Book 10 Chapter 15

Na Yerin's Shackles

- Trauma

The man stood before her, dressed as dark as night.

When the old man saw him, a chill ran down his spine.

"Boom!"

The moment she saw him, her left eye, the one she wore a patch over, hurt like it was on fire. How could he forget the man who had taken his eye? She could never forgive him. The man who had deceived him and played tricks on his mind! What lengths he had gone to in order to defeat him!

Grrrr.

Slowly, a sword was drawn from her scabbard, and from her outstretched hilt, flesh erupted, aiming for his heart. Now was the chance for revenge she had been waiting for. But he continued to smile, unperturbed by the sword's life force. He hated that smile so much that it made him shudder. She felt so foolish for having once fallen for that smile. She drew on her entire body's internal power and focused on the tip of her sword.

"From this day forward, I will erase the image of you from my mind."

As he spoke, he leaped forward and plunged his sword in.

Poof!

The sensation of the sword pole penetrating his body was all too familiar to her. But he made no move to avoid it.

"…Why?"

Somehow, Dokgo Ling felt that things were going too easily. At least his opponent wasn't a man who would go down without a fight.

"Cackle, do you feel better now?"

Even though the sword had pierced his heart, the man had an unexpectedly lascivious smile on his face. He held the blade that had pierced his heart in his hand. There was now only the length of the blade between them. Blood ran down the blade and into her hand. Her hand, gripping the hilt of the sword, was stained red. The blood dripped down her hand, creating a dark bloodstain on the floor.

"Hoo hoo hoo, even if you did, you wouldn't escape my grasp. You're mine."

He raised his hand and lifted the old man's chin. The man's gaze locked with hers. He brought his bleeding lips to hers in a way that was hard to describe. She tried to resist, but like a butterfly caught in a spider's web, she couldn't move at all. The man's lips slowly closed around hers, and the blood in his mouth gurgled and regurgitated into her mouth.

"Get off me!"

Dokgo Ling shoved the man back with all his might and swung his sword once more.

Pavat!

Her sword sliced his prisoner in two, but by then the man was gone.

"Oh… no."

She was like someone who had lost her mind. She looked at the man's bloodied hands and touched the corners of her mouth. There was no blood anywhere. But her hand could clearly feel the sensation of her sword piercing his heart, and her lips remembered the sickly taste of his blood. A chill ran down her spine and goosebumps rose. It was like being possessed by a ghost, the shuddering memories coming back to haunt her.

"Master, Master, Master!

She fondly called upon her master, Gumfu Yioksang, who had become a constant presence in her life.

'You've been trying so hard to forget…….'

In the end, it didn't work. She realized that she was still stuck with it.

"You mean to tell me you haven't gotten away from him yet?"

She saw clearly what was binding her, and she realized what this place was like.

"Is she going to be okay?"

When Dokgo Ling realized what this place was like, he suddenly became concerned for his siblings. It was a place that showed him the black shadows in his own mind.

'Yes! I once heard that my master had an incense that had that effect! I can't believe I can recall it now……. I can't believe you're so enamored of such a magician…….'

"I'm not quite there yet!"

Then a thought flashed through her mind.

'No way! If she ever goes through that again…….'

A sudden chill ran down my spine.

"No, I can't put him through that nightmare again. No way!"

Dokgoryeong's heart was racing. He had to find Na Yerin quickly. He could not afford to dwell on his fantasies now.

Deep within the sealed darkness of our minds, monsters live. The monster is sometimes unimaginably large, dark, and terrifying, and the mere sight of it can be devastating. Unless you rise above your own mind, unless you overcome yourself, you will never be able to defeat the monster that lives in your mind. You have to face the darkness, recognize it, accept it, and then rise above it. But the problem is, that's easier said than done.

"Uh… how did you?"

Na Yerin kept stumbling backwards. In front of her stood a man with whom she had a bad history that she had tried to forget, even in her dreams. The middle-aged man's eyes were not normal then, as they were now; they were bloodshot and maddening.

