However, Esika hardened her expression frightfully and pushed Resban away.

Knowing persuasion wouldn’t work, Resban finally relaxed his grip.

Esika slowly approached the open door.

This was once Callian’s office.

And it was where the previous dukes had conducted their official duties for generations, the center of the Klaus ducal family.

Esika stopped in front of the door with a pale face.

The corpse of a woman hanging there could be seen.

It was a face Esika knew very well.

It was the child who had always followed her. Sella.

Throughout her revenge against Riona and Callian, she had been Esika’s limbs and hands, doing her best for Esika several times over to make up for past mistakes.

“……”

Esika’s tightly clenched fist began to tremble.

Her enemy was not simply trying to kill her alone.

Pure and intense malice seeks to destroy everything around her.

To cause her pain and suffering, to isolate her, that enemy regards human lives as nothing more than flies.

“Sella……”

Resban embraced Esika.

Her brows were furrowed and blue flames raged in her eyes.

A very old anger surged forth.

And at the same time, the final door of memory that had not yet been recreated despite the opening of memories,

was opened.

**

Sunlight rarely enters the Cold Palace.

Thus, only hardy flowers that can grow without sunlight flourish here.

In the Cold Palace garden where liriope bloomed densely like wildflowers, Youngreung was crouched down watching a butterfly.

How did that child come all the way here, leaving behind flowers rich with nectar?

“……”

This morning, trumpets announcing the birth of a prince were heard from the east.

Was it the 5th prince or the 6th prince… the memory is hazy.

When they brought her here, he who was a prince had no wife or children.

As his only woman, Youngreung stained her hands with countless blood for him.

However, when he became emperor, he did not enthrone Youngreung as empress.

Different women entered the palace each month.

Some were daughters of meritorious subjects supporting the country, some were barbarian daughters from lands under the empire’s influence.

The emperor took those women in turn and had sons from them.

And among them, he made the daughter of the Minister of Military Affairs who bore him two sons the empress.

“You are my only first wife, yet why do even you not understand my heart?”

Within the palace, Chun Youngreung was called Noble Consort Chun.

All her children died in the womb before being born. Some said it was due to injuries she sustained before entering the palace, others rumors said she took the wrong medicine.

Whatever the rumors, she was not the emperor’s official wife.

However, her demeanor and temperament were so vicious and cold-hearted that even the empress and empress dowager feared her.

She was merciless to her enemies. The palace struggles were fierce, but even the combined efforts of all the women could not bring down Noble Consort Chun.

The time she laid everything down was when news arrived from her hometown in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains.

That the Cheonma Divine Sect had been annihilated by a sudden attack from the Sura Blood Sect.

From retired elders to newborn babies, all lives within the Cheonma Divine Sect’s walls had their throats slit and their corpses became wolf food.

Upon hearing the news, Youngreung lost her fighting spirit, and it was only natural for a woman who did not defend herself in the flower battlefield to be cast out to the Cold Palace.

She did not even have children to protect her.

“……”

At night, visitors often came to see her residing in the Cold Palace.

The Ghost Killing Squad members who survived the blood calamity told Youngreung stories she did not know.

The reason the Sura Blood Sect, which was not even one-tenth the strength of the Cheonma Divine Sect, was able to attack the Cheonma Divine Sect was because of the walking corpses.

For a long time, they had received enormous sums of money and corpses from someone. And they also received weapons and armor.

It was an amount of resources that ordinary sects could not possess.

Though the walking corpses could not use protective qi, they wore sturdy armor.

When someone brought the skin of a walking corpse and their blood-stained armor, Youngreung did not speak for days.

She did not eat or sleep.

Prisoners awaiting execution in jail have the character for “punishment” branded on their foreheads.

Also, the imperial army soldiers wear sturdy armor made of black iron.

The walking corpses of the Blood Sect had brands on their foreheads and wore armor made of black iron.

Furthermore, what was found on the body of a kidnapped Blood Sect elite was white jade stamped with the empress dowager’s seal.

“It seems you still have not repented, Youngreung.”

The emperor, who visited the Cold Palace in disguise after three months, admonished her with a stern expression.

Youngreung did not meet the emperor’s eyes.

The reason she had not left the palace was solely because of one man.

The man she had devoted her life to loving and wished to be loved by even half as much in return.

But now Youngreung could not leave the palace for a different reason.

“Your Majesty’s seal was stamped on the order to suppress the rebels of the Prince of Jiaozhi’s household.”

She had the blood-stained imperial edict brought by the Ghost Killing Squad member.

The Prince of Jiaozhi is no different from a dog that obeys the empress dowager’s words.

For years, he had been preparing resources to support the Blood Sect according to the empress dowager’s wishes.

And it was ultimately the emperor’s will that stamped the seal of approval on that plan the empress dowager had worked on.

“Youngreung.”

The emperor called her name. His voice contained both sorrow and resentment.

“Look at me, Youngreung.”

Youngreung knew what the emperor would say next.

The weight of the burden he carries as the parent of all people, and thus Youngreung always had to endure.

The poison mixed in by the empress dowager fearing the daughter of a lowly martial artist would covet the empress’s position did not harm Youngreung’s body, but the babies in her womb could never withstand it.

Nevertheless, Youngreung let the empress dowager live.

She believed that too was out of love for the emperor.

The emperor explained the reason he had to rule the Cheonma Divine Sect, which was not a heavenly son but worshipped strength and disturbed the people’s hearts, using the example of the rebellious northern sea king.

He also said that until making such a decision, he was very heartbroken thinking of Youngreung who would lose her entire family.

