The God Beneath the Black Water
Kang Hyeong-seok stood in the water.
The black water of Anmokji had climbed to his knees, and vicious things circled him like shadows.
He had to keep walking. He had to find the jar sunk in the water and haul it out. He knew that well enough — but far too much stood in his way.
Glub.
A ripple spread across the surface, and a white face rose from it. The face was swollen like a balloon and so ragged it seemed the current alone might strip away what flesh remained. It was one of the dead anchored to Anmokji — a soul a righteous shaman had buried in these waters, a curse driven here by things even more wicked.
Glub, glub.
Viscous bubbles erupted in a froth, as though some thick fluid had come to a boil. And then the bubbles became hundreds of faces.
Kang Hyeong-seok's expression went rigid, and as the stench of rotting flesh and a spectral reek stirred his gag reflex, they all opened their eyes at once.
Glug-glug-glug-glug.
They spewed red blood from their eyes and gaped their mouths wide open.
"Eeeeeeeaaaahhh!"
"Aaaaargh!"
"Eheheheeh, eh-heheheeh!"
"Kiiiiriiiik! Kirik! Kiiiiiriiiik!"
The unbearable din bored into his eardrums without mercy. Gritting his teeth, Kang Hyeong-seok tried to shove his way through — but the faces barred his path. Then hands rose out of the black water.
Glub! Bworrk! Gulp!
Was this what it was like for an evil spirit plunged into hell? Countless hands seized his thighs, his clothes, his whole body in an instant and dragged him down. More and more hands came, swarming up his chest. And the moment the rotting fingers that had reached his face tried to force their way into his mouth—
Twang!
The cotton cord wound around his waist snapped taut. Kang Hyeong-seok lurched violently and planted his feet to keep from falling. At the same instant, the countless hands and faces vanished without a trace. All that remained was the wake he had made, running soundlessly toward the shore.
Hong Gyeong-soo...
Kang Hyeong-seok turned around. Hong Gyeong-soo, the one who had pulled the cord, was standing at the water's edge. Still in his black ritual robes. Without the slightest movement, like a stone that stands watching. He simply stood there.
Hssssss.
Kang Hyeong-seok forced a breath out between his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. He had to keep his head on straight. This was no ordinary place; nothing that came lurching out of it, from anywhere, at any time, would be a surprise. And there was no telling what Hong Gyeong-soo would pull next. If a death curse came flying at him, Lee Geum-kyeong would surely block it — but right now, Hong Gyeong-soo was watching his back.
Swish.
He drew the sacred shaman bells and the Divine General Blade from inside his robe and took a long, deep breath. Then, eyes fixed with hardened resolve, he started forward.
Walarang! Walaralang!
What he meant to perform was much like a soul-retrieval rite. Some souls are left behind in water. To rescue one, a bottle filled with rice is bound with cotton cord and cast into the water; and when the bottle is drawn back up, if there is hair inside, the soul has been saved. Just so, Kang Hyeong-seok had to enter the water himself. A shaman is the vessel that holds the god — and that vessel had to bring up the jar lying sunken in this water.
Splash! Splash!
The water climbed past his navel — the cold of it, and colder still the aura of the dead spirits steeping through it.
Walarang! Walararararang!
Kang Hyeong-seok's lips, rattling the bells, were turning blue. The night was deepening, and the hour was racing toward the Hour of the Ox. He had to find the jar before then.
Where is it? Where could it be?
Splash, splash, splash!
He was pressing forward over the slick, mucky bottom, which clung and shifted beneath him as if to topple him at any moment, when—
Walararararang!
The sacred shaman bells rang out as though to point the way. Kang Hyeong-seok turned them toward it and raised the Divine General Blade high. He felt the cotton cord pull at the same instant, but nothing more came of it.
Walaralang! Walaralang!
Kang Hyeong-seok strode quickly toward it. It felt as though his Momjusin — his patron deity — were speaking to him through the bells. Be at ease. You needn't concern yourself with the man on the shore.
