Chapter 199
Chapter 199
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 199
Chapter Title: The Proxy's Revelation
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The Jisan Village Festival continued through the night.
Outsiders could crash in fully opened private homes and enjoy free booze and meat all night long.
In the end, a good number of them chose not to leave and stayed in the village.
"What's going on?"
"Oh, they say there's some big event on the last day. Like a gut ritual or something?"
"What's that?"
"Dunno. But I'm filming it for shorts."
Outsiders muttered casually, pulling all-nighters or passing out drunk in random rooms.
And then, on the bright morning of the final day.
"Whoa."
"Looks like it's starting now."
At last, the ritual began.
Dung dung dung.
To the rhythm of the pungmul troupe pounding their janggu drums, the villagers lined up on either side, forming a long pathway like they were parting a road.
From the tiled-roof house.
To the village shrine.
And from the tiled-roof house at the center of the village—the starting point of the path—something finally emerged.
It was a massive human palanquin.
Four men, rooster feathers pinned to their chests and heads shrouded in plain cloth, were carrying someone on their shoulders.
"Whoa."
"Hey, this is getting real."
The outsiders chatted with idle curiosity, but amid them lurked someone watching with gleaming eyes.
'What a commotion.'
Deputy Eun Ha-je.
The man Kim Sol-eum had called that observed the palanquin's passenger and the villagers' movements from atop it.
At this rate, the project would proceed smoothly.
Her sharp gaze shifted to the outskirts.
Toward the cluster of abandoned houses in one corner of the village, in the direction of the old well site.
'Inside the well.'
That was the mission's objective.
The Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau agents hadn't figured out exactly why being near the well made villagers less likely to follow or felt relatively safe.
They'd checked during non-festival times, but it was just a sealed-up well.
But this "reporter" knew the reason precisely, and what needed investigating.
That well had once been a passage connected to somewhere else.
During this bizarre festival period, the village itself became high-grade Darkness, and the passage sometimes reactivated.
So it needed investigating now.
But...
"......"
The reporter glanced once at Kim Sol-eum atop the human palanquin, then quietly began moving.
Not toward the well site amid the ruins, but in another direction.
Meanwhile, the palanquin procession continued.
The pungmul troupe cleared the way, the palanquin passed, and villagers bowed in reverence. Staggering enthusiasts trailed fervently behind.
Yet they kept their distance, as if getting too close was forbidden.
The problem was that those for whom such permission meant nothing were there too.
"Whoa! Check this out—it's the first time in decades they've done this event!"
Some outsiders shoved their smartphones forward, sticking way too close.
The drunk and disoriented ignored all sense of space, even poking the shrouded villagers carrying the palanquin.
They'd come for the free food and drinks at some rural festival, after all.
But the villagers didn't stop them.
They just stared blankly with smiling faces.
"Not bad for country folk?"
"Professionalism. Pro level."
The villagers didn't flare up.
They only watched desperately to ensure the palanquin passed safely.
"......"
Eventually, the human palanquin arrived safely before the village shrine and halted.
The carriers gently set down the "winner" on their shoulders with utmost care, then two approached the shrine.
They cut the golden cord.
Thud.
The cord fell to the ground. The remaining two untied the cord from the winner's ankle and rehung it on the shrine.
Then the shrine's doors opened.
Inside was...
"The doors are opening! Whoa! Look at that! Gold!"
A golden rooster.
The "special prize" golden rooster trophy had been enshrined inside.
But it was enormous.
"Not plated, is it?"
"Insane."
At the center of the shrine, where the altar should have been, atop a sudden round wooden frame, stood the thing—life-sized human height.
Avarice gleamed in the outsiders' eyes beyond mere awe.
They barely noticed the shrine's pole inverted behind the gold lump.
Like rods stuffed upside-down into a lottery drum.
Finally, the palanquin rider moved.
As the white-robed figure stood before the shrine, villagers came forward one by one, draping paper over the robes.
The paper was densely covered in ink-written characters.
Hangul and Hanja.
The villagers' names.
After three more bows, they tilted a bottle of sacred mountain liquor over it.
Pour...
The ink washed away in the flowing sacred liquor, characters dissolving.
It almost looked like they were seeping into the white robes.
Villagers bowed, prayed, wept, spewing long-buried deep terror in wails, raising hands or pleading to the air.
