An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 205

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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 204
Part 7. Hide and Seek (4)
Thud! Crack! Thud!
As the pit deepened, an ominous aura rose from within.
‘It’s the same as before.’
As it was with Rokurokuби.
Black soil, the stench of blood, a suffocating spiritual presence.
Thud! Crack! Crack!
Kang Hyung-seok, sweat pouring steadily onto the earth, focused on a single thought.
‘I must break the curse. I must break the curse.’
Breaking the curse was as critical as confronting the Oni itself.
Perhaps this was the most crucial thing of all.
Where one exists, so does the other.
Because one exists, the other persists.
Causality.
If I sever that connection, the human pillar will crumble and the Oni will lose its power.
Thud! Crack!
After scraping away at the earth for some time.
My fingertips brushed against something soft and damp in the soil.
Crackle!
Lightning illuminated the entire sky in a pale blue glow, revealing what lay before Kang Hyung-seok in that sudden brightness.
Something wrapped in burial cloth.
Kang Hyung-seok swallowed hard and extracted it, peeling away the ancient cloth layer by layer as if shedding skin.
And within, I found a headless Raven.
‘It’s been dead for a long time.’
Not one or two months.
The acrid spiritual energy rising from the earth had prevented it from decaying further.
Kang Hyung-seok brushed the Raven aside and returned his focus to excavating the soil.
Crack! Crack!
My conviction grows stronger.
Something that shouldn’t be here lies beneath.
It must be the box I saw in my dream.
Inside that box was a lacquered head.
Now that the curse is complete, does the head still remain?
Crack! Clang!
As I dug seeking answers, an unfamiliar sound and sensation emanated from the stone.
Kang Hyung-seok adjusted his grip on the stone and began scraping away the soil, and soon something flat emerged into view.
‘A box.’
Kang Hyung-seok glanced up at the sky once, then used the stone to scrape around the box’s edges to pry it free.
***
Crunch, crunch.
As Shin Jung-ah walked the Mountain, her gaze drifted unconsciously to her wrist.
‘Huh? Just now….’
Brief as it was, she had felt it distinctly.
A faint vibration from the Zelkova wood bracelet.
Dread seized Shin Jung-ah as she lifted her eyes skyward, and immediately she beheld a mass of smoke cutting across the heavens.
It descended steadily toward the earth.
Splatter.
Shin Jung-ah wiped the liquid that had fallen upon her face like raindrops with the back of her hand.
Holding it to the lantern’s light, she saw it was blood—crimson and fresh.
“Ah! Ahhh!”
Startled, Shin Jung-ah shook her hand frantically, but the single drop only smeared further across her skin.
Then it happened.
The smoke descended heavily.
The smoke settled thick upon the ground.
And there, rigid with terror, Shin Jung-ah beheld a horned human figure standing within the haze.
The Oni’s hands held something.
“Wh-what….”
One was a blood-stained Japanese sword.
The other was a dog’s head.
“I need the head of a Korean.”
The thick, sinister voice alone sent every hair on Shin Jung-ah’s body standing on end, and she froze.
The Oni fixed her with eyes vast and brimming with malice.
“Are you Korean?”
Shin Jung-ah swallowed involuntarily.
In times past, she would have lost consciousness.
Yet having followed Kang Hyung-seok through countless harrowing ordeals, whether by virtue of the bracelet and protective talisman or some other grace, her limbs trembled violently even as her mind remained tethered to awareness.
“Are you Korean?”
The Oni’s question came again, and Shin Jung-ah parted her quivering lips.
“…Why?”
“I must prove my loyalty to the Emperor. I will sever three hundred heads and make the world know of our greatness.”
Shin Jung-ah spoke both Chinese and Japanese.
Thus she understood the Oni’s words in their entirety.
‘Three hundred heads to be severed?’
Shin Jung-ah’s expression went slack.
Somehow, she sensed what this Oni truly was.
Clang!
“Eek!”
