Chapter 37: The Ghost of the Scar

The individual who had summoned her to this pavilion was unquestionably Anok. On the day he had newly transitioned from the provinces and first arrived at the Myeong estate, his unexpectedly dignified bearing had admittedly surprised her. Yet, Court Lady Cho had firmly believed that was the absolute extent of his depth. She had continuously looked down on her master as a mere twenty-year-old youth—an innocent, naive boy completely ignorant of how the world truly functioned.

Even in the Baekya region, his formal recognition as the third son of the King of Baekya had only materialized in recent years. Data she had gathered explicitly stated he had been raised without a shred of proper respect.

Though Court Lady Cho had certainly noticed that Anok’s recent demeanor toward her was starkly different from how he treated the common staff, she had simply chalked it up to arrogance. She assumed that a boy who had spent a lifetime neglected was merely growing haughty now that he was surrounded by a wall of sycophantic servants.

But the voice she had just heard completely shattered that assumption. Though he was remarkably young, he exuded a crushing, suffocating weight—a terrifying gravity she had only ever experienced when kneeling before the Empress, who possessed a majestic imperial aura, or Noble Consort Sa, who completely monopolized the Emperor’s favor. In that fraction of a second, Court Lady Cho’s frame instinctively stiffened in absolute alarm.

“The primary duty assigned to you was to watch over me, yet over the past forty-eight hours, you executed a deliberate sabotage. Worse still, while I lay unconscious on a bed of critical illness, you entirely abandoned your post. Is that not an unvarnished fact?”

“Your Highness, that is…… because I cannot physically anchor myself to your bedside for twenty-four hours, I merely rotated shifts with the other servants. The moment news reached me that you had recovered from your illness, I desperately attempted to run back to your side, but as I have already stated, I was forcefully summoned to Damyeon Palace, making it impossible to transit sooner.”

In truth, Court Lady Cho hadn’t spent her hours idly wandering the palace. Even with an expression laced with blatant bewilderment, she seamlessly spun a series of fluent, meticulously crafted excuses out of thin air—the kind of standard evasions that would usually sound incredibly hollow.

Despite holding the absolute hand—the evidence, the expert witness, and the direct testimony—the Anok of the past life had never once engineered an interrogation of this magnitude. He had never aggressively exposed the malice of a subordinate to break them, and he had certainly never imagined that his first target would be Court Lady Cho.

For that exact reason, while his features perfectly mimicked the clinical, unbothered mask he had observed on Yeo Jae-won, Anok’s internal system was wound incredibly tight with anxiety.

“You are still looking down on me.”

From my past life straight through to the present, you have been entirely consistent.

Swallowing those bitter words back down into his throat, Anok spoke with a slow, chilling precision. The shameless, unyielding glare Court Lady Cho had been maintaining finally wavered for a fraction of a second.

Anok was slightly startled by how easily his true, buried resentment had leaked out like a lamentation, but quickly smoothing it over with an indifferent facade, he turned his back to her. Walking slowly toward his desk, he chose to remain standing rather than resuming his seat, continuing his verbal assault.

“Even if it were an absolute truth that anchoring yourself to my bedside at all hours was a grueling task, you should have possessed enough decorum to never let such a pathetic excuse pass your lips before your master.”

“…….”

“Furthermore, leaving a critically ill sovereign behind just to instantly scramble across the threshold the moment Damyeon Palace issues a summons is an act that completely violates palace protocol.”

“But by what metric could a lowly servant like me find the leverage to ignore an explicit command from Damyeon Palace, Your Highness?”

Had she been standing before Noble Consort Sa inside Damyeon Palace, she would have never dared to flash this brand of defiant insolence. Offering a self-deprecating, bitter smile to a woman who didn’t even bother to hide her utter contempt for him, Anok gave a slow nod of assent.

“Yes, I suppose that is true.”

Believing that the Grand Consort had merely grown temporarily arrogant because the Prince had shown him a modicum of attention after the formal ceremony, Court Lady Cho found herself entirely unable to read her master now that he was conceding so tamely.

“You truly could not afford to ignore a summons from Damyeon Palace.”

