Song of the Tiger [6]
The thing that wore the shape of a human child while crying out in the voice of a tiger was thrown into confusion by the guests who had come swarming in without warning. It was not, by nature, the sort of being to turn visitors away — if anything, welcoming them was closer to its true temperament. But because of what the uninvited guest before had done, it couldn't bring itself to welcome them so readily. That ominous, existentially unsettling thing in the tiger mask. Even now, remembering how it had tried to fasten a parasite to its body, it shuddered. That was why it had watched Kim Yi-yeon's group from a distance, and why it had bolted the moment they tried to close in.
But at heart it was a mischievous, innocent creature, and its wariness lasted only a moment. The chase with Kim Yi-yeon's group had been fun, and at some point it had come to treat the whole thing as a kind of game. In raw speed, the woman riding the dog and the woman wrapped in the wind were faster — yet what had drawn its interest most was Kim Yi-yeon. He carried a brightness and warmth greater than anyone it had ever encountered. And above all, he wore a face from the memory of the child it cherished. That alone had endeared him to it.
"Grrrrr."
So when Kim Yi-yeon and his group finally stopped chasing it, the thing felt, if anything, disappointed. Had it gone too far? Had its mocking laughter hurt their feelings?
"Growl..."
It let out a deflated little cry and reflected on its own misbehavior. And then...
"Why so listless a voice?"
"Growl!"
He had reappeared. It swept its surroundings with a quick glance. The woman on the dog and the woman on the wind? Gone.
"Grrrrr~."
Its earlier contrition forgotten, it sneered at Kim Yi-yeon. A sneer that said: even all three of you together couldn't manage it — you think you can alone? Then it glanced back over its shoulder with a snort of laughter. A provocation, plain and simple: 'Planning to flank me like last time?'
"You brat, I'll show you exactly why they call me Kim Corbett— [They don't call me that.]"
Kim Yi-yeon sent his doryeok coursing through his entire body and hurled himself at it. The instant he broke past 100 kilometers per hour, the thing flung itself backward. It was sprinting with its head turned away from the direction of travel, trampling the physics of the real world at a staggering pace.
"Grah. That brat, still wet behind the ears!"
Stung by the provocation, Kim Yi-yeon ground his teeth and kicked off the ground. And so began yet another round of tag between the two of them.
This time, too, Kim Yi-yeon failed to match its speed. But there was none of last round's humiliation on his face. And the thing caught that change almost immediately. Yet instead of shrinking back, it laughed.
"Grrrrrrr!"
That's the spirit — grit like that is what makes the game fun! It accepted Kim Yi-yeon's challenge. Not out of recklessness, either — it had that much confidence in its own legs.
And so it led him on a merry chase. By now, it and Kim Yi-yeon were waging their pursuit along the inner wall of the fortress, circling like a pair of racing clock hands. The walls of Bukhansan Fortress ran 12.7 kilometers around — but for two beings moving at over 100 kilometers per hour, that was a distance they could lap and then some. In fact, the two of them made it all the way back to where the chase had begun in barely five minutes.
And into those five minutes, Kim Yi-yeon threw his gambit.
"Teacher! We're ready!"
"You actually timed it perfectly."
At Yu Min-seo's and Tsukumo Momo's signal, carried to him through the Heaven-Ear Transmission Art, Kim Yi-yeon broke into a wide grin.
"Got you!"
"?!"
The instant he shouted, Kim Yi-yeon slammed his foot down with everything he had.
KUUUUGUGUGUGUNG!
The earth quaked, and stone pillars erupted from the ground in every direction, radiating outward from the creature at the center.
"THIS is the Mountain-Moving Art of Yugong!"
The idiom "Yugong moves the mountain" comes from the Tang Wen chapter of the Liezi, and it means that with foolishly, stubbornly persistent effort, even a mountain can be moved. But contrary to the proverb's moral, in the original tale it was not the old man Yugong who carried the mountains away — it was the divine being Kua'e, moved to pity by Yugong's sincerity. And the Mountain-Moving Art was, true to that tale, a Daoist art of shifting mountains with unearthly power. Kim Yi-yeon, who had not yet ascended to the realm of the Immortals, could not hope to move a mountain whole. But what he needed right now was never the strength to move an entire mountain. Ripping up enough pillars to stake out a formation was more than sufficient.
