The Footprints You Left Behind (6)
Kwaaaaang!
I immediately kicked off from the main hall and charged forward.
Crack crack!
The bright blue arm that had been gripping me burst out of the book and, before I knew it, wrapped itself in swirling light before scattering into nothingness in the air.
But the changes rippling across the entire Sea Dragon Palace refused to stop.
The remnants of the Sea Dragon King…!
A consciousness fragment far inferior to Song Jin’s in terms of pure power.
Yet that insignificant thing spread across the entire Sea Dragon Palace, awakening the heaven-and-earth spiritual energy in every corner.
And then.
Boom, boom, thud!
One by one, the halls of the Sea Dragon Palace began to explode.
Countless odd objects and law treasures flew out from inside the halls and glowed in the air.
Flash!
In the blink of an eye, the entire surroundings were painted pitch black by the light beams erupting from the Sea Dragon Palace’s many odd objects.
This is…
“Senior, what in the world is going on?!”
The dragon-form sword flew toward me.
I wiped sweat from my brow and stared at the chaos unfolding right in front of me.
“Seo Doo…”
“Yes, Senior.”
“Run.”
Kugugugug!
The blue light law treasures from the water-attribute surged together and swallowed the remnants of Seo Hyeol.
The light erupting from the law treasures flickered, forming the shape of a massive azure dragon.
It looked almost identical to Seo Hyeol.
Kwa-kwaa-kwaang!
The dragon formed from the merged law treasures began to thrash wildly.
This crazy…
Kugugugug!
In an instant, the Sea Dragon Palace was swept away by the dragon’s thrashing.
It was on an entirely different level from Song Jin, who had no law treasures to begin with.
The Sea Dragon Clan had gathered every last law treasure they could find and fused them into a Nascent Soul remnant, then wielded it…
Its power came close to the limit of the Nascent Soul realm.
But the real problem wasn’t that.
“Senior! It’s coming!”
Piiiing!
The dragon’s tail whipped down toward us.
Kwa-kwa-kwa!
A massive destruction mark was left behind, but that was nothing compared to what happened next.
Clang!
From the dragon’s tail, a small law treasure that had been embedded in a scale remained behind even after the tail had struck.
“Damn it!”
Flash!
The law treasure was wrapped in blue light and scattered light rays in all directions.
Kwaaaaaang!
The law treasure detonated!
I blocked the blast in front of Seo Ran and swept the explosion away.
My hand trembled.
‘I was already using Mountain Beyond Mountain to fight with my body damaged from breaking the seal… plus this self-destruction one more time and my arm shakes.’
I had to run…
‘Everything is blocked off…’
The surroundings were sealed by the Bongmyeong Castle’s formations, and even the entrance we had come through was now guarded by this law-treasure dragon, making access nearly impossible.
‘As if I wasn’t already annoyed enough… they’re blowing up the law treasures one by one.’
Then, seeing that we weren’t taking noticeable damage, the law-treasure dragon gradually started detonating more of them.
“Can’t we stop that self-destruction?”
“…Impossible. Besides…”
Seo Ran’s expression darkened.
“You’ll see the law-treasure dragon gradually awakening and brightening as it draws more power from the law treasures.”
As he said, the more we fought, the more blue light glowed from the law-treasure dragon’s body made of fused law treasures.
“When it’s completely lit up, the entire dragon will detonate.”
Crack…
I gritted my teeth at the unbelievable situation.
‘Seo Hyeol…!’
Whether he had targeted Seo Ran or not, the plan to acquire law treasures here to push Won Rip aside had completely failed.
Flash!
The azure dragon shape kept rising higher and higher.
If this continued, I had no idea when it would explode…!
And then.
Kwa-kwa-kwaang!
One side of the sealing array shook, and the prow of a black ghost ship appeared beyond the true face.
The Seopmyeong Ship.
“Tara!”
Song Jin shouted, and we barely managed to escape the dragon’s thrashing and board the Seopmyeong Ship.
Gooooo!
The azure dragon roared as its entire body turned white-hot.
That massive body was about to self-detonate!
And at the same time, Song Jin grabbed the helm and attempted spatial teleportation.
The Seopmyeong Ship was pulled into the void and traveled through space.
We escaped the Sea Dragon Palace just as the entire palace was engulfed in blue light.
