Chapter 24 — The Sorcerer And The Fox (3)

When he stepped out of the divine domain, the place was still Ichinomine.

What had been seated on the stone steps of the small shrine was the god Inari, yet now, on emerging from the domain, it was they who stood upon those steps instead.
Shin Hweein walked quietly down and lifted his gaze.

The stone torii he had just passed through bore a name properly inscribed across its upper crossbeam, and he could read it: Suehiro-oo-kami.

“Heol!”

A voice yelped somewhere close, startled, and he turned toward it.
There stood Makoto and the rest of the party.

Some of the Onmyo Bureau’s people were among them too, and at the sight of Shin Hweein appearing out of nowhere their faces went slack with dumbstruck stupor.

— Kang.

— Kyaeng.

Or perhaps it was the foxes.
Even now, out of the divine domain, they still ringed Shin Hweein on every side as though to guard him.

“It’s Inari.”
“It’s Inari.”
“Is she a god?”

Ignoring the murmuring crowd, Shin Hweein moved on under the foxes’ guidance.
The foxes about him lent him an air all the more mystical, and no one dared step into his path.

— Kong, kong!

— Kyaaaeng!

‘So this is what it is, after all.’

The foxes halted not far off and began crying out as if to shout Look at this!
He had already heard of it from the god Inari herself, and yet, beholding it now, Shin Hweein could not help doubting it all over again.

For what stood before him was no real torii a person might pass beneath.
It was a torii-shaped ornament, the kind one finds anywhere within Fushimi Inari Taisha.

“What is it doing?”
“It must have come to help us, surely.”
“Tch. If only she’d led us here sooner, we’d never have fallen into Aeshin’s debt…!”
“Hush. Could it not be that she appeared because we bore the sacrifice for the great work? This is no time for petty-minded thoughts. Watch her!”

Their eyes fixed on him alone, the onmyoji went on assigning her existence a meaning, each in his own way, and even interpreting it.

As for the comrades who had crossed over from Aeshin with him, Father Lucas regarded him with a lukewarm gaze, Yun Jubaek with one that seemed to want to deny reality, and Makoto with a gaze very nearly oppressive in its intensity.

…At this rate, wouldn’t the onmyoji be the easier company?

‘On top of hearing so unsettling a tale already, my so-called comrades aren’t going to be much help, are they.’

Shin Hweein let out a sigh and turned his attention once more to the torii-shaped ornament.

The foxes circled round and round him as if to say We’ve shown you, now where’s our reward?
So he drew out the inari-zushi left over from his offerings to the god Inari and breathed spiritual power into it, just so.

He had grown so practiced at this that by now not even Ushi-gozen’s baleful aura bled out to the surface.

“Th-this… such pure spiritual power…!”
“And quite a different air from a moment ago. Could she truly be a messenger of the god?!”
“Aaah, Lady Inari.”
“But what connection could there be between Lady Inari and an oni?”
“You. Shut your mouth and show a little tact.”

While one needlessly sharp-eyed onmyoji took a scolding from his comrade, the foxes received the inari-zushi and ran one after another, gleeful, to the torii-shaped ornament.

The ornament had been so small at first that a fox could scarcely have nuzzled it with its nose.
Now, as the foxes drew near and began circling round and round it, it slowly started to grow.

From the very start the god Inari’s divine power had kept it concealed.

‘Without Moa, neither the negotiations nor the search would have gone half so smoothly.’

It had been shrouded so thoroughly that even Shin Hweein, who bore the Gatekeeper’s Brand, had failed to find it; to have sought it out by his own power would have cost him a full half-day at the least.
And to force it open with the Brand’s power would have taken longer still.

— Koong!

— Kyaeng! Kyaeng-kyaeng!

Just as he was inwardly shuddering at the calculated guile of Honwondorae, and at the underhandedness of the god Inari who had played along with them, the foxes finished their work and came swarming back to his side once more.

He stroked the god’s messengers one by one as they shoved their heads at him to be praised, then turned only his eyes toward Yun Jubaek.
Grasping at once why Shin Hweein had looked precisely at him, Yun Jubaek stepped forward.

“I’m going to open the gate. There’s no telling what might leap out from within, so stay on your guard, all of you. If nothing comes, we go in at once.”
“Mm.”
“The one who opens the gate… tch.”
“That much, at least, I do envy.”
“Did I not tell you to watch in silence.”

Bearing on his single back the envious and resentful glances of the onmyoji all at once, Yun Jubaek activated the mark on the back of his hand.

The torii-shaped ornament, now grown as huge as the other torii around them, answered the mark and sent tremors rolling through the whole precinct.
At that, the yokai aura concealed until then began to seep slowly out, threatening to taint even the pure, clean mountain air.

