A Regressor's Tale of Cultivation
C796 Chapter 792: Primordial Chaos (2)
Chapter 792: Primordial Chaos (2)
A Supreme Deity raises a hand.
: : In the name of Flood, I declare. : :
Woooo—
Above the Audience Chamber, the chaos of the Outer Sea starts to heave and flood.
The flooding chaos surges forth, and countless Heavenly Domains seem to bubble as if boiling and then explode all at once.
: : Be submerged. : :
An archaic existence called the Flood Supreme Deity (氾濫上帝) Gwae Geon (壞乾) floods annihilation.
Amid the explosions of innumerable Heavenly Domains, another Supreme Deity swings an arm.
: : As the War God of Sunken Speech (沈言), I command. : :
Shioooo!
The Heavenly Domains that ceaselessly explode and drive us back all freeze at once, dropping us into a world of Absolute Zero.
: : Sink. : :
The Silence Supreme Deity (沈默上帝) Heuk Seong (黑聲) presses down a hand made of darkness from within a black robe.
All sound and vibration disappear, and within an endless world of stasis, our very existence itself sinks.
Not stopping there, our existence and history, made into absolute stillness, are torn away and become ancient force.
Judging by the skill in handling ancient force, they are clearly an Immortal Beast King.
: : The winter castle of the firmament. The frosted wall of the North Pole. Snowflake-laden cave of evening. The darkened house of midnight. : :
Hweooooo—
A blizzard blows.
No, it is not a blizzard.
Its name is [Winter].
The concept called 'Winter' itself flies like a blizzard and throws us, who are becoming ancient force, into a domain filled with permafrost data inside the Akashic Records, sealing us away forever.
: : Freeze and be imprisoned. Let none remember... : :
The Owner of Winter, the Extreme Cold Supreme Deity (極寒上帝) Han Cheon (寒天), neutralizes us with their authority.
Hwirurururururu!
The combined assault of numerous Supreme Deities is not the end.
The Future King's Gang Sphere clones, the fifty Gandhara whirl all at once and sever our causality and principle themselves.
—True Martial Arts, Black Heaven Darkness World.
Void Speed is almost sealed, but with only the power of Darkness World that eats and cuts the Law of Causality, it is enough for our very existence to be forgotten eternally.
In an instant, countless Enders and Heavenly Kings seem to be struck.
Kwaching!
Just then, a gigantic hand burning light pink breaks spacetime itself and appears beyond the joint seal of the Supreme Deities and Hyeon Mu.
Some among those Supreme Deities, as if recognizing it, even under control by the Future King, regain their reason and start to scream.
: : H-How...!? : :
: : Surely they died... Even as they died, we saw them challenge the Audience Chamber...! : :
: : Why are you still alive!!?? : :
: : V A S T C O L D!!! : :
Wooooooo—
Supreme Deities who seem to have been Governing Immortals during Vast Cold's era wail as if they are mere mortal beings, and even Hyeon Mu flinches.
: : A V O I D I T !!! : :
: : V A S T C O L D I S U S I N G T H E I R P O W E R !!! : :
Immediately after.
The Vast Cold Heavenly Lord swings an arm.
There is no sound.
There is no shockwave, no visible corpse fragments or phenomena.
Only one thing remains.
It is the Audience Chamber, torn along the trajectory of Vast Cold's arm, illuminating the otherworlds of the other Creation Gods beyond the Vairambha Wind.
And, with no phenomenon at all, dozens of Supreme Deities and thirty Gandhara are [deleted].
Belatedly, Hyeon Mu splits the Gang Extreme clones, but beyond the shards of spacetime, another arm made of light pink flames pops out.
That is the end.
With no sound or forewarning, the Gandhara that are being split by Hyeon Mu's will, except for three bodies, are again [deleted], and afterwards, a corner of the Audience Chamber is torn away again.
Then they begin to pull forth their body.
Kugugugung!
The Supreme Deities on the opposing side who are still intact try to exert their authority, but the moment that gigantic body descends into the battlefield...
No one dares to take action.
The gigantic deity covered in light pink flames.
The Vast Cold Heavenly Lord begins to let out a roar.
Ooooooooooo—!!
Kwaching!!!
Just a roar.
With only that, the entire Audience Chamber shatters to pieces.
All spacetime, except around the jade throne where the Future King sits, fractures unrealistically and flies away,
Mount Sumeru and the chaos of the Outer Sea that are beneath the Audience Chamber start to be [pushed] out.
From the faces of Supreme Deities of Governing Immortal rank, divine blood and Immortal Beast True Blood burst out, and as if internal injuries have occurred to the Middle Realms and Heavenly Domains within their bodies, none can steady themselves.
