Chapter 19 — The Shin House And The Royal House (5)

The party soon reached the innermost reach of Gyeongbokgung, the ground before the Aeshin Great Gate, concealed within Cheonmokgung¹.
Access was strictly controlled. Those present came to no more than Shin Hweein, Ham Seoyeon, Yun Juna, Yun Jinseong and Shin Yuhyeon, Princess Mirye, the Crown Prince, the King, and a handful of Royal House sorcerers.

“These will not speak a word of what passes within, under any circumstance. Be at ease.”
“Your Majesty’s consideration is most appreciated.”

The King himself had stepped forward to lay any lingering doubt to rest.
They were the elite, after all: seven chosen from among the Spell Army and the Royal House’s own sorcerers.
Frankly, the time for fretting over anyone of Shin Uin’s calibre seemed long past, though Hweein could not help that thought either.

As Shin Hweein advanced toward the Aeshin Great Gate with Shin Yuhyeon and Yun Jinseong, Ham Seoyeon grumbled behind him.

“I want to go in and help, too…”
“I’ll take the thought.”
“You haven’t forgotten the promise, have you?”
“Of course not. When I return, I’ll keep it.”

Shin Hweein felt the elders’ eyes settle on his exchange with Ham Seoyeon.
She was not the sort to put herself forward in a place like this. If she had deliberately called out to him, it was likely because of what she had seen earlier: Princess Mirye emerging from his chamber at his side.
Knowing the King meant to push the Princess onto Shin Hweein, she had, in the spirit of protecting her friend, bravely asserted her presence even before these powerful onlookers.

A reliable friend, truly.

— Protect, my foot — or rather, my horn. Honestly, what petty jealousies these humans nurse.
— You are hardly the one to say that. Ham Seoyeon is not like you.
— Exactly the same, I’d say.
— Hah. What would a girl with no friends of her own know?
— From where I’m standing, the young master has no friends either, you know.

Having traded these trifling jabs with Geum Moa, Shin Hweein leaned on his staff, stepped forward, and stood before the Aeshin Great Gate.
After a glance exchanged with the others, he set foot within without hesitation.

Beyond the gate, it was quieter than he had imagined.

“The shock of crossing over into the Specter Realm… it’s almost nothing.”
“The Aeshin Great Gate is specially maintained. So long as the Royal House’s spirit-energy does not wane, no fault will ever arise from this gate.”

So said Yun Jinseong, glancing about with what might almost have been pride in his voice.
Shin Yuhyeon was already settling the surroundings with sorcery.

“The summoning must be performed near the gate. I trust you understand why without my saying it.”
“Yes.”

It was because the body of the kudan, lodged for the present in Hwa’s capital Gyeongdo, was likewise bound to a Specter Realm Gate.
A summoning had to be performed with the environment and conditions made to resemble the creature’s original location as closely as could be managed.
Shin Hweein drew a deep breath and set about preparing the rite as he had been taught the day before.

“Uncle, please wait at a further distance. When the summoning is complete, you may move in.”
“I shall.”

With every preparation in place, Shin Hweein drew from inside his robes the vial holding the kudan’s ashes.
He uncapped it, drew a single drop of blood from his fingertip, and let it fall into the vial.
He shook the vial gently, then poured it out, and the ash-blackened blood spilled forth in a long thread, drawing a complex pattern across the floor exactly as he intended.
It was sorcery-script: the names of the Shin House’s shikigami, the name of Shin Hweein himself, the name of the kudan, and the present location of the kudan’s body.

“…”

The moment the circle of sorcery-script was complete, a weighty presence settled over the area.
Watching from a distance, Yun Jinseong clenched a fist; Shin Yuhyeon looked on in placid silence, his expression unreadable.

Shin Hweein parted his lips slowly and began to intone the incantation.

“—.”

