My Land Turns to Gold - 2
With a soft click, the car door opened, and Cho Eun-sun stretched her legs out long.
Under the cold fluorescent lights of the underground parking garage, her white hair gleamed with a metallic sheen, as if strands of silver thread had been woven through it.
She doesn't even look like a living person.
Wax-pale skin, clothing that made her age impossible to guess, an expensive handbag and glittering accessories. To anyone who didn't know what Cho Eun-sun really was, she might have passed for a silver-haired model with a fanatically dedicated skincare routine.
But to my eyes, she was nothing short of grotesque.
Tap-tap. My gaze drifted down to the beige strappy heels she wore. Two milk-white pearls dangled from the tips of the delicate straps, swaying with every step she took.
My brow furrored hard without my meaning to. Pearls—mere ornaments meant to make fine leather gleam all the more luxuriously. And yet they looked exactly like the tears of the petty spirits clinging to Cho Eun-sun's body.
Those spirits were once people and beasts, too.
Three faces on her cheeks—an infant and two fetuses. Two men on her head, a dog, a fox, and a raccoon dog at her chest. Snake spirits coiled around both arms. And beyond those, a teeming swarm of lesser ghosts pressed into service as her slaves.
Faced with her in the flesh rather than through my connection to Abe, Cho Eun-sun radiated a far more sinister aura. She was siphoning the spiritual energy of those spirits to preserve her own youth, while snaring ever more of them to work her foul tricks.
When those spirits were alive, they must have been nothing like what they are now.
Tragic fates, twisted hearts, or perhaps the malice of another—by one cruel turn or another they had become malignant spirits, wandering the nine realms. Then Cho Eun-sun had captured them, drained their power, and set them to every filthy errand imaginable.
Abe, raise a barrier and stay back. I'll deal with this woman alone.
“But, my lord...”
Abe twisted around and spread both arms wide, as if he could not possibly allow me to face Cho Eun-sun by myself.
“Cho Eun-sun was a mudang who commanded malignant spirits—and it was through me that she learned to wield talismans and curses.”
I know. That's exactly why you need to stay back. If she grabs you as a hostage, I won't be able to attack.
“She would take you hostage?”
What wouldn't a woman try, who had once flung killing curses at Abe—flesh to burn away, soul to erase? I kept my eyes fixed on Cho Eun-sun as I spoke into Abe's mind.
She'd do it without a second thought. So I should hide anything she could use against me in advance. And right now, Abe, that thing is you.
“B-but still...”
Abe fidgeted, beside himself with worry over me.
Cho Eun-sun envies my ability. She wants the Ilbaek-gucheondo for herself.
“Do you truly believe she won't try to harm you here and now?”
I do.
Just as she had once clung to Abe to pry out the secrets of talismans and curses, she would likely try the same tricks on me. She'll want to win me over to her side. Even the tailing—she was gathering information on me, all so she could make her move.
She was biding her time, wondering what bait might lure me in. Abe deliberated for a moment, then finally opened his tightly shut mouth.
“Then I shall watch from close by after all. Please be careful.”
The barrier rose, and beyond its translucent veil, Abe vanished. After that, I could no longer hear his voice—could not even sense his presence right beside me at all.
Cho Eun-sun stopped in her tracks.
“Is your master planning to play hide-and-seek with me?”
She looked thoroughly irritated that Abe had disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“I suppose you missed Abe more than you missed me?”
At my words, Cho Eun-sun looked me dead in the eye and curled her lips into a fishy smirk.
“Hardly. Mr. Kim Yunho, I've wanted to see you so very badly.”
“Have you, now?”
“I told you last time, didn't I? Remember? I respect people who possess powers I lack. I told you I love them.”
It made me want to retch. If my stomach had been even slightly weaker, I might have confirmed everything I'd eaten right there on the spot.
I forced down the thick bile in my throat and spoke.
“So what is it you want from me? Is a declaration of love all you've got?”
“Hohoho, of course not. I intended to move somewhere more private for the real conversation. You see, there are things I prefer to discuss discreetly.”
One of the spirits clinging to Cho Eun-sun's body floated up smoothly and drifted toward me.