Youngreung… was listening to the emperor’s words as usual, but did not nod.

The emperor left, and despite the unusual order for Noble Consort Chun to be released from confinement in the Cold Palace and return, Youngreung did not leave the Cold Palace.

“……”

A faint smile appeared on Youngreung’s lips as she gazed at the white butterfly and liriope.

It was because her long thoughts had been sorted out.

She soon sat cross-legged in the darkest and dampest place in the Cold Palace garden, for the first time in a very long while.

The eyes of the maid watching her trembled, and soon she lowered her gaze.

In the Six Demon Tower of the demonic sect, there are countless secret manuals that the Cheonma Divine Sect has kept, with more evil demonic techniques existing on the lower floors as you go down.

Only the successive sect leaders of Cheonma and the successors who would become sect leaders know that an underground level exists in that Six Demon Tower.

According to the sect’s survival of the fittest doctrine, Youngreung was not her father’s successor, but she had once learned the secret of the Six Demon Tower from Dokyoung, who was the successor.

The Ghost Killing Squad members who heard Youngreung’s order retrieved the secret manual she requested from the underground level of the ruined Six Demon Tower and delivered it to her.

An absolutely forbidden demonic technique that burns the user’s body to turn a radius of ten li into a scorching hell.

It was a forbidden secret manual created by someone who was once the vice leader of the demonic sect and founded the Blood Sect.

It was a demonic technique that could only be used by someone who had reached at least the Fire Realm or Extreme Demon realm, and it was fair to say it was a technique that could not be used because it required the consent of all twelve elders under the sect’s strict laws.

The blazing calamity flames of the scorching hell summoned by the Ten-Li Demonic Fire do not extinguish for a hundred years, and all those trapped in the scorching hell have their entire bodies burned by karmic flames.

The karmic hell fire vines called Pundarika engulf the ten li area, entangling and crushing into ashes all who try to hide or escape.

It was closer to a strange sorcery than a demonic technique, but its level of danger written in the secret manual was more powerful and destructive than any other demonic technique.

It was something that should never have come out into the world, and if the Cheonma Divine Sect had not been completely ruined, it could not have emerged into the world.

The page and maid who had followed her from the demonic sect and shared her life in the imperial palace bowed to Youngreung.

Youngreung slowly drew up demonic energy while sitting cross-legged.

Clouds began to cover the clear sky, and people all buttoned up their collars at the eerie energy that began to rise from somewhere.

The emperor, who was boating on the hexagonal pavilion pond while embracing a young newly-acquired consort, suddenly looked up at the sky.

The empress dowager, who was wielding her authority over the concubines at a banquet in Subangje, also furrowed her brows at the gloomy energy.

Thud—

For a moment, silence fell over the entire imperial palace.

Then with an ear-splitting roar, the ground split open and karmic lava gushed out violently from the cracks.

Beautiful halls and the trees surrounding them were engulfed in flames in an instant.

The emperor’s boat capsized, and the consort who fell into the water screamed for help.

The emperor, who climbed alone to the edge of the pond holding onto rocks, looked around in shock at the hellish scene.

Everything around was engulfed in dark red flames.

The stone tablets he had erected for his children were torn from bottom to top as if paper was being ripped.

He began to flee, breathing rough and rapid breaths.

The voice of the consort screaming for help was swallowed by the pond that had turned into burning muddy water.

The ground continued to split horribly as it shook.

He wanted to believe this was all just an ominous nightmare, but when he encountered a woman running out of Subangje screaming while on fire, he froze in place.

“Mother…!”

Court ladies and eunuchs sprayed water, but the flames on her body only grew fiercer.

He could hear her voice shrieking ‘Your Majesty, Your Majesty, save me,’ but he could not reach out his hand to his mother.

Watching his mother burn horribly with terrified eyes, he stumbled backwards and fell.

Along with the sizzling sound of flesh burning from the hand he put on the ground, he felt pain as if he had touched a hot pot.

When he turned his body to flee again in pain and terror, flame vines that had stretched out from somewhere caught his ankle.

No one could cut the vines because everyone and everything’s bodies had begun to burn.

It slowly climbed up the emperor’s body like a red-hot branding iron, starting to burn him.

This place where horrible screams erupted was a complete scene from the scorching hell.

“……”

Youngreung felt the pain of her entire body burning, but did not utter a single sound.

Her heart was at peace, and it felt as if she could now enter into rest.

Even if that rest was in eternal hell, it would be warmer than her life here.

“Youngreung.”

“My Youngreung.”

Amidst her fading consciousness, she hears a man’s voice.

Before Youngreung’s eyes, which opened like a burning lotus, was a man crying out in anguish.

Though bandages were wrapped diagonally across his face as if he had lost one eye, his face was clear.

A precious person, the successor of the annihilated Cheonma Divine Sect, family… a man who was more than that.

Why did you enter this hell? She wanted to speak, but only her sorrowfully trembling gaze reached him.

“Youngreung, I cannot let you go like this.”

He leaned Youngreung’s burning shoulder against himself.

The hellfire spread to his body, but he paid no heed.

“Until now, I have cherished only you. Thus I wished only for your happiness, but if all that remains for you is pain……”

Dokyoung’s voice seeped into her ear.

“Let us go to hell together. I will bear the karma of the Ten-Li Demonic Fire in your stead.”

It burns.

Everything burns.

“If I meet you in the next life, I will not hesitate then and will take your hand.”

All that she loved, all that she hated, burns brilliantly.

The white butterfly with fire on its wings was slowly consumed by the flames.