Did You Think Growth Would Come That Easily?
I had completely burned myself out…….
“Seriously, this is just unfair. What was the point of making a butterfly net if you were just going to cling to my chest and follow me home anyway?”
I had swung my makeshift net until my arms went sore, catching a healthy swarm of yellow and blue butterflies. Yet three of the little freeloaders had bypassed the mesh entirely, gluing themselves to my front and hitching a ride all the way back to the cave.
Flutter—
Well, fine. You’re butterflies, so I’ll let it slide.
Before heading out this morning, I had instructed Taran and Tula to spin as much silk as their eight-legged bodies could muster. Sure enough, a generous heap of pearlescent spider silk was waiting for me. I secured it against an alcove in the stone wall, fashioning a makeshift enclosure. Once I coaxed the butterflies inside, they fluttered about contentedly, unable to slip through the fine netting.
“A bit cramped, isn’t it? Just bear with it for a little while.”
Once I made it back to Neo Korea and cultivated proper beds of Paralysis Grass and Sleeping Grass, I would set them free into the world.
Day four.
Day five.
Day six.
With no way of knowing when my ticket home would punch, I treated every passing day like gold. Usually, advancing through cultivation realms required sudden flashes of profound enlightenment. But Daoist philosophy meant jack-all to me; all I cared about was figuring out the single best action I could take in whatever situation was shoved in front of me.
That relentless foraging paid off handsomely. Beyond the Dark Blossom Grass, I hauled in a treasure trove of spiritual flora.
There was the Thousand Water Lotus, blooming serenely atop pristine pools; the Deep Core Root, burrowed in the murky abyss of ancient, stagnant waters; the Spiritual Ice Grass, said to sprout only amid the eternal drifts of frozen peaks; and the Ice Snow Flower, perched precariously on sheer glacial precipices, enchanting foolish wanderers with its ethereal beauty before sending them plummeting to their dooms.
And countless others besides.
I harvested scores of rare, miraculous herbs. Setting aside a few choice cuttings to cultivate back home, I set to work on alchemy without wasting a single second.
Then came the seventh day.
Dokgo Yeon, the Gatekeeper, appeared at the mouth of the cave.
“The spiritual qi of Biseungdo is churning erratically,” she said, her tone cool and measured. “It mirrors the disturbance from when you first arrived. Even so, the dimensional currents are treacherous, so you must exercise caution and……”
“It worked… It’s finished…!!!”
Dokgo Yeon’s face instantly froze in annoyance at the interruption, but the moment her gaze locked onto the glossy, spherical pill resting in my palm, her furrowed brow smoothed out.
“What is that?”
“The pills I used to make in the game were always far too rigid, you see.”
“A… game?”
Oops. Got carried away.
“…Just a figure of speech! What I mean is, I tried brewing an elixir with a completely different blending ratio than anything I’ve ever made before!”
Back in the game, every single spiritual pill was locked behind fixed recipe books. If an ingredient wasn’t in the manual, the system wouldn’t let you combine it. That was the hard ceiling of code and programming. But this place was reality, wasn’t it? Recipe books be damned. I could toss in whatever I fancied and trim whatever I didn't.
And the result?
Whoooosh—
The finished pill radiated a breathtaking, translucent brilliance. If my instincts were right, its efficacy would outstrip a Supreme Black Moon Pill by several times—no, several hundred times over.
“Even if you explained the proportions to me, I have no talent for pill crafting, so I could never—”
“Here. It’s yours.”
Without a flicker of hesitation, I thrust the radiant elixir toward her.
“…….”
A dazed, thoroughly bewildered expression washed over Yeon’s pale features as her fingers closed around the pill.
“You looked after me so much,” I said earnestly. “Honestly, far more than anyone would ever expect from a Transformation Realm cultivator.”
“And what, pray tell, is a Transformation Realm cultivator supposed to be like?”
“The strongest monsters among a demographic whose morals are already buried six feet under, meaning their own ethics are buried about a mile into the earth’s crust—”
“Do you harbor a death wish?”
“Not in the slightest!”
Dokgo Yeon looked down at the gleaming pill in her palm for a quiet moment, then smoothly tucked it into her flowing sleeve.
“Aren’t you going to take it right away?” I asked.
“And leave my back unprotected while you stand guard? What reason could I possibly have to trust you with my life?”
“Fair point.”
“…Come outside.”
I followed her out into the bright open air. Stopping in the middle of a wide, sunlit clearing, Yeon turned to face me.
“The spring does not covet the water……”
Wait, what? A mnemonic verse out of nowhere?
“H-Hold on a second!”
“Repeat after me.”
Her voice brooked no argument, leaving me no choice but to mimic her words.
“The spring does not covet the water, but lingers in the low places to fill itself.”