He thought of those who would lend him their power.
The Shin House shikigami he had dreamed of, however vaguely, since his earliest years.
The beloved retainers he had himself sought out and gathered.
He did not forget the Gate-King God, who had aided him through the medium of the Gatekeeper’s Brand.
The Shin blood that ran in his veins, never to be cast away.
The bonds woven through to his very soul, the ones he would, in time, have to face.

“Hweein of the Shin House asks that the darkness cast over Aeshin be lifted — aid me, that I may smite the monster of prophecy and let Aeshin’s future shine bright.”

Bearing all of them in mind, he steadied his heart.
And just as he made to drive his staff down into the summoning circle, the final words of the incantation leaving him without a falter, a voice came.

— Truly?

It came from nowhere in particular.
A voice belonging to a being on a plane far higher than his own.

— Don’t you think the time has come for the Royal House of Aeshin to fall?
— Was the kudan’s prophecy truly the omen of an ill future? I rather doubt it.
— What does it matter if the Capital burns, what does it matter if the Royal House falls? You will still be there.
— Ah, yes — if you are there, that is enough. Strike down the betrayers and raise a new royal house.
— The Royal House’s power negates us outright. What meaning is there in letting such a house endure?
— Let us be done with it.
— None can blame us.
— Tear down the Royal House, take back what is ours, and revive the old promise once more.
— That is the primordial chaos you yourself desire.

A curse? Astonishingly, no.
The cords of fate that had stretched in from every corner of heaven and earth had, as though they had waited only for this moment, bound his whole body fast, each of them clamouring at him in its own disorderly fashion.

A flaw in the ritual? Not that either.
The effect was simply too good.
The sacrifice-rite had carried his voice to every last being capable of lending him their power.
That those “all” included every being to whom he had been bound in his past life: that was Shin Hweein’s one and only oversight.

“Brother, this is…”
“Quiet.”

Sensing the energies of heaven and earth converging on Shin Hweein, Yun Jinseong’s eyes flew wide and he made to step forward, but Shin Yuhyeon stayed him with a hand and drew a talisman from his robes instead, gripping it.
The rite had already begun; there was no halting it midway.
Should some unforeseen karmic burden come crashing down, someone would have to stand against it.

But all of that proved needless concern.

“What I desire is not primordial chaos but order. By my will, lend me your power.”

His breath drawn, his eyes flung wide, Shin Hweein drove his staff down into the summoning circle.
The dragon and the fox set in the ornaments of his staff lifted their heads as one, their eyes ablaze, and blue and red light flooded the summoning circle.
Then, as though drawn after it, the cords of fate tied to Shin Hweein began, one by one, to gleam.

— If that is so, then there is no help for it.
— If such is your will.
— If you mean to see it through.
— Things are already not as they were — the next time may be worth looking forward to.
— I shall wait, with pleasure, for the day we meet again.
— For now — I’ll help you.

A power so vast that Shin Hweein alone could never have produced it converged upon the circle, and the summoning sigil drank in colours of every hue.

— Found you.

A faintly ominous voice came last, and the countless cords of fate that had risen into his vision faded once more.
But the summoning circle only grew brighter, and above it an aura unlike any until now began to swirl, a vast, vast yokai aura.

“It’s done.”
“Stand back, Hweein!”

A very brief moment later, when the enemy’s form revealed itself above the summoning circle, Shin Hweein retreated, his eyes blazing as he kept the front warily in sight.
Yun Jinseong, rushing forward as if to shield him, caught sight of the enemy and let out a strangled gasp.

“Wh — what.”
“So it was, after all.”

— Heh, heh…

What had finally surfaced above the summoning circle was a female-formed monster, roughly the size of a person.
At first he had wondered whether, since the male kudan was carried by a Gyuki, the female kudan might be carried by Nure-onna, the serpent-yokai known as Gyuki’s wife². But no.
Snakes, after all, do not bear oxen.
And on top of that, once one chewed over Old Aengseol’s parting remark, “this is not the usual Gyuki,” the creature’s identity was clear as day.

