Chapter 35

Bosal Jeong gathered power at the tip of her brush and chanted an incantation in a low, eerie voice.

“Rebound the force and reverse the poison, let the five directions know its Qi. Let the thread of causality become a trail of blood.”

Blood-red characters drawn in cinnabar pigment writhed grotesquely in the wake of her brush.
Bosal Jeong’s breathing quickened as she drove the final stroke down hard.

“If the Karmic Poison of the one who rebounded my sal encroaches upon this ground, let the cinnabar bleed and the yellow paper burn! Swiftly, swiftly, as the law commands!”

Crackle!

The moment the incantation ended, the lights in the living room flickered.
Cold yin energy poured from the talisman on the table along with the heavy scent of incense.
The Deputy Chief Prosecutor watched with a frown.
He had seen things like this before, but alongside the strange malevolent energy, he could feel an aura that made him instinctively hesitate to approach.

Bosal Jeong wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and pointed at the talisman.

“This works even without knowing their Four Pillars of birth. Whoever it was forcibly rebounded my sal, so the causality between them and my sorcery is already connected by a thread.”
“So? What does that thing actually do?”
“When that shaman bitch who sent the rebound comes near this villa, the talisman will signal me.”

The corner of Bosal Jeong’s mouth twisted upward.

“It means I’ll have her by the neck before she even finds me. So use your Seocho-dong connections, gangsters, cops, whoever you have. The moment that bitch opens this door, be ready to blow her head off.”
“Well, if you’ve got a way to do that.”

The Deputy Chief Prosecutor casually picked up his phone.

“I’ll send you the address. Come right away.”

Then he slowly typed out a message and sent it.
Bosal Jeong didn’t ask who he had called or how many were coming.
She assumed he had called the right people.

Before long, two vans pulled into the villa courtyard and stopped side by side.
The murmur of approaching voices followed.
A group of men in black suits.
Gangsters.

A large man who appeared to be their leader entered the villa and bowed.

“Hello, sir.”

The Deputy Chief Prosecutor raised one hand in acknowledgment and stood.

“Yeah. Spread out and hide around the courtyard. Someone might show up soon. When they do, grab them and beat the hell out of them.”

The gangster raised his wrist, glanced at his gleaming watch, and said,

“The sun will be up soon, sir.”
“I know. That’s why I called you here.”

The prosecutor glanced at Bosal Jeong and continued.

“If we’re lucky, something might happen before sunrise.”
“Yes, understood.”

The gangster went back outside, and the prosecutor leaned into the sofa.

“I’m putting this on your tab.”
“…Fine. I’ll remember it.”

Only then did Bosal Jeong begin to relax.
In the end, her opponent was still just some shaman bitch.
Maybe even a male shaman.
Either way, they were still an ordinary human. There was no way they could handle a gang of hardened thugs.

“We just need to catch them and kill them.”
“Don’t worry about that.”

A murderous smile spread across the prosecutor’s face.
At that moment, the writing on the talisman atop the table began to melt and run.
Then it suddenly burst into flames.

“A-Already? That’s impossible. How could they get here this fast?”

Bosal Jeong’s face turned pale.
Her gaze snapped toward the courtyard beyond the picture window.

Crunch-

A black Mercedes rolled in over the crushed gravel, and Jun-gyeong stepped out.

“Stay in the car.”
“…Yes.”

Jun-gyeong spread out his senses and swept them across the courtyard and villa.
The men hiding throughout the courtyard revealed themselves to his senses as clearly as if he could see them.
So did the shaman inside the villa.

“They’ve certainly prepared quite a welcome.”

Jun-gyeong slipped his hands into his pants pockets and slowly walked forward.
A gangster openly guarding the front door approached him.

“Hey. Why don’t you just turn around?”

Jun-gyeong tilted his head and looked at him.

“We only came because we can’t exactly say no to the old man, but we don’t really like roughing up ordinary civilians. So just turn around. Don’t get yourself hurt.”

