A Regressor's Tale of Cultivation
C793 Chapter 789: Protagonist (主人公) (4)
Chapter 793 Chapter 789: Protagonist (主人公) (4)
In a far-off past.
In the days when I was nothing more than an ordinary mortal being.
I once saw a Buddhist nun.
That Buddhist nun went around helping people with good deeds even though it brought no benefit.
At times with a shaven head, and at times with grown hair because there was no chance to cut it, she wandered the world and continued her good deeds.
Why was it? That sight of her endlessly helping people...
It also looked as if she craved something.
I asked her what she was seeking, and she answered.
—Dao. I walk the world to obtain the true Dao.
Such a her looked so beautiful to me.
She said that until she attained enlightenment, she would share affection with no one.
And yet, why was it?
Such a thing did not matter.
I, whose blood always boiled and embraced regardless of man or woman, felt that with her, I must not recklessly apply such a measure.
I did everything I could to draw closer to her.
I cut desire out of myself and created everything imaginable.
However, I, to the very end, could not know what the Dao she wanted was.
I could not make what she wanted.
Perhaps...
Even if I devoted my whole life, it felt like it may be my fate to never satisfy her heart.
But even so, it did not matter.
Even if I devoted my life and achieved nothing, it did not matter.
Just once,
If only once, I succeeded in opening the path before her,
A mere life in which I do not even know what the Dao is...
I could throw it all away.
16th cycle.
Riding on the back of [General Seo], I feel a powerful being tailing us as I leave Red Moon Island.
Kugugugugu!
It is the owner of the 'gaze' that always watches Red Moon Island.
[Stop.]
The great inspector who oversees and monitors the entire Human Race territory,
The Integration stage Grand Cultivator, Wi Ryeong-seon!
The being who scatters countless clones to watch all the Sky Island areas begins to send his will toward me.
'After the half-step Heavenly Being stage, is it immediately the Integration stage?'
I give a bitter smile, and without even looking back, I immediately spur the Four-Axis stage [General Seo] to accelerate even harder.
Kwagwagwawang!
Only two-tenths of power remain, so attacking is impossible, but moving at the speed of a Four-Axis stage cultivator is possible.
And from far away, a clone of Wi Ryeong-seon flies toward me.
A clone of Heavenly Being stage cultivation!
'Just one clone is a Heavenly Being...that is an Integration stage Grand Cultivator!'
It is a fearsome realm.
Moreover, the Heavenly Being stage clone should carry the enlightenment and battle experience of the Integration stage, so its strength would not fall behind the Four-Axis stage.
[Devilish cultivator Seo Eun-hyun of Red Moon Island, hear this. Because you used the techniques of the Heart Tribe, you must hereby be detained on suspicion of being a Heart Tribe spy. Submit peacefully to the bindings of the Human Race Grand Alliance!]
At the stern cry of Wi Ryeong-seon, I only drive [General Seo] faster.
It seems that as I pierced the Heavenly Tribulation and used Cutting Principle, the Formless Sword briefly revealed itself.
Kugugugugu!
In the far distance, the edge of the Sky Island zone comes into view.
'I will go straight to the Flying Immortal Platform like this.'
The cultivation of Cutting Principle proceeds in this way.
At first, one whose ties are shallow.
Next, one whose ties are slightly deep.
Thus gradually cutting ties with those whose ties are deep, and in the end cutting ties with the world itself.
Wo-woong!
While riding General Seo and fleeing, I also send several strikes of Cutting Principle toward Wi Ryeong-seon who chases me.
However, perhaps because even if inferior it is the split soul of an Integration stage Grand Cultivator...
I feel that no matter how many times I throw them, the effect of Cutting Principle is small.
'It doesn't matter.'
Since in any case I do not plan to stay in the Bright Cold Realm in this life, if I drop away from the Bright Cold Realm itself and cut my ties with the Bright Cold Realm, my ties with Wi Ryeong-seon will naturally fall away as well.
Of course, for now rather than cutting ties, it is only to the extent of cutting 'attention', so it will not make him forget me completely...
Even so, before long it will be to the extent that he clears me completely from his mind.
Kugugugugu!
Continuing to send Cutting Principle toward Wi Ryeong-seon who keeps chasing me, I continue my Cutting Principle cultivation as we wage a chase for several days and nights.
And at last, the Heaven-Earth Palace with the Flying Immortal Platform comes into view.
Kugugugu!
I sense the presence of powerful cultivators at the Four-Axis stage and above from Heaven-Earth Palace, but I ignore it and execute a forced breakthrough.
