Side Story 20. Gyun-go And Nok-su (4)

“Uh, uaaah!”

Jang Man-chun splashed about in a panic.
With rain falling this hard, it was only natural for water to pool on the ground.
But it was easy to tell that what had pooled around their feet was not ordinary rainwater.
It was because of that green color.
That color must have come from it having sat there for so long that it had turned muddy, along with the tiny plantlike microorganisms living in it and the drifting remains of grass.

It was a swamp.
The swamp was green.
It smelled of grass, like some essence distilled by melting down the forest.

“We have to get out of here quickly. For now, somewhere higher…….”

Jang Man-chun said that.
They had said that if the swamp appeared, then the yokai called Nok-su would appear as well.
Since they had said one could not dare face that yokai unless the day was clear, Jang Man-chun moved without waiting for Cheongho’s reply.
Cheongho followed after him.

Jjeojeojeong!

Lightning struck, and the surroundings lit up.
Jang Man-chun’s face turned deathly pale.
He strode forward almost at a run, then hesitated and changed direction.

“Th-this way.”

But he was forced to stop again before going very far that way either.

“This definitely isn’t the kind of place where there should be a swamp…….”

Whenever they tried to move forward to escape, green water had pooled there.
Even when they detoured to avoid it, it was the same.
It felt as though they were trapped on an island.
As though every direction led to a shoreline, no matter where they went, the swamp blocked their path.
Jang Man-chun trembled in fear, feeling as though he were slowly sinking into the swamp.

“The water probably hasn’t pooled that deeply yet.”

At this rate, they would end up completely trapped.
Saying that, Jang Man-chun splashed through the swamp.
Then, after taking about twenty steps, one of his feet sank straight down.

“Ugh, gh!”

He hurriedly tried to plant his other foot and push himself up, but that foot sank down too.
Had the dry ground turned into muck? In the end, he lost his balance and fell, bracing himself with his hand.
Then even that hand sank in.

“Uaaaagh!”

In an instant, his legs were buried up to the knees.
It was bizarre. The more he tried to free himself, the more Jang Man-chun sank.
How agonizing would it be to be buried alive in a swamp.
As Jang Man-chun screamed, someone grabbed his wrist.

“Hold on tight.”

Cheongho pulled Jang Man-chun up.
Jang Man-chun might have weighed nearly twice as much as Cheongho, but Cheongho rescued him easily.
But Jang Man-chun could not call that process easy.

“L-let’s go back!”

Without even having time to thank him, he hurried back the way they had come.
In the end, all they could do was hold out on higher ground.
Soaked through with rain and mud, he trembled all over.
The two of them climbed onto a rock where the bedrock jutted out bare.
Jang Man-chun wailed.

“We’re completely trapped. We’re going to die here!”

Then Cheongho slapped Jang Man-chun across the face.

Jjaak!

“Get a hold of yourself.”
“Aagh, no, why are you hitti—”

Jjaak!

“Get a hold of yourself.”
“I’ve got it. I’ve got a hold of myself!”

The slap really was effective. The shock, enough to make his molars rattle, calmed Jang Man-chun down.

“R-right. For now, at least, we should be alright up here on this rock.”

He had felt with his own body how dangerous the swamp was.
Setting aside the yokai that might appear, at least they could wait here for the rain to stop.
The more it rained, the more the green swamp spread.
The rock was wide enough for about two carriages to stand on.
It was also about waist-high, so the rising water should be alright.
No matter how much it rained, surely it would not flood that badly.
His legs gave out, and Jang Man-chun collapsed onto the rock.

“You should sit and rest for a bit.”
“I’m fine.”

But Cheongho remained standing instead of sitting.
There was nothing to shield him from the rain, so the downpour drenched him thoroughly.
Cheongho brushed back his soaked hair, then looked around.
Sitting there blankly, Jang Man-chun watched what Cheongho was doing.

Cheongho pricked up his ears.
People couldn’t do something like that.

