An Office Worker Is Good At Exorcism - Chapter 68

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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 67
Part 6. As Much Good As Evil Accumulated (2)
Boom-boom-boom.
The distant sound of a drum seemed to echo from far away.
The darkness was so thick that the boundaries between sky, earth, and water became indistinguishable.
Kang Hyung-seok stood motionless, staring at Anmok Reservoir, and caught the scent of thick, acrid blood seeping through his nostrils.
I knew little about fishing.
Yet in such a desolate place, shouldn’t there be at least one or two fishermen claiming to investigate?
Whoooosh-whoooosh-whoooosh!
Leaves and grass trembled in the wind, producing an eerie sound.
It was a sound that clouded the mind.
The instinct that any living person could feel came as a warning.
This was a place where I should not be.
I had to leave this place immediately.
“Donggwan!”
At Hong Kyung-soo’s voice from beside him, Kang Hyung-seok turned his gaze toward him very slowly.
In his hands were a wooden stake about a meter long and a claw hammer.
“Keep your wits about you! One slip and you’ll be caught up in it.”
As he spoke in a low voice, his white eyes gleaming even in the darkness, Kang Hyung-seok nodded heavily.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Hong Kyung-soo began driving the wooden stakes into the ground.
On the wooden stakes glimpsed in the darkness, red Chinese characters were written in a chaotic pattern, as if cinnabar had been used.
Thwack! Thwack!
Hong Kyung-soo drove each stake down one by one, staggering and breathing heavily.
The soggy earth allowed the stakes to sink with a squelch, and each time, the oppressive energy that shook the mind seemed to subside.
They were stakes meant to sever the flow.
Thwack! Thwack-thwack!
After driving a total of fourteen stakes around the perimeter, Hong Kyung-soo looked up at the moon once, his face glistening with sweat.
“We must finish before the Hour of the Rat.”
The Hour of the Rat was the hour of ghosts.
If we remained here until then, tomorrow could not be guaranteed.
“What should I do?”
At Kang Hyung-seok’s question, Hong Kyung-soo’s footsteps, which had been turning to leave, came to an abrupt halt.
Then he turned his head slowly, like a corpse.
The darkness swallowed his face so that his expression was invisible, but from his silhouette, I could tell that Hong Kyung-soo was looking at me.
“You have an important task to perform.”
As Kang Hyung-seok remained silent, Hong Kyung-soo continued.
“Evil feeds on evil, and water draws ghosts—so a shaman must pull them out, shouldn’t they?”
Kang Hyung-seok immediately responded to him, who had spoken in an odd cadence.
“…What did you do?”
Hong Kyung-soo fell silent.
Yet Kang Hyung-seok continued speaking.
“What did you do here in the past?”
This was a place where malevolent spirits proliferated, where the boundary between the living world and the afterlife had grown thin.
A place where the spirit became untethered from flesh, where the distinction between shaman and Guardian Spirit blurred.
In such a place, possessed by the Guardian Spirit, I gazed at Hong Kyung-soo through my spiritual eyes.
“That jar you carried.”
The image forming in my mind was of Hong Kyung-soo holding a single jar in broad daylight.
The location was here.
Hong Kyung-soo was wading into the reservoir, while a man and a woman watched him.
The man was his companion.
The woman was someone I’d never seen before.
Yet I could instinctively sense she was Kim Mi-sook, the one Lee Geum-kyung had spoken with.
“What did you place in that jar?”
Hong Kyung-soo, who had been silent, began answering in a low voice.
“Something Dong-gwan needed to retrieve.”
My brow furrowed, and Hong Kyung-soo’s words continued.
“A curse, an empty vessel.”
A jar filled with contents cannot hold anything else.
That is why Hong Kyung-soo had submerged an empty jar here at Anmok Reservoir.
So that the things virtuous shamans could not handle would be contained within this reservoir.
So that jar could trap them.
“Retrieve it for me.”
Hong Kyung-soo’s emotionless, toneless words were not directed at me.
A true shaman in his own right.
They were words spoken to the Guardian Spirit who protected me.
I nodded.
As I answered with a gesture, Hong Kyung-soo turned back toward the car.
Thud, thud. The engine roared to life!
When Hong Kyung-soo returned from the car, his attire had changed entirely.
Black shamanic robes.
