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Chapter 5
“To witness the martial arts of the Northern Sea Ice Palace with my own eyes… This is an honor I will remember for the rest of my life!”
The middle-aged man who had told me about the nickname Six Liu Tiger Swords was extremely excited, practically gasping for breath as he spoke.
“The Ice Palace? Is that really true? I’ve wandered around the Central Plains since I was young, but this is my first time seeing someone from the Northern Sea!”
Unlike the leader who had asked me about my identity earlier, the moment he heard the words Northern Sea Ice Palace, he went pale and ran away.
Meanwhile, the ordinary people happily approached me and started talking.
“You know about the Ice Palace?”
“Of course! Isn’t it that mysterious sect supposedly built out of ice, located a thousand days of travel to the north?”
But the answer I received was completely unexpected.
A thousand days?
Nearly three years?
No, it wasn’t anywhere near that far.
And there wasn’t even an ice castle.
Did that make any sense?
Obviously, even the Northern Sea’s snow melted during summer.
Ice Moon Lake didn’t even freeze until November.
“It is also famous that the North Star Emperor cut off the head of the Blood-Bearded Demon Emperor when the Demon Sect rose to power last time! I-I can’t believe I’m actually seeing the beloved daughter of the Ice Palace Master with my own eyes…!”
“Oh.”
At least that part was correct.
People had a lot of wrong information about the Northern Sea Ice Palace, but some of them knew my father’s title, and their reactions were quite favorable.
Perhaps they were simply gossip-loving people who enjoyed stories about the martial world.
“That beautiful young lady defeated the Six Liu Tiger Swords?”
“What happened?”
“She just touched them like this…”
“I’ve heard that when an Ice Palace martial artist touches someone, they can freeze anything. Did she use something like that?”
Haha.
There were martial arts somewhat similar to that.
But I wasn’t a magician.
“Gasp!”
Many people didn’t approach me and talk as enthusiastically as the middle-aged gossip-lover, but plenty of them still hovered around the inn just to get a look at my face.
This was a village in the northern part of the Central Plains, and one where people from the Ice Palace would probably stop whenever they traveled through the Central Plains.
Apparently, my father and the other Ice Palace members had never bothered to reveal their identities.
“Um, great hero…”
The man who had finished cleaning the floor was nervously fidgeting with his fingers.
He looked like he didn’t know where to put his eyes, and his whole body was trembling.
“Hmm.”
I crouched down and ran a finger lightly across the floor to check whether he had cleaned it properly.
“Eeeek!”
“I wasn’t going to scold you over a little dust.”
The man screamed so loudly that the entire inn shook.
“He must have been startled because he thought you were going to use that martial art again.”
The gossip-loving middle-aged man whispered.
Now that he mentioned it, that seemed to be the case.
“This is good enough. Come closer.”
“H-Huh… Ugh…”
I was trying to be merciful, but the man seemed to have completely lost the ability to speak.
At least his survival instinct was still working.
He practically crawled toward me.
As promised, I withdrew the yin-cold energy from his body and allowed him to return home.
“Here. This is payment for the table you broke.”
“Oh, thank you!”
When I handed the money to the innkeeper, he bowed almost ninety degrees.
I used the money I had taken from the martial artists to pay for the damage.
I also handed over an entire money pouch to cover the meals of the customers who had been forced to watch the sword fight.
“Oh, right. You didn’t get to eat properly either, did you?”
The commotion had mostly been resolved, so I was about to return upstairs when I noticed the boy.
His face was a mess, and he had been pushed aside by all the people who had gathered to look at me.
He was still clutching his belongings nervously.
“I’d like to order a bowl of thin noodles for this child too.”
Poor thing.
He must have been terrified.
I ordered him some food and invited him to our table.
He had been staring blankly in my direction, but he suddenly came to his senses and followed me.
“Ah! Thank you, truly, truly!”
I hoped he wasn’t suffering from any lasting injuries from the beating.
The boy bowed repeatedly, belatedly thanking me.
“They caught me three days after I ran away. I thought they were going to beat me to death.”
“They were nothing special.”
I casually shrugged and invited him to sit comfortably and eat.