‘Just like a wild animal.’

Moving one’s ears like that was something only animals could do.
As he stared blankly, Cheongho suddenly whipped his head around.
There was nothing there. Only the dark forest and swamp stretched out in that direction.
Then Cheongho spoke quietly.

“It’s coming.”

Jang Man-chun had been sitting there dazed, then jerked in alarm.

“What? Coming? What is! Is the yokai coming!”
“It’s coming this way.”

Jang Man-chun looked where Cheongho was staring too, but he could not see any yokai.
As he kept staring into that dark, distant space between the trees.

Hududeudeuk.

Leaves rustled down in a flurry, and the mountain birds all took flight at once.
Then several boars splashed away in retreat.
Mountain mice with nowhere left to flee clung to them, and a deer bounded away.
Jang Man-chun had seen something like that before too.
When a great tiger appeared, the whole forest behaved as if terrified like this.

Jang Man-chun quietly retreated behind Cheongho.
Whatever was about to appear was surely more dangerous than a great tiger……

“……What the?”

But nothing leapt out.
Unlike the birds taking flight and the animals fleeing, no yokai appeared.
A tense silence hung for a moment.

Cheolbeok.

At the sound of water, Jang Man-chun looked down at his feet.

“Huhk!”

Something unbelievable had happened.
The swamp pooled below the rock was slowly creeping up the sides of it.
Like a living thing, the green liquid defied gravity and climbed upward, wrapping itself around Jang Man-chun’s ankle.

Then the swamp lifted Jang Man-chun up.
It truly did. Jang Man-chun was hoisted upside down by a stream of living water.

“Uaaaagh!”

Cheongho swung his saber.
With a sharp shik, the stream of water was cut in two.
But it was useless.

‘You can’t deal with it using a blade.’

The Guild Master of the Three Pleasures Butchering Guild had been right.
As the saying went, cutting water with a sword, the stream split apart only to join again.
Cheongho couldn’t rescue Jang Man-chun.
Jang Man-chun, still held by the ankle, was slammed down into the ground.

Puh-eong!

Water exploded upward in a spray.
The brutal impact knocked Jang Man-chun unconscious.
The stream of water held the unconscious Jang Man-chun suspended in midair.

Cheongho glared at the stream of water.
It was Nok-su.
The yokai was here.
Sure enough, bubbles began rising from the swamp.
The surface bulged upward, and a monster appeared.
It was a monster that looked as though it had been made by gathering together the rotting, filthy mud from the bottom of the swamp.

“Hoo, hee, hee.”

It sounded as though it were mocking them.
On a rainy day, there was nothing that could stop Nok-su.
Nok-su, having first taken down Jang Man-chun, would normally have begun its ‘meal.’
It would shove Jang Man-chun into the body that was half swamp, and as he rotted and dissolved, the swamp would flourish.

Cheongho looked at the yokai before him.
He knew at once.

‘I can’t beat it.’

Just as martial artists who had reached a certain realm gave off invisible pressure, yokai too gave off yokai energy.
The yokai called Nok-su possessed tremendous yokai energy.
It was enough to make his body tingle. The wild animals hadn’t fled for nothing.

“Hee, hoo, hoo.”

Nok-su looked at Cheongho while making a strange windlike sound.
It didn’t attack him right away.
Was it because it had already caught Jang Man-chun?
Nok-su extended several streams of water like arms and made them drift around Cheongho.

Cheongho looked at Jang Man-chun.
His whole body was wrapped in water. He probably couldn’t breathe.
Nok-su seemed to be toying with him.
And soon it would likely devour Cheongho as well.

Cheongho considered several possible methods.
Attack Nok-su, rescue Jang Man-chun, or flee alone.

‘…….’

None of them were possible.
Nok-su extended dozens of streams of water from its body.
They writhed like the feelers of a snail as they probed toward Cheongho.