'This is...Star Extinguishing True Chapter!'
Perhaps because Wi Ryeong-seon sent word to seize the suspicious being that is me, several Four-Axis stage inspectors appear from Heaven-Earth Palace and start to exert attraction force to capture me.
'I won't get caught. Anyway, being near Heaven-Earth Palace is enough.'
I see innumerable nets of connection and causality.
I still cannot touch those nets.
However, if it is only to pry through the gaps and slip out of the world...!
Tsuaaaaaat!
The Formless Sword wedges through the plane and cuts space.
And beyond the slit of space, I observe the vulnerability of the Bright Cold Realm's dimension that is revealed in Indra's Net and move toward that gap.
Chwaaak! Pong!
[Youuuuu!]
A shout from behind by Wi Ryeong-seon reaches me, but I simply turn my back and put my palms together.
[In the deepest part of the master's Dao Heart, connect the divine power of Cutting Principle. Just as when Master reached the realm of Treading Heavens Beyond the Path, you connected the inner core and the Formless Sword. If Master connects Cutting Principle to Master's soul itself...]
Knowledge about Cutting Principle that Hong Fan advised gets quickly digested, and I look upon the immeasurably vast 'connection' that links the Bright Cold Realm and me.
The breaths I inhaled in the Bright Cold Realm.
Spiritual energy, rays of light.
The earth I tread there, all the wonders I saw there.
All of that is the connection that links me and the Bright Cold Realm.
'Cut.'
Kiririririk...!
Toward the principle of the connection that lies between my own spirit and the Bright Cold Realm, I use the divine power of Cutting Principle and slice it.
Of course, I still do not slice the principle itself.
However, I manage to make the apparition of the principle a little blurry,
And it seems that much is enough.
Flash!
Outside the Bright Cold Realm, I fall past the Interdimensional Void and, together with Hong Fan, head toward a place where a familiar attraction force is felt.
[As I see it, the best way to slow the curse of the True Immortal of Heavenly Punishment is to go to a place where the True Immortal of Heavenly Punishment's perception of Master is most delayed.]
[If it is a place that where the perception is most delayed.]
[A place where the traces of another True Immortal are. The Head Realm.]
Kugugugu!
Beyond the Interdimensional Void, I grasp what the attraction force that drags us is.
'This is...!'
It is a familiar attraction force.
Back when I was in the Head Realm, it was also energy I felt so utterly sick and tired of.
In the far distance, [something] that resembles a hard-to-recognize head seems to come into view.
And the moment I perceive it.
Before I know it, Hong Fan and I find ourselves in a familiar sky.
Chwaaaak!
"Keheok, keok!"
"Uuumm...!"
Wadangtang!
Tearing in from the Interdimensional Void into some space inside the Head Realm, we are flung into one spot inside that space.
"This place is..."
I squint and look around, and I soon know where this is.
"...Serving Command Palace...?"
Yes.
The topmost floor of the Head Realm's Serving Command Palace.
It is where the Serving Command Seal exists.
"Mm, it seems the attraction force of that Serving Command Seal pulled us in. Originally, they say that returning to the Decaying Corpse Realm you originally came from at the Nascent Soul stage is like picking stars from the sky, but seeing that we returned this easily, it is probably due to this."
"Ah, I see."
I realize how the Serving Command Seal helped us.
'From the beginning, Hong Fan is a being designated by the Serving Command Seal.'
The Serving Command Seal summoned heavenly fortune.
Hong Fan also descended from the heavens under the influence of that heavenly fortune as the one expected to be the most necessary to me.
'Since the one the heavens send through the Serving Command Seal is Hong Fan, the Serving Command Seal may have strongly pulled in the existence called Hong Fan.'
Thanks to that, it seems we arrived in the Head Realm more easily than expected.
"General Seo was almost unnecessary. Haha."
We are quite lucky.
Normally, we would have had to avoid the Vestiges of the Interdimensional Void and descend over several days while fighting with a Four-Axis stage puppet, but we descended to the Head Realm in an instant without consuming much of General Seo's durability.
It feels like heavenly fortune is following.
The heavens that always drove me into extreme environments seem, this time, to take my side a little.
I smile as I look at the Serving Command Seal before my eyes.
Immortal Treasure Serving Command Seal.
Why is it?
I strongly feel that this thing called an Immortal Treasure is alive and deliberately helped us.
"Thank you."
For designating the connection that is Hong Fan, and again helping us with heavenly fortune.
