The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 42

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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 Family’s Terminal Illness — Episode 42

“First, the Geum Woo Sword Technique needs to be more fluid. It’s not about swinging with maximum speed and force at all costs — the real skill lies in striking at the precise moment. You lack that, which is why simply throwing off your timing causes your footwork to crumble.”
Geum Jong-ha’s shoulders hunched, but Ryun continued without pause.
“And the Geum Family Method places greater emphasis on predicting your opponent’s movements than reacting to them.”
Geum Jong-ha listened in silence, his eyes widening. Ryun thought she’d spoken too long and started to close her mouth, but he immediately waved his hand in alarm.
“Keep going!”
“I thought you might find it tiring.”
“No, it’s not tiring at all.”
Ryun murmured under her breath.
“Hmm, if I tell you this and you achieve enlightenment, won’t I be the only one who loses?”
At that, Geum Jong-ha leapt to his feet and launched into a passionate rebuke.
“No, no, what’s this about? We challenge each other to martial duels to learn and improve. To speak of gain and loss here — that’s petty thinking! Besides, I have things to teach you too!”
He spoke so rapidly that his face flushed scarlet and his breathing grew ragged. Ryun stared at him steadily.
“Then… you’ll tell me?”
“Yes!”
“I see. The Geum Family Method fails entirely if your prediction is wrong.”
“…So I predicted wrong? You moved better than my prediction?”
“No, I’m saying I moved in a way that made you predict wrong. You fell for the feint completely.”
“…!”
Geum Jong-ha’s mouth fell open.
Unable to watch any longer, Yeop Un whispered softly.
“What if he starts crying…?”
Hwa Ryun murmured in response.
“Isn’t he already?”
Ryun thrust out her lower lip. Crying over a martial duel where he’d taken a few hits — ridiculous. Yeop Un had spent the entire night reflecting on her words and gained enlightenment from them!
As that thought crossed her mind, she glanced at Yeop Un; he straightened his posture slightly and offered a faint smile.
Meanwhile, the servant beside Geum Jong-ha grew increasingly restless, looking as though he might die of worry that his young master might cause some disturbance.
Ryun decided it was time to broach the main subject.
“But more than that, there’s something I’m curious about.”
“Hm?”
‘More curious than letting him beat me with words,’ she thought.
Geum Jong-ha stared at her with somewhat glazed eyes.
“Why did you request this martial duel in the first place?”
“…!”
The dazed expression shattered in an instant. His face took on the aggrieved look of someone who’d been ambushed without warning.
He then fumbled his lips before gesturing toward his servant.
“Yes?”
“…Get out of here.”
“Young master?”
“Go on, step back!”
Geum Jong-ha practically snapped, though his servant merely looked anxious and glanced between Ryun and him before reluctantly taking a few steps back.
When Geum Jong-ha gestured more urgently, the servant finally retreated several paces further.
Then Geum Jong-ha cast a sidelong glance at Hwa Ryun standing beside Ryun — clearly signaling her to send her attendant away as well. But Ryun quickly grasped Hwa Ryun’s hand with one hand and, looking at Yeop Un sitting nearby, spoke clearly.
“Hwa Ryun is like my sister — she can hear this. And Yeop Un is my friend.”
“No… she’s also my… Never mind. Forget it.”
Geum Jong-ha’s expression turned extremely aggrieved as his lips trembled slightly, and he spoke as though forcing the words out.
“My… my father was upright, but you keep saying things about him.”
“…?”
Ryun tilted her head.
“You — who exactly are you referring to?”
“You! The Danmok Clan!”
“When did we? What did we say?”
Ryun stared at him steadily. For the first time since their second duel, Geum Jong-ha spoke with force, his voice sharp.
“You keep saying my father killed your father!”
“That’s true, but I never said anything about it!”
“I—I didn’t mean to! But you called me a vicious coward…….”
Hwa Ryun bristled.
“Who! When! Where!”
Hwa Ryun slammed her palm against the table. Geum Jong-ha flinched.
“I…….”
“And it’s true! Ever since my father fought Hyeol Ra-gok, he’s been carrying injuries all this time. On top of that, the year you sent the Martial Challenge Letter, our clan was attacked. You knew all of this, and yet you still asked to duel…….”
“I didn’t know!”
The boy cried out.
Hwa Ryun drew in a breath, then spoke slowly.
“Whether you knew or not, my father is already gone.”
“Ah…….”
Geum Jong-ha’s lips trembled as he tried to speak, then fell silent.
His face was flushed crimson once more, but this time it was a mingling of wordless shame and guilt.
Hwa Ryun stared at him a moment longer, then her shoulders sagged.
Her father’s face had grown hazy in her memory—twenty years since she’d last seen it. Time itself had broken, death had been cast aside, and she had returned; yet she could not speak a single word to her father. The thought of it seemed to drain all the color from her heart, leaving only black and white.
But.
“My father is gone now, but…….”
Hwa Ryun pressed her temples hard. For some reason, she felt more exhausted now than she had during the duel itself.
“We have never blamed anyone. Not once.”
The duel was righteous, and Danmok Hyeonseong’s death was an accident—what more was there to say?
The Danmok Clan had never spoken a word about the aimless rage and hatred that consumed them.

