The Eldest Sister's Wrath
Yeongso cut through the darkness without a sound, her figure gliding behind the assassin. Grabbing the blade with her left hand without a moment's hesitation, she struck the back of the assassin's neck with her right. The unconscious assassin collapsed forward limply. Yeongso gently laid her down on the bathhouse floor.
"Phew..."
With this, the operation to capture the assassin alive was complete. She would move her to a secret room away from prying eyes and persuade her. After that, she would arrange an escape route that suited the maid's wishes as much as possible.
"But why hasn't the person next door come yet?" Yeongso's petal-like lips pouted.
He had promised to help, yet he left everything to her.
Wait. It's not that he didn't come.
Yeongso looked toward the slightly open window. Her eyes met Banya's, who was clinging to the window frame, watching the spectacle without a sound.
"Tsk... I don't know about this." Banya wore a thoroughly displeased expression. "The opponent was so amateurish, it's utterly disappointing."
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Since I wanted to be here."
Banya suddenly spat curses at Jeokhwa Palace. He clicked his tongue, muttering that he had clearly only castrated his father, but the man's brains must have slipped out at the same time.
"Who do they think Cheonsaryeon's Baekri Yeongso is...!"
Since when did 'Cheonsaryeon' become part of my title? Well, she had married into this place three years ago, so it wasn't technically wrong, but the nuance felt strange.
It makes me sound like a formidable villain.
Yeongso complained softly to her husband. "You said you would handle it."
"You believed that?"
The corners of Yeongso's mouth drooped slightly. "Yes..."
"Honestly, my lady, you are truly an enigma."
"Did you stay out there just to watch my martial arts?"
Banya nodded readily, then suddenly sighed in frustration. "I won't ask for much. Just one character of a name."
"Pardon?"
"Your master, the sect he belongs to, his hometown, or even the name of his cat—anything. Just give me one character, and I won't bother you anymore."
Yeongso gazed blankly at her husband, who looked almost desperate.
Master didn't keep a cat...
Banya waited for exactly three seconds. Given his temperament, waiting that long was practically a lifetime.
"I simply cannot understand. Why hide such skill? Why? No, seriously... why?"
Yeongso recalled her master's handsome face, smiling beneath his wooden mask. She felt sorry for Banya, but the fact that she had learned martial arts from him was a secret even from her mother at her family home. A secret belonging only to Baekri Yeongso and her master. After her master passed away, it became a secret only Yeongso knew.
But now, with her husband regressing and retaining his memories of his deaths, it was no longer a secret known only to her.
You said this life is your twentieth regression. Despite your efforts in seventeen of those lifetimes, you never managed to find out the details of my martial arts. That means even when I was tortured and killed countless times, I kept my mouth shut.
Baekri Yeongso intended to keep this secret for as long as possible this time too.
"Ha, you're driving me crazy." Banya, unable to control his temper, paced back and forth before snapping his fingers to summon his confidant.
"Move that."
"Yes, my Lord."
Ma Ryun, who had been staring at the moon—which was barely visible due to the clouds—from a short distance away, murmured, "Excuse me," and entered the bathhouse.
The next morning.
News spread rapidly outside Cheonsaryeon: a female assassin had infiltrated the bathhouse targeting the Alliance Leader's wife, but thanks to a maid's quick response, Hwa Banya had rushed in, and the assassin was brutally killed by his hands. There was also a rumor that Hwa Banya was so enraged that he beat the assassin to a bloody pulp, leaving her face unrecognizable.
"They say he piled up firewood in the middle of Cheonsaryeon's front yard and burned the corpse to ashes, declaring he would show everyone what happens to anyone who dares touch his wife."
The voice of the man reporting to Hwa Jak, the 8th Uncle of Jeokhwa Palace, trembled slightly. It wasn't because he was afraid of the distant Hwa Banya, but because he already knew how violently Hwa Jak would lash out upon hearing this report.
"At the time of the attack, the assassin was disguised as a Cheonsaryeon maid. Hwa Banya claimed an inside accomplice must have provided the maid's uniform, and he threatened to find the spy and tear them apart alive. And..."
As the reporter hesitated, Hwa Jak glared at him.