“It-it was true. It was true.”
“Honwondorae, those chew-them-up-and-spit-them-out wretches…! How dare they, at Fushimi Inari of all places, one of the great mother-shrines of Hwa-guk’s mystic arts!”
“Calm your agitation and ready yourselves! Those with strength to spare, purify the yokai aura!”

After a long while of Yun Jubaek pouring out his strength, a whirlwind of massive force gathered itself at the torii’s center.

Even with the mark, opening the gate had plainly been no easy thing.
Yun Jubaek staggered back, panting for breath, and in his place Father Lucas and Makoto swiftly stepped up, guarding him and bracing for the enemy.

Seeing how smoothly the three of them had learned to coordinate while he was gone, Shin Hweein felt a faint pang of being left out.
For now, though, he resolved to ignore it.

“Nothing… is coming out.”
“It can’t be there’s nothing inside. Feel an aura this dreadful leaking out, and you can be sure of it.”

The onmyoji, their fighting spirit fanned still higher, gripped talismans or set their fingers into hand-seals, readying their sorcery or calling forth their shikigami.

Meanwhile, having confirmed that Yun Jubaek’s condition had improved, Father Lucas gripped the cross-pendant at his throat, resolute, and declared:

“Then, we shall enter.”
“I’ve been ready since back there. I can shoot at any moment!”
“Let’s go.”

The three of them, side by side, leapt past the Specter Realm Gate.

Shin Hweein delayed no longer and followed after them, and the foxes came along too.

“Hotenshi-no-Kami!”

At Makoto’s shout the instant they crossed the gate, Shin Hweein’s body went rigid.

Just as he had thought, and yet, indeed: on every side a vast number of yokai could be seen surging toward them.

Honwondorae’s signature sorcery was spreading the aura of the Specter Realm Gate outward, drawing the yokai in.

“Tch.”

He had been expecting something of the sort, so he had hurriedly unraveled the sorcery laid on the gate, and no more yokai would be lured in.
But the thousands, the tens of thousands that had already spotted the alluring prey overflowing with spiritual power could not be kept from closing in.

And those were not the only ones on the scene.

— Krrk, kuk, krrh. Was it you who scratched the great work of that exalted one with your filthy claws.

Locked in combat with Yun Jubaek as he swept his silver blade, a four-footed beast lashed out with forepaws from which sharp claws had sprouted.

His body shone, sinewy as bronze; his tail spread broad like a fan; in form a mingling of dog and lion, and breathing fire besides, he had something of a flame-tailed creature about him…

“Hu! So Jin was you wretches’ stomping-ground!”

He was not so very large, yet his crushing strength overpowered them, and Yun Jubaek could not properly hold his ground and was driven back.
At his cry, Father Lucas, offering a prayer of supplication to back him, answered with composure:

“You must not be led astray by the enemy’s outward form, Brother! They’ve deceived us once already in just such a way!”

Hu. Also called Jocheonhu or Mangcheonhu¹, a yokai of the land of Jin.

In the old days he had been revered as a child of the Dragon King, possessed of power enough to fight dragons and beat them; but at some point his very nature was corrupted, and now he was treated as an evil-spirit.

He was the final form attained by a gangsi, a reanimated corpse, that had heaped up unspeakable evil karma and so evolved.
His shape was as the old tales had it, but his disposition alone had been wholly transformed, turning him into a being that threw the world into disorder.

— Uweh-eh-eh…

— Hiek, huet.

The Hu was not guarding this place alone.
He commanded a great host of moving corpses, and the sight of it made plain at a single glance which of the Hu’s two traditions this one had followed.

The corpses, lifeless to a one, seemed ready to crumble at any moment, and the reason was that no souls dwelt within them.

Perhaps those corpses were all that remained of the people offered up as sacrifices through this gate.

— Kyaeng!

— Kyaaeng!

— Kong-kong!

The foxes, the moment they entered the gate of the Specter Realm, scattered all at once in every direction.

Then they went swarming over a half-ruined altar, the remains of a building that bore signs of human habitation, and the like, digging at the earth in search of something.

— Looks like they’re trying to find the traces Honwondorae left behind for us. Their after-sales service really is reliable, isn’t it.

“Then I leave the evidence-gathering to them. I’ll go help Brother Jubaek.”

By the look of it, this Hu was clearly no Rank-Four creature.

“Leon, hold off the yokai swarming in.”
“You hardly need to say it. Yokai blood isn’t bad for replenishing one’s vigor, either.”
“Eulha, can you… fight?”
“Of course! I can swallow up the whole lot of them!”
“Splendid. Then you help Leon too. Flame-tail, Arong, I leave the army of corpses bearing down on me and the others to you.”

