I let out a dry laugh as I watched the assassins flee for all they were worth. If I wanted, I could track where they had run off to, but it was obvious. Chris.
‘Bow.’
I commanded the armor in my mind. As it bent at the waist, I climbed down from its shoulder and lightly stepped onto the floor.
The corridor was a mess. Weapons the assassins had thrown aside lay scattered around the shattered paving stones.
I intended to leave them there instead of cleaning them up. The palace staff needed to become more vigilant. They needed to know that their “Young Master” was facing a serious threat.
Still, sending assassins to kill one’s own younger brother? He really was out of his mind.
Were there no adults on his side to control the actions of a five-year-old? Or was I being too naïve? It could have been a joint effort between an adult and a child.
In any case, the strategy of confusing them with the formation and finishing them off with a puppet had succeeded.
The puppet’s performance was particularly impressive.
How much power the armor could exert depended entirely on Colin’s will, and his condition was, how should I put it, rather excited.
‘Ha ha ha, do you like me that much?’
‘How about this?’
That day, he spent over three hours playing with me. I had to send him away after that because I was concerned the spell formula would not be able to endure any more.
Thanks to absorbing so much of Colin’s power, the armor was now spewing energy like an active volcano. To be honest, it was becoming a little difficult to control. To truly call it my puppet, I had to raise my Dao Power to at least the Foundation Establishment Realm as soon as possible.
Moreover, I discovered something new while engraving the spell formula. The material used to make the armor was not ordinary steel. It was something far harder than steel.
‘Let’s go back.’
The armor led the way with heavy stomps. The formation was still active, but I had to choose our route carefully if I wanted to bring this giant back to my room without being noticed.
After arriving at my bedroom, I tapped the armor once to thank it for its work.
Armor?
I kept calling it armor, armor. I felt a little sorry about that. We had worked together quite well tonight.
I wanted to give it a fitting name, but I did not have much talent for naming things.
So I decided to use the name of the armor’s original owner.
Ivan.
Yes. From now on, you are Ivan.
***
The next day, the palace was thrown into an uproar. Soldiers on patrol discovered traces of intruders and reported them to the head of security.
Once dawn broke, uniformed investigators arrived one after another on horseback. Every person in the palace household—the maids, gardeners, cooks, sentries, and even the stable hands—was called in for questioning.
Colin arrived at the palace before the investigators did. He turned me this way and that, checking several times that I had not been injured.
“May those bastards rust away…!”
Colin spoke in a voice full of fury.
“What kind of monstrous nonsense is this? Do you truly intend to be satisfied only after burying a child beside his mother’s grave?”
The old man raged at someone whose identity I did not know.
And through his words, I realized that my mother had died.
So that was why there was no portrait of my mother in my room. If I had seen a painting of her, I would have grown curious.
I prayed inwardly for my mother’s peaceful rest. I was surely responsible for no small part of why she had to die in the flower of her youth.
That day was also the first time I saw people called knights.
“Is that not Sir Viten?”
“My goodness, Sir Thalia is here!”
The maids made a fuss each time one of them appeared, as though darkness would fade and salvation would arrive through their presence alone.
I think I understood the feeling. It was probably similar to watching young, exceptional, promising martial arts masters in my previous life.
Perhaps Chris thought he had drawn too much attention, or perhaps the knights stationed throughout the palace had become troublesome. For a while, he lay low as though he were dead.
In the meantime, I finally graduated from those damned diapers. More frightening than the threat of assassination had been the threat of a bowel movement that could begin at any time.
I also suffered another seizure.
A Cold Yin Severed Meridian seizure was dramatic. My entire body stiffened, frost spikes sprouted from where I lay, and ice-laced bloody fluid flowed endlessly from my nose and mouth. Anyone who saw it even once seemed to choose one of two things.
They either saw me as a monster, or loved me even more.
“……Cough.”
“Young Master, stay conscious!”
Lily let out a shrill scream.
