Chapter 33

“My mom is sick. She keeps… she keeps hurting.”
“I understand. What about you? Does it hurt anymore? You have a lot of bruises.”
“No. I don’t hurt anymore.”

Jun-gyeong quietly nodded.
He was already soaked through by the rain.
But he paid it no mind and continued.

“I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.”
“…Okay. Mr. Seonghwangsin said I shouldn’t worry and should ask you for help.”
“You did well.”

Jun-gyeong stroked the girl’s head and stood.
The girl smiled brightly, as though finally reassured.

“Wait here for a moment. If I’m going to meet your mother, I should change my clothes. I should bring an umbrella for the rain as well.”
“Okay.”

Jun-gyeong went inside, dried himself with a towel, and opened the wardrobe.
It was filled with the clothes he had bought at the department store.
He grabbed a pair of pants and a shirt at random, changed, then returned to the entrance and picked up an umbrella.

Snap- Fwoop!

The large black umbrella opened, and Jun-gyeong took the little girl’s hand and set off.

The man dropped a black duffel bag onto the table.

“Fifty million. This should be enough, right?”
“Oh, Assemblyman. I told you not to say the amount out loud. The spirit doesn’t like hearing it.”
“R-Right. My apologies.”

Despite her words, the shaman dressed in a vividly colored saekdong robe¹ wore a broad smile.

“I’ll make sure the calamity warding is done properly. Take this with you.”

The shaman held out a talisman.
It was made from yellow goehwangji² paper, covered in scrawled writing as red as blood.

“Yes. Your skills have never failed me, so I trust you.”
“Go home and don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

National Assemblyman Lee Gang-seok nodded and stood.
Once she confirmed that the assemblyman had left the room, the shaman picked up the duffel bag and tossed it aside.
Then she lay down with it beneath her head, grinning broadly.

“Making money sure is easy. Hehehe.”

At that moment, a man’s deep voice came from outside the door.

“Shall I prepare everything?”
“Yeah. Bring that bitch’s stuff back in. She just refuses to fucking die. Works out for me, though.”
“Yes.”

As the man moved away, the shaman got up, picked up the bag, and opened a concealed side door beside the shrine.
Then she tossed the bag inside.

Thud.

More than ten bags of similar size were already strewn across the room.

When the shaman sat on the cushion before the shrine, the man returned carrying a forearm-sized doll woven from straw, an iron skewer, and a basin filled with water.

“Put them there and leave.”
“Yes.”

The mountain of a man carefully set everything beside her, then opened the door and left.

The shaman picked up the straw doll and stared at it.
An iron needle had already been driven into each of its limbs, while black hair was wound tightly around its head.

“Strange how she refuses to die. Just a calamity bearer, too. Well, works for me. Means I can keep using her longer.”

The shaman grinned, opened a compartment beneath the shrine, and took out a sheet of hanji³.
Then she took a brush and a container of vivid red cinnabar pigment mixed with dried blood from a drawer beneath the table.
She loaded the tip of the brush with cinnabar.
Then she slowly began writing a name on the hanji.

“Park Mi-jeong.”

Before the red letters had even dried, she chuckled and muttered,

“Talk about rotten luck.”

Brush-

Below the name, the shaman wrote Mi-jeong’s date of birth and Four Pillars^[TL/N: aka Four Pillars of Destiny. Contains your birth year, month, day, and hour form the four pillars of your life’s blueprint..
The moment she finished the final stroke, the air in the room turned cold.

Chime-

The bells hanging from the shrine ceiling began shaking on their own.
Unperturbed, the shaman attached the hanji to the straw doll’s chest.
Then she wound the damp black hair around her finger and tied it tightly around the doll’s neck.

“Bear it for them.”

She picked up the iron skewer.

THK-

The iron skewer pierced the doll’s shoulder.
At the same time, the water in the basin sloshed violently with a clang.
The corner of the shaman’s mouth curled upward.

“Good. Hold on. This one’s a strong one.”

THK- THK-

The iron needles embedded in the doll’s arms and legs sank deeper one by one.
At that moment,
the faint image of a woman’s face appeared on the surface of the water.
It was a middle-aged woman, deathly pale and drenched in cold sweat.

