The She (1)
A chill ran down my spine!
I quickly retreated backward, forcing a smile as I spoke. “How do you do, Gwe-gun-nim. Gwe-gun-nim…”
“Come to think of it, you’re the guy who followed me when I didn’t win. What a pretty kid. My disciple wants to become one! What are you doing, man? Quickly take this precious child and let me reshape him!”
Gwe-gun’s eyes sparkled as he began manipulating Her.
‘Damn it, hurry up and tell me what you want.’
“Gwe-gun-nim, please listen to me. First, do you know that Seo Hyoel is getting married?”
“What?!”
Gwe-gun’s eyes rolled completely as he roared, “What? Seo Hyoel! He throws a big ceremony without even telling me! This won’t do! Kid, can’t you lead me to where Seo Hyoel is!”
“….”
I felt a chill run down my spine for some reason. ‘Damn it, trying to continue this conversation at all is exhausting.’
I was fortunate that I already understood Gwe-gun’s logic. “Yes, I’ll guide you right away. First, head straight to the Wondrous Castle. Activate the fortress quickly and give Seo Hyoel your blessing!”
“Good, good, good idea! Follow me!”
Gwe-gun tore through space with Her and entered the Wondrous Castle. I followed him helplessly because he had already severed my escape route behind me. After leaving a message with Jeon Myeong-hoon that I would stay outside the fortress, I slipped in. “Well, where should we go? Where can we give Seo Hyoel the blessing?” ‘He isn’t anywhere right now, so…’
“Use these coordinates. This is the place where Seo Hyoel will receive the blessing of all people.”
I pointed out the eastern location of Heon-won and stepped back. Gwe-gun’s eyes immediately rolled as he began manipulating the Wondrous Castle, and before long it rose into the air. I shouted at the madman, “I’ll go take a little look around this place where I’ll live from now on!”
“Oh, good, good. You’re getting to know your new home. Alright, hurry back and be reborn.”
“Thank you!”
I left the control room of the Wondrous Castle and began wandering its halls. ‘It’s terrifying…’
The puppets that made up the Wondrous Castle pretended to live normal lives, forming societies everywhere. Factories operated by them mass-produced more puppets. The horrifying part was the corpses of Integration-level puppets hanging everywhere. Nearly thirty of them. And six Integration-level auras lingered everywhere. ‘Last life, making that many Integration puppets in a hundred days was possible because there was already plenty of material. Looking at the corpses, they must have been refined over time, so if I’d seen them back then there would have been sixty, not twenty-eight.’
Even if I had reached Integration level, Gwe-gun’s madness would have trapped me here too. I couldn’t afford to relax even for a second if I didn’t want to hang from the ceiling like those soldiers. There were already six Integration puppets made. Heon-won would have become a toy if he had faced Gwe-gun. ‘He said he was visiting other places, not the deepest part of the Wondrous Castle, but somehow he ended up here.’
Originally I had planned to bring Kim Yeon outside without going inside, but the plan had slightly gone awry. ‘Well, if the plan changed, I would just move with the change.’
I knew the Wondrous Castle like the back of my hand. First I began searching for Kim Yeon. Gimyoseongsimjeon made our consciousnesses resonate. Kim Yeon’s location locked onto me.
“Yeon-ah!”
I ran straight there in a single step and found Kim Yeon inside a puppet-made manor. “Un-hyun oppa! You got captured too?!”
Kim Yeon ran toward me with tears in her eyes. I shook my head. “No, I came to rescue you.”
“What?”
She looked up at me with streaming tears. “What are you saying? How can we leave? It’s impossible. If it had been before I was captured, maybe, but once I’m inside the Wondrous Castle’s belly…”
I shook my head and took her hand. “No, it’s completely possible. All I need is one tiny gap.”
I felt her consciousness. Her foundation was already at Cheonin level, and her consciousness size had reached Integration. “By the way, Yeon-ah, did you finish your homework?”
“What?”
I patted her shoulder with a reassuring smile. “Let’s try it once.”
“…Is this really important right now?”
“It is. Your growth rate will determine your escape probability.”
I connected us through Gimyoseongsimjeon to the Wondrous Castle so Gwe-gun couldn’t eavesdrop and spoke to her. After a while she took out a fan and began performing Biikmu in front of me. Gigoego!
Her movements were perfect, like those of a top-tier master. At the same moment I saw her consciousness move in complete harmony with the flow of intent, and my eyes lit up. “Good. She has reached the peak!”
“Yes. As oppa said, her consciousness became more refined at some point… and the color of intent became clearer.”
Gwe-gun’s consciousness cultivation method itself opened the path to Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown and Five Qi Consorting with the Origin. So even if she had only reached the peak realm through Gimyoseongsimjeon and martial arts, it produced the same effect as a Wulin practitioner devoting their entire life to those two realms. “She was already a Five Qi Consorting with the Origin master in theory. Of course, because her martial arts proficiency differed, she would lose to a real one if we fought with raw skill alone….”
‘It doesn’t matter because Kim Yeon’s strength is in her consciousness, not martial arts.’
What mattered was that she could now use Wansuigungmurok from the peak realm onward. That required at least peak-level martial arts. “Alright, Yeon-ah. From now on I will enter you.”
Whoong!
I raised a light orb above my hand and began explaining. “Given Gwe-gun’s personality, he’ll probably come for me soon and try to drag me to the reshaping room. And when he does, I will take you out of the Wondrous Castle with me. Jeon Myeong-hoon will be waiting outside. Run straight to him.”
