Chapter 368

Ouroboros, the myth itself, was the source of all power and the foundation of the Core. From its infinite cycle and completeness were born Origin and the Cosmos. Neither good nor evil, Ouroboros was known to always remain neutral. And yet now, for the first time, it had taken sides, intervening to favor or reject someone.

A single beam of light shot up into the sky, drawn forth by Ouroboros, and Cecilia’s gaze followed it. At its peak, a portal formed, and within it, she saw an image reflected.

“That man is supposed to rewrite our fate...?” she muttered in disbelief.

It made no sense. She couldn’t understand it at all. Cecilia looked back at Ouroboros, her brow twitching, her eyes showing clear confusion, and no one could blame her for that reaction.

The man seen through the portal lay sprawled on a road. It looked like he’d been in a traffic accident. The pool of blood forming beneath him clearly showed how grave the situation was. Was he dead? Or was he merely moments away from it? It didn’t seem like an ordinary human could survive such a blow.

Ambulances and police cars rushed in, sirens wailing. The paramedics frowned the moment they checked the man’s condition. After exchanging a few urgent words, they quickly brought out emergency equipment, performed brief on-the-spot first aid, and loaded the man onto a stretcher.

From that point, time inside the portal sped up, like watching a video on fast-forward. Scenes from the operating room flew by as doctors desperately fought to save the man’s life. After sixteen grueling hours of surgery, he narrowly survived. He was transferred to the intensive care unit, but with all the respirators and tubes connected to his body, his condition still looked nothing less than critical.

***

Cecilia entered the private ICU room where the man lay. The lights were off, but soft moonlight filtering through the window made it feel a little less dark. She walked over and stood at the man’s bedside.

The voices of doctors and nurses chatting in the hallway carried through the door.

“He made it through the worst of it, but he’ll be disabled for the rest of his life...”

“And there’s no telling when he’ll wake up. Even if he does, he’ll likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

“What a cruel twist life can be. And he has no family, right? An orphan?”

“Yeah, we tried calling the number for his older brother listed in his phone contacts, but it turned out to be a disconnected line.”

“So then... who were those people who came by earlier?”

“Civil servants. Colleagues from his department.”

Cecilia glanced at the man’s name tag: Lee Do-Jun. From within her coat, Cecilia pulled out a potion. The transparent glass bottle sloshed with liquid that shimmered in a swirl of rainbow colors. It was an Elixir, a potion containing the crystallized blessing of nature, known as a legendary panacea, said to bring even the dead back to life.

Without hesitation, Cecilia removed the oxygen mask from Do-Jun’s face, gently opened his mouth, uncorked the bottle, and poured the Elixir into his mouth. As the Elixir entered his system with a gentle hum, a strange transformation took place in Do-Jun’s body. Broken bones fused, damaged organs regenerated, wounds closed, and stitches dissolved.

Had the attending doctors seen this, they would have been utterly speechless.

And that wasn’t all. The impure energies built up within his body—miasma—were being purged. In their place, pure energy flowed in, blessings of the natural world. Of course, this alone wouldn’t make him stronger, but it would allow him to absorb energy more efficiently from this point forward, filtering out impurities and taking in only pure essence.

Can this man really change our fate...?

Cecilia wondered.

She pulled out Origin. Should she give all of Origin’s power to Do-Jun, just as Ouroboros had advised? She needed to choose carefully. If she gave it to him, the future from that point on would be in Do-Jun’s hands. Subject to the “return,” he would become the sole decider of the future, or rather, the present.

As she debated internally, an ominous siren rang out beyond the window, followed by a public announcement.

[Attention residents of Jung-gu, Seoul. This is the Hunter’s Bureau’s Fissure Control Center. A Breakout has occurred from a B-rank Great Fissure in the area. A Fissure alert is in immediate effect. If you hear this message, please stop all activities and...]

Cecilia knew what this meant.

The Encroachment... it’s speeding up.

Earth was the last standing planet. She looked toward the Fissure that had torn open two kilometers away. From that breach, monsters began pouring out, sending nearby civilians fleeing in all directions, screaming in terror. In the distance, she could see Hunters rushing toward the monsters.

Cecilia finally made her decision. She was afraid. However, if she didn’t try, the future could never change. She pulled a wooden plaque from her robes, the words “Return to the Origin” glowing faintly. Holding the plaque in both hands, she closed her eyes as if in prayer.

“Please... save us,” she whispered.

Brilliant light surged from the plaque, wrapping around Do-Jun’s body. A moment later, the plaque’s glow faded as if its power had been spent, and Do-Jun vanished.

***

It was a place known as the Central Plains. Among countless dimensions, Ouroboros had chosen that one for a single reason: aside from the Core, it was the most suitable place to cultivate martial strength.

With the power of Return to the Origin, Do-Jun had obtained the skill Pocket Watch, and his growth accelerated at a remarkable pace. Using the skill’s effect of returning to the previous day upon death, he honed his abilities, corrected mistakes, and pressed ever forward, always gaining the upper hand.

