Familial Love
In the heart of Beijing, beneath starlight that seeped into the training grounds of the Eunseong Merchant Group, a pale radiance bloomed and wrapped itself around Ilhong’s entire body, glowing with a soft, steady light.
It looked as though she were receiving the brilliance of tonight’s unusually dense starfall with nothing but a human body.
“Breathe out deeply. Steady your heart. The Seongun Simbeop answers only to your will.”
Hwang Geolgae’s voice lay low across the training ground.
Unlike the way he taught his other disciple, the old man was, for once, transmitting martial arts with genuine gentleness and not a single blow.
“Seongnyeong hoe-ilche—embrace the stars until they overflow the body. Sucheon gipase—follow the heavens, seize the world. Sucheo jakju gaejin—wherever you stand, make yourself the master, and all becomes true….”
Cradle the stars of the open sky and light the whole world. Let all things flow according to Heaven’s principle. Then the realm will find peace, and you will set yourself free.
Ilhong turned the essence and hidden meaning of the mnemonic over and over in her mind’s eye, driving her mastery of the Seongun Simbeop steadily forward.
This was the art her captain—her savior, the one she looked up to—had learned. Her zeal and resolve burned higher than ever.
“Hmm.”
Chewing on a dried squid leg while he watched her train, Hwang Geolgae stroked his long beard again and again.
She had condensed Seongryeong-gi into her dantian. When she drew up that star-saturated internal energy, something faint and whitish gathered at her fingertips.
Unlike the internal energy she had once built from rage, betrayal, and the hunger for revenge, this power burned pure and snow-white, laying bare the feelings and will she now carried.
The girl’s whole frame of mind has changed.
Beneath her quiet breathing, the mental image she had stacked was solid as stone. Whatever had happened to her, her center was so firmly set that even a storm would not rock it—nothing like the days when she had grown stronger on vengeance alone.
“Have you completely set revenge aside?”
Hatred and the urge to kill, by their nature, overfill the heart and shake the mental image. They can fuel desire and give training a purpose, but they are also the emotions that block a breakthrough past the wall.
“No. I’ve simply found another goal, Master.”
The woman who had lost everything to Heuk Jin-jo’s betrayal now seemed to hold something more important than revenge.
Curious, Hwang Geolgae asked what that goal was.
Ilhong scratched her cheek, a little shy, and answered carefully.
“Once I reach the Peak Realm, the captain promised he’d grant me one w-wish….”
Already dreaming of what she would do with that wish-ticket, Hwang Geolgae’s second disciple twisted her body this way and that and drifted off into fantasy.
The old man’s face crumpled in open displeasure.
“Tch. Tsk, tsk.”
It felt exactly like watching a carefully raised daughter get stolen by some greasy outsider. She was sharp, diligent, and well-mannered—he had taught her and trained her with real devotion—and now she had fallen head over heels for that brat Dan Mujin.
Absurdly enough, Hwang Geolgae was tasting the very bitterness Hong Gak-jan, former master of Haoman, would have felt if he were still alive.
“So the sudden leap in her progress lately was all because of that bastard.”
He clicked his tongue, picturing the face of his first disciple—the rude one who never stopped clowning around. What was so wonderful about that pretty-faced punk that her feelings for Dan Mujin could overpower her thirst for revenge?
“But the captain’s late coming back….”
At the mention of Dan Mujin, Ilhong suddenly remembered how overdue his return was and turned her gaze toward the Imperial Palace.
Hwang Geolgae, who had been absorbed in spreading the teachings of the Starfall, also realized how unusually late the boy was and looked puzzled.
“Said he’d be right back, and he can’t keep a single promise.”
His first disciple—the headache who seemed determined to overturn his master’s guts and always did exactly what he was told not to.
“Nothing’s happened… right?”
Why was he this late? Ilhong, who had been eager to show off her progress the moment he returned, spoke up worriedly. What if something enormous had dragged him under at the palace? What if he had been thrown into a cell?
“If it’s that one, something will have happened.”
Ordinarily a master would say everything was fine. Where that boy was concerned, Hwang Geolgae simply could not force the words out.
When Ilhong looked at him as if to ask how he could know without any palace news, he snorted and went on.
“Experience. Have you ever once seen that brat pass through anything without trouble?”
At this point it had to be destiny. The boy was fated to get tangled in problems no matter what. Hwang Geolgae had more or less given up on that front.
From what he had heard, last time the boy had saved Princess Dohwa from poisoning and assassination inside the palace. That level of achievement was, at least, barely within acceptable bounds.
“As long as he doesn’t kill a member of the imperial family or depose anyone… that’ll do.”
The boy already seemed tangled up with the Son of Heaven, which made him uneasy, but Hwang Geolgae still trusted that his advice would keep Dan Mujin from crossing certain lines.
“Mm-hmm.”
After solemn deliberation, judgment was handed down upon the imperial family member who had caused this entire disaster.
“Empress Ga Hwiryung is hereby deposed.”
Emperor Hongrak’s declaration was absolute.
“……!!!”
The man who had always proclaimed neutrality and refused to interfere in palace affairs had just cast out the Empress. Everyone reeled in shock, staring back and forth between the Emperor and his wife.
Empress Ga Hwiryung, as if she had already known it would come to this, simply bowed her head in resignation.
“And the deposed commoner Ga Hwiryung is banished to an island in Guizhou.”
First deposition, then permanent exile to a remote island—as if the guilty party were being locked away for life. It was political death in all but name. No one would ever stretch out a helping hand to her again. She was a kite with a cut string.
