The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - Chapter 6

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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 Doomed Heir — Episode 6

Hwaryun pressed a hand to her chest and decided to start by verifying what she could about the boy standing before her.

Name: Synchronization failed.
Martial Arts: Synchronization failed.
Aptitude and Five Senses: Synchronization failed.
Concerns: Synchronization failed.

‘What? This is…… strange.’
Why wasn’t anything displaying properly? Hwaryun’s mind reeled. Synchronization failure? Yet her Mind’s Eye had grown sharper upon seeing the boy, which meant he was undoubtedly someone of exceptional talent.
In an age when the family’s fortune was crumbling, talented individuals were worth their weight in gold.
The house could only survive if the family survived, and she could only find peace if the house endured. Hwaryun made her decision without hesitation and leaned toward the Nurse.
“Stay here and wait. Just for a moment.”
Before the Nurse could respond, Hwaryun pushed her behind the chicken coop and bolted toward the boy, seizing his arm. A light drizzle had begun to fall, and raindrops were collecting on her brows, but she paid them no mind.
“You there!”
The boy showed not the slightest surprise at her approach, merely turning to face her.
“…….”
“…….”
And in that same instant, Hwaryun’s words dried up completely in her throat.
He was perhaps a year or two younger than herself.
Though his skeletal frame and tattered clothes made him resemble a small creature rather than a person, his features were as sharply defined as if drawn with ink.
Below his left eye sat a single tear mole — the kind of mark that, once seen, was nearly impossible to forget. There seemed to be a soft luminescence hovering around him.
‘But where have I……seen that face before?’
The figure rising in her memory was indeed possessed of extraordinary beauty.
He too had borne a tear mole directly beneath his left eye, but who was he?
Then, in that moment, a scene from a future she had witnessed flickered across her mind.
The scent of forest wood buried beneath the reek of blood, sunlight cutting mercilessly through the gaps in the leaves.
When her Spirit Qi had reversed course and she’d coughed up blood, staggering, there had been hands — cool, indifferent hands — that caught her.
As her body worsened with the passage of time, she had left Hangju to convalesce. She had planned to stay in a small hermitage, but of all places, a band of remnants from Hyeol-ra Valley had descended upon the village below.
Hwaryun had been in no condition to do anything about it. Day after day, her Spirit Qi reversed, her body weakening — blood poured from her lips on good days, and on bad days she could barely stand. She possessed no martial arts to draw upon.
Then, by fortune, a band of martial artists had passed near her hermitage.
The leader of the group had steadied her as she staggered, and Hwaryun, casting aside all shame, had begged for his aid. If that proved too difficult, she’d pleaded, might he at least carry word to the Jegal Family below the mountain?
─ Please, I offer you this ornament. In exchange, there is a great clan beyond these hills. If you would merely deliver word to them…….
She had bowed her sickly frame in supplication, but the gaze of the man regarding her had been utterly unmoved.
─ I have far to go myself.
‘And he simply left.’
He’d looked down at her as one might regard a barking dog, never once glancing back, and departed.
She’d had no chance to stop him — consciousness had slipped away, and when her eyes opened again, she found herself lying on a wooden veranda, tended by the villagers.
Fortunately, she learned later, the Jegal Family’s patrol had recognized the remnants from Hyeol-ra Valley and arrived in time to drive them away.
In that moment, lightning seemed to pierce through her — that man’s face, the way he had glanced at her once before leaving, now overlaid itself upon the boy’s features.
‘N-no, no, the Sub-Sect Master of Macheong! Hwaryun!’
“…Who?”
The boy’s young, innocent voice seemed utterly incongruous. Hwaryun stared at him, her face draining of color.
“I… that is… you…… well…….”
‘He was here? In Hangju? Before he joined Macheong?’
She had learned from members of the Jegal Family that the man she had tried to stop was the Sub-Sect Master of Macheong.
She’d thought then that it was perhaps fortunate he’d simply passed by without engagement.
Hwaryun’s lips moved soundlessly for a long moment before the boy suddenly spoke.
“I have a temple I attend. It’s different from here.”
So startled by the unexpected encounter that she’d been stammering, Hwaryun’s eyes widened at his words.
Why would he suddenly mention the temple he attended?
In that instant, color flooded Hwaryun’s cheeks.