Her natural beauty was something she couldn't hide at any cost. Moreover, her beauty had shone from a very young age. Her beauty had a mysterious magic inherent in it that drove men to lust after her even when she was young. She had a fragrance even before she bloomed. And that scent had the mysterious power to seduce many men, which brought danger to her identity again and again. The mysterious scent kept attracting insects to the flower.

The same was true for the man standing in front of him now.

The most dangerous moment for her was 10 years ago, when he did something to her that left her severely traumatized. Since then, her misogyny has been at an all-time high.

It was her uncle, the man she had always trusted and relied on, who had tried to smear a deadly stain on her pure, snow-white skin. Normally, he was an honorable and just warrior, but that day, to the young girl, he was just another animal.

"Uh, how… are you still alive?"

She continued to backpedal, but her question went unanswered; he was taking a step or two toward her, his eyes still glowing with lust, a maniacal grin on his face, as if he didn't care about her question.

"Hmph, your two eyes are as charming as poppies, and your smile is more deadly than poison. Those purity eyes drive me crazy. Your pearly white skin, lips as red as pomegranates, and eyes as black as ebony… Hmph. Yerin, I can't stand it anymore, I can't stand it!"

The exact same thing was happening again. It was as if a nightmare was being reenacted without the audience's consent. Her uncle's eyes flashed with ugly lust, and thoughts of wicked, twisted desire flowed through her eyes and into her mind. They were the eyes of a beast. They were not human eyes. Na Yerin saw his true nature at the bottom of her uncle's mind. The nature of an ugly, selfish beast that thought only of its own pleasure and nothing else!

She had seen such a beast in her uncle, one of her closest kin. The shock was too much for her to bear. Na Yerin wanted to escape, to run away, to kill herself if she had a sword, but there was nothing she could physically do at the time. The mind distorts reality when the body doesn't cooperate.

Her mind began to activate its instinctive defense mechanisms. She wanted to shut off all her senses if she could.

"Now, come here. Good boy. Here, come here and take your uncle's arm. My little bird."

'It's a dream… it's a dream.

She had self-suggested that she was having a nightmare. With each step he took, she felt as if her age had decreased by a year, and she was becoming the vulnerable girl of ten again. It was as if the nightmare she'd had when she was ten was replaying itself before her eyes, projecting who she was then onto who she was now. I got goosebumps that sent chills down every inch of my body. I suddenly felt nauseous.

Blah, blah, blah.

She took a step backward.

Every time he approached her from the shadows, flashing dark, ugly desires, she had to step back in fear. She was no longer the apprentice of the famed swordsman named Bing Bai Feng, no longer the heir to the sword, she was just a timid girl ten years her junior, her dagger frozen in place, unwilling to be drawn at all.

Chin!

Na Yerin's back touched the cave wall. There was nowhere to retreat. He was now right in front of her eyes. She could only reach out and touch him.

"Well, there's nowhere to run anymore, so come here. My little bird."

Ugly hands, stained with lust, began to stroke her entire body. She was now trembling with fear and panic. Disgust and pity for her feminine weakness invaded her mind. The men themselves were repulsive and horrifying.

"Someone please help me, help me, help me!

She cried out to herself. Her ten-year-old self had cried out, too. It was her father who had rescued her from the pit of despair. Na Yerin could still remember it clearly; it was a painful memory she would rather forget.

"What do you think you're doing, you brute, I'm cutting ties with you today!"

His father's sword flashed white as he appeared, slicing through his uncle's eyes.

Pow!

Red blood splattered in the air.

"Kaaaahhhhh!"

My uncle let out a deafening scream. My father's sword was trembling with deep anger. Flesh was emanating from my father's sword that could have decapitated my uncle in an instant. The uncle had been tempted by lust and had broken the laws of nature. His father could never forgive him. Even in his complete loss of reason, the uncle seemed to realize how foolish it was to fight his father. He shielded his bloodshot eyes with his left hand and exhaled tension with his right. It was his organ, the Crazy Feng Zhang.

