An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 347

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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 347
Part 4. The End Is Human (4)
Shwack!
Kim San’s sickle swept through the air.
Kang Hyung-seok sidestepped the blade with a single backward step, then aimed the pommel of his ceremonial knife at Kim San’s temple.
Crack!
A sickening sound accompanied the heavy impact that reverberated through his wrist.
Yet Kang Hyung-seok’s face remained tense.
Damn this possessed man.
His strength is formidable, and pain means nothing to him.
Shwack!
Despite the blow to his temple, the sickle swung again with undiminished force.
Thud! Whoosh!
Kang Hyung-seok struck Kim San’s arm in the direction of its swing, then drove himself into his side and wrapped his arm around the man’s neck.
Crackle!
Securing his position firmly behind Kim San, I pressed the inside of my elbow against his throat.
“Gack! Ugh…!”
Gasps escaped Kim San’s lips as I tightened my grip with relentless ferocity.
Thrash!
Kim San’s face flushed crimson in an instant as his body convulsed.
The dead had seized the body of the living.
Even a possessed man must breathe—strangulation was an agony no spirit could easily endure.
‘Please, please.’
Lose consciousness.
Don’t cling to pointless suffering.
Whoooosh—!
In the desolate mountain wind, Kang Hyung-seok choked Kim San’s neck and prayed desperately.
Gradually, the strength drained from Kim San’s body.
But a truly unconscious person would never lose strength in this manner.
Thud!
It was immediately after Kang Hyung-seok shoved Kim San’s back.
Shwack!
Kim San’s sickle arced toward where my thigh had been.
Fabric and skin tore open, crimson blood spilling forth as Kim San’s lips twisted into a grotesque, malicious grin.
“Huff, huff.”
Kang Hyung-seok breathed heavily, staring down at his leg now stained with blood, then shifted his gaze to Kim San.
Uncertain what expression to wear, I let my face reflect the turmoil and darkness within.
“What resurrection? What divinity?”
This is the consequence of false belief.
This man is the result of worshipping the wrong person as a god.
Having surrendered his money, his life, and ultimately his very body, Kim San could never restore this man to his original state—not even if I drove out his soul.
All that would remain is a hollow husk devoid of spirit.
Crackle.
Kim San dragged his feet and adjusted his grip on the sickle, while Kang Hyung-seok’s lips twisted with bitter resignation.
“Killing me won’t end this.”
“Hehehehe.”
“Even if you escape this place, you’ll never live a normal life.”
All possession victims share the same fate.
Their lives wither, they shun light and people, and they exist in darkness.
No matter how completely Kim San seizes this man’s body, that truth remains unchanged.
It’s not simply because he’s been possessed.
It’s because Kim San has tasted death—and no one who has can ever live ordinarily again.
“Hrrgh! Hrraaaagh!”
The moment Kang Hyung-seok shifted his stance to prepare for Kim San’s imminent assault—
Jingle.
The Shaman’s Bell rang, though not by the spirit’s hand.
My Guardian Spirit watches this unfold.
He trusts that I, who received a spirit, will not yield to one who merely claimed divinity.
“Hrraaaack!”
Kim San raised the sickle with clumsy desperation.
I perceived everything.
Kim San’s movements, the angle of his hands, the arc of the descending blade.
Crack!
I caught the sickle before it could split my skull and, maintaining that position, drove Kim San backward.
My forearm crushed his throat while I gathered all my strength and drove him against the tree like a charging bull.
Thud!
“Gack!”
The raised sickle trembled, and Kim San’s eyes gleamed with malice.
His mouth gaped wide, and his crimson tongue writhed like a serpent.
Gurgle!
“Krrgh! Kack!”
Pressing Kim San’s throat harder against the tree, I shook the Shaman’s Bell.
The bell’s sound rang just beneath his chin, drawing his gaze away, and then my incantation began.
“By the celestial deities and the supreme primordial force, I command the binding seal—banish the malevolent spirits.”
“Krrgh! Gack!”
“By the authority of the heavens, let no darkness prevail—iron chains bind, iron swords pierce, all evil is sealed.”
Tears welled in Kim San’s eyes, and his protruding tongue convulsed.
“By the nine heavens and the thunder deity, let all demons be annihilated—mountains crumble, stones shatter.”
Kim San looked as though his breath might fail at any moment.
The end seemed near, yet even reaching it brought no sense of peace.
Because I know.
Once this incantation ends, the man will become nothing but a soulless husk.
“Jaegeocha Chugui Ham Myeol Il Hwi Cha Geom San Cheon Toe Gal Jae Hwi Cha Geom Gan Gwi Jin Myeol I Mae Mang Ryang Je Ak Gwi Sin.”
My heart was conflicted.
Intellectually, I understood this was the choice the man had made.
Yet I could not help the turmoil in my heart.
Crash!
Suddenly, a tremendous sound reverberated across the entire Mountain.
Kang Hyung-seok looked around, but the source of the sound was nowhere to be found.
Then this sound was not something that truly existed.
‘It shattered.’
Ragged breathing echoed through the air.
It was not the gasping of Kim San, whose throat was being strangled, but rather the heavy breathing of Chung-geum, whose shoulders heaved and whose face and robes were drenched with sweat.
For some reason, I could see the broken jar that must have been placed before her.
A jar with no bottom.
The passage through which Kim San’s soul was summoned from the afterlife to this world.
“Gasp.”
Kim San’s eyes rolled back, revealing only the whites.
“A mere shaman’s whelp.”
Kim San began cursing Kang Hyung-seok in a murky voice.
“Who am I to be treated this way? I am the Heavenly Chosen, I am Maitreya! Grrrraaaaahhh!”