“You must not close your eyes. Do you understand? Keep them open and look at me!”
She repeatedly slapped my cheeks and wiped my body without rest with warm towels.
Clinging to the fading thread of my consciousness, I smiled. My body was freezing from the cold, but my heart felt soft and warm.
After tormenting me for three days and nights, the seizure gradually subsided.
For some reason, the power of the Cold Yin Severed Meridian seemed far stronger than before. If I had not opened my middle dantian in advance, it might have devoured me completely.
Lily took the seizure extremely seriously, but I seemed to have entered a stage beyond resignation and into acceptance.
I already knew.
That there were no dragons, white tigers, vermilion birds, black tortoises, qilin, haetae, tapirs, heavenly hounds, phoenixes, three-legged crows, nine-tailed foxes, ten-thousand-year fire carp, Azure Stone Milk, or Man-Shaped Snow Ginseng anywhere under heaven.
There was only one truth.
The crimson Udumbara Flower,
Brought into bloom by Master’s soul.
“How is the Young Master doing?”
A girl with purple hair tied behind her back entered the bedroom. A young man with red hair flowing loose like a mane followed her.
The purple-haired girl was Thalia, and the red-haired young man was Viten, if I remembered correctly.
The two were the core of the reinforcements assigned to guard the palace. I had heard they were very young and promising knights, and that was my impression as well.
“He is much better now.”
When Lily answered, Thalia let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank goodness. I was terribly worried that something had happened to the Young Master as soon as I received my posting.”
While Thalia and Lily spoke, Viten came to my bedside and made playful gestures.
“Sir Viten, what are you doing?”
Thalia reprimanded Viten in a stern voice. Viten scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
“No, I simply thought the Young Master might be bored.”
“What will the Young Master think when he sees your reckless conduct? He will think that knights are frivolous by nature.”
“My nieces and nephews liked it when I did this…….”
Viten muttered quietly.
Sorry, Viten. If I had let go of my dignity a little more, I might have played along.
“By the way, what illness exactly does the Young Master have? Can Healer Colin not cure most illnesses?”
“They say it is not an illness, but an Awakened Ability, so even prayers cannot do anything about it.”
“An Awakened Ability?”
“Yes. It is an ability that emits cold. Normally, there is no problem, but sometimes the cold becomes so strong that his blood nearly freezes.”
“An Awakened Ability that harms its own bearer. That is rare.”
“What worries me is that the Young Master’s body seems to grow a little colder every day. Even someone as remarkable as Colin cannot help him, so if this continues, what will happen to him in the future…….”
Lily trailed off.
What would happen in the future? I could tell her that. A child with a heart colder than anyone else would live more fervently than anyone else, then depart while leaving behind only a single glittering ice flower.
What I could not tell her was whose grave I would offer that flower to in this life.
“If his body being cold is the problem, then all we need to do is warm him up.”
Viten suddenly interjected.
“Sir Viten.”
Thalia spoke in a grim tone.
“Do not bring up unhelpful ideas in the first place.”
“No, I only meant it as an idea…… If someone is cold, it is right to warm them up, is it not?”
“Thank you for the suggestion. We are already doing everything we can to preserve the Young Master’s body temperature.”
Lily showed him thick padded clothes and a heating stone that had been warmed until it was scorching hot. Thalia rebuked Viten with her eyes, as though to say, See?
But Viten did not yield.
“This is what I mean. If we try this and that and nothing works, why not put something tremendously hot inside his body instead? Awakened Ability or not, we should put it firmly in its place so it never dares rear its head again.”
He meant feeding me food imbued with Yang Energy.
It was a method Master had tried early on. Thanks to that, I had boiled and drunk rare wild mountain ginseng, caught two-headed snakes to infuse into liquor, and squeezed ginger and garlic into juice to consume.
And there was something else I had tried…….
“You know, things like a Lava Elemental’s core or a Phoenix’s lungs,”
…What?
“Or a Red Dragon’s heart.”