Chapter 74
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 74
I Rang gave him four final warnings.
First, if he encountered a fellow disciple of the Great Martial Dao, he was to travel alongside them.
Second, if he spotted a stranger, he must strike first and subdue them without hesitation.
Third, the densest Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy lay in the depths of the Secret Realm, so he should constantly move toward the center.
And fourth, if he encountered mechanisms or formations beyond his understanding, he was to leave them strictly alone.
“Senior. May I ask a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why is it that only Qi Refining Stage cultivators can enter the Secret Realm?”
“You really crawled in here without knowing a single thing, didn't you?”
I Rang let out a barely audible sigh. Hall Master Woo Yu-hee's description of Ise as someone with a death wish was spot on.
“This Secret Realm is a remnant of a battlefield.”
“Yes. I heard about that.”
“Three hundred years ago during the Great Heavenly Demon War, or perhaps even earlier, a piece of the Heavenly Realm was sheared off in the aftermath of a clash between True Immortals. Most Secret Realms known as 'battlefield remnants' were created that way. They drift through the void, and whenever they drift close enough to the Mortal Realm, an entrance opens.”
“……?”
“Because it is a space imbued with the lingering power of such mighty beings, countless mysterious and auspicious things have formed within it. Occasionally, ancient relics from thousands of years ago are buried there as well.”
Just how fiercely did they fight for space itself to be sheared off? It was a concept completely beyond Ise's common sense.
“Within that space lies an immense spiritual pressure left behind by the battle of True Immortals. Therefore, if anyone who has highly compressed their spiritual energy—like those with a Dharma Flower Dantian or a Golden Core—steps inside, their Spirit Root will burst and be destroyed.”
“I see……”
Ever since stepping foot into the Cultivation World, it had been a continuous series of such incomprehensible revelations.
“Don't bother trying to understand it. It's merely a story of the realm above.”
“Yes, Senior.”
“You need only fight your enemies, overcome them, and return safely. If you happen to find any Spirit Herbs, scoop them up along with the soil and put them in here.”
I Rang handed him a greenish pouch.
It was a Spirit Herb Pouch—a specialized Storage Pouch designed to store Spirit Herbs alive, perfectly preserving their Spiritual Nature.
“Do I... need to return this later?”
“If you bring back Spirit Herbs and hand them over to the Spirit Beast Forest, I'll let you keep it.”
“Understood.”
Dark blue shadows writhed, eagerly welcoming Ise into the fold.
A strange, heavy pressure seeped out from inside the rift. It exerted a terrifying pulling force, as if space itself was trying to swallow a human whole.
Ise took a deep breath.
And stepped forward.
The black void wrapped around his body.
* * *
“He's late. Nothing happened to him, right?”
At the same time, at the Main Mountain's Meal Exchange, Seol Ryeong was slumped over with her cheek pressed against a table.
She frequently dropped by to ask for news of Ise, but his Closed-Door Cultivation didn't seem to be ending anytime soon. Pi Ga-ram and Bu Chun were equally anxious for updates.
Would he truly be able to achieve Great Completion?
Would he become the first among their peers to challenge the Foundation Establishment Stage?
Just as their curiosity reached its peak, Park Gang-seo rushed frantically into the Meal Exchange.
“Urgent news! Urgent news!”
The three turned their gazes toward him simultaneously. There was only one reason he would make such a fuss.
“Did he come out?!”
“How did it go?”
Park Gang-seo caught his ragged breath, raised his index finger, and spoke with a meaningful look.
“He came out.”
“Then why are you alone? Where's Ise?”
At Seol Ryeong's question, Park Gang-seo let out a dry laugh. Even to him, the news sounded utterly absurd.
“They say he entered a Secret Realm.”
“……?”
What on earth did that mean?
For a moment, all three of their brains froze.
He entered where?
“You know that Dark Heaven Secret Realm that opened a little while ago? Apparently, the moment he came out, he heard the news and went straight in.”