"Grrrrr!?"
Hundreds of stone pillars closed in around the creature, tracing out the Soul-Chaining Formation — and every single pillar bore a Three-Eyed Nine-Talisman. Soul-Chaining Formation collab, featuring the Three-Eyed Nine-Talisman! This was the trump card Kim Yi-yeon had prepared.
"You actually managed to set up hundreds of talismans in time?"
Talismans placed in advance would have tipped the thing off, so the two of them had had to finish setting hundreds of them within the mere five minutes I spent chasing it alone.
"Honestly, it was Min-seo who did the heavy lifting — she handled the wind like an absolute demon."
"Heh, hehehe."
"Our Min-seo is the best!"
I heaped praise on Min-seo without reserve and strode toward the thing trapped inside the Soul-Chaining Formation. It spun in a flustered circle among the pillars, defeat written all over its face.
"For the record, running upward won't save you either. This is a formation, not a wooden palisade — it's not something you simply vault over."
It seemed to understand, flinching visibly. And yet...
"Grrrrr!"
It flashed a provocative grin — one that seemed to say, 'Only one way to find out' — and, with a look of sudden resolve, flung its body at the barrier of pillars.
"GRRRAAAAH!"
Whoosh.
"See, that's what I keep telling you~ As long as you're a tiger yokai, there's no way you can cross this barrier — Soul-Chaining Formation plus the Three-Eyed Nine-Talism—"
Thud.
"......"
"......"
...surely it shouldn't have worked?
"......"
"......"
The thing turned its head awkwardly toward me. The look on its face clearly said, 'Why does this work?'
'No, I'm the one who wants to ask!?'
The Soul-Chaining Formation, layered with the Three-Eyed Nine-Talisman, sealed with a binding rule and modified for maximum effectiveness against tigers — the so-called Three-Eyed Tiger-Binding Formation. No matter how strong an anomaly this thing was, waltzing through all that that easily simply wasn't possible. A single hypothesis flashed through my mind. 'Could it be that this thing isn't actually a tiger-related anomaly?' But if so, why had the chang-gwi pointed me here? 'Did I not dig deep enough?' No — that cry had not been the cry of something lying. Then why... Damn. There was no time to think it through.
Step by wary step, the thing began backing away from me. A reaction utterly different from before. Unlike the days when it had treated us as toys to be toyed with, it had now realized it might genuinely be caught — and its whole attitude had changed. If I lost it in this state, its wariness would keep it from ever showing its face again. Which meant the difficulty of this hunt would climb to a filthy degree. 'I have to catch it right now!'
Knowing full well I was slower, I sprinted with everything I had. But...
Whoosh!
It was, of course, far faster.
'Damn it!'
Wasn't there some way? Think — in martial arts novels, there are always techniques like lightfoot art or movement arts, where you don't just run but travel like a teleport. Was there nothing like that among the Daoist arts? '...There is!'
Chukji-beop — the Shrink-the-Earth Method. The Daoists' super-warp technique, said to work by folding the ground itself as you run. The problem was that in all my time with Dongbin's Dao Study Room, I had never once seen even the first character of "chukji" in its pages. And in my experience so far, no Eastern sorcery exists that isn't found in the Study Room. In other words, if it isn't in Dongbin's Dao Study Room, then in reality it doesn't exist — and honestly, I lean toward that being the truer answer.
'If I lose it here, there's no coming back. I MUST catch it!'
Which meant performing, right here and now, a technique that might or might not exist at all. Could I pull it off? 'Of course I can!' Trusting myself, I spun my mind to full rotation in the space of a single heartbeat. 'Think, first — what IS chukji-beop?' You fold the earth. That's why it's called shrinking the ground. But when you actually examine the concept, it's closer to folding space than folding earth. But was space really something you could fold so easily? Space was the absolute canvas that held everything we saw and felt. Interfering with it was not—
'Wait a second...'
