The Mental Pocket Realm
Fifteen Boundless Great Ability beads and half your lifespan.
Jin Somyeong, who had gone blank from the shock, narrowed his eyes.
The key word in that sentence was lifespan.
To be honest, the power contained in fifteen Boundless Great Ability beads was meager. It was still far from enough to exercise true omnipotence. What mattered was that it meant pouring in every scrap of power he had.
"It consumes half my lifespan?"
Setting aside the instinctive revulsion he felt as a living creature, Jin Somyeong's expression hardened as he thought it through.
My lifespan limit was 118 years. Since I'm fifteen now, I should have roughly a hundred years left.
A question suddenly occurred to him. What, exactly, did half his lifespan mean? Did it cut half from the lifespan he had remaining, or did it halve his maximum lifespan itself?
"...Fortunately, it consumes fifty-one years."
He examined the information that had surfaced in his mind more carefully. It did not mean half of his maximum lifespan of 118 years. It meant half of the roughly hundred years he had left.
"About fifty years. That's definitely not a small amount."
But for the sake of achieving such an absurd miracle, it was worth considering. If he thought about it with perfect coldness, time was merely one precious resource among many to a cultivator pursuing eternal life. After all, breaking through realms increased one's lifespan.
There were no few cultivators who used powerful secret arts at the cost of their lifespan. In a sense, every cultivator was someone struggling to break through before their allotted time ran out.
"If I lose fifty-one years, my maximum lifespan becomes sixty-seven..."
If he reached the realm after Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, he would generally be able to live for 250 years. By then, the lifespan he had spent would not feel quite so agonizing.
There was, however, a problem.
He had just realized it naturally, but the lifespan cost was not absolute. It was relative. No matter how much lifespan he had, half of it would be consumed. If he reached Foundation Establishment and his lifespan doubled, then fulfilling the same wish would cost not fifty years, but over a hundred.
The cost was proportional to the difficulty of the wish. For a Qi Refining cultivator and a Foundation Establishment cultivator alike, creating a pocket dimension in the void was equally impossible.
The higher his realm and the greater his lifespan, the greater the price would become. In other words, the longer he waited to make the wish, the more he would lose.
"Ugh. Wouldn't it be better to improve my spiritual root aptitude instead?"
Improving his spiritual roots, or creating a pocket dimension and summoning a spirit stone mine inside it. No matter how he thought about it, the latter was more difficult. Improving aptitude was comparatively easier. It seemed possible with a smaller lifespan cost.
But...
In the end, it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. Improving his aptitude was something he would absolutely have to do one day, but earning spirit stones was no different. No—if anything, that problem was more urgent.
"Right now, most of my Boundless Great Ability is being spent on earning spirit stones."
This was a problem he would have to carry for the rest of his life. Even if he schemed his way into a temporary solution, it would soon come back again, because the higher his cultivation realm rose, the greater his spirit stone consumption would become.
Spirit stones were not merely currency. They were cultivation resources. No matter how outstanding one's talent was, no cultivator could escape that fact.
This issue would not be easily solved. It would cling to him stubbornly. But if he obtained a mine and no longer had to invest time into earning spirit stones, then he could pour every scrap of his spare time into cultivation.
With the Boundless Great Ability I have left over, I should be able to improve my miserable spiritual root aptitude little by little. I could also use it for training in spells.
It meant he could finally begin the things he had always wanted to do but had been forced to put off because circumstances would not allow it.
Suddenly, he recalled the contents of Records of Travels in Namju, the travelogue he had obtained from Wang Shin and read whenever he had time. Supposedly, in certain sacred cultivation lands, there were miraculous pills and elixirs capable of improving one's spiritual roots.
Improving aptitude was a problem that could be solved through effort. Jin Somyeong's heart leaned more toward the pocket dimension and spirit stone mine.
"Fifty-one years..."
What he would lose was clear.
How precious was half a century? Everyone knew the answer. There was no need to waste breath explaining it. And yet the temptation of becoming the owner of a spirit stone mine was difficult to resist.
Besides, if he failed to reach Foundation Establishment before the age of sixty, the result would be the same anyway. After sixty, the probability of breaking through the Foundation Establishment barrier fell astronomically.
Whether he had ten years or fifty left after his sixtieth birthday, if his path of cultivation was cut off, it made no difference.
"..."
A long while passed in silence.
With his eyes closed, Jin Somyeong calculated the gains and losses of the wish, then made his decision.
"I'll do it. A pocket dimension and my own spirit stone mine are worth spending fifty-one years of lifespan on."
For someone like him, who had no proper techniques, no inheritance, and no master, spirit stones were desperately necessary. And in any case, if he achieved Foundation Establishment, his lifespan would increase.
Beyond Foundation Establishment lay Golden Core, then Nascent Soul... The higher his realm rose, the more fifty years would become nothing but an instant.