* * *
[…So I went looking after the disciple sent out a rescue signal, but in the end all the law treasures in the Sea Dragon Palace had turned into that azure dragon and detonated, huh?]
Song Jin pressed his skull between his fingers.
[No harvest at all…]
Both Song Jin and Seo Ran looked gloomy.
But I showed them the Diary of Jeon Hyeol.
“I picked this up during the chaos. When you closed this diary, Seo Hyeol’s remnant that was written inside it activated and triggered the chaos.”
[Hmm, indeed. I can feel Seo Hyeol’s consciousness dwelling in it. This structure causes the remnant to activate under special conditions and pass on predetermined information.]
Truly a scheming fellow.
What if Seo Ran had somehow survived the destruction of the Seopmyeong Ship and reached the Sea Dragon Palace?
He would have been killed the same way, without fail.
‘Is there really a reason I have to kill Seo Ran like this?’
“Then there’s nothing else left in this book?”
I handed it to Song Jin to see if there was anything else that could become a trump card.
[No, I don’t see anything else with my eyes.]
I nodded and handed it to Seo Ran.
‘From now on, don’t open the diary carelessly. Bring Song Jin and show him this first.’
The remnant of Seo Hyeol’s consciousness, once shown to Song Jin, would be consumed by the Seopmyeong Ship anyway. What did it matter?
“It’s a record by Jeon Hyeol, a member of the Sea Dragon Clan. Read it. He seemed to have left it here for you to read, Seo Doo.”
“Ah, the Elder…!”
Seo Ran looked startled and quickly took the diary. While he read, the Seopmyeong Ship had already returned to its place in the Black Wind Sea.
‘So this is the harvest…’
With that much explosion, even the spiritual medicines left behind in the Sea Dragon Palace would have been reduced to powder.
‘Right, come to think of it…’
I asked Song Jin about the structure of the Sea Dragon Palace and the array I had seen.
“Then, do you know anything about the array hidden inside the structure of the Sea Dragon Palace?”
[Hmm, I don’t know what array you’re referring to.]
Song Jin stroked his jawbone and tilted his head.
While Song Jin was pondering, Seo Ran who had been reading the diary in a daze finally looked up and formed a seal.
Uuuuuung!
Spiritual energy gathered before our eyes and formed the array I knew.
As Seo Ran poured in his will, the array activated and I felt my sleepiness lift and my consciousness clear.
“This is the array you’re talking about, Master.”
[Ah, this one! That’s why it seemed unfamiliar compared to the Black Ghost Bone Valley’s expressions…]
Song Jin quickly understood and Seo Ran returned to reading while Song Jin commented on the magic before us.
[This is the technique that awakens the Upper Dantian, expressed as a devil’s magic array. It’s this very array.]
“Upper Dantian… awakening…?”
[The Azure Ghost Bone Valley and the Sea Dragon Clan have been rivals for ten thousand years, so their techniques naturally influenced each other to some extent. And one of those influences was…]
Uuuuuung!
The spiritual energy bursting from Song Jin’s fingertips flowed toward his own Baihui acupoint.
[This is the ‘Awakening Technique.’]
The spiritual energy entering the Baihui acupoint rotated inside Song Jin’s skull and, after a moment, spurted out through his brow.
“That’s…”
I had seen that technique before.
The technique Baekgol Gwima Heogak had used to forcibly awaken Kim Joomi’s consciousness.
And the technique that amplified talent by injecting spirit into the Upper Dantian at the Jin Clan Estate was extremely similar.
‘Just like the one Hyung Yoon uses right now, it starts at the Baihui, guides the flow of pure yang energy to the brow, and burns it…’
The flow was identical.
[I don’t know Seo Hyeol’s true face, but outwardly he was a gentle sage who always wanted the Sea Dragon Clan to maintain a pure heart. It’s not strange at all that he would use the Sea Dragon Palace’s own structure to cast the Awakening Technique that maintains a clear mind.]
“…”
Then why had he placed that ‘mind-clearing technique’ in the hidden layers of Bongmyeong Castle?
I told Song Jin what Seo Hyeol had done.
Maybe he would remember something.
But Song Jin shook his head as if nothing came to mind.
[Strange. Why is there such a thing in the control room of Bongmyeong Castle?]
“Control room?”
