Chapter 147: Jaseung, Finds It

The next morning, Baek Seolyoung put on a new set of martial attire and summoned her subordinates.

They were the Four Dragons of the Northern Sky and the Raging Dragons.

She had married Lee Jaseung, but the warriors of the Black Way Alliance were his subordinates. They treated her with proper courtesy, yet she could not call them her own.

Having been called out at dawn, Peng So felt displeased.

He grumbled loud enough for the people around him to hear.

He had never been a kind man. He had submitted to Lee Jaseung, but in his heart he still looked down on Baek Seolyoung.

There was also the matter of how others saw him. Being pressured by Lee Jaseung had weighed on his mind, and that backlash made him try to come at Baek Seolyoung even harder.

Baek Seolyoung knew that was exactly how he felt.

“Great Dragon Peng, your complexion doesn’t look good. Are you unwell anywhere?”

“I have grown fond of sleeping in lately, that’s all. Haha.”

He offered a ridiculous excuse to the Lord’s summons and laughed loudly, and a few others followed suit. They felt much the same as Peng So, men whose pride smarted at taking orders from a woman.

“Step forward.”

“May I ask why?”

“When your body feels stiff, a spar is the best cure.”

For a moment Peng So’s expression tightened. Everyone understood. Baek Seolyoung had made that proposal to break him of his bad habits.

Every gaze turned to Peng So. They knew his temper well, so they watched the scene with lively interest.

Of course Peng So was not the type to let it pass.

“I am wide awake now that I get to spar with the Lord. Hahaha.”

His true feelings were different.

‘Insolent wench. You think you can press me down just because you have your husband to rely on?’

He wanted to humiliate her thoroughly, but the thought of Lee Jaseung kept him from daring to go that far. He planned to curb her spirit to a proper degree.

“Now then, come.”

Confident he was a step above, Peng So yielded the opening attack.

“Very well.”

Baek Seolyoung drew her sword.

Sensing the poise of a master in her calm bearing, Peng So felt a sharp surge of danger.

‘Was she always this strong?’

But it was already too late to be thinking that.

Baek Seolyoung’s sword cut across the space in a blink and flashed before his eyes.

Swish, swish, swish!

Peng So’s blade skimmed against hers. He tried to block, but he could not keep up with the speed of her sword.

“Gasp!”

Clang, clang!

In an instant more than ten exchanges passed, and on the eleventh clash,

Chaaang!

Peng So’s sword flew from his hand.

Thud!

At the same moment Baek Seolyoung’s ruthless kick smashed into his chest.

Hurled far back, Peng So tumbled across the ground in an ugly heap, then sprang to his feet. The pain was secondary. There were far too many eyes on him.

“Damn it!”

Grinding his teeth, Peng So charged at her.

Swish, swish!

Baek Seolyoung’s sword flashed through the air.

The next instant, the hem of Peng So’s robe split long and fluttered free.

Startled, he looked down. The hem had been cut into a cross shape. It had not been a glancing touch. She had aimed and sliced it precisely.

Baek Seolyoung looked at him and spoke coldly.

“The next thing that gets cut won’t be your robe.”

A chill flowed from her eyes. Peng So flinched. The woman before him was not the Baek Seolyoung he thought he knew.

He started and lowered his head.

“I apologize, my Lord.”

He was weak before the strong and strong before the weak.

The warriors standing in back were just as shocked. They had not expected Baek Seolyoung to be this strong. They too lowered their heads, startled and afraid.

Baek Seolyoung stood proudly before them.

“I am placing the Four Dragons of the Northern Sky and the Raging Dragons on alert. Be ready to move at any time.”

“Understood.”

Their answer rang out.

An hour later, Baek Seolyoung stood in the fields.

It was the very place where Lee Jaseung had built her a house on her birthday.

The spot had come to mind, and the thought had stayed with her the entire way as she ran. A faint hope that if she came here, he might be sitting and waiting for her.

But he was not there.

All that waited for her was the cold wind blowing across the field.

She had forced herself not to worry about Lee Jaseung these last few days.

She had intentionally refused to dwell on him. She believed bad thoughts called in bad events.

He is safe. He will come in soon with that easy grin and open the door.

She kept telling herself that. She truly wished it would turn out that way.

Yet six days had passed without his return. Her heart was beginning to crumble. Beating up the likes of Peng So would not fix any of this.

Standing in this place made his absence feel even heavier.

Her chest went tight, then her emotions surged all at once.

Tears filled her eyes.