* * *

The room without the children felt not merely cold but strangely awkward. Though Geum Jeok-geol and Danmok Cheon-gi faced each other, the former offered only silence.
Had it not been for Wi Ji-cheong’s gentle expression, both might have turned to stone.
It was Danmok Cheon-gi who broke that terrible silence.
“The Geum School has grown considerable.”
His tone was condescending, yet Geum Jeok-geol nodded slowly, neither wounded in pride nor servile.
“Had my parents lived to see it, they would have collapsed. How could their son build the family to such heights in Hangju?”
There was something unspoken in Geum Jeok-geol’s words: *in Hangju, where the Danmok Clan resides*.
The two men fell silent again. Only Wi Ji-cheong quietly raised her teacup. A bird alighted on their table, pecked at a few pastry crumbs, then flew away.
Geum Jeok-geol frowned, his expression uncomfortable, and watched the bird depart.
“……I did not expect Jong-ha’s duel to be against Danmok Hyeonseong’s daughter.”
A face pale and sallow for lack of sunlight; a frame small and frail, stunted in its growth.
The moment Geum Jeok-geol saw Hwa Ryun, he understood. He had already known that the rumors circulating through Hangju about Danmok Hyeonseong’s daughter being ill for a long time were true, but he also suspected that even the whispers about her having a Terminal Illness might not be far from the mark.
“Then you were trying to have him fight the young mistress who had only just departed Hanan Province?”
“Yes.”
“You knew of her condition before requesting this duel, didn’t you? Yet you speak as if you’ve only just learned of it.”
Danmok Cheon-gi’s voice was somewhat dry. Geum Jeok-geol’s brow trembled violently, but he neither affirmed nor denied. Instead, he spoke differently.
“Very well. Say that we knew. What of it?”
“……What?”
“If you say we acted knowing this, then why did you, the family patriarch, put a child who had only just risen from her sickbed onto the dueling platform?”
Geum Jeok-geol attempted to speak calmly, but his voice trembled toward the end. Heat rose from his neck, spreading across his face in a deepening flush.
Danmok Cheon-gi opened his mouth in disbelief, then let out a hollow laugh.
“……Ridiculous. You dare ask us that?”
“One word from you—that the child was unfit to duel—and it would all be undone. Why wouldn’t you say it?”
“When someone petitions for a martial duel, it is the Way of the Baekdo Martial Realm not to refuse!”
“And if it costs you your successor, is that still the Way?”
“Silence!”
Danmok Cheon-gi’s thunderous cry made the air quiver; birds in the distance scattered in panicked flight. The world around them froze like a sheet of ice.
Wi Ji-cheong gazed quietly at Danmok Cheon-gi. Receiving his wife’s gaze, Danmok Cheon-gi drew a deep breath. The scars etched across his face writhed in a confused tangle.
“How dare you speak such nonsense? You—who built the Geum School to such prosperity because of that very principle?”
His words carried the implication that without the untimely death of the Danmok Clan’s young patriarch, the Geum School would never have risen to prominence.
Geum Jeok-geol’s face flushed deeply at these words, but not because his efforts or the school’s growth had been diminished.
“Yes, you said I built the Geum School. That is true. In the days of my parents, we were a humble dojo in Hangju where scarcely anyone knew the name Geum. That humble dojo’s child—I grew it to this. So then, how could a child from a dojo known to no one in Hangju possibly have known the private circumstances of the Danmok Clan’s heir?”
Geum Jeok-geol’s hands trembled at the fingertips. Finally he surged to his feet and cried out.
“Who in Hangju knew of that truth at the time! No one knew! Because you hid it!”
It was a cry like a scream. Danmok Cheon-gi’s neck went rigid.

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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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