His cadence was so completely flat and unbothered that it almost looked as though he was bowing his head in submission. However, Court Lady Cho was an intensely paranoid creature, and judging by the calculating intelligence Anok had displayed since the beginning of this conversation, she knew with absolute certainty that the matter would not conclude here.

Just as she predicted, Anok slowly nodded his head. With a calm, elegant movement of his hand, he swept the decorative trinkets resting on his desk entirely to one side.

As the wood cleared, the true horror was finally exposed: a paper medicine pouch, its wrappings clearly showing the telltale creases of having been opened and inspected multiple times.

“Knowing that the very individual who commanded you to systematically poison my system had summoned you…… how desperately you must have been clawing to answer that call.”

“……!”

In a flash, every ounce of composure drained from Court Lady Cho’s features. She froze so violently that her biological system seemed to lock up entirely; she couldn’t utter a syllable, nor could she shift her frame. Her pupils remained violently pinned to the exposed medicine pouch.

Anok knew with absolute certainty that she would not dare utter a single word to dispute his implication that Damyeon Palace was the architect of this plot.

From what he had observed across his entire past life, Noble Consort Sa would never extend a single shred of mercy to a pawn that had failed to perfectly execute a directive. The moment a conspiracy was dragged into the light, the Consort would ruthlessly sever the tail, transferring 100% of the criminal accountability onto the subordinate’s shoulders.

Knowing she had been utterly discarded by Sa Eun-hyeon, Court Lady Cho would naturally refuse to protect a master who was actively planning to throw her to the wolves.

Anok waited in absolute, crushing silence, giving her space to process the reality. After a long, agonizing interlude, Court Lady Cho managed to force her features back into a tight mask, though her face remained ghostly white with terror as she slowly lifted her eyes to meet his.

“I believe you explicitly stated to Imperial Physician Do that I was ingesting zero external remedies prior to his arrival, did you not?”

“Th-that…… that was……”

“Naturally, you needed that data to disappear. If a prescription existed, the physician would have felt clinically obligated to audit its components—and had he done so two nights ago, you would not be standing alive inside this pavilion right now.”

I am caught. The absolute reality crashed over her: this young, seemingly fragile bride—a boy she had dismissed as an ignorant provincial pawn—knew the entire scope of the conspiracy.

The exact second she internalized that truth, Court Lady Cho felt a sensation akin to having twin blades pressed firmly against either side of her throat. It was the crushing, hollow despair of a defeated general whose lines had completely collapsed.

Anok lazily reached out, his finger mapping the dried herbs one by one.

“The medicine pouch was actively recovered from your living quarters, and Physician Do has already logged his formal analysis of the chemical stimulants. Furthermore, Han-wol can personally provide a direct eye-witness testimony confirming that you forced me to ingest this mixture leading up to the wedding ceremony.”

The evidence, the expert testimony, and the direct witness were all locked securely inside his palm. Yet, despite his overwhelming tactical advantage, Anok’s heart was still hammering violently against his ribs. A lingering, instinctual dread whispered that if he made a single misstep, Court Lady Cho would execute a savage, unpredictable counter-strike.

A human being backed completely into a corner of a dead end was capable of anything. Just as he, in his past life, had willingly chosen to drain a cup of lethal poison just to escape his tormentors.

It was entirely impossible to predict how a creature like Court Lady Cho would lash out once she realized there was no exit hatch left in the empire.

“……This is a fabrication! It is a malicious frame-up! This servant is entirely innocent, Grand Consort! I swear on my life, I have never offered such an abominable mixture to your lips!”

The path Court Lady Cho selected was absolute, unyielding denial. As she began to violently screech her innocence, a chaotic uproar shattered the quiet of the pavilion. Alerted by the screaming, Eunuch Im frantically bolted through the doors, followed immediately by a squad of burly estate eunuchs who pinned Court Lady Cho’s flailing arms, forcibly slamming her body against the floorboards to suppress her struggles.

“Your Highness! Your servant is suffering a monstrous injustice! This is a setup! There is absolutely no metric by which such a horrific, treasonous object could be recovered from my private quarters!”

Her features twisted into an ugly, animalistic mask, her eyes rolling back as she shrieked at the top of her lungs. The sheer vulgarity of the display caused Eunuch Im to furrow his brow in deep disgust.