A woman ghost with long hair—someone who must have been breathtakingly beautiful in life. What was more, she was radiating a powerful yin energy.
A succubus spirit? She looked like the kind of wraith that used potent yin energy to beguile men and drain their yang.
Oh, honestly! Attacking me with something this flimsy.
I drew on the talisman techniques Abe had taught me and flung one out. The talisman, thick with yang energy, flew true and stuck squarely to the woman ghost's forehead.
“Kyiiieeek!”
She crumpled and flopped to the floor.
“So I see my master has other disciples besides me. Well then—can you block this one, too?”
Chanting an incantation, Cho Eun-sun strode closer. Another spirit slipped down from her body, its blurry form sharpening until it settled into the shape of a hollow-cheeked, wild-eyed middle-aged woman.
“I begged you, didn't I? Just a few more days to put off the interest. I clung to you, begged you to help me feed my children. I put my own villa up as collateral to open that snack bar—and the business failed anyway. The shop sank, the villa went under. When it was all about to be taken, I threw myself at your feet.”
“I only asked to delay the payments a few months. And in the end, Min-hee and I died together. It's all your fault!”
The owner of Min-hee's Snack Bar?
A piercing shriek split my eardrums, and my skull felt as though it were being cleaved apart.
That's an illusion. Min-seok told me just the other day that Min-hee's snack bar is still doing fine.
But despite my will, the ringing in my ears and the pounding in my head wouldn't stop. I clamped my hands over both ears and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Hohoho. There it is—that fragile little heart of yours.”
Cho Eun-sun burst out laughing and closed in.
“You're a villain to someone, too. You know that better than anyone.”
“Step back! President Kim—do you know this woman?”
The two bodyguards Moon Sung-il had assigned to me moved fast, blocking Cho Eun-sun's path. On her side, men who looked like her secretary and her own security detail came rushing over.
The two sides squared off, radiating a dangerous air as if a brawl might break out at any moment, and department store security came running at the sight. People had begun to steal glances our way. Then one shopper murmured, just loud enough to be heard.
“Doesn't she look like the woman from that ghost video?”
At that, other shoppers recognized me and began to buzz.
“That's the CEO of Ugok's Yard. Seo Jinwoo's friend.”
“Oh my, it really is him? What on earth is going on over there?”
“Shouldn't someone call the police?”
A few shoppers still sitting in their cars were even filming me on their phones.
Only then did I manage to shake off my daze and gulp down air. And I looked again—really looked—at whether the owner of Min-hee's Snack Bar was truly clinging to Cho Eun-sun as a malignant spirit.
She's not. This is my guilt being weaponized against me.
I had no idea how Cho Eun-sun had divined the guilt buried so deep in my heart. But I understood all too clearly just how vicious she was—that she made a practice of digging into people's weaknesses, tormenting them into fragility, and then seizing them by the throat to shake them down.
I won't let this go.
I lifted my chin.
“You never should have touched me in the first place. Take a good look around. In a few minutes, there's going to be an article saying the owner of Boram Private Loans came after me in person, making threats.”
People filming from their cars, the crowd murmuring along the department store walkway. Sensing their eyes on her, Cho Eun-sun raised a single hand—and her entourage, who had been squared off against Moon Sung-il's bodyguards, fell back one step.
“Since it's come to this, I'll say what I came to say. It'll only take a moment.”
“You should have led with that, instead of all these pointless theatrics.”
I asked the two bodyguards to indulge me—just to fall back a few paces. It seemed worth hearing what Cho Eun-sun had to say first.
“Go ahead, then. Speak. This is the very best patience I have to offer.”
“The Ilbaek-gucheondo.”
Just as I'd predicted, Cho Eun-sun wanted the Ilbaek-gucheondo.
“To you, Mr. Kim Yunho, they're nothing but pebbles. Sell them to me. Ten million won apiece. Ten of them—a hundred million. A hundred—a billion. And... a thousand of them, ten billion won.”
“That's all?”
She thought ten billion won would bend me to her will? Had she grossly misjudged me, or what?
Cho Eun-sun blinked rapidly, caught off guard.
“Bring me seven thousand, and it's seventy billion. I know you could gather seven thousand Ilbaek-gucheondo in just a few months.”