The woman struggled as though something invisible were strangling her.
The shaman clicked her tongue as she looked down at the scene.

“Tsk, tsk. Hurts, doesn’t it? But what can you do? Someone has to bear it in their place.”

She turned, picked up a bell, and slowly shook it.

Jingle- Jingle-

An unnaturally clear chime echoed through the shrine.

“Calamity to the calamity bearer, baleful force to the baleful-force bearer, another’s karma onto another’s back.”

Woooong-

Dark-red energy began rising from the straw doll.
It traveled along the hair, seeped into the name written on the hanji, then stretched toward the face reflected in the basin.

CRACK-!

The woman’s face in the basin twisted in agony.
The shaman watched with satisfaction.

“That’s right. Keep suffering in his place until you die. That way our assemblyman can live a nice, long life.”

Grinning, she placed one final black talisman on the doll’s forehead.

[Substitute Calamity]

It was a talisman that meant another person would bear the calamity in one’s place.

FWOOSH-

The edge of the talisman ignited in a blue flame.
At the same time, somewhere below Namsan, inside a shabby semi-basement room,
a middle-aged woman suddenly vomited blood and collapsed to the floor.

Jun-gyeong was climbing a hill under the child’s guidance.
A neighborhood of villas beneath Namsan.
It was nothing compared to the hill where he had lived before, but it was still no easy route for a child.
As Jun-gyeong followed behind her, his brow furrowed.
He had just felt something ominous brush past him.

“We need to hurry.”
“Okay.”

Jun-gyeong quickened his pace, passed the girl, and began to run.
He no longer needed her to guide him.
To his eyes, now turned red, the threads of causality were clearly visible.
And he could see the baleful force plunging viciously toward the end of those threads.

BANG!

There was no time to wait for the door to be opened.
Jun-gyeong kicked the semi-basement door handle apart with the heel of his shoe and rushed inside.
There, beneath rain-drenched black hair still dripping onto the floor, lay a woman who had collapsed after vomiting blood, her life visibly fading.

The damp air of the semi-basement seemed to tremble.
The smell of blood.
The smell of mold.
And mingled among them, the sickening scent of incense.
Jun-gyeong’s eyes narrowed.

“Incense?”

It was not ordinary ritual incense.
It was the smell of malign incense, used to draw in wronged spirits and amplify baleful force.
It bordered on heterodox sorcery that used the souls of the dead as guides.

Cough-!

The woman coughed up another mouthful of dark-red blood.
Mixed into it were thin black strands as fine as hair.
Without a word, Jun-gyeong grabbed the woman’s wrist.

Sssss-

Qi slowly flowed into her.
At that moment.

Jun-gyeong’s gaze turned cold.

“A calamity bearer…”

He understood immediately.
Someone who was supposed to die, or someone destined for ruin.
Their karma and misfortune were being forcibly transferred onto this woman.

Illness. Accidents. Utter ruin. A fate of death.
This woman alone was being forced to bear all of those calamities in their place.

“Mom… kept getting sick.”

The girl spoke beside him, fighting back tears.

“She’d cough up blood every day… couldn’t breathe… suddenly fall down the stairs… almost get hit by cars…”

Jun-gyeong looked at the dark-red baleful energy wrapped around the woman’s neck.
There were far more than one or two.
Dozens of strands.
Threads of causality clung to her like leeches.
At the end of each one hung another person’s greed.

Some belonged to politicians.
Some to businesspeople.
Some to criminals.
They were shifting the calamities that should have killed them onto this one woman.
Red karmic flames flickered in Jun-gyeong’s eyes.

“What a vile thing to do.”

The dark-red energy wound around the woman’s chest and neck like a snake.
A long line extended from it through the small window and out into the darkness.

Jun-gyeong’s eyes turned cold.
The dark-red energy.
It was no ordinary illness or curse.
It was sal, a baleful force.
A low form of sorcery that forcibly drew out a person’s misfortune and life force, then burned another human being away as their calamity bearer.