What if he really died?

A thought seized her that somewhere out on this empty field he might be lying fallen and bleeding. Her heart grew frantic. She felt she had to run anywhere and find him.

All the fear and sorrow she had held back rushed in together.

Tears slid down Baek Seolyoung’s face.

She was not that hard of a person. That was why she tried so hard to become hard. Truly hard people did not make an effort to become hard.

“I want to see you.”

Her longing mixed with the sound of the wind and vanished.

She cried for a long while like that, then wiped her tears away.

Tears were not what she needed now.

Just you wait, I will save you no matter what.

* * *

Six days earlier.

At first it had been truly ordinary.

Once the mechanism was disarmed and the door swung open, there was an ordinary corridor, and Lee Jaseung walked in with care.

At the end of the corridor there was a single room.

There were no devices. It was not even locked.

Lee Jaseung cautiously stepped inside.

It was a large room. The first thing he saw was the bed, and it was enormous. It looked big enough to lay ten adults side by side.

Even a king’s bed would not be this large. A clean, richly embroidered coverlet lay on top.

The room was appointed with real splendor.

Paintings hung on the walls, porcelain rested atop display cabinets. Even the rug underfoot was an expensive import from the outer regions.

His impression of the room was this.

The Murim Alliance Leader’s resting place.

Just as Jang Wonso had said, it was a space for repose. Considering his bad reputation, even that enormous bed seemed plausible.

Lee Jaseung examined the room.

He put his particular focus and powers of observation to full use. He scrutinized the floor and the walls. He checked whether a painting on the wall might hide a map. He checked whether there might be any hidden space.

Yet there was nothing strange there at all.

He had already overstayed the time he should have used to ascend. If Jang Wonso had returned, he might have come down looking for him.

Thinking he would have to wait for the next chance, Lee Jaseung stepped out of the room.

As he moved to close the door, he turned back again.

His feet would not carry him away. It felt like something tugged at him. A sense that there was something here. A feeling he should not leave like this.

Lee Jaseung wavered. He clearly needed to come again, disarm the mechanisms, and enter. But would he get another chance to come down here alone? He needed to seize such a chance as soon as possible.

He stopped wasting time on indecision. He stepped back inside.

He searched the room again, straining to find what he had missed.

Still he found nothing.

Just as he was about to leave again, his gaze drifted up to the ceiling. The unusually high ceiling held nothing.

He lowered his head, then lifted his eyes to the ceiling once more.

A strange sense of dissonance prickled him.

After staring for a long moment, he realized. The interior was lavishly decorated.

From the many paintings that drew the eye to the array of ornaments in odd shapes, everything begged for attention. Only the ceiling was a single color, clean and plain.

It was as if the room were saying there was no need to look there. As if to say, there is nothing to decorate on this high ceiling.

Then one thing caught his eye. His gaze sharpened.

He sprang up in a single bound.

He soared to the ceiling and stopped as if standing in midair, floating as though his feet were planted on the ground.

What he looked at was the end of a ceiling ornament. Its color had faded compared to the other side.

He reached out and gripped that spot. It was nothing like a mechanical trigger. It was simply that someone had gripped it and hung there so often that the finish had worn.

Why hang here? If the ornament had worn down like this, someone must have hung onto it several times a day.

Thinking that, he looked down, and his eyes went wide.

Astonishingly, the entire room was a map.

The floor, the patterns in the rug, the position of the tables, even the embroidery on the coverlet over the bed. When taken together, all of it formed a single map.

It was a map no one could recognize from below. It could only be seen by hanging from the ceiling like this.

Only now did it make sense. Having obtained the map, Jang Wonso foresaw that no matter where he hid it, it would be taken. So he reconstructed the map into a form only he could understand, then destroyed the original.

Of course, before destroying it, Jang Wonso would have tested it every which way. He would have soaked it in water and heated it. He would have folded it and rolled it.

After confirming that the map itself held nothing, he destroyed it.

Then he hid its whereabouts for a very long time by using this method.

Lee Jaseung looked down at the map.

Yet even he could not tell what place it depicted.

He understood why Jang Wonso had put the map up for trade. Jang Wonso had decided he could no longer decipher its contents.

What he had promised to the Elder Demon Lord was the map, not the information about what place it indicated.

For now, he had to get out. He concentrated on memorizing it. If he fixed the terrain in his mind, he could later work out what place it pointed to.

Then he spotted something and froze.

“Huh?”

Lee Jaseung’s eyes slowly widened.

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