazed at Dan Mok Ryeon and Dan Mok Seong with an almost entranced expression, then nodded gravely.
“I understand what you’re saying.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yes. You mean to prepare to deal with all those… and those… types of people, right?”
“What?”
Ryeon’s eyes opened wide.
Partway through, Dan Mok Seong had frantically tried to cover Ryeon’s ears, but there was no way she could have missed it.
“What? Isn’t that right? I heard Father and Mother saying things like that…….”
“No, it’s right, it’s right…… it fits. Yes, that’s it. So if you become healthy, learn Martial Arts, and become Estate Master…… that’s good. Really good.”
Dan Mok Seong also nodded at those words.
“Yes, that’s how we accomplish the Great Undertaking.”
Ryeon whipped her head around to stare at Dan Mok Seong faster than light. Dan Mok Seong shrugged. His expression said: what’s the problem?
“Who did you hear about the Great Undertaking from?”
“Bi told me.”
“No…… ah…….”
Ryeon felt embarrassed, but Hwang Gyeo On seemed to think it was their shared secret—his eyes blazed with light.
Ryeon decided she simply wouldn’t say anything more.

* * *

As the rain stopped and she finished packing, Ryeon found herself standing before that ‘spirit shrine.’
It was a place where, ordinarily, even in broad daylight no one would venture near—yet now, after the early summer rain, it seemed to shimmer and gleam.
She had asked Gyeo On to look after the shrine as best he could.
She had no tender memories of her father in this place, and this wasn’t where he had died. Yet even dwelling on events that had occurred before her birth sent ripples through her heart.
She wanted to ask if it had to be this way.
What remained when he burned everything—all of it? A family grieving his wounds, a treasure he couldn’t ultimately protect, scars that would torment him long afterward.
Though he belonged to the Baek Do Meng, it was no sect devoted to the Dao or saving the masses. Yet this man, who should have pursued the glory of his family and clan, stood not merely guarding the people of Hang Zhou but came all the way out here to Wu Ryeong San in the distant north…….
“……Would Father have been happier if he could have joined a sect?”
For an eldest son of a renowned clan to enter another sect was unthinkable, even in jest. Dan Mok Hyeon Seong had never even dreamed of such a thing.
A grave voice met Ryeon’s murmur, approaching from somewhere unnoticed. It wasn’t a rebuke for speaking words unbecoming an eldest grandchild of her clan.
“Your father was a man of great ambition. How could he cast off worldly desires and attain enlightenment by joining a sect?”
“Was he?”
“Yes. The clan was his; the future Greatest Master Under Heaven was his; riches and glory were a given—he believed such things.”
“Then why…….”
Ryeon turned to look beside her, a note of grievance in her voice. Dan Mok Cheon Gi, standing alone, spoke with lowered eyes.
“Because he would not be merely one of the countless Estate Masters scattered throughout the world—he resolved to become the Greatest Master Under Heaven, and the Greatest Master Under Heaven should rightly…….”
“Should rightly……?”
“Protect the weak, destroy evil, and uphold justice and righteousness.”
Thus had Dan Mok Cheon Gi taught.
For a moment, Dan Mok Cheon Gi was seized by regret, and he remembered—something he had long tried not to recall—the confident expression his eldest son had worn.

─ But Father, didn’t you say that? Surely the Greatest Master Under Heaven isn’t taking back his own words now?

