< The Witch 5 >
“The moon is unusually bright today.”
“That’s true. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a bright moon. It’s a bit chilly, though. I’ll have to go to the kitchen after work and ask for a bowl of warm soup.”
“Then, let’s have a drink together, Hwangju. I have a bottle of something hidden away. What do you think?”
“As expected of you. Is that what you’re talking about? Hehe.”
The warriors standing guard were chatting and walking back and forth near the wall, and this caught the eye of Namgung Seol, who was hiding in the shadow of the pavilion.
Namgung Seol checked the movements of the two warriors, then took out the acorn he had brought from his bosom and quickly threw it toward the far wall.
-widely!
A small acorn that hit the wall and fell to the stone floor.
The sound of a small acorn rolling against a stone wall in the middle of the night pierced the stillness of the night and spread through the Namgungse-ga at night.
-Knock knock knock···.
“What is this!?”
“I thought I heard something over there!?”
“Let’s go!”
It wasn’t a very loud sound, so it didn’t spread far, but it was loud enough for the Namgung family warriors standing guard nearby to hear.
As expected, the two warriors who were standing nearby immediately ran towards the sound.
And then he picked up the acorn that Namgung Seol had thrown.
“Acorn? Did a squirrel pass by?”
“I was surprised for no reason. It’s autumn, so Songseo is in the middle of collecting acorns.”
“Those damn Songseo guys, don’t you even sleep? I was startled for no reason.”
While the warriors were picking up acorns and talking about the acorn song, Namgung Seol flew over the wall behind the shade like the acorn they were talking about.
Now that I couldn’t get help from my younger brother, I decided to climb over the Namgung family’s wall by myself.
He kicked off the wall of the pavilion and, using the legend of a gold carp jumping over the waves, spun his body like an arrow flying through the air and landed like a songsu over the wall of Namgungga.
Namgung Seol, who achieved his goal without being caught by the warriors, quickly flew to the mountain where he and his younger brother were practicing martial arts.
And then, from under the mountain where we arrived, we picked up a suitable branch.
Her black sword was confiscated by her father, and she couldn’t even borrow her brother’s sword, so she had to resort to picking up a stick.
Didn’t the legendary masters sharpen their swords even on tree branches?
Even though he wasn’t a legendary master himself.
A quiet moonlit night with unusually bright moonlight.
In a garden covered with fallen flower petals from repeated trials and tribulations, Namgung Seol’s sword training, using his life as fuel, began.
Before displaying his swordsmanship, Namgung Seol first raised the Heavenly Thunder Emperor’s Divine Art.
Let’s raise your stamina and feel the thrill of running through your whole body.
Due to the influence of the veins, waves of internal energy quickly spread from the lower abdomen to the tips of the fingers and toes.
The vitality that begins to spread throughout the body due to the energy that spreads out in a straight line.
Namgung Seol felt the rising power and smiled bitterly.
Although the Taegeuk was the key, it was the Heavenly Thunder Emperor’s Divine Art that had a stronger positive energy than the negative energy, so just by raising it this much, it consumed the negative energy of the Seol-sam that was now barely left in the body.
However, Namgung Seol soon shook off his gloomy mood and began to use the branch in his hand as a sword, performing the first form of the Emperor’s Sword Form.
The first step of Namgung’s Emperor’s Sword is Emperor’s Presence.
Each and every form that unfolds with the sword adds weight to the opponent who is facing the sword, and when the unfolded forms come together to form a certain shape, the pressure increases, which is the fear of the first form.
-Whew! Seeing!
The sword pressure spreads out to the surrounding area every time the tree branch is swung from Namgung Seol’s hand.
The flowers began to slowly bow their heads as if they were meeting an emperor due to the pressure.
And the second herbivore followed when the flower’s stem was on the verge of breaking.
This was the part where Namgung Seol failed time and time again.
The three-stroke Emperor Pressure Strike (帝王壓擊) was not difficult because it was a simple blow that required pressing down as if bursting the weight that had been built up until then, but this style is a technique that concentrates the weight built up in the first style into one point.
The reason why the energy did not burst out when reaching the third stage was because of this first stage’s problem.