“No, I’m not evangelizing for a heretical sect!”
Never mind that he himself would become a Sub-Sect Master of the Macheong Sect one day—and here he was, painting her as some kind of
pseudo-religious
charlatan!
“Really, truly I’m not. I’m not doing that, it’s just…….”
His mind was spinning.
If she thought of him not as a mere child but as the Sub-Sect Master of the Macheong Sect…….
‘Wait? The Macheong Sect…… Sub-Sect Master?’
Who was the Sub-Sect Master of the Macheong Sect?
He was the figure who ascended to the position of Sub-Sect Master before even reaching his twenties, began wielding absolute authority over all affairs of the Macheong Sect on behalf of the Sect Master, and earned his name throughout the martial world.
So overwhelmingly powerful in Martial Prowess that he needed neither name nor alias—the title “Sub-Sect Master” alone sufficed—he was the most unfathomable man in any future she had glimpsed.
Some thirty years hence, when the Martial Alliance was formed through the joint efforts of the Black Heaven Alliance, the Macheong Sect, and the White Path Alliance to confront Hyeol-ra Valley, he would claim one of the central pillars; and after the Dongting Blood Incident,

he would serve as regent while the Sect Master secluded himself in their base—standing equal to the elders of both the Black Heaven Alliance and the White Path Alliance, ceding nothing…….
And now, so much younger than that time, the mere meeting of eyes with such intensity had elevated her Mind’s Eye achievement by an entire tier. What did that signify?
She could be certain of it.
This was true talent.
Brilliant promise in whatever he might grasp—sword, saber, spear, or bow—the raw genius of a prodigy!
Her eyes gleamed like stars as the thought took hold.
“What’s your name?”
“Then what’s yours?”
The gaunt, small boy possessed an uncanny boldness and spirit. She narrowed her eyes slightly.
“I’m…… Lian. And you?”
The boy moved his lips silently, studying her face before he answered.
“Hwaryun.”
“Mm, Hwaryun? Just Hwaryun?”
Since the Sect Master of the Macheong Sect was named Cheon Hyedam, the family name Cheon was likely one he’d received upon joining the sect.
Even though she’d anticipated he would become the Sub-Sect Master in the future, hearing his name now sent a thrill of certainty through her. So he truly was the Sub-Sect Master.
The boy’s gaze flicked up toward her, suspicious as if scrutinizing something dubious. She quickly waved her hand in denial.
“Hwaryun, how old are you? I’m eight now.”
“…… Probably six.”
In that moment, she froze.
Six years old?
She had never imagined a Sub-Sect Master so young you could count his age on one hand.
Six years old, six years old, six years old…….
‘The Sub-Sect Master of the Macheong Sect…… was two years younger than me…….’
She’d had no reason to cross paths with him privately, so she’d never known.
‘And yet he’d achieved so much despite being two years younger.’
His Martial Arts were so extraordinary that she’d thought him a decade her senior. She glanced down at her own sleeve, where characters wavered dizzily across her vision.

Hwaryun
Martial Arts: Some Synchronization failed.
Aptitude and Five Senses: Some Synchronization failed.
Inclinations: Some Synchronization failed.

Only because she’d heard his name did “Hwaryun” appear clearly; everything else remained in a state of “Synchronization failed.”
‘Does that mean his aptitude is so extraordinary it doesn’t even show up on the status window? Greater than grandfather’s?’
When she died and splashed about in the waters of the Samdo River, she had witnessed and passed through much.
The place people have long called paradise, the celestial realm, nirvana, heaven, and hell.
And what some express as the future, revelation, and foresight.
There she understood everything—the memories from the time she lay there, why it had hurt, the future after she thought herself dead, the life before this one, how this world was created, beginning and end, light and darkness, yesterday and tomorrow, death and life.
The reason Lian could access information that allowed her to intuit and interpret the world was that her Soul knew.
Yet she had survived her return by forgetting most of it. She had erased what she could not bear.
What she saw now was merely what her Soul could digest from all she had gained at world’s end, shown to her in a form she could accept.
‘If it doesn’t appear here…… does that mean it’s information I can’t process?’
Moreover, a faint, delicate golden radiance shimmered faintly around Hwaryun.
Lost in her thoughts, she was jerked back to awareness only when she met Hwaryun’s steady gaze fixed upon her, and then she studied him anew.
She thought the shabby wicker basket he carried suited him terribly—as though it were a borrowed disguise, something he’d picked up as camouflage.
‘Surely he won’t come at me later, furious that I’ve seen him in his powerless youth?’
Some people, after all, loathe being reminded of their times of weakness.
To break through this awkward silence, Hwaryun quickly pulled out what she’d brought with her.
“Oh! Want to try this?”
It was an odd, sudden change of subject, but the boy seemed to consider it for a moment before deciding to accept.
“What is it?”
“Yakgwa. I got it as a reward for drinking my medicine well today.”
Hwaryun produced the bundle of Yakgwa wrapped in oil paper, making an excuse. Just then, the boy lifted both hands holding the wicker basket to show her. They were covered with dirt and dust.
Understanding he couldn’t hold the Yakgwa with soiled hands, Hwaryun readily brought the sweet to his lips instead.

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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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