Tteolgeureong-

Cheongho let his saber fall.
The streams twitched, then reached for and wrapped around the saber Cheongho had dropped.
Slowly, they reached his body too.
Had Cheongho dropped his saber because he was frightened or had lost the will to fight?
That wasn’t it.
It was not an enemy he could fight with a blade anyway.

‘……She told me not to do this unless I absolutely had to.’

When Cheongho had resolved that he wanted to become human, Yinglong had given him advice.
If he wanted to become human, then he had to cast aside the self that was a yokai. He was not to draw recklessly on a yokai’s power.

Yinglong made prophecies.
She had told Yi-gang that he would be able to defeat the Evil Cult and save the world, but that he would die in return.
And that prophecy had come true.

In the same way, Yinglong had made a prophecy to Cheongho as well.
‘One day, after you come to understand the human heart, you will once again have to choose whether to remain a yokai or remain human.’ That was what she had said.
Then was now that time?
Probably not. Cheongho still had not come to understand humans.

Seureureuk-

Nok-su’s streams of water wrapped themselves around Cheongho’s whole body.
Not only could he no longer breathe, but if Nok-su applied force, Cheongho’s whole body would be crushed.

In that case.

‘If a situation comes that you cannot handle.’

Then, just as Yinglong had advised.

‘You need only bare your fangs for a very brief moment.’

Cheongho did exactly that.
Blue ears rose up from among his dark navy hair.
His eyes shone a vivid blue, and his fangs sharpened.
Four white tails, impossible for any human, emerged and swayed behind him.
If Jang Man-chun had been conscious to see that moment, he would have collapsed from shock.

And above all, Cheongho released his yokai energy.
The yokai energy fitting a great yokai, the Heavenly Thunder White-Tailed Fox.
The streams of water wrapped around Cheongho lost their shape and slapped down onto the ground.
The stream holding Jang Man-chun did the same.
The streams serving as Nok-su’s arms and legs all melted away at once.

The yokai was left with only its gaunt, mudlike main body.
It trembled faintly, appalled by the presence it felt from Cheongho.
Its power might have been formidable, but it was a yokai without roots.
How could a mongrel born from yokai energy that leaked out after the world twisted, be bold before a true great yokai?

To that trembling insignificant thing, Cheongho gave an order of dismissal.

“Get lost.”

And Nok-su’s body melted away.
In an instant, like a frightened turtle diving into water.

“…….”

Cheongho also suppressed the yokai energy he had been releasing.
In truth, it wasn’t easy for him either.
The body he had now was something like a miracle, beyond mere sorcery.
It was a human body he had obtained with great difficulty. If he released any more yokai energy, he would return to being a yokai.

Cheongho barely managed to restrain it.

Tududduk, tuk.

In the meantime, the rain stopped.
Perhaps Nok-su had fled far away altogether, because the green swamp pooling on the ground vanished in an instant too.

“Mister.”

It was when Cheongho climbed down from the rock to wake Jang Man-chun, who lay unconscious with his rear sticking up in the air.
He came to an abrupt stop.
Something had been left behind where Nok-su had vanished just moments before.

“……What is this?”

There was something gleaming in the mud.
It was a purple crystal shard no bigger than a fingernail.
It was clearly different from an internal core, yet it carried a tremendous amount of yokai energy.
As Cheongho widened his eyes and looked at it.

“Guuuuh.”

Jang Man-chun woke up.

“You’re awake?”
“Wh-where are we?”

Fortunately, he didn’t seem badly hurt.
Without thinking much of it, Cheongho tucked the purple crystal shard into his clothes.

“Wh-where did that thing go?”
“I drove it away.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”

Cheongho helped Jang Man-chun to his feet.

It was only after they arrived at Azure Forest.
Did he learn the true nature of that purple crystal shard.

And at Azure Forest.
Three days before Cheongho arrived.
Yu Su-rin, the Taoist Flower Disciple who was revered by all the third-generation disciples, was in a very difficult situation because of her Martial Uncle Dam Hyun.