BDBM | Chapter 1

I was betrayed!

And by the disciple I raised with all my heart.

“Yeohwani, you little brat!”

When Jin Danye opened his eyes, biting his teeth in the face of betrayal, the first thing he saw was a ceiling with beasts painted on its corners. Once, it might have been extravagant, but now, it was faded, covered in cobwebs.

‘Is this the afterlife?’

But is the afterlife supposed to be this shabby? There was no ghostly figure of a judge dressed in official robes, nor the King of Hell sitting on a burning throne. Only the heavy stench of dust filled the air.

As he questioned his situation, a dull throb of pain shot through his head.

“Ugh…”

His hand, completely devoid of strength, reached up to his forehead, and he could even feel the slight fever.

‘Looks like my body hasn’t fully recovered yet.’

After all, there were several holes in his body, and he had fallen off a cliff. The fact that he was alive at all was a miracle.

However, lying around complaining about the pain wouldn’t solve anything.

‘First, I need to find the owner and figure out where I am.’

Jin Danye was once a giant who controlled the shadows of the murim¹. Though his disciple had stabbed him in the back, there were many hidden pockets of secrets the young fool didn’t know about. Just taking one of them would ensure the disciple’s benefactor could live a life of ease.

‘In this world, settling old scores is the way of the murim.’

On top of that, Jin Danye lived by a creed: repay favors tenfold, and avenge wrongs a hundredfold. It was what allowed him to take up the mantle of the Murim’s leader, following in the footsteps of his master.

… Though his disciple farming had failed miserably.

‘Ugh! My blood’s boiling! I can’t take this!’

But Jin Danye didn’t let his anger consume him. If he could turn the tide, rage could be a powerful fuel.

‘Recover my body, repay my debts, and show that disciple the bitter taste of betrayal!’

With this simple but intense plan, he pushed his groaning body to rise.

“No matter how badly I’m hurt, it’s so stiff…”

Jin Danye, complaining about his uncooperative body, suddenly froze, his mouth going dry.

What was that?

Why was I speaking like this?

Slowly, he lowered his gaze, and what met his eyes were his fingers, shriveled like his tongue. His hands were so thin, the joints protruded sharply.

“Gah!”

The first thing that came to mind was hope.

‘Did I, by any chance, undergo Reverse Aging through Martial Arts while crossing the line between life and death?’

But if that were true, my body shouldn’t be this thin.

It felt cold. As Jin Danye tried to check his internal energy, the door suddenly burst open, and unfamiliar people entered.

People with brightly colored eyes and heads.

‘Am I… really dead after all?’

Looking at those making the sign of the cross, Jin Danye thought to himself.

Ivyor was the wife of the fallen Marquis and mistress of a declining house.

The life of a high-ranking noble might have looked magnificent on the outside, but in reality, it was built on a mountain of debt.

After her husband’s death, the financial situation had worsened even further, and the wages of their servants were already months overdue.

But it seemed like there was still hope.

“Lady’s daughter, Tenev Demini, has been named the heir to the Holy King (聖王).”

One day, priests arrived with this news, and for the first time in ages, it felt like a light had appeared in Ivyor’s bleak future.

The next Holy King’s mother! Though the priests claimed they cut ties with the secular world, those were just words.

She had always thought her daughter, whom she had given birth to, was nothing more than a nuisance. But now, she couldn’t help but feel a little fond of her, thinking that maybe her daughter would be the key to her own redemption.

However…

“The child suddenly became ill?”

Just before they were about to depart for the Holy Kingdom, her daughter collapsed with a high fever.

“Isn’t it enough to just take her to the Holy Kingdom for treatment?”

“The sacred power seems to have no effect on her. It’s too dangerous for her to take the long-distance gate in this weakened state.”

The priests looked at her as if wondering what kind of mother she was, and Ivyor didn’t have the strength to argue back. It had already been a few weeks since then. Tenev still hadn’t regained consciousness, and the priests who had come to fetch her daughter had mostly returned to the Holy Kingdom. Now, there were only three priests and two knights left—just five people in total.

‘This is clearly a disaster. How foolish of me to place my hopes on her…’

A fever that couldn’t be cured even with sacred power. It seemed like Tenev was bound to die.

Thinking that way, the remaining priests felt like unnecessary baggage, draining what little resources they had left.

“What excuse can I make to send them away?”

Ivyor bit her nails, lost in thought. It was a rather unladylike action for a high-ranking noblewoman, but there was no one to correct her. She had long since let her manners slip.

It was then that a servant came running to her.

“Miss seems to be waking up!”

“What did you say?”

Ivyor immediately sprang up and rushed to her daughter’s room.

Tenev, already awake, still had a fever and didn’t respond to the priests’ words. She looked around with anxious eyes, ignoring their attempts to speak to her.

But to Ivyor, whose eyes were filled with the joy of hope, none of that mattered.

“Tenev!”

“Madam, she is still not fully recovered…”

Despite the protests of those around her, Ivyor held her daughter and asked, her voice full of concern.

“Are you feeling better now? Do you know how much I’ve worried because of you?”

She then turned to the priests, asking urgently.

“Now that she’s conscious, can we leave for the Holy Kingdom…?!”

However, she couldn’t finish her sentence. A strange sound filled the room, followed by the hot sensation of something wet soaking her chest.

“Eek!”

With a scream, Ivyor instinctively shoved her daughter back onto the bed. A moment later, she realized how inappropriate her actions had been and her face turned bright red, but no matter how little she had eaten, the vomit was still disgusting.

“W-Well, once she’s feeling better, we can leave, right?”