Although Captain Baekung looked rather intimidating, people from the Northern Sea were generally kind to children.
He personally placed a spoon in front of the boy.
“This child is…”
“Ah, my name is Sowoon.”
I had already heard the basics from the Six Liu Tiger Swords, but now the boy properly introduced himself.
His name was Sowoon.
His mother had died giving birth to him, and his father had been a servant working for the Yu Family Manor.
Sowoon’s father had cared for his son as best he could and was a hardworking man.
But several years ago, he had gone somewhere on the Manor Lord’s orders and died while away from home.
Fortunately, the Yu Family Manor hadn’t thrown Sowoon out.
Instead, he had become a servant to the First Young Master.
Then, last year, Sowoon happened to meet a powerful martial artist known as the Radiant Light Sword.
That encounter had become the source of all his troubles.
“He said I had talent and gave me a token. But when the Manor Lord recognized it, he took it away from me.”
“What kind of shameless bastard does that? A Manor Lord stealing from a child… He must have made your life miserable.”
Seriously, what kind of people were they?
They had stolen something from a child, yet followed the Manor Lord and talked about proper conduct simply because the child stole it back.
“Maybe I should have beaten them a little more.”
I muttered this because I was slightly disappointed that I had resolved things so peacefully.
“N-No, it’s okay!”
Sowoon quickly waved his hands, insisting that everything was fine.
“Young Lady, aren’t you going to destroy the Yu Family Manor?”
Captain Baekung, who had been quietly listening to Sowoon’s story, went even further.
“What? Are we the Demon Sect or something?”
Just look at Sowoon’s shocked face.
There was a limit to joking around.
There already seemed to be plenty of strange rumors about the Northern Sea Ice Palace.
If an outsider heard something like that, they might not even realize it was a joke.
“Haha.”
“We need to get to Luoyang quickly. When would we have time for that?”
“You ride very well, Young Lady, so we have plenty of time.”
Still, come on.
This hadn’t even happened in our territory, the Northern Sea.
Why would we go that far over an incident we had simply encountered on the road?
I reassured Sowoon that Captain Baekung had only been joking and that he didn’t need to be afraid.
“Tsk. I finally got the chance to accompany you, but the opponents were so weak that I didn’t even get to properly see your skills.”
The Ice Palace martial artists often praised me like this even though they were far stronger than me.
I scolded Captain Baekung for saying ridiculous things.
But he seemed genuinely disappointed.
“It would have been nice if they had attacked us one more time… Since things have turned out this way, I’ll accompany you all the way to Tianmu Academy. I am Han Yanghwi, Captain of the Baekung Unit of the Northern Sea Ice Palace.”
He finally stopped talking nonsense and introduced himself.
“Huh?”
“Hmm?”
Something about what he had just said caught my attention.
“Sowoon, are you also going to Tianmu Academy?”
I had vaguely heard the word academy, but the Central Plains was enormous.
Surely Tianmu Academy wasn’t the only academy in the entire region.
I had naturally assumed he meant somewhere else.
“Young Lady, are you also going to Tianmu Academy?”
Wait.
He was?
Captain Baekung looked at me in surprise, as if wondering whether I had helped Sowoon without even realizing that we were going to the same place.
“Didn’t Young Hero So mention the Radiant Light Sword earlier? Radiant Light Sword Gwak Do-cheon, one of the Five Swords of Mount Dianchang, is an instructor at Tianmu Academy.”
I wouldn’t have known something like that.
How was I supposed to know the names of the professors before I had even entered the academy?
Captain Baekung pointed toward Sowoon’s bundle.
“The token he says he received from the Radiant Light Sword is probably an admission token for Tianmu Academy, isn’t it?”
“…Yes.”
Sowoon hesitated for a moment before nodding.
Once we learned that the stolen item was actually an admission token, everything made sense.
Every year, Tianmu Academy selected many students through recommendations from major sects and martial arts instructors.
In other words, if someone had a recommendation token, they could skip the difficult entrance examination and be admitted directly.
I was also going to enter through that method.
I had a recommendation token my father had given me.
Wait, but…
“Isn’t the minimum age for entering Tianmu Academy fifteen?”
