The Sanctuaries of the Cosmos
The crew of the Demensys cruiser spent the entire day chattering about what they would do once they received their vacation after returning.
“Yujin, do you have any special plans for your leave?”
Quite a few people approached him in a friendly manner and asked that question. Roughly one in three was a woman, which carried considerable meaning when one considered that females made up less than half of that proportion among the unit members.
Damn this popularity...
Whether he intended to interact with them or not, receiving positive interest from the opposite sex was naturally a pleasant thing.
Yet among them, some showed greater interest in Mu-yong rather than Han Yujin himself.
These were mostly female crew members as well. In most cases, when they encountered her during walks or meals, they would carefully stroke her, displaying a level of affection that gave no reason to feel displeased.
However, a few interfered to the point of becoming genuinely annoying.
A certain female officer from the medical department was especially persistent. Because she held officer rank, it felt awkward to reject her outright.
“Leave her with me whenever you go out on missions! My minor was veterinary science, you know.”
“...I’ll consider it.”
“You seem to have left her alone in your room again this time. That’s not good for her!”
She was right, but he had not actually left Mu-yong alone.
Since it was an external mission, he had placed her inside the Mountain Sea Pearl just to be safe. There was also no chance that anyone would visit his empty quarters and discover her existence, so it had been the natural decision.
As a side note, rather than simply letting her play inside the Mountain Sea Pearl, he had instructed her to cultivate a spiritual field that might prove useful soon. He had held no great expectations, yet the little one had admirably prepared a proper site in an ideal location right beneath the mountain peak.
It was truly a moment where she had failed to live up to her name, but in any case, he went through a fair amount of trouble shaking off the persistently insistent medical officer.
Fortunately, no other troublesome incidents occurred until they reached their destination. The subtle psychological warfare a few individuals directed at him out of jealousy for their own reasons did not even qualify as a minor event.
The destination, Planet C-15, was the exact same world where he had spent his leave right before receiving his unit assignment.
It served as a military strategic point and a hub capable of handling various types of duties for the space force, featuring numerous facilities for administrative processing, supply, and training.
There, the Demensys cruiser formally reported the successful completion of their mission and held a session to evaluate the crew members’ achievements and bestow rewards.
Han Yujin’s expectation that it might take some time turned out to be completely wrong. He had overlooked just how seriously the Empire regarded the space force.
With part of Emperor Luminous’s computational power mobilized, the achievement evaluation process—which could have taken months—was completed with official notification in mere hours. It was done in a manner that left no one able to raise objections or suspect unfairness.
Of course, since the evaluation was based on reports submitted by the commander, there remained some possibility of distortion. However, any fool who would dare to intentionally falsify a report that the Emperor himself—a level-22 spiritualist and the very system of the Empire—would review could never have risen to a command position in the first place.
Even if one could deceive the system once or twice, the probability of contradictions emerging would rise exponentially with each additional instance. Moreover, it was obvious what would happen if a soldier or subordinate who received an unfair evaluation filed a report.
As expected… This mighty Galactic Empire is able to maintain and prosper thanks to its hyper-fusion intelligence Emperor.
It was a fact he had already known, yet he found himself freshly impressed.
Although Major Brenar had described the Empire as having been pushed back by powerful civilizations such as the Cultivation World, a different interpretation revealed that merely being pushed back against the entire Cultivation World—or civilizations of comparable scale—was the extent of it.
Afterward, they had waged an endless war against the cosmic monsters known as the Xenos and endured for tens of thousands of years while steadily expanding their power.
And so.
When given the choice of what reward he desired, he did not hesitate for even a second and placed the highest priority on raising his citizen level. It was the optimal decision if he wished to absorb the sweet nectar of this astonishing Empire as quickly as possible.
Thanks to that, even though the required period had not yet been fully completed, the conditional restriction was lifted and he became a level-3 citizen.
It is by no means a low level.
Unlike spiritualist levels, citizen levels consisted of only seven stages in total. Reaching level 2 was relatively easy, but after that, each additional level represented a massive wall.
For example, Major Brenar was a level-4 citizen, and those responsible for managing the main continents of planets were likewise level-4 citizens.
Therefore, becoming a level-3 citizen this time constituted an enormous rapid promotion. He now stood at the same rank as city administrators.
Even after that meteoric rise, all remaining unused achievement points were converted into credits. With his citizen level now elevated, he judged that he would need the financial resources to make proper use of it.
Something like Aether Elixir can probably be obtained through Major Brenar one way or another.
He held that thought as well. After all, exchanging goods rather than currency would clearly be more convenient for both the giver and the receiver in multiple ways.
Once the reward procedures were concluded.
a vacation of at least three months was granted, no matter how short the minimum.
Han Yujin did not even bother securing proper accommodations and headed straight for the information archive. The building could be described as a library the size of a large shopping mall.
Its central atrium design allowed visitors on upper floors to look down upon the levels below. It was beautifully arranged, offering not only information access but also a space for emotional relaxation.
The atmosphere remained appropriately quiet and serene throughout. After examining the guide map at a desk-like station on the first floor, he proceeded directly to the third floor and claimed a private reading room.
No credits were consumed. For a level-3 citizen, the service was completely free, just like the public transportation he had used to arrive.
Jjik-! Jjik!
He also faced no restrictions for bringing a pet. This was something strictly forbidden for level-1 citizens.
