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Chapter: 23
[Y-Yes…….]
Leaving Anshi’s anxious reply behind, I opened my eyes and looked down at the court ladies.
“Head Court Lady Kim.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“From this moment on, the court ladies whose names I call are dismissed. Remove them from the Eastern Palace immediately.”
“Excuse me…?”
“Just write them down first.”
Using the Eye of Heavenly Fate, I weeded out every court lady whose sins outweighed her merits—those who leaned more toward evil than good.
After that, only about twenty remained.
It was a bit too few, but it was still better than constantly having people struck by heavenly punishment and dragged away, only to spend every day searching for replacements.
“Make a roster of those who remain and bring it to me. We’ll operate with this number for the time being. If more people are recruited, they must be approved by me first.”
“Y-Yes….”
Hurriedly writing down the names, Head Court Lady Kim cautiously asked,
“Um… Your Highness, may I ask what standard you used to choose them?”
I had already prepared an excuse.
“The Snow Tribe’s standards.”
“…Pardon?”
“Head Court Lady Kim, you know why the Pyeong Empire subjugated the Snow Tribe, don’t you?”
“Well….”
A visible tremor passed through her eyes.
It was common knowledge that the Pyeong Empire had massacred the Snow Tribe and enslaved them because of their unique abilities. The empire’s official justification had been that the Snow Tribe’s land originally belonged to them, but everyone knew the real reason.
Naturally, Head Court Lady Kim knew as well, but saying such things openly before me—a mixed-blood descendant of the Snow Tribe and also a member of the imperial family—was difficult.
“It’s alright, Head Court Lady Kim. Before I’m royalty of Pyeong, I’m a descendant of the Snow Tribe.”
“…!”
“The empire thinks the same way, which is why they sent me here. You understand what that means, don’t you?”
Between my conflicting identities, which one came first?
Judging by the way she nervously glanced around, Head Court Lady Kim immediately understood what I meant.
Not that anyone could overhear us with Anshi here.
I continued calmly.
“So I don’t really have a homeland. Pyeong isn’t my home.”
I’d be living here for a while, and I couldn’t have everyone treating me like a foreigner.
I might as well draw a clear line now.
“From now on, this place will become my home, and I’ll be a cloud with no attachment to the Plains of Pyeong.”
“Y-Your Highness, are you saying…?!”
Head Court Lady Kim stammered with a deeply moved expression.
Suppressing a smile, I placed a finger over my lips.
“It’s a secret from the Empire.”
Several days later, Head Court Lady Kim brought the books I had requested along with the palace staff roster.
There were too many books for her to carry alone, so several court ladies accompanied her.
Among them, I spotted a familiar face.
Choi Jamyeong.
She was the very first court lady I had ever examined with the Eye of Heavenly Fate.
Come to think of it, I’d almost forgotten.
As the court ladies set the books down and prepared to leave, I pointed at Choi Jamyeong.
“You stay behind.”
“…!”
Her face instantly turned pale as she froze.
The other court ladies and Head Court Lady Kim glanced at her before quietly withdrawing.
I sat at my desk and quickly wrote something on a sheet of paper.
“You’re Choi Jamyeong, correct?”
Apparently, she hadn’t expected me to remember her name.
Her eyes widened.
“Y-Yes.”
“Come here and take this.”
She approached hesitantly, accepted the paper, and asked carefully,
“What is this, Your Highness?”
“It’s a prescription. Take it to the infirmary and have them prepare the medicine exactly as written. If you’re curious what it’s for, ask the physicians.”
“…Medicine?”
“Yes. Give it to your younger sibling, and you’ll start seeing improvement soon.”
“…!”
Choi Jamyeong stood there with her mouth hanging open.
When I looked into her life with the Eye of Heavenly Fate, I had seen nearly everything—her life, the sins she had committed, and the virtues she had accumulated.
Surprisingly, her virtues outweighed her sins.
Most ordinary people accumulate roughly equal amounts of merit and wrongdoing throughout their lives.
It isn’t a perfect division, but those whose sins outweigh their merits are generally evil, while those whose merits exceed their faults are generally kind.
By that measure, Choi Jamyeong was undoubtedly one of the good ones.
Her family was poor, so she entered the palace to work at an early age.
While she was serving in the palace, a landslide destroyed her hometown.
It had been a terrible disaster that killed most of the villagers.
Only a handful of children survived, including Choi Jamyeong’s younger sibling.
She had taken in every one of those children and was raising them alone.
Fortunately, palace wages were generous enough that she somehow managed to get by.
But recently, one of the children had contracted a mysterious, severe illness.
The child wasn’t even her blood relative, yet she refused to give up.
She cut back on her own food and clothing to scrape together enough money for treatment.
As for the sins she had accumulated, they all came from desperately trying to obtain money or medicinal ingredients.
Things like flattering ill-tempered court ladies from wealthy families, doing whatever they wanted to earn a few scraps of favor.
That was also why she’d been disrespectful toward me.
Compared to truly wicked people, her sins were trivial.
Yet she carried overwhelming guilt over them.
Back then… when I told her to leave and she hesitated, saying it would be impossible for me to prepare for the wedding alone… she had genuinely wanted to help me.
