The Lingering Trace
Lingering trace, damn it.
“……What is this?”
Whoosh!
Flames erupted in every direction, swirling madly in the center of the vacant lot. I’d expected a pathetic spark or a minor fizzle, but this? This was an explosion straight out of a blockbuster movie. The searing heat lashed at my face, even from where I stood at a distance.
Is this how talismans are supposed to work?
I turned to my side, bewildered. Seo Jian was standing there, mouth agape, muttering to herself in a daze. Seeing her face, drained of all color, I realized that was likely not how they were supposed to work.
“Ta—talisman making isn’t supposed to be like that…….”
Seo Jian turned her head toward me. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Without a brush or cinnabar ink…… just with your fingers……. How did you do this?”
……Oh.
Something clicked in my mind. Now that I thought about it, the talismans scattered on the market stalls were all just yellowed paper with a few Chinese characters scribbled in red paint. Even the ones that looked more expensive just had neater calligraphy; they were all just a few characters or patterns slapped onto paper.
What I had done, however—I had transferred the circuit structure I’d seen on the Fire-Forged Sword onto the paper, carving the path for the spiritual energy to flow, line by line. I’d treated it exactly like engraving a circuit onto a weapon.
That was when I realized my actions were light-years away from the common sense of this world.
Don’t tell me the talismans in this neighborhood are just red scribbles and nothing more?
Looking at Seo Jian, who stood there looking like she’d lost her soul, that seemed to be the case. She continued to mutter in a trance until she suddenly snapped to her senses and jumped.
“That’s not what’s important right now……. Just run!”
“What?”
“Hurry!”
Seo Jian grabbed my arm urgently and started to run.
I don’t know how long we ran. Seo Jian only stopped when she dragged me into a vacant commercial building she’d spotted. It was a dark hallway layered with dust. Between the old shops with their shutters half-down, she leaned against her knees, gasping for air.
“Haa…… haa…….”
Now that I looked, she’d run that entire distance in high heels.
“……Are you alright?”
“Wa—wait a moment. Just a moment…….”
Seo Jian held up a hand, trying to steady her ragged breathing. Once she’d calmed down a bit, she looked up and stared straight at me.
“Dohyun-nim. Could you…… do something about your spiritual energy? We might be tracked.”
“……?”
“Earlier…… when that much spiritual energy erupted at once, it left a very thick lingering trace. If someone is determined to chase us, they could catch up in no time.”
……Ah.
I finally understood what she meant. It seemed that if you used spiritual energy too forcefully, it left a trail. It appeared my spiritual energy had leaked quite significantly during that explosion.
But…….
Hiding the flow of spiritual energy? How was I supposed to do that?
As I stared at her blankly, unable to answer, Seo Jian seemed to realize something and reached out urgently.
“……Fi—first, that suppression talisman from earlier. Where is it?”
“Ah, here.”
I pulled the black silk pouch I’d tucked away in my pocket and handed it to her. Seo Jian examined the pouch for a moment, then suddenly stepped in close.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
With a light request for permission, she stood on her tiptoes. She draped the strings of the pouch around the back of my neck and reached behind me, carefully tying the knot. A faint scent—I couldn’t tell if it was perfume or soap—mingled with the natural fragrance of her skin, slightly damp from our run, brushed against my nose. Beyond that, the sight of her blouse collar, ruffled and rising and falling with her heavy breathing…….
*Ahem.*
I awkwardly shifted my gaze to the ceiling and swallowed a cough.
“There.”
Once the knot was tied, Seo Jian placed her index and middle fingers gently on my chest, right where the pouch rested. Then, she closed her eyes.
Swoo—
The next moment, a strange change occurred inside my body. It felt as if someone had firmly shut a faucet that had been gushing water; the energy that had been surging outward suddenly settled into a calm stillness.
“……Done. You should be fine now.”
Seo Jian pulled her hand away from my chest and let out a long sigh. I looked down at the pouch hanging around my neck and asked.
“……What exactly is this?”
“This is a suppression talisman. It literally suppresses the release of spiritual energy.”
Seo Jian caught her breath, looking as if she finally had some breathing room, and continued her explanation. She said that practitioners instinctively sense each other’s spiritual energy, and to hide it, one usually has to consciously suppress their aura 24/7, as if holding their breath. It was an incredibly annoying and exhausting task. That was why they used these suppression talismans.
