Prostration Before the Blessed One (2)
Time came and went.
Primordial nascent beings were born, fashioning stars.
Soon after, beings beneath the nascent ones emerged.
They were the world’s administrators and sages.
Innate star-plate sages instinctively began nurturing life within the universe.
They guided the stars toward proper orbits.
Galaxies and star systems bloomed in the blink of an eye within the heavenly realm.
Life took root, and the environment ripened into one where organisms could grow.
At the center of one such star, just above its surface.
One entity stood there.
Shiver… shiver… shiver…
Grumble… grumble… grumble…
He wore pure white robes and had blossomed black flowers all around him.
It was Seo Eun-hyun.
Seo Eun-hyun muttered endlessly with vacant eyes.
His gaze was empty, and the black blood-lotus flowers writhed endlessly, screaming in disgust.
Yet at the heart of that grotesque flower garden, Seo Eun-hyun remained calm, muttering without a care.
The curse garden expanded.
One li… ten li… one hundred li… a thousand li!
But that was the limit.
After reaching a thousand li in radius around Seo Eun-hyun, the curse garden stopped growing.
Instead, at some point.
Animals began to appear in the curse garden.
Shiver… shiver…
The veins and organs sprouting from Seo Eun-hyun’s body thrashed desperately to fall off, then died.
This continued for tens of years until it gradually evolved.
Then one day.
“Hah… hah… hah!”
From Seo Eun-hyun’s body, a black blood-lotus flower bloomed.
Inside it, a being with the exact same face as Seo Eun-hyun and tentacles burst forth.
The being looked at Seo Eun-hyun, its face twisted in terror, and fled as far as it could.
Yet the farther it went, the more it withered and died.
Dozens of black blood-lotus flowers bloomed from Seo Eun-hyun’s body every day.
From each, beings identical to Seo Eun-hyun emerged, fled, and withered to death countless times.
The true nature of these creatures was none other than Seo Eun-hyun’s heart demons.
Even so, they fled desperately from his body.
Grumble… grumble… grumble…
Seo Eun-hyun’s lips moved, but the meaning of the words could not be discerned.
They were merely meaningless sounds.
And his eyes, which spat them out, had become so dark no one could imagine.
Sssshhh—
Seo Eun-hyun himself did not realize, but over time his hair turned completely white.
Like in his old age.
Grumble… grumble… grumble…
Yet whether he knew or not.
He simply repeated his muttering.
Continuously vomiting curses into his body.
***
A new heavenly realm was born, and a thousand years passed.
During those thousand years, countless lives took root on each star under the sages’ guidance.
Primordial star-shattering life forms gradually appeared, infusing the heavenly realm with vitality.
Among the thousand years, one planet remained half-melted.
Near its core.
From there, something that had slumped and stared blankly with vacant eyes suddenly clenched its fist.
The fist struck its own head.
Kwuaaaang!
The entire planet shook.
A terrifying blow, yet the being remained unharmed.
But something had happened.
It stopped muttering and split open its belly, reaching inside to pull out something.
It was a scroll.
When unfolded, various items and puppets inside were sealed.
One of the puppets on the scroll was wailing.
The being that had half-melted the planet held the puppet with a dazed expression.
[I humbly congratulate you! Lord Venerable!]
The puppet bowed with a face full of reverence.
And he finally understood.
‘After the End,’ a new heavenly realm had been born, roughly one thousand years ago.
That day was exactly his five-thousandth birthday.
Of course, it was the five-thousandth birthday counted by the soul’s age, not the body’s.
Five thousandth birthday.
Seo Eun-hyun, hearing the puppet’s cheers, finally regained his senses.
***
“…”
But regaining senses did not change anything.
He simply stared blankly at the empty sky.
What would change if things were different?
After all, there was nothing in this world.
The ones he loved were all dead.
There was nowhere to return to.
Then what was a person supposed to do?
For nearly a thousand years he had raged, suffered, and cursed.
But when he half-melted the planet, emptiness replaced pain.
He had sworn revenge for losing his companions to Won Rip, because Won Rip at least existed at a reachable level.
Yet now the being who had annihilated his companions and beloved ones—what was he to do?
Seo Eun-hyun knew.
Even after hundreds of millions of years, he could never defeat that demon god.
How could he even reach it, let alone quell his vengeful heart?
He smiled helplessly and sat blankly again for twenty-three years.
Then came the twenty-fourth year.
“…”
Suddenly his eyes narrowed as he touched his belly.
