The First Day of the 998th Cycle
Sssshhh….
Sumisan had ended.
At the same moment, the will of Geomgeukcheongun that had lived inside my saber faded away.
: : Someday, you will become mine. : :
“…”
I swallowed hard as I listened to the words of Geomgeukcheongun.
I had only ever been noticed by True Immortals a handful of times before.
The [Most Ancient One] had pursued me after I regressed, and the owner of Mount Tai had descended to kill me.
At the same time, although my memories were vague back then, I had also met someone from the precedent existence and someone else from the darkness of Bongmyeong-ju.
In addition, I had met the Lord of the Heavenly Punishment, the Heavenly Venerable of Time, Jeong-ryeo, and Yeong-seung.
‘Hmm. It wasn’t just a few times.’
Anyway.
I had received attention or anger from them before.
However, I had never met a being who “desired” me like this Geomgeukcheongun did.
‘A True Immortal… one that I guessed was part of the Light faction… desires me?’
It was terrifying.
I looked behind me.
Kugugugugu!
It looked like a huge crack had formed in the universe.
A large stone had fallen into the basin, creating a hole.
‘This is insane…’
Thanks to the universe’s restoration, space was being filled in again, but I trembled thinking of the impossible power that Geomgeukcheongun had unleashed.
“…Wait a minute, though…”
I looked at the hole in the universe and suddenly remembered something.
Beyond the hole was silence.
No response had come after Hyeol-eum’s scream.
I stared at the hole with trembling eyes.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds….
“…Hah.”
I laughed.
Then, with a quiet smile, I spread my arms wide in the extreme joy I felt within the lives and deaths that had repeated almost a thousand times.
“I… am free.”
I had finally escaped.
“I am free!!”
There was no sound in the cosmic space.
An endless vast star sky and darkness.
I began to laugh inside that star sky.
“Ha, haha…”
The moment I laughed, spiritual energy burst forth from around me and began to boil.
[Ahahahaha! Hahahahaha!]
Laughter erupted from within the ancient command.
I!
Finally!
[I’ve escaped!!!]
I felt the lingering aura of Hyeol-eum completely subside, laughed while crying tears of joy.
Kurlung, kurrurung!
[At last!!!]
Jjeo-eong!
My avatar shattered, revealing my true body inside it.
The compressed core emerged into cosmic space.
The core of the Venerables, called the Original Star.
Original Star
Colorless Sword Mountain Traversing the Sea Great Star
My integration domain had become a star that glowed with starlight from within the cosmic space.
Beginning from the surface of the star, the entire planet was made of colorless crystal from the star core onward.
In places where inverted swords covered the sword mountains, that was my world and who I was.
Kugugugugu!
At the same time, I felt an immense spiritual energy surge through my star veins into the core.
At first it seemed like spiritual energy was simply filling the core everywhere.
But soon the spiritual energy filled the core and veins began to move inside the star.
Veins like blood vessels entered the colorless sword mountain everywhere.
At the same time, spiritual energy began to circulate inside the star.
Spiritual energy circulated everywhere across the planet, creating heavenly phenomena.
Rain sometimes fell inside the star, and brilliant light gathered to form spirit-like beings.
At the same time, spiritual energies exploded inside my star, materials combined, and life-like beings began to form inside this star.
They were still just microbes, bacteria-level at best… but perhaps after hundreds of millions of years, proper intelligent life would be born.
At the same time, I noticed something at the peak of spiritual energy circulation inside my star.
[Ah….]
Kugugugugugu!
At the same time, spiritual energy began to “produce” itself in accordance with the laws of nature inside the star.
At the same time, the star that had only been devouring spiritual energy through other stars’ veins now began to transmit spiritual energy toward other stars.
Only then did I truly feel that my star veins were completely connected.
‘Ah… so that’s it.’
Qi Condensation through Unity only consumed spiritual energy.
Most cultivators spent their entire lives devouring nearby spiritual energy, locking it away in their bodies, using it with spells, and endlessly “consuming” resources.
Even at the Four Pillars and Unity stage, the amount of spiritual energy they consumed and locked away increased, only lengthening preservation time.
The truth of “consumption” had not disappeared.