Jin Danye, or rather, the body’s original owner, Tenev, watched Ivyor as she quickly fled the room, and internally clicked his tongue.

‘What kind of mother is she…?’

As he was facing the colorful-haired individuals who had come looking for Tenev, Jin Danye’s memories began flooding back all at once. The headache and nausea he felt from the rush of memories made him retch when Ivyor had shaken him.

Though he felt sympathy for Ivyor’s predicament, seeing her treatment of ‘her daughter’ made Jin Danye, even in his current body, feel pity for Tenev.

“Ha…”

The memories still kept flowing, endless and overwhelming. They were memories of more than twenty years, including his childhood.

That’s right.

Jin Danye hadn’t just narrowly escaped death—he had awakened in the body of this woman named Tenev.

And he had woken up in the body of a four-year-old!

‘Reverse aging has its limits, but four years old? What the hell.’

It was the kind of death where you were just as likely to die again.

Sighing again, Jin Danye, or rather Tenev, was startled when a priest reached out gently.

“Cleanse.”

With a simple chant, the priest erased all traces of the vomit and sweat that had accumulated while Tenev had been ill. As her body became fresh and clean again, Tenev lowered her head in gratitude.

“Thank you…”

A sharp intake of breath could be heard from both Tenev and the priest. The formal tone was at odds with the childish lisp that slipped out!

‘Even if I’ve turned younger, is my speech this messed up now?!’

As Tenev struggled with this, the priests couldn’t help but feel affection for her, something that made Jin Danye, or Tenev, even more frustrated.

‘Her voice is cute… Wait, no, what am I thinking?’

‘At first, she couldn’t even lift her head… but now, it seems like she’s changed her mindset after the ordeal. I guess we’ll see how things go.’

The head of the Holy Kingdom, chosen not by inheritance but through divine prophecy, had now firmly set her eyes on Tenev as their future ruler. Yet, her first impression was far from what anyone would expect from a divinely chosen heir. She looked frail, with no signs of affection in her eyes—just a child nervously glancing around.

But the priests, who had come with expectations, were not disappointed. While Tenev’s posture had changed from her former hunched, sickly state, now she stood tall, shoulders straight despite her weakened condition.

Grateful for this change, the priests even went as far as to clean her room and encourage her to rest.

Tenev, after a while, began to drink the thin soup the servant had brought, trying to organize her thoughts.

“I… Ugh…”

She grimaced at the childish lisp that slipped from her mouth.

“Am I always like this at four?”

She thought back to her memories. Yeohwan, the disciple she had raised, had been around ten when she took him in.

Tenev gave up on muttering to herself. It was better to leave her mumblings alone than be seen as crazy, and she tried to comfort herself.

‘So, I didn’t just fall unconscious after falling off the cliff.’

Before she lost consciousness, Jin Danye had met Tenev. At the time, he was too out of his mind from the massive blood loss to make sense of it.

‘Well, of course, I was falling with a woman who looked exactly like me.’

Aside from the yellow hair and eyes, it was as if their faces had been carved from the same mold.

But now, waking up in ‘Tenev’s’ body, it wasn’t a hallucination, a ghost, nor a gumiho² in disguise.

It was reality.

“Finally, we meet again, my soul…”

Tenev’s words, and the entire situation she found herself in, made it clear. This wasn’t a dream.

And if that’s the case…

‘It’s not a dream.’

The days when he left his home, sold for a handful of coins, met his master, and united the scattered factions of the Murim—those memories were as vivid as if they happened just yesterday.

‘Based on what Tenev said, and the memories flooding in now…’

To become one of the leaders in the Murim wasn’t just about mastering the martial arts; it meant having access to techniques unimaginable for ordinary people.

Drawing from all his experiences, Jin Danye’s mind worked flexibly.

‘It’s not that one of us is a lie. It’s more likely that for some reason, one soul split into two.’

Yin and Yang, soul and body, heaven and earth.

The conclusion felt natural to him, as he had always been familiar with the concept of duality.

Though the reason for awakening in Tenev’s youthful body still remained unclear, Tenev herself was not someone who would waste time pondering unanswerable questions. There were more important things to do.

“Dan-ah, survival is the most important thing. Enjoy the world. Live, breathe, and savor life.”

‘Yeah. First, I need to live.’

Reaffirming his master’s last words, Jin Danye, or Tenev, recalled the future memories left behind by Tenev.

Tenev had started a new life as the heir to the Holy King. However, because her divine power was vast but ineffective, she had not gained much recognition. After the current Holy King, her protector, weakened, the prophecy had been misinterpreted, and new candidates for the Holy King had appeared.

Meanwhile, her biological mother, Ivyor, kept asking for money, and soft-hearted Tenev, unable to refuse, had given her everything she had.

‘That was the reason Tenev was attacked.’

Tenev’s position had continued to shrink, eventually losing the Holy King’s seat and meeting a tragic end.

‘Truly a cruel fate.’

At least Jin Danye had met his master and been loved beyond measure. He led countless people and earned their respect, enjoying moments of fulfillment.

…Even if, in the end, he was betrayed by his disciple.

Gritting her teeth, Tenev was tortured by the constant surge of betrayal.

“Ugh. But hey, I’ll get my revenge on that bastard someday!”

With a small fist clenched, she made a vow—she would get revenge on Yeohwan, even if it meant becoming a ghost!

And…

“From now on, I won’t live like Tenev, wallowing in pity!”

Tenev had no intention of settling for a half-hearted life.

‘If I’m going to live, I’ll have to take the world by storm!’

This was the moment when Jin Danye, the shadow of the Murim, began a new life as Tenev, the heir to the Holy King.