Will the Northern Sea Ice Palace Lord really leave his daughter alone?

Jin Cheon-hee couldn’t know, not for sure. Still, one thing was obvious: if the Lord had truly gone off the rails, then common sense was the first thing to abandon.

So Jin Cheon-hee moved carefully.

Back at the palace, he gathered everyone and went over his conversation with the Saintess. For secrecy, it was only natural to speak through telepathy, their words sliding soundlessly between them while they weighed what they’d learned and what it meant.

They also turned over the problem of how to investigate the Blue Light Crystal mine.

[It won’t be easy to suit up and slip out once everyone’s asleep.]

[Yeah. Too many eyes in this palace.]

Changing into night-ops gear inside the Northern Sea Ice Palace, sneaking out, and returning without anyone noticing. It was the kind of plan that sounded reasonable right up until you pictured the place’s vigilance in motion.

If it were the Shadow Stealing Ghost, maybe it could be done. But even then, Jin Cheon-hee wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that he’d vanished from this room.

[Then we don’t go back in. We stay outside the palace altogether.]

[What if we use the smoke bomb business as an excuse to head out?]

[That works.]

Smoke bombs. Insecticide sales. Various medicines.

None of it was for profit, not really. It was epidemic prevention dressed as commerce, and the Northern Sea Ice Palace had been turning a blind eye to it for that reason. If he claimed he was heading out on “business,” they would likely keep pretending not to notice.

[Good. Then we do it now.]

Prince Han-bing rose from his seat and called someone in.

***

Early the next morning, while the cold still sat heavy and unmoving over the palace like a lid, their party left the Northern Sea Ice Palace and secured rooms at an inn. The excuse they’d planted the night before held perfectly, neat as a knot.

Once they were settled, they slipped into their familiar routine.

They sold smoke bombs and insecticide. They treated the locals. Jin Cheon-hee boiled water with Life-Nourishing Energy, and beside him Prince Han-bing put on a show of strength and fire, the kind that made people gasp even when they’d seen tricks before.

Gongsun Yeong didn’t let herself be outdone. She tossed coins with a flick of her fingers and split a wooden block balanced on someone’s head, clean and precise, as if she’d done it a hundred times. Watching her, it was hard to believe it had only been once or twice.

When night finally fell and the inn quieted, the three of them gathered again.

“Ugh, night-ops gear is freezing.” Gongsun Yeong blinked hard, swallowing the sting in her eyes. “At least the Saintess sent thick ones.”

In a region like this, even a mask had to be warm. Circulating internal energy only helped for a shichen (2–4 hours), and later, when flesh and blood started flying, there wouldn’t be room to waste concentration on fighting the cold.

That was why Jin Cheon-hee had asked the Saintess for heavy stealth suits. She’d agreed without argument and sent them in secret.

Prince Han-bing looked at him. “I’m moving because I know Noona well, but you’re trusting her pretty easily. Are you sure about this?”

Jin Cheon-hee nodded. “Yeah… I ran through the possibilities. Nothing in what she said contradicts itself. And more than that…”

“More than that?”

He couldn’t exactly say because I’ve lived this once already, so he swallowed the real answer and offered the only thing that wouldn’t expose him.

“It’s a hunch.”

Prince Han-bing clicked his tongue. “That’s it? You’re putting faith in a hunch?”

Jin Cheon-hee smiled despite himself. “I’m not exactly great at judging people, but… I don’t know. People like her feel familiar.”

Gongsun Yeong lifted her brows. “Oh? Look at you. Your eye for people’s finally getting better?”

“Something like that.”

A second life did that to a person. It didn’t make him wise, not automatically, but it did change the angle he saw things from, as if the world’s edges had sharpened.

He exhaled, the breath barely visible in the cold. “It’ll work out. It has to. I just… I hope the Northern Sea Ice Palace Lord hasn’t gone far enough to harm his own daughter. If we don’t want to find out the hard way, we need to settle this quietly and fast.”

Prince Han-bing frowned. “You sound like you’re not convinced.”

