Chapter 255: No Longer Human (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 255: No Longer Human (3)
"Hmm, I don't know about that..."
Those few words struck a profound blow to Baek Seol-hyang’s fragile heart.
She had begged him to stay, promising to do absolutely anything he wanted, and that was his response? Hmm, I don't know about that?
Forget the completely friendless Baek Seol-hyang—any normal person with a beating heart would have drawn their sword the moment those words left his mouth.
Yet, the thought of drawing her blade didn't even cross Seol-hyang’s mind. Her entire thought process had simply ground to a halt.
As a mentally shattered Seol-hyang stood there, mouth agape and tears streaming down her cheeks, Seo-jun realized his careless words could easily be taken the wrong way. Panicking, he quickly tried to salvage the situation.
"No, that’s not what I meant!"
"It’s... not?"
"I just meant that saying you'd do anything I want was a bit much..."
At those words, Seol-hyang’s eyes snapped wide. She had completely thrown her dignity out the window by now. She was far too desperate to care about something as trivial as pride.
Gripping Seo-jun’s sleeve tightly, she asked, "...Then, will you stay in the Ice Palace?"
Even Lee Seo-jun, a man whose very name was synonymous with cold-blooded shamelessness, couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt at the sight of her.
How can a Transcendent Realm master who’s hundreds of years old look so pitiful?
Seo-jun remained silent, organizing his thoughts.
He really did feel a little—actually, quite a lot—sorry toward the Ice Palace. Now that Baek Yun had been caught, he didn't think he’d need the 'Baek Seo-jun' identity much longer. Above all, if he kept causing trouble under that name, the guilt toward Seol-hyang would be too much even for him.
Furthermore, having gained a massive surge in power from his recent enlightenment, he concluded there was no longer any need to keep his true identity strictly under wraps.
"Listen, and try not to be too shocked."
"...I will."
"Have you heard of the Evil-Annihilating Heavenly Lord, Lee Seo-jun?"
Seol-hyang rolled her eyes upward in thought for a moment before nodding.
"I know of him. Rumor has it he’s a blood-crazed madman... Why bring up that guy all of a sudden?"
"That’s me."
"......?"
Seol-hyang froze. Her eyebrows twitched as if she couldn't process the words, before she fixed Seo-jun with a sharp, accusing glare.
"...Why tell such a ridiculous lie? Do you want to leave the Ice Palace that badly? Am I truly not your friend?"
As a martial artist of the Transcendent Realm, Baek Seol-hyang possessed basic common sense.
Specifically, the common sense that it was physically impossible for one person to handle two diametrically opposed types of internal energy unless they practiced a highly specific heart method.
And in all of Murim, there was no heart method that allowed someone to simultaneously wield the Ice Soul Divine Energy and the internal energy of the Righteous Faction.
By its very nature, the Ice Soul Divine Energy refused to mix with other energies.
It was less 'common sense' and more of an absolute law of the world.
It was also definitive proof that the monster known as Lee Seo-jun was no ordinary human being.
"Ta-da."
Witnessing the Firmament Great Evolution Divine Art of the Namgung Clan and the Ice Soul Divine Energy of the Ice Palace bloom alternately before her very eyes, Seol-hyang let out a stupid noise as her worldview shattered into pieces.
"Eh?"
* * *
Seol-hyang’s thoughts raced through several distinct stages in a matter of seconds.
The first thing she felt was a profound sense of betrayal.
The first friend she had made in hundreds of years was actually a spy from the Righteous Faction? Faced with this unbelievable reality, Seol-hyang’s eyes grew dull and lifeless.
How could he do this to her? She cursed the heavens, and she cursed her very first friend.
Her mind, which had barely escaped the brink of Qi Deviation, began to sink back into that deep, suffocating quagmire.
Then, a sudden realization struck her.
Hmm?
Come to think of it, this 'Baek Seo-jun' fellow had been incredibly suspicious from the very beginning. He had practically fallen out of the sky, freely utilizing both the Ice Soul Divine Art and the Beiming Divine Art while brazenly claiming to be the Young Palace Master.
She had initially accepted him as the Young Palace Master purely out of spite and a general 'screw the world' attitude. The reason she sincerely wanted him to take the position now was partly due to his competence, but mostly because his character seemed genuinely decent.