Their desperation and tension pierced even the pungmul drums.
"Uh..."
"Hey. The vibe's getting weird."
Most outsiders awkwardly backed away.
They were starting to sense something eerie...
And then.
"Can I get a closer look at that golden rooster? Hmm, but there's this fragrant smell... like booze..."
Thud.
The moment the smartphone-wielding man stepped into the shrine.
"Huh?"
The golden rooster melted.
Bubble bubble.
As if making that sound, it liquefied, spreading along the shrine floor's groove...
And soon touched the intruder's foot.
The golden liquid.
"......"
The dazed outsider stared at his foot, then his mouth opened.
"I get it!"
Thud.
The smartphone hit the ground.
"The world is■■! We're just one■■scribed within it!"
"Please don't look, don't look at me, don't■■me!"
"I have value, I'm interesting, right?? Or am I nothing? What is this? What? Name-nim?"
Madness spread like contagion.
"Wh-what the hell."
"Why are they acting like that?"
Onlookers on the outskirts recoiled in horror or craned necks to gawk.
But it was too late.
"Aaagh!"
In the end, most fell into delirium.
Screams, nonsensical mutterings, or blankly sitting with vacant eyes.
Madness and eerie calm coexisted.
Yet villagers ignored them.
They'd seen such fates too many times from those touched by sacred liquor, gripped by horrific enlightenment of worldly truth.
Outsiders were just outsiders.
And they—the family of Jisan Village—could avoid such ends.
At the close of this long-prepared Jisan festival!
Those possessed differed from the faithful who'd tended the ritual for decades, awaiting Jisan's fortune—the chosen ones alone would find release!
"A new pole rises at the village shrine!"
The gong's clamor drowned the frenzy.
The winner strode calmly into the shrine amid the madness.
Golden rod in hand.
Just thrust that small rod into the molten gold, and it would melt into the shrine, becoming Jisan's fortune.
Bringing liberation from that horrific worldly truth—the sacrifice, no, the god!
They'd escape this grotesque, cruel world, evade disaster, find freedom!
But...
......
"Everyone."
A civil servant's flat voice.
"The procedure's wrong."
"......?!"
The winner glanced at the golden rod in his hand and sighed.
"This way, it'll fail. In your terms, 'it'll attract impurity.'"
Deathly silence fell.
Then a wailing voice cried out.
"Jisan's fortune speaks lies, fleeing without us!"
"Well."
The white robes slowly raised both hands.
Toward the sky.
"I know."
He spoke in their tongue.
"Bathed in sacred mountain liquor, awakened to worldly truth, I already know. I know Jisan's fortune, pulling the golden pole and re-erecting it at the shrine."
The truth.
"You've distorted the teachings. Half-read scraps from nameless scriptures somewhere, stolen and misunderstood."
Confusion.
Moans and mutters from the uncomprehending.
"What did you think liberation from worldly truth meant? Fleeing this cruel, painful, irrational world, sheltered by Jisan's fortune, exempt and free?"
Villagers lifted heads.
Affirmation in action.
"As I thought. Then let's start from there."
Kim Sol-eum spoke.
The certain knowledge he possessed.
The Nameless Radiant Church's core doctrine.
Its first teaching.
"There is no freedom in this world."
"This world belongs to the Name-nim. Only those chosen by the Name-nim have meaning. To acknowledge this truth, cultivate yourself to receive Their choice, sow and till the world's primal seeds.
"Your free will means nothing; only the Name-nim's will and choice matter.
"The weak who can't accept this truth flee into death, but that's no escape.
He declared.
"There is no escape from the Name-nim."
......
"This is liberation."
Deathly silence.
The winner, the eerie white-robed figure, scanned the villagers and asked.
"Don't want to accept it?"
No.
No.
No way!
"Then pick another auspicious day, prepare a different festival and ritual. The Jisan fortune you called this way,"
He pointed to himself.
"Was me."
Outsider disappearances and deaths. The mountain sacrifice ritual's lottery end.
Cries of 'No,' 'Impossible,' 'Impure, we're impure' echoed with groans and sobs.
But they couldn't kill the winner before them.
Kill him here, and he'd become the new god.
That was the procedure.
In the end, they had to let him go.
"Aaaagh!"
The pungmul troupe faltered, people collapsed everywhere.
The village festival ended in lost chaos.