— Nothing for it, I suppose.

— Kkyu!

Watching his thralls reveal themselves at his command and stride out onto the battlefield in unison, Shin Hweein too drew his katana and charged straight for the Hu.

“You’re here!”

The Hu’s breath, full of carrion-stench flame, was sundered with a single sweep of his blade.
At the sight of Shin Hweein closing in, Yun Jubaek’s face brightened, and Shin Hweein asked him:

“Can you hold the front?”
“It’s a struggle. His strength is great, and the flame in particular is troublesome!”
“As for flame, I have confidence in mine. I’ll take the front, Brother. From behind, watch for an opening and strike.”
“Much obliged!”

The hand-off, offense for defense, was made in an instant.

The Hu, finding the prey he had been hunting slip away from him, snarled and shot out another flame; but when Shin Hweein cleaved it effortlessly with the arc of his swinging blade, astonishment and fury mingled on the creature’s face as he glared.

— So it was you, wench!

“Shinhwa. The one who will sever your head.”

“Sister, I’ll back you up!”
“Leave me be. Turn that corpse-army to dust! That’s your specialty, is it not, exorcist priest!”
“Big Sis! I’ll help too!”
“You… haa.”

Even seeing him appear alongside the shikigami, had Makoto still not caught on.

Resolving to pay Makoto’s words no mind, Shin Hweein caught the Hu’s forepaw as it swept toward him and tightened his grip on the blade.

A member of the Yun House’s direct line, who handled martial arts and sorcery alike, even a Rank-One man, found this strength hard to manage; so no matter how Shin Hweein wore Ushi-gozen’s mask, he would not block such a blow with one hand alone.
He brought both hands to the blade, concentrated, and met it head-on.

— KWANG!

“Kk…!”

— You are no human! That is no strength a human can produce!

“From you, who have heaped up countless evil karma and strayed from the path of man, that is not a thing I care to hear.”

— What would the likes of you know, that you so prate?! How could a low-born thing that cannot see a foot before her face know the karma carried on across these last several hundred years!

The Hu, enraged out of all proportion by so trifling a provocation, fell to battering him with his two forepaws by turns, blow on wild blow.

Shin Hweein gritted his teeth and bore up under the cascade of impacts, gathering his spirit upon the blade.

‘Now is the moment I must borrow even the strength of a demon. Gyuki or Ushi-gozen, it makes no difference. Burn together with the name Shinhwa.’

— Kwang, kwaang!

With every clash the sound came as though the heavens themselves were caving in.

His blade had cut down even Rank-One ability-users without much trouble, yet it failed to land a proper wound on the enemy’s body; the creature, then, was in all likelihood a mighty yokai of Rank Three or above.

Even with Makoto watching narrowly for a chance to extend Hotenshi-no-Kami’s power, and Yun Jubaek pulled back to the rear and stabbing for openings, both lending their aid, the creature would be hard to overcome like this.

Together with the onmyoji now coming into the Specter Realm one and two at a time, they could win the fight, but almost certainly at the cost of casualties.

‘That, I cannot allow. If I am to fight, drawing even on a cursed power, only to leave casualties behind, then for what did I take into my body a strength too great for me?’

He gathered onto the blade all the spiritual power gushing up throughout his now-unencumbered body.

Awakening the talent he had only just gained, he assimilated himself to the malevolence of the Gyuki sleeping within the blade.

No need now for good or evil; for this moment his whole consciousness was unified upon the single thought of killing this creature.

— Hmm?!

Then, in some instant.

The blade and the mask both gave off light at once, and presently the ox-horns on Ushi-gozen’s mask began to lengthen.

That was not all. Was the hair streaming out from behind the mask not staining itself a still deeper black, growing past his waist and down to his hips?

Hair is among the most common materials used in sorcery, symbol enough of the person’s very identity that a long-haired sorcerer may be reckoned to hold that much spare spiritual power in reserve.

And the dense spiritual power now gathered in his hair gave off a dark light all its own, enough to make any onlooker shrink back without thinking.

— That power… how, how can a mere human wield a power so perilous!

What was more, into Shin Hweein’s hair another power had now entered as well; though it belonged to neither Ushi-gozen nor the Gyuki, it harmonized astonishingly well with this yokai aura.

“Just so.”

At last having sought out, from within his own self, that fragment of power which interlocked best with the mask, and having assimilated it, Shin Hweein let slip a clear laugh.

Astonishingly, the oni-face of the mask twisted its mouth into a matching smile.

“At this very moment, I shall be your death.”

That was the aura of death he had taken from Balbal.

Having completed his form as Shinhwa, he swept the blade with a momentum beyond compare with anything before.

It was the moment one of the Hu’s bronze-hard forepaws was severed clean away.