The God Who Presses Down on Heads
Gi Ho-cheol looked back and forth between the two of us sitting side by side, then began to speak as though telling us an old bedtime story.
"A long, long time ago—more than a hundred years past—there was a series of incidents in which villages tucked away in mountain valleys were wiped out, one after another. Every last victim was found with their head burst open, so it was certain that a single yokai was behind it all."
Every one of them died with their head exploding?
It was a distinctive detail, one that stirred at the edge of my memory as if it wanted to surface but couldn't quite…….
"To deal with that yokai, the Gwoeryeoknansin of our kingdom gathered to deliberate. Someone proposed that since yokai like that one were too difficult to capture alone, we should band together and form an organization to hunt them as one. That was how the Gwoeryeoknansin families began to exchange with one another, created opportunities for their descendants and disciples to gain experience, and contributed to the strength of the nation……."
However, he said, the prospect of Gwoeryeoknansin gathering into an armed brotherhood did not sit well with the court. It could too easily look like the seed of rebellion.
"Proud families, every one of them—who would lead and manage the organization became a point of contention in itself. Some argued it should go to whoever was strongest, others to a majority vote, and after bickering back and forth for a long while, they finally decided to settle it with perfect fairness by placing the leadership outside their ranks—entrusting it to the King himself."
The Un Kingdom already operated a specialized hunter organization at the national level, one devoted to subduing dangerous beasts and supernatural threats.
It was called the Chakhogapsa, the Tiger-Quelling Armored Corps—a special unit that held separate hunting examinations across the country to recruit those capable of capturing the realm's most dangerous tigers.
Modeled on that precedent, the Gwoeryeoknansin petitioned the King of the time to establish the Chagyogapsa, the Demon-Quelling Armored Corps.
The idea was that young Gwoeryeoknansin selected from the different families and schools would serve for a set period, roaming the land to hunt the yokai that preyed on the kingdom—and in doing so, mingle with one another, learn to cooperate, and accumulate real combat experience.
It was an offer the court had no reason to refuse.
For a mere monthly stipend and some investment in facilities, they would gain a powerful military force to deal with troublesome yokai, along with an official apparatus for keeping the notoriously unruly Gwoeryeoknansin within reach.
"The first objective of the newly founded Chagyogapsa was to track down and destroy the nameless yokai that had been massacring villages in the mountains. Even at that stage, everyone assumed it would be nothing more than good battlefield practice for the young Gwoeryeoknansin."
But when the Chagyogapsa units kept being annihilated, both the court and the Gwoeryeoknansin families sensed that something was deeply wrong.
Before long, the ones dispatched to the corps were no longer young heirs but the seasoned mainstays of each family—Gwoeryeoknansin in the full flower of their power.
"The suppression force we assembled then was made up exclusively of Gwoeryeoknansin whose names carried real weight across the Un Kingdom. Everyone believed that this time, surely, the yokai would be taken."
And of that entire force, only a single soul survived to return.
"Through that lone survivor, the yokai's appearance and nature were finally revealed. Along with just how dangerous it truly was."
On the outside, it looked like a fair, youthful boy of fifteen or sixteen—with hair as white as an old man's and eyes the dark, clotted red of dried blood.
"According to the survivor's testimony, the yokai introduced itself as 'Dueoksini.' Then it asked them who they were. When the Chagyogapsa soldiers answered, the boy gave a small, pleasant smile…… and every single head in the force burst open on the spot. Those who gave their names and those who held their tongues—all alike."
The only one whose head did not burst, he said, was a certain hatted Taoist who had, for personal reasons, long since abandoned his true name and wandered the land under a pseudonym.
"Afterward, attempt after attempt at suppression was mounted around that surviving Taoist. And with each attempt, another piece of Dueoksini's power came to light."
Dueoksini—or Dueoksin, the God Who Presses Down on Heads.
It held the divine prerogative of recognizing a name simply by gazing upon a head.
And more—it could, by merely fixing its gaze on the head of anyone whose name it knew, crush that head until it burst.
These two powers wove together into a terrible harmony, so that anyone who stood before Dueoksini was dead before the fight even began.
"But that Taoist—who had gone by the pen name 'Gimsatgat' since long before—survived. It was around him that the successive suppression campaigns rallied, and it was he who uncovered the key to withstanding Dueoksini's power."
First: one's head had to be concealed beneath a satgat or wide-brimmed hat, so that Dueoksini could not see it.
Second: one had to have a pseudonym—something used more often than one's true name.
Third: that pseudonym could not be a distinctive alias pointing to any single person. It had to be an anonymous name so ordinary, so commonly borrowed, that it could never be pinned to anyone.
Many Gwoeryeoknansin gave their lives to learn even these three things.
Once Dueoksini realized that the Gwoeryeoknansin were organizing against it, it stopped attacking ordinary villages and turned instead upon the Gwoeryeoknansin families themselves.
In the blink of an eye, entire clans were annihilated—and word spread that Dueoksini had not merely killed them, but had torn open the heads of some and devoured them.
