An Unexpected Encounter
The dual cultivation sessions with Banya had proceeded so smoothly that her prior worries felt entirely foolish. Today, too, Yeongso was bathed in the languid afterglow of their training. It felt much like the pleasant, heavy-limbed exhaustion that followed an overly long soak in a hot bath—limbs weak, yet spirits wonderfully light. Finding herself in such a good mood after intimacy was a novel experience for Yeongso.
In the past, our couplings always pushed me far past my limits, to moments I never wanted... Banya had once coveted her body with a desperate intensity, almost as if he wished to break his own wife. He would drive her to peak after peak in rapid succession, or tease her to the very brink before stopping, stripping away every ounce of her self-control. Only when she sobbed, begging him to stop, pleading that she couldn't take any more, would he finally look satisfied and release his seed deep inside her. At times, she had genuinely wondered if her desperate pleas were a necessary ingredient for Hwa Banya to reach his own release.
That was why I was so terrified of this dual cultivation... But he is actually following the guidelines surprisingly well. Yeongso let out a soft smile. Lulled by her pleasant mood, she found herself doing something she would never normally do: lying completely naked atop the plush silk duvet, simply savoring the sensation. The cool, slippery touch of the silk against her bare skin felt extraordinarily good, wrapping her in a sense of decadent luxury. Moreover, she didn't have to rush to wash herself or immediately bundle up in layers of clothing to prevent something bad from happening.
To think such a day would actually come. To her, "something bad" referred to Banya suddenly losing his mind and pouncing on her again not even fifteen minutes after his release. Perhaps he feels the same sense of fulfillment that I do. That is why he doesn't immediately crave more. This had to be what it felt like to be made whole by a single union.
Just then, she sensed a presence outside the room. Banya, who had stepped out briefly, must have returned. However, instead of walking straight in, he seemed to be lingering, his hand merely brushing against the door handle. What is he up to now? Yeongso sat up to quench her thirst. Even in her own chambers, walking to the table completely naked felt improper, so she loosely threw on a nightgown. The sheer, translucent fabric that offered tantalizing glimpses of her skin was a gift from Banya.
"He's even knocking now. What is he doing?" Yeongso poured some tea and took a few sips. Banya still seemed to be standing outside. "Come in." Had her voice not carried through the door? Yeongso set her teacup down with a soft click. As she reached out to open the door herself, not a single doubt crossed her mind. The person on the other side had to be her husband.
"The door is open, so you can just—" Yeongso froze. The man standing there, hand still raised in mid-knock, was not Banya. "Brother Jang-gyeong...?"
During their dual cultivation, she had strictly ordered the maids not to approach the pavilion. How had Jang-gyeong managed to wander all the way here alone? Had there been no one to stop him? As she stared up at him in a daze, she belatedly realized what she was wearing. But it was already too late. Jang-gyeong had already taken in her languid, half-lidded eyes, her flushed cheeks, her slightly parted, glistening lips, and the pale skin clearly visible beneath the sheer nightgown.
"P-Please wait a moment!" Shock drained the color from Yeongso's face. She slammed the door shut and hurriedly threw on her thickest outer robe. By the time she reopened the door, her mind was a chaotic mess of sheer mortification. With a face burning with a mixture of shame and embarrassment, she asked what had brought him here. Jang-gyeong's face was equally flushed, making it difficult for him to answer coherently.
"I... I shall return at a later time. Or perhaps you could come to the outer quarters instead, Sister Yeongso."
"Yes, of course... I, I am so sorry. I didn't realize it was you, Brother."
"No, you have nothing to apologize for. It seems there was... a misunderstanding of sorts."
After a flurried, awkward exchange of apologies, they parted ways. Yeongso watched Jang-gyeong's retreating figure, his stride much faster than usual, and let out a despairing sigh. You absolute fool, Baekri Yeongso. No matter how dazed you were, how could you just fling the door open without thinking?
Just then, a figure shifted behind the bushes. "Ah...?" The shock of the encounter with Jang-gyeong had already acted like a splash of ice water, snapping her senses fully awake. But now, she instantly recognized the figure lurking in the shadows. If her despair had been at a ten just a moment ago, it had now skyrocketed to a hundred. "Ma Ryun saw us..."
To speak of the Heavenly Killing Star, Ma Ryun, he stood at six feet tall by the age of eleven, and by thirteen, he had shot up to nearly seven feet. His parents, barely able to scrape by, decided they could not afford to feed such a gluttonous beast and sold him to a slave trader. He later heard that his older sister, who had egged their parents on to sell him, ran away the following year to join some sect of the Sapa.
In any case, during the winter of his thirteenth year, Ma Ryun was branded on the back of his right hand for the crime of murdering the slave trader who had tried to beat him into submission. The brand of a murderer on the back of his left hand came three years later, after he was swept up in a massive brawl at a labor camp. He had completely lost his mind, and by the time he snapped out of it, some thirty men lay slaughtered around him.
The guard who had miraculously survived the scene pointed a trembling finger at Ma Ryun. As fate would have it, Ma Ryun was sixteen that year—the legal age for execution.
With a heavy wooden cangue locked around his neck and thick iron shackles binding his wrists and ankles, Ma Ryun staged a desperate escape from the execution grounds. He slaughtered every government soldier in his path. Anyone who dared stand before him was cut down. He could not control the raw, boiling bloodlust surging from the depths of his soul. Then, a soldier's arrow pierced his flesh. He killed the archer, but more arrows rained down upon him without pause. What did I do wrong? They were the ones who started it. That's why I killed them. Because they tried to kill me! I only killed them before they could kill me!
Just as his vision was turning entirely crimson, he heard someone click their tongue. A beautiful young man, dressed in robes that were lavishly embroidered with gold leaf yet worn thin at the seams, was tapping the back of his own neck with a folding fan, looking down at Ma Ryun with utter pity. Who the hell is this? Ma Ryun glared at the youth, who looked to be around his own age. I'll kill him too. It didn't even take a fraction of a second to make that decision. Yet, for some reason, he could not lay a finger on this slender opponent, who stood a full head shorter than him. Instead, he found himself completely subdued by a fragile-looking fan that seemed as if it would break at any moment.
The young man gestured with his chin toward the path behind Ma Ryun.
The voice drifted down from above, telling him in no uncertain terms that escaping past the city walls in this state was a fool's errand.
He offered a sly grin.
Properly? What does it mean to kill properly? Ma Ryun stared up at him with hollow eyes.
The youth had remarked that with forearms like Ma Ryun's, dual sabers would suit him perfectly. Just imagining two razor-sharp blades, each a span wide, made Ma Ryun's heart pound. The youth, whose features were so strikingly beautiful they would put any noble young master to shame, slowly twirled his fan and asked:
The moment the answer left Ma Ryun's lips, the youth's body soared into the sky. Swoosh! Clack! Shhhk! The worn folding fan fluttered through the air like the wings of a butterfly. Wherever the youth passed, soldiers collapsed, blood spraying from their severed throats. Dozens of soldiers were annihilated in the blink of an eye. The youth claimed he had no name, as his master only ever referred to him as "this bastard," "that bastard," or "you damn brat." For the time being, he told Ma Ryun to call him "Young Master Hwa-i," meaning the second young master of the Hwa family.
From that day on, Ma Ryun followed Young Master Hwa-i. Under the tutelage of his savior, who was deeply versed in the martial arts of the Sapa, he rebuilt his foundation from scratch. Within two years, he had earned the fearsome title of the Heavenly Killing Star across the Gangho. And eight years after that, he received a "private summons" from his savior Hwa Banya's wife, Baekri Yeongso.