Did You Think Progression Was That Easy? (1)
“Ugh, my head…”
What on earth had just happened?
I was definitely at home doing a live stream just a moment ago. Orders had been flooding into the store, which filled my Universal Resonance gauge to the brim. And then… and then…
I flew.
My eyes snapped open, and I scrambled to take in my surroundings.
Trickle, babble…
Chirp, chirp!
Chwi-peep, chwi-peep!
“…?”
I was undeniably in Neo-Cyberpunk Korea just seconds ago. So why was this place so overflowing with the pristine spiritual qi of nature?
As I pushed myself upright, a nagging sense of familiarity crept in. I had seen this landscape before.
“Back when I first got hit by that signboard…”
Right. This was Biseungdo—the world inside the cultivation game where I had first plummeted after waking up in a woman’s body.
“Why am I back here…?”
I was utterly bewildered. I had definitely escaped Biseungdo, hadn’t I? Wait! Then what about that changgui from before? Was it still roaming around?
Crouching low, I surveyed my surroundings with heightened vigilance. I couldn’t hear the monster’s mocking laughter yet, but you could never be too careful. Seriously, why the hell am I back in this godforsaken place?! What did I even do?!
Just as I was hurling curses inside my head—
Crunch.
Footsteps echoed from somewhere nearby.
I focused my qi senses. An overwhelmingly powerful spiritual presence bore down on the area.
A-A changgui?
It felt distinctly different from the revolting, sinister aura of a ghost, but it was colossal regardless. It could very well be one. You never knew, right? Time to hide.
Fortunately, the perfect hiding spot presented itself: a dense, double-layered thicket of bushes just large enough to squeeze my body into. Tucking myself away, head and all, I was concealed reasonably well.
Crunch… crunch…
Wait a second.
A realization struck me like a splash of cold water.
If someone could sense spiritual qi, hiding out of plain sight didn’t mean jack, did it? Besides, a changgui was a high-tier monster beast. Sensing qi would be child’s play for a creature like that, wouldn’t it?
Step…
The footsteps abruptly stopped.
No way… Surely not? Would anyone really keep their qi sense flared on twenty-four-seven? D-Do you know how exhausting that is?!
Still, the air seemed to have grown darker somehow.
Slowly. Very, very slowly, I tilted my head upward.
There, looming right above me…
Dun-dun!
A full-blown goblin mask stared down!
“Eeeeeeeek! Monster!”
KABOOM!
My memory was a bit hazy, but I was pretty sure I had reflexively fired off a barrage of Fireball Arts.
“……”
“I-I am truly, deeply sorry. O Great Goblin… no, Gatekeeper.”
In a small clearing nestled between the bushes, the Gatekeeper and I sat side by side.
The face that had materialized above my hiding spot wasn’t a changgui, but the Gatekeeper—the very same guardian who had booted me through the Gate of Ascension. Seeing her here should have made me glad… except I was utterly terrified.
“Did I not tell thee it is fine? More importantly…”
The Gatekeeper took off her goblin mask and set it on the ground.
She had a small scar on her cheek, but her skin was so porcelain-smooth and her eyelashes so long and delicate that the blemish went entirely unnoticed. Add in an exceptionally gorgeous face, and…
Wait. The Gatekeeper was a woman?
Then why had her voice and demeanor sounded so terrifying before?
…Ah. That goblin mask must have had some sort of voice-distorting enchantment. Makes sense. Her chest was completely flat, so I had just assumed she was a guy.
Wait, hey! I’m not bragging about having huge boobs, okay?
“More importantly, an explanation is in order.”
Her crimson eyes locked onto mine. Startled out of staring intently at her ironing-board chest, I jerked my gaze up to meet her eyes.
“An explanation?”
“Why has a cultivator entered Biseungdo before it hath even opened? I am certain I inspected every spatial rift.”
Biseungdo hasn’t even opened yet? What does that mean?
“…Thy expression clearly showeth thou hast not the faintest clue. Haaah. What could a mere first-layer Qi Condensation novice know, after all?”
Did she just look down on me? She did, didn’t she?
…Well, whatever. My boobs are bigger, so I’ll let it slide! Hmph!
“I shall send thee back to whence thou camest. This is not yet a place for the likes of thee.”