Abe had been right.
The Gwonryeong faith—the creed that killing one hundred thousand souls would make you a god. Cho Eun-sun was a devout believer.
The Ilbaek-gucheondo was like an item that dropped from the netherworld each time you escorted a hundred souls across to the afterlife. If Cho Eun-sun needed seven thousand of them, it meant she had already amassed three thousand. That was what a lifetime of roaming the world, sparing no means or method, had bought her—or so I could guess.
And yet I could gather Ilbaek-gucheondo with almost ridiculous ease.
“If I set my mind to it and went around collecting pebbles, sure. I could do it.”
One lap around a cemetery would be enough to fill my pockets.
“But you see, I have farming to do.”
“Seventy billion won is a joke to you?”
“Of course it's a joke. Is that supposed to be a fortune?”
I gave a careless shrug. With three hundred billion won to my name, a smart round of investing alone would put seventy billion in my hands before long.
“And even if you offered me a billion apiece, I have no desire to sell them to you.”
“...Why! Why not!”
Cho Eun-sun demanded through clenched teeth.
“Because what you are right now is repulsive enough—and it's obvious what you'd do with ten thousand Ilbaek-gucheondo.”
She was already drinking down the energy of fetuses and newborns to keep her skin wrinkle-free. With ten thousand of the tokens, she would become a monster that neither aged, nor sickened, nor died.
“I can see the future, Cho Eun-sun. And in that future, you grow old, you sicken, and you die—painfully, exquisitely so. It will happen. I'm going to make sure of it.”
The moment the words left my mouth, I focused my mind. I felt the Underworld Gate swinging open behind me.
“G-good heavens! N-no!”
Cho Eun-sun's eyes flew wide to their absolute limit. The Underworld Gate—a gate no one else could see. Catching sight of it gaping open at my back, she staggered backward, then bolted.
But—
“Aaagh!”
One beige strap heel flew off, and she toppled over in the most graceless fashion imaginable.
Thud, thud. I lengthened my stride and bore down on her.
“No, ahhh, no! I raised them! I trained them, I broke them in—”
The instant I swept swiftly past the screaming woman, the countless spirits that had fallen into the space behind me were sucked skyward into the Underworld like dust into a vacuum.
“Not this—no, not this!”
She clutched at her face, desperate to shield the souls of the infants and fetuses. But I churned both hands through the air, ushering the pitiful souls off to the afterlife, one and all.
The hair that had glittered only moments before hung in a ruined tangle, and wrinkles carved themselves jagged across her face. It was as if a mask had been ripped away.
“Oh my god, what's wrong with that woman?”
“Did she smear something like candle wax on her face? Look at it—completely melted and sagging off.”
The taut fullness of her face, the vitality that had brimmed from her neck, her hands, her whole body—gone without a trace. In the space of a breath, Cho Eun-sun looked like a hag of eighty.
Covering her face with both hands, she shrieked.
“Block them! Keep the people away! Someone help me up, you idiots! Take off your jacket and put it over my head, now!”
Her secretary stripped off his suit jacket and draped it over her head before hustling her to the car, while several of her bodyguards scrambled about trying to confiscate the footage people had shot.
Good luck with that. In all my days, I've rarely witnessed such a rare one-woman show.
To ordinary eyes, it would look as though Cho Eun-sun had fallen and her face had simply melted off. And anyone with a sharp memory might just connect her to the woman from the ghost video.
Vroooom. The sedan carrying Cho Eun-sun tore out of the department store parking garage.
Abe, let's head to my parents' place right away. Now that she knows I can't be won over, she might make my parents her next target.
“You want us to go to Europe? Right this instant?”
My mother looked utterly dumbfounded when I showed up out of nowhere and told her to get on a flight to London departing within the hour.
I'd long had my eye on a package that would take them through Britain, then on to Belgium and Italy for a full imperial tour. I'd wanted to send my parents on a filial-piety trip for Father's Day this year—only now I'd decided to move it up a little. Because Cho Eun-sun just might have tried something wicked against them.
“The thing is, I filed a public interest report recently.”
I pointed toward the redevelopment site in Gangdong-gu, visible across from my parents' apartment.