Chapter 14 — The Sorcerer And The Two Faces Of The Shadow (1)

The Dragon Kings guard the seas and command the weather, and the four greatest of them, the Four Seas Dragon Kings, are mighty beings whose renown reaches not only across Jin but across Aeshin Korea, and indeed across the whole world.

Closer to deities than to mere yokai, they owe their fame above all to Journey to the West, the popular novel said to have been written by the Jin scholar Wu Cheng’en, who gathered together religious and mythic elements across the rise and fall of several dynasties into a tale that captivated the entire nation for ages.
In the novel their titles and names each differ slightly, but they appear as the Dragon Kings who represent the Four Seas of east, west, south, and north.

In their first appearance, to be sure, they cut a sorry figure, robbed by the monkey-beastman Sun Wukong of the Ruyi Staff and the other treasures of the Four Seas’ Dragon Palaces.
But thereafter they return as Sun Wukong’s reinforcements, commanding the weather and showing off their formidable powers, full-fledged supporting players in their own right.

Whether Sun Wukong, the Victorious Fighting Buddha who could call even the Dragon Kings his subordinates, truly existed, no one can know. But the Dragon Kings most certainly do, and the renown they won through this tale, which had spread far across the world, must surely have done much to elevate their standing.

The three brothers, all but Ao Guang, Dragon King of the East Sea, get their names jumbled together throughout the work, but… well, they were beings of such similar powers and similar might, so it is no wonder.

Still, there was one thing that struck him as strange.
To begin with, the Four Seas spoken of in Jin differ greatly from the seas of Aeshin.
The countries differ and the cardinal directions differ, and so Jin’s East Sea is not Aeshin’s East Sea.

More than that, since the upper part of Aeshin is sealed off by the continent, no North Sea could exist for it.
And yet he, whose past life was presumed to have been an Aeshin person, had a connection with the daughter of the North Sea Dragon King, a dragon-princess?

Watching the soldiers crawl ceaselessly up out of the sea, he thought about the Four Seas Dragon Kings.
If there were any way for one born an Aeshin person to have formed a bond with the North Sea Dragon King of a sea adjoining Jin…

At the founding of Aeshin, when every last yokai who had till then come spilling into the present world through gates flung wide on every side was driven back into the Specter Realm and the doors shut after them, the Four Seas Dragon Kings, too, are said to have departed the present world. There must surely have been a clash between those who would make a world for humans alone and the Dragon Kings. …Then could it really be that my past life belongs to that very age?

To the Dragon Kings of old, the seas had been as good as their own territory.
Those who would make use of a Dragon King’s domain, which is to say those who took to the boats, had naturally to offer up rites to them, and any who crossed a Dragon King’s whim would find their vessels sunk in a storm, or swallowed boat and all by some ship-swallower (a whale) and the like.

That said, they were by no means beings who only ever tormented humans.
Able to command the weather, they served also as guardians, staving off the natural calamities that no human power could presume to govern, and that was no small thing.
When humans tendered the proper courtesies, the Dragon Kings granted their protection, kept harm from striking at sea, and gathered up the winds and rain so that one might make a tranquil voyage.

In the founding myths of Aeshin it is told that when the age of humankind came, humans would be able to cross the sea by their own strength alone, without the Dragon Kings’ protection, and to endure the changes of weather besides, so that the Dragon Kings’ continued meddling in the world of men would only hinder human progress. And so the representative of humankind met with the representative of the Dragon Kings and negotiated for them to depart the world of men.

The particulars of how this came about have not been passed down, but the Dragon Kings, on the verge of having their territory stripped from them, could hardly have submitted to such a thing obediently.
There must surely have been military conflict. And if his past life had been caught up in it, then the claim that he had a connection with the dragon-princess of the North Sea was something he could accept.

Our forebears had the right of it. With technology as developed as it is now, humans can read the sea’s roads well enough without making an offering of each and every departing voyage, and even when hardships arise, in most cases the sorcerers aboard the ships can resolve them. More than that, the modern vessels are far too many for the Dragon Kings to look after one by one. The seas, in many senses, no longer have need of them.

Of course, even now, many still perform the rites before setting out, and should they meet with peril at sea, call upon a Dragon King for blessing.
Nor were the Dragon Kings simply driven into the Specter Realm and left at that. The rites offered in places that had once been their domain bolster their power, letting them wield it again in the seas that had originally been theirs.

Having stepped down from the seat of unilateral overlord, no longer able to throw their weight around against humankind, able to act only when given suitable recompense, they had become a kind of guardian-deity. From the human point of view, this was much the better change.
For the Dragon Kings, on the other hand, there could hardly be a humiliation to match it. One could well imagine just how many of them had fallen in the negotiation process, which surely had been anything but smooth.

If those now before his eyes, the North Sea Dragon Princess and the rest of them, were all soldiers who had died in that very era…

“You’ve realized, then, that they are all ghosts.”
“Yokai of the sea or not, the yin energy is too thick. …These are not the living. These are the dead.”
“Hoh, my flames take especially well to the dead. Of course, the Father we had been about to join up with would have been even more of a help just now.”

