Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Returned After Reincarnation
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My country, Francia, was a peaceful kingdom.
Vast fields rippled with golden rice, towering mountains were blanketed in lush trees and colorful flowers, and the king and queen who ruled them loved their people.
I was born the crown prince of that land.
All my dreams were wrapped up in it.
Every day, I built up my knowledge, imagining the Francia I would one day rule. I trained in the sword, dreaming of a strong nation and mighty army.
Now, it all felt empty.
* * *
The floor was cold as ice.
My joints ached, making me curl up instinctively. The darkness around me was pitch-black, and a musty, filthy stench assaulted my nose.
This tiny solitary cell was made of grimy, damp stone walls.
No windows, so I couldn't even tell if it was day or night.
This was the underground prison of the royal palace.
The deepest one of them all.
Inside, I swallowed back sobs that rose like vomit.
Tears streamed down, but afraid they might mock me, I bit into my filthy clothes to stifle any sound.
That was my last shred of pride, the only dignity I could still hold onto.
But apparently, it wasn't enough.
The heavy iron door was shut tight.
A shadowed face appeared at the small barred window, along with flickering torchlight.
"A crown prince, crying like a damn baby. What, you want some milk or something?"
The soldier shrugged and snickered.
His expression was lost in the dark, but the insult stabbed clear into my chest.
The others nearby joined in, laughing along.
I was getting this treatment—not because I'd committed a crime, or because someone had plotted rebellion.
It was because my country had fallen.
These were soldiers from the empire that had stolen it from me.
"Better to be born crown prince of this shithole and die? Nah, I'd rather be me."
Their casual joke made my blood boil. I shot to my feet and shouted.
"You bastards! How dare you call it a shithole!"
I wanted to cut the bastard's throat right then, but the shackles on my wrists and ankles limited me to yelling.
"Fuck, you scared me!"
The soldier jumped at my shout, glaring with savage eyes and spewing curses I'd never heard before.
My country... my parents, the king and queen... trampled under his careless tongue.
Something unimaginable just days ago.
That was the first time I truly understood what it meant to have my heart torn apart.
"Endure it. The punk dies tomorrow anyway."
Someone stopped the soldier as he cursed and moved to enter the cell.
I trembled inside my cage like a trapped bird.
Miserable. Despairing.
Even here in the deepest underground of the palace, I was plummeting into an even darker abyss.
I clenched my fists.
So hard my nails dug into my palms, drawing blood.
It was all I could do.
I was dying tomorrow anyway.
Fifteen years old.
Death didn't scare me.
It just filled me with resentment, nothing but resentment.
The next day.
The sky I saw outside was blue.
Emerging from the underground prison, the sunlight blinded me.
Still, I didn't close my eyes.
These were the last sights of my life.
The glorious royal castle had changed completely.
The grand buildings lay in ruins, charred skeletons remaining.
I walked barefoot over the debris.
Hands bound tight, dragged along like livestock.
Red footprints trailed my steps, but it didn't hurt.
Pain like this meant nothing to me.
Looking at the fallen palace, it felt like my body was being shredded into a thousand, ten thousand pieces.
The city beyond was the same.
The capital, Magnet, was reduced to rubble.
The city that once sang of hope now overflowed with wails.
The surviving citizens couldn't bear to look at me, turning away to wipe their tears.
I took in each one.
The people who had once been my dream...
"Keep walking straight!"
A brutish hand yanked me as my strength faltered.
Behind me trailed the surviving royals and nobles who hadn't been killed yet.
Francia's final procession.
Far off, the execution platform rose in Tenasta Square.
Towering high, visible from all sides.
They forced me to my knees atop it.
"Jeneth Kuhn Francia!"
The man beside me bellowed my name, then listed my crimes in detail. That I was this country's crown prince.
That was my sin.
The square was packed with citizens gathered to watch. Their gazes carried clear, heartrending grief.
They had lost their country now.
A cold blade touched my nape, then lifted.
I tried to stay composed, but my heart pounded at the icy, unfamiliar touch.
I drank in the sight of the ruined palace to the end.
The kingdom would vanish into the annals of history.
Like so many others I'd studied on the continent.
With that as comfort—that I'd shared Francia's final moments—I died.
...But I reincarnated.
From a pampered crown prince to a starving beggar.
Damn it.
"Please, just a coin. My little sibling is dying..."
I gazed at the silk-robed man, filling my eyes with pitiful desperation.
He wouldn't be able to walk away without giving something.