[Yes. The hidden layer you entered is the control room of Bongmyeong Castle. If you place a high-grade Bongmyeong-in on the spot you saw and raise it to a higher place, you can control the entire castle through it.]
That was some new information.
‘Why would he deliberately place the mind-clearing technique in the control room…?’
I had no idea what his true intention was.
What purpose did he want to achieve…
Just as I was pondering this, Seo Ran’s expression finally darkened after he had finished reading the entire diary.
He gave a bitter smile and closed the diary.
Thankfully, the destruction Seo Hyeol had wrought earlier had ended and no blue hand emerged from the diary again.
“…I really was abandoned by everyone and grew up that way. The only person who showed me even a trace of kindness was the Elder….”
Pain that could not be hidden filled his face.
That expression was like…
‘Before he tried to commit suicide with the Wave-Breaking Pearl…’
“What meaning is there in me living… I don’t know.”
I looked at him with hollow eyes, his face twisted in pain.
Normally I would have comforted him, would have shown some care to ease his wounds.
But honestly, I felt no emotion at all right now.
Only a faint twinge of sympathy when he shed painful thoughts.
‘How did one comfort someone again…?’
Everything I used to do with a warm heart… I can’t remember any of it.
I don’t even remember what kind of heart I used to have.
‘Is this how it was done?’
But.
Knowing that killing Seo Ran would make things even more depressing, I barely managed to recall how to comfort him.
“Don’t worry, Seo Doo. You… have truly formed the master-disciple bond, and you’re inside it. As long as there is even one person who thinks of you, find meaning from them…”
“…Y-yes….”
The shadow on Seo Ran’s face eased a little at my words.
“Thank you…”
I received his thanks and looked at Song Jin with hollow eyes.
In the end, reality had come full circle.
“So… we gained nothing in the end, but if you really help us by using your last wish power, is that not allowed?”
[…Huu…]
Song Jin let out a deep sigh.
[I didn’t want to put my disciple in danger, but if it’s two hundred years… I’ll turn that disciple into a Core Formation cultivator inside it and help you. Of course I’ll help too.]
“…Thank you.”
In the end, we had gained no real harvest from the Sea Dragon Palace, but we had acquired a great deal of valuable information, and we had successfully received Song Jin’s promise to help us.
After receiving the promise from him, I left the Black Wind Sea.
* * *
And ten years passed.
At the Cheongmun Clan Estate, we had retrieved the formations and spiritual medicines along with him, and the day of the great assembly where Core Formation cultivators from across the continent would gather was finally upon us.
Whoosh whoosh!
I flew across the vast northern grasslands at high speed.
‘It must be around here…’
I held the amulet I had received as an invitation and sensed the surrounding spiritual energy.
And after a while.
Uuuuuung!
I could sense a certain place hidden behind the formations far away.
Tat!
It was the place hidden by the welcoming array.
However, when I pressed the amulet against that location, the array glowed and opened a path for me to pass through.
I entered the inner area through the path in the array.
‘This place is…’
As expected of the northern grasslands, countless white tents had been set up inside the array.
Countless cultivation inscriptions floated inside the tents, and the presence of Core Formation cultivators could be felt from within them.
“Ah, you’re here, Seo Suseo?”
From afar, Cheongmun Jung-jin approached me with a cheerful face.
I nodded and answered.
“It’s been a long time.”
“…”
He looked at my expression and his face became wry.
There was nothing I could do about it either.
I had forgotten how to smile, and my hollow eyes had not changed.
Now, the only expression I knew besides the hollow one was to forget it.
And at that moment, another person crossed beyond the array.
The old man in a blue robe, Wol-ryang.
He had the same face as ten years ago, though different from mine.
His face was filled with extreme anger.
We met eyes and simply nodded at each other.
And just as we were about to enter the largest tent, the meeting hall.
“Wait, you…”
The old man Wol-ryang pointed at me and spoke.
For some reason, his voice trembled.
“That thing hanging at your waist… why are you wearing it…?”
“…?”
I looked at the amber bead pendant hanging at my waist, Buk Hyang-hwa’s keepsake.
“It belongs to my destined partner.”
“What…? That’s… the thing my great-grandson was wearing…”
“Ah…”
I realized with a jolt that I knew Buk Hyang-hwa’s destined partner.
Her destined partner was
the great-grandson of Wol-ryang, who had already been eaten by Won Rip long before I regressed.