Seo Ran's Family (3)
As I stood there, my heart filled with an ache I couldn’t name.
It felt almost… sorry for the girl.
Yet the truth was simple.
The apocalypse was already knocking at our door.
A mere Star Plate early-stage cultivator like me could never stand against it properly.
For the sake of the Purple Gold Realm’s living beings, even for a while.
At least until the end of the world.
Ban-ta should take charge of the Purple Gold Realm in the meantime.
That would be the wisest choice.
[Heh… how unfortunate.]
[I’ll have to wait for the next chance.]
Baek-woon and Hae-rin only clicked their tongues in quiet resignation and turned away.
Yu-o and Ja-eun watched me with a mix of sorrow and lingering regret.
And then…
Ban-ta’s eyes suddenly rolled back, his fangs glinting.
[…I see. Congratulations, Seo Eun-hyun.]
Yet… do you know what our Star Plate cultivators are?
We don’t just succeed. We receive a formal rite.
[Truly? I had no idea.]
[Of course you wouldn’t! This is a sacred rite passed down through the Purple Gold Realm for generations!]
‘Ban-ta is the first Venerable of the Purple Gold Realm, I remember…’
[I am not a Venerable of the Purple Gold Realm. Therefore…]
[Younger generation! The highest formal rite in our realm is for you—Ban-ta—to bestow it upon you in celebration!]
Ku-gu-gu-gu-gu-gu!
Purple lightning crackled above Ban-ta’s head.
Within the purple clouds, white thunder roared.
The clouds swelled, growing until they blanketed the entire Sam-mok-do.
‘Those horns… how tough.’
I muttered inwardly and prepared to take his strike head-on.
The next instant.
Kwa-reu-reu-reung!
The purple lightning slammed straight into me, shattering the whole of Sam-mok-do.
‘Insane Venerable… He truly means to erase me!’
I raised the Triple Taiji behind me amid the purple storm.
Yet the Triple Taiji trembled like a candle in the face of the purple gale.
‘He’s pulling the power of the Purple Gold Realm to attack me…!’
If this continued, Sam-mok-do itself would collapse.
Of course, there was another way.
‘If I unravel the union with Sam-mok-do, that lightning will hurl me alone into the distant cosmos and leave this place intact.’
To let Sam-mok-do perish with me, or to abandon my Venerable title here—two choices loomed before me!
It was crude, yes.
Yet it was also a strike born from Ban-ta’s fifty thousand years of unfulfilled regret as a Venerable who still had no successor.
‘Can I… endure it…?’
That was the moment I pushed my hardest.
Uuu-ung!
Something new joined the Triple Taiji.
‘What…!’
The very power of Sam-mok-do itself!
It was supporting me.
‘As a Venerable, I can draw upon the world’s power! But… even the power of the Buhae Realm isn’t enough. I need a greater force… a greater force…!’
Greater.
Even greater.
The thought struck me then.
Kii-i-ing!
The lightning slowly slowed, and the world plunged into darkness.
‘Is he freezing time through sheer willpower? No… he’s accelerating my mind!’
I understood exactly what power had accelerated my consciousness.
‘Oh Hye-seo… or the will that has waited for countless centuries for someone like her… this is unmistakably the legacy of a Jongmyeongja!’
Paaah!
At that moment, a vision appeared before my eyes.
It was a vision of a monster.
A sword cultivator.
With each movement, thousands or billions of golden swords erupted from its body and plunged into every corner of the universe.
Within the vision, I saw the monster fighting someone.
‘That must be…!’
It was Hyeon-gwi.
The girl in black robes, hair tied in a ponytail, danced.
The monster roared.
Every universe trembled at its bellow, yet the sword’s essence that split heaven and earth refused to enter the dance.
Inside the dance itself.
Beyond the circle, nothing could penetrate—it dissolved into nothing.
To resist that terrifying aura, I unconsciously clenched my fists.
The Colorless Glass Sword appeared in my hand.
And… familiar movements flowed from her.
She drew gentle circles.
All things vanished around her, leaving only one circle in the heavens.
The next instant!
Pasak!
The circle shattered.
And the darkness of heaven and earth lifted.
