The Living Darkness
The middle-aged man raised his head without realizing it, meeting the old man's eyes.
"Since they have already breached the seal and entered, something is bound to happen one way or another. Nine times out of ten, the secret of the seal will no longer remain hidden."
"Ancestor. Then, are you...?"
"As the current ancestor of the Gwak family, I cannot allow our lineage to end in my generation. Yet, I cannot abandon the legacy our family has protected until now. I must at least have something to say when I face our ancestors in the afterlife."
"Ancestor!"
"Do not worry too much. I am not blindly marching to my death."
The old man's deep eyes turned toward the seal, which was still flickering unstably.
"Since things have come to this, I intend to test my own luck. Who knows? Considering the contributions our family has made over the ages, perhaps Senior Sangyoza will grant me a sliver of karmic destiny."
Flashing a hollow smile, the old man looked back at his somber descendants.
"If my assumptions are correct, the duty our family has guarded for countless ages will also end today. You may feel uneasy about this sudden change, but you must accept what must be accepted and adapt to what must be adapted. Just because our seven-thousand-year duty has ended does not mean the Gwak family is finished. Remember that both the past ages and today's events are merely parts of our family's history, which will endure for ten thousand generations."
"We will keep it engraved in our hearts."
Just before the old man, having said his piece, stepped through the seal, the Gwak family cultivators shouted in unison.
"We pray that karmic destiny favors our Ancestor!"
After beginning his new life as a serpent, Jekyeong had naturally shed much of his past-life mindset. And after being reborn as a Yo-beast, a member of the Beast Race, beastly traits had begun to manifest from deep within him, even without his conscious awareness.
Now that his time living as a beast far exceeded the years he had spent as a human in his previous life, Jekyeong had even forgotten what his past self was like. To be precise, he could remember if he tried, but he saw no need to do so.
If he had clung to his fragile past-life identity until now, he would have gone mad instantly at this very moment—or, even if he hadn't, he would have been paralyzed by sheer psychological trauma.
'How bizarre.'
Though he had crossed the seal at the exact same time as Myeong-ha, Myeong-ha was nowhere to be seen. All that met his eyes was a gloomy darkness and things writhing within it, dripping with pure malice.
Even Jekyeong's transcendent vision could not pierce through the entities lurking in the shadows. This darkness was clearly no ordinary gloom. The things hiding within it were irritating, but the darkness itself was far more offensive.
While the malice of the writhing creatures merely grated on his nerves, the malice radiating from the darkness itself filled his mind with unease.
He wanted nothing more than to turn his surroundings into a sea of fire and incinerate every last one of those repulsive things, but Jekyeong maintained his composure and exercised patience. He had no idea what dangers lurked here; making a reckless scene was out of the question. The best course of action was to move as quietly as possible, achieve his goal, and get out.
'So, which way should I go?'
He had already tested it, but in this place, let alone his Divine Sense, even his Spiritual Awareness was completely suppressed. To grasp his surroundings, he had no choice but to rely solely on his primal physical senses.
Fortunately, the senses of a Great Yo-beast were extraordinary. They were more than enough to detect danger or sudden environmental changes in advance.
"Greeegh—"
A suffocating stench assaulted his nose. Frowning, Jekyeong swiftly leaped backward. Almost the exact instant his feet left the ground, the source of the foul odor materialized right where he had been standing.
'What is this?'
It stood on all fours. Though it was larger than a sturdy bull, its size was not the issue—its appearance was. Its body was gouged and hollowed out in various places, as if chunks of it had been gnawed away, making its original form impossible to discern. Furthermore, something was bubbling inside those hollowed-out cavities, and the dreadful stench was wafting directly from them.
'It's not a living creature.'
He felt none of the vital energy that a living being should possess. In that regard, it was like a Goeroe, yet it was distinctly different from a puppet. This thing was expressing emotions. Resentment, wrath, sorrow—all sorts of negative emotions wafted over, mingled with the stench.
