Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: I've Returned
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1.
Jet-black hair cascading down to the cleft of her buttocks, smooth as ebony.
A slender face and milky skin.
Delicate shoulders and voluptuous breasts.
A slim waist accentuated by curvaceous hips and firm thighs.
An exotic beauty blending Eastern elegance with Western allure.
The reflection in the mirror was all too familiar.
It had to be.
It was the body she'd seen for twenty years.
'The return was a success.'
Returnee Hae Eung-eung.
She had successfully escaped the brutal Murim world, where people died like trash, and returned to modern civilized society.
Yet the face that should have brimmed with joy was filled with profound emptiness and loss.
All her ties from the Murim world were gone, leaving her utterly alone.
'No one was here.'
No family.
No friends.
And even if there had been, twenty years had passed in the real world just as in the Murim world.
Twenty years without seeing someone's face made even family no more than strangers.
Anyone she once knew was no different after two decades.
'It's a blessing in a way. I lost my family before all this even began.'
Twenty-five years ago.
There had been an accident.
Her parents and older sister, off on an overseas trip.
A photo snapped inside the airplane.
That was the last sight of her family.
Opening the dresser drawer revealed a cheap printed T-shirt.
A souvenir received along with her family's belongings.
Even after selling the needlessly spacious house and moving to a one-room apartment upon losing her family, she hadn't thrown it away for five whole years.
Lingering attachment to her lost family.
The final trace left by her family.
She stared at the T-shirt for a long while.
Recalling days she could never return to.
Emotions that had become memories rather than mere recollections—she folded them away neatly in the drawer alongside the T-shirt.
'What's done is done.'
She had spent more than enough time coming to terms with that fact.
The days after losing her family, when she lived like a shut-in.
She discovered a strange game.
And possessed the character she herself had created, spending twenty years in the Murim world.
—The Haenam Sect leaves no sea unconquered. As long as you don't abandon the Hae family name, we of the Haenam Sect will protect you.
—Sister, can't you come live with me at the North Sea Ice Palace?
—Young Lady Eung-eung. I hope you don't hate the Plum Blossoms of Mount Hua Sect too much.
Cherished memories.
Irrevocable bonds.
People who had become guests who would never return.
She had lost far more relationships in the Murim world than in reality.
People who became her second family.
Elders she regarded as parents.
Those who adored and followed her.
They died at the hands of enemies who targeted her.
Nation-toppling beauty.
The world's greatest beauty.
The unparalleled beauty through the ages.
Hae Eung-eung, who had become a character with 100 Charm.
Her mere existence stirred the desires of those in power. She refused to become their ornament.
From that day, blood and storms never ceased.
Any sect, organization, or master who took her in faced unrighteousness, injustice, and corruption without fail.
Sacrifices, hardships, and vengeance followed endlessly.
'Compared to other possessors, my circumstances were especially harsh.'
Her charm brought adversity, but it also garnered aid.
It took a full twenty years for the girl to become renowned as the world's greatest beauty, and for that beauty to blossom into a peerless enchantress.
Profound internal energy equivalent to three full cycles of sixty years, a tempered body, towering fame.
All she had achieved as a woman was exchanged for clear rewards and vanished.
The moment she entered the game.
The first instant she possessed the character she had crafted herself.
She had returned to that time.
She had lost much, but harbored no regrets.
For she had regained much as well.
Brainwashing from the Imperial Palace.
Branding from the Blood Cult.
Restrictions binding mind and soul.
All cleanly erased.
Her lost right arm returned.
She regained the flawless form of her girlhood, from head to toe.
No longer a puppet of the Imperial Palace.
No longer a slave of the Blood Cult.
No longer a wanted criminal of the Murim Alliance.
No longer one-armed.
All her Murim ties had vanished.
She was alone.
'This is how it usually is for returnees.'
A boy who was alone.
Returning as a lone girl.
A tale no one would know.
A story only she remembered.
She neatly organized it all in her mind, folding it away like items in the dresser drawer.
She had to.
Earth wasn't the blood-soaked Murim.
No need to make a fuss.
She had already experienced it once.
Adapting to a changed world was nothing new.
This time, it was adapting to Earth instead of Murim.
Still, it wasn't entirely trouble-free.
