Chapter 6
Chapter 6
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: The Severed Past Life Continues (4)
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Du-du-du-du!
The horses’ hooves pounded the ground noisily.
They traversed the distance they had covered nearly all night in just a few hours.
Far off, the village’s wooden fence came into view.
The horses, white foam flecking their mouths, bore vivid witness to how frantically they had spurred along this path.
Once they crossed the fence, they realized the village had changed from when they departed.
The tree at the entrance had been uprooted, and in its place lay a patch of deeply dug earth.
‘Who the hell did this? They had accomplices?’
As they ventured further inside, traces of cremating the dead came into sight.
Turning over the ashes revealed red embers still glowing faintly.
The villagers’ corpses had been gathered and burned, the tree pulled up, and the ground excavated. Regardless of the number of people involved, it must have taken considerable time.
Only now did Palcherato realize that the soldiers who had pursued the assassins had not returned.
He had overlooked it entirely in the thrill of recovering the royal seal.
‘How could I have forgotten something like that?’
The Seven-Man Squad had always acted recklessly, but to blank on it this thoroughly.
He felt like slamming his own head for such complacency.
Circumstantially, no one else but them.
Yet those men could not possibly have overcome the Seven-Man Squad.
The independence army clearly harbored hidden forces.
“Lord Palcherato! We’ve found tracks!”
Just then, a loud voice rang out from the side.
Palcherato furrowed his brows and hurriedly spurred his horse forward.
In the thicket where the knights had gathered, unmistakable signs of passage lingered.
It seemed they had fled in too much haste to erase them.
Heaven itself was aiding him.
“Let’s go!”
Palcherato kicked his horse’s flank and charged down the narrow forest trail. The tracks guided them obligingly, without any need to search.
As if beckoning them to follow.
* * *
We had left the village behind and set up camp in the forest.
We could have confronted them there, but I didn’t wish to disturb those laid to rest, so we chose a separate spot.
As I awaited Palcherato’s arrival, I felt the need to organize the current situation.
First, the reason I knew the royal seal was a fake was straightforward.
From the start, I had given Aidheal both the counterfeit and the genuine article.
As a precaution.
And the Nureti Tree planted at the village gate—the tree I cherished most in my past life.
As a child, I’d had a habit of hiding precious things beneath it.
Since they wouldn’t suspect the real seal hidden under a pillow, I was certain.
As expected, the authentic one had emerged from underneath.
To the men sitting before me, fidgeting anxiously, I said,
“From now on, give me a short, punchy rundown of the events after Francia’s fall. Pretend you’re explaining to someone from ten years ago.”
They exchanged puzzled glances before slowly opening their mouths.
In a brief span, they summarized the events I had missed.
Ten years of history, compressed, stacked neatly in my mind.
They say even mountains and rivers change in a decade.
Indeed, the Francia of today was vastly different.
To be expected for a fallen kingdom.
With a rough grasp of the situation, I dismissed them and closed my eyes.
The pounding headache showed no sign of easing.
If anything, its intensity was growing.
My enlightenment realm mastery and age beyond unperturbed forties proved utterly meaningless.
The burdens of my past life, long forgotten, settled heavily upon my shoulders.
As crown prince, the weight I bore was greater than any other’s.
All the faults lay with the royal family and nobility who had ruled the land.
What sins did the common folk bear?
Yet I was no longer Francia’s crown prince.
I was not Jenes Kuhn Francia, but the Sword Saint, Yi Geomhak.
That said, I hadn’t fully cast aside the anguish of that past life.
Since arriving here, memories I hadn’t even realized were buried had begun to resurface vividly.
And among them lingered remembrances as sharp as ever.
Yet they failed to stir me emotionally.
The deaths of those I loved and who loved me, those who had filled my peace with dread and terror.
I still remembered them.
But the chasm of time was too vast for those past emotions to reconnect.
For me, Francia’s fall dated back over forty years—a shed skin from a life long past.
I felt sorry for Francia’s people, but any sense of responsibility as their crown prince had crumbled to dust ages ago.
That had certainly been the case until just moments before.
Yet the thread of that past life, which I’d deemed utterly severed, had begun to coil tightly around me ever since witnessing Aidheal’s death.
Sensing something involuntarily draping over me, I rose to my feet.
The men were drawing near.
* * *
“You filthy vermin. When I catch you, I’ll rip you apart limb from limb.”
Harsh curses spilled from Palcherato’s lips as he galloped fiercely.
Relief washed over him at having latched onto their trail, but he could scarcely contain his rage at Aidheal for the deception.
His pursuit, however, did not last.
“Whoa, damn it all!”
Yanking the reins irritably, he brought his horse to a halt.
They were navigating a narrow gorge with steep cliffs flanking both sides.
The problem was the path ahead stood blocked.
A landslide, perhaps—boulders had tumbled from the cliff, sealing the way.
Impossible to pass mounted.
As he dismounted to assess, an unfamiliar voice rang out.
“No need for that.”