Kang Hyung-seok glared at Kim San with eyes that held all his inner turmoil, his lips pressed firmly shut.
All the conditions were met, and I simply needed to expel Kim San, yet strangely my mouth would not open easily.
“…Please help me.”
So I appealed to the Guardian Spirit in a low voice.
“This is one who served one who claimed to be divine.”
I continued, trying to look at the man rather than at Kim San.
“One who believed in the wrong object and walked the wrong path.”
In the end, it all began with faith.
Though the man brought upon himself the consequence of losing his body, there was undeniably a similarity between him and me.
It was belief in the divine.
“I do not know this one’s name.”
“Grrrraaaaahhh!”
Kim San, who inhabited the man’s body, thrashed and tried to move the sickle, but Kang Hyung-seok pushed his wrist back with wood.
“Please, let me know at least this one’s name.”
So that I might honor that spirit.
So that even in death, he would not be swayed by Kim San.
So that the suffering endured in life and the karmic debt accumulated in life would not carry forward into the afterlife.
“I, a humble servant of the divine, humbly beseech you.”
It was at this moment.
Thud.
Footsteps echoed directly behind Kang Hyung-seok.
In that instant, Kim San’s movements ceased, and the wind that had been sweeping across the mountain fell silent.
All sound vanished, replaced by an eerie stillness.
Though I sensed a presence behind me, I did not turn around.
“You have arrived.”
I already knew who it was.
“I beseech you, my Guardian Spirit.”
As I pleaded, a black hand extended into my peripheral vision.
It was the hand of a general clad in black armor.
The fingers pointed toward Kim San.
-The family name is Seo.
The moment the Guardian Spirit’s deep, resonant voice reverberated through the air, Kim San’s body convulsed.
-The given name is Chang-seok.
Seo Chang-seok.
Upon hearing that name, Seo Chang-seok’s entire life flashed before my eyes like a lantern show.
Seo Baek-il, the Cult Leader of Yonghwa Church, and the women he had sexually exploited.
When Seo Baek-il exploited the Female Believers, he would say this.
That he was instilling doctrine.
-Wah! Waaah!
The child born that way became Seo Chang-seok’s father.
-That man’s father, well…
-Shh! Don’t say it.
-Say it? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?
Seo Baek-il died, and Yonghwa Church vanished.
Yet Seo Chang-seok was born bearing a scarlet letter.
The bloodline of a cult leader.
In his childhood, he did not understand why people treated him strangely, but as he grew older, he came to know the reason, and he denied and despised his own existence.
It was Kim San who extended a hand to such a Seo Chang-seok.
-You are not a defiled being.
-…Then what am I?
-You carry the blood of Maitreya. You are a chosen child.
Kim San seduced the emotionally broken Seo Chang-seok with a serpent’s tongue.
It was not genuine consolation.
In his youth, Kim San had been an executive of Yonghwa Church and sought to establish a new religion; he merely needed Seo Baek-il’s successor for legitimacy.
-Will you follow me?
-…
-I shall become the new Heavenly Lord and Maitreya, illuminating your path forward.
-…
-I shall become your father as well.
Don’t hold on to it.
That’s what I thought, but I could see what choice Seo Chang-seok had made.
The result stands before me now—Kim San.
Clang.
The Shaman’s Bell rang out, and I turned my gaze not toward Kim San, but toward Seo Chang-seok, opening my mouth to speak.
“Now I know your name.”
“Grrrrgh!”
“A man named Seo Chang-seok—one who has lived his entire life deceived and bewildered.”
Kim San’s teeth clenched as he gasped for breath.
“A foolish man who lost both his life and his body, with no family to weep for him, no friends to stand by his side….”
Clang, clang, clang!
As the Shaman’s Bell rang out loudly, Kim San’s breathing grew increasingly shallow.
“Rest now. Do not cling to this corrupted spirit—find peace.”
I looked at Seo Chang-seok and slowly closed my eyes.
Then I recited the Rites for the Departed.
“Seventy years of human life are but a fleeting dream, eighty years of fortune merely illusion. In this world of transient beauty and passing shadows, the hundred guilty souls and thirty original debts remain unpaid.”
Seo Chang-seok’s breathing grew increasingly calm.
His rolled-back eyes returned to normal, and I could feel the life force draining from his body.
The flesh was releasing Kim San’s spirit.
“Pitiful is your fate, as I contemplate the affairs of this world—a hundred years of life seem but the twilight of youth, and ten thousand moments of light flow like water.”
This is the Rites for the Departed, recited for those whose spirits have departed but whose bodies must remain.
And so it becomes all the more sorrowful, all the more burdensome.
“Even the wealth of Shisong fades like clouds over green mountains; even the riches of Yidon scatter like dust on the road. The king returned to his dwelling and achieved eternal rest. The sage rode the white clouds and journeyed to the celestial realm.”
I withdrew my hand from Seo Chang-seok, now completely drained of strength.
He collapsed limply, and as I gazed down at his hollow body, I finished the scripture with difficulty.
“May you return to the Pure Land and be reborn in enlightenment.”
I looked down at Seo Chang-seok’s face.
His eyes were closed, his expression so peaceful it was hard to believe this was a man who had suffered his entire life.
Crumble, crumble.
A sound of disintegration echoed.
Turning around, I saw Kim San’s corpse crumbling, becoming one with the earth.
With the spirit departed, the body seemed to dissolve as well.
Crack.
Watching even the skull collapse, I turned my gaze back to Seo Chang-seok.
The tears glistening at the corners of his eyes weighed heavily on my heart, and I could only release a deep sigh.

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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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