As I offer that brief thanks, I examine the curse within my body.
'Indeed...'
The speed at which the curse of lightning transformation progresses has decreased!
"At this level..."
On the assumption that I live only in the Head Realm, it seems I can endure five hundred years.
"Five hundred years in the Head Realm... If I continue progressing in the divine power of Cutting Principle...surely, there may be a possibility."
If it were another method, I would not speak like this.
But this method called the Star Extinguishing True Chapter suits me better than any other method.
If it were an ordinary method, it would be nothing more than me setting a target value, but the Star Extinguishing True Chapter is different.
It truly feels like there is a possibility.
"Master, it seems you have now reached the realm where the 'net' is visible..."
"That's right. The shape of the 'net' is visible."
As I attempt to exit the Serving Command Palace, I converse with Hong Fan about the progress of the Star Extinguishing True Chapter.
"In that case, rather than earnestly cutting connections, how about Master makes it his goal to cut the law itself?"
"Cut...the law...?"
I ask again in disbelief, but Hong Fan nods with a serious tone.
"I am not speaking of something like the principles of the world. Just trying to cut a few simple principles that apply to Master. Conveniently as the Serving Command Palace is helping, it will probably go well, no?"
"The Serving Command Palace? Ah, right."
The Serving Command Palace with the Serving Command Seal is also called Liberation Palace, and it is said to possess the ability to release prohibitions nearby.
The very law called 'liberation' exists in the Serving Command Palace.
If so...
"If, while leaving Serving Command Palace, I cultivate by using Cutting Principle to cut the restrictions that bind me in Serving Command Palace...!"
"That is correct. As the power of liberation and the cultivation of Cutting Principle interlock, Master will be able to advance the progress of the Cutting Principle cultivation even faster."
"Indeed, excellent, Hong Fan."
I did not think to use the power of liberation itself from the Serving Command Palace.
My creativity did not reach it.
Hong Fan filled in the parts I lack and helped me choose better options.
'Thank you. Truly...'
From that day, I practice cutting the laws of prohibitions laid in the Serving Command Palace, or I personally unfold a formation and lay prohibitions, then, borrowing the law of liberation, practice cutting the fundamental 'law' of the prohibition itself.
The Cutting Principle cultivation of the Star Extinguishing True Chapter.
Its progress rises very rapidly, and I gradually become accustomed to touching the fundamental law.
And one day,
I finally succeed in perfectly using the law of 'liberation' itself.
Shukagagak!
As the power of liberation is added for an instant to the line of Cutting Principle, I ignore all prohibitions laid inside the Liberation Palace and move outside Liberation Palace in a flash.
"Huff...!"
A truly immense marvel.
A transcendent method that touches fundamental laws.
That is precisely the Star Extinguishing True Chapter.
At the same time, I realize something.
'The moment I cut the law of prohibition by the power of liberation...I felt something.'
It was like the 'attention' of the faint connections I severed countless times when I was in the Bright Cold Realm.
'In the law of liberation...there is the 'heart'?'
At this strange sensation I feel for the first time, I look back at the Liberation Palace.
The Liberation Palace drifting through the void space of the Head Realm.
At the center of that Liberation Palace, the seal called the Serving Command Seal contains a powerful law of liberation.
At the same time, from that law of Liberation, I seem to feel a certain 'heart'.
'This is...'
Is this also a coincidence?
Or is it someone's intention?
On the first day I apply the law of liberation to Cutting Principle,
I shudder as I feel the intense 'heart' felt from Liberation Palace.
'What in the world...is this 'heart'...!?'
Who on earth is the maker of the Liberation Palace?
Just who are they, that they breathed such a powerful heart into a liberation seal that is no more than an object?
And, for what reason, do they harbor such...a desperate heart?
The wave of heart I feel from Liberation Palace is something like an obsession close to madness, similar to the heart with which I once prayed and prayed in desperation to kill Yuan Li.
For a long time,
Without knowing whether it is coincidence or guidance, until that wave of heart I came to feel by chance can no longer be felt, I look endlessly at the Liberation Palace,
And I only think about the maker who created Liberation Palace.
Present.
Heaven and Earth divide into two.
I am not simply speaking of the sky and ground.
The world itself that all of us have known until now is split apart.
A divine technique that surpasses by thousands of times the strike with which I barely surpassed the Great Mountain Supreme Deity in the Great Mountain Battle and scratched the boundary of Cakravāda.