However, from the Star Shattering stage onward, it changed.
From then on, a true nature of the universe was born inside their bodies, and spiritual energy was “produced” according to the circulation within that nature.
‘The Fissure Opening stage created stars, the Star Plate stage sorted star constellations, and the Star Shattering stage spewed out materials capable of creating stars.’
I understood the Star Shattering stage by recalling the early days of the universe’s creation.
The Star Shattering stage was where one circulated spiritual energy from the star inside their body to produce materials capable of creating a star, or the producer that generated spiritual energy.
The production order of the universe.
That was the Star Shattering stage.
Uuuwoong!
I produced spiritual energy and more precisely engraved the force of my star into the universe.
Uuuwoong!
Communing with the vast space-time itself, I engraved the principle into my first star made with the force of the universe.
The repair method of the Star Shattering stage was so obvious yet it was the method of investigation.
U, Che, Mong, Yeok, Keul.
And Jeong, Hoe.
Swoooaaah—
Rain began to fall on the first star I had just created.
When the rain touched the ground, it turned into crystal, becoming the foundation of my star.
Thus, my first star became the star symbolizing the beginning of the Star Shattering stage.
The Rain Heaven Great Star.
‘From now on, I must follow the training method of the Star Shattering stage.’
The Star Shattering stage training method was simple yet immense.
The Venerables’ repair method was like this.
On the star you created, you made an avatar using elements of your own star.
Then, commanding that avatar to use the star’s power to create a second avatar of only the Unity stage.
After that, from the Unity stage avatar, you exploded another avatar again to create a second star.
After creating a total of five stars and engraving the principles of U, Che, Mong, Yeok, and Keul,
You brought five satellites around an appropriate planet and made it revolve around the planet.
Then, endlessly revolving the planet, when your satellites aligned in a row around the planet, you borrowed the planet’s power to complete the Inner Trigram of the 64 hexagrams.
When the Inner Trigram was completed, you revolved around the planet and drew in the universe’s star veins and spiritual energy in earnest to complete the Outer Trigram.
Thus, through a total of seven Star Body rituals, reaching the peak of the Star Shattering stage, that was the training method of the Star Shattering stage.
‘From the Star Shattering stage, lifespan increases in units of tens of millions of years.’
Of course, even after tens of millions of years, the star you created didn’t explode or scatter.
Instead, if you couldn’t advance your realm after tens of millions of years, your soul would scatter and die across the universe, and only the satellites left by the Venerables would remain and drift through space.
Venerables often expressed this phenomenon as “being eaten by the cycle of time.”
[Huu…]
I manifested in human-form avatar inside my body and looked at the sky.
There was still no proper atmosphere, and the sky was a star made entirely of jagged glass.
Only a few microbes existed, nothing more, and no trace of intelligent life could be seen.
I breathed from the top of the star and felt the spiritual energy.
Venerables of average size had few connected star veins even on a satellite-sized star.
Because of that, spiritual energy wasn’t abundant in average Venerables’ stars, and those Venerables, despite becoming Venerables, grew their avatars with the help of Saints in the middle realm and repeated their training with the middle realm’s spiritual energy.
However, I knew I didn’t need to do that.
‘My star veins were also fully connected, and my body size itself was planetary level, so the spiritual energy was only slightly less than the middle realm.’
With this much, I could advance my realm instantly even without the help of Saints.
Plus, since I had already completed the investigative method of the precedent, the effect of Post-Precedent-Fore was also there, so I could train far faster than other Venerables.
Of course…
‘In ten thousand years, the Ilwol Cheonyeok would meet its end… so it would be meaningless.’
I organized my thoughts and took a step.
Sseureuk—
I suddenly disappeared from the top of the star, instantly appearing on top of it.
I arrived in front of a cave made of glass.
Since this star was me, I could instantly go to the place I had thought of as an avatar from above the star.
“Are you all well?”
I faced the companions I had hidden inside my star.
Time-wise, it had only been a short while, but it felt like a long time.
“Ah, Eun-hyun-ah. What’s going on? After waking up from that strange world, we suddenly moved to this strange place. And… these guys’ conditions are weird.”
Kim Young-hoon looked at me worriedly and I looked at the companions.
