What on earth could it be—
Even on the day the fifteen days were up, Seol Ha thought of nothing else all day long.
The Young Master she served had changed.
Without a doubt.
His temperament, his manner of speech, both carry a strange air of pressure.
As though an old veteran general had settled into his body.
Because it weighed on her, she circled outside the Young Master's quarters every night whenever she had a spare moment.
But because of the Young Master's order, she could not go in.
There was nothing to do but devote herself to training.
It was just as she was about to turn back.
Several people approached.
Familiar faces, smiles mixed with derision.
It was the Grand Madam's second son, Geon A-seong, who had knocked the Young Master senseless not long ago, and the Twin Dragon Sword Demon brothers, called his shadows.
Commonly, the Twin Demons.
She bowed her head in courtesy.
“Surely the promise with that bastard's mother can be cast aside by now?”
Geon A-seong's smiling eyes raked greedily over her whole body. The Twin Dragon Sword Demons' eyes were no better than their master's.
“Come into my arms and you'd live enjoying far more than you do now. Yet you walk a thorny path on the pretext of serving that bastard.”
When it came to lechery, no one in the Golden Manor matched Geon A-seong. Seol Ha felt filthy, but did not show it.
“I am one who has sworn to hold a sword all her life. I abandoned the life of a woman long ago.”
Geon A-seong smirked.
“Forget that paltry oath. Train a hundred days and that bastard's limit is fixed anyway, and in the end he'll throw you away the moment it suits his interests.”
“I will take my leave now.”
Trading more words would only mean seeing something she did not want to see.
Leaving was the solution.
As Seol Ha moved to step away, the Twin Dragon Sword Demons blocked the path ahead and behind.
It was quite unlike the usual.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I've been watching you for quite a while, see. However outstanding your aptitude, you're still just an escort warrior of this Manor. And yet this body, no less than the Chairman's second son, wants to take you and can't. Does that make any sense? That's what I'm saying.”
“The Grand Madam would have your hide. Strictly speaking, I am someone who serves the Grand Madam.”
“Would she really kill me over taking one of you? From what I hear, that bastard Geon Gon's been crippled by the last business, can't even move his body, can't properly wake up either? Then you've got no Liege left to serve, so how about serving me instead? Hyuk hyuk.”
She bit her lip.
The Young Master's condition was perfectly sound and not worth mentioning, but it was disgusting how he took the inflated bad news about the Young Master as an opening to bare his twisted lust.
She drew her sword.
“You must know these men cannot restrain me.”
On the condition that she not serve the Young Master, she had received not only his safety but a small quantity of spiritual medicine to serve as fertilizer for her growth.
The Twin Demons were more than within her ability to handle.
“Ah, no. The Twin Demons will only block your way. I know your skill perfectly well, so how could I think of stopping you with the Twin Demons? Hyuk hyuk.”
Geon A-seong drew his sword.
“I'll do it myself. But can you even cut me? My blood came from the noble Chairman of the Golden Manor.”
This was the aim.
“Would you believe me if I said I'd been waiting only for this day?”
“…….”
“Put away the blade-waving and come quietly with me. Then you won't have to see anything unsightly out in the open. Though in truth I think I'd prefer the open air.”
“Heh heh.”
“Hyuk hyuk.”
She glared at the taunting Twin Demons, but they only cut off her escape route and did not lunge.
Sealed in.
Geon A-seong crept closer.
“Now then, kill me if you've got the confidence. If you haven't, put that sword down first.”
A four-sided siege she seemed in no way able to break out of.
It was the moment she gripped the sword in her hand with all her strength.
A sudden wind blew.
“I'm the same now as I was before.”
A familiar voice continued.
“I hate it viciously when someone touches what's in my hand.”
The shadow that appeared in an instant snatched Geon A-seong by the nape and drove a dagger into the side of his neck.
SQUELCH—
Perhaps he had not expected such an ending.
More question than horror hung on Geon A-seong's face.
“Wh…at… son of a bitch…….”
