The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 5

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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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A Declining Clan’s Limited Lifespan, Part 5

“Oh, Miss. How could you possibly do such humble work yourself…….”
“There’s no such thing as menial or noble in the Se Family’s work! It’s all equally precious. And this chicken lays the eggs Grandfather eats, doesn’t it? I want to help care for it too.”
Hearing a small girl invoke the family head’s name, the Nanny fell silent. Jeon, too, found his spirit dampened for reasons he couldn’t quite name.
And her words—that all work held equal value—struck something tender in his chest.
“Ah! Y-yes, just a little of that perilla cake, if you please.”
“Less than this?”
“Yes, yes. Too much of it reduces their egg-laying, you see.”
“So about this much?”
“Yes, exactly that much…….”
Before Jeon could collect himself, the small girl was already grasping a wooden paddle firmly in her hands, industriously mixing various ingredients in a large basin.
Perilla cake dust smudged across her cheek…….
“Will this be enough?”
There had been much talk about the Se Family’s eldest grandson, who had lain bedridden since birth—sympathetic remarks, one and all. When he finally rose from his sickbed after undergoing some remarkable treatment, the household had buzzed with excitement.
They said the clever strategy had worked, gathering what little remained of the crumbling Se Family’s assets in one last desperate gamble.
Until the young master himself appeared in the kitchen, it had been nothing but gossip.
Carrying a basin of feed they had prepared together toward the chicken coop, Jeon wondered how matters had come to this strange turn—but found no answer. The girl gazed back at him with innocent eyes.
“That chicken is awfully black.”
“Ah! That would be the Silkie Chicken, Miss. Black from beak to bone, that one is. Very… er, that is, a healthy specimen indeed.”
Jeon hastily redirected his words.
“Is it? Then I shall call it Blackie.”
Blackie…….
The Nanny quickly offered an alternative.
“P-perhaps the Huk-wol
(Black Moon)
would suit it better? The black chicken of Wol-yeong-jae, after all.”
“Huk-wol? Is that better?”
At the girl’s question, Jeon nodded readily.
For a chicken’s name, it seemed grandiose, yet it was certainly better than “Blackie.”
“The f-feed should go in the feeder, Miss.”
The wooden trough, carved smooth and long, sat empty. Jeon scooped a ladle of feed the girl had made and set it carefully in the trough, speaking with measured caution.
“Since I fed them well this morning, they may not seem very interested. It’s not that the feed tastes bad…….”
He’d meant to say it wasn’t the feed’s fault, to ask her not to be discouraged.
Flap-flap-flap!
Flap-flap!
Flap-flap-flap!
The moment he lifted the basin and set it in the trough, more than a dozen chickens in the coop erupted skyward all at once—and to Jeon’s eye, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
Were chickens a kind of beast of prey after all?
That was the thought that crossed his mind in that instant.
The chickens rushed at the trough with fierce intensity and fought savagely, their wings thrashing wildly as they competed for every morsel of feed, feathers swirling and the din of flapping echoing loudly through the air.
“They must have…… been hungry.”
“Y-yes, that would s-seem to be the case…….”
The chickens devoured the modest handful of feed as if intent on splintering the very trough itself, and once it was empty, they returned as nonchalantly as before, casually pecking at the sand.
The small girl watched them for a moment, then looked up at him.
“You said I should feed them around the Myo Hour, right? From now on, I’ll do it well!”
Jeon arranged his face into polite assent, swallowing his misgivings, and nodded.
‘What destiny have I earned…….’
But neither heaven nor earth vouchsafed him an answer.

