The Snake, the Flower, and the Tiger - Chapter 35

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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 35

That was when Hee-seo’s cool voice cut through the air.
“Death has no reason.”
“What?”
“No resentment, no grievance. That’s what death is. Your time has ended. So don’t presume to covet another person’s time.”
“What…? You, what are you—how dare you! This bitch, I’ll kill you!”
Jo, who had been kneeling before Hee-seo, snarled and lunged like a wild beast. But Hee-seo had already anticipated the response.
Hee-seo drove her bare foot hard into Jo’s chest. It was a threatening kick, but not enough to stop the Possessed Person on its own.
Following the kick, the fan struck Jo’s cheek again, snapping her head to the side. Not missing the moment of her stagger, Hee-seo whipped the fan across her opposite cheek.
Crack! As the open fan struck flesh and scraped her face, Jo cried out in agony.
“With this fan I command, all wicked spirits perish, demons and specters, all evil ghosts begone!”
“Gack, ack!”
As each line of the Tae-eul Sang-bo-jang incantation was completed, the potency of Hee-seo’s blood soaking the Sam-bul-seon deepened.
The Sam-bul-seon, the Tae-eul Sang-bo-jang, her own blood—it was excessive for one Evil Spirit, but this was no creature worth prolonging the battle with.
‘Such a deep grudge that it summons Soul Fire just for one Evil Spirit… how exactly did it die?’
Jo, battered by the fan’s strikes, collapsed and began convulsing. A flicker of pity crossed Hee-seo’s face as she watched.
This was why Hee-seo sought to learn the ghost’s name.
‘If I’d only known the dead one’s name, her body wouldn’t have been damaged like this.’
Hee-seo’s Exorcism worked by different principles than the Cheon-do of shamans. Where shamans would resolve the grievance of the soul and soothe the heart so it would leave of its own accord, Hee-seo’s approach was closer to using physical force to drive the ghost away.
If she’d known the ghost’s name and identity, Hee-seo could have borrowed some of the shaman’s methods. She hadn’t undergone Divine Descent, but there had been a time when she’d set foot on the path of a shaman herself.
“The longer you cling to that body, the more damage you do to the vessel and the more karma you accumulate. Leave now!”
Hee-seo twisted her body and mounted Jo as she thrashed. Jo’s convulsions only grew worse.
Her flailing arms struck Hee-seo’s face and torso several times, but Hee-seo endured. She would have preferred to pin both arms, but the situation didn’t allow it—all she could do was hold on.
She evaded more blows than she took, yet her lips split and her cheeks swelled crimson in moments.
Thus did Hee-seo face the Possessed Person bare-handed, striving to complete the final incantation.
Until a fist came hurtling toward her face.
“Hum paray, hum baraya, hoo…!”
“Keep going! I’ve got her arms—hurry!”
Jo’s fists hung suspended in the air, trembling. When Hee-seo looked up, Je-eon—whom she’d thought had fled—was holding Jo’s arms fast.
For a moment their eyes met. The man who was always beautiful as a flower shone even in this perilous instant, radiant and luminous.
Unable to tear her gaze from him, Hee-seo drew the small blade attached beneath the Sam-bul-seon across the inside of her own arm.
“…!”
It was Je-eon who gasped as fresh blood spilled from the torn skin. As if it were his own flesh that had been cut, he gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on Jo’s arms with renewed force.
Hee-seo hesitated not at all and swung her arm.
Drip. Hee-seo’s blood fell into Jo’s mouth.
“Gack…! Ack, cough, kyaaaah! Aaaaah! Aagh, aaaaaaagh!”
As though she’d swallowed poison, Jo’s thrashing intensified. Je-eon’s body lurched under the violent resistance of the woman he held, yet he did not let go.
Hee-seo too steadied her breathing, grasped Jo’s jaw, and forced her mouth shut. Then she recited every remaining line of the Tae-eul Sang-bo-jang incantation.
“Hum hrih, haiara om arahya! Hum paray, hum baraya, hum vrata svaha!”
“Urrgh…! Ack, gack, uggghh…!”
Jo’s hands and feet flailed against the floor in spasms. She looked like an insect drowning and dying in water.