The academy couldn’t exactly take care of children from infancy, so there had to be a minimum age requirement.
That was probably why my father had waited until this year to bring up the academy.
Sowoon was younger than me, so wouldn’t he be rejected if he went there now?
Sowoon blinked and gave an awkward smile.
“I’m… sixteen years old…”
What?
What kind of talent had the Radiant Light Sword seen in Sowoon?
Even taking into account that children from the Northern Sea tended to develop somewhat faster, Sowoon was noticeably shorter than average.
He wasn’t particularly muscular or sturdy either.
When I first saw him, I had thought he was only thirteen or fourteen.
That should tell you everything.
“Gasp… N-No. I can’t speak casually to you, Young Lady…”
“At least stop calling me Young Lady.”
That didn’t mean he was particularly bold or overflowing with spirit, either.
Even when I gave him permission to speak casually because we would soon be classmates, he politely refused.
“You’re actually better at riding than I expected.”
“Oh, really? You just have to sit still, so I don’t think it’s particularly difficult.”
His physical abilities didn’t seem bad, of course.
Although he said it was his first time riding a horse, he maintained his balance quite well.
He also managed to keep up while riding at a fairly fast pace and spending about ten hours a day on horseback.
But Sowoon’s real talent lay somewhere else.
“It’s acorn noodles!”
He had taken some acorns he had casually gathered from the mountains and turned them into an incredible meal.
“Wow, why is this so delicious?”
“I’ve never had anything like this before either.”
“Hehe. There were times when I couldn’t even get proper meals at the Yu Family Manor, so I’m actually pretty confident in my cooking.”
They had actually starved a child like this?
Well, technically he was older than me.
But still.
Had he failed to grow properly because he hadn’t been eating enough?
“That’s…”
After hearing his sad story, I wondered if perhaps I should have gone to the Yu Family Manor and at least given them a proper scolding, even if I wasn’t going to destroy the entire family.
“I’m glad you like it, Young Lady. I’ll make it for you from time to time at the academy too, if I get the chance.”
The food was really…
Really delicious.
If you exaggerated a little and said that the Radiant Light Sword had tasted Sowoon’s cooking and given him the admission token because he wanted to hire him as his personal chef, I would almost believe it.
I nodded gratefully.
Several days passed.
“Those lights must be Luoyang.”
After crossing the Central Plains at such a fast pace, Captain Baekung seemed strangely disappointed.
He had apparently been hoping that the Yu Family’s martial artists would chase after Sowoon and attack us.
But why would they be crazy enough to follow us?
They hadn’t shown even the slightest sign of following us since the day we left the village.
In any case, our group eventually arrived in Luoyang.
The farther south we went, the better the roads became, and the villages were closer together.
But the journey was still not exactly easy.
I had confidently promised that I would visit the Ice Palace during vacation.
At this rate, though, traveling all the way back north and then returning south might take up the entire vacation.
I had heard that the Northern Sea was far from the Central Plains, but seeing it for myself made me realize just how far it really was.
“My name is Seol Suryeo. I was recommended by Seol Baekyeong, the Lord of the Northern Sea Ice Palace.”
Tianmu Academy was located south of Luoyang, a little away from the center of the city.
The students’ living quarters were designed so that they couldn’t be seen from outside, hidden behind a central gate and walls.
But even the two buildings visible from outside and the long training grounds were incredibly impressive.
I found a staff member in one of the white buildings where people occasionally passed by and handed over my recommendation token.
“Northern Sea Ice Palace?”
The person sitting there was checking through the list with an expressionless face.
But the moment he saw my face, his eyes widened in surprise.
He didn’t seem to be an instructor.
Was he a senior student?
An assistant?
“You’re the daughter of the North Star Emperor?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens!”
My father must have informed the academy beforehand.
But apparently the assistant hadn’t heard all the details, because he looked extremely surprised.
He searched through the documents at incredible speed.
Then he found the three characters of my name and clapped his hands.
“My goodness! The Northern Sea Ice Palace has finally sent a student! Welcome, Young Lady!”
Apparently, my name was on the list, but the person who had recommended me wasn’t written down.
