The Red-Eyed Baby
Jin Somyeong, seated atop a damp heap of straw, blinked slowly.
Where… am I?
His head felt heavy, as though someone had filled it with stones. Like he had just woken from an overlong sleep. A stale reek of mold pricked at his nose, and when he frowned and looked around, he saw a decrepit barn thick with cobwebs.
The sight was strangely familiar, and his thoughts went hazy all over again.
What was I doing just now…?
A dull ache throbbed through his skull. Forcing his sluggish mind to work, he caught a faint recollection of floundering in a space filled with starlight.
A ridiculous dream. I’m no immortal. How could I possibly fly through the heavens?
A baffled laugh slipped from him—then he froze.
No, wait.
Did I always speak like this?
Struck by a peculiar sense of wrongness, he lowered his gaze to his palm. It was not even half the size he remembered. Small and slight, like the hand of a ten-year-old child.
Remembered? What am I using as the standard for “normal”? I’m twelve years old.
His palm had always been this size, hadn’t it? Of course a child’s body was small. Everything was as it should be. So why had something been scraping at the back of his mind since he woke?
He pressed hard at the space between his brows, trying to shake off the unease that would not leave him.
Then a booming voice roared from outside.
“You little bastard! How long has the sun been up, and you’re still dragging your feet?”
A sturdy middle-aged man appeared, huffing with anger as he glared down at him.
Ah.
A sunburned, rough-looking face. Hair shot through with gray. The man had aged fast under years of backbreaking farmwork, and the sight of him snapped Jin Somyeong’s mind into clarity.
It was a dream.
This was long ago, before he awakened the memories of his previous life—when he had been sold by parents whose faces he could no longer even recall and forced to work as a farm serf.
Of course, he had not remained a serf for long. The moment his past-life memories awakened, he fled and made his way to Jeokyang Market.
It’s been a long time since I saw this barn.
It truly was a miserable place. Even the door was half-smashed, letting wind whistle through the gaps. Making a twelve-year-old child sleep somewhere like this—thinking back on it now, it really had been cruel.
“Didn’t I tell you to get out here? Do I have to beat sense into you before you listen?”
The man slammed his fist against the wall as if to intimidate him, but naturally, it had no effect. Once Jin Somyeong realized this was a dream, what was there to fear?
“Damn it! They told me you were an obedient one, so I bought you, and you turn out to be nothing but trouble!”
“Heh.”
Jin Somyeong, who had been listening quietly, let out a soft chuckle. The man, who had been shouting himself hoarse, widened his eyes and jabbed a finger at him.
“Y-you’re laughing? You…! You rotten brat! Do I look like a joke to you?”
He was so furious he could barely speak. His face flushed scarlet, his breaths rough, and then he drew a whip—a thick one made for breaking livestock.
Crack!
He lashed it through the air as if to frighten him and stomped forward. Jin Somyeong could only sigh.
To someone of his current realm, what threat could an ordinary man—not even at Qi Refining—possibly pose?
“Listen. I understand you spent a fair bit of money to buy me, but even so, surely beating a child is going too far.”
“What…?”
The man, who had been advancing as though he meant to teach him a permanent lesson, faltered in confusion. No matter how he looked at him, that tone did not belong in the mouth of a twelve-year-old boy.
Perhaps he sensed something unsettling in the strangeness of the situation. He hesitated, then snorted and strode forward again.
Jin Somyeong watched the whip rise and clicked his tongue. He was about to cast a light spell and give the man a suitable punishment when he stopped.
What’s wrong with my spiritual power?
His dantian was empty. It was recovering little by little, but by sheer quantity, his energy barely reached the level of Qi Refining. Worse, he now realized his Divine Sense was almost nonexistent, and his body felt heavy.
The ten-thousand-catty strength he had tempered as a fourth-rank body refiner was gone as well.
As the whip tore through the air toward him, he rapidly assessed the state of his body. Everything he had built through a century of grueling cultivation had vanished in vain, as though he had truly returned to being a twelve-year-old child.
Everything, that was—except one thing.
The Boundless Great Ability.
Deep within his soul lay golden beads. Tens of millions of fragments of omnipotence remained intact, untouched by whatever had happened.
That’s a relief. Still, there’s no need to use the Boundless Great Ability for this.
A faint thread of spiritual power was slowly filling him. It was only at the level of Qi Refining, but that was enough.
Whoosh!
The instant a breeze raised by spiritual power sliced across the air, the whip turned to powder.
“Huh…?”
For a moment, the man stared with a stupid expression, unable to understand what had happened. Then his face belatedly drained of all color.
