The Baengri Clan's Unwanted Granddaughter

Chapter 2

* * *

I found myself leaning back on the bed. I heard someone open the door, but didn’t bother looking up to see who it was. I couldn’t muster the energy to care.

“Young miss!” The sound was loud and startling, finally forcing me to turn my head to see my handmaid, Danggeum, come into the room. “Wake up, young miss! I’ve brought you some water, but you don’t need my help washing up, do you?”

I shook my head slowly at the brass basin she presented to me. Danggeum clicked her tongue in frustration and left the room. As the sound of her footsteps grew farther away, I realized I could hear voices outside my window.

“What was all that about?” someone asked.

“I called her and called her, and she still couldn’t hear me!” I recognized the sound of my maid’s voice. “All she does is just lie in bed all day. I think coming back from the dead has turned her into an idiot!”

“I’m sure she’s just shocked. They say she’s been qi-ruined.”

“I knew she was nowhere near ready for that thing. I say she got what she deserved,” Danggeum replied.

It was then I finally realized that I had returned to the past. I’ve... gone back in time. It all came back to me. I had fallen into a state of qi deviation. My body hadn’t been able to regulate my inner qi flow, and my system had been flooded with excess qi.

Most people died when they underwent qi deviation, and even those who managed to survive were left as shells of their former selves. I had managed to survive, but my qi center—the core where one’s inner qi is collected—had been completely shattered. I was ruined. I would never be able to practice martial arts again. I tried to recall when this had occurred in my previous life and remembered that I’d been six years old when I joined the Baengri clan, about half a year before I shattered my qi center. So I must be six years old again.

I slowly lifted myself off the bed and walked toward the table that held the brass basin. A small child’s face was reflected in the still surface of the water. Dark circles, dry lips, and sunken cheeks—I looked terribly sick.

The child in the water blinked her eyes, tilted her head, and moved her mouth around, testing her face. Good, my head is still in working order. I couldn’t help but recall the sensation of my head falling from my body and the crooked smile that filled my tilting field of vision. It was too real to be considered a mere hallucination.

My father and I were a part of the noble Baengri family, honored among the righteous clans. The head of our family was Baengri Paehyuk, who over the course of his life had had three wives and five children, only three of whom survived. My father Baengri Euigang was the fourth and youngest son, born to my grandfather’s third wife. A once-in-a-century prodigy with the blade, my father had grown up to be a handsome and gentle man with a just heart and the determination to wipe out evil. He was perfect both inside and out.

It was understandable that my grandfather had had great expectations for my father. But that all changed the day he brought home a young girl, claiming that she was his daughter. That was me, Baengri Yeon.

It did not go well. A daughter out of wedlock! The mother’s identity unknown! It was an outrage. Grandfather had been furious and had refused to accept me, but my father had refused to back down. That was how I was adopted into the Baengri family.

When I was young, I didn’t know any of this. My father was a genius with the sword, but not so much with childrearing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have forsaken his six-year-old daughter to grow up in this house filled with people who couldn’t care less for her.

That child, surrounded by those who disapproved of her, wanted more than anything to be accepted. Enough, even, to covet a spiritual medicine she wasn’t ready for.

The origin story of a foolish, good-for-nothing villain.

Splash, splash.

I washed my face and dried off with a towel. It’s okay. It’s not too late. After my father’s death in the novel, the fragile balance of the martial arts world would begin to crumble, and its stability all hinged on Father’s disciple, Namgoong Ryuchung. But I knew that at this point in the story he was a child, just like me. Father wasn’t even his mentor, not yet. I knew because I had played a major role in Namgoong Ryuchung becoming my father’s pupil.

I looked out the window toward Father’s chambers. It would be another ten years before Namgoong Ryuchung would become the hero, leading the charge onto the battlefield in the great war between the righteous and demonic sects. That meant that there were still ten years left until my father passed away, essentially marking the beginning of the war.

I need to keep Father alive. The circumstances around his death had been suspicious, and it was up to me to discover what they were.