Hong Beom and Jeon Myeong-hoon were exhausted, Kim Yeon was blinking her eyes while looking at me, and Oh Hyun-seok was smiling with slightly red eyes.
“First, Jeon Myeong-hoon and Hong Beom are fine except for exhaustion. And Hyun-seok hyeonim is…”
“I was separated from my daughter for a while, so I cried a little.”
It seemed he had accepted the child from the dream world as his own daughter.
I looked at him and smiled faintly.
He too seemed to have accepted his own heart in the end.
And I looked at Kim Yeon and said.
“Yeon-ah, are you okay?”
She was only blinking her eyes.
“…Yeon-ah?”
She fiddled with her own mouth and pointed to it.
Kim Young-hoon let out a groan and said.
“I don’t know how it happened, but… it seems your voice has disappeared.”
“Really!?”
I was startled and sent her a message.
—Kim Yeon, what exactly happened!
And…
The message did not return.
“…Kim Yeon?”
I approached her in confusion, and Kim Yeon pointed to the [Above] with a slightly awkward expression.
“…Is it related to the existences of the [Above]?”
Nod nod
Kim Yeon nodded, and I let out a groan and asked.
“Can you not do anything like spirit writing?”
Kim Yeon shrugged.
It seemed she didn’t know spirit writing.
Thinking about it, none of us had learned spirit writing from the start.
“Um… is there anyone here who can write?”
“Here.”
Oh Hyun-seok took out paper from his domain and I set down a brush in front of her and had her write.
Kim Yeon seemed a little flustered, took the brush, and wrote something on the paper.
And I looked at it and frowned.
‘What is this?’
What she wrote was not characters I knew, but strange scribbles.
It looked like a three-year-old child had grabbed a brush and drawn wildly.
However, Kim Yeon looked at me with eyes that seemed to ask “Can you read the meaning?”
Anyway, from Kim Yeon’s perspective, she had written “characters,” but the meaning expressed was completely different.
“Then, can you draw pictures?”
Kim Yeon drew a “picture” on the paper again.
Fortunately, the “picture” was drawn quite normally.
In the picture, Kim Yeon was talking with a large bird, and in the next scene, the bird pulled out her tongue.
“…I see. I understand.”
It seemed Kim Yeon had been sealed with the spirit itself by some True Immortal.
‘I keep getting entangled with True Immortals a lot.’
I let out a deep sigh and looked at Seo Ran, who was tying his head while staring beyond Kim Yeon.
Seo Ran was trembling while clutching his head, and Siho was supporting him worriedly from beside him.
“Seo Ran. What happened to you?”
He spoke with a trembling voice.
“I don’t know either… I don’t know. But somehow a woman keeps appearing in my head. Some, some…”
“It’s okay.”
Uwoong!
I harmonized Seo Ran’s consciousness with the surrounding spiritual energy and stabilized the spiritual energy itself, then forcibly stabilized his consciousness for a moment.
The companions were startled when they realized what I had done.
I told the companions.
“First, I have something to say. I just… came out of the dream world and advanced to the Star Shattering stage.”
“No way! Really…”
Changhoza nodded as if he had known it would happen, and the other companions looked surprised too.
I introduced the current situation and location to the companions.
“So… this star we suddenly fell to is your body?”
“That’s right.”
“Whoa… it’s immense.”
Kim Young-hoon stuck out his tongue, and Oh Hyun-seok and Seo Ran looked extremely surprised.
I explained the current situation and then suddenly remembered one thing.
“By the way… this situation feels similar to the first day.”
“Hmm? Yeah, it does.”
I looked at the sky outside the cave.
The night sky of the universe was still exposed because the atmosphere wasn’t complete yet.
Us talking inside the cave.
Suddenly falling to a mysterious world.
This felt like…
The scene of the first day we fell to this world.
‘Ah, that’s right.’
A lot had happened, but thinking about it…
Today was the first day of the 998th cycle.
It had barely been a day since I had regressed.
Ttak!
To give the feeling of the first day I fell to Deungsunhyang, I snapped my fingers and lit a bonfire.
A flame of seven-colored light bloomed inside the glass cave.
“From now on, I will save Kang Min-hee.”