I walk with my god.
And if that was so, there was nothing left to fear. Kang Hyeong-seok shook the sacred shaman bells as he pushed into deeper and deeper water.
Walarang! Walaralang!
Like a torch driving back the dark, the divinity of the bells swept the perverse energies aside. With every step he took, with every shake of the bells, he drew closer to oneness with the god, and his eyes took on a brilliant light.
That was when it happened.
Hwek!
Kang Hyeong-seok suddenly turned his head.
"Shaman Hong Gyeong-soo!"
Nothing met his eyes but darkness. And yet he felt, with fierce certainty, that the jar he was looking for lay right there.
"Over there! I've found it!"
Jararak!
Hong Gyeong-soo answered by shaking his Divine General Blade, letting its metal ring speak for him. And Kang Hyeong-seok began striding toward the jar, step by deliberate step.
The jar lay in water deeper than where he stood.
Jararak! Jarak!
The chime of the ornaments on Hong Gyeong-soo's blade followed at his back, and Kang Hyeong-seok advanced with the sacred bells held out before him.
The jar was the source. He had to raise it out of the water. But that, he sensed, would not come easily.
"Ugh!"
The spectral stench, growing more virulent by the moment, stabbed up into his nose without mercy. An immense knot of dead spirits and evil curses had clotted around the jar, and an instinctive revulsion pushed him back like a wall.
Splash! Splash!
Even so, he did not stop. The jar lay just a little farther on — he could not stop.
Walarang! Walarararalang!
He drove back the ghosts and curses that packed Anmokji to bursting with the sacred bells, all the while swinging the Divine General Blade.
A traditional shaman's attire resembles a general's battle dress. The ritual robes alone bore a striking resemblance to the cheollik, the pleated war coat of old generals — and the likeness was no accident, but a means of battling the vicious things and easing the shaman's union with the god.
And Kang Hyeong-seok's patron was a General Deity.
Swaahhh!
That was why, Divine General Blade in hand, he could stand closer to his patron deity than ever before.
"The Supreme One speaks: the Yellow Heaven upholds me, the Yellow Earth bears me."
"Sun and moon shine upon me, the stars cast their sheltering shade,"
"the host of immortals escorts me, the Keeper of Fate glorifies me,"
"Tae'eul descends upon me, the Jade Perfected guides my way,"
"and the Three Bureaus guard my body."
⟨ The Great One's Shielding Scripture ⟩
Guarding his body with the Taeeul Bosin-gyeong, Kang Hyeong-seok swung the sacred shaman bells and the Divine General Blade as one. That was when—
CLUNK!
The Divine General Blade stopped dead, as though something had seized its tip. Kang Hyeong-seok snapped his gaze down and saw the edge of the blade blackening before his eyes.
"F—ing hell, enough of this!"
Spitting out the curse, he withdrew the blade as if wrenching a seized wrist free. The blackened tip crumbled away, and with it the sense of drawing near to the god blurred and faded.
Walarararararang!
Rattling the bells in a frenzy, he saw nothing on any side but a multitude of dead spirits. Words failed him. Just how many souls had been sealed away in this place? Or had they simply flocked here? Whichever it was, one thing held true: he was hemmed in by far too many of the dead.
Splash-splash-splash-splash!
Trusting everything to the sacred bells, Kang Hyeong-seok ran for the jar. The deepening water rose to his neck. Without hesitation he flung himself under and swam straight for the spot where it lay. The ink-black water blinded him to everything, yet the jar's aura reached him with perfect clarity.
Glub-glub-glub-glub.
Spewing white bubbles as he swam, his fingertips finally brushed something slick. A round jar, coated in water slime.
Snatch!
He clamped his hands around its mouth and hauled it against his body. At once the stagnant water and vermin pooled inside came spilling out. All that remained now was to carry the jar back.
The moment he thought it—
Ssssssss.
