A Regressor’s Tale of Cultivation - Chapter 302: The Protection (Part 2)
What am I supposed to do? Hallucinate? It’s insane. Should I shove it back into my mouth? No, what would she think of me? I have a chronic illness? At the Nascent Soul stage, what illness could I possibly have! Or perhaps….
My head spun as I racked my brain in a frenzy.
Kang Min-hee approached me.
I felt my thoughts threatening to burst, and my nerves tightened accordingly.
Considering her temperament and the severity of the Black Ghost Valley’s corporal punishments, I might have spent ten days laboring with my spiritual energy sealed in the penal labor yard, or perhaps served as a test subject for the sadistic interrogators for a few days.
At that exact moment.
“Are you all right, Seolip?”
Kang Min-hee pressed her hand to my forehead and asked.
“Ah…”
Only then did I realize I had made a mistake and failed to read her intent.
Kang Min-hee was genuinely concerned for me.
“I am quite all right. I apologize for showing such an unsightly appearance.”
“An unsightly appearance? You vomited blood. You don’t look all right at all.”
“Ah… this is…”
I struggled to come up with an explanation before settling on one that seemed plausible.
“It’s a side effect of the internal technique I acquired before crossing into the Gwanghan Realm. I only vomited a little blood, so there’s no need to worry.”
“Hmm, I see.”
But I sensed something was amiss.
Her intent had grown chilly.
“My friends say it’s a lie.”
“…!”
It seemed one of the ghosts who had mastered ghost arts had recognized the symptoms as those of Blood Demon Sea Light or Blood Severing Willow Grove.
“I have quite a few friends, and among them are some with excellent medical skills. Your symptoms indicate an internal disorder.”
“…I see… I apologize for the deception.”
“Hoo…”
She waved at me wearily.
“Come here. I’ll give you medicine.”
“…! No, I could never dare…”
“It’s an order. Come here. Don’t go running off and vomiting blood again. Get treated here and leave.”
I followed her into the clinic in a daze.
The blood I had vomited was being cleaned up by a few ghosts at the back.
‘Damn it. I only came to raise our affinity score with a greeting… this is my own fault.’
My main body must have seen something strange and thus dragged me into this mess.
She reached for Jeomuldo hanging on one wall of the clinic, pulled out two or three pills the size of eyeballs, and handed them over.
“Here. These are the Yin Death Pills. They’re said to be extremely effective for internal injuries.”
“May I ask what these are made from…?”
“Why? Do you have a rash or something?”
“Yes… they look similar.”
“Well, what do you call it? The Zhi Lac Powder good for internal injuries, the dried leaves of the Ghost Flame Flower that bloom in the thick yin energy of Black Ghost Valley, the bamboo that grows in the swamp called Ghost Bamboo, and… ugh. The dung of the White Bone Toad?”
She seemed to have gotten the ingredients from her “friends.”
“And black moss… the mud used to build houses??? Are you serious? Why make medicine from that stuff? What? Does house mud contain the power of consciousness? No, what is…?”
After a brief moment of bewilderment, she asked me.
“It does contain frog dung and mud… I suppose it’s safe to eat, but… how about it? Would you like to take this?”
“Yes. Please give it to me.”
Since I was taking Won Rip’s body, I could even eat worse than dung.
The thought of insulting Won Rip only made me feel a strange satisfaction.
“Mmm. All right.”
I expressed my gratitude to Kang Min-hee, chewed the pill, and activated Blood Demon Sea Light.
My vitality surged, and my chest felt refreshed.
“See? Better now?”
“Yes. Thanks to this, I feel much better.”
The filthy, disgusting feeling of my guts twisting from the main body had completely vanished.
However, a faint unease lingered within me.
‘My main body is unconscious right now.’
No, more accurately, he was sleeping like a man recovering strength after lying in the infirmary, not simply unconscious.
The fact that the main body was sleeping at all posed a problem.
After reaching the Core Formation stage, I no longer needed proper rest, and since Buk Hyang-hwa’s death, my vow of revenge against Won Rip, I hadn’t slept properly in a long time.
To begin with, I hadn’t been in such a state of exhaustion that sleep was necessary very often.
If I had ever truly slept, it would have been after battling a truly powerful opponent until my mind shattered, or surviving in extreme conditions where my spiritual energy had drained away for over ten years, or after meeting a supreme being.
‘But right now, the main body is seeing one single Tanghua painting and suddenly acting strange.’
His physical condition wasn’t that bad.
Thanks to the enlightenment Tae Yeol-jeon had given me, I had learned to draw power from the depths of my unconscious, and through the Invisible Sword, I had converted that power into vitality.
Yet I had collapsed so suddenly with a stomach-churning sensation that I nearly fainted.
It was too bizarre.
‘Is there something hidden inside that Tanghua painting?’
Perhaps.
If so, it was truly terrifying.
Since we had seen that same painting together on multiple occasions.
Perhaps Tae Yeol-jeon was being manipulated by some divine entity, like the Seven-Color King or the Future King, without even realizing it.
The main body’s well-being remained my greatest concern, and at the same time, I worried for the well-being of “us.”
‘The main body has always been me so far.’
I was Seo Eun-hyun, and Seo Eun-hyun was Seolip.
It was no different from a puppeteer performing with a doll in one hand and playing a ventriloquist act.
Of course, the resources and the level of the sorcerer were far beyond that of simple ventriloquism.
‘Right now, my situation is like a ventriloquist falling asleep because he’s exhausted, while the doll wakes up and keeps performing on its own.’
