1440 - Chapter 53

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 53
“Are you Buddha? Jesus? Why are you putting yourself through such hardship?”
“I want to get stronger quickly.”
“What?”
Wanting to get stronger. Deokwoo’s eyes widened, then closed with a small sigh. It seemed like the kind of thing a child who idolized a robot manga protagonist might say, but what did any of this mean?
“You want to go home?”
Yeonsu answered with a faint smile.
“…… I hate calling it home, but yes, I want to go back.”
“Because of that man?”
“Yes.”
Then Deokwoo hesitated for a moment before asking—a question she’d been curious about for a very long time, it seemed.
“But why did you receive the Descent at twenty? You said you were severely ill before that.”
Yeonsu took a moment to collect her thoughts before answering carefully.
“So I wouldn’t be exploited. If I’d undergone the Gut Ritual while still a minor, before I had any autonomy, I would have been used however my father saw fit. Then I wouldn’t be able to freely prepare for what I need to do the way I am now.”
“That’s also for that man, isn’t it? Being able to freely…… do what you need to do.”
Yeonsu smiled quietly at Deokwoo’s words.
Since they’d become Spiritual Siblings three years ago, they’d had this conversation again and again. So Deokwoo simply closed her mouth. When it came to that man, she already knew from experience just how deaf Yeonsu could pretend to be.
No matter how much she told her not to push herself, no matter how much their mother stepped in to stop her—the result was always the same. There was no getting through to her.
“Ugh. Then what more can I say? At least eat well before you go. Who knows when you’ll be back down.”
“I’ll be down soon. I’m going up and back the same day—I’ll be down before sunrise.”
“Oh, that’s unusual for you? Then let’s go into the city together tomorrow after you wake up. I want to buy some clothes and need you to look them over.”
The same girl who’d been nagging her to rest a moment ago was now asking her to go shopping. It was so fitting for someone her age—twenty-four—that Yeonsu laughed.
Deokwoo, who had received the Heavenly Maiden Spirit strongly, was particularly attentive to how she dressed herself. At least she wasn’t dressing in an overly feminine way—that was a relief. If Deokwoo, who was nearly as tall as Yeonsu, had dolled herself up in feminine styling, it would have been rather unsettling.
Once Yeonsu agreed, Deokwoo even linked their fingers to seal the promise before leaving the Prayer Hall. Yeonsu saw her Spiritual Sister off, then soon rose to prepare for her ascent into the mountains.
In the morning, she climbs the mountain to the prayer site prepared at its peak. The Mountain Peak has the advantage of being a place where earth and sky touch, allowing her to offer prayers to both the Earth Deity and the Heavenly Deity. After praying until the Chuk hour passes, she descends from the mountain.
This was the cultivation plan she had decided on for the day.
Yeonsu climbed the mountain without difficulty. She was well accustomed to the ascent now. The path known only to shamans—not the one used by ordinary hikers—was considerably more treacherous. Yet she had grown familiar enough with the mountain trails to carry ritual food on her back as she climbed.
The mountains embrace people. The sea swallows them. Whether embracing or swallowing, both are forms of holding and encompassing, but whether that embrace brings life or death depends on the intention behind it.
Yeonsu understood this very well. So today, she offered her prayers and ritual devotions with complete focus, to the point of satisfying both the spirits and herself.
So no matter how dark the night, she shouldn’t have found herself wandering like this.
“…… It seems I’ve been enchanted.”
Yeonsu laughed hollowly and stopped in her tracks. The tree her hand was resting on had the red string she’d tied there hanging from it. It meant she’d walked in a circle and returned to the same place.
51
Being enchanted by a Mountain Spirit is dangerous. It may sound like a simple statement, but it’s the same as the saying that if you’re enchanted by a Water Ghost, you won’t die a natural death.
They rank higher than vengeful spirits—closer to yokai, if anything. Not quite spirits that have ascended to divinity, but trifling entities stronger than mere ghosts.
That ambiguous energy between spirit and ghost, born of nature itself, moves in ways fundamentally different from human emotion, making it far harder to predict. That’s what made it so troublesome.
