The First Day of the Third Loop
A blink.
I opened my eyes and rose from my seat.
“It seems I’ve regressed again.”
Maybe this time, the regressions would stop.
I thought that.
‘In the end… infinite regression?’
Yet the more regressions I endured, the stronger my conviction grew.
My power wasn’t the transient, finite kind I had known.
It was infinite regression without end.
“Damn it.”
I ruffled my hair and scanned the surroundings.
Whoosh!
Jae-hyung’s hand came flying at me.
I sidestepped with a casual flick and let my own hand dance.
Pabam!
I danced at a speed so blurred that even I could barely see it, then pressed two fingers into his ma-gyeol.
“Eh, eh?! …!”
The fellow’s mouth was already chattering, so I followed up and pressed into his a-gyeol as well.
Because I pressed the blood so rapidly, even those watching from the side didn’t know what was happening.
“Wh-what’s going on? President Jeon…?”
“Why are you doing that?”
I tapped Jeon Myeong-hoon’s shoulder repeatedly.
“It looks like paralysis has set in.”
“Oh dear, what on earth is this? We should’ve gotten the body moving long ago!”
“Ah, I know a herb that’s very effective for paralysis. I studied herbology before.”
I plucked some from nearby and held them out.
“President Jeon, you’re paralyzed. In this situation, if you stay like this, you could suffer permanent damage. You must take this. If you remain paralyzed, you may become a cripple for life!”
I stepped closer and secretly loosened his a-gyeol, freeing his mouth.
“Wait! W-wait, the dirt—!”
“I can’t! This herb is at its peak potency right now. If you take it with dirt, the effect will be ruined. Just shake off a little dirt and swallow! Otherwise you could be crippled for life!”
I emphasized the lifetime cripple warning and brought the dirt-caked herb straight to his mouth.
Jeon Myeong-hoon grimaced, but eventually he had to chew and swallow the herb and dirt together.
Uduk, uddeok, uduk…
The sound of grinding stones was oddly satisfying.
‘Appreciate the glory. It’s still a tonic for vitality.’
Of course, it had no effect on paralysis.
It was a mild vitality booster with sleep-inducing properties.
A short while later, Jeon Myeong-hoon fell asleep right there.
I pressed my fingers into his sleeping veins to dissolve the paralysis.
“Ugh, the weird things keep happening and this fellow keeps doing weird things too…”
“Strange events cause the body to tense up.”
I made up an excuse, then looked around and added,
“This place is strange. I know trees well, but every tree here is a species I’ve never seen in Korea.”
“Hmm, really? Well, anyway, where on earth did the company car land…”
“It’s a crash site.”
Primarily I would point out that the surrounding trees weren’t Korean, planting the seed that this world wasn’t our world.
“Since it’s a crash site, I’ll go check for settlements or roads nearby.”
“Hmm, how?”
I shrugged and leapt straight up to the tallest tree nearby.
‘No internal energy…’
But climbing trees was well within my physical strength and senses.
In fact, I had trained the skill of climbing such heights during my previous life’s stealth missions.
Shu shu shuk!
I scaled up in the blink of an eye, circled the top a few times as if scouting, then shot back down at lightning speed.
“Hey, you…”
“How did you do that?”
“Wow, Director Seo, that was amazing!”
“What kind of exercise is that?”
“Incredible…”
Jae-hyung, Vice President Oh, Kang delegate, Oh delegate, and Kim section chief all voiced their admiration one after another as they watched my movement.
“Ah, I used to climb trees and play around a lot when I was little.”
“But your reflexes are really good…”
“It’s nothing special. Anyway, I looked from up there. From the vantage point I saw, there wasn’t a single village or road in sight.”
“What? You’re not joking, right?”
“No, I don’t want to be alone out here. Truly, it’s just forest all around.”
The others sighed with disappointment at my words.
“We seem to be in a crash situation. Night’s coming soon. Let’s split into two teams—one to search for the car, the other to find somewhere to stay.”
“Okay, got it.”
“Fine, let’s do that.”
I knew they would insist on looking for an SUV no matter what, so I divided the teams and sent them off.
Then I took O delegate and Kim section chief to the cave where we had stayed before.
“Let’s stay in the cave tonight.”
“Oh, there’s a perfect cave!”
“That’s great…”
I had O delegate and Kim section chief build a windbreak out of cloth to protect us from the cave wind.
After that, we lit a bonfire and roasted the fruits and mushrooms we had gathered.
As evening fell and night came, the others saw the firelight and came looking for us.
“Whoa, you three made this?”
“No, we didn’t do anything. It was all Director Seo who whipped it up so fast?”
“Yeah, it looked like we’d joined the Boy Scouts overnight.”
“Director Seo, I had no idea you were a mutant too.”
I chuckled and handed out the roasted fruits and mushrooms.
“I learned a bit of everything when I was young. Try some of this.”
“You really camped it up. If it hadn’t been a crash, you’d probably have been camping at your original destination.”
“Ah, there was plenty of meat and food in the SUV. Too bad we didn’t get to enjoy it.”
“This mushroom is delicious though?”
My roasted mushrooms were devoured with great enthusiasm, and the employees who ate them all fell asleep shortly after.
Tap, tap…
I gently laid the sleeping employees down.
Then I pulled the Three-Life Ginseng I had dug up earlier and held it in front of the bonfire.
Ujik, ujik…
My lower dantian had been activated long ago with the Heavenly Earth Core Method.