As long as he succeeded, everything would work out. What he lost was extremely small, and what he stood to gain was immense.
One month later.
Jin Somyeong drew a deep breath, his expression tense.
"Finally."
The Boundless Great Ability he had consumed had fully recovered.
The past month had been the most boring stretch of his life. It felt as if he had been waiting for a package with a one-month delivery time. Time passed so slowly that he ended up doing all sorts of things.
He even disguised himself with the Faceless Mask and sold Wang Shin's miscellaneous possessions. He earned two hundred spirit stones, but it had been fairly dangerous work.
In any case, it was now time to make the wish.
Seated cross-legged, Jin Somyeong activated the Boundless Great Ability with all his might.
"First, I want to create a special pocket dimension that only I can access, and I want to make a spirit stone mine inside it. Also, I want the pocket dimension to have a spirit vein so it can help with cultivation."
The moment he made that wish, packed full of greed, the fifteen Boundless Great Ability beads vanished without a trace.
And then...
Jin Somyeong, who had been waiting for his lifespan to disappear, flinched.
"That's it?"
He felt nothing. If anything, there was only a slight hollow sensation, and even that might have been his imagination.
He carefully moved his body. He stretched, then jumped around here and there to measure his physical abilities.
"...I'm fine?"
There were no side effects like the drop in stamina he had feared. Even though half his lifespan had vanished, he remained full of vitality and perfectly healthy. He was exactly the same as before he had made the wish. It looked as though nothing at all had changed.
But the status window was accurate.
It clearly showed that something had been lost.
He dimly understood. If he could not break through realms and increase his lifespan, then in the year he turned sixty-seven, he would die no matter what.
This was different from simply dying of old age. It would not matter how healthy his body was. On the day his lifespan ran out, every calamity imaginable would descend and, one way or another, choke the life from him. That was the price of losing one's ordained fate.
"...It doesn't matter. If anything, this is good."
When breaking through the Foundation Establishment barrier, the healthier one's body, the greater the advantage. The fact that his physical condition had not deteriorated despite losing lifespan was definitely a benefit.
After scanning the status window, Jin Somyeong turned his attention elsewhere.
There was no point dwelling on what was already gone. Now it was time to examine what he had gained.
"Oh!"
A new category called Divine Ability had appeared in his status window. The ability known as Mental Pocket Realm had settled deep within his soul.
As naturally as moving his own arms and legs, he understood how to use the Mental Pocket Realm.
...So the Boundless Great Ability isn't a divine ability? It's displayed separately.
Well, that made sense. The Boundless Great Ability was an omnipotent force capable of creating divine abilities. It was understandable even if it was not one itself.
Jin Somyeong, who had drifted into a brief tangent, pulled himself together.
He focused on the Mental Pocket Realm again. The moment he activated the divine ability through that peculiar sense—
Flash!
A blinding radiance pierced through his soul.
"Ah?"
In a moment too brief to even register, the scenery around him had changed. By the time he came to his senses, he was already in another space.
He had blinked once, and found himself in a strange place beneath a gray sky.
"Hmm..."
Standing atop a small hill covered in green grass, Jin Somyeong slowly looked around. The temperature was just right. Neither hot nor cold, but mild like spring weather.
However, it was not especially large. The entire place was no more than a small hill of about seventy square meters. A little mound too modest to even call a mountain.
This was his Mental Pocket Realm.
The area around the hill was surrounded by gray mist, making it impossible to see outside.
It's solid.
The gray mist looked soft as cotton candy, but when pushed beyond a certain point, it abruptly hardened and blocked him.
Perhaps because he was the master of this space, countless pieces of information continued surfacing in his mind.
The mist was a kind of barrier, and also land. It supported the Mental Pocket Realm located within the void and prevented outside enemies from invading.
Right now, I'm... half in a soul state.
When he looked down at his palm, it was translucent. With his current strength, he could not enter the Mental Pocket Realm in his physical body. It felt similar to having a lucid dream.
His body was still seated in the cave dwelling, and only his soul and spirit had crossed the void to arrive in the secret realm.
I should only enter the Mental Pocket Realm when I'm somewhere safe.
After organizing the information rising in his mind, Jin Somyeong inhaled.
Haaa.
The spiritual energy filling the surroundings flowed into his lungs.
...The spiritual energy concentration isn't that high.
It was worse than his home, which had a first-tier low-grade spirit vein. The vein here was still an ungraded, tier-zero spirit vein. As disappointment creased his brow, he shifted his gaze.
"Where's my spirit stone mine?"
The question did not last long. The hill was narrow, so there was nothing to search. It was very easy to find the lattice-shaped entrance leading underground. Without hesitation, he immediately entered the mine.
"...What is this?"
There was nothing much to see. The underground cave was very short and narrow. It would not be inaccurate to call it an ordinary earthen burrow.