"Grrr!"
As one creature revealed itself, the others hiding in the dark began to let out grating cries one by one. Jekyeong quietly clenched his fist as he swept his gaze over the multiplying monsters.
*Crash!*
The head of the monster that had just lunged at him caved in from a single punch. Its decaying body was half-crushed, and the ground beneath it sank.
"Gwaaaaargh!"
As if that were a signal, dozens, then hundreds of monsters rushed at Jekyeong as if they had been waiting for this moment.
As he mechanically smashed the endless waves of monsters in the Secret Realm, Jekyeong was suddenly reminded of the zombie movies he had watched in his past life. They were similar in how they clung to him in a grotesque manner, feeling neither fear nor pain.
*Boom!*
However, there was a difference. The zombies he had seen in movies would stop moving or at least be incapacitated once their heads were destroyed, but these monsters were not like that. Even if he shattered their heads or ground their entire bodies into a handful of minced meat, they rose again before long.
Yet, it was difficult to call it true regeneration. Watching the monsters rise with their forms haphazardly altered each time, Jekyeong felt as though they were machines being crudely reassembled on the fly.
*Crash!*
The fact that they wouldn't die no matter how many times he killed them was annoying, but other than that, dealing with these monsters posed no real difficulty. Whenever they were hit by Jekyeong's casually swung fists, they collapsed into crumpled lumps of flesh. Jekyeong was much faster at crushing them than they were at rising again.
After a brief warm-up, Jekyeong was surrounded by a sea of writhing lumps of flesh. Some of them, horribly mangled, tangled and fused with one another in an attempt to rise in new shapes, while others dissolved into the ground like rainwater soaking into the soil.
But even if they vanished, they had merely slipped out of sight; they were not truly dead or annihilated. Jekyeong could still feel the stench and the waves of negative emotions radiating from the monsters that had disappeared from his view.
'This won't do.'
Jekyeong wanted to burn these annoying pests to ashes right this instant. The only reason he refrained was his intuition, which warned him that the moment he used his Monster Power, something incredibly troublesome would happen.
This Secret Realm suppressed all of a cultivator's abilities. Not only did it block Divine Sense and Spiritual Awareness, but all kinds of evil thoughts constantly seeped from the darkness, trying to burrow into his mind. It felt as though it were tempting the cultivator to hurry up and use their power. Jekyeong truly felt that way.
Thus, suppressing the urge to sweep everything away, he dealt with the monsters using nothing but his physical strength. Fortunately, these things were merely a nuisance, not a threat.
Of course, this was by Jekyeong's standards. Since he could exert combat power equivalent to a Foundation Establishment cultivator using pure physical strength alone without any Monster Power, he had no reason to fear these monsters. But there was no telling how others would fare.
"Gwoooooooh—!"
At the exact moment Jekyeong wondered how the others were doing, an incredibly eerie sound echoed from the unfathomable depths of the distant darkness.
Whether it was the roar of some monster or the sound of someone unleashing their power, he could not tell. However, the moment that chilling sound echoed, the darkness began to writhe violently, as if forcibly awakened from a deep slumber.
"..."
Jekyeong crushed a monster that was just beginning to reform with another single punch, then quickly left the area. The monsters still directed their malice toward him, but with their bodies not yet fully restored, they could not pursue him.
Although this thick darkness—or perhaps some power of the Secret Realm—suppressed his Divine Sense and Spiritual Awareness, Jekyeong's sense of direction remained relatively intact. He couldn't say he had traveled in a perfectly straight line, but he was certain he hadn't doubled back or gotten terribly lost.
He traveled like that for at least three, perhaps four days. During that time, the only things he encountered were endless waves of monsters of various shapes, though their essence was cookie-cutter identical.
Wrestling with monsters in this ominous darkness for four days without even knowing where to go, even Jekyeong felt his mental stamina slowly draining.