It was precisely that Father they had been trying to rendezvous with when they wound up in this state, was it not.
Shin Hweein shot a glare at Geum Moa, who spoke as if to tease him, and frowned as he watched the encirclement gradually tighten around them.

Yesterday, while dealing with the yokai the Hwa-guk sorcerers had summoned, they had been through a similar situation. But back then they had had companions, and what was more, his shikigami, Leon above all, had swept up vast numbers of them in a magnificent display.
But now…

— Out of the way! Don’t stand between me and my husband!

“Hah, you’d suck my blood, would you? Fine, let’s see you try, then!”

— Don’t take her head-on, you flank her, you blockhead!

For Leon and Flame-tail were both pinned down dealing with the North Sea Dragon Princess, who had clearly surpassed the level of a Rank-Five yokai!
Worse still, even if Shin Hweein threw himself into that fight, he could not summon the will to believe they could overcome her, and on top of that the number of soldiers emerging from the sea was nothing to be trifled with.

Burn that many water-ghosts down with flames forged at the cost of my spiritual power and blood? And those might not even be all of them. It is out of the question. Better to use the Nine-Headed Dragon’s power I have only just gained and poison them instead.

Of course, even that would not be enough to face them all.
Then what on earth was he to do? Should he offer up another rite with Do Yuna’s power?
To whom? To the North Sea Dragon King?
Begging him to please calm his daughter, who had mistaken Hweein for her husband and was throwing herself at him?

If I escape without being made to go through a soul-marriage rite, I shall count myself lucky.

Sooner than help him, the North Sea Dragon King would go so far as to turn Shin Hweein himself into a ghost and wed him to his daughter.
And if this was a Four Seas Dragon King, the situation would be little different with the other three. To begin with, he had no offering on hand at present suited for such a rite.

With the Specter Realm in such upheaval now, there is no guarantee a rite offered would even be properly conveyed…

Just then, flames blazed up at his side.
Geum Moa had conjured dozens of flame-shots and was setting them adrift in the air.

“Hup.”

— Gu-uuuurk!

While Shin Hweein, too overwhelmed to know what to do, was still casting about for his next move, she burned away the water-ghosts that had crept close to them and said:

“I am, by nature, only a handmaid with a small knack for stealth and concealment… but today alone I shall serve you as Hoa, the Rank-Two flame-sorceress. This much will not violate the Three-Year Pact.”
“To put it the other way around, you mean that even with you lending such strength, the situation is dire.”
“Hoh, the thought of setting up wedded life with you alone at last, young master, has my heart all aflutter.”

In the end, it meant that Shin Hweein would have to borrow the power of Geum Moa’s true form.

— Hey, if you heard what that fox-of-flame just said, then fight properly!

“Of course. Looks like I’ll have to show my real skill today.”

— You lot heard her too, then get out of the way! That fox-of-flame is trying to snatch my husband—!

Flame-tail and Leon, having heard her too, evidently grew rather heated and stepped up their fervor. And the North Sea Dragon Princess was no different, drawing her hair back to drain even the energies of her own subordinates and amplify her yokai force.

“Young master, if you truly feel you might die, you must say so at once, you know? Of course, those things can die any time at all—”
“Enough, Moa. Enough.”
“Young master…”

Shin Hweein shook his head at Geum Moa, who spoke as though playing the part of an ill-natured woman.
For one who claimed her heart was aflutter, her color was not especially bright, either.

That was proof she was not a being driven by desire alone.
Proof that within her, too, lived a regard for the journey they had shared this far, a feeling that took Shin Hweein’s efforts in a kindly light.

“Let me struggle on a little longer.”
“But as things are now, it’s impossible.”
“Which is why I have found another way.”

What Shin Hweein drew from his breast were the three sorcerers’ heads he had been preserving under a binding spell.

“While I am sunk in sleep, guard me for just a little while.”
“Sob, sob. To be left guarding a man who’s gone off to meet another woman.”

Despite her words, Geum Moa’s complexion was a touch brighter than before.
It must mean that Shin Hweein had found the answer.
Even if that were not so, no other recourse remained at this point, so he drove his staff into the ground and seated himself there in the lotus position.

“You must hurry back, young master.”
“Wait but a little.”

He set the three Hwa-guk sorcerers’ heads, the mere sight of which was unpleasant, upon his knees and quietly closed his eyes.
He invoked a basic dream sorcery.
It was a sorcery for falling asleep.

— Coming to see me when it isn’t even nightfall! Oh my, oh my!

By the time he opened his eyes within the dream, the Dream-Demon Queen, Lyl, already stood before him, her eyes sparkling.
Last night he had been so worn down in spirit that he had even turned down his dream sorcery lesson…
Had he known it would come to this, he ought after all to have done the thing he had been weighing, he thought, and raised the three heads, which he was still gripping even within the dream, up toward his chest.

