On paper, it wasn’t a particularly long drive, but the traffic on the highway heading from Gangwon Province toward Seoul was notoriously unpredictable.
Variables like rush hour or weekend congestion meant that once you hit the city limits, reaching the downtown core could take far longer than expected.
By the time Jun-ho cleared the Yangyang tollgate and merged onto the Yeongdong Expressway, passing the gateway to Seoul, the clock had already ticked past 6:00 PM.
He had his phone mounted on the dashboard, watching Lillik’s press conference on YouTube.
Lillik was a different version of illik—essentially the same entity.
Since Lillik had been created by cloning illik’s brain, they possessed different bodies, but the fundamental mechanics of their minds were identical.
This didn't mean they made the exact same decisions at every moment. Rather,
it meant they shared the same core blueprints: the same drive to solve problems and the same lack of emotional impulse control.
This incident was clearly a conspiracy between the two. There had to have been some sort of pact. In this lifetime,
illik had claimed he wanted to live a quiet life in California, yet he had appeared on AGT to broadcast his past to the world in real-time. Meanwhile,
Lillik had gone as far as deploying a space battleship to stage a demonstration of force against Earth.
It was something that should never have happened. And yet, here it was—the reality of the world they were living in.
Jun-ho listened intently to Lillik’s words on the screen, his heart sinking. He was particularly stunned when Lillik mentioned a "New Order."
He fell into deep thought.
—-
“700,000 years ago, when we first arrived on Earth, our mission was code-named ‘Planet under Reconfiguration.’”
It was exactly as the name implied: a mission to terraform and remodel the world.
Earth was unimaginably far from our home planet, and since it was impossible for a large population to migrate, only illik and
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I made the journey, carrying medical droids aboard our battleship. At the time, the universe was still reeling from the aftermath of the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs;
the ripples of that cataclysm had even faintly reached our own world.
Other battleships had been dispatched to various corners of the cosmos, but their current whereabouts remained a mystery.
The goal of ‘Planet under Reconfiguration’ was to elevate Earth’s technology to the level of our home world,
creating an environment where humans could welcome other extraterrestrials without fear or friction.
My personal objective was to help humanity develop their own technology and build a self-sustaining environment. Initially,
illik agreed. That meant our own advanced technology had to remain hidden from the public eye.
But Lillik had exposed it. Not just a glimpse, but in full view of the world. He had even intervened in international warfare.
He was acting like a benevolent god protecting the weak, providing the "motivation" to establish a "New Order" on Earth.
Humanity was being deceived. Lillik’s New Order was about demonstrating the most formidable power on the planet to build a world of his own.
From this moment on, humans would never be able to ignore the existence of that battleship.
Jun-ho opened a folder of memories buried deep within his mind.
“Ah… was it that? Back when illik first settled on Earth and set up her lab…”
Back then, the two of them had a child. They hadn't been lovers on their home planet, but love had blossomed,
and a life was conceived. However, the child died.
illik had seemingly accepted it with composure. She tried to conceive several more times but failed,
and eventually, their love cooled. Yet, from that moment on, something had begun to fester within her.
Could it have been rage? She never showed her true feelings, but Jun-ho could sense her subtle shifts every time the course of human history changed.
—--------------------------
The car arrived at a building Jun-ho owned near Gwanghwamun.
He parked in the basement and stepped outside. In the distance, the Gwanghwamun Gate stood tall. He walked past it, heading deep into the grounds of Gyeongbokgung Palace.
The name Gwanghwamun meant "the light spreads in all directions," symbolizing the king's governance and virtue reaching the people.
This was Gyeongbokgung, the primary palace of the Joseon Dynasty. Had Joseon never suffered foreign invasions,
and had the Korean War never occurred, the palace would have been unimaginably more magnificent than it is today.
In 1412, Jun-ho had been one of the high-ranking officials serving the King of Joseon—a position equivalent to a modern-day Prime Minister.
At over 70 years of age, he was tasked with a new mission: following King Taejong’s command to build a pavilion over a beautiful pond within the palace grounds.
Taejong sought to display the authority and dignity of the throne by erecting stone pillars in the water and placing a pavilion atop them. This site, named Gyeonghoeru, became a place where the King and his ministers could speak candidly and discuss righteous politics for the sake of the people.
A few years after the completion of Gyeonghoeru, Jun-ho’s physical body passed away,
but he continued his existence by acquiring a new vessel. He constructed a massive experimental space beneath the pond floor, activating a few droids to build a secret laboratory.
That lab remained operational to this day.
However, because Gyeongbokgung and Gwanghwamun are now global landmarks teeming with tourists
and even a BTS performance will be scheduled there , Jun-ho will have to be extremely cautious.
To access Gyeonghoeru, he had to use a silver sphere to cloak himself in a state of transparency.
Jun-ho reached Gyeonghoeru in his invisible form. As he entered the area beneath the pond, a circular transparent tank rose to envelop him. The water receded, and the mechanism guided him down to the pond floor like a slide.