“What happens if I don’t hide my aura?”
“Strange spirits might swarm you, or you could become a target for crazy practitioners who love to pick fights. You could even have a negative influence on the ordinary people around you without even knowing it.”
According to her, standard suppression talismans were usually cheap, disposable items that wore out quickly. However, the stronger one’s spiritual energy, the more essential a high-quality talisman became, and those were rare and expensive enough that the price was whatever the seller demanded.
“But……. This one seems like it would cost a fortune. I’ve never even seen a suppression talisman that lets you adjust the flow of spiritual energy to exactly the level you want.”
Hmm. The money envelope I’d received earlier had been quite thick, too. Was this also such an expensive item?
Do they always take care of people this much?
Well, I suppose it was justified; I’d nearly burned down an entire branch that had only recently been built. It made sense to provide this level of compensation. After all, wasn’t this place the number one in the industry?
“Anyway, shall we move a bit further? I’m worried the lingering trace might still be around this area.”
I followed Seo Jian’s lead deeper into a secluded back alley. A gloomy maze of buildings without even a single sign stretched on endlessly.
“……Excuse me. Jian-nim?”
“Hehe, please, call me Jian-ssi.”
“Ah, right. Anyway, about what you said in the car. About my affiliated family. Why did you ask that?”
I’d been curious. A family? Realizing that all of this was actually real, my curiosity had been piqued. It wasn’t like some Japanese ninja manga. A family? Was bloodline really that important here?
At my question, Seo Jian, who was walking in front, slowed her pace and looked back. The playfulness had vanished from her face.
“That’s…… a long story. I’ll explain it slowly once we arrive.”
Was there still somewhere else to go? I followed her silently, lost in thought. Then, at the end of the alley, a massive iron gate appeared, covered in numerous talismans and heavy padlocks.
Seo Jian placed her palm against the door and muttered an incantation I couldn’t understand. A faint light flowed from the talismans attached to the gate. It seemed the barrier had been lifted. She then pulled a large, crude key from her pocket and turned the lock.
Kreeeeak—
With a heavy, grating sound, the tightly shut iron gate swung open.
“Get ready. Drumroll, please—.”
She turned around and gave me a playful smile.
“So, are you ready? Ta-da!”
I couldn’t help but be stunned as I looked at the space beyond the wide-open gate. It was a massive underground workshop, packed with top-tier equipment.
“Feel free to look around as much as you like.”
From the latest fully automated furnace with perfect temperature control to an anvil made of special alloy and walls lined with the finest tools—every romanticized dream of a blacksmith was crammed into that space.
“If you just sign a contract with me, you can use this workshop immediately! I set it all up just in case a good property came on the market! Hehe…….”
I was mesmerized, examining the special alloy anvil and the tools on the workbench, when—
“Ahem.”
I snapped to my senses at Seo Jian’s small cough. Turning around, I saw she was standing by a reception table set up against one wall, her hand resting on the back of a chair as if inviting me to sit.
Ah.
I’d been too distracted. I sat down feeling a bit embarrassed, and Seo Jian, who had been smiling brightly, cleared her throat and adopted a serious demeanor.
“Um……. Dohyun-nim.”
“Yes.”
“You need to listen to me carefully. I’ll be honest with you. Honestly, it won’t be easy for you to find another broker who can help someone like you.”
As if someone might be listening, she clasped her hands on the table and leaned in slightly.
“I mentioned this briefly at the café, but the four major families currently hold a stranglehold on everything in the spiritual world. In particular, they ruthlessly monopolize craftsmen like you who know how to carve spells.”
“……Monopolize?”
“Yes. If you aren’t affiliated with a family and you create something as incredible as you did earlier and put it on the market? You’ll immediately become a target for the four major families.”
“……And if I become a target, what happens?”
Seo Jian’s expression hardened.
“They won’t care about the means or methods. At first, they’ll come with bags of money and try to win you over with sweet talk. If you don’t give in…… they’ll try to break you, even if they have to disguise it as an accident.”
“…….”
“Especially since your skills are so overwhelming, they’ll be desperate to cut off your wrists before another family can snatch you up.”
She didn’t seem to be joking.
“……If it’s that dangerous, wouldn’t it be better to just join a family? The four major families or whoever else.”
Seo Jian shook her head firmly.
