Chapter 126
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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Chapter 126
"...!"
San Yu's expression became as though he'd been struck in the head with a hammer.
"But why are you so interested in Somsomi?"
Gaya, who had been scrutinizing San Yu with a dissatisfied gaze, suddenly contorted his face.
"Don't tell me. You don't harbor any filthy intentions toward my Somsomi...."
He asked with the determination that if such were the case, he would kill him right here and now.
Whoosh―!
San Yu suddenly spun around and bolted away from Gaya, running off somewhere on his own.
"Hmm?"
Gaya squinted at the retreating figure, then smiled faintly as he looked at the imperial gift in his hand.
The thought of bringing this to Jeok Soya filled him with excellent spirits.
* * *
Riri's expression remained grim throughout the journey from the Banquet Hall back to the Residence.
"Riri, are you alright? Your expression looks troubled."
Jeok Hwayou soothed his younger sister, noting an expression as dark as their Father's.
"You've never seen Father quarrel with someone before, have you? You must have been quite frightened, our Riri."
"No, it's all because of that girl. Riri was shocked too. I thought she was dead, but she came back alive...."
Riri trembled as she answered, as though still unable to believe it.
"Yes, you must have been quite startled. Go inside and rest now. Your Older Brother will settle matters outside a bit longer before coming in."
Jeok Hwayou let his family inside, then exhaled deeply.
He too was profoundly confused.
Jeok Soya was alive.
The youngest daughter the Baekho Family had taken in was that child, Jeok Soya.
He had naturally assumed she was dead.
The child's belongings and bloodstains left behind where she had vanished.
Even if by some chance she had survived, he believed she could not have lived long.
Because that child's spiritual core had been damaged.
'...Yet how is the child whose spiritual core was damaged still alive.'
That she had not died but lived was truly fortunate.
Had he not carried a faint sense of guilt and loneliness throughout his life because of her death.
Yet even though that child was alive, the guilt did not diminish but only grew heavier—a strange thing indeed.
It was then.
A red silhouette came rushing toward him from afar, gasping for breath. It was San Yu.
Jeok Hwayou set aside the discomfort that had grown between them from last night's quarrel and greeted him first.
"Ah, Elder Brother. You've arrived...."
"Jeok Soya...!"
But San Yu cut off the greeting as though such pleasantries were unimportant and cried out.
"Jeok Soya was with the Baekho Family! How did this come to pass!"
Ah, so Elder Brother saw that child as well.
Jeok Hwayou exhaled a short sigh before answering.
"I confess, I do not understand how this came to pass. Thus, I sought to investigate...."
"That is not what I am asking!"
"Older Brother...?"
"You said yourself—the child vanished after leaving the Jujak Estate on the day of the Festival!"
"Ah...."
San Yu pressed further, his voice sharp as Jeok Hwayou let out a small sound of distress.
"So why—why is the child avoiding us!"
The reason San Yu had sought out Jeok Hwayou first rather than rushing directly to Jeok Soya was precisely this.
The child was avoiding me.
Last night, the moment the child spotted me, she had slipped behind Baek Ga Ya to hide—she was clearly avoiding me.
The child was not avoiding only me. The fact that she had pretended not to notice her family, despite them being here in the Imperial Palace, made that clear.
But why...?
For a brief moment, the question hung in the air, but the answer came swiftly.
It was the words Jeok Hwayou had spoken before me yesterday.
[She is a child who has already suffered greatly, having lost her position to that one.]
[I pray that our sister will no longer be wounded because of that child.]
[While Riri wandered the Streets, that child enjoyed everything Riri should have had in her stead.]
Jeok Hwayou had spoken as though Jeok Soya had committed some grave transgression.
His voice had been flat, reciting what seemed to him an obvious truth.
Could it be that while I was away on the Battlefield, with no Jujak Estate to call home, I treated that child in such a manner?
Blaming her for stealing Riri's place. Saying that was why Riri suffered.
And thus, heaping all the tragedies that befell the family upon that child, twisting the knife....
"Older Brother, please, compose yourself for a moment...."
"Tell me. What have you done to that child?"
But San Yu could not calm himself.
"What words did you speak to her, what deeds did you commit while I was gone, that she would turn away from us, her own family!"
"...."
Jeok Hwayou fell silent before the torrent of fierce anger.
If his Older Brother had uncovered this much, there was no point in concealing it further.
A few servants in the Jujak Estate would yield answers readily enough.
So he parted his reluctant lips and spoke.
"...I merely administered appropriate punishment to the fledgling who deceived her family."
"What?"
In that instant, a look of terrible contempt flashed across San Yu's face.
