Chapter 2
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Reborn in the Ice Palace
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When he came to his senses again, he was lying on a soft bed.
'Hm?'
He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. The room was neatly organized.
There was a large bookshelf, desk, and table on one side, all of them quite luxurious.
'Where is this place?'
At that moment, a clear voice rang out.
"You're awake?"
He turned his head to see a beauty in pure white palace robes gazing down at him.
Her face, which appeared to be in her early to mid-twenties, was coldly set.
"Why did you go all the way to the forbidden area! If I'd found you just a little later, you would've frozen to death!"
"......?"
Seeing his blank expression, she furrowed her brows and spoke.
"Your mother was very worried. I'll take you to her, so get your head straight first."
'My mother passed away when I was young.'
She had just reached the door when she turned back to him and said coldly.
"Seol Hwa-un, if you pull something like this just one more time, I really won't let it slide."
Bang.
She stormed out, slamming the door behind her, and he couldn't help but chuckle despite himself.
"What a hot-tempered little sister."
He replayed what the palace-robed beauty had said.
'By the way... Seol Hwa-un?'
Tilting his head, he suddenly looked down. What he saw before him were hands so fair and delicate they could be called jade fingers.
"Why is this...?"
They were definitely not his own hands, which were rough and hardened from endless training.
Startled, he shot to his feet without thinking. His whole body throbbed.
'Ugh!'
The pain was one thing, but his legs felt weak and unsteady.
'It hurts, so it's not a dream.'
Once he managed to stand for a bit, his condition improved slightly, and he hurried toward the mirror with unsteady steps.
"......!"
Inside it was a slender boy with a face he'd never seen before in his life.
A pale-faced youth with sharp, distinct features.
"This is... me?"
He stood there in a daze for a while.
'What in the world happened?'
He recalled his last memory. He'd triumphed over the yin qi in a fierce battle and even fully unblocked his meridians.
'Now I get it. This isn't my body. But where did the Nine Yin Primordial True Qi go?'
It was an extraordinary energy that could blast through blocked meridians in an instant. Strangely, though, he couldn't sense it anywhere in his dantian.
'I expected the other eight strands to dissipate... but even the one in my dantian?'
The Nine Yin Primordial True Qi was an astonishing power, but it only existed as internal energy and never took root in the dantian.
When he concentrated and circulated his qi, it would gather again, only to scatter once more.
'What a shame.'
Still, since it hadn't vanished entirely and lingered somewhere in his body, he could just capture it with a technique that prevented qi from dispersing.
But that wasn't the priority right now.
More than the Nine Yin Primordial True Qi, he needed to grasp his current situation first.
'Did I end up in someone else's body? How could such a bizarre thing...?'
He closed his eyes tightly.
'Stay calm. That means my original body died because of the Ice Essence...'
He worried about what had happened after he failed to finish everything.
The one silver lining was that the Central Plains Guardian Corps, who had fought alongside him to subdue the Outer Realm Evil Forces, was a force second to none in the world. They would surely clean up the remnants of the Ice Palace.
'Yeah... the captain would have handled it well.'
It was regrettable that he couldn't return home in glory after completing his mission, but there was no helping it.
'In any case, I've finished everything as the Martial Alliance Leader.'
He was curious about the situation after the conquest of the Ice Palace. Self-praise aside, he had played the biggest role in uniting the righteous and evil factions into the Martial Alliance.
Without him, the newly formed alliance might fracture once more.
'I need to go back and hold things together.'
It might be impossible with this new body. Even so, his strong sense of responsibility wouldn't let him abandon the Central Plains martial world.
'More importantly, where exactly is this place?'
He flung open the window on one wall.
"Ah!"
A vast white expanse of snow filled his view. A bone-chilling wind wrapped around him.
Yet he was too entranced by the surroundings to notice.
"...What breathtaking scenery. So beautiful."
He admired the view only briefly before spotting the ice walls on the horizon, realizing this was the North Sea Ice Palace.
'Troubling. Of all places, I reincarnated as someone from the North Sea Ice Palace?'
Soon, the surrounding buildings came into view. They blended well with the snowy landscape. Seeing them, he realized another fact.
'No traces of war at all. That means a considerable amount of time has passed since I died.'