“…”

Jin Cheon-hee didn’t answer.

In the original work, kin-slaying was common for the Supreme Heavenly Demon. The Demonic Cult, the Blood Immortal Cult, it didn’t matter. If either got involved, people went mad.

And the scariest part was how rational they believed themselves to be while doing it.

This place fell under the Blood Immortal Cult’s shadow. The Demonic Cult had come hunting them, sure, but did that really mean they weren’t both involved in the end? Even the Unorthodox factions “forming an alliance” felt like puppets on the Demonic Cult’s strings.

Maybe it would’ve been easier if the White Qilin Medical Pavilion belonged cleanly to one side.

But then he wouldn’t be able to treat patients from the other. As a physician, that was unthinkable. So he clung to neutrality the way a drowning man clung to driftwood, not because it was safe, but because it was the only thing that kept him from watching people die for reasons that had nothing to do with illness.

“Let’s move,” he said at last.

The three of them pulled on their stealth suits and headed out immediately.

“Oh, and Hwanggu and Noe-jin should use the Muscle Contraction Art and wait far away.”

Bark? Squeak?

If those two stuck close, what was the point of stealth suits? He could recognize them from a hundred meters away.

***

“Come to think of it,” Gongsun Yeong said as they traveled, “what’s the Saintess’s name?”

Prince Han-bing’s expression didn’t change. “She doesn’t have one. We just call her ‘Saintess.’”

“Why? That’s weird.”

“Anyone designated as a Saintess in the Cult has to lay down their name until they’re released from the duty.”

Gongsun Yeong squinted. “And from what I’ve heard… isn’t that position for life?”

“It is,” Prince Han-bing said. “So she lives without a name until she dies.”

Isn’t that… unbearably cruel?

Even if a name seemed small, it still carried origins: which parents, which surname, which clan, which generation. Even naming patterns could mark where someone came from.

A life where no one ever called you by your name.

Even if she dedicated everything to the Cult, weren’t they still denying her roots and her life? In this sword-wielding Confucian world, where names carried weight and lineage was treated like fate, it felt especially wrong.

Or maybe—

Jin Cheon-hee’s mouth twisted in dry amusement. Even if you’ve got a perfectly good name, if your family called you “Department Head, Department Head,” “Deputy, Deputy” twenty-four hours a day, even outside the office, you’d go insane, too.

“Does the Saintess have no friends?” he asked aloud.

“Just people she trained with here, in the Northern Sea Ice Palace,” Prince Han-bing replied. “But I don’t know her name either, so I call her Saintess like everyone else. We don’t exactly have… deep conversations.”

Was it regional culture? Or Cult culture? Either way, Jin Cheon-hee had no choice but to call her what everyone did.

The Blue Light Crystal mine lay on the right side of Heavenly Ice Mountain. Military units were stationed nearby, and security was tight in its own way.

[No formations.]

[Only the Holy Land at the peak has them. Down here is fine. Besides, if there were formations inside the mine, how would the miners work?]

That was true.

Instead, guards stood watch in three shifts.

[They’re playing Red Jade.]

[Not exactly. It’s a Golden Blood Chamber knock-off version of Red Jade. They had locals translate it to fit this region.]

No wonder the tribute money Sama Hyeon had been sending was creeping upward.

That son of a bitch. You could’ve warned your brother first.

Sama Hyeon was the type who would survive even if you tossed him into a desert with nothing but his teeth, and now he was selling knock-offs globally without so much as a whisper. In a world where copyright got eaten for breakfast, a man like that really was a unique species.

Anyway, the guards were too absorbed in their game, too busy burning with Red Jade, agonizing over whether to report adultery to the King, bribing a royal physician to lie about a pregnancy, and rolling dice with frantic hands as they debated whether they could fabricate palace intrigue out of it.

While they were still locked in that desperate spiral, the three of them slipped into the mine without trouble.

The Queen player’s doomed, too. No black propaganda cards.

