Chapter 3
Chapter 3
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Awakening
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A space devoid of even a single point of light,
In darkness that made one forget the passage of endless eons,
I found rest, and my soul rotted to its very depths.
A void with no front or back, no up or down.
There, I existed amid the tales spun by countless others.
They clearly did not belong to this space or time, yet somehow I could see and hear their stories.
It was like illusions born from flickering firelight, like summer mirages.
They were all different. Races, genders, ages—everything varied. Some lived in profoundly mysterious and alien cultures, others in bizarre civilizations I could never have imagined.
Yet they shared something in common.
Their stories shared something in common.
Dreadful tragedy.
Without exception, they were the protagonists of tales as horrific as tragedies themselves.
If I dared to guess, they might have been the predecessors who came before me. Of course, there was no way to confirm it.
Time continued to flow.
At some point, the stories ceased.
Upon reflection, perhaps there had never been any voices from the start.
Had they been tales I invented out of boredom, mere hallucinations conjured by a mind driven mad by endless torment?
An incomprehensibly vast stretch of time passed.
It could be called an eon of eons, or a nayuta of moments.
If time did not flow in this place, one might even say it was merely an instant or a fleeting moment.
Then, at some point.
A faint light appeared in the distance.
From it emanated the subtle warmth of the living, the vitality of the mortal world.
Drawn inexorably, I approached it. And when the light drew near enough, I realized.
This cold, desolate, profoundly lonely darkness was the deepest essence of my soul.
That though I moved toward the light, I no longer belonged there.
That by the ancient monster known as the Jeam Jincheon Scripture—whose origins even were unknowable—I had been newly reassembled and reconstituted.
And upon that realization, I knew.
I was now prepared.
* * *
He opened his eyes with a refreshing sensation, as if awakening from a sweet afternoon nap.
As if all that time of agony and shock had been a lie.
As if it had been a brief nightmare during sleep, he rose without a care.
The memory of torture and lost limbs felt embarrassingly distant, his body now utterly at ease.
As if he had simply enjoyed a full night's rest and awakened naturally, he stirred.
“......Was it a dream?”
Of course, he knew full well that was impossible.
In his dantian, coiled serenely as if it were his own, lurked a heavy, malevolent energy.
It was unmistakably the energy of the Jeam Jincheon Scripture.
That horrific demonic qi he had encountered in the underground thunder prison that day now resided in his dantian.
For now, it had granted him only a fraction of its total power.
Even so, the pure demonic qi of the Jeam Jincheon Scripture burned vividly, like embers on cloth, making him acutely aware that it had all been real.
“Hmm......”
His body, once shattered to the brink of death, was now in a state of flawless perfection.
The natural movement of his flesh felt alien to him.
He raised his fist before his eyes, clenching and unclenching it.
There, attached to pale, flawless hands without a single blemish, scar, or wrinkle, were five fingers.
“Where...... is this?”
He sat up.
The scholarly room carried the thick scent of ink.
Even as a bedroom, the walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with books, hinting at the owner's temperament.
“......My room.”
He felt as if he could know, without looking, which book sat where.
It was the space that had been the most comfortable to him throughout his life.
This was his bedroom in the main family home, the one he had used since childhood.
“......It said it would grant me one more chance.”
The Jeam Jincheon Scripture had indeed promised him one more opportunity.
But to return to the past?
He would have been content just to escape that dreadful purgatory.
He had planned to start anew from there.
Those precious to him were all dead and gone, but that was fine.
Simply surviving without achieving anything in that hell was victory enough; he would have considered it a new beginning.
To return to the past, though......!
“......Kuhhuhu.”
Unknowingly, laughter bubbled from his lips.
The Jeam Jincheon Scripture—what it called the scripture defying heaven—was far more terrifying than he had imagined.
It had demonstrated the power to rewind time in a way he could never have fathomed.
Curiosity flickered about the true nature of this monstrous scripture, but it didn't matter now.
He had returned to the past.
He had been granted the greatest opportunity.
“Kuhahaha......!”
In response to his laughter, the demonic qi of the Jeam Jincheon Scripture growled and roared.