He could still endure it for now, but he couldn't guarantee he would feel the same if ten or fifteen days passed like this. He wanted to return to his true form immediately, but he feared that doing so would only draw endless hordes of monsters attracted by his colossal size.
'It's fine. I can still endure this much.'
Jekyeong drank some Yeongju, cooling down the irritation that was beginning to simmer in his chest. It was a good thing he had brought five times his usual supply just in case. With this much, he would be able to avoid losing his patience and reverting to his true form.
'By the way... this place is truly vast.'
Jekyeong had experienced a Secret Realm before. When he had attacked the Yuk family in Jimagwon, the place where the Yuk family head had been in secluded cultivation was a Secret Realm. But... just as cultivators differed from one another, did secret realms differ as well? If the Yuk family's secret realm was a small forest, this place was a vast mountain range, or perhaps even larger.
'Is it moving again?'
He had suspected it from the start, but this darkness was truly bizarre. At first, he thought it was merely the result of the evil thoughts permeating the Secret Realm warping the environment, but wandering through this gloom had changed his mind. This was like a living creature. While not entirely identical, it certainly possessed some characteristics of a living being.
Take its current movement, for instance. The moment someone drew attention elsewhere, it writhed and shifted like a beast drawn to the scent of blood.
Holding his breath, Jekyeong watched the movement of the darkness. As the darkness surged violently like a tidal wave in the ocean, things previously hidden by the gloom came into view. Though they were mere blurry silhouettes that made him wonder if he was seeing things, Jekyeong strained his eyes and engraved everything that briefly entered his vision into his mind.
'Fortunately, my direction wasn't wrong.'
For the first two days after entering the Secret Realm, Jekyeong had wandered aimlessly, not knowing where to go. He knew he had to find an elixir or pill that might or might not exist, but he had no idea where to look.
His only thought was a simple one: if there was an elixir here, it would surely play a core role in this twisted space, so he should look for the most unusual-looking place.
But how was he supposed to find an unusual place when he couldn't see a thing? With both his Divine Sense and Spiritual Awareness completely blocked, his eyes were his only hope, yet even they could not pierce the darkness that seemed to blanket the entire Secret Realm.
But on the transition from the second to the third day in the Secret Realm, the darkness surged more violently than ever before. What mattered was not where or what had happened, but that the surging darkness allowed him to see things that had been hidden before. It felt as if a blindfold covering his eyes had been lifted for a split second.
Though his vision cleared only briefly, Jekyeong saw it clearly. In the far distance stood something—he couldn't tell if it was a towering mountain or a colossal building—with a circular air current slowly rotating in the sky above it. And finally, a massive silhouette seemed to hover around that vortex. The moment he saw it, Jekyeong was certain that place was the heart of this Secret Realm.
'The others must have noticed it too, right?'
They probably had. If they had eyes, they would see it, and if they had brains, they would figure it out. However, knowing about it didn't mean they could easily reach it. Unlike him, they didn't possess such a powerful physical body, so they would have had no choice but to use Dharma Power to shake off the grotesque monsters clinging to them.
But while that might save them from immediate danger, they would have to face endless, relentless harassment—and it might not end with mere annoyance.
'In any case, now is my chance.'
He didn't know who it was, but whoever had gratefully drawn the attention of the darkness had given him an opportunity. He decided to seize this chance and move more aggressively. His cautious steps turned into a sprint, and he no longer held back his strength. With every step he took, the ground caved in, and his body shot forward like an arrow.
"Grrr!"
Detecting the minor commotion, monsters began to emerge from all directions. But Jekyeong ignored them and kept running. Whenever one blocked his path, he threw a punch without hesitation, but otherwise, he focused solely on moving forward without wasting his energy.
*Crunch!*
A monster whose body was more than half mouth tried to swallow Jekyeong whole. Jekyeong leaped high to dodge the creature's hideous maw, then stomped down, reducing the monster to shredded meat. The immense force loaded into his foot crushed the beast and shook the ground beneath it.
*Rumble!*
The entire area shook as if struck by an earthquake.