A ritual knife held between his teeth and in his left hand.
In his right hand, a long strip of white cloth was wound tightly.
“Wrap it around your waist.”
Hong Kyung-soo extended the cloth toward me.
But I did not take it immediately, instead shifting my gaze from his hands to his eyes.
Then my gaze moved to his legs.
A limping leg.
A leg that seemed ill-suited to wade into the slimy, algae-covered reservoir.
Could that leg, bent as crooked as a fishing hook, truly be injured?
“Hurry. We don’t have time.”
At Hong Kyung-soo’s urging, I clenched my teeth and met his gaze.
Eyes always reveal more than words ever could.
I tried to discern Hong Kyung-soo’s true intentions through his eyes, but they seemed to reflect only a hollow darkness.
“Tsk.”
I clicked my tongue and nodded.
“A ritual to retrieve a wandering soul, then.”
Hong Kyung-soo closed his eyes and nodded.
That troubled me.
I exhaled deeply and turned to look at Anmok Reservoir.
‘Is hell a place like this?’
So many Victim Spirits writhed together in chaotic tangles.
Screams and wails filled the air, freezing the heart of anyone with the spiritual sight to witness it.
Hong Kyung-soo intended to send me there.
Clench.
I set my jaw firmly and nodded with grave resolve.
I had to go.
Only then could Lee Geum-kyung’s friend pass on without regret.
Hong Kyung-soo’s inscrutable intentions were suspicious.
But I possessed something greater than doubt.
Lee Geum-kyung and my Guardian Spirit.
Even if Hong Kyung-soo meant to harm me, there were those who would protect me.
They were stronger than him.
“Thank you.”
Hong Kyung-soo spoke with a voice that somehow rang true, then tied a length of white cloth around my waist.
He wrapped the other end around his own body in coils.
Now the two of us were bound together by the cloth.
Step, step.
I walked slowly toward Anmok Reservoir.
The white cloth laid upon the ground unraveled smoothly behind me, and Hong Kyung-soo watched as I receded into the distance.
And then,
Splash.
The moment my first step submerged into the water,
Whoosh.
Hong Kyung-soo, twin ritual daggers in his hands, began to move his arms in slow, dance-like sweeps.
There in the darkness, his shoulders swaying, his blades cutting left and right—it was unmistakably a shamanic ritual.
***
At the same moment.
Kim Mi-sook had begun her ritual.
Beside her, who mirrored Hong Kyung-soo’s movements like a shadow and wielded the spirit blade, sat a man.
It was a Shamanic Temple.
The ritual was being conducted in the Shamanic Temple where no clients were received—a place where only the Spirit Shrine and they existed.
The ritual felt meticulously prepared.
Cluck-cluck-cluck.
There was a rooster bound except for its head, a flayed goat, and a large straw effigy shaped like a human.
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
As the man began beating the drum, Kim Mi-sook’s movements grew more violent.
With the spirit descended upon her, her eyes rolling back, she severed the rooster’s neck.
Blood sprayed, and the headless rooster thrashed within the cloth wrapping.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!
The intensifying drum beat heightened the atmosphere.
“Ehey-! Uh-huh-uh-uh-uh!”
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
“Taeho Bokhi, Shen Nong, the Yellow Emperor, Yao, Shun, Yu, and Tang, Wen, Wu, Zhou, and Gong.”
The man recited the incantation.
It was a prayer for those with great desires.
“Confucius, Mencius, the great sages, swift as lightning, flowing through the meridians, heaven and earth in harmony, all things transforming, nine times nine, eighty-one, the vital force of heaven and earth, eight times nine, seventy-two, yin and yang in balance, from beginning to end.”
Drawing ever closer to the spirit, Kim Mi-sook brought her blade against the goat’s body.
Flesh split with sickening thuds as malevolent energy roiled forth.
This ritual was to aid Hong Kyung-soo.
Kim Mi-sook’s will and purpose aligned with Hong Kyung-soo’s.
“Huu-uh! Uh-huh-uh-uh! They come. They arrive!”
Kim Mi-sook seized and dragged the effigy propped against the wall.
It was a human-shaped figure made of straw, dressed in men’s clothing.
Mounted atop it, Kim Mi-sook’s eyes gleamed with murderous intent as she tore open the effigy’s front panel.