Unease began to creep in.
'Just how much time has gone by?'
At that moment, his body shivered from the cold wind. Feeling the chill, he quickly shut the window.
'Even if I recover my internal energy, it's meaningless if my body is this weak.'
Returning to the Central Plains from the North Sea meant traveling tens of thousands of li. With this body, he'd collapse halfway.
'From the looks of it, this body holds a fairly high position even in the North Sea Ice Palace... Escaping won't be easy.'
Even if he claimed to be the Martial Alliance Leader, no one would believe him, and they'd probably stop him from leaving.
'I need to regain my former prowess.'
Just then, the door burst open. In walked a beautiful woman whose looks rivaled the palace-robed beauty.
"Hwa-un!"
She pulled him into a tight embrace.
"......?!"
"It's really a relief. You woke up safe and sound."
The palace-robed beauty, who had followed her in, spoke up.
"The Medical Hall Leader said you're fine. In fact, you overcame the Heavenly Punishment."
Still holding him, the woman replied.
"How could you do something so reckless? You're lucky you came back alive, or I might have lost you."
'Is this woman my mother?'
"Look at me, getting all worked up. Why are you standing? Lie down right now."
The woman practically forced him back onto the bed.
He had no choice but to obediently lie down again.
'This is awkward...'
Moments later, another person entered the room.
A middle-aged man in ornate white robes. The attire was all too familiar.
"......!"
Confirming the man's face, he tensed up instinctively.
'That's... the Ice Palace Lord!'
He had clearly been swept up in the Ice Essence's energy alongside him—how was he still alive?
Misunderstanding his reaction, the woman smiled and said.
"You're worried about getting scolded by your father, huh? Don't worry. Mother already smoothed things over."
"......"
His expression softened a bit. He realized the man before him wasn't the Ice Palace Lord he knew.
'No, he's not. The face is similar, but definitely different. Even the aura is subtly off.'
Yet the subtle emanation of power was no less than the Ice Palace Lord's.
The middle-aged man approached with a stern expression and spoke.
"Won't you even greet your father?"
He flinched, and the woman stepped in first.
"He just woke up. He's still out of it, so don't scold him too harshly."
"......"
"See? You rushed over the moment you heard he woke up. You were worried about your son after all."
The middle-aged man cleared his throat awkwardly.
"The process was dangerous, but he did achieve his goal, didn't he?"
Stroking his head, the woman said.
"Hwa-un. You always felt guilty every time your father performed the meridian unblocking for you, right? That's why you went to the forbidden area to fix it yourself?"
"......?"
"Now your father knows all about it. So what if you lost a bit of internal energy? Having you by our side is what matters."
Only then did he piece together the situation.
'I see. This boy Seol Hwa-un's body had blocked meridians from the start. They kept it from fully sealing with periodic unblocking.'
The cave where he and the Ice Palace Lord died must have been brimming with Ice Essence energy. So the boy went there to use it to heal himself.
Much of the Ice Essence energy had dissipated, but plenty of yin qi should have remained.
'With this kid's skill, he couldn't possibly absorb it. He must have died in the process.'
If his wandering soul entered the boy's body at that moment, it all fit together.
'In any case, thanks to this Seol Hwa-un, I was able to come back to life.'
From what they called it a 'forbidden area,' if Seol Hwa-un hadn't gone there, his revival would have been impossible.
As Do-cheon—no, now Seol Hwa-un—grasped the situation, the middle-aged man stepped forward.
"Do you still have lingering attachments to martial arts?"
The man's eyes gleamed coldly.
"Your constitution isn't suited for learning martial arts. I've told you that time and again."
The woman shot him a glare.
"Dear."
The middle-aged man continued.
"But, well. I heard from the Medical Hall Leader that you luckily overcame the Heavenly Punishment. How about it? Shall we try for real this time?"
'He's telling me to learn martial arts?'
Seol Hwa-un hesitated to speak rashly. A wrong word might arouse suspicion.
At that moment, the woman chimed in.
"Tell him you'll do it right away. Even with his duties as Palace Lord, he said he'd teach you personally, didn't he?"
Seol Hwa-un's eyes widened.
'The Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace?'