Chapter 413
I had felt it before. I opened my eyes once more in the middle of a regression. This time I was racing against the flow of the river of time woven from the Taiji. Above, the black sky stretched out, and as always, ten seats stood revealed in its expanse. If it had been any other loop, seeing those seats would have shattered my sanity. But this time my mind had already absorbed the true meaning of the Dharma-Destroying True Word, so the shock of confronting the seats barely registered. I simply kept repeating the words in my heart and did not lose my mind.
And as I gazed upon those ten seats, I suddenly froze.
Wait…
A chill raced through my soul itself.
Because the majority of the seats above were all looking straight at me.
The one carrying a resolve as vast as Mount Tai glared at me with fierce intensity.
The one hazy and dreamlike, as if lost in illusion, gazed down with something almost curious.
The one that felt somehow familiar offered no emotion, yet still stared.
The one that seemed to be sealed away somewhere filled me with the sensation of excitement.
And the one brimming with an endless hunger gave nothing but the raw feeling of emptiness; judgment was impossible.
Among the central seats, the one radiating a void-like emptiness paid no attention to me and focused instead on its neighbor.
The same was true of the seat that seemed to belong to the Soul-Generating Flower.
It was unmistakably the one I had seen in the nineteenth loop, the one that had appeared to watch over me.
Except it no longer glowed with light.
The radiance had grown terribly faint, as if the owner had suddenly died, and it flickered like a candle about to gutter out.
Two of the central seats seemed to be watching over the one that was fading.
And I already knew who it was.
The Heavenly Venerable of Time…
It had to be him.
He had offered me a gift and sacrificed something of his own for an immense price.
So that was why he called it “luck,” I realized.
His tone had carried the unmistakable weight of someone who understood that to escape one’s fate, sacrifice was required.
Clearly, the cost the Heavenly Venerable of Time had paid was no small thing.
The nineteenth loop had shown only two who truly recognized me—the Heavenly Venerable of Time and the most ancient being. But in the twentieth loop the Heavenly Venerable of Time no longer even registered my presence.
No, it was as if he had ceased to exist within his own consciousness.
I looked up at him and offered a deep, heartfelt gratitude.
Then my eyes found the final seat among the ten.
The one belonging to the most ancient being was gazing at me with perfect calm.
A shiver ran down my spine.
For some reason I felt far more terror in the gaze of the most ancient being than in the resolve of the one like Mount Tai.
This time everyone was staring at me because the Heavenly Venerable of Time had intervened in my regression.
I understood it at once.
By stepping into the process, he had caused the other Heavenly Venerables to notice me.
Perhaps this entire loop had been sent by him rather than by my own power.
But when a Heavenly Venerable uses his own strength, eight of the ten seats clearly register it.
The seat of the Heavenly Venerable of Time had lost its light and could not see me, while the ninth seat simply did not care.
Because he had spent his own power, the most ancient being and everyone else now looked upon me with absolute clarity.
And I felt it even more strongly this time.
The most ancient being had always been able to sense my regressions.
I could tell.
His gaze was so calm it was almost peaceful.
In my last life I had thought the Clear Scale Armor had kept him at bay, but that had been only a justification.
Right now I understood that the most ancient being could have chased me through history itself.
The fear was unbearable.
Perhaps…
The other Heavenly Venerables’ eyes were now fixed on me because of the Heavenly Venerable of Time’s intervention, so he simply chose not to chase.
But if that were true…
Then in the next regression, when the others no longer watched, I might be pursued after all.
The thought was terrifying.
The regression process was nearing its end.
Soon the point of my return would arrive.
And suddenly I noticed something strange in the sky.
I had sensed it roughly in the nineteenth loop as well.
It was…
Four seats in the center were encircled by rings.
The six on the outer edge had no rings except one.
But my eyes widened.
The outer rings.
At first I assumed they belonged to the ringed seats.
They did not.
Rings alone!
There were exactly five rings around the outer edge.
I had mistakenly counted the seat without a central star as one of my six.
The illusion of distance had been too great.
In truth there were only nine seats in the entire sky.
Nine seats, five rings.
Those were the true identities of the ten lights beneath the sky.
The regression was complete.
With a violent jolt, something seemed to snag me somewhere.
***
I stood once more in an immense torrent of chaotic power.
And as I faced it, my hands were clasped with others’.
I understood.
This was the moment after the Mugeuk Sect had been annihilated.
The instant when I stood with the twenty-three remaining companions.
This must be the gift the Heavenly Venerable of Time offered.
