KGGGGK—!!

A spark jumped off the blade. The impact shoved my body back. It was a fierce force.

But because I’d already shifted half a step and twisted my upper body, I was pushed back with my posture slightly turned.

Thanks to that, my body rotated in a way that let the attack slide off naturally.

The incoming strike was carried away along the tilted spine of my sword.

KIIIK—!

The one who had attacked me, whose strike had been deflected, shifted to the side, and I wrapped qi around the Divine Sword as if I refused to let him get away.

Right as I was about to unleash a sword form—

“...Hm?”

—I had to stop as soon as I saw the attacker’s face.

“...Mister Mujeong?”

At my words, the middle-aged man who had ambushed me dropped to one knee with a THUD.

“Please forgive my rudeness.”

He lowered his head deeply, setting his sword down on the ground.

I frowned as I looked at him.

He was someone I’d met a few times back in Liaoning.

Strictly speaking, he was one of Murong Yeongsun’s escorts.

So why would someone like that launch a surprise attack on me?

The reason was obvious as fire. So, still frowning between the brows, I looked toward a certain spot.

The entrance to the training ground—and sure enough, there was a woman leaning her back against it, looking at me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I shoved the drawn sword back into its scabbard as I asked.

“...You really blocked it?”

Murong Yeongsun sounded a bit surprised as she said that to me, and I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.

Then—

“Hey.”

I spoke to her with a blank, expressionless face.

“Did you lose your mind?”

“I’ll apologize. There was something I wanted to check.”

“Check my ass.”

STEP. I turned and walked straight toward Murong Yeongsun.

“What do you take me for? I’m already pissed off enough I could die.”

I’d had too much pile up lately to just let this slide. Especially when it came to her.

“...”

Murong Yeongsun just looked at me with those sunken eyes of hers.

Normally I might have held back a bit, but this time I couldn’t.

“Hey.”

“Yeah.”

“I clearly told you before I left Liaoning.”

It had been winter, on one of those days she came by according to her little seasonal schedule.

“I told you not to cling to me because it’s [N O V E L I G H T] annoying. That no matter what you did, there would never be a day when I looked at you.”

“...”

At those words, the corners of Murong Yeongsun’s eyes twitched.

Back then, after hearing that, she’d looked at me with reddened eyes and said—

‘Can’t you cut me a little slack...?’

Her expression had been so pitiful, and then even more pitiful, that I’d ended up giving in at the time.

“But I also told you not to cross the line. So what the hell do you call this?”

Now was different.

“Why are you coming all the way to Sichuan just to piss me off?”

There’s a mountain of things to do and even more I have to keep an eye on.

By luck, it was still barely within what I could endure, so I was hanging on—but I had no room left to spare for crap like this.

“Why did you do it?”

I kept my voice from rising and asked for her reason.

“I wanted to see if the rumors were true.”

Yeongsun answered with that.

“See if what? Whether I really got stronger or not?”

Little Sword Saint. Killed an absolute master the Poison King himself supposedly couldn’t finish off.

Saved the Poison King and Tang Clan.

That was the ridiculous rumor about me that had started to spread a bit inside Sichuan.

Just hearing an exaggerated, blown-up rumor like that was laughable.

An absolute master? Someone even the Poison King couldn’t kill?

As if. He wasn’t that much of a monster.

...Was he?

‘He was a monster, but still...’

I hadn’t even killed him myself, so I didn’t feel much about it.

If anything, the only impression it left was—

‘That I could catch a guy like that with this body.’

I’d learned that it all depended on how well you handled your own body.

I’d felt that down to the bone in the spirit-dream too.

‘...I really thought I was going to lose my mind.’

I died over and over until I awakened sword force.

And even after awakening sword force, how many more times did I die?

It was long enough that I gave up even trying to count.

‘And the condition was just to block a single strike.’

Ignite sword force and block the opponent’s sword force.

I’d been clinging on just to fulfill that one condition, and yet I had no idea how many hells I’d gotten a glimpse of because I couldn’t do it.