A long white hand stretched out of the jar's mouth. Thin as a white snake, it seized his shoulder in an instant, and though Kang Hyeong-seok frantically rattled the sacred bells, underwater they made no sound at all.
Ssssssk.
A snow-white face rose slowly from the jar. A grotesque face — it had a full set of features and no eyes, three mouths, and no bridge to its nose.
Bwoorrgl!
Bubbles bursting from his lips, Kang Hyeong-seok thrashed to tear the thing's arm away. It's dangerous. He had seen many spirits of the dead in Anmokji — but none had ever felt this distinct, this dangerous. Evil draws evil to itself. And evil swallows the weak to swell its power. That was exactly what this thing was.
Schluuurk.
The thing's mouths began to open. The three of them soon merged into one, like the gape of a snake swallowing an egg. And in truth it stretched its maw toward him as though it meant to take him in headfirst.
Damn it all...
Could this, too, have been part of Hong Gyeong-soo's design? Kang Hyeong-seok looked at the bells that would not ring, then turned his gaze to the Divine General Blade. He still had a means of resistance.
Ssssssss!
He swung the Divine General Blade, cleaving the current. It left no wound on the thing — but the swinging itself was the point. A shaman draws near to the god by swinging the Divine General Blade.
Swish! Swiiish!
Stroke by stroke, Kang Hyeong-seok achieved deeper oneness with the god. And this oneness was fiercer and clearer than any before — clear enough that he could see his patron deity standing just behind the thing, clad in black general's armor.
Swish.
The deity leveled its colossal general's blade at the thing's neck, and Kang Hyeong-seok swung his Divine General Blade toward that spot in one great arc, without a moment's hesitation.
Kwaang!
There was no sensation of contact against his hand. And yet the feeling that he had cut something through was unmistakable. He had struck its neck.
Brrrrglglgl!
Its existence snuffed out, the thing was dissolving away.
Krak!
Unable to bear the patron deity's full weight, the Divine General Blade snapped clean in half, and the broken blade sank away into the deep. His patron deity watched over him.
Brrrgl.
With the air in his lungs running out, Kang Hyeong-seok felt his arms and legs grow heavy. Something was strange. It wasn't the feeling of dying.
What is this...
Was it because he had just achieved a oneness with the god stronger than any he had ever known? His senses had sharpened so keenly that he could now perceive far more than usual. The deep floor of Anmokji. The number of evil spirits and fish gathered there. His senses even reached past the surface of the water.
They even reached Hong Gyeong-soo, standing at the shore.
"...Tsk."
He could see Hong Gyeong-soo's face as the man clicked his tongue softly. Without a single point of light, he could still read his expression, vivid and clear.
The man was disappointed.
Yank!
Hong Gyeong-soo began hauling in the cotton cord, and the line soon dragged Kang Hyeong-seok's body upward.
"Pwahh!"
He broke the surface and stared at Hong Gyeong-soo pulling the cord out of the darkness, the jar and the Divine General Blade and the sacred bells clutched tight. Now that his patron deity had left his body completely, he could no longer see the man's face.
Yank! Yank!
"Initiate!"
Hong Gyeong-soo kept hauling the cord and screamed himself hoarse.
"Hold on tight! That rope is your lifeline! You don't get to die today!"
Kang Hyeong-seok watched the man hauling him in with bewildered eyes. The voice was desperate — so desperate, in fact, that he began to doubt what he was seeing. And that was precisely why he couldn't tell what the man on the shore was after.
Walaralang!
Hong Gyeong-soo shook his sacred bells to drive back the evil spirits closing in on Kang Hyeong-seok. They were no ordinary shaman bells — the finger-mounted kind, wedged between the fingers, their battered surface giving them the feel of some ancient relic.
Walararalang!
Kang Hyeong-seok felt his feet touch ground. Clutching the jar tight to his chest, he walked toward Hong Gyeong-soo.