“Haaah! A-an immortal?”
He fell flat on his backside and scrambled backward. Unable even to stand properly, he clawed desperately at the ground, trying to crawl away.
“Listen. What was your name again?”
“…Pardon? Jo—Jo Manbok, sir. P-please spare my life.”
“I see.”
Leaving the terrified Jo Manbok behind—so frightened he had even wet himself—Jin Somyeong walked out of the barn.
As he followed the quiet country road, a flat expanse of rice paddies and fields spread before him. It was peaceful, almost picturesque. He walked wherever his feet took him, then sat down on a suitable rock.
Cultivation is… possible.
He circulated the Cheonroedochegyeol, a technique he had practiced for so long that it had become as natural as breathing, and it worked. The ambient spiritual energy was thin, so the pace was slow, but spiritual power gathered in his dantian.
That meant he could cultivate even inside a dream.
By the time he had begun confirming, one by one, whether the information he had gathered while investigating Hwanmongjingyeong was true, the spiritual power that had once been no more than Qi Refining had already broken through Foundation Establishment and reached the level of a Golden Core.
As time passed, his original realm returned at terrifying speed.
“Am I about to wake from the dream…?”
Murmuring to himself, Jin Somyeong kicked up a pebble rolling on the ground and snatched it from the air. He toyed with the stone, feeling its texture as vivid as reality, then placed it into his subspace.
It was to test whether he could bring it out of the dream.
Chirp… chirp…
At the sudden sound of sparrows, he turned his gaze. Dawn was late, or perhaps morning had already come. He stared out at the countryside, alive with the trilling of insects.
Then the horizon blurred like a heat haze. It felt as though the entire world were collapsing inward from the outside.
He did not know how much time passed. The instant he realized his vanished spiritual power and Divine Sense had fully returned, he found himself back in Hwanmongjingyeong, within the mist filled with starlight.
From the moment he had recognized the dream for what it was, his mind had grown clearer and clearer, until he had finally awakened completely.
As soon as he emerged, he checked his subspace first. He searched for the pebble he had picked up in the dream, but unfortunately, it was nowhere to be seen. It seemed difficult to bring objects out from within a dream.
I can absorb spiritual energy and cultivate, but objects are impossible…? I don’t know where the exact boundary lies.
After organizing what he had learned, Jin Somyeong stretched out his hand. Among the countless points of starlight, he chose one that drew his attention and touched it.
This time, a bustling market unfolded before his eyes.
He watched a Qi Refining cultivator set up a stall and hawk goods, and confusion rose in him.
Who is that?
No matter how many times he looked, he could not recognize the man. He combed through his memories, but the face was truly unfamiliar. Could it be someone he had merely passed by by chance?
Jin Somyeong emerged from the memory of a nameless stranger diligently selling wares until the scene ended, and he frowned.
So this is how it works. Memories unrelated to me are mixed in as well. No wonder Hwanmongjingyeong isn’t popular.
If every memory one touched were brimming with usefulness, Hwanmongjingyeong would never have been left neglected like this. Seongdo would have managed it directly, no matter the cost.
Clicking his tongue, Jin Somyeong reached toward a glimmer of starlight that happened to drift past him.
The scene that unfolded this time was…
Sky Island?
A continent-sized island flew above the sea.
“They say a third-rank high-grade spirit vein has appeared in the Gwangwon Sea.”
“Oh, then let’s hurry. We were just running low on stored Spirit Stones. This is fortunate.”
Familiar faces appeared—Golden Core merchants he had met during his stay on Sky Island. Under their cheerful discussion, Sky Island changed course. It seemed they intended to fly toward the Gwangwon Sea, where the spirit vein had been discovered.
They’ve been doing well.
Even living in that bizarre sea where spirit veins vanished and reappeared without warning, everyone’s expressions were bright. Come to think of it, except for the endless war against demon beasts, Sky Island had been a good place to live.
The relationship between seniors and juniors was good too.
Still, looking back now, Sky Island had certainly been a region lacking in cultivation resources. To think they would go so far as to wage war with demon beasts for a third-rank spirit vein, the sort one could see now and then in Jungju without much surprise…
He felt a slight pang of pity, though ironically, the cultivators living on Sky Island looked cheerful enough. The cultivators of Sky Island united against the demon beasts and carved out a decent life for themselves.
People do tend to come together when they have an external enemy.
Was that a trait unique to humans, or something common to all living beings?
As he pondered the thought that had suddenly occurred to him, the memory ended before he knew it.