-Fit! Fit!
Namgung Seol’s branch, unlike the first one that focused on cutting, turned into a stabbing motion, gathering the energy that had descended from the surrounding area and stabbing it into one point.
-Percussion!
But before I could even stab it a few times, the branch burst open with a loud noise.
The gathered energy quickly dispersed to the surroundings, and the flower petals on the ground rose and fell in a magnificent manner.
It was a failure.
Just one of many failures so far.
“This is!”
However, the reason Namgung Seol was surprised was because he felt something different from before.
Although it was clearly a failure, Namgung Seol looked at the hand that had been holding the burst branch with surprised eyes.
When I was holding the sword, I didn’t know why it was a failure, but when I held the branch and spread it, I vaguely knew what was wrong.
It was discovered that the reason the branch broke was not because of the branch itself, but because Namgung Seol had distributed his strength incorrectly.
A mistake in the process of guiding the surrounding energy with the sword.
Namgung Seol, filled with joy, quickly ran down the hill and picked up another branch.
I had vowed to myself that I would see the end of the Emperor’s Sword before I burned myself to death, and tonight, for some reason, I felt like I had found a clue.
Namgung Seol, who had broken off the branch and was now chasing the clue, began to dance with his swordsmanship without thinking.
How much did I swing it around like crazy?
-Rust!
It was when the moon that had risen above my head was blocked by the peak of Hwangsan Mountain and the surroundings became completely dark.
A sound felt in the grassy area that forms the border between the hill and the forest.
Namgung Seol, who was surprised, stopped his swordsmanship and cautiously asked in the direction where he had felt the presence.
“Is it silver?”
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My younger brother Namgung Eun, who knows this place, came to check on me at night and wondered if I was coming to find him.
My younger brother is originally a bit of a mischievous person, so he might have woken up in the middle of the night to check on me.
But the grass is unresponsive.
“Who are you? It is not good to secretly watch others practice martial arts.”
He looked for a place where he felt movement, thinking that it might be a lost herbalist or a hunter out for a night hunt, but there was no trace of it. As the warriors had said when they left Namgungga, Namgung Seol thought it might be Songseo, so he grabbed the tree branch again without thinking.
It was because I felt it was a waste to let the poem be taken away by something like Songseo.
***
After getting some clues on the first day.
Namgung Seol’s day consisted of secretly practicing swordsmanship at night and spending most of the day embroidering with his younger sibling.
If you want to practice swordsmanship sufficiently at night, you need to be careful during the day.
And there was nothing better than pretending to quietly embroider and immersing oneself in thought to organize the enlightenment one had gained at night.
For a long time, she embroidered peonies (花王牡丹), which were like her nickname for being praised as the Flower King (花王), on black cloth with white thread.
Namgung Seol’s hands were quickly forming a peony, but his head was filled with the new questions he had felt last night.
‘Why did I suddenly feel like I was wearing clothes that didn’t suit me?’
This herbivore almost succeeded.
That was the first thought that came to my mind in that regretful, precarious moment.
As I was finishing the two peonies and lost in my thoughts about yesterday, I heard a loud noise from outside.
The first to react to that sound was not Namgung Seol, but his younger sister Eun-i.
“Why is it so noisy? Go and find out what’s going on.”
“Yes, miss.”
A concubine who looks after Namgung Seol and her younger sister Eun.
It wasn’t long before his younger brother asked his step-son to go and check why there was such a commotion outside.
A servant came running and told Namgung Seol that his father was looking for him.
“Miss, the head of the household has ordered you to come to the main hall immediately.”
“Did your father say that?”
“Yes, miss.”
I went to see Gajujeon with the expectation that he might return the sword that had been confiscated because I had been behaving well recently.
Although there was a commotion in the training ground beyond the Gajujeon Hall, Namgung Seol entered the Gajujeon Hall without thinking much about it.
“Father, have you found it?”
“Oh, right. Seol-ah. Sit down like that.”
As I sat down according to my father’s orders, I heard his cautious voice.
“Have you heard why there’s a commotion outside?”
“Are you talking about the training ground? No. I didn’t hear it.”
