I Exorcised an Evil Spirit by Teaching Myself on the Internet

Like the soul of that woman who'd killed herself, the one that had first taken the shape of a pale wisp of smoke. I'd assumed this thing was the same — just another lump of black smoke. But no. The only reason it had looked pitch black from head to toe was that its hair, hanging down past its feet, shrouded its entire body.

"What the hell is that?"

The mutter slipped out of me before I could stop it.

Whiiit.

The thing turned its head. Instinct kicked in — I realized, with a jolt, that I absolutely could not let it catch me looking at it.

"Choi Eun-ha, what is that thing?"

"What?"

"Over there, in the fresh produce corner."

"This? It's a lotus root salad they just got in."

"Oh! Have you tried it yet?"

"Haven't."

Nice. Smooth. Completely natural.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

...Yeah, right — like hell it was. The hair monster was closing in on me. And through it all, Eun-ha showed not a flicker of alarm, which meant the thing must have been invisible to her. I tried to play it cool, but by the time the monster was right in front of my nose, cold sweat was running down my back.

What happens if it actually touches me? Should I bolt now? Is that thing fast on its feet? No, wait — it's a ghost. What if it can teleport?

As a dozen frantic thoughts churned through my head, I remembered something I'd read on Dongbin's Dao Study Room. That's right — hadn't the blog said that among spiritual energies, Do-ryeok punches the hardest of them all, top of the top? Then I would trust the Do-ryeok inside me!

At that exact moment, the black monster reached out its hand toward me. The instant its fingertips touched my chest, sparks burst out — sparks no ordinary person would have been able to see.

FWOOSH!

Startled by the white flames, the monster recoiled. Yes! Riding the momentum, I strolled toward it as casually as I could manage.

"Huh, now I'm curious. Maybe I'll buy one and try it."

The monster shuffled backward to get out of my path. Where do you think you're running, you bastard? I chased down the retreating thing and swung my shoulder into it like a shoulder barge.

FWOOOOSH!

———!!

The monster's upper body, crushed under my shoulder, was swallowed by the flames and collapsed. The tangled mass of hair caved in on itself, melting and scattering across the floor. Apparently it hadn't been a body covered in hair after all — the body itself was the hair. And just like that, another successful exorcism.

"You want me to ring this up for you?"

"Nah, forget it. It looks disgusting. Why would I eat that?"

"? Are you insane?"

Ignoring Eun-ha's grumbling, I turned over the memories that had flowed into me while the monster burned.

"...What is this?"

Unlike the woman, whose death had poured grief, despair, and a whole tangle of human emotion into me, the only thing that had seeped out of this monster was pure, concentrated malice toward living human beings. Apparently, a soul that lingers too long after death loses its memories of life and curdles into an evil spirit, feeding on nothing but jealousy and hatred for the living.

So that thing was an evil spirit too, huh?

Running into a malevolent spirit the very day after my spirit eyes opened — what a fantastic start to the month. But ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠honestly, this had been a valuable experience: evil spirit or ghost, one blast of Do-ryeok settled the account, one hit for me, one hit for it. Thinking of it that way, gaining my spirit eyes actually felt like a net gain. I could now see a world no one else could.

"I'm gonna hit the bathroom real quick."

"Mm."

Thirty minutes had passed since Eun-ha went to the bathroom.

"Did something happen to her?"

Worry gnawed at me — what if casting out that spirit had messed something up inside my body? I locked the store and headed into the storeroom at the back where the bathroom was.

"Choi Eun-ha? What are you doing in there?"

And yet, for some reason, the girl who'd supposedly gone to the bathroom was standing pressed into the corner of the storeroom, forehead against the wall.

"......"

She didn't answer. She just stood there, silent and still, head jammed into the corner.

But... something was off. Was Eun-ha's hair always that long?

No — that wasn't the issue. Eun-ha's hair was growing. Right before my eyes. Within moments, the yellow blonde spilled down past her shoulders, past her waist, all the way to her feet.

"Hee... heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!"

And then, with her hair streaming down to the floor, Eun-ha began whipping her head around like a lunatic —

"It wasn't exorcised!?"

The yellow-haired monster was complete.

Swoosh.

Eun-ha — no, the yellow monster — drew something out from behind its back, a piece of metal that glinted cold and sharp.

A kitchen knife.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Where the hell did that come from?

"Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!"

The yellow monster hoisted the knife and charged.

"Shit!"

I wrenched open the bathroom door right beside me and dove inside.

Click!

The instant the lock clicked shut—

"Openitopenitopenitopenitopenitopenitopenit."

The door shuddered in its frame, accompanied by a voice that sounded like sanity coming apart at the seams.

"Like hell I'd open it, you lunatic!?"

Why was it so strong though? The handle rattled like it would be ripped clean off the door at any second. Clamping the door shut with one hand, I pulled up Dongbin's Dao Study Room on my phone. I couldn't be sure, but Eun-ha was probably possessed — the evil spirit had burrowed inside her body and was pulling the strings. And as long as it was hiding inside a physical host, Do-ryeok body-blasts probably wouldn't work. Granted, landing a body blast on someone swinging a knife would be a challenge all on its own.

I needed another way.

"Please, please — isn't there some exorcism method that's easy and simple and works right now!?"

Scrolling desperately through the site, I found exactly what I was looking for.

"There it is!"

"Peach wood? Where am I supposed to get that right now? Talismans too — that's a mountain of prep. Forty-nine days? I need it now! Isn't there anything simpler!?"

As if it had heard my plea, the next link to scroll into view was exactly the phrase I wanted.

- Exorcism emergency? Right now? You can do it too! The easy-peasy exorcism chant: the Six Jia Secret Chants!

I clicked straight through and speed-read the post.

