Exorcism Specialist Company: Ghost Soul Trading - Chapter 23

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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 23

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

The bell’s chiming grew increasingly frantic.
The blue light visible on Tae-woo’s radar intensified to the point of eye-watering brilliance.
This was unmistakably a bad omen.

Crack—

The bell in that room finally shattered, scattering like popcorn in all directions.
Silence descended in an instant.
The blue light within the radar rippled outward like a wave, diffusing gently.
Yet its brightness and intensity remained unchanged.
Ye-rim exchanged a tense glance with Tae-woo, then advanced slowly toward the inner room, gun raised.
Tae-woo followed close behind, gripping the Guihon Blade in one hand and the Blood Water Sword firmly in the other.
By instinct alone, I sensed the presence of an extraordinarily powerful spirit.
Click—
Ye-rim swept her gaze left and right from the doorway in tactical fashion before stepping inside.
Tae-woo pressed close behind her.
The space appeared to be a private home theater equipped with a Home Theater system.
One wall held an enormous screen with a reclining sofa positioned before it, while a beam projector was mounted on the ceiling.
Despite the luxurious interior design with state-of-the-art equipment, thick black mold caked the corners of the room.
And with it came an indescribable stench and oppressively humid air that swept through the space.
Tae-woo deactivated his radar, overwhelmed by the blue light radiating throughout the entire room, and surveyed his surroundings.
At that very moment, the beam projector suddenly activated, and bizarre imagery flooded the screen.
It appeared to be a film, yet every character’s eyes were hollowed out into pitch-black voids.
Moreover, instead of flowing naturally, different scenes tangled together, cutting and replaying erratically between 0.5 and 1-second intervals.
It resembled the kind of disturbing imagery used to test for mental instability.
That was the moment.
Whoooosh—
A spirit suddenly burst forth from the screen.
A specter clad in white mourning garments with long hair cascading to its legs and ashen-gray skin.
“Eeek!”
The abruptly manifested spirit shoved Ye-rim aside and lunged directly at Tae-woo.

Crash—
Shatter—

Ye-rim tumbled backward, her body crashing through the decorative cabinet stacked against the side wall.
In the process, her head struck the wall hard.
Simultaneously, the ghost shoved Tae-woo down and seized his throat, dragging him out of the room.
The grotesque part was that although the ghost straddled Tae-woo’s abdomen with its hands clamped around his neck, his body slid across the floor as if being pulled outside.

Scraaaaaape—

Tae-woo felt his back scraping against the floor as he glanced around.
He was being dragged past the Second Floor Living Room where they’d just fought, toward the Terrace.
“Gack!”
The ghost’s iron grip tightened around my throat, cutting off my breath and blurring my vision.
I tried to look directly at the ghost’s face, but its wild, thrashing hair obscured my view.
Yet in my hands, I still gripped the Guichal Blade and the Blood Crimson Blade.
I raised my arm to stab the creature.
In that instant, the ghost sensed my intent and wrapped its hair around both my arms, binding them tight.
Hisssss—
At the same moment, the ghost’s face came fully into view.
A serpentine, pointed tongue flicked inside a mouth lined with blackened teeth, while its two eyes—devoid of pupils—gleamed a sickly crimson, as though flooded with blood.

“Keeeeeeeeeeek!”

The ghost brought its face close to mine, as if to kiss me.
“Ugh!”
I wanted to counterattack, but the hair binding my arms was too strong—I couldn’t break free.

“Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out, get out!!!!”

The ghost stared directly at Tae-woo’s face and shrieked with a voice that felt like it would tear his eardrums apart.
Throughout it all, Tae-woo kept his brow furrowed, lifting his head to look.
Then he saw the terrace door at the end of the second floor living room rapidly approaching.
It was dragging Tae-woo out through the glass terrace door.
“Damn it—”
Crash!!!!
The moment Tae-woo clenched his teeth and cursed, the ghost hurled him out onto the terrace.
The thick glass shattered as Tae-woo’s body flew outside.
“Argh!”
Tae-woo’s body traced a parabolic arc, plummeting from the second floor terrace into the yard beside the first floor.
Thud!
A dull impact reverberated through his entire body with pain.
Tae-woo felt the earth beneath him and gritted his teeth, twisting his body.
“Damn it all.”
When he looked toward the second floor terrace, he confirmed that the ghost had vanished without a trace.
The problem was Ye-rim.
Ye-rim was still trapped on the second floor in the home theater.
“Manager!”
Tae-woo sprang to his feet and rushed back toward the first floor entrance.
He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
He tried opening the nearby windows, but they wouldn’t open either.
“You bastards!”
He struck the window with the hilt of his sword.
Thwack—
But it didn’t break.
Instead, the window turned pitch black, and dozens of eyes began to appear one by one.
All those pupils turned toward Tae-woo in unison.
Startled, Tae-woo stepped back and looked at the other windows.
Those windows too had all turned black, with dozens of eyes staring out from them.
“Ugh.”
It was an absolutely grotesque sight.
Human eyes had appeared in every window of the massive mansion, and they were all fixed on Tae-woo with their collective gaze.
It was clear that the ghost had driven Tae-woo out and then sealed off all entry points.
But—there was one place.
One opening remained.
It was the very terrace door that Tae-woo had just shattered with his body.
Tae-woo rushed back toward the adjacent yard.
“Whether it works or not, I have to try something!”
Tae-woo knew that when he wielded the Ghost-Slaying Blade, his physical abilities became extraordinarily enhanced.
He sprinted at incredible speed across the yard beside the mansion, then without stopping, launched himself toward the second floor terrace.
Whoosh—
Tae-woo’s body traced another arc through the air, hurtling toward the Second Floor Terrace.
I felt my body lifting weightlessly into the air.
I had jumped far higher than I’d anticipated.
This was a height no ordinary human could ever reach.
But this was no time to marvel at such things.
Another ghost had appeared before the shattered doors of the Second Floor Terrace, looming below me.
This ghost too had long hair and wore a crimson dress, its gray skin radiating an unsettling intensity.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
The ghost spread its arms wide as if to embrace me, meeting my descending arc across the Terrace.
In that same instant, I raised the Ghost-Slaying Blade high above my head.
“Haaaah!”
With every ounce of strength, I brought the blade down in a vertical arc and landed on the Second Floor Terrace.
Screeeeeech—
The ghost’s body split cleanly in two from the Ghost-Slaying Blade, dissolving into black smoke and vanishing.
And through that dissipating darkness, my figure materialized on the Terrace.
Still in my landing stance, I fixed a grim expression and surveyed the Second Floor Living Room.
There, the ghost that had thrown me was dragging the unconscious Ye-rim by her feet, pulling her somewhere.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
I shouted with fury.
The ghost’s head snapped toward me, its brow furrowing.
But—the expression was grotesque beyond any human scowl.
The wrinkles across its forehead and bridge of its nose shriveled repulsively, like a mummy drained of all moisture.
“Release Lee Manager! Let him go!”
I sheathed the Blood-Crimson Blade at my waist and gripped the Ghost-Slaying Blade firmly with both hands.
I was signaling my resolve to focus all my power on this single opponent, not multiple foes.
Wielding the blade with both hands allowed me to swing faster and strike harder.
Boom-boom-boom-boom—
The ghost suddenly charged toward me.
The way it ran with both arms extended straight ahead was utterly grotesque.
Thud—
I lowered my center of gravity and swung the Ghost-Slaying Blade sharply downward to my left.
Then, as the ghost rushed forward, I whirled the blade diagonally upward to my right in a sweeping arc.
Screeeeeech—
The ghost’s body split in two, dissolving into black smoke and vanishing.