Inside was a slip of paper inscribed with a name in red.
Kang Hyung-seok.
“The great curse descends!”
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
As the man beat the drum harder, Kim Mi-sook clenched the spirit blade between her teeth.
Then she picked up a wooden stake and a mallet from the ground, pressing the stake’s point against the effigy’s chest.
Thud! Crack! Thud!
The wooden stake began to drive in.
Simultaneously, the man beating the drum’s mouth fell open wide.
“One strike!”
***
On the mountainside with the clearest spiritual energy in the area.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom! Shriek-shriek-shriek! Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Gathered at the place where traditional Korean instruments wailed loudly were Lee Geum-kyung and other Shamans.
Whoosh!
The moment fire caught the stacked firewood, flames shot upward in a violent surge.
Watching the sparks dance like a living thing, Lee Geum-kyung opened her mouth.
“Begin.”
The moment her words ended, the Male Shaman playing the drum spoke.
“Yeosiamuun ilsibul jusawi-guk gisugup godok-won-yeo baekcheon-sal gwishin-seol.”
A chant to ward off curses.
As the traditional instruments, including the gong, wove together in a cacophony and the sound crescendoed, Lee Geum-kyung swung the five-colored cloth with great force.
I had already anticipated that curses would be hurled at Kang Hyung-seok.
Boom-boom-boom-boom! Shriek-shriek-shriek!
Before the watching Shamans, Lee Geum-kyung swung the five-colored cloth, then seized the ritual knife.
As I became increasingly unified with the divine, certain sounds and voices reached my ears.
Thud! Thud!
The dull sound of something being struck repeatedly.
“Two!”
A signal that the second curse chasing after Hong Kyung-soo had been deflected.
It was a sound I could hear clearly, even as the traditional instruments shrieked loudly in my ears.
“Namugojoong-gyeop gwishin namujoong-gyeop gwishin namusoggyeop gwishin namunyeon-gyeop gwishin namuweol-gyeop gwishin namuil-gyeop gwishin.”
The Male Shaman’s chant grew faster, and I struck my own face and forearms with the ritual knife.
The blade was sharp and unsheathed.
Yet no mark appeared on my body.
Even when I placed the blade in my mouth and twisted the handle with both hands, nothing happened.
Clang-clang-clang-clang! Shriek-shriek!
As the sound reached an even greater crescendo and the Shamans’ prayers converged at a single point, I danced in a great circle around the space.
Then I approached the pig that had been prepared and brought the knife to it.
Rip!
The moment the blade grazed it, the pig’s hide split open, revealing the crimson flesh beneath.
I cut away a piece of flesh and placed it in my mouth, then severed a leg and draped it across my shoulder.
I was conducting two rituals simultaneously.
The Great Curse Ritual and the Curse Reversal Ritual.
One to block the curses flying toward Kang Hyung-seok, the other to send back the curses that had been directed at him.
“Namugoongjoong-gyeop gwishin namujoong-gyeop gwishin namusoggyeop gwishin namusogyeop gwishin.”
It was at this moment that the Male Shaman’s chant reached its peak.
“Whiiiiik-!”
I let out a piercing whistle and drove the knife straight down into the pig.
Then I brought the handle down with force, driving the blade deep.
At that same instant, a different sound reached my ears.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaack!”
“Ughhhhhh! Ughhhhhh!”
Screams of both man and woman.
The man who followed Kim Mi-sook and Hong Kyung-soo.
Tearing shrieks and vivid images unfolded before her eyes.
“Ahhh! Ahhhhhhack!”
It was Kim Mi-sook screaming while clutching the hem of her skirt, crimson blood dripping steadily, and beside her stood the man who had hurled the drum away, vomiting violently.
The flesh they had hurled came flying back.
Clang clang clang clang! Boom boom boom boom boom!
Lee Geum-kyung slowly raised one hand.
At that, the hands of the Shamans playing the traditional instruments ceased, and a terrifying silence descended.
“Teacher….”
One of the Shamans spoke to her, but Lee Geum-kyung shook her head heavily.
Then, gazing into the darkness, she murmured a prayer in a low voice.
That Kang Hyung-seok would be safe.
That Hong Kyung-soo would not attempt any reckless schemes.
It was a prayer hoping that the calamity her friend could not resolve would be undone.

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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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