The Secret Realm (2)
Gu Yang-gyeol had not a single worry in the world.
He had already ascertained that his opponent was merely at the level of a Qi Condensation Great Perfection cultivator.
With that kind of power, standing against him—a Core Formation Middle Stage cultivator—was simply impossible.
With some exceptional spell or artifact, the man might conceivably land a wound. But a slight injury meant nothing to a Core Formation cultivator.
Upon reaching Core Formation, one condensed a Golden Core, and so long as that core remained intact, a Core Formation cultivator could not die. Even a pierced heart or a severed head would not end his life.
To kill a Core Formation cultivator, one had no choice but to destroy or disable the Golden Core itself. And that was something the power of Qi Condensation could never accomplish.
Knowing this, Gu Yang-gyeol was at ease. Cheon Woo-jin might attempt a final desperate struggle, but he could simply ignore it. If anything, Gu Yang-gyeol hoped the man would resist to the very end. Watching what desperate measures a cornered rat reached for would yield far more information.
And yet……
What is that man thinking?
Gu Yang-gyeol's eyes narrowed in suspicion.
The man stood utterly unguarded. Not even the faintest sign of a spell being prepared. He wasn't even holding the Ore Jincheon Sword.
Was he intending no resistance at all? Had he understood there was no escape left, and meant to surrender quietly?
Or else—did he possess some means capable of countering a Core Formation cultivator?
Damn it all!
Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.
The instinct of a Core Formation cultivator who had weathered hundreds of years of life-and-death battles was screaming a warning. If he simply lunged in, he might be walking into danger.
The moment that thought formed, Gu Yang-gyeol drew spiritual power up from his Golden Core.
If Cheon Woo-jin attempted a last resort, Gu Yang-gyeol would sense it just before the strike. The gulf between Qi Condensation and Core Formation extended even to the speed at which spiritual power could be wielded—respond swiftly enough, and he could shut it down before it began.
Does the man truly believe a Core Formation cultivator like me could fall to Qi Condensation trash?
And so Gu Yang-gyeol never took his eyes off Cheon Woo-jin. Fixing his gaze on those eyes, he tried to read exactly how the man meant to make his move.
Which was why he saw it, plain and clear—the moment those eyes began to glow golden.
"Instant Death."
He thought he heard a voice.
But Gu Yang-gyeol felt nothing. No special sensation, no fluctuation of power. What spell in the world had he cast?
Perplexed, Gu Yang-gyeol tried to study the man once more. And then, strangely, there was nothing to sense at all.
He couldn't even see the man anymore.
Before his eyes, nothing remained but an endless expanse of darkness.
Ah……
Only then did Gu Yang-gyeol register his own condition.
His heart had already stopped. His body hung torn apart from head to toe, blood gushing from the ruin of it. Even his Golden Core—the thing that should have preserved his life through any wound—had ceased to function.
He had fallen into an abyss of death from which there was no climbing out.
The instant he understood that, pure, unfiltered terror seized him.
S-save me!
Gu Yang-gyeol screamed.
I was wrong! Please, spare me!
Of course, no voice came out. His body had already ceased every function of life entirely.
I don't want to die like this! I still want to live!
That his consciousness persisted at all was because he was a cultivator who had reached Core Formation. There remained a brief interval between the death of the body and the death of the mind.
I have to reach Nascent Soul and gain a thousand years of life! And after that, Soul Formation—two thousand years!
In that sliver of time, Gu Yang-gyeol screamed like a man gone mad.
Please…… someone, save me……!
But the scream reached no one.
And so Gu Yang-gyeol died a lonely death—in the darkness where no one existed, in the grip of uttermost terror.
Thud!
Gu Yang-gyeol's body, plummeting from the air, slammed into the ground. Dark crimson blood spread across the frozen earth.
Watching the scene, Cheon Woo-jin let out a breath of relief.
That was dangerous.
The Instant Killing Heavenly Eye activated only when he faced his target directly. Peeking furtively from hiding could not inflict instant death—he had to meet the target head-on.
Which meant that if the enemy was in the midst of raining down attacks, using the eye became all but impossible. He had to either strike first before the enemy began its assault, or wait for the moment the assault paused.