Mu-yong, nestled in his arms, looked around the interior of the private reading room—which was not particularly spacious but was cozily appointed—with open curiosity. She seemed especially intrigued by the display occupying an entire wall that showed a realistic view of cosmic space.
In the upper-left corner, the logo of a corporation called EnerVision was visible. It was a highly famous megacorporation that ranked among the top three in the field.
“Hmm.”
As he continued to stare at the logo, an augmented reality interface appeared without any need for a remote. With a light manipulation, the cosmic scene on the wall display instantly transformed into a bright, lush forest.
The sunlight filtering through the leaves from above and the vivid, babbling brook on one side felt so realistic that it seemed as if the very scent of the forest was drifting through the air.
Jjik-!
While gently stroking Mu-yong, who liked the scene even more because it resembled familiar terrain, he pondered for a moment.
The technology really is excellent.
If one were not told beforehand, it seemed fully capable of fooling even a Qi Condensation investigator into believing it was a real window revealing the outside landscape rather than a display.
Thanks to that, he felt no sense of confinement despite the room’s modest actual size. Seated on the sofa, he began to earnestly search for the knowledge he desired.
Having become a level-3 citizen, he now had access to a considerable amount of information. Although credits were required to view it, the data was thoroughly verified and received regular updates.
Besides, this kind of information is difficult to obtain anywhere else in the first place.
With that thought, he purchased data on the cosmic sanctuaries without hesitation.
The purchased information could naturally only be examined through the augmented reality interface in this location.
It felt slightly inconvenient since it was not a physical book and he could not skim the contents in a traditional manner, but the inclusion of images and video alongside text made it more than acceptable.
In truth, if he had implanted an Intellitron chip, such inconvenience would not have existed. The interface manipulation would have been far more organic and effortless.
In any case.
Han Yujin, now examining the information regarding the cosmic sanctuaries, concentrated so deeply that he barely even blinked.
Even with the three-dimensional hologram, comprehension did not come easily.
It really isn’t an ordinary map.
It was a map that mixed in astral dimension coordinates—the source of all spiritual energy in existence and a realm that half-overlapped with reality, referred to here as the Mixed Origin World.
It represented the sole method of traversing the infinitely vast universe and contained the principles behind warp engines, making it so intricate and complex that an ordinary person would grow dizzy.
Even he, at the Core Formation stage, found it difficult to understand completely. Having not yet reached the Nascent Soul stage, he still lacked developed space-time perception.
Fortunately, he did not need full comprehension at this moment. For now, it was sufficient to learn which forces occupied which territories in this universe.
From the map, the Luminous Sanctuary was clearly a remote and dangerous location. Aside from the Void Sanctuary teeming with Xenos, it shared no proximity with any other sanctuary.
In contrast, while the other sanctuaries were not necessarily close to one another, none of them bordered dangerous regions like the Void Sanctuary.
The first to draw his interest was naturally the Seondo Sanctuary where the Cultivation World was situated.
Even on a map interwoven with astral dimension coordinates, the Seondo Sanctuary stood out for its sheer scale. Perhaps for that reason, outsiders treated it as a single bundled region, but within the Cultivation World itself, it was apparently classified into three distinct districts.
Okcheong Sanctuary where the orthodox path is mainstream, Hyun-geuk Seon-yeok where the demonic path is mainstream, and Cheonyo Sanctuary where the yao race is mainstream.
Since he planned to visit the Cultivation World one day, he examined this section with particular focus.
I’ll most likely end up heading to Okcheong Sanctuary.
With that thought, he continued studying the sanctuary map.
The second-largest Magic Sanctuary was a region dominated by fantasy-style wizards.
The distinction lay in the fact that although humans formed the majority, they could not be called the absolute mainstream, and the various groups often coexisted harmoniously rather than engaging in blind opposition.
Moreover, as its size suggested, it was a civilized power that did not fall far behind the Cultivation World in any aspect.
The third-largest Primordial Sanctuary was the homeland of the dragons. It was also the territory inhabited by a giant race known as the Jotun and powerful elemental spirits.
Its most notable feature was that, despite an overall primitive level of civilization, its strength and potential did not lag significantly behind the other sanctuaries.
Could the Primordial Forest where I trained have been one of the planets within this sanctuary?
The feeling somehow seemed to fit.
The fourth-largest Divine Demon Sanctuary was the domain where divine races and demon races held sway.
Angels and demons.
It could truly be called a sanctuary where myths breathed and lived. The intelligent beings here considered it perfectly natural to grow stronger through faith and to be bound to the divine or demon beings they worshipped.
There were several other sanctuaries besides these, but all seemed minor and not worth close attention at present.
So the universe is structured around these major power distributions…
Of course, the Empire had likely not identified every sanctuary existing throughout the cosmos. Still, this amount of information was enough for now.
While he focused on absorbing the data.
Mu-yong seemed to regard it as study time as well; she closed her eyes and assumed a meditative posture. She was probably contemplating the Taiji Hoe-won Gong.
The sight of the tiny creature doing so was so adorable that he wanted to pet her vigorously, but rather than disturb her, he refocused on the sanctuary map and strove to commit it to memory as completely as possible.
Next, he intended to examine the training methods of the Galactic Empire.
He was deeply curious about the precise differences compared to the Cultivation World’s methods and how exactly they enabled practitioners to avoid the Three Tribulations of Cultivation.