The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 172

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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 Clan’s Terminal Lifespan – Episode 172

“Since you’ve come this far, it’d be nice if you picked up something while you’re here.”
“We’re really allowed to observe?”
It was decided that they would learn the Ice White Sword, the foundational technique that all Beijing natives naturally mastered.
Its most advanced final form was the Ice White Divine Sword—the swordplay of the Beijing Ice Palace warriors.
Since the technique’s power was maximized when harmonized with the Ice White Divine Method, it seemed she thought the basic Ice White Sword could be revealed to outsiders.
“Every major clan in the Martial Arts World teaches their foundational swordplay to anyone who enters their affiliated branches anyway, don’t they? We’re doing the same. And these are my own children and grandchildren—why would I be reluctant? Don’t tell me you’d rather not study my martial arts fundamentals?”
“Of course we want to learn! The basic swordplay of the Beijing Ice Palace—we’d be thrilled to study it even if we had to pay gold for the privilege!”
Dan Mok Hyeon Yo displayed what it truly meant to be an external branch leader of the Dan Mok Clan, crying out without a moment’s hesitation before immediately pulling her mother aside to a corner and whispering urgently.
“But what if our children struggle too visibly out there?”
“It’s only natural for learning to be difficult when you’re young.”
“The Beijing people hate us, Mother. We took you away from them, and now this….”
Dan Mok Hyeon Yo bit her lip, holding back tears that threatened to spill over.
Since they’d found her, Bing Xue Yan had regained her color so dramatically it could be called miraculous, yet she hadn’t recovered her former vitality.
Her gaunt, wasted frame still required support even for short walks.
“……Like this, well, in any case. That’s why if our children make even the slightest mistake, they’ll resent us even more.”
“Why would only you find it difficult? They will too.”
The Dan Mok Clan had decided to demonstrate a few moves from the Twelve Stars Falling Blade.
“But that doesn’t mean we can say anything to them in return, does it?”
With Bing Xue Yan weakened as she was, how could the Dan Mok Clan ever take a stance against the Beijing Ice Palace?
Yet Bing Xue Yan remained resolute.
“Why can’t we? Give them a piece of my mind! Did I get hurt because of you? Why would you shrink back? That’s exactly why these wretches are acting so brazenly!”
Bing Xue Yan had indeed scolded the Beijing Ice Palace people. But it only backfired.
From their perspective, their Bing Xue Yan now sided with the Central Plains people over them, which filled them with such resentment that their hostility toward the Dan Mok Clan only deepened.
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Mother….”
“If anything, it’s your father?”
Bing Xue Yan said this and laughed heartily before brushing along the creases of her daughter’s brow.
“Why do you shrink back because of what happened between me and your father? There’s no reason to. You are the cousin of the Hall Master of the Beijing Ice Palace—

if something needs to be disciplined, then discipline it.”
Dan Mok Hyeon Yo’s heart had barely settled before her expression grew sullen.
“Those people froze up Dan Mok Ryeon’s washbasin. That poor small, delicate thing suffered for so long before finally recovering, and she’s only just come this far—how could they do that?”
It was Dan Mok Hyeon Yo, Dan Mok Ryeon’s aunt, who was rattling off complaints that even Dan Mok Ryeon herself hadn’t mentioned, but Bing Xue Yan didn’t scold her for being troublesome.
“I’ll give those wretches a proper scolding myself.”
“……No, please don’t do that. They were only doing it out of affection for Mother. Since then, I’ve been taking care of Dan Mok Ryeon myself.”
“My daughter has grown so well. You look after your cousin before yourself.”
“Of course! Dan Mok Seong came with me, but Dan Mok Ryeon has no parents, no siblings—she’s alone. Dan Mok Hyeon U doesn’t have much sense. Mother, that boy’s fondness for Dan Mok Ryeon….”
As she prattled on, even Dan Mok Hyeon Yo couldn’t bring herself to say it plainly—that her brother had actually grilled his beloved koi to eat for her sake!—so she hastily covered for him.
“Ah, he’s even set his beloved koi free.”
“Dan Mok Hyeon U will need a scolding from me as well.”
“No, well…… it was his koi after all.”
Bing Xue Yan looked at her talkative second daughter and pressed down the tender ache swelling in her chest.
She had been such a small child once—eyes bright with admiration for her older brother, bickering with her younger siblings, and when her brother struck her younger sibling, she would turn and quarrel with her brother in return.
She knew how, caught in the middle, the girl would lie awake night after night chewing over her own lesser attainments compared to her two siblings. There was even a time she’d come to her crying inconsolably.
That daughter had grown into such a capable young woman, her eyes bright with determination to mediate between the clan and the Beijing Ice Palace, only to slip back into childhood petulance at the realization of being with her mother again.
“Well then, shall we go watch something interesting?”