“Ah, ah, ah…”
He had not spoken for so long he seemed to have forgotten how.
But then he recalled the word ‘word’.
“Gone…!”
Panic flooded his face.
“The colorless glass swords… the colorless glass swords… are gone…!”
And he remembered.
When he had swung his sword at the being atop Mount Taesan, it had shattered.
Only then did he scream with all his might.
“Huaaah! Ah, aaaaaah! Aaaaaah!”
While his whole body trembled, he found the tiniest shard of the colorless glass sword deeply embedded inside his dantian.
Seo Eun-hyun gritted his teeth with a trembling hand.
“I… must find it.”
After a time nearly equivalent to a thousand years, a purpose awakened in him.
Thanks to that, ‘reason’ began to return.
“…”
He silently extended his consciousness, scouring the planet he had been on.
But he could not find the shard.
After searching for a while, Seo Eun-hyun moved to the neighboring planet to look for it.
No luck.
Yet he did something slightly different.
Thud… thump… thud…
He used the earth law technique to smooth the ground and sketched the companions’ appearances he remembered.
Whether it was a sketch or a mural did not matter.
But after a while.
Seo Eun-hyun stopped.
His eyes shook dangerously.
Without the colorless glass swords, there was no Mansang Inyeondo.
And without Mansang Inyeondo, his memories had begun to leak.
He trembled as he struggled to recall his companions’ faces accurately.
After nearly thirty-six years of mental strain.
Seo Eun-hyun managed to recall enough of their features to draw their faces.
But he was not satisfied.
They were not accurate.
He sighed deeply.
No matter what, he needed the Mansang Inyeondo to find proper memories.
And for that, he needed the colorless glass swords.
He took the planet where he had drawn the companions’ faces as coordinates and began searching for the shard.
The shards were tiny fragments scattered across the star realm.
But Seo Eun-hyun paid no heed.
Although they were glass swords, after four thousand years of refining in his dantian, they had become ambiguous minerals.
What that meant was that the colorless glass sword shards were older than this newly born heavenly realm.
His method of tracking them was simple.
He found a planet, activated the Mansang Inyeondo’s seal across its entire veins, and followed the strongest flow of power.
Where the veins surged most, that was where the shard lay.
The planet had used the Mansang Inyeondo for the first time, so the strongest flow was where it had been used most often—longer than the planet itself.
Through this method, Seo Eun-hyun recovered a thumb-sized colorless glass sword shard over four thousand years.
Once he had found that many, his first action was simple.
Whoong—
He returned to the planet where he had first drawn his companions’ faces and activated the Mansang Inyeondo with the thumb-sized shard.
Although the recoverable range was limited, the faces he had wanted were all there.
Seo Eun-hyun restored the faces and sculpted tiny stone statues.
Small enough to fit in his hand.
He buried them in the planet and raised a tombstone.
At first, he made only the tombs of those preserved in the Mansang Inyeondo.
He could not do more.
But now he had a new purpose.
To recover the Mansang Inyeondo, memorize every face, and raise tombs for everyone he remembered from the previous heavenly realm.
That was his new goal in this empty new heavenly realm.
He began prostrating and offering incense toward the tombs he had already made.
Performing proper funerals.
And so, from that day, Seo Eun-hyun’s wandering began.
***
Six thousand years passed.
Seo Eun-hyun reached exactly his ten-thousand five-hundredth year.
Clack—
Finally, he recovered one handle of the colorless glass sword.
Pathetically slow.
Yet he smiled.
More tombs had been raised on planets than before.
He placed the colorless glass sword into Jeomuldo.
He still did not know how he had revived, but he knew one thing.
The being who had revived him had also restored Jeomuldo and his other belongings.
Thanks to that, he could use the capital civilization’s law.
He looked at the handle of the colorless glass sword inside Jeomuldo and thought.
He would insert it into his dantian and refine it again only after all the colorless glass swords were restored, simultaneously.
Otherwise the dantian would take too long to reach them, and some shards would be strong while others weak.
Whoong—
When he held the handle of the colorless glass sword and activated the Mansang Inyeondo, he felt a faint attraction.
Very weak, very short-lived, but Seo Eun-hyun cared not.
It was a good omen.
The more the colorless glass swords were restored, the more the Mansang Inyeondo would draw their shards toward other colorless glass swords.
In other words, the more colorless glass swords were restored, the faster the recovery speed.
And so, another ten thousand five hundred years passed.
Seo Eun-hyun finally restored one out of three thousand colorless glass swords.