The Tiger's Song [8]
"S-so, where exactly are you headed?"
"Bukhansan. It's my personal philosophy—you can really see what a man is made of when you climb with him."
"Ah! I know that saying too!"
At Kim the Exorcist's dopey grin, Jeong-in sneered inwardly. Then, mostly to toy with him a little, she looped her arm through his.
Leaning in close...
Jeong-in brought her lips to his ear and whispered.
"Just call me Jeong-in."
"Ah, I, um—!"
"I know who you are. Kim the Exorcist, right? I watch your videos all the time~"
At that, Kim the Exorcist went scarlet, eyes going wide as saucers.
"And I happen to know Bukhansan like the back of my hand... I know all the spots with no people around at this hour~"
He flinches.
"So why don't we head up there and get to know each other a little better?"
Hehe.Easy.
That said, this Kim the Exorcist—unlike his appearance, the man was solidly built. The type who just looks scrawny in his clothes, maybe?
And so Jeong-in led Kim the Exorcist up Bukhansan. Their destination was the Mountain God's Inner Space. There, no one could interfere while she planted the chang-gwi in him. Granted, the Mountain God would be waiting there, but—
A Mountain God without a body is nothing but a scarecrow anyway.
You'll just stand there twiddling your thumbs while I drag your name through the mud.
Giggling to herself, Jeong-in guided Kim the Exorcist along, until at last they arrived at Jungseong Gate of the Bukhansan Fortress Wall.
"Um, should we... hold hands?"
"H-hands?"
Before he could even answer, Jeong-in seized his hand. To drag an ordinary civilian like Kim the Exorcist into the Inner Space, a psychic like her had to take his hand. The funny part was that what went in one way had to come out the same way—on the way out, a psychic had to hold his hand again. Otherwise, a non-psychic could never leave the Mountain God's Inner Space under his own power.
Easy to slip into, and it traps non-psychics without lifting a finger. What a handy little pocket dimension~
Holding Kim the Exorcist's hand as she stepped over Jungseong Gate, Jeong-in suddenly thought: Huh? This guy's body is pretty firm, and his hands are kind of big?
Compared to how he looked, he seemed smaller than Kim the Taoist, so this was an unexpected side to him. Yes—exactly the kind of solid build and big hands that Kim the Taoist would have—
"Huh?"
The moment they crossed Jungseong Gate, the scenery transformed. Winter Bukhansan vanished, and spring Bukhansan within the Inner Space welcomed the two of them. And it was only when they'd walked that far that Jeong-in noticed something strange.
The Kim the Exorcist behind me right now... is he really Kim the Exorcist?
But before she could turn around to check—
"Let go of my hand, you son of a bitch."
WHAM!
...a flying kick from behind beat her to it.
"Khagh!"
The monstrous force sent Jeong-in hurtling forward.
"Ngh!"
Gritting through the pain, she steadied herself midair and landed after flying a good few dozen meters.
"Not bad. I was aiming to crush your spine, you know?"
"You...! Kim the Taoist!"
There stood Kim the Taoist—who should have been in the middle of a live broadcast at that very moment.
"H-how!?"
A question packing two mysteries at once. One: how had he known her location? Two: how had he fooled her eyes? Weighed against each other, seven to three, the latter was the heavier.
Impossible! My eyes were wrong!?
Jeong-in was a psychic who specialized in bewitching and deceiving people with chang-gwi. Naturally, she was a master of transformation spells and illusion arts that mimicked other people. And by that expert eye of hers, the Kim the Taoist in the broadcast had been real.
My eyes could be wrong!? No way!
Unable to accept it, Jeong-in ignored the Kim the Taoist right in front of her, pulled out her phone, and opened his stream.
......What?
But there was Kim the Taoist on the screen, still streaming away. Even now, through her eyes, he still looked like the genuine article.
"How in the world—!?"
"How about you answer me!"
CRUNCH!
Before she could even finish, Kim the Taoist folded space with compressed-footwork sorcery and his fist came down like lightning.
"Gwek!"
The blow landed square on her face and sent Jeong-in flying backward yet again.
"And quit turning on the charm for people you've just met. You were scared out of your wits that I'd catch on when you latched onto me, weren't you?"
Watching Jeong-in sail away, I let out a sigh of relief. Phew. So it actually worked?
What had deceived Jeong-in's eyes was none other than Narrative Coercion.
Deceiving people is her whole specialty, so I figured even Cheongangsu's transformation art might get seen through.
That was why I'd chosen a Narrative Coercion newly installed through Yeokcheonje: [Hard to Tell Through a Screen].
