Thud.

The scroll in Cheongun’s hand slipped weakly and fell to the floor.

Seolhwa stepped up to him, picked up the fallen scroll, tidied it, and set it on the table.

“Master said you would know how to cure it. I hadn’t meant to worry you.”

After arranging the scroll, Seolhwa gently pushed Cheongun toward the table.

Though he staggered, he let her hand guide him and dropped into the chair.

Seolhwa brought a teacup, poured him warm tea, and sat across from him.

“Is it serious?”

She stole a look at Cheongun’s face.

Slightly parted lips, a vacant gaze that didn’t seem to be looking at anything at all.

‘Should I not have told him?’

Since Seop Mugwang had laughed it off as nothing, she hadn’t thought it was cause for great concern.

But was there, after all, some problem?

“Father?”

Seolhwa waved her hand before his eyes.

Only then did Cheongun say, “Ah...,” and look at her.

He stared fixedly at Seolhwa.

“...So it’s that brat....”

Seolhwa tilted her head.

That brat?

“Yu Gang?”

Crack—!

The teacup that Cheongun had been lifting feebly shattered in his hand.

Startled, Seolhwa rose and fetched a clean cloth.

“Are you all right?”

She dried his wet hand, swept the shards together into a corner, and sat again.

All the while, Cheongun still looked dazed.

For a moment Seolhwa considered bringing a fresh cup, then decided against it.

“Why are you like this? Is there some problem?”

“Hu....”

Cheongun let out a long sigh once more.

After wrestling with something for a good while again, he looked at her with a resolved expression.

“Seolhwa.”

He drew her hand up from the table and held it.

“I... loved your mother very, very much. You know that, don’t you?”

Seolhwa quietly nodded.

“I know how much you love Mother and me.”

“Right. To me there’s nothing in the world more precious than you. But loving you and loving your mother are a little different things.”

“Different... how?”

Can love be different?

If you love, you just love, don’t you?

Cheongun smiled faintly and nodded.

“You and I are bound by blood, but your mother and I are not.”

That’s... true.

When she thought about it, it was.

She and Cheongun were father and daughter, bound by blood, but strictly speaking, Father and Mother were strangers by lineage.

In Seolhwa’s case, it would mean cherishing someone from outside the Namgoong Clan as much as, no—more than—one of the Namgoong Clan.

‘Is that even possible?’

Right now, there was no one more important to Seolhwa than the people of the [N O V E L I G H T] Namgoong Clan.

She had never once thought she could make someone like that.

‘But Father did.’

And as a result, she herself had been born.

“It’s... difficult. That you loved Mother.”

“It wasn’t difficult. For me, not loving that person would have been harder.”

Seolhwa cocked her head.

How could that be?

How could one love someone outside the clan more than the clan itself?

“Seolhwa.”

Cheongun squeezed the hand he held.

She looked at him.

“Is Yu Gang that kind of person to you?”

“!”

Seolhwa’s eyes flew wide.

‘To me... Yu Gang...?’

Is he... that kind of person...?

Her breath caught in her throat at that instant.

And for some reason she felt hot.

She couldn’t see herself, but she felt her cheeks slowly flushing.

“...”

Without meaning to, Seolhwa dropped her gaze.

At that sight, a complicated, subtle smile touched Cheongun’s face.

“Gaining someone precious is a good thing. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“But...”

It was unbearably embarrassing.

She had never felt embarrassment before, but she knew it at once.

That this feeling—this sensation—was embarrassment.

“It’s just that... my chest... feels strange...”

“When you close your eyes, he’s all you can think of, so you can’t sleep?”

“!”

Seolhwa snapped her head up.

She hadn’t said that.

“H-how... did you....”

“It’s all right. It’s perfectly natural.”

Her face burned.

She couldn’t sit there another moment; without realizing it, she sprang to her feet.

As if he had expected it already, Cheongun wasn’t surprised. He only grinned at his daughter.

Seolhwa’s brow twitched, twitched, and trembled for a beat.

“I’ll... eat breakfast separately...!”

“Do that.”

Seolhwa scurried away from the spot.

After she left Cheongun’s quarters, she ran back to her own at the fastest pace she could manage.

She felt she couldn’t bear it without the cool wind on her face.

Back at her quarters, she again circled the training yard for a long while.

