Chapter 697
Every item has its own purpose.
There’s no need to cherish everything, nor should one fear breaking things.
Wagon wheels are bound to wear out or break eventually, and there comes a moment when the cart itself must be replaced.
Just like all things, everything has a lifespan and a purpose, so it’s sufficient for them to be useful.
Thus, Park Jinseong begins to move in order to use his constructed body for its intended purpose.
Walking between exhausted souls at the end of a rigorous ritual, he quietly opens the window just beyond the curtains.
*Thud.*
He jumped right off the high hotel.
Park Jinseong, dressed in dark clothing, easily blended into the darkness, and as his body disintegrated into insects, he simply vanished.
Even if someone with good eyesight happened to see Park Jinseong, they might mistake him for a delusion or a ghost.
And thus, disassembled, Park Jinseong clung to the underside of a vehicle heading out of the hotel.
He then moved to the road, slipped beneath a bustling ambulance, and with astonishing ease, began to dangle onto it while heading to the hospital.
‘What luck I have.’
Is it fortune that’s on his side?
The ambulance he clung to was headed to exactly where he needed to go.
The hospital.
To be precise, the one where he encountered a certain figure in America.
Lucas Metathronius Goldsmith.
The man with the Crystal Arm.
The man who had signed a sort of contract with Park Jinseong back in America.
And now, the unfortunate man had fallen into a coma and found himself hospitalized.
Though revered by the people, he was, in truth, a person consumed by the countless sins accumulated through greed for wealth.
He lived a life much like a miner digging for gold and dollars, and now he was there.
Park Jinseong had come to see Lucas.
‘Hmm. There’s quite a spiritual countermeasure here.’
However, that meeting wouldn’t be so smooth.
This place likely required medical insurance or considerable funds for an admission.
Facility features to suppress external intruders or troublesome patients were certainly in place, and thorough barriers for wealthy patients were established as well. Moreover, with the hospital being a place overflowing with the suffering and the dying, spiritual countermeasures against potential ghosts had been put in place too.
‘Looks like they have ties to Japan…’
But unfortunately, that spiritual measure wasn’t perfect.
The barriers and spiritual countermeasures, presumed to be made with the aid of Onmyoji, were… sadly the type Park Jinseong knew well.
Perhaps they thought that even if it was an inefficient Onmyōdō outside Japan, the power of capital could handle it… But ironically, the unfamiliar defenses were like open automatic doors to Park Jinseong.
He passed through them far too easily.
The barrier deceived with its Onmyōdō application, and the spiritual countermeasures distorted or contaminated the symbols, creating gaps.
Thus, Park Jinseong was able to enter the hospital without resistance.
Not through the first floor, but by scaling the exterior wall from a mid-level.
Once he entered that level, he deconstructed his body to melt into the vent, heading towards the hospital room where Lucas was staying.
*Beep—*
*Beep—*
*Beep—*
*Huff.*
*Huff.*
An expensive single room.
A luxurious space where an immense amount of money seemed ready to be spent each passing day.
There lay Lucas.
He was lying on the bed with eyes closed, looking more haggard than when they last met, strapped with various devices and relying on an oxygen machine for breath.
‘Amazing.’
It was palpable.
A fixation on preserving his life as long as Lucas’s wealth allowed.
Medical instruments attached all over his body.
Medical devices that forcibly pulse electric signals to make muscles move.
Artifacts that work in conjunction with patches on his chest to maintain heart, lung, and breathing activity at adequate levels.
A defibrillator equipped to operate automatically in case of any issues.
‘They even have a perfluorodecalin infusion device.’
Was it prepared in case of a power failure or machine malfunction?
Ready to inject perfluorodecalin through a tube connected to the lungs to allow for liquid breathing if breathing became unstable.
‘Not to mention… Is that a micro-machine I see?’
Along with surgical scars all over his body.
Minuscule marks visible only from brief incisions must surely be where chips were implanted.
Whether for drug infusion or some other purpose…
This was certainly something that could elicit admiration.
One could consider that all the latest technologies that this university hospital could employ were in play.
Park Jinseong smiled at Lucas’s appearance.
‘In ancient Greece and Rome, they believed that death and sleep were not much different. So, is this man truly dead or merely in a deep slumber?’
Life and death.
The sleep that lies between.
Sleep can be infinitely close to death or life.
Thus, one might argue that this man is taking a rest within the boundaries of life and death.
Rest.
Rest indeed.
With only the pursuit of money.
Obsessed with his own safety.
The rest of a man who has lived in anxiety.
It’s not a bad thing.
Park Jinseong thought as he began to observe Lucas.
Without approaching, keeping a distance.
‘If I get too close, some device or alarm could react, and inserting parasites or insects into him would surely be detected.’
He had come to find Lucas because he felt the ‘hint’ that Ashtosh Singh mentioned would relate to him.
His intuition whispered.
His reason and experience had spoken.
A different variable from before his rewind.
A hint that could lead to the subject of ‘immortality,’ which he couldn’t have approached before.
He believed it would align with Lucas.
Thus, Park Jinseong observed Lucas.
But…
‘It’s ambiguous.’
Unfortunately, nothing particularly special was visible about Lucas.
Of course, one could roughly guess how extraordinary the latest medical technologies were by looking at the medical devices attached to him, which were keeping him alive.
These would have been developed by pouring vast amounts of money into them.
With such technology, one could arguably say they could pull someone back from the afterlife.
But when asked if this related to immortality…
He would answer no.
That technology is about keeping a person alive, maintaining life.
It’s far from what Park Jinseong desired.
‘Hmm.’
He wondered if there might be something among medical technologies that he wanted, something related to the hint, but… he found nothing.
Well, that was to be expected.
Park Jinseong was someone who had little interest in anything but magic, so how could he understand technologies related to medicine? It would be no different with science, much less grasping any concepts from magic or alchemy.
‘This doesn’t seem right.’
It’s strange.
His intuition felt that this man, Lucas, was related to something, yet when observing Lucas, that hint didn’t appear at all—it was quite peculiar.
‘Haha, if it were so easily discovered, others would have taken it already.’
Yet one cannot say they don’t understand.
This Lucas was no ordinary man.
He survived among countless enemies through the talent of making money.
The Machine Cult was targeting him, as was the government.
Even though he possessed tremendous treasures, he did not receive criticism for living beyond his means, continuously preserving his life.
If what he harbored was something that could be recognized through mere observation, he would have undoubtedly been robbed and stripped long ago. If robbed, it doesn’t exist, and thus it is unseen; if not robbed, then it is concealed and elusive.
Therefore, he must abandon impatience.
If fate allows, he will be able to obtain it.
If it doesn’t, it will vanish from existence just as it did before his rewind.
‘If fate does not connect, it’s of no use to me; it’s as though it is not permitted. Being obsessed with that is nothing but suffering.’
He waits.
He observes.
Like a spider spinning a web and biding its time.
Just like the warrior who aligns himself with power holders, killing them at the Bohemian Club.
There is no need to hurry.
This is not a life that will swiftly perish like before his rewind.
It is not a body that’s barely clinging to life.
He’s not in such bad condition that he’s using his final spells with limited lifespan left.
Furthermore, war’s flames have not invaded Korea yet.
What need is there to rush?
‘Eventually, a clue will reveal itself.’