Chapter 331 : Truth and Memories (4)
Chapter 331: Truth and Memories (4)
Throughout his repeated lives, Lee Tae-seong acquired a unique ability related to time.
Incomplete Foresight.
It was not perfect, but it allowed him to perceive an opponent's movements in advance and sense incoming attacks. Whenever he learned a martial art, it was as if time flowed rapidly, allowing him to witness its completion.
As a result, Lee Tae-seong grew far stronger than he had in his previous lives. Until now, he had mastered martial arts through the experience gained from regression and repeated practice. This time, however, it was different.
Even then, Lee Tae-seong always explained every martial art he learned or obtained.
Though his foresight was incomplete, it allowed him, for the first time, to locate every cultivator in the Lower Realm.
He attacked the cities where the cultivators had settled within the Hidden World.
During one such assault, he discovered a small dragon being held captive.
Watching Lee Tae-seong's memories, Jang Woo-hyun recognized the dragon immediately.
'The Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon.'
The dragon said to have accompanied the True Martial God, Lee Tae-seong.
Only in this life did he finally meet the dragon connected to the Dragon King's Scale.
Afterward, Lee Tae-seong continued hunting cultivators.
Together with the Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon, he sought out every cultivator in existence and exterminated them.
Once everything had been brought to an end, Lee Tae-seong attempted to ascend to the Middle Realm through his own power.
Until now, every Heavenly Ascension had merely been hitching a ride on the rituals prepared by the cultivators.
This time, it was different.
Together with the Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon, he tore open a hole through dimensions and prepared to ascend to the next world.
Then, at that very moment...
Unlike before, Lee Tae-seong felt that the world itself was helping him.
The world responded to him.
Its laws changed.
The heavens, which sent Heavenly Tribulation upon cultivators, instead opened a path before him.
On that day, Lee Tae-seong realized...
That the heavens needed martial artists.
In his previous lives, Lee Tae-seong had met quite a number of martial artists in the Middle Realm.
Though they were vastly outnumbered by cultivators, martial artists did exist there.
Each had ascended to the Middle Realm after attaining their own truth.
They were beings completely different from Lee Tae-seong, who was consumed only by vengeance.
The martial artists who had ascended to the Middle Realm truly deserved to be called immortals.
Rather than humans, they resembled trees or rocks—parts of nature itself.
But Lee Tae-seong had no need for such a state of mind.
His goal was to exterminate every cultivator.
At first, he had fought to avenge his master and fellow disciples.
Not anymore.
Now, he simply wanted to erase forever those lunatics who toyed with others and bent everything to their own will.
'If you think your power gives you the right to manipulate the world as you please...'
Then he would crush them beneath an even greater power.
And...
The heavens resonated with Lee Tae-seong's conviction.
He felt the Will of Heaven.
It was telling him:
I shall aid you.
Fight against the humans who defy the Heavenly Principles.
Lee Tae-seong did not refuse.
As the representative of martial artists, he accepted the will of the heavens.
'The difference Senior Kim spoke of between Ascension and Heavenly Ascension.'
From that point onward, what people commonly knew as a martial artist's Ascension truly began.
The heavens aided martial artists ascending to the Middle Realm.
Cultivators endured Heavenly Tribulations and forcibly Ascended.
Martial artists who received the heavens' aid were the army...
And the weapons...
Prepared to oppose them.
That was what an Ascended martial artist truly was.
Answering the call of the heavens, Lee Tae-seong entered the Middle Realm.
Together with the Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon, he slaughtered countless cultivators.
Neither Fusion cultivators who manipulated the world...
Nor Great Ascension cultivators who became one with the world...
Could stand against him.
'The True Martial God.'
No title suited him better.
The incarnation of martial arts.
A being possessing absolute power.
No one could stop him.
To the cultivators...
Lee Tae-seong became a calamity.
A nightmare.
Even if five or six Great Ascension cultivators, all of whom had stepped into the domain of gods, attacked together, they all died.
Lee Tae-seong even invaded the domains of the cultivators and single-handedly destroyed their sects.
At times, he wandered throughout the Middle Realm, helping those who had aided him in previous lives.
Among them was even the giant from the Land of Giants whom the Recorder had spoken of.
Lee Tae-seong defeated even more cultivators than were recorded in the archives of the Nation of Ingenious Mechanisms and threw the entire Middle Realm into chaos.
The Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon devoured every magical artifact and treasure left behind by the cultivators Lee Tae-seong had slain.
Its body grew larger and larger.
Eventually, it became even larger than a mountain range.
Sometimes the Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon took the form of a sword.
Other times, it transformed into a dragon covered in silver scales.
When Lee Tae-seong had personally exterminated more than half of the cultivators in the Middle Realm...
His rapid growth carried him toward the next world.
Ascending to the Upper Realm differed from ascending to the Middle Realm.