By that divine technique, the entire boundary of Cakravāda is torn away, and the scenery of [Outside] enters the eyes of all Governing Immortals including me.
Some glittering presences with a feeling far too remote exist beyond the dense void.
And in between, a wind called Vairambha Wind (毘藍風), which appears when a Heavenly Domain is generated, blows in.
Wo-woong—
Before I know it, a golden silhouette that escapes from the Impermanence Sword looks toward somewhere beyond the Vairambha Wind, far across the void.
In that far-off place, a ray of shining light enters his eyes, enters all our eyes.
From the scenery of [Outside] beyond the domain of Cakravāda, a familiar nostalgia is reflected.
It is the nostalgia of Earth.
I can tell instinctively.
The dimension where the Earth we lived in...
It exists beyond those glittering worlds.
Tsuaaaaat!
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Seeing that, we all firm our sentiments.
Hong Fan, seeing us like that, lifts the sword.
As if asking, do you think you can go back?
No answer is needed.
"The single strike just now is something we barely evaded by combining Golden Great Thousand World and Auspicious Soul Filling the Heavens, plus Heavenly Escape and Oh Hyun-seok's Primal Chaos World."
Kim Young-hoon speaks.
It is as he says.
Only by combining each of our Martial Pinnacles and even adding Heavenly Escape and Oh Hyun-seok's authority could we barely let that radiance strike pass through.
However, Hong Fan is a monster who evolves with each single move.
The evasion method we just used will no longer work.
"We can't keep dodging."
"We have to face it."
"Do you have a combination in mind?"
"For that, I ask you, Hyung-nim. I will compose the breaking formula."
In the end, to defeat Hong Fan, we have to join forces.
I begin to pour my all into analyzing the martial arts of the Emptiness Sword, reinterpreting them, and devising a breaking formula, while Kim Young-hoon begins to pour his all into composing combinations that, through the combination of his martial arts and mine, can deflect or counter Hong Fan's attacks.
Immediately after, Hong Fan moves the Emptiness Sword.
—Emptiness Sword Sixth Form.
—Future.
Peobeong!
Including me, Kim Young-hoon and our comrades are annihilated in a single blow.
But as we pass into the 2102nd, I can at last discern the essence of Future.
'Acceleration...is it?'
The base speed being speed of Undying—that is Future King Fate Supreme Deity Hong Fan Gu Ju.
And accelerating one step more from the state of Undying.
That is the essence of the True Martial Art Emptiness Sword's Sixth Form, Future.
Only after dying several times do I roughly grasp the composition of the Emptiness Sword.
The basic composition that I grasp is as follows.
First Form, Zero.
A killing technique that maximizes 'scraping', extending even to cutting, tearing, and ripping.
Second Form, King.
A killing technique that maximizes 'downward slash' displaying great force by using the power of attraction force itself.
Third Form, Light.
A killing technique that maximizes 'coiling force' (纏絲勁), digging into 'rotation' of force itself.
Fourth Form, Heaven.
A killing technique that maximizes 'upward slash', attaining a property that transcends spacetime through repulsive force by inverting attraction force.
Fifth Form, Upper.
A killing technique that maximizes 'force emission' (發勁), expanding the concept even to throwing techniques that shoot out force.
Sixth Form, Future.
It appears to be a technique that maximizes 'acceleration,' becoming even faster than a state of having reached the domain of Undying.
I still cannot know the detailed principle.
And the final profundity of the Emptiness Sword, the Seventh Form, Hope.
'This is still impossible to analyze.'
I cannot even tell what kind of property that is.
The only certain thing is that Hope, despite being a mere decisive move, is 'alive'.
Possessing a living characteristic, it holds a trait that, once its first target is marked, it pursues to the end and kills. It is something that can be called a martial doctrine that transcends martial doctrines.
Based on the above basic forms, it appears to use applied decisive techniques or applied profundities through using the basic forms innumerable times or drawing the power out to the extreme.
And the terror of the Emptiness Sword is that, while linking the above forms with applied decisive techniques and profundities, it shows infinite combinations.
I think like a madman on the weaknesses of the Emptiness Sword and breaking formulas, and on Kim Young-hoon's side, he devises combinations of decisive techniques to attack Hong Fan Gu Ju.
And, each gripping our sword and saber, we take a step forward.
The gold sword and the silver sword are raised and aimed at Hong Fan Gu Ju.
In an instant, we take our step.
Clang—
Kang Min-hee constrains our ranks, and once again drags Hong Fan Gu Ju's whole body down into the real