The lantern, bisected by the Oni’s swinging blade, clattered across the ground.
Though secondhand, she had paid two hundred thousand won for it, yet the sum vanished from her mind beneath the crushing tide of terror.
“Answer me, or I’ll cut you down.”
Watching her trembling in terror, the Oni twisted his face into a grotesque snarl and raised his katana high.
***
With a wet crunch, I wrenched the box from the earth.
Gripping my ritual blade, I pulled the box free from the soil.
The box that lay exposed matched exactly what I had seen in my dream.
That terrified me.
A resonant chime rang out.
Shaking the Shaman’s Bell, I fixed my gaze upon the box and began to chant the sacred incantation.
“By the infinite kalpas, by the Five Directional Kings who expel evil, by the Five Directional Generals who expel evil, by the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas who expel evil, by the Azure Emperor of the East who expels evil.”
This was the Dragon-Tiger Expulsion Sutra.
And since the dragon in “dragon-tiger” is written with the character for dragon (龍), it carried the meaning that dragons and tigers drive away all wickedness.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
Beneath the roiling sky, I continued the incantation and moved my ritual blade toward the box.
“By the Crimson Emperor of the South who expels evil.”
A sharp crack split the air as wood splintered.
As I twisted the embedded blade, a groan-like sound emanated from the box.
Simultaneously, the malevolent spiritual energy that had accumulated within came pouring forth—its momentum was terrifying.
Thunder roared again.
“By the White Emperor of the West who expels evil.”
The wood groaned and cracked further.
“By the Black Emperor of the North who expels evil.”
The box shrieked as it fractured.
My forearms swelled with power, and the box burst open.
Thunder and lightning split the heavens.
Lightning crackled across the sky.
Azure brilliance illuminated heaven and earth, forcing the contents of the box to reveal themselves to the world.
I reached into the box, my breath suspended.
With trembling hands, I withdrew the object within.
A flash of blue light pierced the thunder.
The azure radiance bathed the object in my hands in brilliant clarity.
“…A military uniform.”
A Japanese Military uniform.
Not from the modern era, but from a distant past.
I began to unfold the neatly folded uniform, and when I finally discovered the name tag, I understood the true nature of the Oni.
“Tanaka Gunkichi.”
A presence stirred before me.
I slowly lifted my head and saw a woman standing before me.
Lee Nak-yul.
She, who had become a dragon, stood before me in human form, nodding gravely.
As if announcing that I had finally reached the truth of all things.
***
It was at this moment that Kang Hyung-seok reached the origin of the sorcery.
The Oni’s movements ceased.
The sinister expression remained unchanged, and the Japanese sword held high was no different, yet something was shifting.
Crack, crack, crack.
Fissures spread across the lacquered face of the Oni.
“Wh-what?”
Shin Jung-ah clenched her hand, still bearing the shock from when the lantern was severed, and trembled in confusion.
Something had changed.
The Oni, which had felt transcendent, now appeared different.
“Uhhhhh.”
Black fragments fell from the eyes of the groaning Oni.
And what was revealed were human eyes.
‘A human, a Japanese sword, three hundred heads.’
Shin Jung-ah, trembling violently, pointed at the Oni with her hand adorned with the Nandina bracelet.
“The Nanjing Massacre.”
Then, muttering the words, one of the Oni’s horns fell away.
As the true nature of the sorcery was revealed, so too was the true nature of the Oni being exposed.
“A soldier who killed three hundred people.”
Shin Jung-ah did not know the details about Tanaka Gunkichi.
However, she had learned of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Military in those times.
The Japanese Military had competed in Nanjing to see who could behead the most people.
The hundred-head beheading competition between Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Tsuyoshi.
And surpassing that, Tanaka Gunkichi was the soldier who claimed to have beheaded three hundred people alone.
“Ugh, uhhhhh.”
The Oni released a groan like breathing.
Then it staggered backward.
