The Lost Records of Hwanga-gongdong
"No! Stop! You successor, you worm of a thing... how despicable!!!"
The elephant, coming to its senses far too late, was practically showering me with compliments even as it forced every scrap of strength into holding back the seals being ripped free of its body. The price was catastrophic.
The gravitational collapse of the Star Eater—Togo's mythic-grade ornament housing his Nascent Soul, the SF-mode ultimate weapon that by lore could swallow entire stars—slammed straight into the elephant the moment it left itself defenseless trying to suppress the seals.
"KRAAAAGH!!! If I'm going to die to the likes of you, Togo—you who lost your body, fell to being a puppet, and even forfeited your Laws—then I'll drag both you and the successor down with me!!!"
Ignoring even the seals bursting free of its crumbling flesh, a Nascent Soul wrapped tight in golden seals erupted from atop the elephant's head.
As the Nascent Soul's forehead split open and an eyeball bulged free, Togo stepped protectively in front of me, extending a mechanical metal arm and deploying a blue barrier.
An intangible force carved space itself into fragments as it poured from the elephant's Nascent Soul, grinding mercilessly against the blue barrier—and before I could even move—
An invisible gamma-ray burst collided with the intangible force and canceled it out. In the same breath, a light source symbolizing a star's death lanced through like a laser, punched clean through the elephant, and vanished.
"Hoo... I'm getting a little tired."
This was the power of Elder Togo—estimated level eight hundred at minimum? And that was with me already at Nascent Soul, this place being an isolated secret realm free of Heaven's restrictions, and Togo having lost his body and, as a rebound, even his Laws. I couldn't even begin to guess how much stronger he actually was!
Of course, setting aside the power source itself, most of that force belonged to the mythic-grade ornament Star Eater—but Yu Hee, who had no idea, naturally assumed it was pure Togo and her eyes sparkled.
Ah, come to think of it, the humanity who'd gotten the Chef job had stocked some recovery items.
I was about to pull out the simple cookies—items ground to powder with a millstone from the inventory, mixed with spirit-vein water and monster eggs into dough, then baked over spiritual flame—to offer him for spiritual energy recovery, when the humanities made a huge fuss insisting they'd deliver them themselves. So I activated the Erosion skill.
"Elder! We worked really hard making these!"
"They're for spiritual energy recovery!"
Leaving only his holographic form and stuffing his metal body into the inventory, Elder Togo was surrounded by humanities feeding him cookies. I left that scene behind and focused on the seals being sucked into the opened Record Book.
Because the Record Book was getting heavier by the second!
These were the seals that had ground an elephant of late Nascent Soul—someone who'd clearly known Elder Togo, so probably Deity Transformation in truth—into powder, Nascent Soul and all.
The fact that Togo had killed it and yet no kill count or experience came in told me everything was being absorbed by the seals.
Even with the item filter switched off, there wasn't a single drop.
Because Togo killed it? Or because this was a sect-event secret realm? My gut said the latter, and while I was settling on that conclusion, every last seal was recovered into the Record Book.
As the seal-formed characters fully settled into the empty Record Book, the seals climbed up both my hands gripping it, etched themselves into my arms like tattoos, then turned transparent and melted away as if absorbed.
What the hell. Why tattoos.
You have recovered the lost records of Hwanga-gongdong!
Would you like to view the next story?
Tattoos weren't anything special—this was pure growth gear!
Was getting this first the intended route? But without Elder Togo, I don't think I could have faced that monster elephant alone.
While I was thinking that, the message window that refused to disappear no matter how I waved it away kept prodding me like the story absolutely had to progress. I glared at the Would you like to view the next story? prompt, told the humanities to take care of the body and return to base with Elder Togo, then started watching the story.
Playing story.
Even after ending the Ancient Era and dividing the world—thus losing most of their power—the True Immortals were still strong.
A human-shaped figure representing the True Immortal who had divided the world was shown surrounded by seven other figures.
Then three of those figures were torn away, and the True Immortal itself was torn apart by the remaining four.
The surviving True Immortals were not satisfied with the divided world. Thus they created their own worlds from the corpses of the dead True Immortals, and these were called the Four Systems.
Blah blah this, blah blah that—listening to the story, I felt sleep coming on. Making a Nascent Soul cultivator's investigation this boring? This story was seriously cliché! Who the hell wrote this?
I half-listened through the middle stretch about the Four Systems this and the remaining True Immortals that, until interesting content finally showed up at the end.
However, the first Will-Bearer to appear managed to steal one hand from the Four Systems made of True Immortal corpses—and this became the foundation of the secret realm where the secret sect known as Hwanga-gongdong is located.
My base was a True Immortal's hand?
What, were True Immortals some kind of giant race? For that, it was just ridiculously huge and a barren wasteland with zero spiritual energy!
Elder Togo had no idea either!
Would you like to view the story again?
"End! Return to base!"
Back at the base, I shared the story I'd just seen with the humanities. Since they shared the same memories as me and knew about my past life, maybe they'd come up with some decent ideas?
Time to pool our heads and use the power of collective consciousness!
From our discussion, we reached a reasonable conclusion: in the first story, the True Immortals had tracked down and destroyed Hwanga-gongdong, reducing this base to its current state.
If we assumed the five peaks of the base were finger traces, then maybe only the center counted as the True Immortal's hand? With that thought, I asked Elder Togo about what we'd learned.
"So according to you, baby, this secret realm is made from a True Immortal's hand."
"Oh—you believe me?"
"It's a fact you learned by receiving the succession, so it can hardly be a lie, can it? The Ancient Era was already ancient history even before I was sealed."
Hearing my words, Elder Togo examined the base this way and that, then nodded as if it all made sense.
"I thought spiritual energy was vanishing like water poured on sand—turns out the True Immortal's hand was swallowing it all."
"If the base is eating spiritual energy, does that mean this base is alive?!"
What the hell. That's terrifying.
And according to the story, that True Immortal was obviously a player.
"A tiny fragment might still remain. You'll know once you recover all the successions, won't you, baby?"
"But we can't go recover more right away. You're exhausted too, Elder Togo."
More importantly, there were two Deity Transformation enemies waiting.
Genuine monsters we had no way of facing unless Togo recovered his realm or I reached Deity Transformation myself.
Just the regional penalty alone nearly killed me when I entered—without Load and Save, what the hell would I have done!
Seriously.
Leaving the exhausted Elder Togo who'd fought the elephant, I pulled the Record Book from my inventory and checked its options.
◈ Restriction: Cannot be verified · Successor
◈ While owning Calamity Mountain: All stats +1 per level
◈ While owning Qi Records: All recovery & regeneration +1% per level
◈ [Locked — recover Hwanga-gongdong's lost cultivation arts to unlock]
◈ [Locked — recover Hwanga-gongdong's lost techniques to unlock]
◈ [Locked — recover Hwanga-gongdong's lost Dharma Treasures to unlock]
◈ [Locked — achieve Sect Master of Hwanga-gongdong to unlock]
◈ While held: Effectiveness of all stats +20%
◈ On use: Triggers a random recovery event (3/5)
— View Details —
An option that boosted all recovery and regeneration rates by percentage had appeared.
At my current level of five hundred, it was jacking recovery and regen up by a full five hundred percent—an absolutely broken option by any measure.
Truly a mod item made for players!
The sect event's difficulty was insane, so the item effects were equally insane.
"Well then..."
Time to go run the Abyss.
In the Mental World, my Nascent Soul seemed thoroughly pleased with my choice, waving the small tower in her hand like a stick through the air and laughing.