The Difference Between the Bizarre and the Uninvited
The vast skies above the national border gave way, and what lay beyond was enemy territory.
“Hmm.”
What greeted him first were the gaudy ornaments that sat somewhere between nouveau riche vulgarity and traditional elegance. The airport looked superficially cheap yet overflowed with the distinctive ostentation of Japan. Scattered throughout were murals painted in the style of ukiyo-e, as if to proclaim that this, indeed, was Japanese beauty.
They’ve tampered with the paintings.
A strange energy emanated from the artwork. It was neither sorcery nor quite magic—an alien form of power.
Onmyoujutsu?
Onmyoujutsu was a force created when Japan took the shamanic arts that had developed in China and Korea and rearranged them in their own fashion. Originating from Northeast Asian sorcery, it relied primarily on talismans, with incantations added to amplify their effects. Those who practiced it were called onmyouji. For centuries they had occupied key positions in the state, reading the heavens, conducting rituals, practicing feng shui, and handling every task ordinary shamans performed, never relinquishing their grip on power. In short, it was Japan’s unique variant of shamanic tradition.
So they’ve woven onmyoujutsu into the place.
The “method of detecting shamans” that Jinseong had guessed from the beginning was precisely this—onmyoujutsu. In a way, it made perfect sense. Shamans were an elusive breed; how else could one find them through ordinary means?
Internal energy detectors worked better on mages or martial artists than on shamans. Dimensional residue detectors were only useful against summoners. An MRI or a terahertz radiation body scanner might detect the physical toll a shaman paid for using their arts, yet… since that toll looked no different from ordinary illness, it could not distinguish a shaman from a patient. Meaningless.
That was why Japan had apparently engraved onmyoujutsu throughout the airport—to detect shamans. The method was collision between sorceries. Shamans, being capable of every kind of curse and blessing, naturally prepared defenses against other forms of shamanism. They usually carried “warding dolls” shaped like human figures that would shoulder any harm directed at their owner. In the process, the shamanic residue from curses would scatter. The onmyoujutsu carved into the airport seemed designed to catch that dispersion and send a signal.
A light prod, and any reaction immediately exposes them. Quite refined.
Of course, ordinary people sometimes carried warding dolls as well. Who didn’t wish for good fortune and disaster prevention?
It’s probably linked with the body scanners too.
Jinseong guessed the system combined onmyoujutsu with scientific methods. Being flagged as a patient by a body scanner was common enough. Carrying a warding doll was also common enough. But both at once? That would be rare.
If both flags are triggered, follow-up measures will surely follow. They’ll be placed on a watch list, and a contractor or another shaman will come to verify… something like that.
Jinseong saw it as a spiderweb. A sticky web meant to catch any shaman entering Japan. Strangely, the realization only made his anticipation swell.
Just what are they hiding so desperately that they reject shamans this fiercely?
He acted as if he had noticed none of it, calmly surveying the airport. In the footbath area that Kagoshima Airport boasted, he spotted onmyoujutsu subtly hidden within the floor patterns. The shuttle buses heading to tourist spots were likewise saturated with it. Beyond the airport, an outright barrier had been erected.
Impressive.
The determination to keep shamans from ever leaving the terminal was palpable. It bordered on obsession.
That barrier… it’s designed to detect cursed objects. No—talismans.
Clicking his tongue, he boarded the bus. Dragons were elegantly painted across the floor and ceiling—onmyoujutsu once again.
This one induces collision with cursed objects. The effect itself is negligible, but it leaves a trace. A subtle trick that’s hard to notice.
And that wasn’t all. Heat-sensing devices—presumably—were installed throughout the bus. The explanation claimed they were for disease prevention, but who would believe that? In an era when no global pandemic raged, installing such things was nothing but a waste of budget. Obviously they served another purpose.
Let’s see. As expected, they aren’t ordinary sensors. They’re internal energy detection sensors.
Unlike normal sensors, he could feel components inside them containing trace amounts of various energies. They were unmistakably the internal energy detectors he had seen countless times during his mercenary days.
They intend to narrow down and verify suspects by every possible means?
Internal energy detection was ineffective against shamans. Shamanic arts did not rely on any fixed type of energy, and even if they did, the physical backlash made stable accumulation nearly impossible. Therefore, these sensors were clearly not meant to identify shamans, but to filter out non-shamans.
Hah. How tenacious. Just what kind of honey pot are they hiding to go this far?
With an expression full of anticipation, Jinseong settled into an empty seat and quietly gazed out the window. His appearance was that of an ordinary tourist; no one gave him a second glance.