In the end I did pull it off, but what I gained from it... wasn’t anything fancy.

‘Just that I can move a bit faster.’

Even at the same realm, with the same body, the power and speed you can show are different.

I had to recognize that.

I had to draw out the absolute maximum power and speed my body could produce.

That spirit-dream had been a fight over whether I could recognize that or not.

So what Yoo Cheongil had wanted to teach me there wasn’t simply that a body that hadn’t fully reached the pinnacle could still use sword force, but—

‘How far you can push your body’s full potential.’

I figured that’s what he’d wanted to show me.

‘Anyway.’

This wasn’t what mattered right now, so I set it aside.

“Did you get your confirmation? Are you satisfied now?”

“...”

I practically hurled the words at Murong Yeongsun.

“I’ll allow that part of this is my fault for dodging the conversation.”

I said it without smoothing the wrinkle out of my brow.

“But at the very least, you shouldn’t have used a shitty method like—”

“Who is it?”

“What?”

Murong Yeongsun cut me off.

Who? What the hell is she suddenly talking about?

“What do you mean.”

I asked her back, but Yeongsun didn’t answer; she was too busy looking around.

After she’d searched the surroundings for quite a while, Yeongsun looked at me, eyes gone utterly cold, and spoke.

“What do you see this time?”

“...”

“Who did this to you?”

[Oh?]

At Yeongsun’s words, Yoo Cheongil was flustered.

[What the? Can that girl see things too?]

His words were so loaded with meaning that it sounded like he was worried. If she could see, there’d be far more than one or two problems—

[Then I gotta hop over there right now! That hairy bastard’s nothing, this girl’s way better, hell yeah!]

“...”

Crazy old man. What the hell am I supposed to do with him?

I barely managed to hold back the sigh trying to burst out.

If I let it out as I was, it’d be obvious something was off, so I endured for a moment, then let out a shallow breath.

“Hoo...”

I exhaled softly, pushed my hair back, and called out to Yeongsun.

“Yeongsun.”

“...”

The moment I called her by name, a cross-shaped vein popped on Murong Yeongsun’s forehead, but unlike last time, she didn’t get angry.

I could feel her holding it back.

“I told you before too. It’s not like that.”

“Lies.”

Yeongsun cut my words off sharply.

“You’re tangled up in something. There’s no way you’d be like this otherwise.”

“...What are you so sure about?”

“Because you’re not that kind of person.”

“Don’t make pronouncements. What do you even know about me?”

“I know. I’ve watched you for years. How could I not know?”

I let out a short, involuntary laugh at that.

“You can’t learn anything from just a few years.”

At best, a few years.

And it’s not like she saw me every day of my life without missing one. Using an engagement as a pretext, just briefly.

Using the breaking of that engagement as a pretext, for a moment.

After that—

“What could you possibly see with eyes clouded by leftover attachment and obsession. You don’t know anything.”

“...”

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s all pointless and meaningless. So just stop.”

“...Stop?”

At my words, Murong Yeongsun’s petal-like lips pressed together.

Her emotions were laid bare in a way that was rare for her.

Then—

FWIP—!

“...!”

Suddenly, Murong Yeongsun loosened her front and bared the area around her collarbone.

“You’re out of your fucking—!”

What the hell is she doing all of a sudden? I grabbed at her clothes—

“Then why did you save me?”

“...”

I froze for a moment at the dark scar on her collarbone.

Because I knew very well why that was there.

“If you saved me, you should take responsibility.”

“What kind of bullshit is that?”

It was absurd.

“What, you figure you can’t get married because your body’s got a scar, so I should take responsibility for you?”

“No.”

Yeongsun shook her head, as if that wasn’t what she meant at all.

“You think I can’t get married just because of a little scar like this? I’m pretty. Really pretty. Enough that something like this doesn’t even register as a flaw.”

“...”

She wasn’t wrong, which made it that much more irritating.

It was even worse because I’d heard almost the exact same line somewhere else.

‘I’m pretty, you know.’