Doesn't this kind of thing happen all the time? A celebrity you've only seen through a camera turns out to be far more handsome in person. Twins who look clearly different face-to-face become indistinguishable, like identical twins, when viewed through a screen. A celebrity's disguise or costume looks more convincing through a camera's distortion than it ever could in real life. This was one of those anecdotes, sublimated into a narrative.
This one's a perception-distortion type too, so like "You Look Quite Different From Your Broadcast," it barely costs me any cognitive power. Thank god for that.
There was a catch, though. For the narrative to hold, it needed one condition: a double whose face and aura resembled mine closely enough for the distortion of perception to take hold. Which, on paper, was a pretty hard condition to meet. But as luck would have it, there was exactly one person in Oidong right now whose face and vibe were weirdly similar to mine.
Kim the Exorcist.
For the hour until I reopened the stream, I tracked him down and installed him as my stand-in. He was, of course, flustered by the sudden request, but—
"I'll do a collab stream with you later, so just do it."
"Yes, sir!"
That one line and he folded like a lawn chair.
However brilliant a psychic Jeong-in might be, however gifted at deception sorcery—this wasn't sorcery. It was Narrative Coercion. A phenomenon produced by Narrative Coercion's correction is something no psychic, however skilled, can easily see through. If it were that easy, I wouldn't have suffered the way I did in [Lostco] or [The Suicide Train].
Man, when it was happening to me it was a total shitshow, but using it myself? Absolute cheat code.
There's a reason wit and out-of-the-box thinking matter as much as sorcery skill for a psychic.
"By the way, don't even think about running."
I didn't look back at Jungseong Gate behind me. I just pointed at it with my index finger.
"The entry conditions have changed."
For the record: entry still required a psychic crossing Jungseong Gate. But exit now came with an added rule—at least one hour must pass after entering. For this, I'd asked Kim Han-soo to channel the Mountain God. With a body granting him his full power, the Mountain God could fine-tune the Inner Space's rules as needed. Come to think of it, my finding Jeong-in so easily was thanks to that too. One way or another, Ieol and Gulgak were currently anchored to the Mountain God, and Kim Han-soo becoming his shaman had let him sense Jeong-in through that connection. Kim Han-soo's help had been enormous, all things considered.
Then—
"Don't make me laugh...! Who's running from whom!?"
"You. From me."
"You insolent little brat!"
"Whoa, whoa! Stop! Cut! Quit delivering lines like a minor villain who gets wiped in the first two episodes!"
"I'll show you why I can command the chang-gwi!"
At that instant, Jeong-in's body began to transform. It swelled to several times its size, both arms warping into wings, and tiger-striped fur sprouted across her entire massive frame—until she became a gigantic bird of prey draped in a tiger's pelt.
"So the anomaly planted in her body was the Homanjo—the Tiger-Striped Bird. Well, fair enough. That thing counts as a tiger too, I suppose."
The Homanjo is a giant bird recorded in The Complete Works of Cheongjanggwan, in the Record of Yangyeop, written by Yi Deok-mu. A monstrous bird discovered on a nameless island by a Bibyeonrang official—a sixth-rank post handling military secrets—dispatched to Honguido [Hongdo, in South Jeolla Province] during King Yeongjo's reign. As you can see, it was a monster covered in tiger stripes that devoured people just like a tiger.
Good thing I did my homework on tiger-related monsters and folklore before coming.
While I was thinking that, Jeong-in finished her transformation and looked down at me, sneering.
No sooner had she finished speaking than she split that enormous beak wide and came pecking down at me. Call it a peck all you like—if that beak connected, my entire upper body would simply cease to exist. Worse, her attack speed was frighteningly fast for something that size.
"Whoopsie!"
I folded space with compressed-footwork sorcery and slipped aside. Another peck. A stomp of razor talons. A sweep of those colossal wings—a relentless combo rained down on me, and yet...
"Whoopsie!"
"Oh dear, how dangerous!"
"Whoa, careful, careful!"
Not a single attack touched me. Which made sense, really—this side was using compressed-footwork sorcery. No matter how big or fast you are, how do you hit someone who runs by folding space itself?
ScreeeeEEE—! KRAAAAAAAAK!
When her attacks kept so much as grazing me, Jeong-in went berserk, beating those enormous wings in fury. Naturally, I dodged even that tantrum with ease—and this time it was my turn to take the offensive.
"Let's start light. A talisman or two."
With Environment Conversion sorcery, I sent a Jincheon talisman flying. But my opponent wasn't some hot-shot rookie either.
