Xianxia

"Only five thousand years."

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠word DEAD glowed on his monitor. Cheon Woo-jin muttered quietly as he stared at it.

"So this life ends here, too."

Five thousand years. In the real world, it would be a span of time almost impossible to imagine. But in the game Tale of Immortal Cultivation on the Eternal Road, it was never, ever enough — because this was a xianxia game whose whole point was to become an undying immortal.

"I wanted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to live a little longer."

The defining trait of the xianxia genre was that every time you cultivated your way to a higher realm, your lifespan increased along with it. In Yeongro Suseonjeon, the first stage, the Qi Condensation Realm, set your lifespan at one hundred years. Reach the second stage, the Foundation Establishment Realm, and it doubled to two hundred. The third stage, the Core Formation Realm, let you live to four hundred.

This endless growth through steadily extended lifespans was the heart of the genre. There was just one problem.

If you failed to secure the resources needed to break through to the next realm before your current lifespan ran out, you simply died.

Even now, one of his game characters had just perished of old age. He hadn't been in combat. His health bar had been completely full. He had simply dropped dead while walking down a road.

If he'd died fighting a boss, he could have loaded a save and tried again. But when death came from the passage of time itself, there was nothing to be done. Loading data from hundreds of years earlier would most likely lead to the same ending anyway. It was far less painful to just start over from the beginning.

"This time, I really wanted to see how long I could last."

Deep regret colored Cheon Woo-jin's voice as he murmured to himself. It had everything to do with his dream. For as long as he could remember, Cheon Woo-jin had wanted nothing more than to live as long as possible.

Everyone wants to live long, of course. But his parents had died of illness when he was young, and so that desire burned in him more fiercely than in most. It was the reason he'd fallen so deep into Yeongro Suseonjeon, a game devoted entirely to the pursuit of immortality. Even if only inside a game, he had wanted to live as long as he could.

"Hoo."

He let out a long sigh, and his mother's last words came back to him — she had passed away when he was in middle school.

You have to stay healthy and live a long, long time. Even now, her voice was vivid in his ears.

Staying healthy and living a long time isn't so easy in the real world.

Cheon Woo-jin worked at a publishing house specializing in humanities titles — a place that had once made its name translating Eastern classics. But the publishing industry had been in a slump lately, the staff had been cut, and he was working overtime day after day. His health was deteriorating by the week because of it.

I should be exercising... but by the time I drag myself home late at night, exhausted, the only thing I have energy for is gaming.

A bitter taste in his mouth, Cheon Woo-jin reached for his mouse. On the title screen, he clicked New Game and entered the character creation menu.

Tonight I'll just make a new character and sleep.

Yeongro Suseonjeon let you build your own protagonist when you started the game. Cheon Woo-jin had never cared much about customizing appearance, though. The only thing that mattered to him was the character's initial abilities as a cultivator.

Because these end up shaping everything that comes after.

He clicked the button, and the protagonist's starting abilities rerolled at random. Base stats like strength and constitution, the Five Elements affinity of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, weapon aptitudes for sword, saber, spear, fist, and palm — everything was decided by pure chance.

But what Cheon Woo-jin watched most closely was the Innate Trait.

Innate Traits were special abilities the protagonist was born with. Roll a good one, and the rest of the playthrough became dramatically easier.

The problem is that top-tier traits almost never show up.

It was common to reroll for a full hour and never see what you wanted. So in practice, most runs started with a few serviceable mid-grade traits patched together.

As long as a couple of decent mid-tier traits come up, the game's perfectly playable.

Click, click, click.

Cheon Woo-jin kept pressing the button. Staring blankly at the screen and clicking away, he felt sleep creeping up on him. He knew he should just lie down and close his eyes, but it felt like such a waste to end the day like this, so he kept holding out. The classic occupational disease of the modern office worker.

"Huh?"

At some point, he must have dozed off. He flinched awake, and something strange was on the game screen.

No other innate traits were listed at all. Only a single gold-colored trait, one he had never seen before, filled the slot.

"What is this?"

Blinking, Cheon Woo-jin moved his mouse to inspect it.

The instant he read the details of the gold-colored trait, Cheon Woo-jin's eyes flew wide open before he could stop himself.

"How is this even possible?"

It was absurdly powerful. The only drawback was that it could be used just once per in-game day — but the ability to outright kill a single enemy instantly was a game-breaking effect.

"So it looks like it can definitively one-shot any target... isn't this way too strong?"

This was no random ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instant-death proc that only fired against trash mobs. It was an execute that could kill "one designated enemy" with no conditions attached. If the description were to be taken at face value, it would work on bosses too — and with an ability like that, the entire playthrough would become trivial.

"It's a little disappointing that no other traits showed up... but if something this good rolls, you take it and run."

Cheon Woo-jin clicked to lock in the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye and saved the character. He didn't even bother checking the other stats.

"I'll play just a bit, then sleep."

He'd meant to create the character and go to bed, but his mind had changed. He wanted to test this cheat-level ability with his own hands.

"With an ability like this, maybe I really could survive to the very end."

Wrapped in that faint hope, Cheon Woo-jin moved his mouse, fighting off the drowsiness. And the moment he clicked the Start button—

A voice that shook heaven and earth rang out, and a vast darkness surged forward and swallowed Cheon Woo-jin whole.

Krrumble — KRAKOOM!

He came to at the deafening crash of thunder. Straining his eyes open and pushing himself upright, he found that everything around him was bathed in blue.