That was why Cheon Woo-jin had lured Gu Yang-gyeol here. He had acted as though fleeing for his life, cornered at a dead end, lulling Gu Yang-gyeol into carelessness. The plan was to wait for the moment Gu Yang-gyeol stopped attacking and sauntered close, then unleash the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye.
But midway through, Gu Yang-gyeol had sensed something. Cheon Woo-jin had seen the man's expression shift just before he activated the eye. If Gu Yang-gyeol had unleashed an offensive spell at that instant, he might well have killed Cheon Woo-jin faster than the eye could take effect.
A good thing I revealed the Body of the Dark True Abyss.
Cheon Woo-jin had deliberately shown Gu Yang-gyeol that he was using the power of the Body of the Dark True Abyss. Normally he refined his spiritual power through a pass of purification so that no exceptional aptitude would show—but this time, he had wielded it raw and unrefined.
He had judged that Gu Yang-gyeol would be able to detect the physique. Gu Yang-gyeol surely knew that the Heukha-ryong of Mount Goeyu had been slain by someone. A cultivator who had inherited the dragon's Body of the Dark True Abyss could not help but draw his interest.
What was more, Gu Yang-gyeol possessed a single water-attribute Spiritual Root and had mastered the Yukgeuk Eumryeong Formation Art, a technique of yin water—he was bound to covet a physique so perfectly specialized for the water attribute.
Which meant he had no choice but to try to take Cheon Woo-jin alive rather than kill him.
In the end, everything was decided by that one difference.
Gu Yang-gyeol felt no need to kill Cheon Woo-jin here and now. Cheon Woo-jin believed he had to kill Gu Yang-gyeol here and now. That difference determined winner and loser.
Cheon Woo-jin had won the gamble where his life hung in the balance. Now it was time to sweep the entire pot off the table.
"……"
Cheon Woo-jin extended his hand toward Gu Yang-gyeol's corpse. A response stirred from the man's lower abdomen.
The lower dantian was also called the Sea of Qi. Amid a vast ocean of primordial energy, he could feel a small star drifting serenely. He seized the star with his spiritual power and drew it out.
A translucent sphere passed through the skin and emerged from the body.
So this is Gu Yang-gyeol's Golden Core.
It was different from Heukha-ryong's. A translucent orb suffused with a soft golden shimmer.
In its original state, everything Gu Yang-gyeol was had been condensed into this core—the mass formed when he reached Core Formation and fused his life, his spiritual power, and his soul into a single whole.
But there was no vitality left in it now. The Instant Killing Heavenly Eye had acted so thoroughly that even the core had died. Had the core survived, Gu Yang-gyeol might have clung to life. But with the core dead like this, resurrection was forever beyond him.
"……"
Cheon Woo-jin rested the core on his palm and extended his spiritual power into it. Slowly, the core began to break apart, and the every kind of energy stored within it was released.
Gu Yang-gyeol's innate true qi and a medley of other energies mingled together, but Cheon Woo-jin filtered out only the pure water-attribute qi—and took it into himself.
He could feel it flowing into the wide sea that was the Body of the Dark True Abyss.
"……"
He could not, of course, make all of Gu Yang-gyeol's spiritual qi his own. But accumulating it up to the limit of a Qi Condensation Great Perfection cultivator was entirely possible.
This should be more than enough to challenge Foundation Establishment.
Ordinarily, challenging Foundation Establishment required not only a Foundation Establishment Pill but spiritual power befitting the realm itself. To build that power, countless cultivators trained their arts over decades and devoted loyalty to their sects in exchange for rationed pills.
Cheon Woo-jin needed none of that process. Simply absorbing spiritual qi through the Body of the Dark True Abyss secured him power worthy of Foundation Establishment.
If I can secure the materials for a Foundation Establishment Pill, and the spirit stones…… I can attempt the breakthrough.
A realm where others poured in decades and still couldn't set foot across the threshold—and his preparation for it was proceeding apace.
Next, Cheon Woo-jin examined Gu Yang-gyeol's storage pouch. It held a large number of high-grade pills, and a considerable stock of spirit stones as well. Regrettably, no cultivation manuals—but there was something else worth salvaging.