Even though my father had increased his contact with the Murim Alliance, it seemed that an ordinary academy staff member still found my arrival fascinating.
His eyes shone with curiosity.
“The entrance ceremony will be held here on the first day of March!”
I answered his questions appropriately.
Then I stepped aside for Sowoon.
“Um, the Radiant Light Sword gave me this token. My name is Sowoon…”
“Hmm?”
Unlike me, whose name was already on the list, there didn’t seem to be any information about Sowoon at all.
“Hmm… Hmm~ Hmm, ah! You can wait at the Black Rock Hall.”
The assistant studied the list for a while.
Then he told Sowoon that his admission needed to be verified and pointed toward a building with black roof tiles.
Was an instructor going to come personally to verify him?
If the First Young Master of the Yu Family had shown up with the token, he might have been humiliated badly.
“Will it take long?”
“Probably? We need to look into it, but I’m not sure whether he is currently in Luoyang.”
What?
If the instructor wasn’t in Luoyang, did that mean Sowoon had to keep waiting until he returned?
He would obviously arrive before the entrance ceremony…
But judging from the assistant’s words, it didn’t seem like this would be settled within an hour or two.
“Sowoon, do you have enough money?”
“Y-Yes. Of course.”
“If it takes too long, I’ll see you at the entrance ceremony. We’re staying at the Hwangyeong Inn, so come find us if you need any help.”
Sowoon seemed a little flustered, but he readily bowed.
“Yes, thank you! Thank you so much for traveling with me…!”
We couldn’t wait around for him forever.
So after telling him where we would be staying, I left the academy with Captain Baekung.
“Looks like they’re holding the entrance examination right now.”
On the way out, Captain Baekung pointed toward the training grounds.
Since we had arrived in Luoyang early, with plenty of time before the entrance ceremony, the entrance examination was still underway.
‘That recommendation token really is useful.’
There were quite a lot of people gathered there.
If I had taken the regular entrance examination, would I have been able to pass?
Captain Baekung had said that most of the examinees were nothing special.
Still, they were children who had gathered from all across the Central Plains.
Hmm.
The young talents from the Namgung Family and Beast Palace that my father had mentioned would probably also enter through recommendations, just like me.
There must have been intense competition within their own families, especially since they had so many branch families.
I suddenly wondered how well I would be able to compete with them.
‘Well, I can only do my best.’
I took a quick look at the people who would soon become my competitors for spiritual medicine, then left Tianmu Academy.
I had heard that going out would not be easy after entering the academy.
So I wanted to eat as much delicious food as possible while I still had the freedom.
We dropped off our luggage at the Hwangyeong Inn, where we would stay until just before the entrance ceremony.
Then we sat in a quiet corner on the first floor and ordered some fish dishes.
“It’ll take a little while. Is that all right?”
“Of course.”
I nodded at the waiter and looked around the inn.
Perhaps because both a Murim Alliance branch and Tianmu Academy were located in Luoyang, there were more martial artists here than in any village we had visited so far.
Yet there were no fights breaking out at all.
It really felt like this place was well regulated.
“Young Lady, my stirrup broke, so I’ll go to the blacksmith for a moment.”
The head of Tianmu Academy was Master Seongak, and apparently he absolutely hated martial artists causing trouble and harming ordinary people.
Even though Captain Baekung had repeatedly assured me that there was nothing dangerous along the road, he had never once left my side during the journey.
But now that we had reached Luoyang, he finally relaxed.
I sat in the inn, observing the appearances of the martial artists around me and trying to estimate their strength while waiting for our food.
“Excuse me, Young Lady.”
“Hmm?”
But before even fifteen minutes had passed, the waiter returned.
He was empty-handed and trembling as he approached me again.
“What? Are you saying you don’t have the ingredients? That’s fine. I can order something else.”
“No, that’s not it… It’s just that… someone has come looking for you.”
Who could possibly be looking for me in Luoyang?
Thinking that there might have been some kind of misunderstanding, I stood up.
Then I saw him.
A huge man, nearly six feet tall, wearing a tiger-skin cloak, was striding directly toward me.