She wasn't worried that his personality had been an act.
Seo-jun might mock her for being a klutz and a loner, but she was still a Transcendent Realm martial artist and the absolute ruler of the Ice Palace.
It wasn't a metaphor; she truly possessed the insight to see through a person's true nature.
Regardless, the important thing was that her first friend was a pretty decent person (or so Seol-hyang firmly believed).
Besides, he had willingly revealed his true identity to her just now, hadn't he? He could have kept it a secret forever!
Why would he do that?
The corners of Seol-hyang’s mouth twitched upward.
This guy actually thinks of me as a friend too!
With that single thought, the world instantly looked brighter. So what if Baek Seo-jun was actually from the Righteous Faction? That wasn't nearly as important as she initially thought.
Who would dare criticize her—the Palace Master of the North Sea Ice Palace—for making a friend from the Righteous Faction?
The North Sea Ice Palace was completely isolated anyway. Seol-hyang was a total loner—no, wait, she was now a loner with exactly one friend.
There was no one around to tell her what to do, and even if there were, she had the sheer physical power to cave their heads in.
Besides, Baek Seo-jun had been a suspicious and strange fellow right from the start. Adding 'Righteous Faction' to his resume just made him a suspicious and strange guy from the Righteous Faction...!
Oh...?
At that moment, Seol-hyang’s train of thought hit another turning point. It wasn't just a shift in perspective; it was a full-blown explosion of enlightenment.
She thought:
Lee Seo-jun of the Righteous Faction. Baek Seol-hyang of the Evil Sect. Two people from completely opposing factions.
In other words, this was... a sweeping friendship that transcended the boundaries of good and evil!
At the sheer magnificence of that concept, Seol-hyang’s cold heart began to pound.
That was how it came to this.
Since Baek Seo-jun—no, Lee Seo-jun—had postponed his departure, claiming it wasn't an urgent matter, the two of them ended up sharing a round of drinks. In her highly elated state, Seol-hyang cautiously attempted to share her favorite hobby with her dear friend.
"The world is full of ignorant fools," she declared. "It is teeming with people who simply cannot understand this aesthetic. But you, as the esteemed friend of Baek Seol-hyang, will surely be able to appreciate it."
She stopped chugging alcohol in the corner of the room and stood up abruptly, still clutching the bottle.
Then, from an even deeper corner of the room, she dragged out all sorts of cleaning tools she had obsessively collected and began showing them off to her one and only friend, Lee Seo-jun.
"Now, look closely. As for this duster..."
Seol-hyang didn't just brag with words. She scurried around the room, personally demonstrating her masterful techniques to her first friend.
Swish, swish, swish—
Seo-jun could only stare blankly as Seol-hyang dusted the corners of the room with incredibly elegant hand movements.
What the hell is this?
Then, it dawned on him:
Seol-hyang’s drinking habit was cleaning.
* * *
To summarize Seol-hyang’s impassioned argument:
The act of cleaning was no different from tending to the bonsai trees that the pompous old farts of the Righteous Faction enjoyed as a hobby.
Gazing upon the Ice Palace after she had personally scrubbed it spotless gave her a sense of pride and achievement no less profound than breaking through to a new martial realm.
Seo-jun, who had only started drinking with her because her sorrowful wailing had been too pitiful to ignore, decided to preach the convenience of martial arts to his new friend.
"You don't need to do it like that," he pointed out. "You could finish the whole place in no time if you just used Void Object Grasping and Astral Qi."
Seol-hyang roared.
"Silence!!"
"What? Why?"
"I absolutely refuse to acknowledge such vulgar, unorthodox methods!"
The fearsome member of the Seven Evil Black Sect and Master of the North Sea Ice Palace proudly declared:
"Cleaning only holds value when you wipe away the filth, speck by speck, with your very own hands!"
"Uh... okay. Have fun with that."
"Urgh...! You’ll understand once you try it yourself!"
And that was how Seo-jun ended up scrubbing the Ice Palace alongside Seol-hyang.
As he wiped away barely visible specks of dust with a snow-white cloth, a thought occurred to him. He pointed to a rather large piece of 'trash' lying in the corner.
"But what about that?"