They had all heard the rumors that a Secret Realm was opening. Of course, for them—who were at best in the Mid Qi Refining Stage—it had nothing to do with them. And since Ise was in Closed-Door Cultivation, they assumed he would miss out on it this time around.
Yet, he had entered. He had finished his Closed-Door Cultivation at a truly mind-bogglingly perfect time.
“A Secret Realm isn't some neighborhood walking trail... Did he even prepare properly?”
“Probably not at all. They say he set off immediately after stepping out.”
No matter how monstrous a genius he was called, what kind of place was a Secret Realm? According to the rumors, it was nothing short of a living hell.
“What about my Dharma Artifact?”
“He probably took it with him.”
“Is he seriously out of his mind?”
* * *
An immense pressure weighed down on his body. Just as he began to worry that he might actually burst at this rate, the black void spat Ise out.
His toes touched solid ground.
Ise bent his knees slightly to absorb the impact, simultaneously balancing his weight on the balls of his feet.
At that very moment, a wedge-shaped spell imbued with vicious killing intent flew in from his right, aiming straight for the back of his neck.
He instantly raised the Golden Supreme Parasol, letting the shield take the spiritual energy head-on.
A humming shock traveled through his wrist, but his body, transformed by Spirit Bones, didn't budge an inch.
He swiftly pinpointed the opponent's location.
Ise kicked off the ground and surged forward. Seeing him approach without a single trace of panic despite the surprise attack, the assailant's pupils shook like an earthquake.
Without giving the enemy time to gauge his realm, Ise thrust the Golden Supreme Parasol directly toward the opponent's head.
Glancing at the enemy frantically channeling the Metal Attribute to cast a defensive spell, Ise seamlessly abandoned the feint with the Golden Supreme Parasol. Instead, he drew his Small Axe and brutally sliced through the enemy's waist.
It was a swift, flawless transition of attack lines that was unimaginable for a standard cultivator.
Squelch.
The body of the cultivator, who was a head shorter than Ise, was cleanly cleaved in two.
Ise pulled back his axe and looked down at the corpse.
‘He's weak.’
The ambush itself was a fine tactic, but his response to an unexpected counterattack was far too inadequate. With that pathetic level of spell manipulation, he couldn't even stand against a cultivator who practiced a Body Refinement Art.
His skill was far too miserable for someone who had willingly entered a Secret Realm. The amount of spiritual energy scattering from the corpse was only around the 7-Star level.
Either someone had dragged him in here as fodder, or he was a fool who had fearlessly entered in hopes of striking it lucky with a Fated Opportunity.
Ise brought down the Small Axe, severing the cultivator's head from his neck.
Using Earth Spear, he impaled the severed head on a pike of stone, then thoroughly searched the Daoist robe for a Storage Pouch. However, there were no Dharma Artifacts on him. Judging by how his Daoist robe was scorched and torn everywhere, he seemed to have already suffered defeat in a previous battle and lost everything.
Just as Ise felt a tinge of disappointment, a sudden fluctuation of spiritual energy rippled behind his back.
Ise spun around. Far across the black rocky terrain, a shadow was rapidly pulling away.
It was a figure identical to the cultivator he had just cleaved apart.
His gaze shifted back to the corpse at his feet. The weave of the Daoist robe was unraveling thinly, dissolving into thin air.
It was a clone.
As expected of someone who dared enter a Secret Realm, he at least possessed a single life-saving measure.
‘...What a grand welcome.’
Ise clicked his tongue. The moment his ambush was neutralized, the target had already begun fleeing at full speed. Judging by his velocity, he had clearly mastered a mobility spell for escape as well.
Ise retracted his gaze and slowly surveyed his surroundings.
The scenery of the Secret Realm was deeply unfamiliar.
Dark Heaven (暗天). Just as the Secret Realm's name implied, the sky was an endless expanse of pitch black. A night sky in the dead of night, utterly devoid of moon, stars, and clouds—this was precisely what it felt like.