That was how that crazy woman from Blue Moon Sect had evaluated herself.

‘...Is this just their type?’

Both of them had similar atmospheres, and even the things they said sounded alike.

It was worse because their confidence actually had some real foundation behind it.

“Who are you thinking about right now?”

“...I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just too dumbfounded to say something.”

“Those were eyes thinking about some other woman.”

“Don’t talk crap.”

Their damn intuition is annoyingly sharp too.

“And even if I was, so what. We’ve been done for a long time.”

“Right. We’re done.”

It had been almost ten years since the engagement was broken.

You could safely say we were strangers now. We’d been strangers to begin with.

“So just quit and go your own way. You just said you’re not asking me to take responsibility over a scar, so why are you doing this.”

That scar had formed right after the engagement was broken.

There’d been an incident, shitty as hell, and it had shown up during the cleanup.

It was also the root of why Murong Yeongsun had become obsessed with me.

“Whatever you want from me, I can’t give it to you, and I have no intention of doing so. Did you forget why I ran away?”

“Yeah, why’d you run away so cowardly? If you were going to face it, you should’ve done it properly.”

“Properly my ass. You really are one funny woman, you know that?”

I wrinkled the bridge of my nose and spoke to Yeongsun.

“You got caught bribing one of our household servants to spy on me, didn’t you? You got caught trying to slip money to my bastard brother to pull some stunt, didn’t you? Do you know how many other things there were besides that?”

I was sick to death of it.

At home, they helped her because they were hoping maybe we could get engaged to the Murong Clan again.

I couldn’t stand the sight of it, so I had to run out.

That was also why I left for Anhui.

‘I tried so damn hard not to get caught in the end.’

I’d come to an agreement with my father, and I’d secretly coordinated with the Murong Clan Head too.

But then—

‘They both stabbed me in the back?’

Had those old men lost their minds?

I’d done more than a few things for them on my way out, too.

My teeth clenched on their own.

“Just thinking about that time still makes me shake with rage, so what exactly do you expect me to do with you.”

“Isn’t that enough for you to accept me?”

“What kind of brazen bullshit is that?”

I had no idea how many layers of iron plate she’d strapped over her face.

“I will never think that way. And that’s not changing in the future either. So stop being a damn nuisance and get lost. Before I send a letter to your father right this instant.”

I put every ounce of feeling I had into throwing the words at her.

Hearing that, Murong Yeongsun pressed her lips tightly together.

In her lowered gaze, I could see the corners of her eyes trembling.

Clicking my tongue briefly at that sight, I moved to leave.

Then, suddenly, I spoke to her again.

“Don’t expect anything from me. What you’re doing isn’t some pretty emotion like love or affection.”

The reason I didn’t look kindly on Murong Yeongsun’s actions.

The reason I didn’t respect her and refused to bother accepting her.

“Stop trying to find your dead mother in me.”

Because I knew that the root of her feelings was longing.

Her shoulders gave a tiny tremble when I mentioned her mother.

I glanced at that and spat out my last words.

“Well then, Young Lady Murong. I’ll be taking my leave first. Since you’ve been discourteous, I trust you’ll be more careful from now on.”

I went back to formal speech. It was my way of saying I wouldn’t be talking any further.

I walked straight out of the training ground.

And the moment I stepped outside, Yoo Cheongil spoke to me like he’d been waiting.

[That girl can’t see, right?]

It seemed he’d been hung up on Murong Yeongsun’s words.

“She can’t. Don’t worry.”

[...What a shame.]

“...So that wasn’t worry, that was regret?”

[It was a joke. Half of one.]

So the other half was serious.

[So, what happened.]

“...It’s nothing much. It just came out of my own mistake.”

[Mistake?]

“Yes.”

Yeah, it was a mistake.

Seeing her mother’s soul when I was a kid.

Being unable to turn away from that desperate plea to please, please save her daughter.

Because of that, I’d stuck my nose in where it didn’t belong and saved Yeongsun.

And so—

‘The fact that girl is trying to see her mother through me.’

All of it had started from my mistake.