Huuuuu—
And the Vast Cold Heavenly Lord exhales.
The breath that starts from their mouth becomes a terrifying repulsion force, and just as the Future King's sigh bound us for an instant, it briefly binds the Gandhara of all the Supreme Deities and Hyeon Mu.
Hyeon Mu endures that breath of repulsion force and tries to mount some resistance, but...
In the next moment, Hyeon Mu and the Supreme Deities can eventually no longer withstand Vast Cold's breath and are pushed outside the Audience Chamber.
They are flown away to the otherworlds where the other Creation Gods are.
Having restored their bodies amid the combined assault of the Supreme Deities, Obsidian and Silver Basket look at Vast Cold with slightly dumbfounded eyes, and I also look at them, a bit taken aback by that monstrous power.
I can do something similar, but not like that.
But immediately after,
The one Supreme Deity who remains vomits light.
The Future King's Immortal Treasure.
The Radiance Supreme Deity.
Tsuaaat!
The Seven Heavenly Lords scream, and inside it, a phenomenon that looks as if 'time is turning back' happens again, and the one who had flown away to a separate world jumps out.
It is Hyeon Mu.
Hyeon Mu looks at us with gloomy eyes and places the Origin Essence of Light upon her hand.
"Radiance Mantra. Time Restoration."
Kiririririk!
As I endured the Future King's strike with Auspicious Soul Filling the Heavens and brought my comrades back to life,
Hyeon Mu turns time back once more, invites us onto a new timeline, and brings back and restores the Supreme Deities and Gandhara that were just now annihilated back into this world.
"In pure force, the one equal to the main body is you."
With eyes filled with self-loathing and emptiness, Hyeon Mu points to the Heavenly Void Furnace and speaks.
"Then, shall we see if your authority is also to that extent?"
Woo-wooonng!
The Immortal Treasure Radiance Supreme Deity.
From within, the Torch Candle Heavenly Lord jumps out and resists.
But unable to resist the authority of Hyeon Mu who regained the Future King's memories, they in the end become a single flame and burrows into the Heavenly Void Furnace.
The Torch Candle Heavenly Lord becomes a single incense flame of the Heavenly Void Furnace.
Incense lights up in the Heavenly Void Furnace, and the incense flame changes into mist and chaos, forming some kind of shape.
'That is...'
"O Heavenly Void Furnace. I light incense before you and beseech you: pour forth infinite tales and make the sinner wander through the life of eternal ages."
Immediately after, Hyeon Mu grabs the black handle among the three handles, and she pours toward Vast Cold the Torch Candle Heavenly Lord that burns in that brazier and the something that is welling up inside it.
Vast Cold tries to evade, but at that moment.
Hyeon Mu seems to vanish from before the eyes, then quickly envelopes what is inside the brazier over Vast Cold.
—Emptiness Sword.
—Sixth Form.
—Future.
Kiriririk!
I step forward to stop it, but in the end, Vast Cold is just barely covered by the ashes that are burning in the brazier and disappears from the battlefield.
Judging by what I experienced in the 16th cycle...
They likely got sucked into the countless 'stories' melted into chaos, and for a time close to eternity, they will remain confined while repeating the cycle of reincarnation as a mortal, exhausting the heart and mind to the extreme.
"You also use the Emptiness Sword."
"Because I am his True Martial Arts itself. Why do you think I am called the True Martial Great Emperor?"
Hyeon Mu transforms again into a swirling Gandhara and leads the restored army of Supreme Deities.
"The move of 'Future' is an acceleration technique that surpasses my own limits. The principle of Void Speed is something that cannot be manifested to reach Undying if the heart is not settled. But if I use Future, I can move again at the previous speed as much as I want."
Tsaaaaaaa—
Countless authorities and authorities mix and intertwine, and the powers of innumerable Supreme Deities surge like waves and create a new world close to Mount Sumeru.
Kururururu—
Something in the form of a mountain, almost the same as Mount Sumeru, with dozens of Heavenly Domains woven together, plunges down toward us.
"You cannot surpass even me alone."
Woo-wooong!
And, in front of yet another Mount Sumeru completed under Hyeon Mu's command.
Something small blocks it.
It is a single degenerate star.
That black hole which absorbs all light devours even the very other Mount Sumeru as if drinking down the sky, and transmits the power to somewhere.
Its name is Swallowing Heaven.
The worst mantra evolved from the Flawless Mantra by the God Of Gods.
The Obsidian Devil Heavenly King, while receiving power from Swallowing Heaven, steps forward and begins to exert power, and seeing that, Hyeon Mu starts stroking the Heavenly Void Furnace again.