It was not only because of the Nandina bracelet or the Ancestral Mountain protection talisman.
It was being remembered.
The atrocities and crimes it had committed.
Even now.
“That soldier who was executed.”
Shin Jung-ah spoke haltingly, and the Oni’s face twisted in agony.
Tanaka Gunkichi had been executed.
He had not accepted death with composure.
Until the end, he denied his crimes and insisted on his innocence.
He persisted with excuses and silence before his life ended by firing squad.
That was the true nature of the Oni standing before Shin Jung-ah.
“Grrrrrrr.”
Smoke billowed from the Oni’s body as it cried out with a bestial roar.
Then, like someone fleeing from the past, it abandoned Shin Jung-ah and began to vanish.
***
“…There is something I wish to ask you.”
Though it had been long since Kang Hyung-seok last encountered Lee Nak-yul, he offered a question rather than a greeting.
“Why did you summon that creature to this land? Who could possibly attempt such a thing?”
Perhaps it was the urgency in his heart.
Kang Hyung-seok’s words came faster than usual.
And conversely, Lee Nak-yul shook her head at a measured pace.
“The sorcery deceived the heavens themselves, so I too do not know.”
“…Then we are destined never to learn?”
“All things have their time. This simply is not that time.”
Lee Nak-yul spoke gently, as if offering solace, and offered a weary smile.
“Shaman, you have broken the sorcery that has persisted for twenty years, and those who aid you seek to prevent it.”
“….”
“Those who have suffered from the sorcery—I shall guide them to the heavens. Please, pray for us all.”
“…But it is not yet truly finished.”
“The Oni will unfold as intended.”
I understood what Lee Nak-yul meant.
Park Mi-ryung, who served the Great Goblin, had spoken of it.
That she was a stake.
So Park Mi-ryung would become the stake that pierces through the Oni.
“…I understand.”
“I’m counting on you. And I wanted to say this to you.”
Lee Nak-yul gazed at Kang Hyung-seok with a gentle smile.
“Thank you. For soothing my sorrow.”
Kang Hyung-seok smiled.
It was a smile as full of emotion as Lee Nak-yul’s own.
And when he blinked, Lee Nak-yul had vanished as if she had never been there at all.
***
The smoke that the Oni had transformed into drifted across the night sky for a long time.
It could not escape beyond the five mountains.
Rumble, rumble! Rumble!
Lee Nak-yul prevented it from heading elsewhere, and there was also the reason that it could not leave the five mountains bound by sorcery.
Whoooosh.
The smoke drifted over the mountains for a long time.
Then it descended upon Amisan, which had been chosen as its destination, and became an Oni once more.
The Oni stared into the darkness and inhaled the air through its nose.
It caught the scent of fragrant wood that had lingered when it encountered Shin Yoseph.
“…A Choseon person.”
The Oni contorted its face and walked in the opposite direction of the scent.
It walked for quite some time.
Patter, patter.
Small footsteps began approaching from directly ahead of the Oni.
The Oni stopped in its tracks, and at the same moment, a clear ringing sound echoed.
Wa-lang.
The sound of a Shaman’s Bell.
The Oni stood rigid, staring toward the source of the sound.
And moments later, moonlight illuminated Park Mi-ryung, who held the Shaman’s Bell, approaching with a serene expression.
“Huuuh.”
It was right after the Oni exhaled in response to the ominous aura emanating from her body.
“How dare you wreak havoc on another’s land.”
The voice came from Park Mi-ryung’s lips, yet the words were not hers.
It was a voice deeper, lower, and more majestic—a man’s voice.
Gongsu.
Her god, the Great Goblin, was speaking to the Oni through Park Mi-ryung’s mouth.
“A mere shaman of a tributary state dares to speak thus.”
The Oni spoke in a murky voice, as if threatening.
But soon its face hardened, and it slowly raised its head.
Because it had begun to see with its own eyes.
The overwhelming Great Goblin looming down upon it.

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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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