The heavens offered no assistance.
Lee Tae-seong carved the path forward with his own strength.
Following the path of light he had created all the way to its end...
A new world appeared before Jang Woo-hyun.
'The Upper Realm.'
The world where True Immortals and Martial Gods resided.
Unlike every world he had seen before, this place had no fixed form.
It looked as though countless different worlds had been stitched together.
One region consisted of nothing but ice and snow.
Another was beautiful enough to be called a paradise.
Elsewhere stretched an endless ocean.
Another was filled only with flames and ash.
Between those worlds lay gaps where an endless universe filled with countless stars could be seen.
It even resembled countless miniature universes created by martial artists of the Immortal Realm all mixed together.
Every world existed in complete disorder, without any rules.
That...
Was the Upper Realm.
The moment Lee Tae-seong arrived there, he advanced into another realm.
A realm where opening a miniature universe was no longer necessary.
The Primordial Unity Realm.
He himself became the universe...
And the world itself.
The instant he entered the Upper Realm, Lee Tae-seong moved.
He found a True Immortal...
And attacked immediately.
【A being who has only just ascended to the Upper Realm? Foolish. Your power cannot possibly reach mine.】
The True Immortal had spoken confidently at first.
But the moment Lee Tae-seong revealed his strength...
He was horrified.
With a single punch...
A star shattered.
With a single slash...
A sun was severed.
Stars vanished.
Entire worlds collapsed beneath a single strike of his sword.
He had already reached a realm that could no longer be called martial arts.
"This is a new martial art."
Even in the Upper Realm, Lee Tae-seong explained the power he wielded.
Jang Woo-hyun lacked the cultivation to understand his explanations.
Nevertheless, he concentrated with all his might, unwilling to miss a single moment.
Then...
He realized something.
'This... is what was contained within the World-Creation Sword.'
The martial arts Lee Tae-seong was explaining were identical to what the Dragon King's Scale had shown after devouring World Creation.
The Star-Destroying Fist (滅星拳).
The Galaxy World-Creation Sword (銀河開闢劍), which destroyed worlds and created new ones.
Using the Martial God's martial arts, Lee Tae-seong shattered countless stars and worlds while slaughtering the True Immortals.
Each time he did...
The Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon devoured the shattered stars and worlds.
While continuing his hunt for the True Immortals...
Lee Tae-seong encountered a being from the Myriad Immortal Palace.
【How can one who has reached the ultimate peak of martial arts be so violent?】
A gigantic silver True Immortal.
Countless arms stretched behind him.
Jang Woo-hyun knew exactly who he was.
'Silver Radiant Thousand Hands.'
Another name for the Three Thousand Radiant Silver Treasure Heavenly Venerable.
The one who called himself the vanguard of the Myriad Immortal Palace came before Lee Tae-seong and activated a magical treasure.
For the first time since reaching the Upper Realm...
Lee Tae-seong was caught off guard.
A black hole radiating a faint glow appeared...
And swallowed everything.
Tens of thousands of stars disappeared.
Space itself twisted as it was consumed.
Everything vanished.
Only a pitch-black world remained.
The only things visible to Jang Woo-hyun were the gigantic silver True Immortal...
And a sphere that looked as though it had been crafted from the night sky itself.
Lee Tae-seong was trapped inside it.
【Suffer within the eternity of time.】
Within the prison created by Silver Radiant Thousand Hands...
Lee Tae-seong was sealed.
Nineteen thousand years later.
One thousand years before Jang Woo-hyun's present era.
Lee Tae-seong shattered the prison through his own power and emerged.
The prison created by the True Immortal had become his training ground.
After cultivating within the Void, Lee Tae-seong gained control over time itself.
By accelerating time, he spent hundreds of thousands of years inside the prison before finally emerging.
After spending an immeasurable length of time there...
Lee Tae-seong had become something other than human.
His will and consciousness had disappeared.
Only a single purpose remained.
"Kill the True Immortals."
With a wave of Lee Tae-seong's hand, the shattered fragments of the sphere became his armor.
In his hand appeared a sword that seemed to have been forged from an entire constellation.
It was the transformed Sighing Heavenly Treasure Dragon, having devoured the stars.
Once his preparations were complete...
Lee Tae-seong moved.
Everything disappeared.
It was not destruction.
It was closer to erasure.
Its power could not even be measured.
The very spaces called worlds were vanishing altogether.
After breaking through the seal...
Lee Tae-seong stepped beyond the Primordial Unity Realm into another realm.
Though he possessed neither will nor consciousness...
One word remained in his mind to describe that realm.
Chaos (混沌).
The state before light and darkness...
Before heaven and earth...
Had separated.
The beginning of the world.
The primordial origin.
The Chaos Realm could return everything to its primordial state.
It contained every possibility.
It was a realm reached only by Lee Tae-seong.
No being remained capable of standing before him.
