Hong Seol's Childhood
Returned to the mist brimming with starlight, Jin Somyeong let out a low groan.
Hong Seol's childhood?
When he searched his memories, Hong Seol's eyes had indeed been red. Whether it was coincidence or not, the moment he used the Boundless Great Ability, a memory connected to Hong Seol had appeared.
At the very least, it doesn't seem as though she was born ordinary...
A newborn infant had survived the dead of winter without freezing to death. Anyone could see that it was strange.
Jin Somyeong reviewed the scene he had just witnessed, sorted through the information, and then consumed the Boundless Great Ability once more. Wishing to meet Hong Seol, he reached toward another point of starlight.
This world was not inhabited only by cultivators.
People lived even in regions where spiritual qi was so thin that ordinary cultivation was impossible. In those places, which cultivators dismissed as the secular world and kept at a distance, there were countless families.
Among them was a certain household known as the Hong family, and one day, that household gained a new member.
The family head and his daughter had brought home a newborn infant they had found.
The whole household's attention gathered around this disruption in their otherwise monotonous lives.
"How can a person's eyes be red?"
Anything unusual, anything different from others, was bound to be rejected. Everyone frowned and kept their distance.
"...Still, she is rather cute."
"She's so composed. She barely cries."
That lasted only at first.
"Could she be mute?"
"No! If you hold her like this..."
"Bwaaah!"
"See? She likes it, doesn't she?"
"Ahem! Move aside for a moment. Let me hold her too."
Their subtle rejection did not last long.
From the very day they brought home that unnamed newborn, the family began to prosper in ways that were almost uncanny. Everything they attempted went well, and worries and misfortunes resolved themselves as if by nature.
Was she truly a little bundle of fortune?
Faced with that astonishing change, even Hong Gawi, the family head who had originally said they would send the baby to another household once winter passed, changed his mind.
"Little one, your name is Hong Seol."
He went so far as to formally bestow the family surname upon her and accept her as his adopted daughter...
Before Jin Somyeong knew it, a month had passed since he entered the Hwanmongjingyeong.
During that time, he had examined a total of twelve starlights, and five of them had contained memories related to Hong Seol.
Strange.
Now that he had learned about Hong Seol's childhood, questions naturally arose. No matter how he looked at it, the Hong family had no connection to the cultivation world.
At first, he wondered whether they were related to the famous Hong clan of Jungju, but that was not the case either. They merely shared the same surname. They were ordinary people who knew nothing about cultivation.
In that situation, how had Hong Seol become a cultivator?
For now, I'll keep searching.
Setting his curiosity aside, he consumed the Boundless Great Ability. Wishing to meet Hong Seol, he touched a point of starlight, and once again the world overturned.
"Seol. Now, repeat after me. Mom!"
"..."
"Hm? I told you to call me Mom. Come on."
Hong Sowol, who was hugging the five-year-old Hong Seol like a doll, kept pestering her until a sigh slipped out.
"No."
Her refusal was so firm it almost felt cold. Hong Sowol looked shocked, and Hong Seol averted her gaze.
"Then you won't be able to get married, Big Sister."
"...But I'm not getting married. I'm going to live with our Seol forever."
"Father won't like that. And you're Father's daughter. If I call you Mom, what does that make Father?"
"Uh, um."
For a moment, Hong Sowol was left speechless, her mouth opening and closing uselessly. She rolled her eyes this way and that, pondering for quite some time, but in the end she failed to find a suitable answer. So she simply hugged Hong Seol tight and cried out.
"Oh, honestly! Why does such a tiny thing have to nitpick so much? Just call me Mom!"
"I don't want to."
"How ungrateful! Whenever you cried and cried looking for your mother, I was the one who held you! Don't you even remember that?"
"...That's a lie. I don't cry."
"You did. Every single day, too. You cried so much I couldn't sleep properly."
"I said I didn't cry!"
Hong Seol, who had been sitting quietly in her arms, began to wriggle and struggle until she slipped free.
"Huh? Where are you going?"
She escaped Hong Sowol's grasp and ran to the training yard behind the family estate.
"Oh, our little treasure has come to look at swords again?"
"Hello, Uncle Jang."
At her polite bow, both hands folded neatly at her belly, the bodyguard chuckled and unfastened the scabbard at his waist. He tied the scabbard and sword together firmly so that the blade would not be drawn even by accident, then handed it to her.