Two Transcendent Masters and one Peak Master. A lineup capable of strolling past a ring of guards even while they played counterfeit Red Jade like their lives depended on it.

Inside, the mine was dim, but torches were spaced along the tunnel walls, steady points of light that made the way forward clear. Because it was night, the miners were nowhere to be seen.

Down they went, deeper and deeper, until the path split into two.

Only one side showed heavy traces of traffic, and Jin Cheon-hee assumed that was the miners’ tunnel.

[Should we check the other way, too?]

He couldn’t know what the Northern Sea Ice Palace Lord was hiding. But if there was something hidden, he suspected it would be where people didn’t go.

They followed the neglected tunnel. The passage narrowed with every step until it ended in what looked like a dead wall.

Gongsun Yeong frowned at the stone. “Maybe they stopped digging because no minerals came out?”

“Hm…”

No matter how he looked at it, that was what it seemed like.

If I’d brought Hwanggu, we’d have found the trick in seconds. I should write the Wudang Fist Emperor soon. If he taught the Muscle Contraction Art to a dog, maybe he knows how to change species completely.

Because turning into an alpaca like last time required too many materials and an expert hand.

Jin Cheon-hee crouched and conjured a crude imitation of Samadhi True Fire using Life-Nourishing Energy, letting it hover near the corner of the tunnel.

Whoosh.

The flame tilted, trembling as it leaned toward one side.

“Air’s moving through.”

Something was off.

He groped along the stone, searched, pressed, and listened, but for a long time he couldn’t find the mechanism.

“They hid it meticulously,” Gongsun Yeong murmured.

“Yeah,” Prince Han-bing said. “Can’t be helped.”

Then Jin Cheon-hee drew in a slow breath and activated the Bat Sound Wave of the peerless Sound Art, Seven Demon Seizing, striking the wall with a measured blow. Seven Demon Seizing borrowed what bats used, working with ultrasound to map what the eye couldn’t see.

A divine art, absolute-level Sound Art.

Wooooong.

Backed by the Profound Primordial Complete Foundation Divine Art, the technique surged with eerie precision, because that cultivation method could process information on a scale ordinary people couldn’t even imagine.

“This is it.”

Jin Cheon-hee nudged aside a stone that had been lying too casually in the corner and stepped onto the soil beneath it.

Creak.

The “dead end” opened, revealing a hidden space wide enough for one person to pass through.

Prince Han-bing stared at him.

[Can all Central Plains people do that?]

Gongsun Yeong shook her head.

[No way. He’s just… not normal.]

[I heard the Zhuge Clan are skilled not only in martial arts but in anything that uses the mind. This is incredible. All I can do is admire it.]

[Noona said the scariest guy to have as an enemy is that benefactor kid.]

Jin Cheon-hee stepped through first, then glanced back. “You coming or not?”

“Ah. Yeah,” Prince Han-bing said, and followed.

***

On the other side of the secret door, the ground fell away into a cliff.

When Jin Cheon-hee peered down, his breath caught.

Far below was a vast underground cavity. A palace stood there, and beside it a small city, the path leading down winding like a river along a steep slope. Luminous Pearls were embedded with meticulous care, and even in this subterranean world everything was bright, sharp, and clear, as if it were daytime.

“To think something like this exists…” Prince Han-bing said, awe slipping into his voice.

Jin Cheon-hee felt it too. “This wasn’t built in a day or two. It’s stranger that no one here seems to know about it.”

Yet for all its splendor, there were no people. No movement. No life.

“Strange,” Gongsun Yeong muttered. “If people lived here, there should be household waste. But there’s nothing. Not even traces.”

It felt like staring at a child’s block house, dazzling from the outside and hollow the moment you looked closer.

“Let’s infiltrate the palace first,” Jin Cheon-hee said.

He headed for the cliff rather than the winding path. Even if he couldn’t see anyone now, someone could be watching from the shadows, waiting. Crawling down the cliff would be slower, harsher, and far less predictable.

As he prepared to descend, something caught his eye: a strange device inside one of the houses, half-hidden in the light.