A Tale Of A Scribe Who Retires To The Countryside [EN]: Chapter 403

403. A Dangerous Temptation

Son Bin couldn’t hide his surprise. He never imagined Empress Saraswati would be shedding tears. He wondered if she had been particularly close to the Sword Demon God, but the Empress’s gaze was fixed on Son Bin, not where the Sword Demon God had been. The tears on her cheeks sparkled like jewels in the light.

“Ah.”

With a small sound, the Empress swayed. Without thinking, Son Bin reached out to her.

Thud.

Son Bin caught the Empress’s arm as she stumbled. The Empress, in turn, grabbed Son Bin’s arm with her other hand.

“Are you alright?”

“My legs…”

The Empress couldn’t seem to stand properly, as if her legs had given way. Son Bin carefully helped her to a chair.

Rustle.

Leaning back in the chair, the Empress finally released Son Bin’s arm. As Son Bin took a step back, the Empress looked up at him with teary eyes.

“Lunar eclipse, solar eclipse, you said?”

the Empress asked. The cold, ruthless look of a demon god was nowhere to be seen.

“Yes. Lunar Eclipse, Solar Eclipse, Lightning Flash, Single Blade.”

Son Bin replied. The Empress lowered her head, quietly repeating “Lunar Eclipse, Solar Eclipse, Lightning Flash, Single Blade,” then suddenly looked at Son Bin.

“You must really like it.”

“Pardon?”

Son Bin asked, taken aback by the unexpected comment. The Empress smiled softly.

“You look so proud.”

Son Bin realized he was smiling. It was inevitable. Lunar Eclipse was the technique of the person he respected most in the world.

“Ahem.”

Son Bin felt a bit embarrassed and tried to look away, but she asked in a soft voice,

“Did you see the Sword Demon God?”

Son Bin understood what she meant—the Sword Demon God’s memories that had flooded into his mind a moment ago. The Empress was asking about that. Son Bin didn’t answer, but the Empress shook her head slightly.

“No, I asked a foolish question. Of course, you saw him. You are the ‘Raja’ [a term for a great leader or king], after all.”

Son Bin sighed quietly.

“Yes, I saw him.”

The moment Lunar Eclipse ended, Son Bin felt the wind. It was the same as with the Water Demon God, but the scene that unfolded before Son Bin was neither a vast prairie nor a blue land.

A will of iron, higher than a giant fortress wall, the noble pride of a warrior sharper than any blade, and a trust in comrades thicker than steel armor. It was the glorious empire and the honorable devotion of the warriors who protected it.

The monster wearing the rusty, broken clothes of an old convict was not there. Only the strong warrior’s proud oath remained.

So, Son Bin told the Sword Demon God—no, that was all he could do—that his duty was over, so he could return.

“Why did you say that to the Sword Demon God?”

Son Bin looked puzzled at the Empress’s question.

“Pardon?”

“The Sword Demon God has been through a very difficult time for a long time.”

The Empress said with tears still in her eyes.

“But he is a complete stranger and adversary to the ‘Raja.’ He even showed clear hostility and hatred towards the ‘Raja.'”

The Empress asked in a quiet voice,

“Then why did you say such words for him?”

Son Bin smiled bitterly. There was only one answer.

“How could I not?”

It wasn’t the right answer, but it was the most accurate expression of Son Bin’s feelings. How could he not? His own heart was aching so much. Empress Saraswati stared into Son Bin’s eyes without a word, seeing the regret and the helplessness in his eyes.

“I see.”

The Empress murmured quietly. She lowered her head, thought for a moment, then looked up at Son Bin again, smiling gently, her cheeks still stained with tears.

“You are indeed our ‘Raja.'”

Son Bin gave a bitter smile and avoided her gaze. But the Empress’s gaze remained fixed on Son Bin.

“Ahem. Keep your promise.”

The voice, thrown out like a casual remark, belonged to Old Man. Old Man frowned and said to the Empress,

“Bin won, as you said. Now it’s your turn to keep your promise.”

The Empress gave a sad smile at Old Man’s words.

“I understand. But I need to sort things out a bit first.”

The Empress turned her head and looked at the entrance of the detached palace. Old Man frowned. The dozen or so missing maids had reappeared at the entrance of the reception room, bowing their heads and waiting for the Empress’s command.

“Gasp, already…”

Hwang Bang-ju was startled. In fact, Old Man had only noticed them a moment ago. It was virtually impossible to distinguish the maids’ presence in the storm-like flow of internal energy caused by the Sword Demon God and Son Bin.

‘I wondered why no one was coming…’

Old Man thought he knew why no one had come despite the commotion in the detached palace. The maids must have taken some measures.