Blood shot up from his neck and the words leaked out.
“That son of a bitch is me.”
As Geon A-seong collapsed, the young man who still carried a boy's look pulled the dagger free.
“Seol Ha, kill them all.”
Geon Gon revealed a vicious murderous intent of a kind Seol Ha had never seen before.
“If you want to live.”
As though from a habit long engraved in her, Seol Ha swung her sword at the Twin Demons without a moment's hesitation.
She had to see it through.
If the Young Master wished it.
***
“Hoo. Hoo.”
It was her first time killing anyone.
Fear and excitement rose on Seol Ha's blanched face.
I, of course, was composed.
Before the regression, killing trash like this had been nothing. I wiped the bloodied dagger roughly on my sleeve and stowed it at my waist.
“Calm down. Breathe deep. Compared to what's ahead, this is nothing.”
“How… can you be like that? We just…….”
“Yeah, we killed the second son. Just now. But is there anyone watching?”
WHIP, WHIP—
Seol Ha looked around, but there was no one.
Of course there would be none.
This lecherous bastard was thorough in his own way about preparation, so once he decided to lay Seol Ha down, he would have made sure no one else was let in here.
Though of course the Grand Madam could not fail to know.
She would have thought nothing of it and let it pass. She might even have judged it better to leave Seol Ha powerless.
As I recalled, she was a pervert with viciously twisted tastes.
In any case, the reality did not change.
I had killed Geon A-seong, and Seol Ha had gone along with it.
“Run. This was my doing. You saw nothing and knew nothing, Young Master.”
Seol Ha spoke with all her heart.
My nose stung a little.
Rather than blame me, even in the middle of all this Seol Ha worried about me.
“Why would I run and leave my home behind?”
If that were the plan, I would not have gone through that brutal agony to regress.
“Then what do you intend to do?”
Her earlobes reddened and her voice rose.
A habit Seol Ha showed when facing a trial too hard to bear, or when she was very tense.
Seeing it after so long stirred something in me—
“I'm going to burn down my quarters.”
“And then?”
“I'm going to burn this son of a bitch and pass him off as me.”
“What do you mean….”
“The rumor already says I've been crippled, doesn't it?”
“…….”
“What could a crippled me, the one everyone sees, have done? It's obvious. You resisted and killed the Twin Demons, and the second son failed to take you. After that, in a fit of rage, the second son burned me in front of you. In revenge for the Twin Demons.”
“Since when have you been thinking of such a thing? No, is that even possible?”
She had the look of someone who could not bring herself to believe it.
The thought that she might find it hard to accept a me like this came the moment I looked into Seol Ha's eyes.
“Just now, the moment I saw what you were going through, I snapped. Lightning struck inside my head and I came wide awake.”
“…….”
“I'll do anything now. That's better than having what's mine taken. If that makes you uncomfortable, I'll understand if you leave my side.”
The Seol Ha I knew was, by my standard, a good person.
A woman who had followed me, with whom she shared no blood, blindly, to repay my mother's kindness.
If a person like this was not good by my reckoning, then what would be?
Only, I was no longer the me of the past.
The me she had known and followed was gone.
I was a merciless demonic practitioner who had endured ninety years.
Understanding a me like that unconditionally would likely be hard.
“What… should I do?”
At the unexpected answer, I looked at Seol Ha without a word.
I thought of asking something like the reason for her unconditional loyalty, but I did not particularly want to.
For as long as she was at my side, I would simply consider her my responsibility.
“Pour oil in my quarters and get ready to burn it. I'll handle the rest.”
I rolled the dagger in my hand and took hold of Geon A-seong's face, lifting it.
It had been quite a while since I made a human-skin mask.
I was, after all, a human-skin mask artisan praised even by the Heavenly Demon.
***
FWOOSH—
The fire caught.
The house where I had lived my whole life with my mother would turn to ash in less than an instant.
Before long the estate's servants and maidservants would appear.
