lpffa Chapter 257 : One Step
Chapter 257 : One Step
Chapter 257: One Step
Inside the strange ship made of bones.
Jang Woo-hyun checked the condition of his body before staring at the bracelet wrapped around his arm.
The Corpse-Blood Realm rejected the living.
From the fact that the world itself was trying to kill him, Jang Woo-hyun came up with a single thought.
‘Will it work?’
After pondering for a long while, Jang Woo-hyun went to find Lee Ahn.
“If I remove this bracelet and put it back on again, will it be fine?”
“It’s possible, but you’ll feel tremendous pain. Why would you want to do something like that?”
“I can’t say for certain yet, but there’s something I want to test.”
Removing the bracelet in the current situation was madness, but Jang Woo-hyun’s expression was serious enough that Lee Ahn asked no further questions.
Lee Ahn pulled out a small glass bottle from his robe.
“If you drink a mouthful of this potion, the medicinal effect of the pill you took earlier will disappear. Remove the bracelet then. If it becomes too much to endure, take the original pill again and put the bracelet back on.”
“And after that, I just repeat the process?”
“After that? Don’t tell me…… you’re planning to repeatedly take the bracelet off and put it back on?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m planning.”
“I have no idea what you’re trying to do……. Fine. Do whatever you want.”
Shaking his head, Lee Ahn pulled out two more bottles identical to the first.
“Just repeat it the way I explained. I seriously don’t understand what’s going on in your head.”
“I’ll try it once first, then I’ll explain.”
Taking the glass bottles from Lee Ahn, Jang Woo-hyun moved to an area where he could train.
A vast space inside the ship.
Skeletons dressed in clothes bustled around busily there. It seemed Lee Ahn had already given orders, because the moment Jang Woo-hyun appeared, all of them cleared the area.
The wandering skeletons were Lee Ahn’s subordinates and summoned creatures who managed the ship.
Jang Woo-hyun walked to the center of the wide space and sat down.
The moment he swallowed a mouthful of the red liquid from the bottle, the reaction came immediately. His entire body tingled, and he quickly removed the bracelet.
“Grrgh!”
An overwhelming pain assaulted him.
The agony felt as though insects were gnawing through his brain, making it impossible to remain conscious. The poison energy floating through the air burrowed into his body. It felt as though blood were pouring from his seven orifices, while sensation vanished from his limbs.
Even after experiencing it once before, it was pain he could not adapt to.
Grinding his teeth, Jang Woo-hyun focused his mind so he would not lose himself.
The world known as the Corpse-Blood Realm rejected Jang Woo-hyun.
He tried to feel that force completely. Because perhaps this could become the path forward.
Jang Woo-hyun’s thinking was simple.
What tried to kill him was the law of this world that rejected the living.
Then what would happen if he could read that law? If he could perceive that force?
‘The Realm of Wish twists the Law of Nature and changes the world’s laws.’
If the world’s laws themselves were attacking him, perhaps he could use them in reverse to find a clue.
The Realm of Wish was still difficult for Jang Woo-hyun to fully understand, which was why he had come up with such a crude method.
After enduring for roughly a quarter of an hour, Jang Woo-hyun swallowed another pill and put the bracelet back on.
“Huu.”
He had gained nothing. All he felt was pain.
But he did not give up easily. After resting briefly, he removed the bracelet again.
Thus, Jang Woo-hyun’s insane act repeated over and over.
---
“…….”
Lee Ahn frowned as he watched the repeated scene continue for several days.
‘What the hell is this lunatic?’
Even to someone like him, who had died once and revived, what Jang Woo-hyun was doing looked utterly insane. He could not understand it at all.
‘Why the hell is he doing this?’
“He’s probably training.”
“What?”
At Jin Ha-un’s words, Lee Ahn turned his head.
“That insane behavior is training? That?”
“Uh…… I don’t know exactly either, but Hyung-nim usually acts like that whenever he trains.”
“Hah.”
Lee Ahn turned back to look at Jang Woo-hyun. He could see him trembling violently while clenching his teeth against the pain.
“What kind of training is that? Training to endure pain? Does that even have meaning? Or is he trying to build patience? Even the greatest martial artist couldn’t endure that. The world itself is rejecting him.”
If enduring it like that were possible, then Lee Ahn himself would not have suffered in the Central Heavens Realm. He never would have been captured by Yang Jeon-gun either.
“I don’t know what exactly he’s trying to do, but I doubt he’s doing it without purpose. Sometimes he suddenly realizes something and starts acting strangely. And every time that happens, he gains something from it.”