The golden monster that had battled in the void was reduced to dust.
“You have reached the One Wheel. But the Mandala is still incomplete. Can you truly bloom?”
The golden monster, now shattered, moved its hand.
Every part of its body vanished into the void.
Yet one limb—its massive leg—refused to obey the girl’s will.
She sighed softly.
“You have bloomed. You have stepped into the realm of entering extinction. Yet… what does that truly mean?”
With that, I left the vision.
But I could not escape the trance that bound me.
And without a word, I lowered my sword and pointed it at Ban-ta’s lightning.
Buuung!
I traced a circle after Hyeon-gwi.
The blade struck with no qi, no intent—yet half the lightning was cleaved in two.
[What?!]
Ban-ta recoiled in shock.
Yet I cared nothing for the external world and turned the meaning of my strike over in my mind.
‘This… is the One Wheel.’
A single circle floated before my eyes.
Only now did I understand.
It was nothing special.
Perhaps… it had always been inside me.
Another name for this circle was Sitting Liberation and Standing Death.
Just as I had compressed everything I was in the realm of Defying Heaven to forge the Chongcheon-geom.
‘The Owner of the Void’ had compressed everything in the previous realm to discover the Wheel.
‘I see. This is… not just the name Hyeon-gwi uses. It is the true realm name of the Owner of the Void!’
I confirmed the One Wheel and once again refined my own martial path.
Uuu-ung!
I lifted the Chongcheon-geom.
It was the Invisible Sword compressed into one.
And I wished for every color of my life to be woven into it.
I refined the Invisible Sword into the Chongcheon-geom, the name given to the blade forged from my entire existence.
That blade was the Chongcheon-geom.
It was Sitting Liberation and Standing Death.
‘Inside… a circle.’
Within the Chongcheon-geom I saw a circle.
Every scene of my life was, in truth, drawing a circle.
Beyond the flat scene I had always known lay another scene.
Like the two sides of a coin.
And if one keeps spinning the coin, it becomes a sphere.
My life was already overlapping death.
Because life and death revolved together, a perfect circle had always existed inside me.
I caught a glimpse of the Owner of the Void’s enlightenment and flung the sword aside in a trance.
And I glimpsed what came next.
Beyond the One Wheel.
I saw the realm I had once called Void Shattering.
Naturally, beyond the Owner of the Void’s movement, the realm name he bestowed upon her echoed.
Mandala.
The Wheel beyond the Chongcheon-geom rotated, and around the center, countless images bloomed.
It was the life of the being known as Seo Eun-hyun.
My life was drawn as a Mandala and scattered across the entire heavens.
And finally, the last instant!
Pasak!
The Mandala shattered.
Just as the circle had.
My life returned to nothing.
‘Is this… the end?’
My throat suddenly tightened.
Yet the next moment.
I felt something beyond the void.
It was… fragrance.
I had no idea what flower it belonged to, but the moment I inhaled its scent, I could release everything.
Nothing at all. Just the mysterious fragrance overflowing into the emptiness beyond.
I heard the name of that realm alone—Defying Heaven.
Udanbara.
Yes.
One Wheel.
Mandala.
Udanbara.
Those were the great steps the Owner of the Void had pioneered.
Kwa-reung!
The moment I understood those realms, thunder crashed inside my head.
Red Lotus.
Prajna.
Dragon Flower.
These were yet another realm from the golden monster’s memory.
Though they did not seem to be its true realm, I felt clearly that it had trained there to resist the Owner of the Void’s power.
And at the same time I felt a common point between these two realms.
Each described the extreme of its realm as something “living.”
Even Udanbara. Even Dragon Flower.
They were all names of legendary flowers and trees.
They were alive.
As if treating martial prowess itself as something truly living.
Feeling that, I suddenly realized something.
‘Three Flower Wuji. Since some point… like Jang Ik’s Defying Heaven, I had called my Sitting Liberation and Standing Death, Void Shattering… and the next three realms “Three Flower Wuji.”’
Now that I thought about it, there had never been a marker for that.
I had simply decided one day to call the martial path corresponding to the Zenith Realm “Three Flower Wuji.”
