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### Chapter 2. Divorce and Cultivation (2)
“So, what exactly is going on here?”
It was already absurd enough that I had somehow ended up attending my own funeral.
But on top of that?
My ancestor had just sent the Grim Reaper who came to take me away flying with a high kick!
I'd never heard of anything like this.
My ancestor (?) cleared his throat first.
“Ahem. Listen carefully. In this world, there is the Immortal Realm where immortals live and the Mortal Realm where
humans live…”
Skipping all that,
apparently I was getting in the way of my ancestor becoming a high-ranking immortal.
“It isn't about the family line ending, you idiot! You, you, you, you! If you have a descendant covered in bad karmic
ties like you, I can't pass the test to become an immortal! I'll fail!”
What kind of ridiculous nonsense was this?
Then my immortal ancestor folded his fan
and pressed it firmly against my solar plexus.
And then.
Fwoooooooooosh!
“Gueeeeegh…!”
Suddenly, black strands resembling Spider-Man's webs shot out in every direction from my solar plexus.
There had to be dozens of them!
“Gaaaaah! What are these?! I'm going to die!”
“Ahem. You hopeless descendant. You're already dead, for starters.”
Boonggi boong boong.
Then, as though playing a gayageum, he plucked the bundles of black threads pouring out of my solar plexus with his
fingers.
“These are the threads of your bad karmic ties. Why are there so many? By modern standards, this is legendary.
Absolutely legendary!”
“Wh-what are these bad karmic threads?!”
I couldn't move an inch because of the threads.
Every time one of them was touched, it felt like my skull was vibrating!
This was torture.
“What do you think they are? They're this.”
Snap!
My ancestor took one of the threads and pulled it apart with both hands.
Huh?
Something like a strange video began playing between the threads.
“Oppa, can't you lend me some money?”
“No, this is all because of you, Oppa.”
“If you'd just gotten me onto a broadcast, this wouldn't have happened!”
“Fucking bastard. Why did I even marry you?”
“Hey, get lost, you pathetic beggar! Let's get divorced!”
Ah.
That unmistakable voice.
The wife who had married me.
No, my former wife, that bitch.
The vivid voice and expressions of Ji Ye-eun flashed past my eyes.
Fuck.
I understood immediately.
The threads of bad karma!
“Each one of these isn't just a connection. You know what sal means in your saju-palja, right?”
“Ah, yes, I know.”
“All of these are sal, you idiot! There are 108 fates destined to kill you!”
Huh.
That made no sense.
“Doesn't sound believable, does it? Since you won't believe me anyway, I'll let you experience it once.”
Huh?
“N-no, I'll just believe you… Grrrrk!”
Fuck.
This damn Gam family!
None of them ever listen to what other people say!
The moment my ancestor stretched his hand toward my head,
all sorts of bizarre visions appeared before my eyes.
This felt similar to when I used my superpower.
Except my superpower involving objects
had only shown me signals of either a bright future or complete ruin for that object.
This was showing me 108 different signals of my own life ending in disaster, one after another!
I was strangled to death,
my head exploded and I died,
I was hit by a car and died. Ah, I'd already experienced this one before(?)
I drank poison and died,
I slipped and fell to my death in the mountains,
I stepped on a thumbtack and died after metal poisoning set in,
I bought a drink from a vending machine and died while vomiting because it contained bacteria,
the cable car I was riding suddenly snapped, causing me to fall to my death,
I was skiing too fast, slammed into a metal pole, and my body was split in half vertically!
“Gaaaaah! Stop!”
“See? Do you believe me now?”
Believe you, my ass.
There was no need to actually experience the pain of 108 different ways of dying!
“Grrrrrgh!”
Foam began bubbling from my mouth on its own.
“This brat still hasn't come to his senses. One more time…”
“N-no! No, Ancestor! Sir! Please, stop!”
“Really?”
I desperately stopped my ancestor as he raised his hand and aimed it toward me again.
Then.
Thump!
Whoosh.
When my ancestor flicked his hand again,
the threads of bad karma were gathered up and disappeared back into my solar plexus.
Whew.
What a fucking mess.
I had barely managed to catch my breath when
my ancestor lightly tapped my head with his fan.
“You lived dragging around all these bad karmic ties without doing anything about them. Isn't that why the consequences
have reached me too?”
“You're blaming me for this?!”