Urrrrgh!

There was a tremendous crash, and a stormy, ferocious tension raged everywhere. He broke a window and fled, leaving the room in disarray from the force of the tension. He was never found alive, and no one knows where he went. It was a family disgrace, a dark shadow. Afterward, her misogyny reached a fever pitch, and Nabaxian became fanatically overprotective of her. Afterward, it became a taboo, and no one spoke of it.

It was a deep wound that still lingered in the depths of her psyche. A grudge that had lingered for over a decade! Still, she couldn't seem to shake the memory of that nightmare.

But a ghost from the past?

"Please, someone help me!

I had never been so desperate to ask for help. Her uncle's lewd hand came closer and closer. Her whole body was paralyzed, like a butterfly caught in a spider's web, and she could not move at will. She brought her knees together and cowered, shaking and shouting. She squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could and screamed at the top of her lungs.

'Help! Bi-Biryou!'

At that moment, a white flash erupted before her eyes, sweeping away all the shadows of her nightmare. She sat crouched for a long moment.

Tap.

She was trembling like a little bird when a hand tapped her on the shoulder. It was a touch that was not forceful, not aggressive, not violent. And then there was a sound.

"Did you call?"

The voice was like a ray of light breaking through the darkness. Of one thing she could be sure: it was not her uncle's voice, rumbling with anger. She lifted her head to look at the voice's owner. It was Bi Ryuyeon, with his always reassuring smile.

Suddenly, she found herself feeling relieved and relaxed. Her face, which had been so cold and icy, so expressionless that one might mistake her for a former Ice Sword master, was now radiant. It was an expression that Bi Ryuyeon had never seen before.

"Hey, Sojae, are you okay, is something wrong?"

The sad expression on her face, as if she were about to burst into tears, was pitiful enough to give him the urge to hug her. But he didn't have to worry about that, because it was Na Yerin who was the first to fall into his arms.

"Nassauzer?"

Na Yerin's hands were clutching at his clothes, squeezing them tightly. Ryuyeon didn't miss the fact that Na Yerin's body was still trembling slightly. She was still afraid of something. It didn't matter to him what it was, only that she was trembling now.

She seemed to have suddenly reverted to a ten-year-old girl. Bi Ryuyeon silently held Na Yerin's slender body until her trembling stopped. The two of them didn't say anything for a while.

"How did you find me?"

After a while, when Na Yerin had finally calmed down, she asked Bi Ryuyeon a question. The labyrinthine hall was so labyrinthine that it was usually difficult to find one another, but Bi Ryuyeon seemed to find her way around without much difficulty. She found it fascinating.

"It's a gut feeling."

Bi Ryuyeon proudly replied.

"Persimmons?"

"Yes, it's a feeling, and even if the person I love is stuck in some kind of maze, I can find them, that's the power of love, mmmhahahaha!"

Once again, Bi Ryuyeon did not hesitate to answer. Na Yerin couldn't help but smile wryly at his confident answer, but it was so confident that Na Yerin didn't realize that it was a lie. The truth was actually quite simple. The truth was actually quite simple: Bi Ryuyeon had dangled a ghost by the hem of Na Yerin's robe. He could easily find Na Yerin's location by following it, but he didn't feel the need to tell her, so he called it a hunch.

Whew!

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew in from nowhere, her hair and the hem of her dress fluttering in the breeze.

"Thank you."

She smiled broadly. It was a smile that seemed to melt the ice cap for an instant.

"But Confucius isn't an illusion either, is he?"

It was very difficult to tell what was illusion and what was real here.

"Have you ever seen a vision so vivid and fresh, me Sojae?"

Her emphasis on freshness made me wonder if she was ordering from a sushi restaurant.

"I see."

Na Yerin had to wonder inwardly why she was so relieved by Bi Ryuyeon's appearance.