KYAAAAAAK!
The moment Jeong-in roared, the Jincheon talisman detonated in midair.
"Not bad, actually."
Was that a Lion's Roar? Or, more accurately, a Tiger's Roar? Either way, it seemed her transformation into a giant monster wasn't the whole of her power.
But Jeong-in wasn't the only one holding back.
"Let's see you block this."
I launched Jincheon talismans from multiple directions at once. Environment Conversion sorcery, learned back at Seonhwa High and put to good use ever since—accumulated experience had sharply increased the number of talismans I could control simultaneously.
Woooooong! WhiiiIIIING!
Faced with talismans diving in from thirty-six directions at once, Jeong-in panicked and let loose her Tiger's Roar. But the Tiger's Roar was a technique that fanned out radially from the front. Eleven talismans beyond its arc threaded cunningly past the roar and latched onto Jeong-in's body.
"Let's find out if your durability is as rock-solid as your speed and firepower. BOOM."
KA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
GRRAAAAAAAAGH!
Eleven Jincheon talismans detonated on her body simultaneously, and the shockwave shook the terrain for dozens of meters around. Enough force to casually outdo a couple of anti-tank mines!
And yet, in the middle of all that, Jeong-in was still alive. No—more than alive...
A little singed, but barely any effective hits. Huh.
I'd wondered why her illusions and deception arts seemed weirdly strong—apparently her raw combat power came entirely from the anomaly's own strength. Still, she's on a completely different level from the ones I fought before... The rabbit mask and the dog mask had burst into flames from a single do-ryeok-loaded punch, but Jeong-in had eaten two of my fists without so much as flinching. I was firmly absorbing the lesson that animal masks came in wildly different tiers, and thinking through which sorcery would actually work on her, when—
KIYAAAAAAAH!
Jeong-in began to beat those massive tiger-striped wings. I backed off, bracing for a storm of thrown feathers, but—
Flap-flap!
She shot rapidly up into the sky.
"...You've got to be kidding me..."
Tch! You know what, there's no rule saying I have to be an idiot and dance to YOUR beat!
"You said you wouldn't run!?"
Don't get it twisted! This is a tactical retreat, nothing more!
"That's the same thing!"
In other words, Jeong-in intended to stall and evade until the exit time limit filled up. Once it did, she'd trust her half-healed body and charge straight through Jungseong Gate in a desperate physical assault. That two-faced little liar, mouthing off one second and doing the opposite the next! Well—she was never a man to begin with, so what did I expect...
Anyway, this complicated things. No matter how well I'd mastered compressed-footwork sorcery, it sat awkwardly against an airborne opponent. The distance I could close with my freshly learned technique wasn't that long, there was a delay between consecutive uses, and against an enemy above me it risked opening big gaps. And sniping her down with Houyi's Aim? My spiritual power came up short.
Just as no solution was coming to mind, I remembered something from my chase with the Mountain God.
That's right! The weapon to beat that bastard is already prepared!?
Then my job was simple: shamelessly grab the tail of the fleeing Jeong-in and lure her right back here. I racked my brain desperately for the words that would bring her back.
"Jeong-in, aren't you curious why your chang-gwi never properly latched onto the Mountain God?"
—!
Her wingbeats, already fading into the distance, slowed.
"Isn't that why you buried yourself in Hopungdang in the first place? And you still haven't figured it out? How embarrassing—you didn't even notice that I caught it from scraps of secondhand gossip."
At that, Jeong-in finally wheeled around mid-sky.
You... know something!?
Curiosity beat even a storm advisory.
"The tenth year of King Sunjo's reign. The year of Giyu."
—?
"Hey, you blockhead, that's the story you told us! And hearing it again, still nothing clicks?"
What on earth are you trying to say!?
Unable to bear it any longer, Jeong-in wheeled back and circled to a spot directly above my head. Trusting her altitude, she had stupidly flown straight into the heart of the jin—and with a stomp of my foot, I gave her the answer.
"Hey, you dimwit! Sunjo's tenth year is the nineteenth century! Bukhansan was practically a bare mountain back then! How many tigers could there possibly have been up there!?"
THUD!
The instant my foot struck, the Three-Eyed Tiger-Sealing Formation—the one I'd laid out that afternoon to capture the Mountain God—reactivated, stone pillars surging up from the ground.
Wh-what is this...!?
Trapped dead in the formation, Jeong-in gaped at the glowing pillars and talismans pulsing up from the earth.
"Oh, and by the way—flying won't save you either. A formation isn't a wooden palisade. It's not the kind of thing you escape by flying over it."