* * *

Ryeon had first taken notice of the chickens when she heard them clucking from a distance as she left after greeting Dan Mok Cheon-gi.
Once she realized the sound came from the chicken coop kept by the Wol-yeong-jae kitchen, her mind crystallized around a single idea.
All the time she’d spent lying in bed, she’d been searching for one thing: how to expend Spiritual Energy without limit.
The most certain and helpful thing was to share this Spiritual Energy with those around her.
But forcing Spiritual Energy into an ordinary person was like pouring seawater into a freshwater fish. Wasn’t that why her own vessel had become so precarious?
She could only safely transmit it after refining it through multiple stages, and Lien had grasped this refinement method just recently.
There was nothing difficult about it—she simply had to go through “multiple stages”!
She’d purify the water first, then infuse it with Spiritual Energy, boil it, and create something from it. While she couldn’t feed a large amount at once, it was safe, and she could expend her own Spiritual Energy in the process.
So how brightly must chicken feed have shone in Lien’s eyes?
She could use Spiritual Energy while making the feed, which was good; Dan Mok Cheon-gi would eat this Spiritual Energy-infused feed and consistently consume eggs from the larger hens, which was good for his health; and others would see her as a remarkably dutiful granddaughter, which was also good.
But…
‘The chickens are… they’re growing so well, maybe too well.’
Early morning, when light rain fell and cooled the summer heat.
Beneath the umbrella the Nanny held for her, Lien scattered chicken feed with a ladle, her expression blank as she thought to herself.
The chickens that had rushed at their feed with frenzied eagerness on the first day had grown quite calm after several days.
And after several more days passed, a single silkie chicken with completely black feathers among them seemed to grow sharper and brighter in the eyes with each passing day.
“Mm, Huk-wol, does it taste good?”
The silkie chicken nodded its head. Lien tried to convince herself it was mere coincidence that her words and the chicken’s movement aligned, but no matter how she looked at it, the bird seemed to be answering her.
“The chickens certainly seem to prefer the feed you give them, Miss.”
The Nanny standing beside Lien spoke warmly.
“Well, I’m the one feeding them, so of course they do.”
“That’s not it. Their reaction is completely different from when Jeon gives them feed.”
Lien smiled sheepishly and looked at the chickens. Now that the Nanny mentioned it, that did seem to be the case.
“Are you going to stop by Wol-yeong-jae after you finish feeding the chickens?”
“Yes!”
Though Dan Mok Cheon-gi had reacted sharply when Lien visited to offer thanks not long ago, he hadn’t refused her visits each morning.
‘All I want is to live a long life, but there are so many things to worry about…’
Her own body, the health of those around her, the family’s circumstances. Now she’d have to keep watch over the neighborhood situation and the state of the martial world as well.
‘And on top of that, there’s the matter of Hyeol-ra-gok.’
If she couldn’t capture Hyeol-ra-gok even after solving everything else, by the time she turned twenty, she’d be scattering chicken feed while watching the martial world burn.
Just as Lien turned her steps toward Wol-yeong-jae, lost in these thoughts,
she sensed a small presence entering through the small gate in the wall that adjoined the chicken coop, and the moment she tilted her head in that direction,
the face of the child entering was obscured by the morning sun rising in the east. However…

* Sim-an 4th Grade Achievement (1▲) *
You can now perceive flaws. This ability consumes additional Spiritual Energy.
Sim-an 4th Grade harmonizes with Harmony 4th Grade.

Light flooded her vision as characters suddenly appeared. Lien steadied her mind, now familiar with these notifications.
Her Sim-an had risen in achievement like this before. Specifically, when she had observed her grandfather.
At that time, Lien had speculated that since Sim-an was the power to perceive something, experience would accumulate faster the more she observed what was fierce, vast, and great.
But now, having merely looked at a boy smaller than herself, it had jumped to 4th Grade in an instant.
‘What on earth is this…?’
But she had no time for such thoughts.
Now that Sim-an had reached 4th Grade and she could perceive flaws, she needed to understand what it meant that it harmonized with Harmony 4th Grade.
Lien quickly drew out a Seon-gyeong from her sleeve and checked “Harmony” among her abilities.

1st Grade: You can blend in without standing out.
2nd Grade: You can maintain balance well.
3rd Grade: You can embody what you have observed.
4th Grade: You can break dissonance.
5th Grade: You can correct dissonance.
6th Grade: You can be noticed.
7th Grade: You can go unnoticed.

Sim-an 4th Grade was the ability to perceive flaws, and Harmony 4th Grade was the ability to break dissonance.
As Lien briefly pondered what it might mean for these two to harmonize, she suddenly gained a different understanding from the final line.
Harmony 7th Grade. The ability to go unnoticed.
‘So that’s why no one has ever noticed…!’
It was something she’d been puzzled by for some time.
With a hundred-year-old ginseng or so, even someone who’d practiced a Mental Cultivation Method would sense something unusual just by looking, yet why hadn’t anyone properly recognized the Spiritual Energy she possessed?
In the past, she could understand to some degree. With people collapsing, losing consciousness, and coughing blood, who among them would be capable of detecting Spiritual Energy in such chaos?
But now, even though she was living hand to mouth with only a limited lifespan ahead, despite appearing to be regaining health outwardly, it seemed not a single member of the Se Family had noticed her Spiritual Energy.
‘It was because of Harmony…….’
The fact that Lien had achieved Harmony up to the seventh stage alone had been strange enough; perhaps it was the body’s desperate struggle to survive, she reasoned.
If someone with even modest martial prowess could discern her constitution merely by glancing at her, what then?
To obtain this living, walking Elixir, wouldn’t a new storm of blood descend upon Kangho?

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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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