"At the scenes…… there were no heads left on the bodies, or only the marks of something half-eaten and abandoned. Family after family vanished that way, and the Gwoeryeoknansin came to understand that this was no mere suppression campaign any longer. It had become a war for their very survival."
And so the Chagyogapsa's campaign against Dueoksini became the war it was later named for.
The Gwoeryeoknansin gathered beneath the Chagyogapsa's banner and, with the court's backing, organized a true army.
"A special satgat was also crafted, designed to evade Dueoksini's head-crushing power."
A hat so large it shrouded the wearer's head completely.
Into it were woven charms to keep it from obstructing the wearer's vision, and disguising charms as well—spells to make it impossible to tell whether the one beneath the hat was old or young, man or woman.
And to preserve absolute anonymity, every Chagyogapsa soldier who donned one of those hats was called Gimsatgat, regardless of age or gender.
All of them taking the name of the Taoist 'Gimsatgat'—the first survivor, the one who had lived through that horror and, rather than flee, had kept leading the fight against Dueoksini ever since.
"Thus began the war between the countless Gimsatgats and Dueoksini."
Even setting aside its head-bursting power, Dueoksini was a yokai of terrifying strength. It was hard enough to capture under any circumstances—and in the middle of battle, a single crack in one's hat meant instant death. It was, he said, a miserable, brutal war.
"Victory belonged to us in the end—to all the Gimsatgats. And yet it was hardly a perfect one. We never confirmed Dueoksini's death."
After a savage battle, Dueoksini was gravely wounded by the Gimsatgats and fell from a cliff.
But no body was ever found, and so no one could say for certain whether it had died or lived on.
"The Chagyogapsa was disbanded afterward—the losses had simply been too great—but since the Gat War, nearly every Gwoeryeoknansin in the Un Kingdom carries a satgat. The custom of giving the name Gimsatgat when one cannot reveal one's true name was born in that era as well."
"So that explains why this Taoist Gimsatgat's whereabouts are so elusive, and why his tales spread across the whole kingdom……."
The Crown Prince looked struck with wonder even as he sighed at the tragedy of it all.
I, on the other hand, was spiraling.
Dueoksini? An actual Dueoksin—the God Who Presses Down on Heads?
The god that presses down upon heads. And "head" didn't only mean the literal one—it carried a metaphorical weight as well.
The summit. The heavens. And…… the Supreme Deity.
When the "karma" accumulated by gods and immortals and the Heavenly Realm itself reaches a certain threshold, it is born as their recoil—a being made in order to press down on the head of the world.
The king and god of all things wicked.
From the gods' perspective, it's the law of heaven, earth, and every spirit made manifest—a trial, or a punishment, that this world visits upon the gods themselves.
That was why gods, who unlike humans were not bound to reincarnate, did everything they could to avoid piling up karma. Why they kept the divine law and strove to live as righteously as possible.
And from the perspective of the wicked things, it's their one and only chance—maybe the world's head can be replaced, maybe the world itself can be ruled, maybe they can finally stand above it all.
That was what the birth of a Dueoksini meant.
Mom and Dad too…… they said the previous Jade Emperor and King Yama both died at Dueoksini's hands, which is why my parents inherited their thrones around the same time.
I'd heard that the two of them first began to notice each other while they were waging that war against Dueoksini, before they became the Supreme Deity and the King of the Underworld.
And the reason they each came to inherit the staggering mantle of "Supreme Deity" of the Heavenly Realm and the Netherworld was the merit they earned in striking Dueoksini down.
Much the way Cheoyong became the god who captures rebels and governs the warding-off of calamity.
Either way, this is a huge deal—a genuine catastrophe!
My heart was pounding. I racked my memory for everything I'd ever been told about Dueoksini.
When it's freshly born…… it's supposed to be more like a warning. Until a Dueoksini gains the standing to ascend to the Heavenly Realm…… it's still comparatively weak.
But the gods couldn't simply step in and destroy it themselves beforehand, either.
Because the moment a god moved against Dueoksini, the karma of "meddling in the lower realm" would accrue—and that very karma was the fuel from which Dueoksini claimed its true divinity.
So while it's still in the lower realm, the best course is for the gods to hold back their karma and let the beings of the lower world deal with it. That's what I remember being told.
For its part, a Dueoksini's goal was to devour beings who carried the standing to ascend—mountain gods, Gwoeryeoknansin, divine bloodlines and the like—growing stronger with every kill and ascending to the Heavenly Realm as quickly as it could.
The yokai in that story—the one the Gimsatgats defeated and drove out of the Un Kingdom in the Gat War—is the one we're facing now. If mortals were enough to drive it off, it must still be weak. A seed of calamity, not the bloom.
Did Mom and Dad know? That a Dueoksini had appeared?
Just in case, I have to ask them right away. The moment class ends……
I sat there fidgeting through every remaining minute, waiting for nothing else in the world but for Gi Ho-cheol's lesson to be over.