“Hah, this is ridiculous.”
After staring at Jang Woo-hyun for a moment, Lee Ahn spoke again.
“But why are you fighting the True Immortals?”
Jin Ha-un was somewhat lacking, but Jang Woo-hyun, Seo Ryeom, and even Cho-su of the Nation of Mechanical Marvels were outstanding forces.
However, that only applied at the level of the Middle Realm. No matter how strong they were, challenging True Immortals was sheer stupidity.
The only reason they could even fight was because the True Immortals could not directly project their full power into the Middle Realm. If they truly descended with their complete strength, they would be unbeatable.
From Lee Ahn’s perspective, challenging True Immortals was no different from an ant charging at a human.
“Because the True Immortals are targeting Hyung-nim.”
“What? What did you just say? The True Immortals are targeting that guy? Why?”
“I don’t know the details either. But they attacked first, so we can’t just sit there and take it.”
“That’s right. We can’t just sit quietly and let ourselves be crushed.”
Seo Ryeom, who stood nearby, supported Jin Ha-un’s words.
“…….”
The more he listened, the stranger the story became.
They were fighting True Immortals because the True Immortals were targeting them? To Lee Ahn, it sounded like utter nonsense. His common sense could not comprehend it.
“Grrgh!”
While frowning deeply, Lee Ahn suddenly heard another scream and finally understood why they were fighting the True Immortals.
‘So he’s just a madman doing insane things.’
Watching Jang Woo-hyun once again remove the bracelet and suffer in agony, Lee Ahn found himself convinced.
True Immortals or not, anyone who did something like that could not possibly be sane.
Jang Woo-hyun might have been more insane than even the cultivators of the Corpse-Blood Realm.
---
Every time he removed the bracelet Lee Ahn had made, horrifying pain descended upon him. Yet Jang Woo-hyun never stopped.
He tried to sense something. He tried to find something. Whenever the repeated pain nearly drove him mad, he rested for a while and regained his composure. And after resting, he removed the bracelet once more without fail.
For the first two days, he achieved nothing. He could not even endure for one shijin.
On the third day, the pain did not lessen, but he felt something.
After the fourth day, on the fifth—
Within the terrible agony, Jang Woo-hyun clearly sensed something.
It was a certain will and a predetermined law.
Things that absolutely had to be one way, and things that absolutely had to be another.
Living beings who arrived in the Corpse-Blood Realm had to die.
This was a world of blood and corpses. A land where ordinary living beings were never meant to walk.
A will was being conveyed to him.
And the will of the world was its law.
* Twist the Law of Nature. Apply the laws of your Microcosm. The expressions are merely different. To put it simply, it means engraving your Will-Form into the world itself. Creating a new power with your own will. It’s easiest to think of the Microcosm itself as a mass of Will-Form. After all, the inner world is no different from what one pursues or the goal one seeks to reach.
The words Zhang Sanfeng once spoke regarding the Realm of Wish suddenly surfaced in his mind.
‘The Microcosm is a mass of thought. A mass of Will-Form. And the world’s will is a single law.’
His thoughts continued flowing. Jang Woo-hyun’s mind accelerated rapidly.
Once before, he had grasped a clue regarding the Realm of Wish, but Zhang Sanfeng had told him it was wrong and forced him back out of enlightenment.
Not wanting to fail like last time, he calmed his mind.
Slowly, he breathed.
The surrounding energy gathered around Jang Woo-hyun.
Poison energy, corpse energy, death energy. They were all dreadful energies, yet within them existed the Energy of the Five Elements, and though faint, even natural energy remained. Only now could he truly sense them.
Hooooo.
Exhaling slowly, he spread the energy within his body outward. The continuing breath carried not only energy, but also Jang Woo-hyun’s thoughts and Will-Form.
The surrounding world became newly perceived.
Though his eyes were closed, he could see new things.
Beyond Lee Ahn’s ship made of bones, he sensed the world known as the Corpse-Blood Realm itself.
He could see the flow of the world.
It was mostly red and black, but within it he also saw green, white, yellow, and far in the distance, blue. Countless colors existed.
This was the world he currently inhabited.
‘This is…….’
He had experienced something similar before.
When he tried to absorb what the Unified Guardian had given him, Jang Woo-hyun had nearly become one with the world itself. Had the Wind-Passing Great Sage not pulled him back, he would have completely lost himself.
Because he had experienced it once before, Jang Woo-hyun could now sense the world far more easily.