Where am I?

Cheon Woo-jin scanned his surroundings in a hurry. He was in the middle of a rugged mountain range. An untouched primeval forest stretched out endlessly in every direction.

I was definitely in my own apartment...

He sifted through his memories. He'd finished overtime, come home, and played the game. He'd created a new character, and then... what happened after that?

O you who dream of immortal life, the time has come to alter your Destiny.

Yes — that was it. He had definitely heard that voice. And immediately afterward, a blackened darkness had flooded in and swallowed everything.

So where on earth was this place?

As he was glancing around —

"...!"

Krrumble — KRAKOOM!

The thunder crashed again. And yet the sky above was perfectly clear, without a single cloud. Where in the world was the sound coming from?

He tilted his head back toward the direction of the thunder and caught sight of something glinting. At first he took it for lightning. But it quickly became clear that it was a person.

What is that?

KWAKWAKWAM!

A man was tearing across the sky with a roar like a jet engine. He wore violet daoist robes, and in his hand he gripped an enormous blade.

And then—

"...!"

Urrung — KRAKOOM!

With an even greater explosion of sound, a colossal living creature appeared. It was a monster covered in jet-black scales, its body the size of a high-rise building dozens of stories tall.

That's a dragon, isn't it?

Not a Western-style dragon. It was a dragon of the East. A pitch-black dragon was soaring through the sky.

And Cheon Woo-jin had seen that black dragon before — not in the real world, but inside the game.

Why is Heukha-ryong from Yeongro Suseonjeon here?

Heukha-ryong was a transcendent being who appeared in the game's opening. When you started the game, you could watch the dragon do battle with a cultivator who had strayed into its domain.

Exactly like right now.

Don't tell me... is this the world inside the game?

The xianxia world of Yeongro Suseonjeon. Had he been drawn into it? But why?

"KYAAAAH!"

Just then, the black dragon's roar split the air. Mouth gaping wide, Heukha-ryong spewed a jet-black aura at the man in violet robes.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"...!"

KWAKWAKWAM!

The man swung his blade in a great arc. Violet light erupted from it and scattered the dragon's breath to pieces — and then that violet light swept on to engulf the black dragon's entire body.

Unbelievable...

A shiver ran through him at the spectacle of overwhelming power. It was a battle on a scale utterly beyond anything a monitor could convey.

So that's the power of a cultivator!

A mere human body, standing against a dragon of that size. It made him truly grasp just how extraordinary the cultivators of a xianxia world were.

"KYAAAAH...!"

But—

The black dragon's power was a cut above the man's. As if to say this much was nothing, the colossal dragon charged in ferociously. The man swung his sword to meet it, but in the end Heukha-ryong clamped its jaws around one of the man's arms and tore it away.

"GRAAAH...!"

The man's scream echoed across the mountains. With one arm ripped off, he frantically moved the remaining one — but Heukha-ryong unleashed its jet-black aura once more.

KOOOM! A colossal explosion swallowed the sky.

The black dragon drifted leisurely out of the blast and climbed high into the heavens, while the man in violet fell from the sky, his whole body torn to shreds.

"...!"

Cheon Woo-jin ran toward where the man had fallen. If the dragon had still been nearby, he would never have dared approach — but Heukha-ryong had already flown far beyond sight.

"Ugh..."

Astonishingly, the man was still breathing. Even with a hole punched clean through his torso and one arm torn away.

Just like the game!

In the game's opening, this was exactly how you came upon a cultivator mortally wounded by Heukha-ryong. Yeongro Suseonjeon was a game with a high degree of freedom — you could save the dying cultivator, pass by and pretend not to see, or even finish him off by cutting his throat.

But in general, saving the cultivator was the most profitable choice. Building a friendly relationship meant you could call on his help later in the playthrough.

Since a new cultivator is generated randomly every time you start, I used to reset over and over until one with good traits showed up.

Of course, this wasn't a game anymore. This was reality. He couldn't just restart because he didn't like the result.

"Are you all right?"

"H-help me..."

As Cheon Woo-jin drew near, the man forced out his voice. Gravely wounded as he was, he seemed to still be conscious — a high-realm cultivator, after all.

"Inside my sleeve I have hidden a Salvation Pill. Place it in my mouth..."

The Salvation Pill was a recovery medicine made from mystical herbs. Its power was so potent that it could pull even a cultivator on the very brink of death back from the edge.

"The black dragon may return. Quickly, please..."

Blood running from his mouth, the man pleaded in a desperate voice.

"If you save my life, I swear I will repay this debt..."

"..."

The truth was, Cheon Woo-jin needed an ally. He had been dropped, empty-handed, into the world of the game without warning. If he could turn this man of tremendous power into an ally, it would be an enormous help.

And yet — why?

Cheon Woo-jin felt an inexplicable wariness.

Why does something feel so off?

Yeongro Suseonjeon was a game that taught you how to survive as a cultivator in a xianxia world. Over countless rebirths, Cheon Woo-jin had lived a great many lives within it. And each time he began a new life, legions of cultivators rose up to stand in his way.

The memories of fierce rivalries and battles fought for his very life against those men were sending warning signals up from somewhere deep in his unconscious.

Cheon Woo-jin studied the man before him carefully. He wanted to understand the source of this unease.

It was precisely then that strange characters began to appear before his eyes.

Cheon Woo-jin swiftly withdrew his hand.