It was difficult to even tell whether he was indoors or outdoors. The ground he trod upon was black sand, and the rocky mountains protruding here and there were ink-black.
Distinguishing the ground from the sky was no easy task. Whenever Ise shifted his gaze up and down, a wave of dizziness washed over him, as if he were trapped in an Illusion Formation.
There was clearly not a single speck of light, yet his vision was crystal clear. It was a paradoxical expression, but it was dark light. There was no other way to describe the place.
He surveyed the surroundings as he walked.
The place where he had landed was a barren rocky area. It was not an environment where Spirit Herbs could grow, and violent, gouged-out traces were left on the rocks everywhere. It seemed someone had already swept through and stripped away all the rare minerals.
The situation in most of the nearby area would likely be no different.
Ise set his direction toward the area where he felt the strongest spiritual energy. Just as I Rang had advised him, he intended to head straight toward the center of the Secret Realm, where Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy was abundant.
As he walked further, corpses began to appear one by one. Each bore the gruesome traces of violent battle.
Some were decapitated, while others had their torsos completely cleaved in two. Fragments of broken Dharma Artifacts were scattered beside them, and some corpses were riddled with holes, as if pecked apart by a flock of beasts.
The time and manner of their deaths varied widely.
Among the corpses he found, some had their outer robes completely stripped off.
Ise's brow furrowed slightly. At first, he suspected a perverse serial killer. However, upon closer inspection, the stripped corpses were both male and female, and aside from the missing outer robes, they were otherwise intact without any strange marks.
‘They stripped off their Daoist robes?’
Ise kept that detail in mind.
Was it simply the bizarre trophy of some lunatic? Or was it the rule of this place to count even Daoist robes as valuable resources, literally stripping victims of everything they owned? Or was there some other hidden reason entirely?
As he walked a bit further, he spotted the familiar fold of a Daoist robe.
A pure-white Daoist robe. An emblem depicting Haljo and Haechi as symbols.
It was the corpse of a formal disciple of the Great Martial Dao.
The corpse's entire midsection had been blasted away. Judging by the scorched, blackened burns along the edges of the massive hole, it was the work of a destructive Fire Attribute spell.
Though the man was a complete stranger, Ise knelt down and carefully turned the corpse over. Clasping his hands together, he quietly recited a Soul Pacification prayer.
“Though your body crumbles in a foreign land, may your soul return home.”
Ise unfastened the neck pendant from the corpse and placed it into his Storage Pouch. Since it was not a Dharma Artifact, it was likely something kept as a personal keepsake. He intended to return it to the Great Martial Dao Main Mountain as a relic to be placed in the Memorial Hall.
If possible, he wanted to bring the body back as well, but he could not put the corpse of a Daoist inside a Demon Ghost Sealing Scroll. To treat the corpse of a fellow disciple like a mere Demon Ghost was not soul pacification, but desecration.
Ise left the corpse as it was and stood up.
He moved forward once more.
After walking for about an hour, following the dense flow of spiritual energy...
Ise stopped dead in his tracks. His Dokkaebi Sense had picked up a gaze.
Ever since reaching the Great Completion of Qi Refining, his Dokkaebi Sense had become far sharper and infinitely more acute. The enemy had perfectly concealed their presence and spiritual energy, yet their gaze—watching him like prey—was distinctly perceptible.
Ise slowly looked around his surroundings. He readied his stance, fully prepared to block any spell that might fly toward him at a moment's notice.
Even after waiting for a good while, the opponent did not reveal themselves. They were extremely cautious.
The flames of the Fire Release Art conjured by Ise drifted ominously into the air. If they were going to hide in the dark like a gloomy rat, he had no choice but to scorch the entire place upside down and force them out.
Fwoosh.
Just before the swelling flames could sweep across the area...
“Fellow Daoist. Stop your attack.”
A cultivator with both hands raised above his head slowly stepped out from the shadows.
Ise's eyes narrowed. The stranger was wearing a white Daoist robe, clearly embroidered with the emblem of the Great Martial Dao.