Seeing this, I try to squeeze out the dispelling formula of the Heavenly Void Furnace even faster.
A true war of myth begins to unfold.
16th cycle, inside the Heavenly Void Furnace.
I blink.
"Mm, I dozed off for a moment."
After entering the Heavenly Void Furnace, setting Hong Fan as the law protector, meditating a bit, and growing bored for a while, I dozed for a moment.
'Maybe because I'm using it for the first time...I really don't know what it's helping at all.'
I received Yang Su-jin's blessing and tried using it, but no matter how I look, I can't see the effects that were expected.
"Maybe it's not something that shows effects after one use...but like the Liberation Seal, it draws in fortune and boosts cultivation luck?"
For now, since this is the first use, I don't think I can judge anything.
"Tsk... It seems at least a day has passed, so shall I head out soon..."
Sensing time through my biological clock, I call to the one who should be standing as my law protector outside.
"...Hong Fan, are you there?"
"..."
But for some reason Hong Fan gives no answer.
"By any chance, was there anything unusual outside?"
"..."
No matter how many times I call, there is only silence.
'Inside the Heavenly Void Furnace, I can't send consciousness outside, huh...'
On top of that, it seems even sensing through the grain of air, temperature, and vibrations is blocked, so I can't feel anything outside.
'Did something come up? I should go out for now.'
I step out of the Heavenly Void Furnace and look around to find Hong Fan, who should be standing as my law protector outside.
"Hm...shall we first head...out...?"
And I shut my mouth.
"...Huh?"
Kugugugugugu!
My vision reels.
My sense of distance and my sense of time are strange.
Causality, spacetime, rules...
I cannot feel any of them.
Everything is bizarre, it's a terrible sea of chaos like billowing clouds!
Pitch-black Primordial Chaos greets me.
"Keheuk! Kahahak...!"
When I meet this chaos with a body that is merely at the Nascent Soul stage, I realize that my very existence is being distorted.
Instinctively, I look back at the Heavenly Void Furnace.
I do not know why I was suddenly transferred into this bizarre sea of chaos.
However, one thing is certain. Even in this sea of chaos, the Heavenly Void Furnace takes on an intact form, and inside it, I am also fine.
'I must return...to the Heavenly Void Furnace...'
However, no matter how I search, I cannot see the Heavenly Void Furnace.
With no time even to be flustered at the Heavenly Void Furnace suddenly vanishing, my entire body melts in the chaos and turns into something bizarre hundreds of millions of times.
"Guaaaaaaa!!!"
Uwoooong!
One shichen.
For that length of time, I scream, and I barely gather my very existence around the Canvas of Myriad Forms and Connections.
"Keheok... Heok...!"
A pale mist surrounds me from the chaos and protects my Nascent Soul.
But what is protected is only the spirit and the Nascent Soul.
Everything else, my physical body and all that spans the body, has already melted away in the chaos and vanished.
'I can't feel...the Colorless Glass Sword...'
However, the Canvas of Myriad Forms and Connections, which activates based on the Colorless Glass Sword, remains.
It is a strange thing.
'For now, I can endure in this chaos through the Canvas of Myriad Forms and Connections.'
I operate the Canvas of Myriad Forms and Connections at full power and strain to protect at least my spirit.
'Why did I suddenly get moved from the Heavenly Void Furnace to a world like this? Could this be the Heavenly Void Furnace's true ability? Damn it...'
Startled by this bizarre phenomenon, I first begin to think about a way to escape from within this phenomenon.
'It might be an illusion. Let's stay still and figure out the rules of this strange world.'
Wo-woong!
Maintaining the power of my Nascent Soul, I create a spell in half a day within my Nascent Soul to calculate time on my own behalf and measure the time.
Thus, a day passes.
*
A day.
Within the span of a day, I learn one thing.
"Damn it..."
It is precisely that this world has no rules.
I cannot discover any rules at all.
I can only drift in this sea of chaos like duckweed and barely maintain my existence.
In this world, it is impossible for anything living, anything with rules, to exist.
"Yang Su-jin...why in the world did you send me here...?"
Harboring doubt toward Yang Su-jin, who strongly insisted I enter this place, I continue to observe this world and observe again.
*
A month passes.
"...I see."
During the span called a month, I come to know by feeling this chaos with my very Nascent Soul.
This chaos belongs to none of Qi, Soul, or Fate.
Qi, Soul, Fate.
It feels like all of Heaven, Earth, Heart and the Three Powers are jumbled into one big mess.
And that means...
'If I use this chaos, it might be possible to cultivate and to restore the body...!'
In the midst of chaos, I set a goal.
'First, in this chaos where everything is jumbled together...let's trying dividing it into three.'