I understood the time itself as a transaction.
Yeongsung had proposed it.
I had rejected the offer and refused the price he wished to trade.
Yet I had known.
I had refused to respect and trade that time because I had desperately desired it.
Yes…
I missed these companions more than I could express.
I gripped the hands of Hong Beom and Jeon Myeong-hoon on either side and felt their warmth.
Beyond that warmth I felt the presence of Buk Hyang-hwa, Kim Yeon, Yeon-jin, Kim Young-hoon, Oh Hyun-seok, Wisihon, Umwa, Baek Rin, the remaining Guardian Ghost Kings, Yuk Yo, Seo Ran, Siho, and the others.
I wept as I felt the warmth of every remaining soul.
Thank you…
I offered the Heavenly Venerable of Time my deepest gratitude, then entered the time of extreme purity and rapidly inflated my inner domain.
The domain had already merged with my soul through the Law of Connected Boundaries, so even from twenty-nine thousand years in the future it had traveled with me.
Yet something was amiss. The domain I had prepared was still at the very beginning of the Integration stage.
No matter!
I quickly sealed Hong Beom and Jeon Myeong-hoon inside and returned the companions to my body.
The seventh Guardian Ghost King I failed to seal was crushed.
I gnashed my teeth and looked to the sky.
Mount Tai still stood there.
And then the light of the Heavenly Venerables arrived.
Powerful and magnificent, they descended.
I immediately lowered my head.
The dazzling light wrapped around the mountain of darkness.
As I expected… the other Heavenly Venerables had recognized my regression!
The Heavenly Venerable of Light had come to catch the master of Mount Tai, sensing the reversal of time.
I sweated coldly and kept my head bowed.
Surprisingly, the master of Mount Tai offered no resistance.
He merely looked down at me calmly from above.
Be cautious of the light!
Many beings had warned me of the same truth.
Perhaps the light was far more dangerous than Mount Tai itself.
I waited, head lowered, for the master of Mount Tai to be completely captured by the light.
Then a ringing sound echoed.
I suddenly realized I had entered my own inner world.
This… what is this!?
The clear, desolate inner world.
It was mine.
And then I sensed someone behind me.
Someone had invaded my inner world and forcibly pulled my consciousness inside!
Yet I could not turn.
My throat felt choked.
No… it was more like a blade inside my mouth or a gun pressed to my temple.
I felt with absolute certainty that any sudden movement would tear my soul apart and kill me.
The intruder’s voice spoke.
A voice that was warped, twisted, and impossible to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
You do not possess the right to that.
The voice carried a faint, simmering anger.
I will go today.
The whisper reached my ear.
Come up. We will see who you really are.
His presence vanished.
I whirled around, but nothing existed in the inner world except me.
I was drenched in cold sweat.
I knew who it was.
The master of Mount Tai.
He had entered my inner world as if to mock me.
Even Seo Hyoel had not dared to intrude so casually, yet the god of the mountain had slipped inside in an instant, sealed me inside as the master of the inner world, left his words, and vanished.
The authority was chilling.
But I did not tremble before it. I gnashed my teeth.
I knew exactly what he had done.
I escaped from the inner world and wept blood.
A hole had been torn in the domain I had unfolded.
The mountain of darkness gradually grew transparent and vanished together with the threads of light.
But I could not remain silent. I shouted.
Mount Tai!!!
Among the twenty-three companions who remained, one had been taken by the mountain god before I could seal him and died instantly.
Of the nine Guardian Ghost Kings I had placed inside the domain, all except Wisihon, Umwa, and Baek Rin had been crushed and shattered.
He had killed every single one before I could save them.
The projection of Mount Tai vanished together with the eight lights, yet his gaze remained glued to me.
He had obviously done something while passing through my inner world.
I gripped the remaining companions even more fiercely.
Just moments ago I had wondered what would have happened if the Heavenly Venerable of Time had returned everything before the Mugeuk Sect vanished.
But even then it would have been the same.
The god of the mountain would have devoured everything I had left, down to the last scrap, even after being captured by the light.
The power of calamity surging from the Goryeok Realm grew even more immense.
It was the gift the mountain god had left behind.
I gnashed my teeth and swore through tears of blood.
Just as Jeon Myeong-hoon had sworn revenge against the god of lightning, I would avenge the god of the mountain.
The world had not ended, but my emotions boiled with even greater fury.
As the power of calamity drew me in, on the very first day of the regression I ignited a burning desire for revenge against the Heavenly Venerable of Mount Tai.