Neither the True Immortals...
Nor the Golden Immortals (金仙) above them...
Could endure his might.
The inhabitants of the Upper Realm were mercilessly slaughtered.
【P-Please spare me! Senior! Great One! I cannot die like—】
【Please hear me—】
【Save me! Please save me!】
Even those worshipped as gods in the Middle Realm could not stop Lee Tae-seong.
Alone...
He overwhelmed the entire Upper Realm.
【How could someone like this reach the ultimate peak of martial arts...?】
Appearing before Lee Tae-seong as he massacred the True Immortals...
Were the Martial Gods who had originated from the Martial World.
Most of the Martial Gods who blocked his path had Ascended nineteen thousand years earlier because of Lee Tae-seong's exploits.
For some reason...
None of them recognized him.
Devoid of will and consciousness, Lee Tae-seong attacked immediately without a word.
The result was no different from what had happened to the True Immortals.
【This is impossible...】
The attacks of Lee Tae-seong, who had reached the Chaos Realm, transcended both space and time.
They crossed space itself.
They could not be blocked.
No matter how they defended or evaded...
Lee Tae-seong's sword still split the Martial Gods apart.
By interfering with time itself, every swing of his sword affected the past...
Erasing the time the Martial Gods had accumulated.
Some fell from the Primordial Unity Realm to the Immortal Realm.
Others dropped all the way to the Wish-Fulfillment Realm.
Those beings were beheaded with a single strike.
Jang Woo-hyun saw the body of a wolf beastman being torn apart...
Along with a horned Martial God standing before him.
'That scene.'
The memory left behind by the god of the White Horn Tribe on the Dawn Continent.
Just as Jang Woo-hyun had witnessed before...
The Martial Gods were defeated.
The wolf beastman who appeared to be the Heavenly Wolf Blazing Emperor vanished.
The beings wielding swords, spears, and sabers also disappeared.
Entire worlds shattered.
Tens of millions of stars vanished.
The universe-like expanse split apart, triggering a tremendous explosion.
Not a single one managed to mount a proper defense.
With a single strike, space split apart.
A rift in time appeared.
The horned Martial God fled into it with his followers in order to survive.
'He'll arrive at the Dawn Continent with those who follow him.'
And there...
He would die after leaving behind his memories.
Those were the very memories Jang Woo-hyun and Kim Min-su had witnessed.
The tide of battle had completely turned.
Only death remained for the Martial Gods.
Then...
Reinforcements arrived.
The Myriad Immortal Palace.
The united alliance of the Upper Realm's True Immortals.
Having realized the severity of the situation, they committed every ounce of their strength.
【The vanguard of the Myriad Immortal Palace stands before you.】
Once again...
The gigantic True Immortal stood before Lee Tae-seong.
Silver Radiant Thousand Hands attacked first.
Hundreds of enormous hands, each capable of shattering planets, surged forward.
But the instant Lee Tae-seong swung his sword...
Every one of those hands was severed.
【...!】
The vanguard of the Myriad Immortal Palace crumbled into dust, his countless hands severed.
【Disappear.】
【Defy not destiny.】
When even the armies of the Myriad Immortal Palace failed to stop him...
The Immortal Emperors, the rulers of the True Immortals and kings of their kind, finally stepped forward.
【A temporary alliance. Aid us.】
The Immortal Emperors and the surviving Martial Gods fought Lee Tae-seong.
How much time passed...
No one knew.
The battle continued without end.
Eventually...
Every one of them died.
The Immortal Emperors.
Even the strongest Martial Gods.
Even Lee Tae-seong himself suffered grievous wounds and slowly began to die.
'They all disappeared.'
That was the reason something had gone wrong in the Upper Realm.
One thousand years ago.
The battle against Lee Tae-seong had exterminated every Martial God and True Immortal in the Upper Realm.
It appeared that no one had survived.
'Then... what is that thing?'
The Three Thousand Radiant Silver Treasure Heavenly Venerable had clearly perished during the early stages of the battle.
Yet somehow...
He had continued targeting Jang Woo-hyun and exerting his influence until now.
Jang Woo-hyun had only a moment to ponder the mystery.
Lee Tae-seong's memories had not yet ended.
His body became enveloped in light before splitting into countless spheres of light.
The sword forged from a constellation transformed back into a dragon.
Then it scattered tens of thousands of silver scales...
As though hiding them somewhere.
Thousands of spheres of light descended into the Lower Realm.
They reached people.
Just as had happened to Jang Woo-hyun and Kim Min-su...
Those who came into contact with the spheres awakened memories of their previous lives and gained extraordinary talent.
Everything was finally coming to an end.
Then—
Lee Tae-seong, whose body had nearly faded until only a faint outline remained...
Turned his head.
He looked directly toward where Jang Woo-hyun stood.
As though he could see everything.
"You are the one."