A bright, innocent smile settled over Hong Seol's expressionless face.
"Do you like it that much?"
"Yes!"
The bodyguard looked at her in wonder as she hugged the longsword, which was larger than she was, and grinned foolishly.
"Good grief. You look as delicate as some princess in a palace somewhere, so why in the world do you like swords so much?"
"I don't know either. I just like them."
From childhood, Hong Seol had loved swords to an almost peculiar degree. If no one stopped her, she would stare at a sword all day long.
"This is a secret from the family head, all right? He doesn't much like you holding swords."
"Don't worry."
"And what is supposed to be a secret?"
"Hup."
Startled, Hong Seol hid the sword behind her back, and Hong Gawi, the family head who had appeared from somewhere, glared at the bodyguard.
"You there. What will you do if our Seol says she wants to become a warrior?"
"It wouldn't be bad for her to learn at least enough to defend herself... Ahem, no, never mind."
The bodyguard laughed awkwardly under that sharp gaze, but in truth, he was not especially worried. This was merely part of their daily routine.
Hong Gawi, now Hong Seol's adoptive father and the family head, would grumble in displeasure but ultimately give in. Breaking Hong Seol's stubbornness was truly difficult.
That was how it should have gone.
On that day, when everything was perfect, calamity descended from the sky.
A pale gray vortex appeared together with dark clouds, and it swallowed every sound.
The first to fall was the family head, who had been scolding her with exaggerated solemnity while forcefully holding back the laughter that kept threatening to spill out. The light vanished from his eyes. He crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut and did not rise again.
No one else was an exception. The warrior who had lent Hong Seol his sword, Hong Sowol, who had been seriously wondering whether she ought to marry before it was too late...
Everyone in the family.
No, every last one of the tens of millions of people living in the city collapsed. In a single instant.
Above the city, now swallowed by silence, a black-robed man with pallid skin appeared. Looking down upon the city that had become a vast grave, he bowed respectfully toward the gray vortex.
"How is it? Does it suit your palate?"
"It is far from enough. The quality of the souls is too poor. Every last one of them is not even worth the first tier."
"Haa. I came here just in case, but as expected, this won't do."
As the black-robed man muttered in disappointment, a cold voice burst from the gray vortex, which writhed like a living creature.
"Even if I absorbed billions of souls like these, they would not restore my strength."
"Hmm..."
"Simply guide me to a city where cultivators are gathered. If I devour them all, recovering my strength will take no time at all."
"Absolutely not! If you indiscriminately absorb the souls of cultivators, every faction under heaven will come after us! Even swallowing the souls of mortals today was already reckless."
"Hmph! What do you take this body, a member of the Soul-Devouring Race, for? No matter how many humans come, they are no match for me. I need only devour them all."
"Urgh."
"Cast aside your useless concerns. Do you not wish to reach Deity Transformation?"
"...Of course I do."
"I told you, only if I recover my strength can I ascend to the Upper Realm. In truth, your aptitude is fairly decent. If you go to the Upper Realm, where cultivation resources overflow, you will be able to reach Deity Transformation easily enough."
At the gray vortex's honeyed whisper, the black-robed man, who had been licking his dry lips, suddenly froze.
Something moved in the city, which had fallen into a silence cold enough to chill the bones. Amid all who had collapsed, a single child of about five years old was staggering to her feet.
That child was Hong Seol. After struggling upright, her eyes flew wide.
"Father? Uncle Jang?"
She shook her fallen adoptive father and the bodyguard several times, but then her mind went blank.
Neither of them was breathing...
"How curious. How is she alive?"
The black-robed man descended from the sky and looked at her as though appraising some strange object. Hong Seol, who had been sitting there in a daze, developed a fierce look in her eyes.
Instinctively, she had realized who was responsible for this.
She picked up the sword left behind by the dead bodyguard and tried to untie the cord that bound the blade so it could not be drawn. But a cord tied firmly by a grown man in his prime would not come undone so easily.
She struggled with it for a long time beneath the black-robed man's gaze, which regarded her as if the whole thing were absurd.
Who knew how much time had passed?
In the end, with her fingernails broken and her hands covered in blood, she managed to untie the cord.