"He said he would castrate the spy as well..."
Slam!
Hwa Jak's fist split the table in two.
"How does that bastard even know if the spy is a woman or a man to talk about castration!"
But the spy planted in Cheonsaryeon was indeed a man.
"In any case, Hwa Banya's momentum is so fierce that the spy is utterly terrified. He says he needs to keep a low profile for the time being."
"Why does that bastard get to decide that?!"
His furious voice threatened to pierce the ceiling of the office. The reporter bowed his head deeply, as if he had nothing more to say.
After shouting and venting his anger for a while, Hwa Jak panted and muttered to himself.
"But why isn't Baekri Yeongso dying?"
Even that arrogant Hwa Banya had died once. Though no one knew exactly how he died, he did end up as a cold corpse buried in the ground. Why was Baekri Yeongso, who looked like she would collapse at a gentle gust of wind, still perfectly fine? How, in that viper's nest of Cheonsaryeon?
The letter Yeongso sent to her eldest brother-in-law in Gyeongseong flew like an arrow through Cheonsaryeon's fastest communication network.
Un Sang-yu, who held the fourth-rank position of Vice Magistrate at a young age, reached for his sword before he even finished reading his youngest sister-in-law's letter. His only thought was that he must hide this.
But things rarely went as planned.
"Sang-yu! Darling!"
The voice of his wife, Baekri Yeongra, echoed down the hallway.
"I heard a letter came from our youngest? It's been so long. But why did she write to her brother-in-law instead of her perfectly fine older sister..."
There was no time. He must hide the sword. And the bow hanging on the wall. Ah, right. The arrows had sharp tips, so he must hide those too.
Sang-yu's movements were swifter than ever.
Good heavens, there's a dagger too.
To make matters worse, it was a set of four with different colored handles. He opened the study window and hurled the armful of weapons outside.
Just as he shut the window, the study door swung open with a bang.
"Didn't you hear my voice? Why aren't you answering?"
Yeongra, who was now a mother of two but still as spirited as the day they first met, approached her husband.
"The letter."
"...Huh?"
"Our youngest's letter."
"...Ah, that."
Sang-yu, a man of imposing height nicknamed "The Tiger Who Catches Criminals," had one fatal weakness: he was completely henpecked.
Yeongra sensed something suspicious from her husband's reaction. The smile on the generous beauty's lips slowly faded.
"Hey."
"...Even if it's just the two of us, calling your husband 'hey' at our age is a bit..."
"Did something happen to our youngest?"
A moment later, after reading the letter, Yeongra immediately tried to draw her sword and rush to Nak-an. But the sword was nowhere to be seen. The bow that was hanging on the study wall was gone too.
"Sly Un Sang-yu..." Yeongra trembled. "And you call yourself the eldest son-in-law of the Baekri Clan?"
"Darling, I..."
"Don't call me darling starting from this very second!"
The eldest daughter of the Baekri Clan had been famous for her fiery temper since youth. She was the polar opposite of the second daughter, who was as quiet as deep water, making her inner thoughts impossible to read.
"I will crush Hwa Mujin with my bare hands!"
And Yeongra, like the rest of her siblings, doted on the youngest, Yeongso, to an extreme degree.
It was a miracle that the Lord of the Baekri Clan still had his head attached to his shoulders after marrying Yeongso off to Cheonsaryeon. Sang-yu often thought that if the Clan Leader hadn't wept tears of blood back then, he might have actually died of grief.
"Move!"
"Yeongra." Sang-yu blocked his wife with his body. "It's not that I'm not angry. Of course I am. I'm so furious that I've already trampled Hwa Mujin to death hundreds of times in my mind."
Sang-yu took his wife's hand, telling her to feel just how hot his head was from anger. Yeongra, who was snapping at him not to play tricks, was startled by the burning heat radiating from the back of her husband's head.
"What is wrong with this?!"
"...No matter how surprised you are, calling your husband's head 'this' is a bit..."
Sang-yu coaxed his wife into a chair. Then, he asked her to remove her hand from "this" now that she had finished checking.
"I let go a long time ago. Why are you still grabbing my hair?"