With a swirl of her finger, my body floated into the air.
“I-I’d really appreciate that!”
“Indeed. Farewell.”
She flicked her finger with a sharp swish! My body shot forward, rocketing back to my original world—
“Gah!”
SPLAT!
…Like hell it did. I face-planted straight into a puddle of muddy water.
“Cough! Splutter! Hack!”
“…Hmm?”
“T-This is all part of the ritual to send me back, right?”
The woman twirled her finger once more. And then—
THUD!
“Ouuuuch…”
This time, I tumbled across the hard ground. After two awkward rolls, my massive chest slammed into the dirt and brought me to an abrupt halt.
“The more I think about it… this really, really doesn’t feel like a ritual…?”
Wriggling upright, I glanced back at the Gatekeeper.
“???”
She was blinking her wide eyes repeatedly, staring at me in sheer, unadulterated bewilderment!
Hey, why are you making that face?! You said you’d send me back! You said this wasn't a place for me yet!
“Excuse me, Gatekeeper-nim?”
“……”
“Y-You… veggies! Yes, I was just thinking about veggies! I definitely wasn’t about to drop honorifics and call you ‘Hey!’ Haha… Anyway, Gatekeeper-nim? You can send me back, right? Right? You can do it, can’t you? I didn’t even turn off my stream before I got yanked here, so I need to get back ASAP! If I cut the broadcast out of nowhere, the chat is going to turn into a complete dumpster fire!”
The Gatekeeper, who had been standing there with a completely glazed-over expression, finally opened her mouth to utter something unbelievable.
“…Thou canst not go.”
“Huh?”
“I cannot send thee back.”
“Wait… why?”
The light slowly returned to her eyes as she pulled herself together. Gazing at me steadily, she slumped her shoulders and let out a resigned sigh.
“It appeareth there is a reason thou wert brought here.”
Dabbing water onto my fitted dress to wipe off the caked mud, I soon gave up. I’d just have to buy another one later.
“So what’s this reason I was brought here?”
“What wouldst thou have me say when thou art asking the very person who hath no answer?”
Well, aren’t you way stronger than me? Shouldn’t you know more?!
“Didst nothing out of the ordinary occur before thou arrivedst here?”
There were plenty of strange things. My Universal Resonance percentage suddenly spiked past a hundred percent. My body abruptly lifted into midair. And a distorted spatial rift ripped open in empty space.
…Wait. Universal Resonance? If I recall correctly, reaching a hundred percent was supposed to trigger a breakthrough into the next realm.
So why didn’t I advance? Why was I transported to the world of Biseungdo instead?
“I asked if naught occurred.”
“……”
Could it be… that I was brought here specifically to undergo cultivation training for my breakthrough?
It was a plausible hypothesis.
But why?
Nobody else had ever been summoned to Biseungdo when advancing through their realms. Take Hye-yeon, who broke through after taking my spirit pills—she didn’t get dragged to Biseungdo, did she? So why only me? Was it because my existence was fundamentally intertwined with Biseungdo?
That seemed like another reasonable hypothesis to test. Of course, the only way to know for sure was to confirm it firsthand.
“It’s possible that I’m…”
I turned my head to share my theory with the Gatekeeper.
“…W-Why do you look so angry?”
A pair of glacial eyes bore down on me. And in the next instant—
“Eek!”
An unseen force constricted around my entire body like a vice. My ample bust was violently flattened as if pressed against an invisible pane of glass, and my arms were pinned tightly to my sides. I lifted helplessly into the air.
T-This looks way too compromising! Bound hand and foot with only my chest thrust forward?! Dammit!
“W-Why are you doing thiiis…?!”
“From now on, when a high-ranking cultivator questioneth thee, answer without hesitation.”
What?! When did you even ask me anything?!
“W-When did you ask?!”
“Even if thou didst not hear, answer anyway.”
How am I supposed to answer if I didn’t hear you?!
“A-Understood! I get it! Whether I hear you or don’t hear you, or if you ask from miles away, I’ll answer everything!!”
It was totally absurd, but I had to say it. That was the only way to survive.
…Wait, why isn’t she letting me go? It wasn’t crushing me hard enough to kill me, but floating suspended in midair in such an embarrassing posture was utterly humiliating.