"You do not understand! The despair and betrayal Father and I felt on the day that child first underwent her Resonance!"
At that expression of revulsion directed at me, Jeok Hwayou felt something surge within his chest.
"Mother died bringing that child into this world! Yet the child born at the cost of Mother's life was not Phoenix!"
And so he raised his voice and cried out.
All those hollow excuses he had whispered to himself for so long.
"That child—the one who should never have been born—because of them, my deceased Mother bore the shame of committing treason, and Father lost his mind!"
"So."
San Yu regarded his younger brother with cold eyes and spoke icily.
"So what did you do to that child? Just tell me the facts."
"...."
At that chilling question—one cold enough to freeze even the Southern Lands themselves—Jeok Hwayou barely suppressed the anguish pouring from him and clenched his teeth.
His chest heaving as he composed himself, he answered in a somber voice.
"...I took away their spiritual core and sent them to the Cold Palace."
"What?"
"I couldn't bear to watch them transform again and wander about in that horrific form. For a child who deceived everyone, surely that was generous enough.... Ugh...."
Jeok Hwayou's words could go no further.
San Yu had driven his fist into his younger brother's face.
It was a savage violence he had never once employed—not even amidst that terrible battlefield, not even with a comrade who challenged him daily.
"You're spouting absolute madness."
San Yu looked down at his younger brother, who lay sprawled on the ground clutching his swollen cheek, and spoke with a frigid tone.
"How could such a small child have deceived anyone?"
A flinch.
At those words, Jeok Hwayou visibly flinched.
It was something Jeok Hwayou had long been avoiding.
Seven years had already passed since Jeok Soya's first transformation—he had been only nine years old then.
With the help of retainers, he had upheld the family in place of his father, who had lost his mind, yet he too had been immature.
As time passed and he grew older, doubts began to arise.
Was that child truly the perpetrator?
But Jeok Hwayou lacked the courage to confront that question, so he turned away from it.
The moment he faced it, it felt as though the entire world he had believed in would crumble. So he deliberately closed his eyes, shut his ears, and steadfastly averted his gaze.
"So then, what became of that child's spiritual core now?"
"...I returned it before sending them out of the estate. However, the spiritual core was in poor condition, so I believed that even if they survived, they would not live long."
"The spiritual core was in poor condition?"
San Yu's expression turned savage in an instant.
"Don't tell me. You...!"
"No!"
Jeok Hwayou protested in a deeply aggrieved voice.
"Truly, no! I did take the child's spiritual core, but I swear by the Heavens that I never touched or damaged it!"
"Then how did a perfectly intact spiritual core end up in poor condition!"
"I don't know either. I only speculated that it deteriorated from being separated from its owner and left neglected...."
San Yu's brow furrowed.
'Can a beast's spiritual core deteriorate in such a manner?'
He had witnessed countless individuals whose spiritual cores had been damaged throughout the long war.
Most had been afflicted by attacks from demonic beasts or sorcery from the Northern Lands.
Sorcery.
A power imbued with malicious intent to harm another—fundamentally different from ordinary sorcery.
What if Jeok Soya's spiritual core hadn't simply been neglected, but had been damaged for another reason entirely?
What if someone had wielded dark magic with the intent to harm her, or if the ferocious beasts of the Northern Lands had been involved....
'This is absurd. My thoughts are running wild.'
Jeok San Yu severed the spiraling thread of his reasoning.
"Strip away her spiritual core, send her to the Cold Palace. And then what comes next?"
"...."
Jeok Hwayou found himself utterly speechless this time.
After Riri appeared, he had come to understand that the cruelties the family had inflicted upon her were no less severe than the theft of her spiritual core—perhaps even more brutal.
And the moment he consciously acknowledged this before his brother's question.
'What have we done to her? What atrocities have we committed?'
A chill settled deep into his very core.
San Yu turned his body away, regarding his younger brother with an icy gaze as the boy stood frozen in silence.
In any case, he could extract answers quickly enough by interrogating the household servants.
"...It was all for Riri."
A cowardly, pleading voice arrested his footsteps.
"It was all for Riri, our poor, beloved sister."
Yet San Yu continued forward without bothering to hear more.
"Riri is the sister Mother left behind, having traded her very life for her! She is precious and irreplaceable!"
Jeok Hwayou raised his voice, crying out toward his brother's receding figure.
"For Riri's sake, I would do anything! Five years ago, and even now!"
Though San Yu's form had already vanished from sight and no one remained to listen, still Jeok Hwayou continued to cry out.
His expression crumbling as though it might shatter at any moment, as though he were brainwashing himself with his own words....
---------------
Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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