“Hmm?”
I continued.
“You may not know, but… actually, the universe we live in, Ilwol Cheonyeok, will end in ten thousand years. And for us cultivators, ten thousand years isn’t that long a time. So from now on, I will find Kang Min-hee and with her… either flee to another cycle, or find a way to survive together even in the end of the world.”
Explaining the plan ahead, I looked at the star sky.
I had escaped from Hyeol-eum for now.
The fate he had granted me had somehow been escaped thanks to Geomgeukcheongun.
‘Of course, I don’t know what will happen if I regress again.’
Perhaps in the next life I might not receive Geomgeukcheongun’s help.
‘No, it’s probably better not to receive help.’
Honestly, this time receiving help from that existence was like running from a fox and meeting a tiger.
In the next life, it would be better not to receive any help at all.
Of course, receiving help would be too difficult to escape from Hyeol-eum’s grasp.
Therefore…
‘My first goal of this life is to not die.’
I set several goals for this life.
The first goal was survival.
The second goal was… exploring and rescuing Kang Min-hee.
The third goal, since the end was near, was to go to the Thunder Star Sea first and retrieve the secret information of the middle realm that Yang Su-jin had stolen.
After setting roughly three goals like that.
Gwi-duk—
“…Eh?”
I fell forward in place.
“Ah, Eun-hyun-ah!”
“Um!”
“S, senior?”
Kim Young-hoon, Kim Yeon, and Seo Ran rushed toward me one after another.
I thought something was wrong with the avatar and tried to turn my consciousness back to the star, but soon realized something serious had happened.
Ulk, ulk….
From the avatar, something like black water began to flow out.
‘This… this is…’
I understood the identity of the water and was shocked out of my mind.
‘Death!?’
It was condensed beyond belief, even liquefied ‘death energy.’
‘Ah…’
I had thought about it for a while.
If I died hundreds of times like this, wouldn’t I be suddenly pulled to the afterlife and frozen in eternity?
But until now, since I hadn’t felt any reaction from the afterlife with my Underworld Sense, I had thought ‘I was still fine.’
I realized it was a misunderstanding.
‘I’m… being pulled.’
I realized I was being forcibly pulled toward an infinite ashen world and was terrified.
‘No! How! How! I escaped from Hyeol-eum’s jaws!!! How!!!’
I wanted to scream, but the power of death enveloped my mind and gradually began to suppress it.
I couldn’t even move my body, not even a finger.
‘No, no, no!!! Please! Please!!!’
As my consciousness was cut off, I saw in the deep and vast darkness a vision of great beings beckoning to me.
‘No… can’t…’
The next moment.
Hong Beom, who had regained his consciousness, shouted something at Seo Ran, and the last thing was Seo Ran taking out the ghost ship…
I completely lost consciousness.
* * *
‘…Where is this?’
It was ashen.
But at the same time, it wasn’t ashen.
‘…?’
I suddenly felt a question and looked around.
‘Is this… a palace?’
The surroundings were a palace.
Pillars made of material similar to the ghost ship supported the black palace, and I was sitting on something that looked like an ashen carpet.
“…Eh?”
And I looked at the “Seo Ran” behind me in puzzlement.
Behind me, for some reason, Seo Ran was sitting too, and he was trembling like a trembling aspen while looking somewhere he couldn’t believe.
That was when.
“That child used the ghost ship to pull you here before your consciousness completely left the light realm.”
I suddenly turned my gaze toward the being sitting on the jade seat deep inside that palace.
The being was a woman.
“Welcome, Venerable Seo. I thought we would meet someday, but I didn’t expect to meet so soon. It’s a pity, but fortunate.”
I felt the endless power emanating from the being in front of me and broke out in cold sweat.
“Who are you, and where exactly is this place?”
To my question, she smiled faintly and said.
“This is the Ghost Realm, a pocket dimension inside the Saintess Palace. And I am Yu-o, the Saintess who holds the position of Saintess of the Ghost Realm.”
Ttak!
The moment she snapped her fingers, a small table, teacup, and teapot appeared in front of me and Seo Ran.
“Let’s drink some tea and talk for a while. Your Majesty, the Future King.”