A faint smile appeared on Jun-gyeong’s face.

“That’s fortunate.”
“What?”
“Looks like I won’t have to kill you.”

Jun-gyeong read the Book of Karmic Sin floating above the man’s head.
He had plenty of convictions for violence, but there was no murder listed.
His Sin Level was only at Caution.
There was no particular need to kill him.
Jun-gyeong walked past him toward the front door.
Halfway there, he stopped and drew a line across the ground with the toe of his shoe.

“Don’t cross this line. Once you do, it stops being a fight. Tell the ones hiding too.”

Jun-gyeong turned back toward the entrance.
The gangster let out a long sigh and flicked his wrist.

“Can’t be helped. Get him.”

At his signal, gangsters burst out from all sides.
They rushed Jun-gyeong at once.
Jun-gyeong watched until they crossed the line, then moved.
There was no need to use internal energy against ordinary gangsters.
He ducked beneath an incoming punch and closed the distance.
Then he drove his palm into the man’s jaw.

THWACK-!

With a meaty crack, the man went tumbling across the ground.
At the same time, Jun-gyeong swept the ankle of another man lunging in from the side.
As the man flew into the air, Jun-gyeong drove a fist into the armpit of another attacker charging from beside him.

THUD!
“Kgh!”

He slapped aside an incoming fist and drove his own into the man’s philtrum.
At the same time, he spun sideways and smashed his elbow into the temple of the man beside him.

CRACK-!

Dropping low and gliding across the ground, Jun-gyeong slipped behind another gangster and struck the back of his knee.
Then he smashed the kneeling man’s jaw.

THWACK!
“Gah!”

At the same time, Jun-gyeong launched himself into the air.
His leg shot out.
At the end of it was a gangster’s head.

CRACK! THUD-THUD-

In an instant, the courtyard was littered with gangsters sprawled across the ground.
Jun-gyeong landed, slipped his hands back into his pockets, and looked at their leader.

“Last warning. Don’t cross the line. Next time, you really will die.”

Without waiting for an answer, Jun-gyeong headed for the villa entrance again.
The gang leader couldn’t move.
He could only stare blankly at Jun-gyeong’s retreating back.
It was only a corrupt prosecutor.
Crossing him might land the gangster in prison, but crossing the man walking away from him now felt like it could cost him far more than prison. He wasn’t even sure he’d remain alive in this world.
He suddenly looked down at his own hand.
It was trembling with fear.
He looked once more at Jun-gyeong’s back.

When Jun-gyeong pushed open the front door, a huge man blocked his path.
He was not much different from the gangsters outside.

Grab-

The man grabbed Jun-gyeong by the throat.
Jun-gyeong glanced at the hand, then raised his eyes to meet the man’s gaze.

“Let go.”

The man’s hand didn’t budge.
Instead, he tightened his grip.
A smile appeared on Jun-gyeong’s face.

SWISH- THWACK!!

It happened in an instant.
Jun-gyeong’s palm struck the man’s jaw, and his eyes instantly went dull.
He swayed, then crashed to the floor with a bang.

When Jun-gyeong stepped inside, he saw the Deputy Chief Prosecutor and the shaman sitting in the living room.
The prosecutor looked as though he had already given up, while the shaman avoided Jun-gyeong’s gaze and clutched her designer handbag tightly.
Jun-gyeong read the Books of Karmic Sin above their heads and gave a faint chuckle.

“Kim Tae-ho. Jeong Da-hye.”

Both of them flinched.
Neither had imagined that he would know their names.
He shouldn’t have known their Four Pillars.
No, if he had known them, there would have been no need for him to come here at all.
He could simply have sent sal at them from afar.

Bosal Jeong made up her mind completely.
An enemy who knew her name.
Then she had to kill him.
The thought that she had to kill him by any means necessary if she wanted to survive consumed her mind.
Her eyes bulged as she glared at Jun-gyeong.

