The First Day of the Tenth Cycle
I blinked awake and surveyed my surroundings.
It was the familiar scent of the forest.
“…I’m dead.”
I hadn’t really expected to survive, but I’d still hoped for at least a little mercy. Getting hit with zero effective force was… disappointing.
“…At least I cursed him so he couldn’t eat the longevity fruit. That was my final act of defiance.”
I clicked my tongue.
“So that was the power of a Core Formation Daoist…”
I recalled how Won Rip had unleashed his technique and the sandstorm-like mist had swallowed the entire desert.
“Core Formation is supposed to be a natural disaster? That’s hilarious.”
A natural disaster was what true catastrophe looked like. Core Formation was nothing more than a poor imitation.
I sensed my companions gradually rising around me.
I opened my consciousness and used my sleep art to lull them all into deep rest.
Then something strange hit me.
“Why… doesn’t my dantian hurt…?”
I hadn’t separated my consciousness with the invisible sword to shrink it.
Yet my dantian was perfectly fine. No swelling. No discomfort at all.
“What… the hell…”
“Argh…!”
The sudden headache exploded through me. I clutched my head and collapsed onto the ground.
“Ugh… argh…!”
My soul felt as if it were being ripped apart!
It hurt! It hurt so much!
And then I understood why.
“Ho… how…?”
At the center of my consciousness realm.
Where my soul resided.
There were five crimson flags embedded there.
“Grrrraaaaah…!”
The Five Elements Blood Curse Flag left by Won Rip.
It had followed me through the regression.
“Ugh… ugh…!”
Fortunately, after a while of its wild rampage, the flag’s tremors gradually eased and it began to settle.
After some time.
“Haah… haah…”
The flag’s frenzy finally died down. Only then could I rise.
“…This crazy…”
A chill ran down my spine.
Regression wasn’t invincible.
I should have noticed long ago that my consciousness and mind remained unchanged with each loop.
The golden restraint tied to my consciousness and soul regressed together with them!
“Was I too complacent until now…?”
If a top Daoist had deliberately brainwashed me or placed a golden restraint on my consciousness, that restraint would have followed me even after the regression.
In other words, if I ever got caught by a top Daoist once, I might be his slave for the rest of my regression life.
“But first… what do I do with this Five Elements Blood Curse Flag?”
If the flag I’d brought through regression had become linked to Won Rip, he should have already noticed something by now.
“At least I’m safe for a few days.”
Still, Won Rip was a Core Formation Daoist who had hidden and waited for Nascent Soul cultivators to be defeated before finally showing himself.
So in this era when Heavenly People were everywhere, he wouldn’t have dared to show his face even if he had a question.
“Then should I ask a Heavenly Person cultivator to look into the Deungsunhyang Forest?”
If I asked Changhoza, given his personality, wouldn’t he at least take a look?
I carried the hope that he would. First I went to find the golden pellet Huang Jusan and performed the flesh-remaking technique.
Crack. Crack.
The center, lower, and upper dantians aligned. My body evolved so my larger consciousness could contain it without strain.
“Now the lingering pain is finally gone.”
I once again examined my consciousness and dantian.
“Still, this Five Elements Blood Curse Flag… even without Won Rip’s mental restraint, it might be quite useful in the early stages of regression.”
The flag suppressed my consciousness, preventing my dantian from swelling.
Thanks to that, I didn’t even need to separate my consciousness and suffer headaches at the very beginning.
With the invisible sword and this flag, the dantian overload caused by consciousness would be completely solved.
“Then once…”
I carried my companions into the cave.
After that I intensified my sleep art, observed my consciousness, and dived deep into it.
Inside my soul.
At the center of my soul.
There were the five crimson flags.
I examined the color of intent and the qi of the yin and yang.
The yin and yang qi flowing from the five flags suppressed my consciousness in mutual harmony.
However, the qi was not connected to any distant place.
The same was true for intent.
“Someone else’s” intent flowed, but it was gradually dissipating and not linked to anything external.
“At least for now, it doesn’t appear to be connected to Won Rip.”