“They are my people. You don’t have to be wary.”

The Empress, saying words that seemed to further fuel Old Man’s wariness, lightly gestured to the maids. The maids immediately carried out the Empress’s orders. The broken tables and chairs were replaced with new ones, and the debris scattered on the floor was cleaned up. It didn’t take long for the messy reception room to regain its appearance, though the scars left by the shock remained.

Clatter.

A maid brought new teacups and tea. The soft scent of tea filled the reception room.

“Please, sit down.”

Despite the Empress’s words, Old Man remained frowning.

“Now that the ‘Raja’ has won, there’s no need to be wary of me anymore.”

Old Man didn’t believe those words—at least not until she was reduced to ashes and disappeared. But Old Man, twitching his eyebrows, eventually plopped down in the seat he had been in earlier. He couldn’t keep standing, and the tea was innocent. Hwang Bang-ju quietly took a seat next to Old Man, and Sa Su-yeon and Dang Wol-ah also sat at a table a little further away, wary of the Empress. Seo Rin sat between Sa Su-yeon and Dang Wol-ah, but Geom-hee remained standing in her place.

“‘Raja,’ please sit here.”

The Empress said to Son Bin, who was about to sit in front of Old Man as before. The seat the Empress offered was directly across from her.

“It would be better for you to be close to me.”

Son Bin hesitated for a moment but soon walked towards the Empress. And just as Son Bin sat down…

Rustle.

‘Huh?’

Feeling someone approaching behind him, Son Bin turned his head. Geom-hee was standing there.

‘Uh…’

Son Bin hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should tell her to sit down. But Geom-hee was staring at Empress Saraswati with a blank face, not at Son Bin. Son Bin turned back to the Empress, but the Empress didn’t even glance at Geom-hee, only looking at Son Bin.

“Ahem.”

Son Bin cleared his throat and picked up a teacup. The Empress asked Son Bin in a clear voice,

“How does it feel?”

“Feel?”

The Empress nodded. Son Bin realized she was talking about the blue energy. Son Bin quietly raised his hand.

Whoosh.

The blue energy immediately responded to Son Bin’s will and flared up. It still obeyed Son Bin’s will absolutely, but it was clearly very different from before. It had become more intense, and its presence itself had become clearer. To put it in perspective, it felt like a newborn cub had become a young beast.

“This blue energy is…”

Son Bin opened his mouth and inadvertently looked at the Empress, then flinched. Even if Son Bin didn’t know much about women, he wasn’t so clueless that he didn’t know what her sparkling eyes meant as she looked at him. Son Bin quickly turned his head away.

“Ahem, what is it exactly?”

“Well, what could it be?”

The Empress said with a slightly playful smile. At that one glance, Hwang Bang-ju immediately had to calculate the damages to the broken detached palace items in his head.

“I don’t know what to call it, but for now, I’m calling it ‘Fragment of God.'”

“Fragment of God?”

Old Man frowned and asked abruptly.

“If you were to use the closest word in your language, it would probably be ‘Divinity.’ But it’s still vastly different from its essence.”

“Divinity?”

Hwang Bang-ju couldn’t resist his curiosity and opened his mouth. He didn’t dare ask the Empress directly and spoke to Old Man.

“Divinity in a demon, does that make sense? If it’s divinity, it should be, well, somewhere noble and very beautiful…”

Hwang Bang-ju, realizing that the description suited Empress Saraswati, shut his mouth.

“In the Heavenly Axis Church, demons are just one of the ranks of gods. It’s not that strange for us to have divinity.”

Hwang Bang-ju blankly nodded at the Empress’s words. He had already forgotten what he had asked. He was simply intoxicated by the Empress’s sweet voice. Thwack.

“Cough.”

Old Man hit Hwang Bang-ju on the back and said to the Empress,

“Alright, let’s say you have a ‘fragment’ or whatever.”

Old Man, still frowning, asked,

“How did you guys get it? Where did it come from? Don’t tell me, through the Gate of the Abyss?”

The Empress smiled brightly.

“This ‘Fragment of God’ was given to us during the ‘Ancient Descent.'”

Old Man’s expression changed instantly.

“What nonsense…”

The ‘Ancient Descent’ that the Empress was talking about was clearly referring to the descent of the Heavenly Demon claimed by the Demonic Sect. No one else recognized it, and even if it were true, it was something that happened in the distant mythical era.

“Don’t tell me you’re saying you’ve existed since time immemorial?”

“Not exactly.”

The Empress said in a soft voice.

“The current me has only lived for the amount of time you see. But before that, I lived a different life in a different form—so many lives that it’s hard to fathom.”