If I can extract qi from the chaos, it might be possible to restore the body and accumulate cultivation.
From that day forward, I concentrate my entire mind and attempt to access the chaos.
*
Thus, a year passes.
"Gaaaaaaaah!!! Kuaaaaaaaagh!!! Aaaaaaaagh!!!"
Nothing.
Nothing is achieved.
For the time called a year, I grab at this thing called chaos and do every kind of mad act to extract qi.
However, the chaos does not budge.
It only tosses me about like duckweed, making me drift here and there.
In this severed world of chaos where I cannot talk with anyone...
I scream endlessly and wail in despair.
*
Ten years pass.
"..."
Something...
Begins to change.
Woo-wooong—
I empty my mind into emptiness, become a natural state, and focus my will before my eyes.
And at a certain moment,
Paaatt!
A portion of the chaos before my eyes twists.
'Ahh...'
For the span of ten years, I drifted through chaos.
And in the tenth year.
At last, in regards to how to wield this thing called chaos...
I am able to grasp a faint sense.
'Is this...'
Peok!
'How it's done...?'
Not as if handling spells.
Not as if handling martial arts.
The condition to handle chaos is, quite literally, a do-or-die resolve.
It is the very will to offer everything.
'I must devote my entire self...'
Woo-woooong!
Only then does it move, if only in part.
That is chaos!
Ripple!
Succeeding in making a portion of the chaos before my eyes ripple, I remember the sensation at the moment of success.
A power that moves only when I devote my whole mind, heart, and strength.
'It's like...'
When I cut down Yanguo's Crown Prince Makli Hyeon even after my neck fell.
When I seized Makli Hwang-cheon's hand and, even after dying, gripped it to buy time for my disciples.
When, to bow to my master, I resisted the heavens and made my heart beat just to move my body.
Only by unfolding the do-or-die resolve I felt then does movement become possible.
That is precisely chaos.
I can do it.
I know myself well.
'If I set my mind to it, I can do it as much as it takes!'
Whether one year, ten years, a hundred years, even if it takes a thousand or ten thousand years!
'I will surely regain my body, accumulate cultivation...and return!'
I will not give up.
*
A hundred years pass.
100 years.
Woo-wooooong!
And after the span of a hundred years...
At last, I succeed in handling and separating chaos by will alone.
Woo-wooong!
The chaos splits into the three planes, and qi flows out.
I absorb the qi, replenish the Nascent Soul energy that has been exhausted for a hundred years, and realize.
"It links...with the Star Extinguishing True Chapter."
Indeed.
A technique of handling chaos with pure will alone.
Somehow, this touches something in the content of the Star Extinguishing True Chapter.
In the Star Extinguishing True Chapter Hong Fan gave me, it is termed Primordial Origin (始原).
'Originally, whether Cutting Principle, Cutting Self, and Cutting Other...'
The cultivation called 'Cutting People' must be cultivated through the power called [Primordial Origin].
But since I simply did not know what this power of [Primordial Origin] is, I have until now been cultivating by unorthodox methods.
But now,
I realize the method to handle the power of [Primordial Origin].
'I see. In a way...is this chaos not the optimal space to cultivate the Star Extinguishing True Chapter?'
Moreover, I now also know the method to split chaos into the three planes and extract qi.
The Nascent Soul stage, the Heavenly Being stage cultivation are all possible.
'Let's restore the body, accumulate the realm, and cultivate the Star Extinguishing True Chapter.'
If I do so, surely, even if I leave this world of Primordial Chaos, I will be able to take away a great many gains.
'Let's raise the realm!'
Though that is the only thing I can do anyway...
In any case, right now is the optimal situation in which I have no choice but to focus on elevating my realm.
Thus, I decide to raise my realm with all my strength, and from that day I enter relentless tempering.
*
A thousand years pass.
A thousand years.
In that time, I achieve many things.
First, by extracting qi from the three planes, condensing it, and smelting and refining it for a long time,
By referring to Yuan Li's Blood Body creation method, I succeed in cultivating a body within pure qi.
Up to there is exactly a hundred years.
Then, after creating a physical body, I let the Nascent Soul dwell in the body, and to reinforce and recover the Nascent Soul that has left the body and been directly exposed to chaos all that time, I spend another hundred years.
And through eight hundred years...
I at last reach the Grand Perfection Nascent Soul stage, and see immense progress as I cultivate the divine power of Cutting Principle.
"Huuu..."
Now that I have, to some degree, acquired a knack for handling chaos, I create a spherical protective barrier centered on the body, protect the flesh from melting away in the chaos, and open my eyes.
I can see more clearly now.'
For nearly a thousand years, I delved deeper into the power of [Primordial Origin] and stu