It had nothing to do with flowers, yet… why had I ever called this “Three Flower Wuji”?
Ossik!
I understood the horrifying truth.
“Today…!”
Three Flower Wuji.
Only on this day did the marker appear for the martial path as a whole to be called “Three Flower Wuji.”
‘Insane…’
The moment I recognized the term “Three Flower Wuji” on this exact timeline!
It had been carved into every single timeline of mine.
In other words, beyond even my regression, the realm had been carved into the me who had never witnessed the legacy of the old Jongmyeongja in the Flat Earth Realm.
I understood both the fact and how it had happened.
‘The power of the ancient… Jongmyeongja! The power of the ancient Jongmyeongja!’
Just the fact that I had met him here was enough to carve every realm into my past self with horrifying authority!
It was truly a chilling ability that never fell behind regression itself.
‘Thinking about it, Kim Yeon in the previous loop was the same.’
Her abilities were not things like vast consciousness or Heavenly Thunder Body or the Path of Echoing Sound.
Those were mere fragments—trivial manifestations of the true power of names and ranks.
‘This is the true power of the ancient Jongmyeongja, pulling the complete force of name-rank!’
It was no joke. An ability rivaling regression itself.
Perhaps, depending on how I used it, I could even treat regression as “trivial.”
“Huff… huff…”
With the new realm name confirmed, I scanned my surroundings.
‘Where… am I?!’
I realized I was no longer in the Flat Earth Continent of the previous realm.
My body had briefly danced in trance there.
But my soul now floated above the lower side of the Flat Earth Continent.
In other words, on the underside of the flat Buhae Realm.
‘What is this…?’
I saw a Mandala there. It was the Mandala of the Three Wood Mountain.
The great Three Wood Mountain!
And the Mandala depicting a hero who entered the mountain, defeated the monster, stole its seven halos, and offered them to the sky in sacrifice.
‘…I see. That’s what Jang Ik meant.’
Only now did I fully understand why he had named the Heart Clan’s territory Sam-mok-chong—Three Wood Grove.
And when I stared at the Three Wood Mountain drawn in the Mandala.
The Mandala vanished in an instant.
Paaah!
At the same moment, pushed by unknown power, I was ejected from Sam-mok-do and returned to the upper side of Yuri Samok Mountain.
At the same time, a whisper brushed my ear.
-If you truly wish to see, prove it.
Prove what?
Yet I somehow knew.
‘My own martial prowess… to prove it.’
Kuuuk…
I clenched my fist tight and vowed to return to this Mandala of the Three Wood Mountain someday.
That was the only opportunity to feel the rare legacy of the Star Shattering realm beyond Void Shattering in this world.
I rose once more above Sam-mok-do, eyes half-lidded, and met Ban-ta’s gaze.
Ban-ta remained silent for a moment, then spoke.
[…Yes. I lost. Do as you wish. The Venerable of the Purple Gold Realm… will come again someday.]
His reaction to the beyond-common-sense skill I had just shown was clearly stunned.
Tu-ung!
He reached into the void, pulled something out, and tossed it to me.
[Take this. A genius like you will master the Fissure Opening stage in an instant. A Purple Gold Realm specialty for aiding the Fissure Opening breakthrough. The Twilight Charm. Sorry I tested you so casually. Consider this my apology.]
Uuu-ung!
I caught the golden talisman he threw.
‘This…’
An overwhelming level of refinement power surged through my body.
It felt as if the universe’s black hole had been refined into a single charm.
A form of talisman-type refinement.
‘Even a Venerable would find refining this difficult… yet he gave it to me…’
He truly seemed sincere.
[Please accept my apology. I am the one who owes you an apology for not being able to extend the invitation.]
[Haha, if you’re sorry, later bring me a fresh Star Plate cultivator and keep me company.]
Thus, with Ban-ta, I had completely cleared old grudges.
From now on, I could formally receive recognition as a Venerable from every Zenith Realm cultivator.
I set myself to prepare for the coming apocalypse ahead.
With Seo Ran beside me.
At the same time, I interrogated Seo Hyoel, digging into his plans and true intentions… and began my Star Plate training in earnest.