Baek Yun’s physical body had vanished during the process of trapping his soul, but they had brought Neung Wol’s corpse back to the Ice Palace so Seo-jun could properly explain the situation to Seol-hyang.
"Ah."
The sight of the dead body snapped Seol-hyang back to reality.
"Ugh... So those bastards from the God-Destroying Association targeted not just the Geum family, but the Ice Palace as well..."
She had completely forgotten about it amidst all the shocking revelations, but this was a grave incident. If things had gone wrong, she easily could have been assassinated.
"I thought he was living quietly after being exiled, but to think he would pull a stunt like this."
Seol-hyang recalled Baek Yun’s face, which existed only as a faint memory in her mind.
Murdering fellow disciples and conducting human sacrifices.
Those were the very reasons Baek Yun had been exiled from the North Sea Ice Palace in the first place.
Perhaps feeling he had hit a hard limit trying to practice the Ice Soul Divine Art with a male body, he had resorted to all sorts of forbidden methods.
Setting aside the human sacrifices, he had murdered his own Ice Palace kin under the guise of dual cultivation.
Baek Yun had tried his best to cover it up, but the Former Palace Master had eventually uncovered the truth after discovering several withered mummified corpses.
Normally, Baek Yun would have had his martial arts crippled before being exiled.
However, sensing the danger, he had somehow managed to flee the Ice Palace before judgment could be passed.
"Well... it’s not entirely incomprehensible. Since it’s practically impossible to master the Ice Soul Divine Art with a male body, he must have been driven into a corner."
Seol-hyang clicked her tongue.
"But he crossed the line. Laying a hand on his own people is unforgivable."
She then patted Seo-jun’s shoulder sympathetically.
"Perhaps you can empathize with him a bit. You must know better than anyone just how nearly impossible it is to master the Ice Soul Divine Art in a male body."
"Empathize?"
The corner of Seo-jun’s mouth curled into a sneer.
"I’d rather not be associated with a pathetic loser like him."
Setting aside the fact that he hadn't actually found it all that difficult to master the Ice Soul Divine Art, he had absolutely zero intention of empathizing with a piece of trash who had contributed to the downfall of the Geum family.
Seeing the cold look in Seo-jun’s eyes, Seol-hyang flinched.
"I-I’m sorry... Now that I think about it, you did say you had ties to the Geum family..."
"No need to apologize."
Seo-jun simply shrugged it off. He understood that Seol-hyang was just overly excited about finally having a friend.
Glance...
Seeing that Seo-jun wasn't genuinely offended, Seol-hyang straightened her slumped shoulders.
"Ahem! Cough! "
She cleared her throat a few times and, properly emboldened, decided to bring up her main point.
"So, you said you were leaving tomorrow."
"Yeah."
Seo-jun had already mentioned he was going to hunt down the last piece of trash responsible for the Geum family's destruction.
Seol-hyang didn't want to let him go, but she knew that to maintain a healthy friendship, one must never overly restrict their friend (she had read that in a book once).
So, she asked cautiously.
"I won't try to stop you, but... do you know when you might return?"
The weight of waiting with a promise was entirely different from waiting without one.
If she had a clear timeframe, Seol-hyang felt she could endure any amount of time, living each day with a sense of warm anticipation she had never experienced before.
Seeing her transparent emotions as clear as day, Seo-jun replied with a hint of pity.
"I'll probably stop by once on my way back after finishing my business. It shouldn't take more than a week."
"I-I see."
Seol-hyang nodded, trying her best to look dignified. Seo-jun continued.
"Oh, and I’m planning to get married this coming spring."
"Huh?"
"Do you want to come?"
"...Me? Am I even allowed to?"
"Ah, right."
Now that he thought about it, if the notorious Master of the North Sea Ice Palace suddenly showed up in Anhui, it would probably cause quite a stir among the orthodox factions.
"Then I’ll come pick you up myself."
"The people of the Righteous Faction won't just sit idly by..."
"Eh, it’ll be fine."
What were they going to do about it anyway?
Besides, he trusted that the leaders of the Sixteen Major Sects and Clans wouldn't be foolish enough to meddle in someone else’s personal friendships.
And if they do...
Then things will get very interesting.
Seo-jun let out a short, amused laugh.