IBGVMW~02

Chapter 2

“Ahem ahem, how thoughtful of you to worry about your old grandpa… But my child, there’s no need for such trouble. Your grandpa is perfectly satisfied just seeing your face every morning.”

If one listened only to Baek Dan-hyeok’s words, one might imagine Woo-hee paid a dutiful morning visit each day. In truth, the mornings between them were a brutal training routine between grandparent and grandchild.

“Child, aren’t you busy fighting with Yeong-ho in the practice yard right now? Did you make a special detour to come straighten my crooked back? Your grandpa is moved to tears.”

Interpreting that correctly would go something like this: Why are you loafing here instead of running laps because your fourth senior beat you in the rain?

“No, no, Grandpa. I don’t see a single tear.”

Woo-hee, clearly not feeling any guilt about shirking her duties, replied with brazen confidence.

“But I just straightened your back, didn’t I? A tear or two is nothing. Come on—help me out a bit?”

She even raised a fist as if to launch a blazing show of filial piety. If Baek Dan-hyeok nodded, his eyes would surely redden right away—though from blood rather than tears. Not that it mattered much.

“Nonsense! Now that I’ve seen your face, is that enough? Yeong-ho must be waiting at the practice grounds like an ox with his neck strained—shouldn’t you be off?”

Utter nonsense. Yeong-ho and Woo-hee were not merely seniors and juniors; they were locked in a feud that made enemies seem tame.

“Grandpa, are you trying to kick me out?”

As expected, the troublemaker scowled like a condemned criminal.

“Am I not precious to you? Am I that granddaughter who’d hurt if you put me in your eye? Is that why you’re doing this?”

Baek Dan-hyeok opened his mouth to say that putting someone in one’s eye will make it hurt and one will die—then swallowed and fell silent.

Because faint, pale-blue qi ghosted around Woo-hee’s clenched fist. It was proof that the Ice Palace’s inner cultivation method, the Bingbaek Heart Formula, had flared to a dangerous degree. A trailer for a punch that could shatter rock.

As a grandfather he was the sort to put up with unfilial antics; as master he’d tolerated an unruly disciple. Even for a demonic sect, this was getting out of hand.

“Grandpa, isn’t it boring if you act like this?”

Baek Dan-hyeok snapped out of his regret about neglecting moral cultivation. This was no time to be sentimental.

“Oh my, there is no one in the Central Plains as lovely to this grandpa as my little rascal! Just looking at you makes my eyes hurt—I might go blind!”

It was like staring at the sun gave one a headache; looking straight at his granddaughter gave him a similar pain. Not an outright lie.

“Hehe, I knew it! Grandpa loves me more than anyone, so how could you ever kick me out?”

Woo-hee beamed a most adorable smile—utterly at odds with her earlier threat to resort to fisticuffs if expelled.

“Now sit down. I came because I have something important to tell you.”

The elder, the former Ice Palace patriarch, entered his chambers with a flutter of anxiety as though someone had dragged the sect’s Grand Matriarch in chains.

“Hah… what mischief has my little darling gotten into this time that she’s come to drain her grandpa’s life away?”

He’d never seen the words important talk followed by anything good.

“What? Are you suddenly trying to make me feel guilty? Saying it like that makes it sound like I’m always getting into trouble!”

Woo-hee protested with a doll-like pout. A stranger might mistake her for an affectionate granddaughter. Baek Dan-hyeok was not so easily fooled.

“So if you didn’t run away after some deed, what breeze blew you here?”

Woo-hee stomped dramatically and launched into a full-blown tirade.

“I can’t live like this because I’m so wronged!”

Baek Dan-hyeok tilted his head and stared up at the ceiling, as if to curse the indifferent heavens for his granddaughter’s plight. He’d briefly forgotten he’d been dragged indoors by a ferocious child.

“Child, what do you possibly have to feel wronged about?”

Truth be told, Woo-hee had been raised wild and headstrong by the Ice Palace’s lavish indulgence—Baek Dan-hyeok himself most of all. He might be the main culprit for her behavior.

“If someone were out there making someone’s life miserable on purpose, then I’d understand… but it’s not even that.”

The little golden-child born of his inner energy would never be someone who tolerated being wronged meekly.

“Grandpa, do you know how arrogant the Central Plains people have become?”

Out of nowhere, Woo-hee veered away from grievance into an odd, unrelated point.

“Huh? The Central Plains? Arrogant? What are you babbling about—weren’t you saying you were wronged?”

“They treat us like a deranged cult that the Ice Palace raised with love! It’s like they all agreed to smear us with weird accusations. I’m so livid I could die!”

Baek Dan-hyeok’s eyes widened involuntarily. This was a topic he hadn’t expected.

“Child, what fool’s tale did you pick up?”

If the Central Plains had any reason to brand the Ice Palace like a demonic cult, Baek Dan-hyeok could think of a few reasons—he’d been the one who, in his day, made their name notorious across the Central Plains. He had once paraded about as the Safa’s Number One Sword, raising all sorts of hell.

But how on earth did his dark past reach Woo-hee’s ears? He’d taken care to seal such things.

“Grandpa, who told you I heard anything from anyone? I just read it in books.”

Baek Dan-hyeok flinched like a guilty man caught by his own foot. He’d misread the source.

“Oh? Books? You mean those cheap popular novels that are all the rage in the Central Plains—the ones about sects fighting each other?”

He knew them. With cheap printing techniques, crude stories written for a few coins had flooded the markets—tales spun by profiteers.

“They say we take people from the Central Plains to the North Sea, do unspeakable demonic-cult things to them—why would they say that? Because we didn’t do it, that’s why! They treat us like some bored tiger showing off a catch, then when they get bored they just wipe the traces away.”

“Bah, what nonsense! If you kidnapped people you’d feed them well and break them in to be servants—why would the North Sea be like the Central Plains where people are picked up on the street? Besides, they say the first thing we do is shave off their hair so their spirit breaks and they obey.”

Baek Dan-hyeok winced and rubbed his head, a little prick of conscience. He was bald—so the remark stung—and a little chastened.

“Also—listen to this! They say we lock them in a place and starve them until only one survives. That last one, if you give him our special technique, becomes an ice ghoul or something monstrous!”

Not concocting some insect-laden gujaric king but performing some human experiment? Even the Central Plains’ darker superstitions rarely went that far. Such things belonged to demonic cults, not normal martial sects—unless a fool ignorant of martial affairs wrote the nonsense.

“They even wrote the method in detail. The survivor would be wounded and weak, so they say to feed him a miraculous pill to heal inner injury and boost inner power—then cram him full of yang-essence pellets to create a temporary extremity of yang. After that, absorb the Eternal Ice Essence as a finish. Most die—but if one survives, he’s reborn as an invincible, toxin-proof monster that conquers the Central Plains!”

Baek Dan-hyeok froze at that. Ten or so years ago, he had indeed dragged a pile of physicians back from the Central Plains, snatching up tonics and formulas in desperation to save a granddaughter condemned from birth. He’d hunted miracle pills with reckless zeal, targeting yang-rich elixirs on the theory that they’d harmonize her ruined meridians.

Those physicians, the tonics, the inner elixirs—all had failed. It was the Transference of Martial Skill that had saved her.

The problem was that she’d become too strong too fast: reaching a state where ordinary poisons could not touch her, a body like tempered steel—Geumgang Bulgwi, unbreakable by iron. Not immortality, but close enough for a fifteen-year-old to be terrifying.

…Wait a moment. No—surely not?