The White Tiger Clan’s Baby Cotton Ball - Chapter 7

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 7

At that moment, Jeok Hwayu unconsciously hesitated and looked at Soya.

Elder Brother…

He had thought it was an undeserved title from a child who had deceived his family.

Yet somehow, he felt strangely conflicted.

“I have somewhere to go for a moment, so wait here.”

Jeok Hwayu hid his inner thoughts and forced an awkward smile.

That was the moment.

“What happened to that child?”

“She’s dead.”

Suddenly, a scene flashed before Soya’s eyes of Jeok Hwayu conversing with a black masked man.

Startled.

‘What is this…?’

The scene scattered and disappeared in an instant. Like a dream…

A cold sweat trickled down Soya’s forehead. She must have seen something that wasn’t there.

“Soya?”

Jeok Hwayu called to Soya, who was standing there in a daze. Soya quickly came to her senses and looked at him.

“I’ll be back shortly, so if you wait here…”

He seemed somehow anxious. As if worried she might refuse his request…

‘It’s a lie.’

Soya could instinctively tell.

That his words telling her to wait were a lie.

That if he left, he wouldn’t return.

That this was the very moment she was being abandoned.

But even knowing this.

“Yes, Young Master.”

Soya smiled brightly and nodded while tightly gripping the bead bracelet he had given her as a gift.

Only then did Jeok Hwayu turn around with a relieved expression.

Soya stood in the same spot, watching Jeok Hwayu’s retreating figure for a long time.

The bright smile that had lingered on her face gradually faded away.

The sun gradually set and night fell.

As the festival ended and the streets became deserted, Soya was left alone.

Elder Brother didn’t come. He wouldn’t come no matter how long she waited.

But Soya still stood in the same spot, fidgeting with the bead bracelet she’d received as a gift, waiting.

Even knowing he wouldn’t come. Because she wanted to feel what it was like to wait for him.

‘Still… it was good.’

Soya truly thought so.

She was a wicked baby bird who had deceived and saddened her family.

But her family had taken her in until she was nine years old, when they should have beaten and driven her out.

For someone like her, today’s brief outing was an incredible luxury. It felt as good as receiving the most precious gift in the world.

So she must never harbor resentment.

Even if they had abandoned her…

* * *

She gradually developed a fever and her throat felt prickly. Her movements also became somewhat sluggish.

Soya knew what these symptoms were. It was from eating the peach.

She had suffered from this a few times when she was very young, and after their positions were reversed, the servant women who knew Soya couldn’t eat peaches had often deliberately fed them to her to torment her.

She would be fine after suffering for a few hours anyway. Just like always.

More than that, she was more worried about what to do from now on.

She had nowhere to go immediately and nothing to her name…

“Run away!”

Suddenly, an urgent voice echoed in her head.

‘What is this sound?’

It was the very moment Soya quickly turned her head.

Swoosh—

A short blade grazed past Soya’s hair.

A few strands of snow-white hair fell to the ground like snowflakes.

“…!”

Soya’s eyes widened in shock.

If she hadn’t turned her head, what would have fallen where the blade passed wouldn’t have been hair but her neck.

A chilling sensation instantly rose on her skin.

Frozen by the piercing killing intent she suddenly felt, Soya spotted a man wearing a black mask in the bushes across from where the blade had come.

Their eyes met.

Startled.

She suddenly remembered the scene that had flashed before her eyes during the day.

That mysterious vision of Hwayu talking with the black masked man…

“What happened to that child?”

“She’s dead.”

Her heart sank sharply.

‘It wasn’t a vision. Perhaps that scene showed me the future.’

Soya now thought she knew who ‘that child’ in the conversation referred to.

‘That child’ was Soya herself.

She had thought his words about getting rid of her for Miss Lili’s sake just meant driving her out of the family clan.

She had thought it meant casting her far away so she wouldn’t catch the young lady’s eye.

But no, that wasn’t it.

‘Elder Brother… wants to… kill me…’

Soya’s pupils shook violently.

She wanted to deny it but couldn’t.

‘He intends to kill me.’

Her toes trembled. Despite the hot summer, she felt chills.

‘I need to run… I need to run away…’

Her body, dulled from eating the peach, wouldn’t move as if it had frozen solid.

The killing intent she felt nearby was slowly approaching her.

“You can’t just stay still! Hurry and run, Soya!”

At that moment, the voice echoed in her head again.

There was no time to wonder what this voice was or what the future she had seen meant.

Soya began running in the opposite direction from where the blade had come.

At the same time, she heard the footsteps of an adult man chasing after her.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

Tap-tap, thud, thud, thud.

Her body felt weak and shivery, her legs kept giving out, but she continued running.

But then.

“Ouch!”

She tripped over a stone and fell.

Clatter—

The bead bracelet she was holding broke, colorful beads rolling across the ground, and at the same time, the pouch Soya had tied inside her jeogori fell with a thud.

“Ah…!”

And right at that moment.

“You little rat of a girl.”

A large shadow fell over Soya’s head.

Soya stiffened in place and looked up.

A man with his face covered by a black mask stood before her.

The man raised his sword toward Soya.

‘No. I’m going to die.’

Perhaps from the beginning, it had been impossible for a small girl to escape from a grown man.

It was right at the moment when Soya sensed death and squeezed her eyes shut.

Clang!

Clash—!

With a sharp sound, the assassin’s sword flew far away.

Soya carefully lifted her eyelids.

The first thing she saw was the broad, solid back of an adult man.

‘Father…?’

No, it wasn’t Father.

A man as tall as Father stood before her, his long, snow-white hair reaching his waist fluttering in the wind.

On the man’s shoulders, on the fluttering silk, was drawn a brave mountain beast with white fur and blue eyes, along with a blue emblem.

Soya knew what that blue emblem drawn on the silk meant.

The divine beast that protects the Western Region and the master of the earth that rules the land.

The leader of wild beasts with teeth and claws harder than steel, possessing physical strength that surpassed the limits of all beast-people.

‘Western Divine Beast White Tiger…’

The very master of the White Family that she had only heard about through people’s words was blocking Soya’s path, elegantly wielding his sword.

* * *

The master of the Western Region, Baek Saeon, head of the White Tiger Family, had set foot on southern soil by the Prince’s command.

[Go to the Southern Region, to the Land of Suzaku. Steal the most precious thing there.]

It was a sudden, riddle-like command, but he couldn’t refuse. Because…

[If you do so, Baek Saeon, I will give you the Dragon Blood Herb you have been searching for so desperately.]

The Prince saw right through what he needed.

So precisely speaking, he had moved not by command but by transaction.

Though he hadn’t expected to end up stealing in the land of those chicken-brained Suzaku bastards.

But then he had moved instinctively at the murky killing intent he felt nearby.

His blade cutting gracefully through the air held not a trace of mercy.

Clang!

The snow-white long sword slashed a long cut across the body of the black-masked assassin.

Baek Saeon looked down at the fallen assassin with cold eyes.

He elegantly swung the tip of his sword toward the assassin who was on the verge of death.

Then the black mask covering the assassin’s face was cut away.

Beneath the removed mask, a tattoo in the shape of a three-legged crow extending from cheek to nape was revealed.

It was the mark of the ‘Three-Legged Crow’, the warrior group employed by the Suzaku Family.

It was when Saeon was frowning as he stared at it.

Suddenly he sensed something trembling beside him.

Swish—!

The moment he turned his head, his gaze met something small and white.

“…?”

With a face pale as a sheet, trembling all over, yet wearing an expression unnaturally serene for her age…

“What is this. This little cotton ball.”

It was a girl, small and snow-white like a cotton ball.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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