Once, twice, three times...

Ten times, twenty, thirty...

A hundred, two hundred, three hundred...

He died and died again, so many times he eventually lost count. But each time he died, he grew stronger.

By the time he had died roughly a hundred times, he was strong enough to defeat second-tier martial artists with some notoriety. This was an achievement he had accomplished in less than a year since arriving in the Central Plains. Part of it was thanks to the elixir that had remade his body into one perfectly suited for cultivating internal energy.

However, there was one problem. While Pocket Watch removed the penalty of “death,” it could not prevent something else from dying: Do-Jun’s heart. His memories of Earth began to fade. Things once called “precious memories” melted away like a distant heat haze, and his emotions dulled. He could no longer understand others’ grief.

Time continued in the Central Plains, but Do-Jun’s own time had stopped. By the time he realized that the so-called Ten Elites Under the Heavens were nowhere near his level, an overwhelming sense of emptiness took hold of him. Neither the Martial Alliance Leader nor the Blood Demon stood a chance against him. They couldn’t even exchange a single blow.

Just as he was letting each day pass without meaning, a woman named Cecilia appeared before him. She explained the reason he had come to that world: to cultivate the strength needed to defeat Solomon, the being known as the Supreme Demon. At first, Do-Jun didn’t believe her. But when Solomon appeared before him, Do-Jun couldn’t defeat him.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding, like a rat,”

Solomon had said to Cecilia.

No matter how many times he used the Pocket Watch to return to the day before, the moment the next day arrived, he would die again, every single time. Hearing this, Cecilia took out a peculiar object that looked like the hilt of a broken sword.

She had explained,

“If we combine this with the power of Cosmos, you’ll be able to return to any point in your past—without Solomon detecting it. However... it comes at a cost. A part of your memory will be erased forever. Whether it’s something painful... or something precious. If you’re okay with that, I’ll use it.”

With Do-Jun’s consent, Cecilia thrust Cosmos into his abdomen. And just like that, Do-Jun returned to the very first day he arrived in the Central Plains. He repeated the process over and over, all to defeat Solomon. However, Do-Jun wasn’t the only one affected by the consequences of using this power.

“Go back. You’re not ready yet.”

“Will you be alright?”

With each return, Cecilia weakened. Eventually, Do-Jun asked about her condition.

“This is the last time. This is the best I can do with my power,”

she had answered.

“Cecilia! How dare you...!”

Solomon had arrived.

Even this time, Do-Jun’s sword couldn’t reach Solomon. No, it had reached him, but the speed of Solomon’s regeneration nullified the blow. As he watched Cecilia vanish, Do-Jun once again returned to the first day in the Central Plains using Origin and Cosmos. And as a result of the power, he lost all memories related to the Core.

***

“That is everything I remember,” Cecilia said.

Having now learned the full story from Cecilia, Do-Jun merely gave a single nod. He was able to remember everything after that point. He lived quietly in the Kunlun Mountains, where he built a house and started a new life. He had planned to live quietly in peace. Well, he tried.

One day, he spotted a group trying to climb the mountains. It was the start of the war that became known as the Great War of Good and Evil. A force from the Blood Sect had come to destroy the Kunlun Sect. Do-Jun had initially tried to ignore it, but when the Kunlun Sect was crushed, and the children of a nearby village were kidnapped by the Blood Sect, he couldn’t turn a blind eye.

It was an ill-fittingly clear day. As he gazed at the burning villages, Do-Jun climbed onto a wheelless wagon. Despite having no wheels, white mist coiled around it, and it soared rapidly through the air.

Do-Jun infiltrated the Blood Sect’s base, killed the Blood Demon, and tried to return the children to their village. But the village was gone. The children had lost their parents and had nowhere to go. So Do-Jun brought them to the Kunlun Mountains to raise them himself. He intended to send them back into the world once they reached adulthood. To help them survive, he taught them enough martial arts to get by.

The children, having witnessed Do-Jun single-handedly obliterate the Blood Demon and his men, revered and feared him. They called him the Heavenly Demon. As they grew up and their numbers increased, his once-lonely home became a kind of school. Do-Jun decided to call it his own Sect.

He left its management to one of the first children he had taken in: Zhang Yongji. With Do-Jun’s permission, he renamed it the Heavenly Demon Sect. And just like Do-Jun once had, Zhang Yongji began taking in orphans and lost children, raising and training them at the Black Assassins Academy.

Seeing how well Zhang Yongji was running the Academy, Do-Jun felt there was no longer a need for him to be directly involved. Anyone who wandered into the mountains was welcomed into the sect. Once he confirmed the sect could run on its own, Do-Jun sealed the Heavenly Demon Sword within the sect and prepared for full retirement.

He intended to live quietly, like flowing water, until something unexpected happened.

“I opened my eyes, and I was back on Earth.”

He had awakened on Earth because of some unknown force. Looking back on it now, it could have been only one being.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Do-Jun asked the tiny snake on his wrist.

Kyuu!