She had been rough with her hands because she was trying to keep up appearances before the other court ladies, but deep down she despised herself while pitying me.
When she witnessed me surviving the wedding night, the relief she had felt had been completely genuine.
That was why I had brought her into my palace.
When you come to understand a person this deeply… it’s hard not to grow attached.
Humans who were weak but worked hard.
Who did their best within the circumstances they had been given.
Who sometimes committed sins simply to survive.
Pitiful, fragile people.
When I had spent time watching the Mirror of Karma…
When I observed the dead crossing the River of Three Crossings…
When I looked into the mortal world through the Thousand-Mile Mirror…
There had often been humans like this whom I wanted to help.
But as a divine being living in the Heavenly Realm, influencing the mortal world without prayers or offerings was a violation of heavenly law.
I could do nothing.
But now I’m a human living in the mortal world.
This wasn’t even a miracle requiring divine power.
A small kindness like this was completely possible.
After two hundred years of treating patients, writing a prescription like this is easy.
From Choi Jamyeong’s memories, I had seen that the illness afflicting her younger sibling had been caused by an evil spirit.
It wasn’t a disease to be treated.
It had to be purified.
Among immortals, it would be no more serious than a common cold.
For humans, however, it was an entirely different matter.
As I looked over the prescription again, something occurred to me.
I opened the chest beneath my desk.
Inside were gold bars I had casually grabbed from Sangra Palace’s treasury using the Eightfold Command Seal.
The large ones had been too heavy to carry, so I had only brought back palm-sized bars.
Picking one up, I held it out to her.
“Some of the ingredients are rather expensive. This should be enough. If it isn’t, or if you can’t obtain the materials, tell me.”
Choi Jamyeong didn’t take the gold bar.
She looked back and forth between the prescription and the gold before murmuring in a daze,
“H-How… how did you…?”
“On the day of the wedding, I looked at you. Do you remember?”
Her shoulders trembled.
She stared at me in disbelief.
“Then… then that feeling wasn’t my imagination?”
“What kind of feeling was it?”
I already knew exactly what it felt like from the Eye of Heavenly Fate.
But that was from an immortal’s perspective.
Humans might experience it differently.
Looking into empty space, Choi Jamyeong answered quietly,
“…It was like my entire life flashed before my eyes.”
“Your life flashed before your eyes?”
“In the terror of death… as I looked back on how I’d lived… I realized there were so many things I regretted.”
The terror of death?
Wait.
Did being gazed upon by the Eye of Heavenly Fate really make people feel as though they were about to die badly enough to see their whole life flash before their eyes?
The effect was much stronger than I’d expected.
No wonder some of them nearly collapsed even though the burden was divided among thirty people.
While I was caught off guard, Choi Jamyeong looked at me with newfound resolve.
“When the fear disappeared… all I could feel was gratitude. I decided that whatever life I had left, I’d live more honestly… work harder… instead of taking the easy path, I’d put in the effort to find the right one.”
There was a firmness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
She looked like an entirely different person.
What was this?
The Eye of Heavenly Fate wasn’t supposed to reform people.
The Crown Prince’s attendant had vomited blood and still tried to deny his crimes.
That proved it.
Maybe it’s because she was already a good person to begin with.
Humans truly were fascinating.
Most of the time they were endlessly fragile.
Yet sometimes they displayed astonishing strength.
And without warning, they revealed unexpected kindness.
No wonder it was impossible not to become attached to them.
I could understand why so many gods watched over humanity—and sometimes even came to love them.
After swallowing nervously, Choi Jamyeong continued,
“The experience was so unbelievable that afterward I wondered if I’d simply fallen asleep standing up… or if I’d imagined someone… imagined showing my entire life to Your Highness…. But… it wasn’t my imagination after all.”
“…Mm. No, it wasn’t.”
When I nodded, Choi Jamyeong inhaled sharply.
“Then… Your Highness is….”
She started to speak, then stopped as her eyes fell upon my neatly braided silver hair.
Among humans, who normally had black hair, unusual hair colors often signified extraordinary power.
Divine blood.
Or the influence of supernatural forces.
And my silver hair is the hallmark of the Snow Tribe’s divine bloodline.
I didn’t even need to make excuses.
She reached her own conclusions and accepted them.
The identity of a Snow Tribe descendant really was convenient in many ways.
I held out the gold bar and prescription again.
“Go on. Take them.”
“…I was disrespectful to Your Highness.”
“I know.”
“And yet… instead of punishing me, you’re rewarding me?”
“It’s not a reward.”
Tilting my head, I added,
“Think of it as good fortune.”
“…”
“Like an accident that comes out of nowhere… except instead of disaster, unexpected blessings have rolled your way.”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“Maybe it’s the protection of your ancestors. Maybe it’s because of the virtue you’ve accumulated. Either way, this is your luck—your blessing. So just accept it.”
If someone’s fortune was great enough to catch the eye of a major god like me, then perhaps it truly was the accumulated blessings of their ancestors.
And it was also true that seeing how her good deeds outweighed her sins had moved my heart.
So this wasn’t a reward from me.
It was simply Choi Jamyeong’s own blessing coming back to her.