Jeon Myeong-hoon’s Jichukcheomgeok had a unique technique: the return lightning strike. This technique followed the basic properties of lightning. It summoned lightning from the sky that struck the ground and then returned, ascending again. “But in this situation the best use is simply to flee.”
Using the return lightning strike, Jeon Myeong-hoon had flown here along his own trajectory, creating a lightning path. By following that path on the way back, we could return at an incomparably faster speed. With my help it would be nearly the same as using transmission transmission. “While I stall Gwe-gun in front of him, I will entrust my body and consciousness to the light orb inside you. Then we can escape.”
“….”
She looked anxious. I smiled and patted her shoulder. “It’s fine. It will succeed.”
“…Yes. I believe you.”
She hesitated, but soon accepted my light orb. I fused the Gigoego and the light orb I had planted inside her and settled into her mind. The consciousnesses of the two of us became even closer through Gimyoseongsimjeon. And then. [When the hell is he coming? We need to be reborn in a new country right away! Hurry, hurry, hurry…] Gwe-gun’s voice echoed throughout the Wondrous Castle. “It’s starting…!”
I grabbed Kim Yeon’s hand and simultaneously unfolded Gimyoseongsimjeon. At the same moment her enormous consciousness, controlled by me, spread through every corner of the Wondrous Castle. For an instant control of the fortress passed to us. ‘This will hold for three seconds.’
Three seconds was more than enough. I pulled out the Colorless Glass Sword and gripped it in my off-hand. Uihye Eunsan!
The sword strike hit a hole in one side of the Wondrous Castle while the Integration puppets froze.
In the brief pause I moved with her in the frozen world and rushed outside. ‘One second down.’
The Wondrous Castle had been sturdier than expected, costing a full second. ‘Two seconds left…’
And then. [You bastard! You’re already in my new home…] “What?!”
Gwe-gun instantly regained control. I gritted my teeth, stepped outside, and threw Kim Yeon as hard as I could toward Jeon Myeong-hoon waiting in the distance. “Kyaaaah!”
“Yeon-ah, do exactly as I said!”
I cut my sentence short and turned toward Gwe-gun. Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! The Wondrous Castle restarted, unleashing a pressure equivalent to the entire human race. ‘The mad old man. How does he become a clan-level in one hundred years?’
It was something I felt every life, yet every time I was still amazed.
Six Integration puppets lifted by Her appeared. Gwe-gun began manipulating them without hiding his rage next to Her. ‘Perfect. As soon as he tries to take Yeon he rushes to the front.’
I shouted with everything I had. Even if we leave now, one strike is all we need to deliver to Gwe-gun. “Gwe-gun-nim! We will borrow your disciple! We will surely grow her even more correctly…”
I planted my stance and blew my will into the Colorless Glass Sword. “Please forgive me just once!”
EM__Whoosh! Uihye Eunsan! My will turned into a single beam of light and slammed into Gwe-gun at the center of the Wondrous Castle.
“What?!”
Gwe-gun, unable to dodge the insanely accelerated Uihye Eunsan, was struck. And I entered his consciousness. If Seo Hyoel’s mind was hell, Gwe-gun’s was purgatory. So I felt completely untainted even inside it and purified his mind with everything I had. Gigoego!
At the same moment I sensed Gwe-gun’s chaotic mind suddenly clear. ‘It won’t last long!’
EM__Whoosh! I stepped out of Gwe-gun’s consciousness, recovered my will, and succeeded! “…Amazing. What was that just now?”
Gwe-gun looked at me with the last of his madness gone. I answered calmly. “The name of the technique is Uihye Eunsan. Think of it as a kind of… mind sword.”
“Is that so…”
He smiled bitterly and said, “Go. Free my disciple from me. My interest is now only in blessing Seo Hyoel, so I won’t chase you until I catch him.”
“Thank you.”
He brushed his face and urged, “My state won’t last long, so hurry up and leave! Quickly!”
I bowed to Gwe-gun, then flew to Kim Yeon and Jeon Myeong-hoon. “Let’s go!”
Even without showing Biikchu, I had reversed his consciousness once. That meant I could show Biikchu once more in front of him later and gain another chance. I grabbed Kim Yeon’s hand again, placed my hand on Jeon Myeong-hoon’s shoulder, and used the light orb clone I had placed inside her. Gwaaaaah! Gwe-gun was roaring again. Gwe-gun’s sanity was desperately trying to suppress his madness, but he wouldn’t last long! “Go!”
Kim Yeon’s consciousness area, at Integration level, was swung by me into forming a single seal. The understanding of her peak-level martial arts merged with it, and the seal manifested as martial science in the world. Wansuigungmurok!
The consciousness area at Integration level moved, erasing our very existence from Gwe-gun’s perception. “Jeon Myeong-hoon!”
“I know!”
At the same moment Jeon Myeong-hoon used the return lightning strike. Crack! Crack! Our bodies wrapped in lightning and we returned at transmission-like speed along the path we had come.
But the moment Gwe-gun’s madness won, I felt Her and the Wondrous Castle tearing through space toward us. I grabbed Jeon Myeong-hoon’s shoulder, inserted a light orb clone for him too, and accelerated him. Gitsutsu tsu! Jeon Myeong-hoon accelerated further and we fled the Wondrous Castle at transcendental speed. Whoosh! The distant fortress shrank toward the horizon and soon vanished completely from consciousness range. Kim Yeon watched with tears in her eyes. “…Oppa. I…”
“I know.”
I held her tight. “Congratulations on breaking free.”
Jeon Myeong-hoon looked at the scene and stroked the wooden box in his arms.
And then Her’s left arm grabbed my leg. “Hwaaaaaah!!!”