* * *

Dan Mok Ryeon could perfectly understand how Bing Xue Yan had come to be settled in Beijing, so far from Hang Zhou in the southern Central Plains.
‘There’s no gap between her thoughts and her actions….’
When she made up her mind to do something, she simply did it. Nothing else mattered.
So from the moment the lady of the hall had suddenly suggested going to the Beijing Ice Palace training grounds to observe the successor candidates—not that this was even a schedule one could hastily arrange!—she’d ended up here.
Bing Xue Yan came to the practice yard, looked around once, gathered the children, and said, “There’s a place to the south called Gyeong Hang Un Ryeon where they’ve set up a waterway and gather to study and exchange knowledge of martial arts. Are we not doing anything?”
When Bing Xue Yan says to do something, the Beijing Ice Palace does it. And when the Palace Master heard the news, she found it amusing and came rushing over with great enthusiasm, so the gathering was completed on the spot.
Grandmother was delighted for once, and it was a granddaughter’s duty to oblige her, so Dan Mok Ryeon and Dan Mok Seong had also dressed in martial robes.
The senior members all wore expressions of keen interest. There were Dan Mok Hyeon Yo and Dan Mok Hyeon U—weren’t they Bing Xue Yan’s children?
The people of Beijing Ice Palace loved Bing Xue Yan because she was that strong. She was meant to be the sun of Beijing.
If they could defeat her children? Just the thought of it made their competitive spirit boil over.
‘Is that why they say the Heir isn’t like a Beijing person?’
Everyone—even Dan Mok Hyeon Yo and Dan Mok Hyeon U—was brimming with excitement and spirits high, but in their midst, the Heir alone wore an expression of some discomfort.
She heaved a deep sigh, sent people here and there to organize the spectators, called physicians to prepare for emergencies, and kept busy gathering towels and water.
But Dan Mok Ryeon couldn’t keep her eyes on that for long. The adults had their business, and the children had theirs, but the girl who came forward to display the Ice White Sword looked familiar.
“Oh?”
A young girl whose entire body was tense, determined to show her best self before Bing Xue Yan.
When Dan Mok Ryeon had not long arrived in Beijing, it was this very servant who brought a frozen basin to her room.
‘The world—so the one who brought the frozen basin was a disciple.’
The way she glanced at Bing Xue Yan with sparkling eyes clearly showed deep admiration.
In her youth, she had rejected the position of Palace Master that could have been hers and plunged into the Central Plains with only love in her grasp, and afterward she had burned through all her strength against Blood Coral Valley while protecting the weak—there was no one who did not know of Bing Xue Yan’s story.
A flame-like martial artist born in this land surrounded by ice and cold—even children who had only heard the tales passed down would naturally admire her.
Dan Mok Ryeon opened her fan reluctantly and glanced down at the dirt floor instead.

Bing Wen Bi
Characteristics: Inscription / Pride / Devoted / Single-minded / Light-chasing
Aptitude and Potential: Medium-High
Ice White Divine Sword: 4-star
Ice White Divine Method: 3-star
White Cloud Step: 2-star
Worry: Before Iron Resolve Ice Soul, I must defeat the Dan Mok Clan and show a perfect form!
Hint: Words alone won’t do it.

She didn’t know what “Inscription” meant, but the rest was easy enough to grasp. Overflowing pride in the Beijing Ice Palace, devotion to Bing Xue Yan and the Palace Master, and a straightforward personality that refused to look aside.
‘But what does it mean that words won’t do it? Does that mean something else will work? What besides words?’
“Then, might I display the Ice White Sword first?”
“Oh! Go ahead, go ahead!”
When Palace Master Bing Xue Han closed his eyes deeply and even clapped his hands in approval, Bing Wen Bi—the girl with the frozen basin—drew her sword with a flourish.
Watching her, Bing Xue Yan began to explain.
“It’s easy to think that Beijing swords are only cold, but that’s not so. Our swords exist where the heat that boils and melts ice and the cold that instantly freezes that heat back to ice coexist.”
True to her words, Bing Wen Bi’s blade was also rough. Some of that was due to her mere 3-star attainment, but the swordwork itself carried an inherently fierce and savage air.
“A cold lump of metal is no different from a beast that claws and tears at the soft skin of fragile humans.”
Dan Mok Ryeon’s eyes widened as she watched breath condense into white mist with each of Bing Wen Bi’s breaths.
That mist forming on her breath wasn’t because of the cold here. Even if this was Beijing, it was summer after all, and the practice yard was warm from all the gathered people—so for breath to condense meant, on the contrary, that her breathing was colder still.

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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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