Now eight years old.
Twenty-three including my past life.
A cunning child with an adult's mind.
My begging skills had already reached heavenly levels.
"Get lost, you rat!"
But some assholes didn't fall for it.
Human trash.
My sibling's dying (a lie, sure),
a kid begging this pathetically (acting, but still), how could this pig bastard be so heartless?
He must spend at least a silver nyang a month just keeping that flabby gut in check.
Stingy over a few coins? Tsk tsk.
I cursed the pig's back with every obscenity I knew as he walked away.
Of course, in my head.
Ahem.
Feeling some inexplicable gaze, I figured I owed a tiny excuse for my character.
Memories of being crown prince? The dignity I'd upheld?
First thing I ditched here.
Try surviving a year in a beggar den.
When your belly skin sticks to your back, you'll realize how pointless that crap is.
And this wasn't the Valencia continent I'd lived on.
The Central Plains.
A world where martial artists ran wild instead of knights.
I'd seen them a few times.
Scenes of those martial artists fighting.
Having seen plenty of knights in the palace, it wasn't that shocking.
What really surprised me here was the lack of any leash on these dangerous freaks.
Under the law of the jungle, with the treaty of no interference between officials and martial world, they let these ticking bombs roam free. Is this a country?
And sure enough, such a place existed.
Like anywhere, a beggar's life was worth less than a roadside pebble.
Goddamn it.
If I was gonna reincarnate, why not as a young master of a prestigious clan? A beggar? Come on!
What a royally screwed life.
But that year, an opportunity finally came to pull me from poverty's hell.
My first meeting with Master.
"A child bearing the aura of the Heavenly Killing Star. Will you come with me?"
I grabbed the kindly old man's wrinkled hand tight and flashed the most innocent look I could muster.
I had to grab anything at that point.
Scammer or not, I just wanted out of the beggar pit.
Luckily, Master wasn't a scammer.
He was incredibly kind.
Thanks to him, my trashed personality got patched up a bit after rolling in the gutter.
What followed was straight out of a street-vendor wuxia tale.
I learned martial arts.
An unparalleled technique called the Celestial Spirit Divine Art.
I burned my youth fueling the pain of training.
Rain or snow, I swung my sword endlessly for long years.
With heavenly talent and an unparalleled art, what do you think happened?
I soared like a leaf on a fierce wind.
I first set foot in the martial world at age twenty-four, a year after Master passed.
That was my debut.
Twenty-one years later, at forty-five, I beheaded the Heavenly Demon at the end of the Great Righteous-Demonic War, earning the righteous faction's symbolic title of Sword Saint and ascending to the throne of the world's greatest.
One year after that.
"I'm retiring to seclusion."
"Really? You're serious?"
The one answering with sparkling eyes was the Murim Alliance Leader, the Might King Hwangbo Jun.
His eyes shone so bright I regretted my words and wanted to take them back.
I held back my wavering heart and said.
"Yeah, so don't look for me."
"Yes, sir! Got it."
"You want a beating?"
"...Why do that?"
"Why do that?"
"Ah, nothing."
To an onlooker, it might look like a middle-aged man groveling to a young guy, but actually, I'm two years older.
My vast inner energy keeps me looking in my twenties.
"A leader who can't hide his face. You look thrilled to death."
"Was it obvious?"
"Very."
"...Haha, no way."
He scratched his head and laughed awkwardly.
If I kept watching this, I'd never retire, so I turned away hurriedly.
Then I headed to the homeland of my youth.
I planned to hole up in the mountains for a flashy, peaceful old age.
But that pipe dream didn't last.
At the final stretch to my hometown, I ran into the culprits behind it all.
Remnants of the Demonic Cult.
No idea how they slipped the net, but they were gunning for revenge on me.
And these guys.
They started spouting weird shit and slit their own throats.
As their blood splattered the ground, a glow erupted from the earth, carving an unknown pattern in an instant.
What was I doing till then?
Just watching.
Curious what would happen.
My realm of Profound Enlightenment was on another level.
Past Five Qi Converging to Origin and Three Flowers Gathering at the Summit, parlor tricks like this were mere entertainment.
But things went completely off script.
The ground under my feet vanished in a flash, and darkness deeper than the underworld yawned open.
No time to prepare.
Even I, who could split instants and nearly halt time, couldn't sense that moment.
And so I fell into an unknown place.
Literally one blink, and my vision filled with unfamiliar sights and people.
Really.
What an absurd turn of events.