A palm-sized plate of silver metal, shaped rather like a shield.
This is……
Cheon Woo-jin gripped the metal plate and held it out before him. The instant he poured spiritual power into it, the plate swelled in the blink of an eye into a full-sized shield. More than that, it generated a hemispherical barrier that shielded the entire area in front of him.
The Silver Spirit Steel Guardian Shield!
A defensive artifact from the game. On its own it was already a formidable shield, but it could also form a protective barrier covering a considerable area.
Cheon Woo-jin's spiritual power couldn't draw out its peak performance, but it should still stop attacks from Foundation Establishment cultivators.
This is a top-grade artifact I can keep using through Foundation Establishment and even after reaching Core Formation. Excellent equipment.
After the offensive artifact, the Ore Jincheon Sword, he had now acquired a defensive one as well. Just as Cheon Woo-jin had hoped, powerful artifacts were finding their way into his hands on their own, without him having to comb through black markets one by one.
Then……
After burning Gu Yang-gyeol's corpse to erase every trace, Cheon Woo-jin turned his head. When he lifted his gaze toward the highest peak of the secret realm, he saw something descending through the clouds.
They're coming out.
Ssslither.
Great white serpents were crawling down. Not just one or two—there looked to be at least ten.
A secret realm was no plowed field where one could harvest spirit herbs without a hint of danger. Within its depths lurked every peril that threatened a cultivator's life. Only by staking one's life to enter and comb it through could one claim its resources as training spoils.
That was why secret realms were sometimes treated as training grounds by the sects—cruel training grounds beyond measure, where of ten men sent in, even five could hardly be expected to return alive.
Sshaaaaa!
A dozen-odd White Spirit Serpents lunged at Cheon Woo-jin. While a Core Formation cultivator like Gu Yang-gyeol had been present, they had kept their bodies hidden—but sensing his aura vanish, they had revealed themselves.
In other words, they looked down on Cheon Woo-jin.
Black lightning devours the heavens.
KRA-BOOM!
A black lightning aura erupted and coiled from the Ore Jincheon Sword as Cheon Woo-jin drew it. He had burned through a great deal of spiritual power disposing of Danmok Ryeong and fleeing Gu Yang-gyeol earlier—but thanks to the energy absorbed from Gu Yang-gyeol's Golden Core, he had already fully recovered.
Cheon Woo-jin soared into the sky and brought the black lightning crashing down.
KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!
With a roar like a mountain collapsing, the falling Black Thunder reduced the White Spirit Serpents to powder. A merciless lightning aura, writhing like a black serpent, trampled the white ones beneath it.
The power was far greater than when he had cut down Danmok Ryeong—and that wasn't simply because he had absorbed Gu Yang-gyeol's spiritual qi.
Against Danmok Ryeong had been his first attempt. This was his second.
It was only natural that the second attempt came more smoothly than the first.
Cheon Woo-jin kept rising as he hammered down Black Thunder, piercing through the clouds and climbing toward the tip of the bud that stabbed skyward. For the lowly outer disciples of the Venomous Sword Sect, it would have been an exhausting climb—but Cheon Woo-jin reached the vicinity of the summit in an instant.
Sshaaaaaaa!
At the very peak, where the mystical spirit herbs grew, an enormous serpent that had been coiled there raised its head.
It was the White Spirit Grand Serpent—the boss of this secret realm.
Its spiritual power was beyond any comparison with the White Spirit Serpents he had faced below. In truth, this was a boss that a lone Qi Condensation cultivator could never kill. Even the Venomous Sword Sect would have planned to organize a squad under Danmok Ryeong's command to subdue it.
But Cheon Woo-jin kept his expression cold as he drew up his spiritual power, savoring again the sensation of when he had driven Black Thunder into those small fry moments ago.
Crackle, crackle. Lightning aura sparked through the spirit meridians across his entire body.
Now I'm finally starting to understand the principle.
The moment the White Spirit Grand Serpent lunged, releasing a torrent of spiritual power—
Cheon Woo-jin vented the lightning aura pulsing deep within his body.
With an explosive thunderclap, the black lightning of Cheon Woo-jin—even now, in this very moment, still growing—poured down upon it.