“Um… I’ll answer promptly from now on, so could you please release me…?”
“……”
Why wasn't she letting go? Following the line of her gaze—
“?”
She was staring directly at my chest. Wait. Is she… is she staring at my pushed-out breasts right now?!
Squeeeze—!!
“Aaaaagh!! T-This is actually going to kill me!!”
“…Then just die.”
“You crazy cultivator bastarrrrrd!!”
Having big boobs isn’t a crime, you know!
After barely securing my release, I rolled my stiff shoulders to work out the kinks.
…Hmm. Well. Now that the pressure was gone, that tight squeeze had actually loosened up my stiff joints a bit? Whatever.
Walking alongside her, I laid out my theory without holding anything back.
“So, basically, I think I was brought here for the sake of advancing my realm.”
“…Absurd. Never in all my years hath there been such a cultivator.”
“Right, it confuses me too. But it’s just a hypothesis for now. We’ll have to verify it to know for sure.”
“And how dost thou intend to verify it?”
“First, I need to know where we are. Is this the same Biseungdo I left earlier?”
I asked while surveying the landscape. There were mysteriously no monster beasts around, and the spiritual qi was noticeably denser. It felt subtly different from the area I had been in before.
“Nay. That realm was the lowest plane of Biseungdo, through which mortals pass upon becoming cultivators.”
“Then this place is…”
“The final Biseungdo, where high-ranking cultivators make their final sojourn before ascending into immortals. An expanse that should not open for another thousand years.”
“A Biseungdo that leads straight to the Immortal Realm!”
So that’s why the spiritual qi here was so absurdly rich.
“Yet at their core, they are one and the same. The realm of Biseungdo differs vastly from the mortal plane; disparate concepts can coexist within the identical space. Just as the Biseungdo thou wert in and this place share the same geography while embodying distinct conceptual planes. I, too, exist within that Biseungdo whilst simultaneously existing within this one. It is not something the intellect of a fledgling cultivator could fathom.”
Excuse me. You’re a cultivator too, lady. You prideful, flat-chested beauty.
“…Well, anyway. Like it or not, we’re stuck together for now, so let’s introduce ourselves.”
“A mere first-layer Qi Condensation fledgling dareth speak so familiarly to me, a Transformation Realm grandmaster…?”
“I figured you were pretty high up there.”
“Had I not bound myself to the principle of living and dying by the rules, thy very existence would have been erased long ago.”
True enough. Even a Nascent Soul Great Perfection cultivator had made my legs shake in terror. Someone at the Transformation Realm above that was bound to be unimaginably powerful—and very likely an absolute menace.
Still, the silver lining was clear: she held herself to strict, self-imposed rules. I didn’t know all the details, but as long as I didn’t break her rules, she probably wouldn’t kill me.
“Looks like I read you right. Judging by how you squeezed me earlier, it didn’t seem like you actually intended to kill me.”
“Thou didst not technically violate any rule.”
“Is having a big chest against the rules?”
“……”
A heartbeat later—
“Aaaaaaaagh!! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorrrrry!!”
Having narrowly escaped her genuinely murderous chokehold a second time, I swore a solemn oath never to bring up breasts again.
“My name is Cheon Cho-young.”
“…Dokgo Yeon.”
“Go-yeon-nim?”
“Dokgo. Yeon.”
“I know, I know. Just teasing.”
It felt like I had grown just a tiny bit closer to the Gatekeeper. Rule-bound or not, the fact remained that she had saved me from the changgui and sent me back to Korea in the first place.
“Where dost thou think thou art going, anyway? Scouring a Biseungdo that hath not yet opened is hardly advisable.”
What is she talking about now? I already scoured the place top to bottom when I first fell here.
“Based on what you said, Yeon-nim…”
She did say the fundamental geography was the same, right? Even if the conceptual layers were separated. Which meant—
“The cave I used to stay in should still be here. I’m going to check there first.”
Since that was where my journey started last time, starting from there again made the most sense. Sure enough, as we rounded the bend along the trail, a familiar sight greeted our eyes.
“Whoa, it’s really here!”
The entrance to the cave where I had stashed all my spirit herbs stood right before us.