“Eunuch Im, transit to Court Lady Cho’s private chambers immediately and execute a meticulous search of every inch.”

“Your command shall be executed flawlessly, Your Highness.”

Accompanied by two robust attendants, Eunuch Im quickly departed the pavilion, charting a direct course for her quarters. Waiting for them there was the exact duplicate medicine pouch that Han-wol had successfully retrieved from the maid’s room and planted inside her wardrobe.

Throughout the agonizing interlude, Court Lady Cho deployed an absolute frenzy of physical strength, violently thrashing against the tight grip of the eunuchs until she managed to wrench her arms free, throwing her frame flat against the stone tiles. Her chest heaved with ragged, furious breaths as she desperately shrieked for mercy.

“Grant me a solitary opportunity to prove my absolute innocence, Your Highness! I beg of you, this servant is facing a malicious frame-up! I merely……”

“Grand Consort, we have successfully recovered the medicine pouch from the depths of Court Lady Cho’s quarters.”

It appeared Han-wol had strategically tucked the evidence into a location that required very little effort to uncover. Returning barely fifteen minutes after his departure, Eunuch Im stepped across the threshold and respectfully presented Anok with a paper pouch filled with the exact same lethal herbs he had displayed on his desk.

Reaching out with a single hand to receive the pouch, Anok lowered a cold, utterly exhausted gaze onto the trembling form of the court lady kneeling at his feet. He repeated her exact words back to her, his cadence dripping with icy irony.

“Grant you an opportunity to prove your absolute innocence?”

“Yes! If you merely grant your servant a margin of a few days, I swear I will uncover the truth and prove my innocence!”

Suddenly, a hidden, suffocating memory violently surged to the surface of Anok’s mind—a pathetic, miserable memory of his past self, weeping on his knees as he begged for a margin of a few days to correct a mistake.

Because the traditional methods of brewing and serving tea in the Baekya region differed drastically from the rigid, highly complex etiquettes of the Great Jin imperial court, the past Anok had routinely jumbled the two distinct methodologies in his head. Ultimately, he had committed a minor formatting error while serving tea before Noble Consort Sa. On that day of brutal chastisement, he had begged for mercy using the exact same phrasing Court Lady Cho was deploying now.

During those few days of borrowed time he had begged for, Anok had practiced the movements in an absolute frenzy of terror, eventually spilling boiling water directly over the back of his own hand. The severe burn he sustained that afternoon had ultimately solidified into a horrific, puckered scar that defaced his skin until the literal day he died.

Worse still, when Court Lady Cho had witnessed the blistering flesh, she had casually dismissed the agony, claiming that rinsing it with ice-cold water would suffice, deliberately preventing him from seeking an imperial physician just to cover up the severity of the discipline.

—You must learn to endure a trifling discomfort of this metric, Your Highness. If you lack the fortitude to tolerate a baseline of physical pain, you will never successfully transform into a legitimate member of the imperial lineage. It is not as if you are being forced to navigate the bloody warfare and active assassinations of the inner palace, nor has the Prince taken a swarm of concubines to turn your household into a chaotic warzone. You must learn to bear this much.

As she had violently poured freezing water directly over the raw, open wound, Anok had been forced to violently clamp his jaw shut, swallowing his agonizing screams until his chest felt like it would burst.

Come to think of it…… the solitary individual who had noticed his hand wrapped in dry rags days later, sensing something was fundamentally wrong and forcefully dispatching a doctor to his quarters, had been Yeo Jae-won.

It was a medical intervention executed entirely behind Court Lady Cho’s back while Anok lay weeping in secret, unable to cope with the agonizing pain of the oozing, infected blisters—a fact later revealed to him by Eunuch Seok, who had escorted the physician to his pavilion.

Court Lady Cho was the primary architect who had systematically smashed his internal psyche into microscopic shards over a period of years in his past life. Why on earth should he extend a single opportunity to such a monster?

What is meant to happen will inevitably find a way to manifest. This was the solitary piece of philosophy Anok had internalized most deeply since his life had restarted. If he failed to ruthlessly cut Court Lady Cho down at this exact juncture, he would simply be gifting her a second opportunity—an opportunity to slowly chew away at his mind until his sanity crumbled to dust once more.

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