Moreover, the faint remnant of his intent was dissipating, and my own intent now flowed in its place.
“So if Won Rip’s intent fully dissipates, will the flag disappear?”
It looked as if it would within a short time, judging by the speed of dissipation.
But I felt an ominous premonition when I saw my own intent flowing through the flag’s restraint.
“My own intent… and it refuses to listen to me.”
The intents passing over the restraint ignored my will and moved according to the flag’s logic, helping my own intent suppress my consciousness.
Whoosh!
I tried to move my consciousness to control the flag, but the Five Elements Blood Curse Flag trembled and pressed down on my consciousness.
“Ugh…”
If I moved my consciousness further, the pain of my soul being torn apart would return.
“Moving the consciousness large distances triggers the flag’s restraint.”
The good thing was that at the very end of my last life, when I was before Won Rip, even simple movement had been restricted. But now, because his intent had dissipated, moving my consciousness normally no longer caused pain.
“At least I need to ease the restraint first.”
While observing the flow of the restraint, I waited for Won Rip’s intent to fully dissipate.
Only after all traces of him disappeared did I carefully examine the flag.
“This is…”
I studied the flag and eventually understood the fundamental principle behind it.
“Human consciousness interpreted through the Five Elements.”
If I hadn’t reached Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, analyzed intent colors, reached Five Qi Consorting with the Origin, and mastered every basic Five Elements technique, I wouldn’t have figured this out so easily.
“Interesting.”
Of course, because my Core Formation, consciousness, and soul weren’t perfectly identical, I couldn’t dismantle the restraint in a single breath even after mastering the Five Elements techniques and grasping the principle of Five Elements spiritual power.
“Still, if I only understand the method of mapping the Five Elements to human consciousness…”
As I interpreted the symbols of the Five Elements Blood Curse Flag.
“Eh? Wait. This is…”
I suddenly realized these symbols looked extremely familiar.
And I understood the fundamental principle of this Five Elements Blood Curse Flag.
“The Curse Divine Art…”
A divine art that maximized someone else’s suffering and suppressed the opponent.
These symbols resembled the curse symbols of the Yin Soul Ghost Curse greatly.
“So that’s it.”
A divine art that interpreted human spirit through the Five Elements and discovered the sufferings each element could inflict on the human spirit.
That was the divine art of the Five Elements Blood Curse.
Crack crack!
With an understanding of the flag’s fundamental principle, I realized I could interfere with the Five Elements Blood Curse Flag planted in my soul with my consciousness.
“Human spirit is the Five Elements. When I awakened the Hyeol transformation, I gained the realization that I am not made of only myself, and that the spirit is also composed of separate parts just as the Five Elements are…”
Whoosh!
My intent moved slightly and the Five Elements Blood Curse Flag stirred.
The flag embedded deep in my soul moved and gradually began to float toward the surface of my soul.
“Push it…!”
Whoosh!
My consciousness gradually returned.
The previous size of my consciousness gradually returned, and I could once again move my consciousness at will.
“Ah…”
My body, trapped somewhere, stretched like it was yawning.
The consciousness that had been squeezed by the Five Elements Blood Curse Flag finally rose.
I could finally move a little.
But.
Creak!
My consciousness was caught again by the flag’s restraint while trying to rise. Only seventy percent of my consciousness had regained movement.
I opened my eyes.
“To fully remove the restraint, I need something more.”
With over seventy percent of my consciousness recovered, there was almost no discomfort. Even the remaining thirty percent could move if I endured the pain.
But no matter how hard I tried to push the flag away, the restraint didn’t disappear.
“Damn it, Blood Wood Daoist. You left me with a pain in the ass.”
I stopped researching the flag at this point and decided to leave the rest to Changhoza and the others.
“If Changhoza can’t do it, after I hear Song Jin’s final wishes from the Seopmyeong Ship, I’ll ask him.”
After all, he was a remnant of a Heavenly Person cultivator, so he knew a lot and would surely have a solution.
Whoosh!
I calmed my consciousness and opened my eyes.