As if it wasn't already sad enough that I had no ancestral blessings whatsoever!
This man.
No, this great-great-great-grandfather sure knew how to say things that hurt.
“Don't I get any ancestral blessings or something? You said immortals actually exist!”
It wasn't just an ordinary ancestral ghost.
There was actually an immortal among my ancestors.
So why had I lived such a miserable life without any luck?
Forget my wife for a moment.
Just when I finally seemed to have gained some luck with money,
I died immediately!
Smack!
“Ow! Why did you hit me?!”
“You bastard. If I gave you a superpower specifically for stock investing, I gave you more than enough! And you're
blaming me for this? I even carefully selected a twenty-first-century customized superpower just for you!”
“Huh?”
…
Was that what it was?
“You were so damn slow that you didn't realize you had a superpower until you were almost forty, so I'll let that slide.
I thought you were a kindhearted fellow who'd donate generously once you became wealthy, but you turned out to be such a
cheapskate.”
“Ugh…”
He wasn't wrong.
I'd actually tried to donate before.
I'd made a staggering ten billion won through stock investments!
Once you had that much,
you'd normally donate at least enough to reduce the amount of money you'd otherwise pay in taxes.
‘Ye-eun caused all sorts of trouble.’
But my wife was different.
As expected, she really was different from everyone else!
She even considered charitable donations made for tax purposes a waste of money,
so she used a fake foundation to launder the money and took even that money back.
“I made this money because of me, so I'll keep it? Yay, free money~!”
The amount of money she siphoned away from the government was worth hundreds of millions of won.
I could still hear her voice vividly in my ears.
That money wasn't free money.
It had been the price of my life?
“Th-that… If I'd donated it, are you saying I could have lived?”
So because of what my wife had done,
I had actually died?
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You probably would have lived. Though you weren't generous enough to make donations large enough to
completely turn your luck around. That's what I gave you the power for. Who knew you'd keep it all clutched in your
hands and then get killed by sal just like that? It's my fault for having such a poor descendant. It's my fault! Sigh!”
As he spoke,
my ancestor picked up a bottle of soju that guests had been drinking from at one side of the funeral hall.
He somehow pulled out the translucent spirit (?) of the soju bottle,
then downed it in one shot!
“Ugh! What's this? Has the soju gone bad?”
My father's friend, whose soju spirit (?) had been taken away by my ancestor,
grimaced.
Apparently, eating the spirit (?) of food made it spoil.
That gave me a lot to think about.
“If I'd only donated, I would have lived…”
And my wife had gone so far as to make sure I couldn't even donate at the level ordinary people did,
even ordering me around while skimming money off the top.
Ha.
So that's what it was.
“You didn't know your wife had even stolen your life away from you, did you?”
“…I guess not.”
I thought she was just taking my money.
She was a demon when it came to that.
Considering she had been a BJ by profession, now that I thought about it, what else could I even say?
But that's how frightening rose-colored glasses could be.
There had been a time when I actually thought a woman like that was an angel.
Good grief.
But I was already dead.
What good did knowing this do now?
“So what do I do now? …Should I wake up the Grim Reaper?”
“No. We have to knock him out again.”
“What?”
What did he mean?
Just as I was wondering that,
the Grim Reaper, who had apparently already woken up and was lying over there, suddenly sprang to his feet and pulled
out a club.
“Immortal Gam! This is obstruction of official duties!”
“If the laws of this world say I must follow the rules, then I shall become a jump-rope champion!”
That just means you're going to break the law!
Whoooooosh!
“Gueok!”
A tackle,
an armbar,
then a chokehold!
The immortal ancestor's combo followed in an instant,
and the Grim Reaper was knocked unconscious once again.
Tap, tap!
“Don't get cocky. You can't even keep up with the twenty-first-century fighting meta.”
My ancestor stood up, brushing the dust from his palms.
“…”
My ancestor was surprisingly modern.
My ancestor gathered a white aura into one of his hands.
“Now. Listen carefully. I'm running low on strength, so this is my final chance. The laws of causality have become
somewhat tangled, so there will be some terrifying restrictions added, but since this is the second time, you should be
able to do it, right?”
“Yes?? What are you talking about?”
The second time?
The final chance?
But my ancestor didn't answer my questions.
Instead, he struck my forehead with his palm, which was covered in white energy.