“A calamity bearer…”

Jun-gyeong’s voice sank low.
The dark-red demonic energy embedded near the woman’s heart continuously sucked away her life force.
It was like a living parasite.
And at the end of that baleful force, he could feel someone’s greedy desire.

Jun-gyeong summoned his karmic flames and wrapped them around his hand.
Then he seized the energy.

CRACKLE- BZZZT-!

The baleful force writhed as though screaming.
But it didn’t break easily.

‘Not bad.’

Baleful force this tenacious was beyond the level of some neighborhood shaman.
This was the work of an occultist who had fattened her craft on human lives for years.

“Ugh… ngh…”

A groan escaped the woman’s lips.
At the same time.

CRACK-

Jun-gyeong raised his hand and clamped down on the dark-red baleful energy.
The moment he seized it, the causality connected somewhere far away began to tremble violently.

CRAAAAACK!

The karmic flames burst softly across his palm and began traveling backward along the flow of the baleful force.
Jun-gyeong slowly turned his head.
Beyond the rain-streaked window.
A dark-red line of causality stretched deep into the unseen darkness.
Where its end led.
Now he could see it all too clearly.

“Found you.”

And in his eyes,
killing intent slowly emerged.

Inside the shrine room.
The shaman’s face suddenly stiffened.

“What?”

SNAP-!

One of the iron needles embedded in the straw doll suddenly shot free.
The shaman frowned.

“Who dares interfere with my sorcery?!”

At that moment.

FWOOOSH-

Dark-red flames erupted across the entire straw doll.
The shaman recoiled in shock.

The baleful force hadn’t been severed.
It was flowing backward.

“What the fuck…!”

She hurriedly seized the bell and shook it.

JINGLE-JINGLE-JINGLE!!

The talismans on the table rose into the air and poured out black yin energy.
But it was too late.

CRACK!!

An invisible hand seized the thread of causality and began dragging it backward by force.
The straw doll rose into the air and exploded in an instant.

BOOM!!!
“AAAAAH!!”

A scream burst from her mouth.
As she fell backward, the iron skewer shot past her face and buried itself in the floor.
The shaman brought a trembling hand to her face.
Her cheek had been cut, and blood ran down it.
She sprang to her feet and screamed.

“Bring the car!”

She opened the side door beside the shrine and began throwing the bags outside.
She was rushing, but her trembling body made it difficult to move properly.
After barely gathering the bags of money, she carried them out of the shrine.
The man’s car was waiting with its trunk open toward the shrine.
The shaman threw every bag into the trunk and climbed into the back seat.

“Go! Go!”

Without a word, the man started driving.

VROOOM-

The luxury sedan roared away from the shrine at high speed.

The shaman let out a long breath and pulled out her phone.
She quickly scrolled through her contacts.
Finally finding the name she wanted, she tapped it.

-Oh my, Bodhisattva Jeong.
“Yes, Deputy Chief. I hope you’ve been well.”
-Can’t complain. But what brings you to call me at this hour?
“I… have something urgent to discuss with you.”
-With me?
“Yes.”
-Ahahaha! Sounds like you’ve run into some trouble. All right. If it’s your problem, Bodhisattva Jeong, then naturally I have to step in. Where shall we meet?
“Let’s meet at the villa in Yangpyeong. You remember it, don’t you? The place where I performed that killing-curse ritual for you last time.”

The Deputy Chief Prosecutor fell quiet for a moment.
He knew the place.
But he wondered why Bodhisattva Jeong had deliberately mentioned what they had done there.

-Yes, I know it. Understood. I’ll head there right away.

The reason was obvious enough.
It meant, ‘Get here quickly and fix this. I’m in trouble.’
That was undoubtedly why she had deliberately reminded him of the killing-curse ritual used to kill people.
It had certainly gotten the message across.

Deputy Chief Prosecutor Kim Tae-ho spoke to the investigators as he left his office.

“Everyone, go home.”
“Yes, Deputy Chief.”

After leaving the main office, he took out his phone again as he walked toward the parking lot.

“Yeah, it’s me. Get some men ready and send them to Yangpyeong.”

After making the call, he got into his car and headed for Yangpyeong.