The sun had already set.
I looked at my sleeping companions for a moment, then fell into thought.
“What is ‘ming’…?”
Ming.
The ming Yang Su-jin’s remnant had spoken of.
The ming Kim Young-hoon had awakened to.
The ming Won Rip had described after obtaining the Bongmyeongin.
Goe-gun had said that fate was real.
Also, when one reached the extreme of fortune, it seemed possible to interfere with fate to some degree.
“And the term ‘jongmyeongja’…”
Yang Su-jin’s remnant was from my previous life.
“Even Yang Su-jin, who used his fortune to interfere with fate and became such a being, was made into this by something that is watching over the entire Three Thousand Worlds… to find the ‘jongmyeongja’?”
What exactly was a jongmyeongja, and what was this world?
I suddenly looked up at the sky where the sunset was fading and stars were rising.
And then.
I suddenly felt that those stars looked like eyes watching the ground and shivered.
“Damn it. Too much thinking.”
Stars as eyes? What a chilling imagination there was.
I shook my head.
“I’ve experienced too many things in my previous life…”
Raising to Foundation Establishment, awakening Wol-doipcheon, catching Song Jin with Seo Ran, watching his final moments, learning the Seopmyeong Ship technique, learning about the existence of Bongmyeong Castle.
Kim Young-hoon died after looking beyond Wol-doipcheon.
Spending hundreds of years inside Bongmyeong Castle, then being killed by Core Formation Daoist Won Rip.
Perhaps because I lived too long and experienced too many things, my mind had become unstable.
I calmed the throbbing headache and let out a sigh.
I looked at sleeping Kim Young-hoon.
The him from my previous life rose before my eyes.
“You said to live a little more like a person, right?”
Yes. Maybe this life, resting a little wasn’t so bad.
A life of living like a person…
“Bongmyeong Castle, fate, jongmyeongja… all of it can be thrown away. Taking a little rest might not be bad.”
At the very end of my previous life, the pain from having my consciousness tortured by Won Rip made me especially eager for rest.
“In this life I’ll hear the solution to the Five Elements Blood Curse Flag from a Heavenly Person cultivator, rest a little, and recover my mind.”
Thinking this, I slowly circulated my inner energy with the night breeze.
Whoosh!
Gradually, a golden core formed in my lower dantian.
My whole body tingled, and I exhaled a satisfying breath.
And then.
Boom. Bang.
Not long after forming the golden core, a massive white body approached from beyond the forest.
I frowned slightly, seeing the thing that had disturbed my rest time.
Boom. Boom. Boom!
[This guy… what kind of yokai are you that dares enter my forest?]
“…I am the master of this forest.”
A Core Formation level fox yokai living in Deungsunhyang.
I looked at the creature and spoke politely for now.
“I got caught in a spatial rift and happened to fall here.”
No matter what, as long as I kept my arms to myself and acted polite, the guy would leave at this level.
“Please show mercy and let me stay in this forest for a few days.”
If I was polite, I would remain polite until the end.
[This guy, stop with the nonsense. If you want to stay in my forest, you have to tear your limbs off and offer them to me.]
“…Master of this forest, I plead with you. Please let me stay.”
[Daring to enter the same yokai’s territory and beg for mercy?]
“Master of this forest, I apologize for my rudeness. I beg one last time. Please…”
[Enough! Hand over the wine river, intruder!]
Boom!
The fox raised its front paw to strike me.
Bang!
[…What…]
And then I raised the invisible sword and blocked the front paw.
“Haah… I begged three times. Isn’t that enough?”
I had actually been a little worried.
It felt a bit unfair if this damn thing acted surprisingly polite and left.
But it seemed no different.
“Today is the hottest day, you little shit.”
I looked straight at the fox and laughed brightly.
The fox trembled as it sensed the qi of my invisible sword.
Maybe I had been waiting for this day all along.
“Let’s start hunting the fox…”
Whoosh whoosh!
I deepened my sleep art on my companions even more and stepped forward toward the fox.
Tonight was going to be a long night.