“You spent your whole life doing exactly as you pleased—yet you listened so well to that one thing.”
Dan Mok Cheon Gi gazed down at his small granddaughter standing beside him.
“Did you know that your father fought here?”
“……Yes.”
“How did you know?”
Mok Ryeon shared her reasoning with him. Dan Mok Cheon Gi seemed startled at first, then grew quietly thoughtful.
“And how was it, coming all the way here last night?”
“How did you……know?”
“Is there anything I wouldn’t know?”
Dan Mok Cheon Gi spoke these words while gently stroking his granddaughter’s hair.
Mok Ryeon gazed quietly at the old shrine and spoke in a soft voice.
“I think I saw Father.”
She had truly seen him, but she didn’t say it that way. She didn’t mention how grateful she was that her mother and grandfather hadn’t witnessed it.
“Because I thought of it as a place Father protected, I wasn’t afraid. Though at first, I was terrified.”
As she spoke, Mok Ryeon slowly drew her hand across her chest.
Thanks to recovering the fragment of the Tae Geuk Pae, she had even been able to heal Gyeo On.
Had the Tae Geuk Pae then entered her father’s hands, only to come to her? Mok Ryeon looked down at her own hands. No answer came to mind.
Suddenly, the gaze of Dan Mok Hyeon Seong in the spirit vision that had turned toward her flickered back into memory.
Dan Mok Hyeon Seong had never truly faced her in life. At that time, his body had been in poor condition, and he had feared it might only harm the child, or so it had been said.
Had that spirit vision shown her only what she wished to see? Or was it something else……?
“If Father had……seen me, do you think he would have recognized me?”
Would he have known I was his daughter?
“How could he not? The moment he saw you, he would have sprung to his feet, hoisted you onto his back, and raced straight from here to Hang Zhou, climbed to the very peak of every tower ringing West Lake, and shouted from the rooftops that all of Hang Zhou belonged to you.”
Even if you were his own child, he couldn’t have recognized you at first sight of the grown form, but Mok Ryeon chose to believe Dan Mok Cheon Gi’s words.
That in that brief moment, Dan Mok Hyeon Seong had seen her, had known her.
Dan Mok Cheon Gi rested his gaze on his granddaughter’s shoulders, then turned his head to survey the shrine carefully.
“……When it rained, this place looked so dark. Now that the day is clear, it’s not quite so.”
The light in Dan Mok Cheon Gi’s eyes deepened.
It was a place he had tried not to come. What would he do by coming—search for traces of where his son had fallen?
Yet now that he could see with his own eyes what his son had sought to protect, the place where that struggle had left its mark, his heart felt somehow lighter.
All that he had vaguely chosen not to see, all that he had buried away—it was like finally opening a chest he had long feared, not knowing what lay within.
What lay inside was old and crumbling, something others might dismiss as worthless, yet to him it was precious.
Had he not opened it, he would never have known.
Had he not come here, he could never have opened it.
That he had come this far……
Dan Mok Cheon Gi gazed quietly at his granddaughter. In the eyes of his granddaughter, who gazed upon something lost before ever holding it in her hands, he felt a depth without end—a depth as unknowable as a night sky scattered with stars.
“Let us descend now. The road ahead is long.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
Mok Ryeon nodded.

* * *

On the day the Dan Mok Clan departed, Hwang Chu Hun accompanied them down the mountainside and saw them off.
Hwang Gyeo On had made such a fuss about going along that only by Mok Ryeon’s intervention was he finally left behind at the estate.
“That girl…… following someone like that for the first time, I’ve never seen the like.”
Hwang Chu Hun murmured in a bewildered tone. Yet Ma Hwa Chang, the deputy estate master, paid no mind to Hwang Chu Hun’s astonishment and merely counted the jars of Baek Yak Cheong that the Dan Mok Clan had left as gifts.
“Since you’ve spoken of that young lady so often, perhaps she simply felt a sense of familiarity.”
“Perhaps so……”
“That’s not what matters now. How long has it been since Gyeo On has been in such good condition?”
Against Ma Hwa Chang’s fervent tone, Hwang Chu Hun’s voice remained restrained, as if carefully suppressed.
It had been years since he stopped vacillating with the child’s condition. The cycle of great hope and joy giving way to greater despair and devastation—he had experienced enough.
“……Is that medicine truly so efficacious?”
“To be honest, it seems like a remedy made from ground Spirit Elixir. It’s difficult to believe it’s merely Doraji Cheong—it feels more like thousand-year ginseng……”
Ma Hwa Chang scooped a spoonful of Doraji Cheong from a medicine jar and stirred it into hot water, examining it carefully.

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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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