That was different from saying ‘reincarnation’ because the reincarnation that people generally talk about wouldn’t remember those countless lives.

“We don’t even know what this ‘Fragment of God’ is.”

The Empress looked at Son Bin and opened her mouth quietly.

“It was just an existence that allowed us transcendent power and a slightly longer lifespan than others, and occasionally made us feel emotions I didn’t even know. But after the Gate of the Abyss opened, the ‘Fragment of God’ awakened, and we learned who we originally were before this world.”

The Empress smiled faintly as she spoke.

“Isn’t it funny? I don’t even know which ‘I’ is the real one anymore. No, maybe there was no ‘I’ from the beginning.”

The Empress quietly caressed the teacup and said with a lonely expression.

“Maybe only faded emotions remain, like lingering attachments…”

Her slender fingers brushed against the teacup. Sa Su-yeon somehow felt like she could understand the Empress’s feelings. Sa Su-yeon had felt that way when she was losing herself in the Northern Sea.

“So?”

The person who broke the sinking atmosphere with a blunt voice was Old Man.

“Who in the world doesn’t have their own worries? The weight of life is hard for everyone. So stop beating around the bush and tell me where the Gate of the Abyss is.”

Old Man, holding the teacup, frowned and said,

“The tea’s getting cold.”

“The Gate of the Abyss…”

Despite Old Man’s blunt words, the Empress smiled.

“That’s right. But rather than calling it the Gate of the Abyss…”

Empress Saraswati turned to Son Bin. The pitiful look she had shown until now was gone, and her red lips were adorned with an extremely seductive smile.

“Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say you’re looking for ‘Wu Xie’ [meaning ‘No Flaws’ or ‘Perfect’], Sa Hyeok?”

In that instant, something heavy fell into Son Bin’s chest.

“You knew?”

Son Bin asked, glaring at the Empress.

“Didn’t I say that I wouldn’t tell you everything?”

The Empress said, still wearing a seductive smile.

“That’s right. Like those words, there are many things I haven’t said, ‘Raja.'”

Son Bin’s face hardened. The reason he had never mentioned ‘Wu Xie’ Sa Hyeok was because he was worried about giving the demon gods information about him. But Empress Saraswati already knew—even that Son Bin was looking for him.

“Where is he?”

The Empress smiled brightly at Son Bin’s stiff expression, as if she was pleased with Son Bin’s reaction.

“You have the ‘Fragments of God’ that the Water Demon God and the Sword Demon God had, and you still don’t know?”

Son Bin bit his lip. Certainly, after the blue flame-like energy poured in from the Sword Demon God, Son Bin could feel the location of the Gate of the Abyss opened by the Heavenly Demon more strongly than before. But it was still in a faint fog. At this rate, he couldn’t avoid getting lost.

“What should I do? The truth is, I don’t know more than the ‘Raja’ knows.”

The Empress said as if she was very sorry. Son Bin gritted his teeth.

“Didn’t you say you’d let me know if I won?”

“Yes, but I never said I would *tell* you.”

“What does that…”

Son Bin stopped speaking, suddenly realizing something.

“Yes, that’s right.”

The Empress nodded and raised one hand, placing it gently on her chest, where her heart was beating.

“If you take even the ‘Fragment of God’ that I have, you will know—more clearly and more distinctly than now.”

Son Bin’s face hardened. The Empress’s words were no different from telling him to kill her.

“I don’t even know what this ‘Fragment of God’ is, but it has allowed us transcendent abilities. Perhaps the closer the ‘Raja’ gets to the Gate of the Abyss, the stronger that power will become.”

As if enjoying the repercussions her words were causing in Son Bin, the Empress looked straight into Son Bin’s eyes and smiled.

“Now, can I say that I have kept my promise to the ‘Raja’?”

No one could deny her words.

The meaning of ‘Raja,’ the ‘Fragment of God,’ and the destruction of the empire, as well as the possibility of her own death—she had told Son Bin everything.

“What are you going to do now?”

The Empress smiled at Son Bin, slightly tilting her chin with one hand. It was an extremely seductive and alluring smile.

“Are you going to kill me to take my ‘Fragment’?”

Whoosh.

No one saw it, but Son Bin clearly saw it—the scene of blue energy rising like flames from the Empress’s entire body.

“Are you thinking of tearing my chest open with that beautiful sword and taking everything from me?”

The woman, whispering in a magically beautiful voice, was no longer the Empress of the empire. It was another demon god with the ‘Fragment of God.’

(Author’s words)

Are you going to hit me?

*I will continue to run with 3 updates a week in August as well.