“The sp-spring does not covet the water, but lingers in the low places to fill itself.”
“The river breaks no dikes; winding and turning, it finds the sea.”
“The river breaks no dikes; winding and turning, it finds the sea.”
“When the cup is full, water overflows without sound; to force the pour will only shatter the vessel.”
“When the cup is full, water overflows without sound; to force the pour will only shatter the vessel.”
Why was she feeding me cultivation verses all of a sudden?
“It is nothing grand,” Yeon murmured, her hands tucked behind her back. “Merely the Still Water Mantra. Yet if you can truly grasp even that first verse… well, I doubt anyone in the same realm could ever best you.”
“Why are you teaching me something like this…?”
“It is the price of the pill.”
“I already told you, the pill was a token of thanks for everything you’ve done for me!”
“It matters not. When the Gate of Ascension opens again, I shall achieve Feathered Ascension and depart for the Immortal Realm. I have culled the mortals who strayed here and ushered true cultivators into the cultivation world; my duty on this island is finished. Any lingering attachment to the secular realm was severed long ago. In truth, an elixir holds no meaning for me.”
Ah. So that was it.
I had wondered why an old monster of the Transformation Realm was acting so shockingly reasonable. Mortals often grew remarkably kind right before death, perhaps because they sensed their time running short. It seemed supreme cultivators on the verge of ascension underwent a similar softening of the heart.
“Consider it a parting gift, then,” she added, her eyes drifting toward the horizon. “A token of appreciation for someone who stumbled into my dreadfully dull existence. Though I know it was hardly by your own will. I am simply finding words to justify the gesture, so do not read too deeply into it.”
“…Thank you for imparting the mantra to me!”
Moved by genuine gratitude, I brought my hands together in a solemn martial clasp—only for a swift, stinging rap of knuckles to crack against the crown of my skull.
“Ow!”
“…I’ve lived on the Korean Peninsula my entire life, you little rascal. Where did you learn such tacky theatricals?”
“Oh.”
Cho-young gave the interior of the cavern one final inspection.
The harvested spiritual plants were bundled securely where she could grab them at a moment's notice. Over in the shadowed alcove, she double-checked that the web enclosure holding the butterflies was firmly anchored.
According to Dokgo Yeon, Biseungdo’s spiritual currents had destabilized in the exact same manner just before Cho-young had arrived. The violent fluctuation in the realm's qi signaled that the window to return was opening right now.
Stepping out of the cavern, Cho-young faced the clearing.
Whoooosh—
A sudden gust of wind, thick with the island's pure spiritual essence, whipped across the plateau, sending dark strands of hair dancing across her face.
She could have at least stuck around to see me off.
Claiming she had urgent business to attend to, Dokgo Yeon had vanished into thin air without ceremony. Once Cho-young left, there was no telling if she would ever be able to return to this realm. It had only been seven days, but a surprising amount of fond attachment had taken root.
Right on cue, the space directly before her eyes began to warp and ripple, the fabric of reality twisting in the exact same vortex that had dragged her out of her living room a week ago.
Cupping her hands around her mouth, Cho-young screamed toward the sprawling forest where she suspected Yeon was watching:
“I’m heading out first!! Take good care of your health!!”
Health, my foot. As if an ancient monster like her could ever catch a cold.
Still, she said she had spent her life on the peninsula. What better parting words were there for a Korean elder?
Cho-young’s feet lifted off the dirt. Gravity vanished as the gravitational maw of the rift reeled her inward. Just before the dimensional distortion swallowed her whole, she threw her head back and shouted with all her might:
“Thank you for the mantra!! Master!!”
Swish—!
In the blink of an eye, she was gone.
High atop the canopy of a colossal ancient tree overlooking the whole of Biseungdo, Dokgo Yeon spat out the bitter medicinal leaf she had been rolling between her teeth.
The rampant spiritual storm that had thrashed the skies only moments ago had melted into utter silence.
Which meant……
She slowly pulled down the wooden goblin mask resting on top of her head, slipping it back over her face as she murmured into the stillness:
“To think a thousand years could suddenly feel this long.”
With a faint rustle, her figure dissolved into the aether, leaving behind nothing but a single fluttering leaf upon the branch.
CRASH—CLATTER—THUMP!
“Kyaaaagh!”
I violently ate dirt, slamming chest-first onto the hard floor with a breath-stealing impact.
“…Could this stupid dimensional travel be just a tiny bit gentler for once?”
Groaning, I pushed myself up from the floorboards, only to freeze. Why on earth was the apartment such a disaster zone? Who trashed the place? Me? No way. It wasn't remotely like this a week ago.
Cardboard shipping boxes littered the floor in every direction—some flat, some half-folded, and others haphazardly taped together. My eyes drifted toward a particularly monstrous fortress of stacked boxes in the corner.