“Oh!”
When the shuttle bus reached its destination and he let out an admiring gasp upon stepping off, no one found it strange. They simply assumed a foreigner had been moved by the sight of Japan and smiled warmly.
The scenery that greeted him after disembarking was indeed magnificent. Yet what Jinseong saw was something else entirely.
Even this far out, there are barriers! Of course—any major tourist site reachable directly from the airport would have them.
He decided against the shuttle and opted for a regular city bus instead. He moved to a secluded spot, used successive short-range spatial jumps to reach a bus stop, then boarded a battered old bus that looked nothing like something meant for tourists and rode it to a random destination. He had no particular goal. He simply wanted to escape the major tourist sites directly accessible from the airport.
Yet that very choice proved helpful.
The moment he stepped off at a suitable stop, Jinseong burst into hearty laughter.
No wonder they’re so desperate to filter out shamans. Hahaha!
The place he had arrived at was a quiet rural village. An utterly ordinary countryside settlement. It bore an uncanny resemblance to rural Korean villages and was clearly lacking in anything one might call a tourist attraction.
But to Jinseong’s eyes, it looked more beautiful and magnificent than any tourist destination.
He saw black haze.
It was like the darkness of night diluted again and again by light until only the thinnest, most delicate gossamer remained—like the final feather robe of a fairy. Too faint to be called substantial, yet too clearly present to be called illusory. Yet if gathered and gathered again, it would surely take on the color of true darkness. An exceedingly weak black haze.
He also saw white powder.
Like the fine, delicate dust that appears when a sack of flour is torn open and scattered into the air. If one altered its properties so it could pass through light, lowered its presence to the utmost, and made it float like snowflakes that never touched the ground, it would look exactly like this.
They tried to merge, yet repelled each other like magnets of the same pole. Their shapes writhed like seaweed swaying underwater, blooming with white flowers.
So many scattered souls and spirits!
What his eyes beheld were none other than the constituent elements of the soul—hon and baek!
And in shamanism, both were materials that could be used for countless purposes. In other words, what lay before him was a mother lode that surpassed any gold mine or diamond deposit.
The instant he realized the secret Japan had fought so hard to conceal, Jinseong smiled brightly. He used spatial jumps to dart here and there, confirming the presence of hon and baek. And he came to understand that nearly the entirety of Japan—except for places where detection barriers had been erected—looked much the same.
Of course. It never made sense that tampering with nature would only cause global warming. Now I understand.
The fact that hon and baek, which should naturally dissipate, remained in such quantities was clearly a side effect.
With so much hon and baek left behind, grudges cannot be resolved and only accumulate. Evil ghosts and malevolent spirits must be rampant everywhere. Disasters would occur frequently as well. Everything fits perfectly.
He also realized why Japan had developed and boasted of onmyoujutsu while restricting its use to domestic purposes.
Now I see why they praised onmyoujutsu so highly yet only used it internally.
Inside Japan, simply gathering hon and baek roughly would produce sufficient power for shamanic rites. The beings known as shikigami would move on their own if given a well-trained soul with properly fused hon and baek.
But outside Japan, such methods became impossible. After all, hon and baek were not common. Mere continuous exposure to yang energy on the level of sunlight would make them vanish in an instant. Baek might endure for a while, but hon would evaporate like mist. To use hon and baek as Japan did, one would need proper shamanic rituals or high-grade cursed objects.
With this much hon and baek, a skilled shaman could single-handedly turn an entire country into ruins!
Even bringing in a high-level necromancer could reduce a city to wasteland. Luring a suitable vengeful spirit, refining its hon, and implanting it could birth a powerful evil spirit—or, in some cases, a great evil spirit. One could also capture a malevolent ghost, refine its baek, and create a monstrous great evil ghost.
And since the entire country was like this, one could produce dozens of such monsters. Depending on the circumstances, a single individual might drive the nation to the brink of collapse.
A talisman specialist could draw mysterious power even from mass-produced talismans in a factory. A flame sorcerer capable of Soul Burn could turn anywhere into a sea of fire using the abundant hon and baek as medium.
Of course, that was only in theory. In practice, it would not be so easy. Japan blocked shaman entry with such paranoid fervor; they could hardly have failed to prepare for the possibility of illegal entry and rampage. There were surely numerous countermeasures scattered across the country to detect and stop shamans.
“Splendid. Truly splendid!”
But what did any of that matter? As long as he wasn’t caught, it was fine.
Jinseong felt— no, he was certain—that he would reap enormous gains in Japan.