The Earth of twenty years ago, 2030, had no virtual reality games, no gates, no Awakeners.
2.
A two-room apartment in the city.
A room equipped with air conditioning, refrigerator, TV, computer, bed, wardrobe—the essentials for daily life.
This hideout, a bit spacious for one person, was one of the items in the Reality Return Support Package.
'The housing got an upgrade.'
From one-room to two-room apartment.
And that wasn't the only surprise.
ID. Property deed. Bank account.
The three essentials for living in Korea.
The standout item: 2 billion won.
Considering it compensation for twenty years in the Murim, it wasn't an excessive amount.
[Today's average price per pyeong in Myeongho 2-dong, Gangbuk-gu, Seoul: ~120 million won]
A 10-pyeong house worth 1.2 billion won.
In Gangbuk, not even Gangnam.
She didn't know what value this unfamiliar neighborhood—absent from Gangbuk twenty years ago—held.
But she could tell that even 2 billion wouldn't last a lifetime.
'Not that this body could expect a full lifespan anyway.'
The body reset hadn't just restored her right arm.
The restrictions she herself had imposed at character creation began tormenting her anew.
The most vicious restrictions.
And there were plenty more below.
A list steeped in the traces of someone prioritizing a tantalizing wild character over a successful Murim warrior.
Considering this was a curated selection, it was a miracle she had succeeded in returning at all.
'Thanks to dumping everything after Charm into Insight.'
Physique and internal energy could be compensated with money and power, but Insight—closely tied to intuition—was irreplaceable.
'View Status Window.'
All stats originally start at 30.
Players can redistribute to specialize, and Hae Eung-eung's allocation was extreme.
'In the Murim world, I endured with spirit pills from those seeking my favor, but this is Earth.'
A world without spirit beasts or elixirs.
Raising stats naturally was nearly impossible.
Even internal energy was in dire straits.
A parched world devoid of any internal energy.
If her internal energy were zero, forming a dantian on her own would be impossible in such a harsh environment.
Without growing internal energy, cultivating it was hard, and slow cultivation left meridians weak.
Time was not on her side.
'How many years until my meridians give out?'
Nine Yin Vein Blockage Blockage patients typically died before 30.
As yin energy strengthened, meridians hardened, narrowed, and condensed until they closed.
Internal energy circulation would cease.
Then the blood vessels.
Blocked vessels meant death.
Even with artificial organs, replacing brain vessels was impossible.
Modern medicine offered no hope for survival.
But there was a variable.
Soyang Carp Inner Core [1 slot]
*Remaining Capacity: 0/1 slot
[Soyang Carp Inner Core]: A carp imbued with yang energy. Used to alleviate Nine Yin Vein Blockage Blockage symptoms.
She had spent 85% of her clear points on the body reset special perk, and 10% to bring the Soyang Carp Inner Core.
The cure for Nine Yin Vein Blockage Blockage was the Great Sun Carp Inner Core.
No way two such cores existed, even with the Imperial Palace's power barely securing one in the Murim world.
'I can't be bound by an impossible-to-find or buy cure.'
She couldn't afford to rest easy.
Emergency treatment.
A smokescreen to buy time.
That was the value of the Soyang Carp Inner Core.
She needed another way.
Absorb yang energy.
Or achieve Marrow Cleansing and Bone Transformation through profound internal energy to reform her constitution.
The former was simple.
Just accept men's essence.
But she refused.
The man she once was, submitting to a man?
Absurd.
Even as a woman, she recoiled.
'I may have forsaken my life as a man by living twenty years in a woman's body, but I won't abandon my life as a Murim warrior.'
Having once lost her sense of self, she had no intention of discarding a warrior's pride for a woman's happiness.
That left hope in the latter option.
Three cycles of sixty years.
180 years of internal energy would enable Marrow Cleansing and Bone Transformation.
Earth in 2050 held the potential to gather such vast energy.
Gates and monsters.
And Awakeners.
Things absent from Earth twenty years ago.
'The news said gates are doors to other dimensions.'
Unlike energy-barren Earth, the worlds beyond gates might brim with qi sufficient for cultivation.
She felt the need to see a gate with her own eyes.
'I should go. Right now.'
With a feminine gait she couldn't suppress, she opened the front door and stepped out.
It was Returnee Hae Eung-eung's first outing.