Camellia 139

That was not the face of someone looking at the one they loved. Seolyeong could say this with certainty, because he too had someone he loved.

That face only reflected a desire to possess. If he truly cared for the other, he would not wear such a cold and merciless expression.

He would never presume to judge another’s emotions, yet Seolyeong felt an inexpressible sorrow rise within him. His throat grew tight, and he fell briefly silent.

Just then, Eun Yajeong appeared, gliding in leisurely as he had in the forest, and received the unconscious woman in his arms.

“This standoff cannot go on forever, my lord.”

His tone was light and careless. Although the Cheonma showed no response, the arrogant blood fiend clicked his tongue and added with a whistle.

“If you truly wish for this woman to be acknowledged as the Gyo-mo, I could assist.”

“Touch what is mine, and you will not like what follows, Yajeong.”

Only then did Hwaryun turn his gaze upon him. He had immediately understood what Eun Yajeong was suggesting. With a crescent-eyed grin, Yajeong bared his fangs.

“I shall bite her properly so she does not fall too far into the Demonic Path. You know it as well as I do, my lord. To realize a youthful love that arrives at the wrong time, someone must be sacrificed.”

And of course, the sacrifice would be the woman. To persuade sect members who would rather hang themselves than accept an orthodox woman as their matron, there was no other choice. But a woman of the orthodox sect reborn as a blood fiend might quiet their resistance.

The trouble was, turning a human into a blood fiend was no simple process. A single misstep could cost her life.

Taller than Yajeong by a head, Hwaryun stepped up to him without hesitation. The force radiating from him made Yajeong’s shoulders twitch.

Though he maintained a composed expression, his trembling limbs gave him away. Anyone would flinch before the greatest warrior alive.

The Cheonma tilted his head and spoke with a warning.

“How pitiful that a foolish friend rushes to an early grave.”

Far from sorrowful, he looked ready to crush someone where they stood. He slowly ran his fingers through Yajeong’s long hair.

“If you wish to live to see peace, do not offer me counsel again.”

“…”

“Mind your place, and guard your tongue. Were it not for our former friendship, you would already have been tossed to your brothers for sport.”

His grip on the blood fiend’s shoulder was harsh. Yajeong winced from the pain and let out a bitter laugh. He had known Hwaryun since before he reached the peak of martial cultivation. Yet now he felt something like loss as he muttered,

“You’re not the man I thought you were, Ryun-ah.”

The reason the blood fiends had ever allied with the Cheonma Divine Sect was simple. They cared only for domination. Armed with violence, savagery, and inhumanity, they looked down upon human emotion, seeing love and pity as weaknesses that clouded judgment.

Realizing that his once-loyal subject was beginning to turn, Hwaryun clenched and unclenched his hand. The killing energy that surged around Yajeong swelled, ready to crush him at any moment.

As the tension between sovereign and subject escalated, Seolyeong turned anxiously toward Sahyeol Amje.

Strangely, the man who had succeeded Hwaryun as sect leader appeared wholly uninterested in their quarrel. Even with such confusion unfolding before him, he remained composed. Baffled, Seolyeong asked cautiously.

“Did you know this would happen?”

“Know what.”

“All the things I’ve only learned today.”

“You mean the Cheonma turning his back on the sect because of some orthodox woman?”

Summed up like that, there was little to refute. Seolyeong nodded. The sect leader pointed to himself and said something that sounded like a joke, yet was not.

“Doesn’t seem so surprising, considering I’m in the same boat.”

“…”

“Don’t look so stiff, Ahyeong. You make it sound like your husband just said something unforgivable.”

At this point, Seolyeong thought it necessary to search the man’s mind from corner to corner. How could he remain so unbothered after discovering a secret that could turn the entire martial world upside down?

As Tang Yujae began shifting their position again, Seolyeong startled and followed close behind.

“Why do you keep changing locations?”

This was becoming maddening. Yujae was simply filtering events to extract the information he wanted, but to Seolyeong, who did not know the full picture, it was all terribly disorienting.

The net cast across the heavens was beginning to feel familiar now. While drifting through the sky, Seolyeong kept stealing glances at the Amje’s face. He was a man unreadable at the best of times, and now an uneasy feeling stirred in Seolyeong’s chest.

If left alone like this, something disastrous was bound to happen.

He spent longer than expected peering into the Tang clan’s past. Sahyeol Amje observed his family in silence, like a fisherman waiting patiently for a bite. Whenever the clan lord went out, he would follow quickly, as if he sensed movement on the line.

It was around the time Tang Muhyeok began visiting Masugung in secret, avoiding the eyes of the other factions, that he began watching Namgung Seonju with hidden intensity.

And then Seolyeong understood why Sahyeol Amje had focused so much on the Tang lord.

To soothe her burning loneliness, Namgung Seonju performed sword dances at dawn. Watching her, Tang Muhyeok slowly fell under her spell. Each time her mesmerizing sword sliced through the air, his gaze grew more vacant.

“Will you remain hidden forever?”

One day, Seonju looked toward his hiding place and spoke bluntly. Betrayed by the man she once loved, she had no intention of wasting this miracle of a chance.

“Teach me a form, Master.”

A woman who had once chased freedom like a wild swallow now seemed worn down by captivity. Yet that very lifelessness struck a strange fire in Tang Muhyeok’s chest.

The dignified daughter of the Namgung clan approached him in slow steps, whispering,

“I wish to feel the sword that holds the soul of Baekdo.”

It was a tragedy born of compounded misfortune. While the Cheonma was absent, Eun Yajeong remained silent, disillusioned with his master. Tang Muhyeok, drunk on the thrill of defiling the woman of the greatest warrior alive, said nothing. Namgung Seonju, consumed by betrayal, stayed silent in hopes of escaping the Cheonma’s grasp.

It was the very moment the last Cheonma of all ages, having gained a cruel and breathtaking insight, learned how to break the wall of time.

While he floundered through past and future, caught in the current of fate, Namgung Seonju became Tang Muhyeok’s woman. While he lost his mind trying to mend a fractured future, she kissed Tang Muhyeok and whispered words of love.

The one thing Hwaryun had so desperately longed to hear became Tang Muhyeok’s alone.

“I love you, Master.”

With those soft words, Namgung Seonju betrayed the lover who had ruined her life. Even as she carried his child to term, she clung to a single rationalization. That man never existed. She had borne this child alone.

It was a small mercy that the child, born after a painful labor, resembled only her.

Holding the warm infant to her chest, Seonju wept uncontrollably. She clawed at the silvery scales blooming behind the baby’s ears, desperately trying to dispel the fear that she had given birth not to a child, but to a monster.

Only when Tang Muhyeok pried the child from her arms did she speak again, her eyes poisoned with fury.

“Give her back.”

It was at the height of the Cheonma’s delusion, as he clung to a vain hope that he could still change the future. But Namgung Seonju had lost her mind as completely as the man who betrayed her.

So it was only natural that the downfall of the Cheonma Divine Sect came even sooner.

“I’ll make that child human.”

Because no one in that sect had ever endured life with their sanity intact.