“Die! Die! Die!”

At the same time, she pulled talismans from her handbag and hurled them at Jun-gyeong.
Jun-gyeong’s eyes narrowed.
Among the flying talismans was a genuine mass of sal.
He reached out and seized it.

CRACKLE-!

Jeong Da-hye’s eyes widened until they seemed ready to split.

“H-How… How did you grab sal with your bare hand…?”

It was impossible.
This was not some visible arrow. Sal was a mass of yin energy invisible to ordinary eyes.
A human being couldn’t see it and catch it with their bare hand.
Yet that was exactly what had just happened before her eyes.
She stumbled backward.
Jun-gyeong simply let her.
No matter how much she struggled, she was only a shaman.
One with no power of her own.

His gaze shifted away from Jeong Da-hye and returned to Prosecutor Kim Tae-ho.

“I won’t kill you either. But I will make certain you answer for your karma.”

Jun-gyeong placed a hand atop his head.

“GRAAAAAAGH!!!”

Kim Tae-ho screamed and collapsed to the floor.
He twisted in agony.

“AAAAH! Spare me! Please!”

Jun-gyeong looked down at him coldly and spoke in a low voice.

“You will suffer nightmares for the rest of your life. You will return to the prosecution and expose its corruption with your own hands, then destroy yourself piece by piece. Pay for every sin you’ve accumulated in this life, then fall into Hell.”

The rest of his life would be hell, and when that life finally ended, Hell would still be waiting for him.

Only then did Jun-gyeong turn his gaze toward Jeong Da-hye.

“Don’t come any closer! Stay back!”

As a final act of desperation, she dug into the corner of the handbag clutched against her chest and pulled out a talisman.

“I-If I use this, I’ll get hurt too, but you’ll die. You’ll definitely die! So stay back! I said don’t come any closer!”

Jun-gyeong ignored her and kept walking forward.
With trembling hands, she took out a lighter and set the talisman on fire.
The moment the goehwangji caught fire, it blazed up, rose into the air, and turned to ash.

“Heaven above, earth below, open the path of Yin. Great warrior spirit who thirsts for blood and devours sal, come, come! Heaven above, earth below, open the path of Yin!”

As Jeong Da-hye rattled off the incantation, the ash floating in the air settled onto the floor and began forming a pattern.

“Wronged spirit of Kang Jun-gyeong, the military commander who stained Goryeo’s northern frontier with blood! I offer you this vessel of strong flesh and blood…”

As Jun-gyeong listened, something about it struck him as strange.
But then the huge man lying on the floor began convulsing, and an agonized scream unlike anything a human should have been able to produce tore from his throat.
Dark-red yin energy poured violently into his nose, mouth, and ears.

“Come, God of Slaughter of Goryeo! Swiftly, swiftly, as the law commands!”

KRAAAABOOM!

With the final cry, every light in the living room burst at once with a shower of sparks.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Only the blue flames of the burning talisman illuminated the huge man.

At some point, the bodyguard’s screams stopped abruptly, though his limbs had been twisting wildly moments before.
His body had swollen to nearly twice its former size, and his suit jacket tore apart beneath muscles that bulged as though ready to burst.
As the man slowly raised his head, unfocused blood-red light blazed in his eyes.

Step. Step.

The man reached out with one hand and drew the real sword hanging decoratively on the living room wall.
The blade scraped across the floor with a skin-crawling metallic shriek.

“…How long has it been since I last held a sword?”

A low voice emerged from the bodyguard’s mouth, sounding as though it echoed from deep within a tomb.

Bosal Jeong stretched a hand toward the sword-wielding monster with a crazed smile.

“General! Take that bastard’s head! Strike down that barbarian and save your people!”

Jeong Da-hye’s voice, still full of confidence, rang through the living room.
At the same time, the possessed man turned his head toward Jun-gyeong.
Then he raised his sword and pointed it at him.