The father nodded at Seol’s answer and asked again in a cautious voice.
“Oh, then, I have something to ask you. I don’t suspect you, but I need to make sure, so could you answer honestly? The villagers who are the culprits are involved, so I can’t just punish them.”
Namgung Seol blinked and answered his father’s incomprehensible words.
“Yes? Yes. Of course, if my father asks, the girl will answer honestly.”
My father nodded at Seol’s answer and then asked with a very embarrassed and apologetic expression.
“Nothing else. So. What should I say about this… Ah! That, that’s right. The villagers said they saw you at Hwangsan Mountain the past few days. Is that, is that true?”
“yes!?”
Namgung Seol recalled the feeling he occasionally felt while practicing in response to his father’s question.
Namgung Seol, who thought that the villagers had caught him practicing in secret and that his father had heard about it, answered with his eyes tightly shut.
“I’m sorry, Father.”
Then a thunderous voice struck!
“What!? Are you saying that was true!?”
The sound of thunder could be heard inside the house as the father shouted in anger, and the father’s spirit was released.
-Whoosh!
Even when he was caught practicing secretly in the past, his father quietly confiscated his sword and told him not to be too impatient, showing an intense reaction.
Namgung Seol flinched at the intense reaction.
His father continued to yell at Namgung Seol, who blinked in surprise.
“Yes, you! Huh, what! Heuk!”
My father staggers, clutching the back of his neck.
Namgung Seol was surprised and went over to help her father, but what followed was a shouting and rejection.
“Oh, Father! It’s okay···.”
“Stand back! Is there anyone out there!?”
“Yes, my lord!”
“Imprison Namgung Seol, the eldest daughter of Namgung, in a closed room! And do not allow her to eat any food except water and Byeokgokdan (辟穀丹), and do not allow her to have any contact with other people!”
“Oh, Father!”
Namgung Seol was immediately locked in a closed room used only by Namgung’s immediate family, and the news that his younger brother relayed to the warriors guarding the closed room a few days later was a story that was hard to believe.
“Sister, isn’t that right!? You said that you lured the herbalists and hunters of Hwangsan and extorted their yang energy···.”
“what!?”
Namgung Seol felt very wronged by his younger brother’s story.
His father probably thought he had done something wrong, but he had never even touched a man’s hand.
***
“That’s nonsense!”
“Eek! I, I just heard that too!”
At Jeomsoi’s explanation, his older sister’s face turned red and she shouted in an angry voice.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous!”
Twice in a row.
I spoke to my older sister briefly on the way here, and it seemed like we were somewhat acquainted, if not close friends, but she seemed to have a hard time accepting that her acquaintance had been having a one-night stand.
‘They say that the quiet cat gets into the hut first.’
“There is a saying that you can know the depth of ten feet of water, but not the heart of a one-foot person…”
So I tried to comfort my older sister, but my older sister, who never raised her voice to her relatives, shouted at me and said.
“That’s not it!”
He immediately apologized when I flinched.
“I’m sorry, So-ryong. But that’s nonsense. Come in for a moment, So-ryong. I can explain.”
My sister, who seemed excited, grabbed my hand and dragged me into her room.
My sister sat me down on the bed and explained in a quiet voice.
“Lady Namgung Seol is someone who should not be in contact with men.”
“Huh? What is that?”
My sister points to my chest when I ask her a question.
“That which we are taking. It is because of Lady Namgung Seol’s strange disease. Since the body shortens its lifespan without yin energy, yang energy is poison to Lady Namgung Seol.
So, Namgung Sojeo is careful not to even let a man near her, but, hey, Yanggi-ra? This is clearly an unjust accusation.
“This is definitely not a lie, since Lady Namgung Seol confessed to me while shedding tears that she envied me.”
‘Oh my… A woman with a disease like that of a fantasy heroine?’
The older sister’s explanation that although she is a heroine who would make fantasy unicorns dazzle, she seems to have been falsely accused of being a succubus.
But everything was fine, but I started to wonder if I would be treated coldly if I went to Namgung’s house in this situation.
When their children do something wrong, some parents tend to blame their friends, but that’s because they’re my sister’s friend.