It was true that in the real world, space was an absolute canvas that permitted no human touch whatsoever. But this was the Other Side. Was a made space — a constructed Other Side — really the same untouchable absolute canvas? 'No. No, it isn't. Above all, I've already interfered directly with an Other Side's space before!' I'd done it in [Lostco], and again during the [Suicide Train]. I had felt the boundary of the Other Side, and I had set it on fire. 'If I can burn it, there's no way I can't fold it!?'
The instant my thoughts reached that conclusion — the distance between me and the thing had already vanished.
"GRRAH!?"
By the time I realized I could do it, I had already done it. At my sudden appearance right in front of it, the thing panicked — and tried to bolt again.
"Too slow."
However fast a being might be, it cannot outrun one who folds space itself and simply walks across the seam. Shaking me off was no longer possible.
Tap.
"GRRAH!"
My hand closed around its throat. The long, long chase was over.
"Grk— khh— grk!"
Clutching its neck, the thing flailed its limbs in pointless resistance. There was only bewilderment and fear in it — no hostility, not the slightest intent to attack. 'Something really is wrong here.' The elation of having broken through chukji-beop on my own lasted barely a moment before I was frowning at the strangeness of the whole situation. Completely unaffected by the Three-Eyed Tiger-Binding Formation. Not a shred of aggression even while captured. An Other Side atmosphere far too gentle for the hidden face of a man-eating tiger. Every last piece of it was telling me that I had overlooked something. The good news: my answer sheet was sitting right here in my hand.
"Let's see what exactly is going on with you."
I loosened the reins on the Resonance Technique I usually kept tightly suppressed. The instant I did, its thoughts began flowing in through the hand gripping its throat. 'It hurts!''I'm scared!''Stop it!' The emotions the thing was feeling right now came through first.
"Growl?"
And it felt that too.
"Now, you are entitled to counsel and free to exercise your right to silence — but if you'd rather not be exorcised, I suggest you confess everything you're upset about within three seconds."
"Growl!"
At that, the memory it wanted to show me poured into my head. Someone wearing a tiger mask. The chang-gwi clinging to that someone's armpits, jaw, and cheekbones. At the man's command, the chang-gwi swarmed onto this thing. 'I was completely played...' The chang-gwi, strictly speaking, hadn't lied. Asked where the tiger they were attached to was, they had pointed to this place — to the Bukhansan San-gun, who had lost its body and newly settled here. Because, past aside, the one they were attached to now really was the Bukhansan San-gun. The problem was that "attached" did not equal "on the same side."
'It was never the tiger binding the chang-gwi — the chang-gwi latched onto the tiger...' The guests had well and truly usurped the host.
Then another memory began flowing in. Not a recent one. Heavily degraded, with tile-roofed and thatched houses visible — quite old, judging by that. Joseon dynasty, perhaps? If the first memory had been one the San-gun deliberately chose to show me, this one felt like it had slipped through on its own — the single most indelible memory the San-gun possessed. And in that memory, the San-gun, a knife held to its throat, was being hauled up Bukhansan by men whose faces were veiled in white hemp cloth.
'Where are you taking me?'
Smack.
'Ow!'
At its question, the man behind it swung a rod across its back. 'Who gave a thing like you leave to speak human words?''Growl... grrr.' The San-gun, tears streaming down its face, imitated the cry of a tiger. The procession climbed Bukhansan and came to a stop at a valley. And at that moment—
"GRRRRRRR!"
The San-gun thrashed and tore itself free of my hand.
"Growl! Grrr!"
It glared at me as if to say this was more than enough. Angry — as if I had no business peeking into someone's most intimate memory.
"Whoa. Sorry."
I apologized honestly. If the child in front of me was not the man-eating tiger that commanded the chang-gwi but an innocent mountain god, then I had committed a colossal breach of etiquette. I bowed my head once more, formally.
"I completely misunderstood you. I'm sorry."
"Growl!"
The San-gun nodded as though accepting the apology — then suddenly darted ahead and beckoned to me.
"You want me to follow?"
"Growl!"
"Teacher!"
"Did you catch the man-eating tiger? ...Huh?"
Min-seo and Momo, who had been waiting at a distance to assist with the formation and avoid drawing suspicion, were thrown by the unexpected scene.