Whoooosh—

The black smoke swept forward with the ghost’s momentum, engulfing Tae-woo’s body.
A deep, resonant sound echoed through the air—
Then silence descended.
Tae-woo activated his radar while gripping his sword.
A sharp whine pierced the quiet—
The blue light that had filled the surroundings vanished.
Only a faint blue glow emanated from the floor below.
Ghosts on the First Floor were being detected.
Tae-woo deactivated his radar and rushed toward the unconscious Ye-rim.
“Lee Manager! Lee Manager!”
Tae-woo shook Ye-rim awake.
Blood trickled slightly from her head.
“Mmm…”
She slowly opened her eyes.
“Thank goodness.”
Tae-woo nodded.
Ye-rim furrowed her brow, glanced around for a moment, then suddenly sat up.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I hit my head suddenly.”
She spoke while gently touching the wound on her head with her fingertips.
Fortunately, it wasn’t bleeding heavily.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. It’s nothing serious.”
Ye-rim answered casually and pulled a small bandage from her pocket, wrapping it around her forehead like a headband.
“You carry things like that around?”
Tae-woo asked with a curious expression.
“In this line of work, you end up injured more often than you’d think. It’s good to carry basic first aid supplies.”
She answered while picking up the submachine gun that had fallen to the floor.
“By the way, what happened to that ghost that burst out of the Home Theater earlier?”
Ye-rim asked, since she hadn’t witnessed Tae-woo cutting down the ghost.
“Yes, I eliminated it.”
“You eliminated it?”
She looked at Tae-woo with a surprised expression.
Though there was some dirt on Tae-woo’s clothes, he didn’t appear injured anywhere.
What was certain was that the dirt on his clothes meant he’d been thrown outside.
She couldn’t gauge how long she’d been unconscious, but it was clear that quite an intense “action sequence” had unfolded.
“Can you continue?”
Tae-woo asked again.
She nodded without concern and casually inspected her firearm.
“By the way, Tae-woo, you’re impressive. That ghost that appeared earlier seemed to be at least a Grade 2 spirit.”
“Is that so? Grade 2 would be a Whisper Ghost, right? Those are the spirits that induce auditory hallucinations or drive people to suicide, but I didn’t experience anything like that…?”
“You’ve probably experienced it in Incheon as well, but bokMyeong-gwi—vengeful spirits—don’t necessarily just cause hallucinations or drive people to suicide. The higher the grade, the stronger the spiritual energy, and the more powerfully they can attack the living. The descriptions in the Ghost Record are merely a kind of ‘guideline.’ You can think of it simply as: ‘Grade 2 spirits and above can conduct psychological attacks.’ That’s all you need to understand.”
“Ah, I see.”
Tae-woo nodded in acknowledgment.
To summarize: grades like 1st, 2nd, and 3rd were assigned each time a spirit gained an additional ability it could wield—meaning they weren’t spirits that used only that particular ability.
As this thought crystallized in his mind, Tae-woo felt a chill run through him.
Then just how powerful was the highest-grade (?) 6th-grade spirit, the one not even recorded in the Ghost Record?
An entity that could disable electronics while conducting psychological attacks, manipulate humans, use tools, consume other spirits to amplify its own spiritual energy, and even evolve—the sheer scope of its capabilities was staggering.
And he couldn’t even begin to fathom how devastating its violence might be.

Guihon Trading Company – Exorcism Specialists Chapter 23

Author
Chao Wren’s
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yoon Tae-ri
Cover
Lee Chi

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260318158.0023

ⓒ2026, Chao Wren’s

※ This e-book is protected under the copyright laws of the Republic of Korea.
No part or whole of this work may be reprocessed in any form without permission from the author and publisher.

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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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