* * *
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The unmistakably youthful hands of a teenager and the familiar bedroom from memory confirmed he had returned to the past.
But he needed to pinpoint exactly when.
It was simple enough.
Clues abounded around him.
“Hmm......”
He swiftly scanned the densely packed books in the room.
It seemed like a mere glance, but in truth, it was not.
Every detail of every book in his room remained etched precisely in his mind.
When each had entered his collection.
Where it had been placed at any given time.
He meticulously compared those memories with the scene before him.
A simple task.
He confirmed it in just a few breaths.
“......Age seventeen, February.”
His youthful voice felt unfamiliar.
His gaze deepened.
He reflected on his tumultuous life.
Reassembling it over and over.
It was like a divine immortal surveying an early go board and reading countless future moves at a glance.
“.......”
A faint noise from outside pulled him from his reverie after a long contemplation.
“......Has the Eldest Young Master risen yet?”
“What does it matter? He'll probably grab a book the moment he wakes, as usual.”
“......Good grief. The Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Clan, hailed as the Central Plains' Foremost Family, reduced to that state......”
“No wonder they call him the Swordless One. Truly pathetic.”
“And yet, he was once renowned for his brilliance......”
“That was just rumor in the end.”
“Born the Eldest Young Master of the mighty Luoyang Sword Clan, called a Heavenly Clan, he can do as he pleases, no?”
It was the servants gossiping about him.
One might expect anger at such talk, but his eyes were utterly impassive.
He had never cared for worldly gossip, never let it sway his moods.
Now, infused to his soul's edge with the madness and demonic qi from the Jeam Jincheon Scripture, the surface of his mind was as still as a bottomless lake.
Yet deep within, it harbored a volcano on the verge of eruption.
“......You there! Anyone around?”
He called out to the servants in a deliberately loud voice.
No one answered.
It was to be expected.
His quarters were one of the Luoyang Sword Clan's secret retreats,
And the soundproofing here was undoubtedly the best in the Central Plains.
Yet he had heard their whispers with crystal clarity.
“Is this another power from the Jeam Jincheon Scripture......?”
Hearing was surely not the only sense affected.
He took his time, calmly experimenting and observing.
It did not take long to reach conclusions.
A dramatic surge in overall physical abilities.
Stamina, strength, five senses—all bodily functions enhanced.
“......Impressive.”
He gazed into the mirror.
Reflected there was no longer his former frail body.
It was a body of steel, forged to the extreme, possessed only by those relentlessly trained.
Every muscle fiber stood out starkly, almost grotesquely.
After admiring his physique briefly, he noticed something new.
“Hoh......?”
The mirror showed his face twisted in a chilling expression.
Was this what a demon steeped in killing intent, demonic qi permeating to the marrow, looked like?
“Oh dear, oh dear.”
Peering into the mirror, he experimented with his expressions.
“Like this......”
He lowered the corners of his mouth further.
Smoothed the furrows in his brow.
Narrowed his wide-staring eyes.
“......An even more grotesque face.”
A phlegmy chuckle escaped: kekekel.
He needed to refine his laugh too.
“Plenty of time......”
He rubbed his face vigorously, kneading it like dough.
First, relax the muscles.
Heat rose from the chafed skin, and his facial muscles grew supple.
He peered back into the mirror and resumed practicing expressions.
“Hmm. Need to craft something more 'human'......”
Staring long into the mirror, he found his own appearance amusing, and natural laughter flowed.
Kuhukuhuk—a raspy, metallic cackle.
Wrestling with his reflection, he spoke.
“......Come to think of it.”
In the mirror grinned a face that could terrify a child into convulsions.
He muttered quizzically, as if seeking an answer from his reflection.
“What does it even mean to be 'human'?”
No matter how grotesque the expression, the face was one any would call peerlessly handsome.
But what he saw was different.
Where eyes should be gaped empty sockets twisted in agony, weeping blood tears;
Where a nose had been, two holes oozed bloody pus;
No patch of facial skin remained intact;
In his throat flopped a tongue clinging by its root.
It was not what the mirror showed.
It was the vision within his heart.
Wounded, warped, distorted, defiled......
It was the madness of the Jeam Jincheon Scripture he harbored.