— You’ve already developed your dream sorcery to such a degree! You can now bring real-world objects safely into the dream! Though as a gift to a lover, it’s not awfully romantic.

“Lyl, I am sorry, but I haven’t the leisure for a long conversation. I must wring information from these.”

The reason he had not handed the Hwa-guk sorcerers’ heads over to Makoto straightaway was precisely this.
He had thought he must confirm with his own eyes by what means those who had reached for the Gatekeeper’s authority alone had learned their wicked sorceries, and how dangerous those sorceries were.
Even though he was leaving every matter concerning the Seo House entirely to Yun Jinseong, the rights over the Hwa-guk sorcerers, he believed, belonged to him.

— Of course I have every confidence I can wring information from inside their heads. At the very least about the things they were doing right up until they died.

At Lyl’s answer, Shin Hweein let out a deep sigh of relief.
He had thought it possible, having picked up dream sorcery, however clumsily, but he had not been certain.

“That is enough. Let us be quick about it.”

— But that’s a matter separate from our agreement, isn’t it? I only said I would teach you dream sorcery. If you want anything more from me, naturally you’ll have to make, ah, additional payment… won’t you?

Behind Lyl as she spoke of additional payment, her face bashful, a lavishly furnished bedchamber had at some point begun to take shape.
In sheer honesty with her own desires, even Geum Moa could not compare with this dream-demon.
Shin Hweein flicked his hand, wiped it all away in an instant, and raised his eyes.

“Who said I asked you to draw out the information directly. I shall do it. You will only teach me the method.”

— Tch, it won’t be that easy, you know.

“When has anything ever been easy? If I take to it easily, that is the end of the matter.”

He was aware, even of himself, that he picked up sorcery easily.
Now was the time to wield that ability beyond its limits.
Lyl, letting out a sigh at Shin Hweein’s serious expression, flapped her wings and drew near him.

— Hoh, very well… Then shall we begin by sensing the residual thoughts left in the necks of these dead? If you’ve brought them properly, you should be able to feel them without trouble.

“I already feel them. I laid a dream sorcery on them just after their deaths, so perhaps a part of their consciousness is still wandering in the dream.”

— Oh my, so it is. If you had been born a dream-demon, you could have fulfilled all dream-demons’ deepest wish along with me.

“The deepest wish of dream-demons? What might that be?”

— Why, of course. To plunge all of humankind, every sentient being, into dreams. For then we dream-demons would become the rulers of the world.

Picturing the scene for a moment, Shin Hweein nodded and said to her:

“Had I been born a dream-demon, I would have made war on you. Let us begin quickly.”

— I really hate you!

The flow of time within a dream is faster than in reality.
For one who had mastered dream sorcery, a single day passing in the real world might mean a year spent in the dream.
Naturally, since Shin Hweein had only just begun learning dream sorcery, he had not so very much time to spare…

“And so, until when exactly does our lord intend to enjoy his siesta?”

— Don’t tell me you really are doing this because you want to live alone with that fox-of-flame bitch, do you—!

…but it was time enough for him to master the sorcery he needed.

“As if I would. Well done, all of you.”

Shin Hweein, who had quietly opened his eyes while still seated in the lotus position, slipped the heads from his knees into his subspace storage as he spoke.

“My lord! It is a great delight to see you, but holding off this delusion-obsessed woman any longer is becoming rather hard!”

— The underlings just keep multiplying! If we’re retreating, then hurry up about it. I’ll stay behind and hold them off!

The situation was a wholesale rout.
The North Sea Dragon Princess had by now shifted her lower body into that of a serpentine reptile and was driving Flame-tail and Leon backward, and the water-ghosts that burst forth with each crashing wave, for all the fierce onslaught of Arong and Geum Moa, steadily filled the area and cut them off.

“There is no need to retreat. Reinforcements will be here shortly.”
“Reinforcements?”
“Indeed.”

Shin Hweein answered Geum Moa’s question with composure and, atop the back of his hand, raised a long needle that gave off an ominous red glow.
At the same time the Gatekeeper’s Brand flickered to life, throwing up into the air a vortex that gave off an ill-boding aura, and seeing it, Geum Moa, scarcely able to believe her own eyes, cried out:

“You mean to release yokai into the present world?! That is the worst crime a Gatekeeper could commit!”
“No, Moa. That is not my intention.”

But that is what the yokai of the Specter Realm will think.
No sooner had he set the sorcery in motion than he sensed yokai converging on them from every direction, and Shin Hweein smiled, palely.

“Now then. Let us watch and see which side wins.”

It was one of the by-products yielded by the Onmyo Bureau’s study of the Specter Realm Gates, taught to him by a Hwa-guk onmyoji.
The Yokai-Luring Art, which manipulates a Specter Realm Gate and spreads its emanations to draw great hordes of yokai, was unfolding from his hand.