“I'm betting both your future and mine on this. Do well!”
Crack—!!
In an instant, my vision turned completely white,
and I passed out.
---
And when I opened my eyes,
a familiar ceiling came into view.
“Huff. Huff…”
My breathing was ragged.
It felt like I'd been underwater for a long time and had just surfaced!
“Whew… Whew… What is this? Huh?”
I reached around with my hand,
and felt my cheek.
I could touch it!
As if the whole thing about being dead and attending my own funeral had merely been a horrible nightmare,
I was vividly alive right now!
“Whew. Whew…”
Once my breathing had calmed down a little,
I looked around the room.
This place was…
“An old house?”
Which old house was this again…
It was definitely a place I'd lived in for quite some time.
An apartment from the days when I barely owned anything.
So this apartment was…
I suddenly lifted my upper body and looked around.
As soon as I caught sight of the dressing table,
I heard something in my ear.
Something very far away.
A voice murmuring and chattering.
“Ah, really? Hahaha.”
The voice sounded faint and distant.
Huh.
No way.
I got up and looked into the mirror on the dressing table.
My face appeared in it.
I was definitely at least ten years younger.
Don't tell me…
Had I gone back into the past?
“This isn't… a dream?”
Had all those years actually been a dream,
and was I really young again?
No.
My memories were rapidly becoming hazy,
but the ten-plus years I'd experienced from this point onward?
They absolutely hadn't been fake.
I'd gone through every kind of hardship,
and even died after being hit by a car!
That had definitely been my past.
No.
My future!
“My God.”
Just as goosebumps began rising over my skin,
the distant murmuring voice seemed to fade,
and then the bedroom door suddenly flew open.
“What~ You weren't asleep?”
A woman came in, grinning mischievously.
Ji Ye-eun.
My ex-wife was standing there exactly as she had looked when she was young.
‘Fuck.’
My friends had teased me about her again and again.
And although I would apparently regret it terribly in the future,
the rose-colored glasses I'd had over my eyes at this point in time?
They hadn't been wrong!
It made perfect sense!
‘Wow, shit…’
Just moments ago, I'd been in the room on one side of the apartment,
the room dedicated to her internet broadcasts.
Ji Ye-eun had apparently just finished broadcasting there.
Her face?
Large, round, black eyes that looked utterly innocent.
A beautiful smile that revealed her upper teeth whenever she laughed.
Her fair skin and stunning looks were enough to make any man smile just from looking at her.
And her outfit right now?
It was ordinary.
Well, ordinary for an internet broadcasting BJ of that era!
It looked like a sailor outfit that had been modified to be provocative,
with the level of exposure making it practically equivalent to a swimsuit.
The embarrassing outfit clearly revealed the curves of her figure.
Without realizing it,
my brows naturally…
Naturally…
‘Hehehe.’
I became happy!
At this time,
Ji Ye-eun was still doing the kind of broadcasts commonly classified as being on the “dark side.”
Yeah.
That was how things were even during our newlywed days.
Later, after I used my connections to get her face on terrestrial television just once,
she completely erased her past and transformed herself into a cheerful older-sister type of celebrity,
earning the affection of people who knew nothing about her past.
‘What the fuck.’
Even after seeing everything there was to see,
I was still reacting like this when I saw her young self.
It really seemed like the me of this age would have had a hard time not getting completely taken advantage of by her.
But me.
Gam Dasan.
If I let the same woman fool me twice, then I'm not Gam Dasan anymore.
I'm Gam Dead!
Just as I firmly steeled my resolve,
she approached me with a giggle.
She smelled strongly of alcohol, as though she'd been doing a drinking broadcast.
“You really drank?”
“Of course I did. Honey, why were you waiting for me? Hm? You waited in bed until the broadcast ended? Why?”
Whoosh!
The overpowering scent of perfume mixed with alcohol made my head spin.
Ji Ye-eun leaned her upper body toward me.
Especially because of her outfit,
it felt like a scene from a sexy movie.
Ji Ye-eun skillfully used the fingers of one hand
to undo the buttons of my shirt one by one.
Then, with those slender, delicate fingers,
she traced the back of my neck.
“Should we play Mommy and Daddy for the first time in a while tonight?”
Ji Ye-eun laughed playfully as she said it.
Oh.
That game was the one I was thinking of, right?