1440 - Chapter 64

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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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Chapter 64
A thick killing intent permeated the space. Some of it clung to the men themselves, but most came from the vengeful spirits that had been prowling outside, unable to breach the Baekga barrier—until now.
Vengeful spirits that had wailed in resentment, unable to sever the Baek family line.
The fact that they had finally made their way inside the house meant one thing: the barrier surrounding Baekga had shattered.
“Seize them!”
“Yes, sir!”
The man who appeared to hold the highest rank kept one hand stuffed in his pocket as he kicked over a vase worth tens of millions of won. His subordinates moved with military precision, pinning Baek Ineumm and Yeonhyung against the walls. Miju and the daughter-in-law were handled with equal brutality.
“Ugh! Stop, please—guh!”
“Ahhh! Let go, don’t—stop!”
The four resisted fiercely, but the men showed no mercy, systematically beating down not only them but the main household staff as well.
It was impossible to tell who had sent these thugs.
Was it Maximod? Or Park Geon-hu? Or perhaps some politician or industrialist connected to the Baek family, still hidden, trying to silence witnesses?
Having done business with so many people, there was no way to know who had hired these men to beat them to death.
The Baek family, unable to use scapegoat offerings, were no different from ordinary people with slightly opened spiritual sight and a modest sensitivity to energy. Foolishly confident in their own home, they carried not a single talisman for protection, and thus fell completely helpless before the thugs’ assault. All they could do was curl into balls, shielding their heads and vital organs.
The pain they had never truly considered when they themselves had committed such cruelty, harming others through their schemes from a distance. They had never had to witness how much their victims suffered, how they wailed and died. So they had thought nothing of it.
But now, experiencing firsthand the agony and terror that came moments before death, they discovered that even a single kick could draw tears from their eyes—such was the intensity of the hurt. How weak and contemptible they were in their suffering.
When the Baek men could scream no longer and collapsed to the floor, it was the vengeful spirits that had been waiting for them that descended next.
Large, black, formless things—already stripped of all human shape—swarmed over Ineumm, Yeonhyung, and Miju.
“Gahhh, guh……”
With their windpipes crushed and a piercing malevolent will pouring into their bodies, the three convulsed on the ground, clutching at their throats. Naturally, no one came to save them.
“What is this? Another house? A storage shed?”
One of the thugs tearing through the main house discovered the Annex Building accessible through the back door. Another thug immediately suggested checking it out.
“He said we could take anything we find, didn’t he? Who knows? Might find something good. Money, gold, or maybe a woman.”
“Last one sounds the most promising, doesn’t it?”
“This bastard acts so righteous, doesn’t he?”
The two large men jostled each other as they squeezed through the narrow back door, then pushed through overgrown weeds toward the Annex Building.
To the untrained eye, it looked less like an annex and more like a dilapidated storage shed. The sinister aura it gave off made both men hesitate at the threshold, eyeing each other nervously.
Then the one who’d mentioned the woman puffed out his chest to show his nerve.
“Ah, shit—it’s just a haunted house, right?”
Thwack!
“Aaargh!”
The man who’d kicked the door staggered backward as if he’d struck a boulder. He fell hard on his back, and his ankle immediately began to swell. He screamed in pain, gripping the swollen joint.
“Aaahh! Damn it, my leg!”
“What? What happened?!”
The other thug, standing ready to smash his way inside, stared down at his collapsed partner in shock. Then he looked back at the door.
It was an old wooden door that should have crumbled with one good kick. Yet his friend lay there as if he’d kicked a reinforced safe, holding his broken ankle and crying.
The worn wooden planks remained untouched, unmarked by even a scratch on their flimsy lock, standing as firmly and quietly as if no foot had ever dared strike them.
***
Inside the Annex Building, in a narrow hallway, Kim Hyewon—the employee who regularly visited to tend to things—knelt in meditation.
She too possessed divine power, though faint. By nature she should have been a divine vessel, meant to receive a god. But her shaman’s illness had made her body too fragile to undergo Divine Descent. Her in-laws had thrown tantrums, threatening to cast out their daughter-in-law immediately if she ever became a mudang.
So, like all rejected vessels, her body had begun to weaken over time. And then, of all moments, she had discovered she was pregnant.
It was an unplanned pregnancy, but Hyewon had been overjoyed.
She had thought herself barren. Until her mid-thirties, she had tried everything, only to fail. Her mother-in-law’s cruel words—”Isn’t it because you’re possessed by a ghost that you can’t conceive?”—had been a constant wound.
Yet the child she had longed for so desperately had finally found its way to her.
From that moment, Hyewon had done her best to protect her body. But she still needed to earn money to eat. Her husband had squandered everything by running for office, and after that shock, he hadn’t left his corner of the house or worked a day since.
Now she had a child to birth, yet he showed no sign of support. So Hyewon had to step up and earn as much as she could, as stably as possible.
In that regard, the Baek household—with their Shaman’s Wife and all—had been good work. In a remote corner of Hongcheon where jobs were scarce, it was one of the few positions that paid decently. The work itself required discretion, so they paid well to ensure silence.
Though the household had a twisted air about it, she had no other choice. Transferring to the Annex Building—relatively quieter—had been her best option.
Others avoided working there, calling it an ominous place. But Hyewon didn’t mind the darkness if it meant escaping the main family’s hysterical outbursts and mood swings. She’d been assigned to the Annex without incident and begun her work.
But perhaps because she was already so weak when the pregnancy came, Hyewon began to feel her unborn child’s life force slowly fading.
Her body’s weakness contributed to it, as did the shaman’s illness that kept gnawing at her from her rejected Descent. But worst of all was the energy of this house.
No matter how many protective charms she carried, she could not fully shield herself from the twisted aura of the vengeful spirits who had met untimely deaths through scapegoat offerings. Added to that were the regular visits from divine messengers searching for souls who had died before their time—their presence was no less oppressive.
In the air thick with resentment and darkness, even her employers were peculiar. But she couldn’t afford to leave—her livelihood depended on it.
Just a little longer, a little more saved. If she could just put away a million more won—no, two million more. Postponing her departure day after day, it didn’t take long for problems to manifest in a body already so fragile and vulnerable.
―Ah!
It happened as it always did, right after Ineumm had roughly taken one of her men. As Hyewon stepped in to clean up as she always did, a sudden sharp pain doubled her over.
It felt as if her abdomen was tearing open. Below her navel, a dull, cramping ache twisted her insides. Something was very, very wrong. Even as she thought it, all she could do was curl into a ball.
Clang, crash, bang.
The cleaning tools she’d brought scattered across the floor as she collapsed and wept.
―Huh, hah, uh……uh-uh.
62
So this is how I lose the child. My baby, whom I would have held in my arms next month—and now I’m sending her away like this.
There was no point begging the owners of this house to spare our daughter’s life. If anything, they’d say her illness was bringing bad luck, and count themselves fortunate they didn’t throw her bleeding body out into the street.
Better to waste no more time on this—better to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. There was no room now for hesitation or delay.
Kim Hyewon forced herself to think clearly. She would have to slip into the main house and use the telephone there to call an ambulance.

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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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