****

“So the child is finally driving me into a corner.”

The news that the Martial Alliance and the Sado Union had joined hands and named the Blood Sect as a public enemy soon reached the Blood Demon as well.

Grave news that they had, in the literal sense, become the public enemy of the martial world—yet the Blood Demon did not lose his leisurely smile.

“What do you make of it?”

His gaze turned to the woman seated at his side.

A woman veiled in red gauze, dressed in red lavishly ornamented with gold and white jade.

A dozen-odd ornaments dangled from her hair; her ears, neck, and arms were likewise laden with finery.

On the fingers of her hands, folded one atop the other, not a single finger was bare—rings of jade and gold, glass and yellow jade adorned them all.

In a word, a woman gorgeously adorned, whose mere presence seated upon the jade throne exuded aloof majesty.

“She’s the child you cherished. And now that child is leveling a sword at my neck.”

The woman’s head turned slightly toward the Blood Demon.

Beneath the red veil, her gaze lowered.

“When she said she would betray the sect and leave, I severed my feelings for her. You know this, my lord. I fed her poison.”

“So you did.”

The Blood Demon clicked his tongue softly.

A poison that erased memory.

She had said she used it to wipe out entirely the thought of leaving the Blood Sect.

The problem was that the child had fled before the poison spread—and in the end she overcame both the poison and his domination.

A breath of laughter slipped from the Blood Demon’s lips.

‘Namgoong Seolhwa....’

That she would amuse him this much.

To speak plainly, she had exceeded expectations.

Which only made it all the more impossible to let her go.

The Blood Demon slowly looked over those gathered before him.

Even the Third Blood Lord had, in the end, died at the hands of the Shadowless Demon God, leaving only the First and Second, and the Fourth and Fifth Blood Lords.

It was a starkly different sight from the Blood Sect around this time in his previous life.

Across dozens of lives, the only one who had ever hounded the Blood Sect to this degree was Namgoong Seolhwa—she alone.

“Fifth Blood Lord.”

He looked to the one who sat silently keeping his place to the side.

The Fifth Blood Lord—a man once called Mount Hua’s Foremost Sword.

A shabby man who, after the grand design he had prepared for so long was blocked by Namgoong Seolhwa and he lost an arm, now barely clung to life.

The Blood Demon gazed at that Fifth Blood Lord and crooked a finger.

Not a word or gesture to “come,” merely the trouble of crooking one finger.

To show such an attitude before the other Blood Lords watching was an obvious insult.

The remaining Blood Lords propped their chins and closed their eyes as if uninterested, or tittered with their subordinates, and that made the Fifth Blood Lord all the more wretched.

“...”

Yet the Fifth Blood Lord quietly rose and approached the Blood Demon.

Watching him, the corner of the Blood Demon’s mouth curled with a rancid smile.

“How has Mount Hua’s pride fallen to such baseness? Look at this—can this be called a life fit for a man?”

He gave a little snigger and flicked the empty sleeve that fluttered where the Fifth Blood Lord’s arm should have been.

The Fifth Blood Lord looked at him.

A fierce glint bled from his eyes.

But that was all he could do, and the Blood Demon knew it.

Meeting that fierce stare, the Blood Demon laid his hand on the stump of the man’s severed arm.

“I prefer those who, rather than yielding their last breath easily before death, kneel and beg for life and survive in squalor.”

A sticky, filthy aura welled around the Blood Demon.

Only then did the other Blood Lords turn to look at the two.

The woman at his side also turned her head slightly to regard the Blood Demon and the Fifth Blood Lord.

“Isn’t that more human?”

Ssssss....

The Blood Demon’s energy crawled down through his hand and slowly seeped into the Fifth Blood Lord.

In that instant, the Fifth Blood Lord felt excruciating pain in his severed arm.

“Ghhk....”

A pain so severe he nearly blacked out on the spot flooded him.

Thunk—

He could endure no longer and sank to one knee where he stood.

But the pain did not end.

No, it surged harder and harder like a storm.

“Gyaaaaaaaah!!”

A scream like his throat tearing loose rang out like a death cry—then cut.

Thunk—

The Fifth Blood Lord finally lost consciousness and collapsed.

White steam curled up in wisps from his body.

Horror clouded the eyes of the other Blood Lords as they looked down at the fallen Fifth.