The guards within the Golden Manor's estate would come running and raise a commotion putting out the fire.
Seol Ha looked at me.
“It's… flawless.”
“How's the voice?”
Geon A-seong's pitch felt higher than that of most women, which made his voice fairly hard to imitate, though not beyond me.
“It's a little unnatural.”
“And now?”
I shook my vocal cords from side to side and performed the voice-changing art.
“It's identical.”
Seol Ha wore a look of wonder.
And no wonder, since a voice-changing art that mimics this exactly demands tremendous craft and fine tuning of qi.
Ninety years had not been spent idly.
“Young Master.”
“What?”
“May I ask how on earth you did that? Even I felt no presence at all. Have you been hiding your skill?”
“No. I used a grand art I needed.”
The grand art had been a success.
The first stage of the Heavenly Brahma Molting Art opens part of the body's potential.
Flesh, bone and muscle tear without limit and are then composed anew to fit my new potential.
True qi that had scattered without being properly absorbed because of insufficient aptitude is also absorbed to fit the newly expanded frame of the body.
Of course, since I had taken no spiritual medicine at all in childhood, this part was not much of an advantage.
Even so, the result was satisfying.
The combat instinct and choice of martial arts from ninety years lived as the world's second-best.
The enemies' fitting carelessness.
And on top of that, the dead of night.
With reasons like these added, failing would have been the stranger outcome.
Of course, for convenience I fobbed Seol Ha off with something suitable.
“Would you believe me if I said I reclaimed the residual energies that had built up all over my body through the time I've trained? Of course, it's such a brutal grand art that I wouldn't recommend it.”
If there had been another way, I would have chosen differently too.
Because.
If the other parts are not grown in balance to match the grown body, one suffers a calamity greater than qi deviation.
That was why the second stage of the Heavenly Brahma Molting Art had to be hurried along once the conditions were met.
Also, given Seol Ha's age and the aptitude she already possessed, attempting the Heavenly Brahma Molting Art would be a loss for her instead.
Of course, there was no need to explain it point by point.
“It hurts like hell.”
For Seol Ha, that much was enough.
“Yes, I don't like pain either.”
Seol Ha smiled faintly.
“So you know how to smile, too.”
I watched her flush red for a moment, then stroked my chin.
“Hmm, there's no time, so I'll commit a brief rudeness.”
“What?”
Instead of answering, I tore part of the shoulder of Seol Ha's martial arts uniform.
Skin like white jade was laid bare.
“If your clothes are too intact, it draws suspicion.”
But perhaps the person mattered more than the clothes.
Even the torn martial arts uniform felt on her like a splendid ceremonial robe.
Pretty. Pointlessly so.
At the same time, a crowd came surging from far off.
It was the first day of living as the second son, Geon A-seong.
***
“So in a fit of rage you burned that bastard and the quarters to the ground?”
The woman upon the golden throne, having her long nails tended by maidservants, looked down at me with a cold gaze.
One of the masters of the Golden Manor.
The Grand Madam, Maeng A-wol.
One of the mortal enemies who had devoured my life.
As a child, merely stepping into this room had given me chills; now the glittering things in sight here enthralled me.
If I get all of this into my hands, the days ahead will go more interestingly and more quickly—
An incense burner of pure gold.
A splendid curtain woven of white silver thread.
Cloud-dragon patterns of pure gold laid over the walls.
Adding the golden throne adorned with jade, gold and myriad-crimson treasure pearls, it was no exaggeration to call this room a sea of gold.
“I believe I told you not to act rashly. And yet you have gone and caused a calamity.”
“That is… it simply happened…….”
Stammering before the Grand Madam was the second son Geon A-seong's specialty.
The Grand Madam did not suspect me much.
If anything, she was indifferent.
My near-perfect human-skin mask work was left feeling rather awkward.
A long silence.
Just as I wondered what she was thinking.
The Grand Madam parted her red-painted lips.
“As the price for that, I shall have to kill you. Only then will no particular talk arise.”
Now this was unexpected.