"Wh-what happened?"
"I'll explain on the way. Seems this one has something it wants to show us."
Following the San-gun, I filled the two of them in on what I had learned. Before long, we arrived at the place it had been so eager to bring us — a small hermitage tucked into one corner of the inner fortress. And lying collapsed there was a person I had never expected to see.
"...Kim Han-soo!?"
Kim Han-soo, the shaman YouTuber of channel "ClapClapClap." He had once been my comrade — until he'd run off the moment word reached him that Cosmos and the Paranormal Administration Bureau had marked him. Why on earth was he here?
"Hey, why are you—"
I rushed over and checked his condition. "Not good..." His energy was badly damaged. Even when he'd been hit by the loneliness of the abandoned house, he hadn't been in half this bad a shape.
"Growl..."
The San-gun crept up beside me, glancing anxiously between my face and Kim Han-soo's.
"Don't worry. I can save him."
I forced a Green Immortal Pill into Kim Han-soo's mouth and, just as I had once done for Lee Jin-seol, channeled doryeok through his wrist.
"Mmmh..."
The effect was immediate.
"Coming back to your senses?"
"...Kim Do-sa?"
"That's me. Look, pal — if you were scared enough to ditch your friends and run, you should at least live well. Why are you lying here like this?"
"Nobody ran! I told you! I just came to my family home in Oidong to clear my head after hearing that story yesterday, and— ugh...!"
"Don't talk so much. Your body's in the worst state I've ever seen."
But yesterday? When I'd laid out my situation and told them to cut ties with me if it came to that had been more than two weeks ago. If he says it happened yesterday — had this guy been lying unconscious here for over two weeks? How was he even alive right now? The reason wasn't hard to guess. The San-gun — the Mountain God of Bukhansan — had kept Kim Han-soo's breath going.
Once Kim Han-soo had recovered a little, I asked him.
"So what on earth happened to you? After that message, you never touched your channel again and went completely dark — I assumed you were hiding out of fear..."
"Nobody was hiding! I told you! I just came to my family home in Oidong to sort out my thoughts, cool my head, and then... and then...! Right! The tiger mask! I met someone wearing a tiger mask!"
Kim Han-soo's story went like this. The day he'd come down to the family home to gather his thoughts, a visitor arrived late at night. A strange visitor in a tiger mask. The masked guest said, without another word, that he had simply come to the wrong house, and left. The trouble began after that.
"Suddenly I had this weird urge to go to Bukhansan, so I climbed it to clear my head — and then I realized men in hanbok were following me from behind..."
"So that was when the chang-gwi possessed you."
And this time, too, the one who had saved this Kim Han-soo was—
"Grrrrr!"
—this San-gun, draped over the awakened man's body with its face buried against him. At this point, it was airtight.
"This 'family home' of yours — you mean Hofungdang, don't you?"
"H-how did you know that...?"
"That explains it..."
When I'd seen Lee Seon-ja, I did think she strangely resembled someone. So much plastic surgery that the original template was barely left, but her face had borne a resemblance to Kim Han-soo's. Or rather, of course — it was the other way around. I had always wondered why the tenth-generation heir of a hereditary shaman line, nine generations deep, was playing fake shaman on YouTube — but everyone has their own circumstances, so I'd decided not to pry.
"I went and met your mother at Hofungdang."
"You met my mother? ...My mother?"
"Yeah. Is that a problem?"
"...That can't be."
"What?"
"...My mother tried to receive the god our family had served late in life, failed, and fell into delirium. She's been in a nursing hospital for years now."
"......"
"That's why I came down to the family home — to sort things out and look after the house we'd left sitting empty."
"......"
"Kim Do-sa... who on earth did you meet?"
The moment I heard those words, every lingering, unresolved question from this case began clicking into place in my head with a satisfying series of snaps.
"...So that's how it was."
"Oh! Don't tell me — you said that line! The one from the Crown Prince Ghost video, Kim Do-sa-nim!"
"That's right."
I nodded with firm conviction. That line every living soul dreams of delivering at least once in their life!
"Every riddle is solved!"