"Roughly thirteen to sixteen square meters, maybe."
It was a tiny underground cave, small enough to remind him of a cramped single room. The floor was flat, and the ceiling was fairly high at around three meters. At the very least, it was not uncomfortable to move around in.
It was dark, but not so dark that he could not distinguish objects. A faint blue light shimmered from every direction.
"This is really a mine? It's too narrow."
An inexplicable tension began creeping up inside him.
Something had felt strange from the size of the hill onward. The Mental Pocket Realm was nothing like what he had expected.
He started wondering if he had been cheated.
Gulp.
His mouth went dry.
"No way. Surely not."
Forcing himself to swallow, Jin Somyeong moved forward. He approached the small crystal growing from the cave wall.
This thing emitting a faint glow was a spirit stone, but...
"A fragment? A spirit stone fragment?"
Jin Somyeong's eyes flew wide open. For a moment, the back of his head went numb.
The moment he realized the true nature of the blue crystal, his fingertips trembled. It was not a complete spirit stone, but only a fragment.
The very thing one had to collect over a hundred of just to exchange for a single spirit stone.
"Guh!"
He staggered. In that instant, he fully understood what high blood pressure must feel like.
He had offered fifty-one years of lifespan, and all he got was a fragment?
"Ah."
Like a man who had taken a heavy blow to the head, he stood there blankly for a long time.
For more than a minute.
At last, Jin Somyeong, whose mind had briefly left him, managed to gather himself. He hurriedly rummaged through the information in his mind, and only then was he able to calm down.
"So it grows."
Of course. The Boundless Great Ability would not deceive him. To be honest, the wish he had made had been excessive. It had been difficult to fulfill properly even with fifty-one years of lifespan. The result, after various compromises, was a growing secret realm.
"Phew. Thank goodness. If it grows, that's actually better."
Resources useful during the Qi Refining stage would one day become trivial. Something useful in the future was far better than something valuable only right now.
Jin Somyeong focused his mind.
He organized the information in his mind and shaped it into the form of a status window. It was for the future, when the scale of the Mental Pocket Realm had grown larger.
In any case, this mine currently produced one spirit stone fragment per day.
Increasing that production was not difficult.
He simply had to invest resources.
If I invest one spirit stone, the daily production increases by one spirit stone fragment.
That meant he would recover his principal after roughly a hundred days, and everything after that would be pure profit.
He was about to invest spirit stones immediately, but paused. Because he had come to the secret realm in soul-spirit form, his hands were empty.
Frowning, he soon thought of a solution. Too much information had rushed into his mind all at once, so he had only just realized it now.
Flash!
With a blinding burst of light, he returned to Jeokyang Market and picked up his storage pouch.
A spatial-attribute spiritual object that can be absorbed has been discovered.
Absorb it?
After dumping all the contents inside onto the floor, he immediately granted permission.
Crack!
The artifact worth three hundred spirit stones turned to powder.
Jin Somyeong shuddered from head to toe at the strange sensation. It felt as though something deep within his soul had grown.
"Aah!"
Along with a peculiar thrill, he understood the new effect added to the Mental Pocket Realm.
He had absorbed the storage pouch's ability wholesale. He was now able to store physical objects in a pocket space about three square meters wide.
He gathered all the items scattered across the floor into the pocket space, then entered the Mental Pocket Realm again.
"It works!"
Even in his soul-spirit state, he could take objects out of the pocket space. He immediately headed toward the spirit stone mine.
He invested the ninety-nine spirit stones he had earned from selling Wang Shin's belongings, and...
The resource production increased to one spirit stone per day.
"Good!"
Now, even if he did absolutely nothing, one spirit stone would be created every single day. If others found out, they would cough blood from envy.
He could not possibly hold back.
The moment he invested another hundred spirit stones—
A doubled income greeted him. He felt full without eating a single bite.
"Hm?"
More good news arrived. Without his noticing, the spiritual energy concentration of the Mental Pocket Realm had surged. The spirit vein had somehow reached first-tier low-grade.
By growing the mine, the spirit vein had naturally strengthened as well.
"Good! This is good!"
He was so happy his heart pounded. Now, no matter where he was, he could enjoy the effects of a spirit vein.
It naturally meant his cultivation speed had increased, and his usual spiritual energy recovery rate had risen as well.
And now, he no longer needed to spend the Boundless Great Ability climbing Jeokyang Mountain.
From here on, his cultivation speed would only grow faster and faster. It was only natural, now that he could pour the omnipotent power of the Boundless Great Ability entirely into cultivation.
Flash!
Returning to the cave dwelling, Jin Somyeong sat cross-legged.
He could no longer restrain himself. He wanted to see just how much faster his cultivation had become. The spiritual energy flowing in from the Mental Pocket Realm connected to his soul was unmistakably clear.