“Ushi-gozen.”
“Madness, that this is truly its female form, and Ushi-gozen, no less.”
“A famous warrior’s bloodline in Hwa as well. If they have managed to copy even those traits intact…”
“Damn it.”

Ushi-gozen is a type of Gyuki, and, in truth, a specific person.
The younger brother of Minamoto no Yorimitsu³, who famously slew the great Hwa-yokai Shuten-doji; born with the face of an oni and the horns of an ox, he was nearly killed at birth, only to be saved and raised by a serving-maid, and who, in the end, was put down by the hand of that very elder brother, Yorimitsu. A tragic yokai.
And the reason such an Ushi-gozen now stood before them in female form was…

“The power of modern media is truly a fearful thing.”

It was on account of Hwa’s peculiar culture, ever fond of remaking historical figures into women whatever the matter, a fondness that had, unfortunately, swept the entire country in popularity.
And yet the shikigami that onmyoji could readily wield tended to take on monstrous forms, a most regrettable state of affairs, this.

“When you say it, it sounds genuinely frightening!”

Yun Jinseong, already smarting from having had the military’s Nati operation thoroughly bungled out from under him, ground his teeth at the line and lunged at Ushi-gozen.
Though her belly was abnormally swollen in the shape of an expectant mother, Ushi-gozen met Yun Jinseong’s approach by drawing the katana at her hip and swinging.

“Rank Two!”
“I know!”

The instant Yun Jinseong’s armoured fist struck Ushi-gozen’s blade, a roar shook the area and the ground sank several metres.
Shin Yuhyeon, too, sent talismans flying to keep Ushi-gozen at bay while rapidly chanting an incantation to summon his shikigami.
The tiger-folk Shin Myeongin had once wielded; a tiger-gate bird whose vast wings blotted out the very sky; even a flame-hound, somewhat less handsome than Shin Hweein’s Flame-tail; one after another they sprang forth to protect their master and hurl themselves at Ushi-gozen.

“Shin Hweein, withdraw. It’s dangerous.”
“Understood.”

Shin Hweein did not so much as consider standing against the master of a malice so enormous that merely sharing the same space with her shook one’s organs and rattled one’s spiritual power.
It was because they were Yun Jinseong and Shin Yuhyeon that they could face her with such composure; for Shin Hweein, a single step closer to that monster might well leave him coughing up blood.
The gulf in tier was, in that sense, absolute.

‘Can I really ever reach that domain?’

The frail thought surfaced of itself, and he scoffed it away at once.
He, of all people, who had told Princess Mirye that the world could be changed merely by speaking a word, now binding himself with no one’s words but his own.
To begin with, it was presumptuous of him, only a short while into his career as a sorcerer, to already be thinking of surpassing those two.
There was no need to crane his neck staring up at the summit. He need only do, one by one, what he could do now, and grow accordingly.
And fortunately, or unfortunately, there was at this very moment one thing he could do.

“I knew they’d try something this way.”

Shin Hweein muttered, glancing behind him.
Had they readied themselves even for the contingency in which Ushi-gozen was successfully summoned through all those conditions? From the moment the creature appeared, an ominous light had been creeping over the Aeshin Great Gate.
Ushi-gozen had originally been bound to the Specter Realm Gate in Gyeongdo, and Shin Hweein had, through the summoning rite, transferred that linkage onto the Aeshin Great Gate to draw her forth.
In sorcerous terms, this meant the Aeshin Great Gate and the gate in Gyeongdo had been made one, so any working they had set in advance upon the Gyeongdo gate would carry over to the Aeshin Great Gate intact.

‘It is that sorcery from before, then. It’s grown more vicious, but…’

The yokai-luring spell he had once met when fighting onmyoji had been twisted into a far crueller form, sorcery vile enough to truly rupture the Aeshin Great Gate and loose every yokai upon the Capital itself.
The Special-Grade sorcerers who could resolve this quickly were all tied up with Ushi-gozen; even had a band of other First-Rank or Rank-Two sorcerers been gathered here, they could not have met it.