It had never even occurred to me before to uncover the truth. How could I accomplish what not even the hero was able to do? It wasn’t as though my father’s death hadn’t left me broken up or with unanswered questions, but I also knew that it was best to leave it to Namgoong Ryuchung to uncover the mystery.

And, most importantly, I wanted to stay alive.

* * *

Father’s chambers were right across the courtyard from mine. My heart pounded with each step as I walked toward it. My feet wanted to turn back and let me hide away in bed again, but before I knew it, I was standing in front of his room. You can do this. I pumped my fists and glared down the doorknob. If someone had passed by at that moment, they would’ve thought I’d lost my mind.

There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You need to do whatever you can to keep Father alive! Especially since my survival depended on his. After all, if even the greatest of cultivators could die, then what chance was there for me in this world?

You’ve got this, Baengri Yeon. It won’t kill you. I really didn’t have any other option, anyway. You can do this. You can do this! Before I could talk myself out of it, I opened the door carefully. The smell of medicinal herbs stung my nose.

“You’re up.” Father rose slowly to his feet from behind an embroidered folding screen.

I stepped into the room and, with all the innocent cuteness I could summon up, opened my mouth: “Fathe— Arrgggh!” My foot had slipped, and my face was now heading straight for the floor.

I braced myself, but instead of feeling the hard smack of the floor against my forehead, I felt a strong breeze blow through the room. Opening my eyes, I found my nose less than a hair’s breadth from the floor. My heart pounded furiously.

“Careful now,” Father said, holding onto the back of my collar like a cat with a kitten.

Impossible. He hadn’t been anywhere near me. How had he closed the distance between us so quickly? Rubbing my nose, I glanced over the floor. How embarrassing! What just happened? Did I trip over— Wait, is that a book?

The tiny writing on the bamboo slips tied together with twine seemed to be about herbs. But that wasn’t the only thing on the floor. The room was a complete mess, filled with stacks of more books and medicinal herbs.

I lifted my head to see Father’s face. The skin under his eyes was sunken and dark. He must have stayed up all night again. I hadn’t seen the lights go out in his room once in the past few days, and he’d lost almost as much weight as I had while I was ill.

I stretched out my arms to him, asking for a hug. He hesitated for a moment before he frowned and said, “I told you not to run in the house!”

I giggled. My father continued to look at me sternly. Pretending not to notice, I continued to stretch my arms out toward him. “You’re not going to hug me?” I asked.

Hesitation flashed across his face as he struggled internally. Obviously, he gave in eventually. I was sick, after all. Father picked me up, and I put my arms around his neck. I could feel his body tense up. He cleared his throat awkwardly and looked around the empty room.

I was determined to become closer with Father. This was my first goal, and I knew that physical touch was the easiest way to shorten the distance between two people. The first time my father had held me, it had been almost unbearably uncomfortable. From his awkward stance and rigid posture, it was clear that he had never held a child before. In all my memories of my past lives, I couldn’t recall ever being hugged by anyone I called a father. But now...

Father moved across the room, careful not to let me fall from his embrace. “Did you sleep well last night?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I am.”

“If you’re in pain or have a fever, you must tell me immediately.”

“I will.”

“I’ll call for some medicine for you.”

“Ew...”

The groan was reflexive. The medicine Father gave me always tasted awful. In the past, I’d always thrown a fit until he forced me to take it. As expected from someone who had wielded nothing but a sword his entire life, Father’s methods weren’t exactly child-friendly. He would simply say “Drink it,” and watch over me like a hawk until I did as I was told. I would sometimes throw up, but he would just bring a new batch, and my resentment toward my father would grow.

Things were different this time around. I drank it obediently, even though he’d given me way too much as usual. But in my weakened state, my body couldn’t handle the medicine, and I ended up throwing it up again. To my surprise, Father just started to feed the medicine to me one spoonful at a time instead of berating me.

“How are you becoming more childish with each passing day?”

A thin smile formed over his normally stoic face, and he looked at me with such loving eyes. Suddenly embarrassed from his unusual tenderness, I hid my face in his chest.