I also vividly remembered the Marrow Spirit Technique from the 50 years of piercing blood vessels in my previous life.
Uuuung—
I swallowed the ginseng and began circulating internal energy.
A while later, the lower dantian began boiling like a volcanic eruption.
I steered the surging energy through the channels of the Marrow Spirit Technique.
“Huuu…”
My entire body filled with power.
I picked up a branch I had gathered and held it.
Uung—
Then I filled my hand with internal energy and began carving the stick bare-handed.
Uduk, uddeok…
The branch was sliced away at incredible speed under my energized hand.
After a moment, the stick had been reborn as a smooth wooden sword in my grasp.
Boong, boong!
I swung the sword through empty air.
It wasn’t particularly impressive, but it was good enough for practice.
“Huuu…”
In my previous life…
I had swung a sword at the late stage of the first class and died.
‘I thought I would gain some special enlightenment at death.’
Gaining enlightenment at the brink of life and death had seemed too novelistic to me.
I gained no enlightenment at all. My realm was still only late first class.
‘I held a sword for a hundred years…’
And I still hadn’t reached the peak stage.
‘It’s far away.’
For a cultivator, of course.
Even the minimum condition—the five qi gathering at the crown—felt distant.
And the supreme art that could bring me there, the Marrow Spirit Technique, was beyond the reach of even the late three flowers gathering at the crown, which I couldn’t understand.
The three flowers gathering at the crown was still far away.
The late three flowers gathering at the crown was an even greater distance.
‘How much more training do I need?’
All the peak experts I had met had told me the same thing.
From the peak stage onward, the world was completely different from the first class.
In reality, even a first class expert could not defeat a peak expert in a one-on-one match.
They lived in an entirely different world.
‘Can I enter that world?’
I had reached second class after fifty years of training without any martial arts in this life.
Then, another fifty years later, I had climbed to the peak of first class.
‘How many years does it take to reach the peak stage?’
Genius cultivators simply shoot past the peak and into three flowers gathering in months.
But I was no genius.
An extreme dullard.
In all honesty, the reason I reached first class in my previous lives was because I had been guided by the number one under heaven the whole time.
If I had trained alone or joined another sect, it would have taken two hundred years instead of a hundred to barely reach first class.
‘Can I reach the peak stage in this life?’
All kinds of thoughts swirled in my mind.
It seemed like every action I took was meaningless.
I felt a deep sense of powerlessness.
And when I felt that powerlessness…
I stood up.
“…It won’t disappear anyway.”
No matter how much I worried, my lack of power didn’t change.
My talentless dullard status and status as trash also didn’t change.
Yet…
Whether I worried or didn’t, if I was trash,
I would become a striving trash.
Stomp, stomp…
I stepped out of the cave.
The night breeze was cold, but as I circulated the Marrow Spirit Technique, a scorching heat rose inside me.
Boong, boong!
I swept away all distractions and unleashed the Danak Sword Art.
The sword technique inherited from Young-hoon hyung in my previous life, with twelve basic forms expanded.
I unleashed every derived derived form and derived ultimate form from the twenty-four basics.
A sharp sword qi exploded in front of the cave.
Shuk!
My wooden sword struck a falling leaf and sent it flying.
As I watched the leaf, a strange feeling arose. I stepped forward to chase it and swung the sword again.
Because I hadn’t infused the sword with internal energy, the leaf was merely struck by the wooden blade and flew upward.
‘More, more…’
I chased the leaf with even greater focus.
I continued the sword art, following the twenty-four basics of the Danak Sword Art.
Eighty-six derived forms, connection techniques, variations.
Hundreds of forms streamed from my hand.
Then, at some point, I realized I had been continuously swinging the sword at one single leaf, lost in a trance.
‘Just a little more, just a little more…’
My body felt like it was being pulled into martial dao.
‘Is this… enlightenment?’
Boong, boong!
It slipped away just as it seemed I could grasp it.
Just as I couldn’t catch that leaf without internal energy.
How long had I swung the sword so mindlessly?
Then, suddenly, I realized the sun was rising.
I had stayed up all night.
‘Just a little more, just a little more…’
Just one more step!
Dawn broke.
Pah!
Shuk!
The wooden sword, without internal energy, sliced cleanly through the floating leaf.
It wasn’t broken leaves, but fresh green foliage.
‘Almost… almost there…’
At that moment, I felt my left arm beginning to tremble.
‘This is…’
I ignored the trembling.
Should I continue the sword dance, or put the sword down for a moment?
‘No, I can’t. The enlightenment is right here!’
My eyes stung.
But my arm was shaking too much.
“Damn it…”
In the end, I dropped the sword.
“Huk… hah…”
Then I understood why my arm had gone numb.
Because I was a regenerator.
At this time.
Knowing what was about to happen.
Unconsciously, I had foreseen the pain of being bitten by a fox in just a moment, so I had already tensed my arm.
“Damn it!”
I grabbed the sword again and resumed the sword dance.
But…
The enlightenment didn’t come.
It had fled in the blink of an eye.
“Damn it!!!”
What was I afraid of?
What on earth?
When the path to the peak was right in front of me!
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood.
“If you understand the Way in the morning, even if you die in the evening, that’s all right!”
It was unfair.
The enlightenment I was supposed to find only once in my lifetime had been lost because of groundless fear.
“Uaaaaah!”
I roared, and in the depths of my heart I swore,
From today on, no matter if I die in the evening, I will never give up on the Way I gain in the morning.
Gripping the sword, I made that vow.