“But it’s a sorcery I already know.”

Shin Hweein gave a small snort and reached out toward the Aeshin Great Gate.
Crimson, ominous lightning flared as though to refuse his touch, yet he thrust his hand past it without flinching.

“Release.”

When one knew a sorcery to its depths, dismantling it was no labour at all.
This was no longer mere curse-absolving; it had passed into the domain of analysis and decomposition.
He could see plainly that some rather clever heads at the organization had patched and layered things to make it a more sinister, more wretched working, but, knowing the foundation, none of that signified.

“Done.”

Once the sorcery was unmade, the Aeshin Great Gate swiftly settled back into stillness.
That it had gone faster than he’d imagined was perhaps because the Royal House’s authority constantly pooled upon the Aeshin Great Gate, and the gate itself was already armoured from the outset with formidable sorcery-resistance.

— Well done, young master. But, my apologies — things are wrapping up over there as well.
— What?

He had been steeped in a small, foolish satisfaction over the deed when Geum Moa’s words jolted him, and he turned with a start.
There, transformed at some point or other, was the yokai: a vast bull, rolling now upon the ground.
According to the lore, before her death Ushi-gozen had hurled herself into a river and raged about as an enormous bull-monster ten gil tall⁴ until she died, and in that, too, the creature matched precisely.

‘Becoming a bull would have amplified its yokai force further. And yet…’

The Rank-Two great yokai Ushi-gozen, who at her appearance had borne a presence that drew shivers down the spine, was now writhing with all four limbs severed, burned, or frozen, a pitiful sight.
Yun Jinseong bore a few minor wounds; but Shin Yuhyeon, by contrast, looked exactly as he had when he’d first stepped through the Aeshin Great Gate into the Specter Realm.

“Hweein, you seem to have finished too.”
“Then shall we end this?”

A Rank-Two great yokai, full-term and yet not weakened but in fact strengthened past her usual self.
She was a being falsely fashioned by the power of the organization Honwondorae, yet was it not precisely because of that falsity that yokai could grow all the stronger?
A monster against which it might take several Special-Grade sorcerers in concert to prevail, and these two had done it, just the pair of them, this swiftly.
Yun Jinseong was certainly strong; but the speed at which this fight had ended was, surely, owed above all to his father, Shin Yuhyeon…

— Mooooo!

Ushi-gozen’s head went flying.
That her belly alone had remained strangely untouched was, no doubt, because they had fought with care not to kill the kudan within.
The instant she died, her enormous body burst all at once, and, as with the Rank-Three Gyuki when it had died, a dark cloud spread out to cover the area.
But that cloud was quelled and dispersed in an instant by a single gesture from Shin Yuhyeon, and what remained behind was Ushi-gozen’s severed head, its essence condensed within it, rolling along the ground.

— The Royal House shall resolve the old grievance, meet a new hero, and endure.

A female kudan: the body of a bull, the face of a woman.

“Got it!”

— When the falsehood is laid bare, all returns to nothing — and the monster of strife shall stay silent until the one who seeks it comes.

“Brother, then the prophecies that remain are all favourable ones…”

It was at that moment that Shin Hweein, at last, took a step forward.
Remembering what Old Aengseol had told him, he tapped the floor with his staff.

— However, that is what comes after —.

And a thorn of wood, springing up out of the earth, pierced the kudan through the neck, and in the next instant burned away together with her.
This time, not even ash remained.

“Resolved.”

So said Shin Hweein.
Shin Yuhyeon nodded in silence.

“Now, that was a waste —.”

Yun Jinseong glanced between them with a deeply mortified look, just for an instant.
Then, belatedly catching up with Old Aengseol’s words, he closed his mouth.

“Huah.”

Yun Jinseong let out a strangely-pitched sigh, and said:

“Let’s pull out.”
“Yes.”

The three men set the area in order and walked out through the gate without a backward glance.
Thus the Royal House’s commission was ended.
And what remained as spoils was Ushi-gozen’s head.