An absurd situation.
So who was “I” now? The main body, Seo Eun-hyun, or the second personality born from him?
I felt a disorienting confusion over my identity.
Of course, I wasn’t troubled by the idea that we had truly split, nor was I worried about the pain of separation.
‘If that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.’
The main body retained his memories and his enlightenment.
Whether I was Seolip or Seo Eun-hyun, or the second personality born from him, it made no difference.
Honestly, that was all.
I had no desire to take the main body’s body or steal his power of regression and reincarnation.
The main body’s life and the power of regression were already a terrifying abyss of despair and suffering in and of themselves.
I had no intention of embracing it.
‘The only thing I worry about is “regression”…’
Until now, I had been certain that when the main body died, his consciousness would fully transfer to me, making me his resurrection body, and when the resurrection body died, I would regress again.
But the signs of separation between the main body and his consciousness had raised one possibility that concerned me.
‘If the main body dies, he might not revive me and simply regress to the original timeline….’
It would have been a blow to the main body, and at the same time, it presented a massive dilemma for me.
‘If that happens, what becomes of me?’
Would I regress alongside the main body, or stay on this world line?
It didn’t matter which choice I made.
‘First, once the main body wakes up, I’ll have to ask him about this problem.’
I organized my thoughts and bowed my head to Kang Min-hee before me.
“Thank you sincerely, Venerable.”
“It’s fine. As long as you’re better, that’s all that matters. From now on, don’t be rude, and if you feel pain or discomfort, tell me immediately. I can’t stand pretentious brats like you.”
“Haha… Is that so?”
“Yes. Remember back when? There was this guy. He lived in a village like mine.”
“What kind of fool was he?”
“Me and that fool… how should I put it? We worked together in places like the Commercial Hall. That fool kept making huge mistakes at the Commercial Hall. He’d fix them afterward, but… anyway, on his second week, he spilled a whole drink on his superior’s desk.”
“….”
I understood exactly what she was talking about, and my mind sank.
‘Damn it.’
This was my story.
It was definitely the day I spilled coffee on Hyun-seok Oppa’s desk.
‘Hyun-seok Oppa… I used to think he was the most terrifying person in the company.’
It’s said that a woman’s grudge is like frost in the fifth month, but why doesn’t a man’s anger produce frost?
Because anger itself is power.
Right now, Oh Hyun-seok and I got along well, like brothers, and he had a cheerful, easy-to-like personality.
But the more friendly a person is, the more terrifying they become when truly angry.
After work, I was dragged to the smoking lounge for an hour and a half and scolded in a cold, stern posture.
I had never realized that a person could be that frightening even without matching body size or muscle mass.
‘At the time, the boss was glaring down at me with his large frame and thick muscles…’
I thought he was a tiger about to roar.
“Back then, that idiot waited until his superior finished scolding him before going home together. Later, I found out that guy was drenched in cold sweat. He couldn’t even stand properly because his legs were weak… here, what should I call it… oh, a flying technique? He had a chair waiting, but he kept trying to make me sit down.”
It was definitely what had happened.
She had been waiting for me, after all.
The day’s events came flooding back.
Even when I got off the subway, it was raining, and Kang Min-hee didn’t have an umbrella.
Back then, neither of us lived alone; we commuted from our family homes in the southern part of Gyeonggi.
One reason I had asked her out was because our commute paths overlapped, and we both got off at Gwanggyo Station.
‘When I saw the convenience store’s umbrellas were all sold out, I had no choice but to run.’
Since our home was close to Gwanggyo Station, I offered to run ahead, and I gave my umbrella to Kang Min-hee, who still had further to go, then ran myself.
‘Those memories again.’
Kang Min-hee recounted the exact same memory, including me giving her the umbrella.
But the feeling she had sensed from it seemed a little different from mine.
“That idiot kept coming to me the next day with a cold and a fever all day, so I had to look after him the whole time. I was so annoyed I thought I’d go crazy. Watching him babble nonsense all day was frustrating.”
‘I don’t remember it being that bad…’
In my memory, he had been perfectly fine.
But her memory of it was different.
“And that day, there was something called Excel at my hometown that my superior taught me, but because of the cold, I couldn’t even put it in my head properly, so he kept coming to me asking questions.”
She laughed bitterly.
“See? If you don’t take care of yourself when you need something, and you get sick or hurt because of it, the entire group suffers for it. Remember this. Don’t act like that idiot.”
“….”
As I listened to her words, a strange sense of discomfort stirred, and I asked.
“Forgive me, Venerable.”
“What is it?”
“In the story you told me earlier… that fool gave you a raincoat when it rained, right? And the next day he caught a cold.”
“That’s right.”
“Then, if the Venerable hadn’t accepted the raincoat at that time, wouldn’t the Venerable have caught the cold?”
“Perhaps. But unlike that idiot, I’m smarter.”
She sighed.
“Instead of the idiot, if I had caught the cold, I could have taught the idiot later, right? He’s so dumb he only remembers what I explain, but if I only explain one thing, he gets it. So it would have been better for me to teach the idiot.”
She lit a cigarette and stood up.
Kang Min-hee drew a formation on the floor for communicating with the Ghost Realm and finished her story with the following words.
“If you go back to the past, I’ll be the one in pain instead.”
* * *
The main body woke up again.
I explained everything I had experienced to the main body and summarized all the events that had occurred during his sleep, delivering them to his consciousness.
Only one thing.
Kang Min-hee’s final words were not passed on to the main body.