His gaze, fixed on the collapsed cliff, naturally followed the sound.
On the path they had just traversed stood a young man clad in bizarre garb.
“What you seek is in my possession.”
He drew something from within his robes.
Even at a distance, the golden seal gleamed brilliantly.
The royal seal.
“Kuhahahaha! So it’s you!”
Palcherato eyed the seal, then threw his head back in boisterous laughter.
He wondered if a trap lay nearby, but spied no indications.
Even if one did, he paid it no mind.
His forces were not so feeble as to fall to some hasty contrivance.
“You brainless fool. Thanks for delivering it right to me. But your little game has gone too far.”
“Is that so?”
The young man’s lips curved into a smile.
Palcherato stared at the composed grin and barked a hollow laugh.
The man’s head must be addled.
Brutes like that yielded best to the rod.
“Kill him.”
At his command, two knights surged toward the youth.
* * *
Two knights closed the distance from either flank.
Blinding white flashes targeted my upper and lower guards in unison.
Clang!
I deflected the low sweeping blade while dropping my stance to evade the slash at my nape.
My spinning body carried my sword naturally into a deep gash across one man’s shoulder blade.
“Argh!”
Screaming as he lost his arm.
Even his cry I severed with my blade.
The headless corpse crumpled powerlessly.
The remaining knight, witnessing his comrade’s fall, poured speed into his sword.
But his demise differed little.
I dodged and severed one leg.
He collapsed with a shriek, and I plunged my sword into his heart.
I had matched them deliberately, holding back.
Overwhelming might only breeds resignation in foes.
“What are you waiting for! Kill him!”
Palcherato’s fury-laced bellow echoed, and more knights charged.
Four this time.
I greeted them with the same unhurried poise.
Their blades brimmed with rage over fallen brothers, yet they underestimated me not.
These were men versed in formations.
Two circled to the sides, swinging wide, while the front pair thrust straight.
A semicircle enfolding me.
I held my ground, seized control of the space, and countered the descending strikes.
The air rent with noise as four beams of light shot from my fingertips.
Kagang!
In an instant, the swords lunging at me ricocheted away simultaneously.
Seizing the opening, I beheaded two.
The other pair followed in a heartbeat.
Those who had rushed as one fell as one.
Silence blanketed the surroundings.
Treading the blood of the slain, I advanced on the survivors.
Doubt now rimmed their eyes.
They sensed the tide turning awry.
“Looking quite flustered?”
Even my taunt drew no response.
The knights’ faces were set rigid, their muscles taut with excessive tension.
They feared me.
“One mere brat—what are you fools doing!”
Palcherato’s shrill roar reverberated through the gorge, laced with desperation.
“All together! Charge!”
At the commander’s grim shout, the rest barreled forward as one.
I stomped toward them.
No sooner had I moved than swords slashed at my shadow.
There their blades’ reach ended.
I tore through the onrushing herd at will.
Like a wolf weaving among sheep—overwhelming, unbound motion.
Not once did they seize my step.
Pffft!
Behind my hazy afterimage, crimson blossoms unfurled.
Over a dozen knights met their ends in the blink of an eye.
“Hah!”
A shout, and azure light blazed into view.
The commander’s sword.
He timed his thrust as I withdrew my blade.
A sound tactic to counter superior speed.
A man of impressive focus.
Yet the outcome remained unchanged.
As ever, my sword claimed his neck first.
Speed that dominated every circumstance.
Such was my blade.
Now, the sole survivor was Palcherato, face slack with shock.
He stammered,
“Wh-who the hell are you?”
For the first time, even as I closed on him, his question halted my step.
Feet that had never faltered amid a storm of strikes.
Snared now by a single absurd query.
One not easily answered.
Two names and two lives defined me.
Jenes Kuhn Francia and Yi Geomhak.
The kingdom’s crown prince and the martial world’s Sword Saint.
Fifteen and forty-six.
Name to age, the gulf between past and present yawned uncrossable.
Utterly distinct existences.
Until yesterday, I would have replied without a flicker of hesitation: ‘I am Yi Geomhak.’
That past life forgotten long ago, cleanly severed.
The supreme under heaven, the martial world’s peerless swordsman—the Sword Saint, Yi Geomhak.
That was me.
But gradually, I had come to see.
On the Valencia continent, I could not be wholly Yi Geomhak.
My past self had died, yet the bonds and circumstances of that time persisted, independent of my being.
I had arrived here after over forty years of another life, but a mere decade had passed on this continent.
Those who once filled my dreams were the very souls suffering now.
The citizens my father held dear and my mother loved still breathed in the present.
All I once knew endured, and the white-hot fury blazing within was wholly inherited from that past life.
“Who am I?”
Thus, I resolved to reclaim my past life.
“Jenes Kuhn Francia.”
I unearthed the name from that forgotten existence.
In doing so, I shouldered once more the duties I had laid down in death.
Yet none weighed heavy.
For I was no longer a boy of fifteen, but the mightiest beneath the heavens.
And so,
the severed past life continued.