And the winner who'd orchestrated this conclusion—Kim Sol-eum, succeeding as always with info and psyops...
'As expected.'
Just watched it all with sunken eyes.
No joy.
I knew it would end like this.
I surveyed the mad scene.
This was indeed a Nameless Radiant Church subsidiary ghost story. But not a place revealing their proper doctrine.
Probably intentional.
'They half-assed the ritual here as an "experiment" to give this ghost story its own flavor.'
To grasp the process in detail, I needed Baek Saheon's help.
Had to learn exactly how the rituals worked, what doctrines they followed.
And.
Baek Saheon had manipulated a villager who'd drawn another golden rod, buying enough dawn time for me to hear and analyze everything.
'...Picked up another brainwashing item in the meantime.'
I had no drive to recover it now.
Pointless anyway.
Regardless, I'd pinpointed their errors...
My Nameless Radiant Church knowledge was real, so the villagers were easily swayed.
I'd already guessed what that "worldly truth" was from wiki entries—no effect on me...
Anyway.
'Jisan Village will agonize over what's right, believe what they want, fight among themselves.'
Division would weaken bonds, expose weaknesses—Bureau could act before next festival.
So before the uproar settled, I'd slip away.
Festival over.
Village rejected me as winner.
Should be safe leaving now.
"......"
I tried to walk out of the shrine.
Splash.
My step rippled the golden liquid.
This was the golden rooster.
Its color suggested the round wooden base beneath hadn't melted with it.
Probably still embedded in the floor.
'Only the gold melted...'
Thud.
"......"
I halted.
Thud.
The ground shook. No,
Thud.
The floor.
It cracked, golden liquid pouring below.
"......!"
I leaped out of the shrine, barely dodging the collapse.
And from between the split wooden circle...
Transparent liquid gushed up.
Sacred fresh liquor.
......!
I realized.
'The golden rooster was a pressure stone.'
And the wooden circle wasn't a base...
'It was a lid.'
The trophy had been holding down whatever lay buried beneath the shrine from rising.
A massive liquor jar.
And inside, bound and slumbering, the real one.
It had awakened to my "true" doctrine.
Rattle rattle rattle.
The sound of countless legs dragging across the floor.
Aaaaaa!
A long body burst from the transparent liquid.
Writhing with innumerable legs.
A gigantic centipede from the jar.
Aaaaaa!
But those countless legs were human arms.
Praying hands.
In prayer position.
A flat, featureless face mimicking human eyes and mouth moved.
Like the wicked precept-breaking monk from old folktales.
......A form I recognized, distinctive.
Centipede Monk
The Nameless Radiant Church legend-transmitting ghost story. A cleric awed by a tale's power dwelling in vermin receives recognition, spawning mutated believers worldwide.
But its body was half-rotted.
Arms protruding outside the shrine were soaked in liquor, melting.
Eyeballs liquefied.
In some rural tales, villagers misread its teachings, trapped it in a liquor jar, held sacrifices with the brew.
That was it.
The doctrine-bringer here.
To appease it, they'd placed chicken symbols everywhere—its favored prey.
Seemed futile.
Aaaaaa......
Name-nim.
Immersed in Nameless Radiant Church doctrine, no dialogue or communication possible.
Only imparting doctrinal teachings and enlightenment.
Forcibly, violently, the indescribable truth.
No salvation, no nirvana. This is the world's truth: eternal liberation approaches. At the end of the dharma's age, offer pain, illusion, madness; vomit discernment; achieve immortality. This is the Way's reality, the law of boundless value.
⟨ Centipede Monk's Chant ⟩
Had to respond.
I knew.
But...
'Do I have to?'
I dropped my arm.
......Tired of it.
Who knows how many times.
Until when?
Head said hold out a month, grab the Wish Grant...
But hearing that centipede's horrific sermon—what's the harm? Let my body crumble—what of it? Thoughts crushed me.
Maybe I...
"Grape Agent."
A large hand gripped my shoulder.
I turned.
Firm face, shining eyes.
The Bronze Agent stood there.
"As promised, right on time. ...And I told you."
Returning...
"I'd find a way to extract you."
Grip tightened.
"By the rules."
"'In relevant supernatural disasters, two agents are dispatched for rescuer extraction.'"
Choi Agent's chakdu pierced the shrine eaves, goblin fire erupting fiercely.