Screech-screech-screech. Her fingernails broke and tore as she clawed the floor, then her entire body convulsed once and went rigid as wood. From her impossibly wide eyes, tears mixed with blood began to stream.
Jo then toppled, vomited a torrent of black blood, and her rigid form went completely slack, sagging limp.
“Hah, hah, hah…!”
“…Hee-seo. Is it… over? Are you alright?”
As Hee-seo exhaled all the breath she’d been holding and wiped her brow, Je-eon asked urgently. With such severe exhaustion, she had no strength for words and merely waved her hand dismissively.
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to call Jesus himself. So let go of that. I’m going to be plenty hurt as it is… God, I’m completely out of energy. This is impossible.”
As Hee-seo struggled to rise despite her total depletion, Je-eon quickly released Jo’s hands and steadied her.
With no strength to push him away, she simply stared up at him—only to find he was looking elsewhere.
“Do you do this every time? What you mean by exorcising ghosts with your body—you’re cutting into your own flesh and bleeding yourself dry to drive them away?”
“…What, you thought I was making things up to sound mystical or something?”
It wasn’t meant to be funny, but when Je-eon’s expression remained rigid and unyielding, Hee-seo found herself caught off guard instead.
Why was he looking at her like that when it was his own body that had no wounds?
The intensity of his stare was so frightening that even Hee-seo, the one actually injured, felt embarrassed.
“First let’s treat that arm. Come on, we need to go down.”
“Wait—we should take Jo and that man too… huh?”
Hee-seo moved to stop Je-eon from wrapping his arms around her shoulders, then froze. In that instant, she had no choice but to doubt her own eyes. The Soul Fire still blazed fiercely beyond the window.
“That…… Why is it still——”
This made no sense. The aura she’d felt from Jo had vanished completely.
As Hee-seo staggered in confusion, she felt it—a ghost aura so sharp and chilling it pierced straight through her from behind.
There was no time to evade.
“Hee-seo!”
Had Je-eon’s voice ever carried such desperation?
At the urgency in his cry, she spun around—and the world descended into slow motion, as if these were the final moments of her life.
A face stained a sickly crimson rushed toward her.
It was Han Do-yun.
The moment she confronted that bestial visage, every question in Hee-seo’s mind crystallized all at once.
‘That’s right. From the start, this was never something a single Evil Spirit could accomplish. I should have suspected that…….’
No matter how potent a Possessed Person’s grudge, it wasn’t enough to account for everything that happened at the Hotel or the Soul Fire itself. But if multiple malevolent ghosts had grievances to settle, the picture changed entirely.
If Han Do-yun and Jo had been possessed from the very beginning…….
‘Then the security guard seeing the phantom, the Hotel incident—none of it was Je-eon’s doing.’
Han Do-yun’s appearance was no different from Jo’s. Black blood streamed from every orifice in his face as he lunged with enough force to snap her neck.
Hee-seo’s reflexes screamed at her to draw the Sam-bul-seon, but her expression crumpled with dismay. The Sam-bul-seon lay on the floor at her feet.
“Ugh—! Hack, ah!”
In that moment, Han Do-yun closed the distance and seized her throat. Despite his brutal strength, Hee-seo gripped his wrist, refusing to be dragged toward him without resistance.
How long could she hold on? The strength of a possessed body was beyond what any living person could withstand bare-handed.
With her throat constricted, Hee-seo stretched her foot toward the Sam-bul-seon. By the barest margin, her toes caught it. If only she could get it in her hand…….
But what happened in the next instant defied all her expectations.
Crash, crackle, shatter!
“Cough, ugh, cough!”
A violent impact sent Hee-seo sprawling across the floor. Simultaneously, the window—fractured by the Soul Fire—shattered with a thunderous roar. And Han Do-yun plummeted through the broken glass.
He did not fall alone.
Je-eon had wrapped his arms around him and thrown himself toward the Sea.

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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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