CRASH—!

A wine bottle fell at the next table and shattered with a loud report.

They, too, were people the Beggar’s (Network) had planted in advance to aid Namgoong Seolhwa.

Naturally, the tavern’s patrons turned their eyes toward the source of the sound.

“Wahaha! This fellow, really! Clumsy as ever! Waiter! Bring another bottle!”

Amid the commotion, Namgoong Seolhwa smoothed her hardened expression and filled the cup of the man sitting across from her.

“Rowdy night.”

“So it is.”

Calming her emotions, Namgoong Seolhwa asked the woman:

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — Why? Is it because the Blood Demon killed you?

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — No. I can accept that he killed me. Over these repeated lives I tried, in my own way, to understand him. I could not, but I tried.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — Then why...?

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — What I cannot endure is not that he laid hands on me. My children....

Wait....

Namgoong Seolhwa’s brows drew together faintly.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — Children... plural?

In the formation illusion, hadn’t there been only a single son?

Why “children”...?

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — My son, and the children who were never even born because of him.... For those children.

Namgoong Seolhwa felt the quiver of the woman’s emotion.

“...I’m feeling it tonight,” Seolhwa murmured, pressing her temple and lowering her head in thought.

The Blood Demon’s children... were not just one.

In truth, that followed.

The formation’s illusion was a construct; it was not Yeon Hwi’s true past.

Sama Cheon had said the Blood Demon altered the formation’s content; what Seolhwa saw was not reality, but the past the Blood Demon had wanted to leave behind.

The time the Blood Demon turned back must have been after Sama Cheon’s family died.

Only then would Sama Cheon create the Great Law.

That point in time was after the Blood Demon’s first son was born.

The firstborn had certainly been born by then; even the Blood Demon could not change that.

But the children born after that were different.

The Blood Demon’s aim was to save his family and take revenge on those who had dragged him into the abyss.

For revenge he discarded all the other children.

However many there were.

Erased from memory — as if they had never been there in the first place.

Ruthlessly struck from his life.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — After I first avoided him, he did not come looking for me for a time. Ordinarily, during that interval I should have conceived a daughter, but because he did not come....

At first she thought the daughter’s not being born was her own fault.

Because she had begun to see her husband as a monster.

Because she had avoided him.

Because she had incurred his anger.

So she tried.

Each time she returned to life — unable to be certain whether life would repeat again — she tried somehow to conceive a daughter.

Thanks to that, several times she conceived, but the problem was that the children conceived in those different times were all different from the first.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — Many children were born from my body, and died.

Each time another child was born, she missed the previous child to the point of madness.

Yet the woman gave her utmost to love the new life she had been given each time — and suffered in proportion to that love.

Thus, across repeated lives, the children who were born and then gone — she did not forget a single one.

That loss and guilt withered her day by day.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — And then at some point I understood.

That none of this was because of me.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — He didn’t care about children at all. He must have thought they’d never existed from the start! But I’m not like that! There is nothing more precious to me than my children...!

Her tone rose by degrees.

Even through the medium of transmission, her vivid rage was palpable.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — I cannot forgive him. He is nothing but a blood-crazed murderer who even killed my children...!

“...”

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — So when I learned he had spared you, you cannot imagine how much I hoped.

So much was different in this life.

When she realized that change began with Namgoong Seolhwa, whom the Blood Demon had allowed to live — when she learned that Namgoong Seolhwa meant to stand against the Blood Demon —

The woman thought:

At last, the time has come.

He has crushed his own foot.

And she decided.

Help Namgoong Seolhwa.

Aid her so that, grown safely to her full height, she could set her sword to the Blood Demon’s throat.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — But ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) when I saw you brought back and bound again, I pitied you.

When Namgoong Seolhwa returned to the Blood Cult, she suffered each day.

She neither ate nor drank properly; like one who had lost her emotions, she curled up in a dark room, clutching her sword as she tried to sleep.

The woman pitied that Seolhwa.

Blinded by revenge, she felt ashamed for having tried to use this blossom-bright girl.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — So you fed me the poison? The poison that erases all memories?

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — I wanted you to forget the pain and live in peace. It was a poison I had made for myself.

Once, she had taken it.