Shrrrng...
She could barely lift the sword, and it wavered in her grasp as she pointed it at him. The black-robed man muttered as though dumbfounded.
"Insolent thing. A mere mortal dares."
He snorted, looking at her as if she were a worthless insect, then respectfully asked the gray vortex, "What of this brat? Since she resisted your soul-devouring divine ability, Senior, she doesn't seem to be an ordinary human."
"She does not look like much... I cannot say. I will know once I swallow her."
An ominous aura was about to seep from the gray vortex rippling in midair.
"Vermin. No matter how many of you I kill, you keep crawling out."
"...!"
An old man appeared, tearing through the dark clouds, and glared at the black-robed man and the gray vortex.
"The Holy City?"
The black-robed man stiffened like a mouse before a predator. He trembled and broke out in cold sweat until he suddenly came to his senses and, without warning, raised his magical power.
Was he going to fight?
No. With absolute decisiveness and not a trace of hesitation, he abandoned the gray vortex and fled.
But...
The moment the old man from the Holy City extended his index finger, the black-robed man, who had even been teleporting in his attempt to escape, slammed into the ground.
"Kugh!"
As though crushed beneath a great mountain, he was buried in the earth and could not move.
"S-spare... kuh!"
The black-robed man, who had strutted about while massacring ordinary people who were not even cultivators, was suppressed by a single pointing finger.
The arrogant gray vortex was no exception.
"Aaaaaaargh!"
It spun furiously and tried to do something, but it was crushed beneath an enormous pressure. It screamed in agony, and moments later, it was compressed into a speck no larger than a mote of dust, losing all presence.
Having subdued the murderers in a single move and sealed them into a spirit pouch, the old man was about to leave when he paused.
"Father...! Big Sister! Mother!"
Once her enemies vanished, Hong Seol collapsed where she stood and sobbed for a long while. Then she wandered through the entire house, searching for anyone still alive.
She fell countless times and became covered in dirt as she rummaged through every corner of the estate, but there was not a single survivor.
"..."
The old man watched her silently and sighed. He already knew there were no survivors.
In the end, when Hong Seol realized everyone was dead and sank down as if collapsing, the old man hesitated over something. Then, when he saw her broken fingernails, he made his decision.
"Child. Will you come with me?"
Hong Seol crouched there, sniffling, and only after a long while did she look up at the old man with swollen eyes.
"Grandfather, are you an immortal?"
"...Yes. And you, too, can become an immortal. It would have been impossible if you had no spiritual root, but fortunately, you possess the qualification to walk the path of immortality."
"If I become an immortal, can I bring Father, Mother, Big Sister... can I bring my family back to life?"
Unable to answer that unexpected question immediately, the old man finally said, "I do not know, to be honest. But I have heard that if one reaches the very end of the heavens, one becomes an omnipotent being capable of accomplishing anything."
"Then I'll do it. I'll become an immortal."
At Hong Seol's request, the old man made graves for the household members. Then he took out a flying carriage.
As the flying carriage bearing the two of them departed, the city was left behind as a silent place without a single survivor...
Before he knew it, Jin Somyeong had returned to the Hwanmongjingyeong. He remained silent. There had been so much unexpected information that his thoughts were tangled.
Hong Seol was currently being pursued by the Holy City. Had she once belonged to the Holy City in the past?
I don't know what happened to turn them against each other.
If Hong Seol was from the Holy City, then Jin Somyeong, who had learned Sword Qi from her, also had a connection to the Holy City.
Come to think of it, I don't know much about the Holy City.
To begin with, it was a secretive force about which little had been properly revealed.
Ordinarily, the foremost goal of any force formed by cultivators was naturally the Great Dao of Longevity. But was that truly true of the Holy City as well?
It was ambiguous.
If cultivation was their goal, they did not seem to make proper use of their position as rulers of Jungju.
There must be countless ways to make a faction larger and more magnificent.
The Holy City seemed almost like... a group of administrators who wished to preserve the status quo.
It was not certain yet, but at the very least, they did not seem to be an utterly wicked force. Not if they punished foreign races who massacred ordinary people.
I am curious, but...
To speak coldly, it was not important enough that he had to learn the truth right away.
Jin Somyeong set aside his questions about the Holy City and focused on finding Hong Seol.