Hmm…
Back in Hwanmongjingyeong, Jin Somyeong looked out at the river of light spread like the Milky Way and concluded that this would not do.
Searching for Hong Seol in such a haphazard fashion was far too inefficient.
Should I use the Boundless Great Ability instead?
If he wished to be guided to starlight related to Hong Seol, might it have an effect?
Since the thought had occurred to him, he tried it at once. The moment he spent ten million units of the Boundless Great Ability and made his wish—
“…”
Nothing happened. He waited for a long while for some change, and his brow slowly furrowed.
I spent ten million on that.
With a sigh of disappointment, Jin Somyeong chose one of the scattered points of starlight around him. He moved forward as though swimming through the deep sea and reached out his hand.
In the next instant, a pure white radiance dyed the world.
Ruins sprawled in every direction, so thoroughly collapsed that not a single building remained whole.
In that place, so silent it would not have been strange for ghosts to appear, a group of more than a dozen people emerged in formation around a large carriage.
At a glance, it looked like the procession of a prestigious household. The carriage was lavishly decorated, and warriors mounted on glossy horses guarded it on all sides.
“Sowol. The air is cold. Close the window before you catch a chill.”
“Just a little longer.”
“Now, now.”
“It’s boring sitting still inside the carriage.”
She looked about thirteen. The young girl, who had rolled back the leather-covered window and was peering outside, suddenly widened her eyes.
“Wait! Everyone stop! Quickly!”
She shouted urgently, as if she had discovered something. The man beside her looked at her in puzzlement.
“Why all of a sudden?”
“Father, look over there! That little thing wrapped in a cloth! It’s moving!”
“Ahem. Sowol, you’re old enough now, aren’t you? How many times have I told you to call me Father, not Papa—”
“Oh, please. Hurry!”
The man chuckled at his daughter’s pestering, then looked where her finger pointed and was startled.
He had realized what the round bundle wrapped in swaddling cloth was.
“A newborn survived in this bitter winter…?”
“A baby?”
“W-wait!”
There was no time to stop her. Sowol sprang out of the carriage and ran over, scooping up the infant wrapped in cloth.
Afraid the baby might have frozen to death, she hurriedly tucked it into her arms and examined it.
“Huh?”
It was unmistakably the dead of winter, and yet the air around the baby was as warm as spring. A soft, sunlit warmth lingered beside the child.
Sowol’s eyes went round with shock at the impossible phenomenon.
“You foolish girl! How can you be so careless? Do you have any idea how dangerous the world is?”
“Ah… I’m sorry.”
Her father, who had rushed after her with the guards and was about to scold her severely, stopped short.
Without realizing it, his gaze had been stolen by the infant in Sowol’s arms.
“Its eyes are red…? How ominous.”
“Ominous? They’re pretty.”
The baby, whose head was smaller than a fist, did not cry. It simply stared up at Sowol with bright, unblinking eyes, then opened its toothless mouth in a wide, empty smile.
One tiny hand pawed at the air as if searching for something, then curled around Sowol’s little finger.
“Ah…”
At that small warmth, Sowol gazed blankly at the baby and said,
“Father. Let’s take her with us and raise her.”
“What? No, what are you saying? Everything about this child is strange no matter how I look at it. Absolutely not!”
The man clearly felt uneasy and wanted to leave, but Sowol was persistent.
“Then what? Are you really saying we should abandon a baby who can’t even speak on a freezing day like this? How could we do that?”
“Hrmm…”
“Papa! Please. Hm?”
She even resorted to the coquettish pleading she rarely used, and the man let out a long sigh.
In truth, his daughter’s wheedling was one thing, but he could not bring himself to ignore the gaze of the baby smiling so guilelessly.
“Haa… Hand the child here.”
He carefully took the baby wrapped in swaddling cloth, then was startled all over again. Though the weather was cold enough for breath to turn white, the air around the infant was full of warmth.
His fingertips trembled faintly at the extraordinary phenomenon.
How can this be? Could this be the child of an immortal, the kind spoken of only in legends?
So shocked that he could not even close his mouth, he whispered to the guard beside him.
“Check whether anyone is nearby.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard returned from searching and shook his head.
“There is no one.”
The man stood frowning in thought for a while, then exhaled. After that, he gave his daughter a stern warning.
“Do not grow too attached. Once this winter passes, we will find a suitable household and send her there as an adopted daughter.”
Sowol stuck out her lower lip in dissatisfaction, but since he had agreed to take the baby for now, she did not argue further.
And so, carrying the red-eyed baby in their arms, they left the ruins and headed somewhere far away.