Unlike vengeful spirits, who ascend once their grudges and resentments are resolved, yokai simply torment humans for amusement.
Yeonsu stood still, rotating her ankles and loosening her body. She might have to run, but on this dark mountainside, especially on a downward slope, not falling was the most important thing.
“Let me try again.”
As soon as she took a step forward, a voice rang out.
“Where are you going? I came down because I wanted to play with you, but where are you heading?”
“…… .”
Yeonsu’s feet stopped dead. She was definitely enchanted. The voice echoed through her head with crystal clarity.
Yeonsu quickly picked up a stone at her feet. Choosing one with jagged edges, she clenched it tightly in her palm. The sharp stone pressed against her skin, snapping her mind awake.
Yeonsu didn’t respond to the voice. Instead, she moved her feet slowly forward, one hand gripping the stone, the other gripping her sword—her ritual implement.
“Hey, where are you going? I said I came down because I wanted to play with you. Where’s big brother going?”
The Mountain Spirit suddenly changed its voice. And seizing the moment of her surprise, a small hand shot out and grabbed her ankle hard.
‘Ungh!’
It happened right where the ground dropped away sharply ahead. Her foot, landing desperately, struck empty air, and her body pitched forward.
Crack-snap, thud, thud! Thud!!
Her body shattered branches and crashed against rocks as she tumbled down wildly. Even as she fell, one hand cradled her face while the other clung to her sword at her waist, refusing to let it go.
After a long tumble downward, Yeonsu’s body caught on a large tree root and stopped.
‘Haack! Huh, huh-ugh. Ungh…….’
The pain was unbearable. It felt as though every bone in her body had shattered—not as a figure of speech, but literally felt that way. The ankle that had been grabbed throbbed as if broken, and she couldn’t move.
‘Ugh…… ah, ungh, I’m losing my mind…….’
“You’re losing your mind? Is it fun going crazy? I’m having fun playing with big brother too. Don’t go. Don’t go—play with me instead, won’t you?”
Yeonsu absolutely refused to answer that voice. But the voice was equally relentless, continuing to speak.
Whenever Yeonsu tried to move away, hook-like hands shot out and seized the hem of her clothes. They pulled with enough force to choke, while the laughter shifted from that of a raspy old man to that of a small girl again.
“Kahahahahaha-kerrrruck, I said don’t go.”
Small hands reached for her ankle again. Those eerie fingers, which had been stroking softly below her ankle bone, now gripped her foot and yanked hard. There came a sickening crunch as her ankle dislocated.
“……!”
Yeonsu clamped her teeth shut, swallowing the scream that threatened to tear free. Cold sweat poured down her face. A chill raced along her spine, and genuine terror soaked her clothes through. In her mind, a voice laced with dread echoed again and again.
“Let’s play, let’s play together. Will you play with me?”
Through eyes squeezed shut against pain and fear, then wrenched open, Yeonsu saw it: a corpse wrapped tightly in blood-stained hemp cloth, laid before her. She stared at it, her eyes wide with shock. Her gaze traveled slowly—from the head, down the neck, across the shoulders, along the arms—until it stopped at the fingertips.
Where the hemp cloth had come loose, the corpse’s hand was barely visible. A woman’s hand: joints swollen with inflammation, twisted and gnarled from years of hard labor.
Yeonsu’s eyes darted urgently to the left leg of the corpse. It bent at an unnatural angle. Even bound so tightly in hemp cloth, the deformity was unmistakable—one leg was visibly shorter than the other.
“Mother…….”
Mother. Mother.
Yeonsu repeated the word like a prayer, her fingers fumbling at the blood-stained hemp. The corpse felt hard as wood beneath her touch.
Shoulders so small. A frame so thin, so fragile. My mother.
With legs that would not obey her, she crawled desperately forward and pulled her mother’s corpse into her embrace. She did not ask herself why. She did not remember that just this morning she had seen her mother, whole and alive.
Only rage upon rage, only sorrow layered upon sorrow. Emotion alone consumed her body and stripped away reason.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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