What was that?
Why was an intensely bizarre, ominous aura leaking from behind that cardboard mountain?
Stepping gingerly across the clutter, I reached out and lifted the topmost box.
“…Huh?”
I was supposed to live alone, wasn't I?
Lurking behind the gap in the boxes, a grotesque, demonic visage was staring directly at me. The eyes were hollow, sunken pits; its slack-jawed mouth leaked a ghastly, wet “Gheeeer—” groan; dried, dark-crimson streaks were smeared all across its pale cheeks; and a rat's nest of matted hair hung down like a tattered curtain over the nightmare.
Trembling, I quietly lowered the cardboard box back into place.
“I-I’m just seeing things. Exhaustion, obviously. It’s not like ghosts actually exist, right?”
Haha.
Right.
Just a harmless hallucination. There was no conceivable reason a vengeful wraith that died of overwork—eyeballs sunken, drooling guttural noises, drenched in blood—would be squatting in my tiny living room.
“…….”
Swallowing hard, I cautiously peeled the box back one more inch.
“U-Ugh.”
I dropped it right back down.
Holy shit. That really is a gho—
RUMBLE-CRASH!
Two pale, frantic hands burst straight through the cardboard barricade, lunging forward to clamp around my collar!
“KYAAAAAAAGH!”
“SKREEEEEEEECH!”
The two of us shrieked at the top of our lungs, our combined screams rattling the apartment's reinforced windows.
“You scared the life out of me!”
The terrifying demon turned out to be none other than Hye-yeon.
The sunken, corpse-like eyes and the bird’s-nest hair were the natural consequences of going three days and three nights without sleep, packaging spiritual elixirs on my behalf. As for the blood smeared across her cheeks… I chose not to ask. Some questions were better left unanswered.
“I scared you?! You have the nerve to say that to my face right now?!”
“Wh-Why are you mad at me?”
“Where on earth have you been all this time?!” she wailed, shaking me by the lapels until my teeth rattled. “Do you have any idea what it felt like?! Staring at these luscious, mouthwatering elixirs day in and day out, gritting my teeth and forcing myself not to swallow them whole while packaging boxes non-stop for three straight days?! Do you know the sheer psychological torture of wanting to steal something so badly, yet knowing you can’t?! DO YOU?!”
Hye-yeon hissed like an enraged feral cat, vigorously throttling my neck back and forth.
“B-Biseungdo! I got dragged to Biseungdo, okay?!”
She froze, blinking in bewilderment.
“Biseungdo?”
“Yeah! A dimensional rift sucked me in completely out of nowhere!”
“How could you possibly go there? That sacred realm only opens its gates once every thousand years! Urgh… How dare you lie to my face! That settles it—your punishment is thirty seconds of chest-groping! Prepare yourself!”
“I’m telling the truth, I swear!”
Seeing her cackling wickedly while extending two claw-like hands toward my bosom, I instinctively flicked my wrist and unleashed the Water Bullet Technique.
SPLASH!
The sphere of water detonated directly against her chest, drenching her from head to toe. Her soaked shirt clung tightly to her skin, outlining every voluptuous curve of her figure in vivid detail. But the display lasted only a heartbeat; with a casual snap of her fingers, inner qi surged, evaporating the moisture instantly.
“Water Bullet Technique? That’s a spell reserved for… wait a minute. You’re at the 2nd Layer of Qi Condensation?”
“How did this happen?” she gasped.
A short while later, I sat her down and recounted everything that had transpired over the past week.
“Hmm… So what you’re saying is: the spiritual qi gathered from your stream surged when the internet orders flooded in, tearing open a tear in space-time that dumped you on Biseungdo, where you gathered rare herbs and returned after a week?”
“When you summarize it like that, it sounds completely insane.”
“Back when we first met and I felt your spiritual roots, I knew they were strange,” Hye-yeon murmured, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Turns out they’re even more bizarre than I gave them credit for.”
“Well, whatever. The important thing is I made it back in one piece. Thanks for holding down the fort and packing all those orders while I was gone. You worked really hard.”
“Hand over an elixir and I won’t devour you alive.”
“Of course you get one! From now on, we tackle the rest together. Ah, hang on a second—let me start up the stream.”
Just as my fingers reached out to activate the terminal’s holographic projector, Hye-yeon abruptly clamped her hand over mine.
“What gives?” I asked.
“Do you… really have to turn it on right now?”
“Why wouldn't I? I need to stream to harvest more spiritual qi.”
“Well, the thing is……”
Hmm?
Hesitating, Hye-yeon brought up her own personal holographic interface and flicked the floating display over into my field of vision.
The moment my eyes registered the screen, my breath caught in my throat.
“Wh-What on earth is this…?”