In the succession struggle over the Crown Prince’s seat, the Empress had simply vanished.
Everyone watched the Emperor’s face and waited for his next words. This was the same sovereign who had looked the other way no matter what the Empress did. What wind had suddenly blown through him? Would he change his mind again?
But he had hardened his heart toward the woman who had been his lawful consort. He did not reverse the decision.
“Carry it out at once.”
“Yes!”
Members of the Shadow Guards seized the former Empress Ga Hwiryung by both arms and began escorting her away like a common criminal.
The mother of the Crown Prince—once a figure of immense influence inside the Imperial Palace—was being dragged off like that. Not a single member of the imperial family could find words.
And then everyone’s eyes turned to the Emperor, who had finally drawn his blade.
Yet after ordering the Empress’s deposition, Emperor Hongrak said nothing more and simply gazed out the sunlit window.
The Imperial Noble Consort spoke for everyone in a low voice.
“Your Majesty, are you in earnest? This is so unlike Your Majesty’s previous conduct that this Ma Juyeong cannot discern Your Majesty’s true intent.”
In short: You stood by and watched while your daughter and I nearly died—why are you suddenly intervening and moving so actively?
The others were too busy reading the room after such a colossal upheaval, but the Imperial Noble Consort simply asked what she wanted to know.
Emperor Hongrak smiled faintly and opened his mouth.
“Someone told Us that We are not fair.”
“…….”
Who in the world had the guts to hurl that kind of straight talk at the Emperor of the Central Plains?
Everyone began eyeing one another, searching for the culprit. When no one stepped forward, they looked puzzled—until the Emperor added one more line.
“And that by turning a blind eye and letting things drift, We are ruining the nation.”
“……!!”
The imperial relatives’ faces went blank with shock. Even the high masters of the Shadow Guards around them—save for Heok-ho—twitched their brows and let emotion show.
“Who on earth…?”
At someone’s question, Emperor Hongrak fixed his gaze on me again. There was a hint of indignation in those eyes, and at the same time a flicker of interest.
I don’t think I put it quite that strongly… or did I?
When the Emperor stared at me without a word, every person present turned and looked at me with unsteady eyes.
So this was what it felt like to sit on a bed of nails.
“D-Dan Mujin.”
Beside me, Princess Dohwa spoke to me with a rare stammer. In her eyes was the denial of someone thinking, Surely it can’t be…?
“Did you truly speak those words…?”
No matter how large my liver was supposed to be, to criticize and rebuke the Emperor to his face? Even the Empress and the Imperial Noble Consort would not dare that.
“Urgh… I thought he was just a fisherman, Princess.”
How was I supposed to scoop spilled water back into the cup?
My words were, in effect, an admission. Every imperial relative present began staring at me as if I had lost my mind.
“Ahem!”
And Cheon Su-gong promptly put two full paces of distance between himself and me.
His whole body was shouting that this lunatic had nothing whatsoever to do with him.
You’re the one who summoned me to this palace in the first place, old man.
“You really are… haah. Impossible to predict.”
Princess Dohwa seemed to sift through a mountain of possible remarks and finally settled on one of the milder options.
Cheon Su-gong would have immediately smacked the back of my head. Her patience truly was remarkable.
And so, under every watching eye, the deposed Empress Ga Hwiryung set out on the road to exile.
She gazed for a long time, with wistful eyes, at the Imperial Palace she would never return to.
The story that she had summoned the Blood Sect and turned the Crown Prince into a jiangshi was ultimately buried by the Shadow Guards.
The evidence vanished. Publicly, Ga Hwiryung was said only to have plotted an assassination through the Embroidered Uniform Guard under her command, been exposed, and then sentenced to exile by the Emperor’s own hand.
At least, that was the version for outside consumption.
“But is this really enough for exile? She tried to assassinate the Son of Heaven’s child, and she even dragged in the Blood Sect—public enemies of the Central Plains—to turn the Crown Prince into a jiangshi.”
When I asked whether this wasn’t a rather soft punishment, Cheon Su-gong flicked a glance at me, then jerked his chin toward the Emperor.
“Then why don’t you go suggest to His Majesty—who just lost a son not long ago—that he should also kill his wife.”
“……I’ll just keep quiet.”
Cheon Su-gong nodded as if I had finally made a sensible decision.
I had no interest in sticking my neck out any further and getting marked. The Emperor was already far too aware of me as it was.
“Ah….”
Halfway out of the palace, lingering attachment made Ga Hwiryung plant both feet and stop.
She had not even been able to see her first son buried, and now she was leaving the house where she had spent half her life.
And she spoke a few words to the Second Prince, who was watching her departure with sorrowful eyes.
For the record, the Empress had denied the Second Prince’s involvement to the very end, and whether some deal had been struck or not, the Emperor accepted it.
So Second Prince Ju Gachi was left truly alone, sending his mother away.
“Ju Gachi… your mother has always believed in you.”
Only after laying down every scrap of the trust and affection he had so desperately wanted from her did the Second Prince finally receive them.
Mother and son wished each other safety and farewell with aching faces.
In that moment they did not look like imperial relatives locked in political intrigue, but simply like an ordinary mother and her son.
Of course, as someone who had never once known normal parents, I couldn’t quite feel what that emotion was supposed to be.
“…….”
Then the deposed Empress Ga Hwiryung looked for a moment toward where I stood, and turned her body away.
There was no resentment in that gaze, and no regret either—only something I could not name.