But when life rolled back, all her memories returned again; she only realized even that had been in vain.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — That is all. That is all I can tell you.

She was only a woman who feared a husband who had changed, who wanted to save the countless children who had passed through her hands, and who suffered because she could not.

She too was weary of a life that repeated without end, and only wished to end it.

Once, in the small hours, she had prayed earnestly for her husband’s happiness; now she prayed just as earnestly for his death.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — Trite, isn’t it? For someone who has lived so long.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — It is not trite. I obtained the answer to the most important question I had for meeting you.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — May I ask what answer?

A faint curve touched Namgoong Seolhwa’s lips.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — Poisons do not work on me.

Wall-Poison Firm Qi.

No matter how much memory she lost, the body remembered martial arts; the instant she took poison, she surely would have used that art.

And yet, astonishingly, the woman’s poison worked.

It was true that thanks to Wall-Poison Firm Qi she recovered her memories faster than expected, but the woman’s poison had indeed affected her.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — You must have researched poisons for a long time.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — Martial arts... draw his eye. As I brooded over how I might kill him....

The fruit of long effort never betrays.

So it was with this woman.

The Blood Demon was a powerhouse lauded as number one under heaven; the poison she had studied over long years with the desire to kill such a being — its efficacy could not help but exceed even her own expectations.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — The Blood Demon does not even know you can make poison, does he?

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — No. I doubt it....

That was enough.

The woman’s existence — and her ability, which even she had not fully grasped — would be another variable the Blood Demon had not foreseen.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — I have a request.

Namgoong Seolhwa’s eyes turned deeply serious.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — This may put your life at risk. But if it succeeds without mishap, we can land him a mortal blow.

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — What... do you need me to do?

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — Do you know there is another room inside the Blood Demon’s chamber?

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — I know there is a room only he enters. I have never been inside. He absolutely forbade me to enter that room....

It was enough simply to know the room existed.

When the Blood Demon left his seat, the work would take only the briefest window of time.

****

[Voice Transmission — Blood Demon’s wife:] — Come to think, I do not even know your name.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — I am called Iseon.

She had been a maid in Yeon Hwi’s household.

Her birth was not distinguished.

[Voice Transmission — Iseon:] — It has been a very long time since anyone has spoken my name.

Long ago, before he changed, he had often called her “Seon-ah.”

The time she stopped hearing her name and the time he began to change were perhaps the same.

As Yeon Hwi’s face vanished, Iseon, too, began to disappear.

What remained now was only an undying woman with nothing left but grievance and hatred, and a man mad on blood.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — Thank you for today. I know you came at risk to yourself, Lady Iseon.

Hearing her name at her ear — a name she had not heard in ages — Iseon shook off her reverie and curved her lips softly.

When Namgoong Seolhwa had returned to the Blood Cult with her memories lost, Iseon had looked after her from pity and guilt.

Not knowing any of that, right before her escape Namgoong Seolhwa had worried that Iseon — in the guise of a maid — would be put in danger.

[Voice Transmission — Iseon:] — You are truly a good person. I only wished to step outside for the first time in a long while, so do not burden your heart. As for what you asked... I will do my utmost.

“Shall we go?”

“Let’s. The wine’s just run out. The wife will be waiting.”

Namgoong Seolhwa tidied the place and rose.

“Can we pack the leftovers?”

“Ah, one moment. Waiter!”

While the Beggar’s Network man called the waiter to wrap up the food, Namgoong Seolhwa offered the woman a final greeting.

[Voice Transmission — Namgoong Seolhwa:] — I will take my leave first. I hope there will be a day... a day we can meet again. The item I mentioned — through Eunwol....

In that instant, something dawned on Namgoong Seolhwa.

Her lips parted slightly.

Could it be...?

She asked Iseon something via transmission. Then—

“Ha....”

“Hm? Why are you smiling? Drunk?”

“Ah, my kid’s face just popped into my head. Seems I’ve had a bit.”

“Hahaha! Come on, let’s go! Let’s go!”

“Yes. Let’s.”

The Beggar’s Network man took the wrapped food from the waiter and strode lightly out of the tavern.

Following him out, Namgoong Seolhwa cast one last sidelong glance toward where Iseon sat.

Beneath the veil, red lips held a smile.