“If you join a family, someone like you will never be able to leave for the rest of your life. Since you aren’t from the main branch, everything you make will be claimed under the family name, and they’ll slash your unit prices however they please. In short, you’d become a slave-contracted craftsman.”
A slave-contracted craftsman…….
For a moment, I was reminded of the malicious guilds in the game that controlled and imprisoned creators. It seemed reality was no different.
“But it’s too much of a waste for someone with your skills to rot in a place like that. That’s why I’m telling you this.”
Seo Jian confidently raised a finger.
“I’ll create a foreign identity for you.”
“……A foreign identity?”
Meanwhile, in the vacant lot on the outskirts of the Goblin Market where Dohyun had caused the explosion, Kang Mujin, a Taoist from the 1st Investigation Division of the Spiritual Management Bureau, was squatting on the ground.
“…….”
Kang Mujin traced the soil, which had melted into a smooth, glass-like surface from the heat, with his finger. He had originally been in the middle of escorting a suspect who had attempted a terrorist act at Cheonhwadang to the Management Bureau. However, he had detected an unauthorized, massive explosion of spiritual power and had come to investigate. He had urgently tracked the lingering trace of spiritual energy, but it had cut off midway, so he had returned to the scene of the incident.
Behind Kang Mujin, Cheong-hyeon, the General Manager of Cheonhwadang who had been caught up in the explosion, stood quietly. He had originally been on his way to the Management Bureau to write an incident report. However, since Mujin had only just been assigned to this area, he wasn’t familiar with the geography of the inner Goblin Market, and Cheong-hyeon, who knew the way well, had volunteered to guide him here.
Mujin cleared his thoughts and focused on the scene before him. He touched the black soil on his finger to the tip of his tongue. The intense fire energy made his tongue tingle and go numb.
With this level of destructive power……. Is it at least a Grade 2 fire-attribute practitioner?
A Grade 2 practitioner was one of the top powerhouses in the Korean spiritual world. If someone that big were involved, they should normally be a core asset of a major family or at least under the strict surveillance of the Management Bureau.
But they poured out this much firepower in this narrow market without prior authorization? Just what kind of lunatic is this?
At that moment, a subordinate who had been searching the scene approached urgently.
“Taoist-nim!”
“Oh, right. Did you find anything?”
“There are no reports of spiritual energy usage from any major families, nor from any other families or factions, in the Management Bureau’s records. The spiritual energy extracted from the lingering trace is also unidentified and not registered in the Management Bureau’s database, so we can’t look up any records.”
“Then what is it? Are you telling me an unregistered Grade 2 practitioner is running wild?”
“And…… this doesn’t seem to be Korean-style sorcery.”
The subordinate held out a transparent zipper bag picked up with tweezers. Inside the bag was a piece of burnt yellow goehwangji (talisman paper). It wasn’t written in red ink. It was covered in unknown, pitch-black, minute, and dense patterns.
A method not used in Korea. And this overwhelming firepower…… could it be?
“……It’s highly likely they’re from the Fire-Worshipping Cult.”
“Fi—Fire-Worshipping Cult? Do you mean those guys from Persia?”
“Yes. Pull the entire list of arrivals on flights from Iran and Dubai within the last month. Separate the religious visa applicants and cross-reference them.”
“Yes! Understood!”
The subordinate hurried away, radioing in the orders. Kang Mujin stood there for a long time, staring silently at the center of the charred lot.
……But.
Even if it were true that the Fire-Worshipping Cult used Eastern talisman paper, judging by the remaining traces of spiritual energy, there were no signs of combat here. No signs of fighting someone, no signs of another practitioner’s defensive measures.
“……What on earth did they do here?”
While Mujin was racking his brain, Cheong-hyeon’s gaze, standing behind him, was also fixed on the ground.
Fire-Worshipping Cult…….
Just then, a slightly scorched piece of paper caught on the tip of Cheong-hyeon’s shoe. It was the remains of another talisman that had been hidden by the sand and missed by Mujin’s subordinate.
……What is this?
The moment he saw the minute black circuits engraved on the remains, Cheong-hyeon’s pupils trembled slightly. Taking advantage of the moment Mujin’s gaze was directed elsewhere, Cheong-hyeon stepped on the scrap of paper with his shoe, then naturally bent down and tucked it into his sleeve.
……I must report this to the Clan Head immediately.