‘Engrave my Will-Form into this flow.’
Open my Microcosm.
That was the Realm of Wish. And the Immortal Realm.
Change the flow. That was what it meant to twist the Law of Nature.
If he engraved his own Will-Form into this flow, then he and the world would become one, and the world itself would change.
Jang Woo-hyun glimpsed beyond the Realm of Wish into the Immortal Realm.
And then he realized something.
‘There isn’t much difference between the Realm of Wish and the Immortal Realm.’
The difference was merely one of scale.
Projecting only a little of one’s will into the world twisted the Law of Nature and altered laws. Pouring everything into it created a completely new world—a Microcosm.
‘Then why are the realms divided at all?’
Unlike the previous stages, there was no clear separation.
Did the other martial artists know this as well? Or had Jang Woo-hyun alone discovered something once more?
‘I don’t know.’
He still could not understand everything completely.
But today, he had taken one step forward.
If he advanced just a little further, he would surpass the wall blocking his path and ascend to the next stage.
At that moment—
The crimson energy tightening around him from all directions caused Jang Woo-hyun to inhale sharply again.
‘This is as far as I can go.’
The scattered will gathered back together once more. If he interfered with the Corpse-Blood Realm any further, he might truly die, so Jang Woo-hyun stopped there. This was his limit.
Organizing the new knowledge and enlightenment he had gained, Jang Woo-hyun opened his eyes and quickly fastened the bracelet onto his wrist again.
The energy constricting him from all directions and the horrifying pain gradually subsided.
As he released a long breath, he noticed Lee Ahn standing before him.
“……What?”
“I’m curious. Did you really gain something?”
“More or less.”
Seeing Lee Ahn’s eyes gleaming as though he had discovered something amusing, Jang Woo-hyun instead found himself wondering what kind of person this guy truly was.
“Are you really one of those Eight Kings or whatever?”
“Why are you suddenly asking that?”
Jang Woo-hyun silently stared at Lee Ahn, whose eyes widened in confusion.
For someone considered an absolute ruler of a world, Lee Ahn was far too carefree.
‘This guy is one of the absolute rulers of the Corpse-Blood Realm?’ That thought crossed his mind.
But soon, he shook it away after thinking of someone else.
‘Compared to that monkey, he’s practically refined.’
The Wind-Passing Great Sage was an existence of a far higher level than Lee Ahn, yet he was not merely carefree, but downright frivolous.
Thinking about that monkey constantly shouting, ‘If I fought seriously, I’d beat them all,’ made Lee Ahn seem perfectly understandable by comparison.
“Never mind. How long do you think it’ll take to find Hyeonwol?”
“You’re no fun. I’ve already sent my subordinates everywhere, so it won’t take long. Since they created a massive passage connected to the Central Heavens Realm, there’s bound to be plenty of movement.”
“You won’t miss them, right?”
“That won’t happen, so stop worrying. Are you done training?”
“Yeah. For now.”
If he pushed any further, his body would no longer endure it. This time, he had to stop here.
Jang Woo-hyun had no intention of overdoing things. This was not the Central Heavens Realm, but the Corpse-Blood Realm.
---
While Jang Woo-hyun trained, the rest of the group did not remain idle either.
Seo Ryeom and Jin Ha-un each trained in their own ways, while Cho-su also made preparations of his own.
“There are this many Flowers of Destruction?”
Before Cho-su, mysterious flowers whose petals constantly shifted in color were piled high.
The flowers, condensed with immense energy, were Flowers of Destruction commonly used as materials for Dharma Treasures and magical artifacts.
“The Flower of Destruction originally grows in the Corpse-Blood Realm. What are you planning to make with them?”
“I’m going to make a Dharma Treasure called the Mountain-Breaking Sword. With this amount, I can probably create two hundred of them.”
Previously, Cho-su had tried to obtain Flowers of Destruction from the Nation of Mechanical Marvels but failed. Even he had never seen such an enormous quantity before.
“You can use all of them. Thanks to you, I gained some useful subordinates.”
After thanking Lee Ahn, Cho-su immediately began creating the Mountain-Breaking Swords.
Everyone spent their time in their own way, and after several more days passed—
Lee Ahn gathered Jang Woo-hyun’s party together.
“We found traces of them. Just as I expected, there’s someone working with them.”
Since everyone had already expected as much, no one looked surprised.
“One of the Eight Kings has joined forces with them. The Black Beast Bubble Phantom King. That bastard is gathering forces to invade the Central Heavens Realm.”