The Baopuzi is a Daoist text written in the fourth century by one Ge Hong, a scholar of the Eastern Jin and an aspiring immortal. The book — twenty inner chapters and fifty outer ones — covers everything from the recipe for jindan, the substance that transmutes base metals into gold, to bedroom arts, dietary therapy, breathing and meditation techniques, and even ethical principles for getting along with people. But the most famous and widely circulated knowledge from the Baopuzi was something else entirely.

Ge Hong, still an aspirant himself, argued that to become an immortal one had to create and consume an elixir. And since any elixir refined in the mundane world would be tainted by impurity and rendered useless, he added, anyone who dreamed of immortality had to ascend a famous mountain to do it. The catch: once a practitioner entered the mountains, all manner of uncanny things would latch onto them and torment them, so they had to be prepared. Ge Hong offered two countermeasures. The first was passive: pick an auspicious day, so the uncanny things couldn't latch on in the first place. The second was active: recite a chant that drives off whatever had already latched on.

And the name of that chant — the one that drives off the uncanny — was the Six Jia Secret Chants.

"Yes — this is exactly what I was hoping for!"

At the bottom of the post, the site owner had tacked on a postscript.

"Of course it's never that easy, damn it."

If nine words could finish an exorcism, every exorcist, shaman, and priest in the world would have starved to death long ago. That vague, hand-wavy instruction — "put Do-ryeok in your voice" — nearly made me consider fighting her off with a toilet plunger instead.

"Like that'd work...!"

It was do or die. Nothing left but to gamble everything.

"Ah — ah! Mic check, mic check."

Clutching the shuddering door for dear life, I squeezed the words out of my throat. Maybe it was the superhuman strength of a crisis, or maybe I really was a genius Daoist — either way, within a few tries, Do-ryeok had poured into my voice.

"Ah! Aaah!"

The force rattling the door suddenly weakened. Of course it did — Do-ryeok is spiritual energy of tremendous density and overwhelming Yang aura. A voice steeped in that energy would be poison to an evil spirit even without any spell attached.

"Lin Bing Dou Zhe, Gai Zhen Lie Qian Xing!"

I roared it out before the thing had a chance to flee.

KU-BANG!

"AAAAAAARGH!"

In that instant, the sound of a body hitting the floor and a scream tore through the air at the same time. My hand shot for the door handle — then I changed my mind.

"Lin Bing Dou Zhe, Gai Zhen Lie Qian Xing!"

"Lin Bing Dou Zhe, Gai Zhen Lie Qian Xing!"

"Lin Bing Dou Zhe, Gai Zhen Lie Qian Xing!"

Again and again and again, until my throat felt like it would tear. Every time I chanted, there came the sound of something rolling across the floor, and a scream burst out like the last gasp of a dying animal. Judging by how the noise drifted farther away, the thing was fleeing from the incantation. And by the time my throat was starting to genuinely hurt, the thrashing and the screaming finally stopped.

Creeeak.

Just to be safe, I cracked the door open a sliver and checked outside. The storeroom was a disaster. The stacked goods had all toppled and rolled across the floor; plenty of items had burst open or been crushed beyond any hope of selling. And scattered among the wreckage lay clumps of yellow hair — just looking at them made goosebumps crawl up my spine.

The store itself was wrecked too. Shelves toppled every which way, broken merchandise strewn about. And there, at the entrance, lay Eun-ha. From the cracks spiderwebbed across the glass door, I could piece it together: she'd been trying to flee the Six Jia Secret Chants and get outside. But because I'd locked the door, she couldn't get out — so she'd just beaten on the glass until she ended up like this.

And then—

Sliiither.

A bundle of black hair came slithering out of Eun-ha's mouth like a snake.

"Where do you think you're going!"

Like some decrepit old man creeping toward the grave, the hair oozed out bit by bit — and I yanked it out in one pull, like tugging a sweet potato vine by the roots.

FWOOOOSH!

Flames spread from the point I'd grabbed, racing down into the hair still inside Eun-ha's body. At that very moment, her eyes flew open.

"You okay!?"

"Khack — khhack — ugh, uuuuueeeegh!"

Eun-ha gagged and heaved for a long while before finally vomiting up a cloud of black, ash-like smoke. The moment it left her mouth, it dispersed into the air and vanished. Now the evil spirit was well and truly exorcised.

"Wh-what hap—"

"That's my line — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you said you were going to the bathroom. What the hell happened to you?"

"I-I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, something — like a bug? — dropped from the ceiling into my mouth. I tried to spit it out in a panic, and after that I don't remember anyth—"

"I see..."

Whether it was from being chased around by a knife-wielding blonde lunatic or from burning too much Do-ryeok on the incantation, I was too exhausted to press the issue any further.

"U-um, I don't really know what happened, but Yi-yeon... I mean, oppa Yi-yeon — you saved me, right?"

"Sure... let's go with that."

"Thank you..."

"If you're grateful, buy me dinner sometime."

"Is that flirting?"

"Flirting my ass. I'm genuinely wrecked, so buy me something expensive."

"Okay! I'll buy you something expensive."

Eun-ha flashed a sheepish smile. And then, in that very moment—

Pssshhh.

The hair that had grown all the way down to her feet peeled away from her scalp and detached all at once.

Which is to say: Choi Eun-ha had just gone completely bald.

"Uh, uh? Uhhh?"

Her soul visibly leaving her body, Eun-ha ran her hands over her own head. Where the bleached, fried stubble of her dye job should have been, there was nothing but smooth, bare, immaculately soft scalp.

"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Eun-ha screamed. A scream that made the one she'd unleashed under the Six Jia Secret Chants sound like a polite cough.

May the gods' protection be upon her scalp — that was all I could do. All I had left to offer was a prayer.