The Broadcast Collapses
I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, when a notification popped up on my smartphone.
Woo Minjung had started her broadcast.
Thinking back on how she spewed venomous abuse every single day while drunk made me want to abandon the idea of saving her completely. But I had promised Kang Minah I would rescue her mother.
If I used Mongsil as a shield, pulling off a direct rescue didn’t seem all that difficult.
The screen lit up.
The background had changed slightly.
Several softbox lights were turned off, making the space look even gloomier and more sinister.
And then there was Woo Minjung.
She was dressed far more provocatively than the day before.
Woo Minjung wore only a transparent black vinyl robe, and it looked like she had nothing on underneath.
The robe was deliberately draped to slip off one shoulder, and her exposed breasts seemed even larger and more swollen than yesterday.
Her nipples were clearly red and engorged.
Wait a second…
Where exactly was Woo Minjung broadcasting from right now?
I ran a quick deduction.
The current time was 11 p.m.
Factoring in the time difference, that made it 9 p.m. in Cambodia.
In Dubai it would be 6 p.m.
But the view outside the window was pitch black, so it probably wasn’t 6 p.m.
Still in Cambodia, huh…
Before the broadcast began, she seemed to be fiddling with her computer and various settings.
Her face was deathly pale, with deep dark circles carved beneath her eyes.
Yet her lips were painted a vivid, garish red.
She stared at the camera for a moment, then bowed her head like a machine and greeted the viewers.
Her voice was extremely languid, the ends of her words slurring together.
The trembling and sobbing from the previous day were gone. In their place was pure lethargy.
“Today… today…”
She couldn’t continue. Her eyes darted to the side of the screen.
She was looking at Jang Junpyo standing just off-camera.
She gave a small nod, then forced a smile as she faced the camera again.
Her speech was slightly awkward, like a child reciting a memorized line.
The chat window flooded with question marks.
At that moment, a new window appeared on screen.
Today’s Highest Donor
After the completion of Nipple Development, you may select the next training phase for Lewd Butterfly.
1. Oral Pussy Development — Focused on oral sex and throat stimulation.
2. Pussy Development — Amplification of vaginal wall sensitivity and cervical stimulation training.
3. Anal Development — Anal sphincter relaxation and colon sensitivity stimulation training.
— This is fucking insane.
— It’s the sponsor’s choice, apparently.
— Whoa. Can they even air this? They usually shut it down the second it gets too much.
Then it happened.
BigSpender2 has donated 1,000 Strawberries.
One thousand strawberries equaled ten million won.
— Holy shit. Starting off with ten million?
— BigSpender2 has entered the chat!
BigSpender3 has donated 2,000 Strawberries.
BigSpender1 has donated 20,000 Strawberries.
— Insane. The big spenders are going at each other.
— As expected from BigSpender1. The GOAT!
— How rich is BigSpender1 to casually drop two hundred million? He spent over a hundred million yesterday too.
— BigSpender1-nim, let’s go with pussy development!
BigSpender1 has donated 30,000 Strawberries.
— This is crazy!
— That’s three hundred million right there.
It was getting interesting.
I was curious about the true identities of these big spenders.
59…
9, 8, 7… 2, 1
Congratulations… BigSpender1. As the highest donor… please choose one of the three training options…
Woo Minjung’s body trembled lightly. She had become a death-row prisoner begging for BigSpender1’s mercy.
All three choices targeted the places tied to the deepest shame.
The camera panned to the plastic trays beside her.
Tray 1: A long silicone cord that looked like it could be used for an endoscopy.
Tray 2: A large vibrating toy and a probe-like device with a rounded tip.
Tray 3: A series of gradually thickening anal plugs and a bottle of transparent lubricant.
She instinctively pressed her thighs together.
The intimate silhouette beneath the transparent robe became even more visible.
“Th-this kind of thing…”
Her voice cracked.
She knelt in a praying position, rubbing her hands together… and pleaded.
Like a condemned prisoner, she closed her eyes.
Tears slid down the side of her nose.
And then, the executioner’s message appeared in chat.
— H a h a. The pinnacle of fuckable meat is obviously the asshole. Asshole. ^^
The camera was just about to move toward the anal plug tray—
BANG!!
A sudden explosion.
The screen shook violently.
“Kyaaak!!”
Woo Minjung’s scream.
The camera spun sideways from the impact, its focus shifting toward the door.
Ratatatatatatata!
The rapid fire of rifles mixed with sporadic pistol shots.
Men with guns running past.
The chat window exploded into chaos. I swallowed hard and stared intently at the screen.
The camera wasn’t showing the prepared stage for the broadcast. It was exposing the raw, unfiltered scene behind it.
— What the fuck is this?
— Gunshots?
— The stream actually blew up.
— Is Lewd Butterfly gonna die?
— Damn. Suddenly craving Tung Tai Fung dumplings.
Bang! Bang!
Bullets streaked across the frame with flashes of light.
The Cambodian gang members who had rushed forward dropped one by one.
“What the hell is going on?”
Either the Cambodian gangs had turned on each other,
or the police were launching a rescue operation.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Woo Minjung’s sorrowful screams continued to echo.
— Wow. This is fucking entertaining.
— People are actually dying, right?
— Is Lewd Butterfly dead?
There was a saying that tragedy looks like comedy from far away.
Watching their chat messages filled me with disgust.
Because it wasn’t their problem.
Just like how the war where Ukrainian youths were risking their lives had been reduced to nothing more than an FPS game for entertainment.
This channel has been permanently suspended for violating platform policy.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Of course they’d ban it. A live stream had just shown people getting killed on air.
“Haa…”
The possibility that Woo Minjung might die made my head throb.
What a mess, and I hadn’t even left to rescue her yet.
I scratched my head while staring at the now-black screen.
Then I replayed the final moments of the broadcast in my mind.
I had seen food delivery packages wrapped in paper.
It was from the famous dim sum franchise Tung Tai Fung.
Dim sum wasn’t particularly popular in Cambodia, and the franchise hadn’t expanded much there.
Cambodians generally didn’t like dim sum.
It was food mainly sought after by the Chinese community living in Cambodia.
A quick Google search showed that Tung Tai Fung only had locations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
“Bingo…”
And specifically the Tung Tai Fung branch in the outskirts of Phnom Penh, in Takeo Province.
I checked the location.
Using search results, I confirmed the delivery radius of that Tung Tai Fung branch.
“Good. Delivery range is two kilometers.”
I scanned the Google map for what looked like an industrial complex.
Cambodian crime syndicates usually operated under the guise of large industrial parks.
“It’s probably somewhere around here.”
After the national highway ended in Takeo Province, you had to travel quite a distance down an unpaved road into a remote area.
There, I spotted a fairly large logistics park.
For now, it looked like I had found where Woo Minjung was being held.
And then there was the identity of BigSpender1.
His chat messages had an old-fashioned feel to them.
The excessive use of emoticons was another clue.
“So it really was Chairman Kang Rokgi?”
Considering how easily he burned through five hundred million, it was highly likely.
Maybe he wanted to fill up a billion won, play the hero who rescued her with money, and then bring the thoroughly trained woman home to use as his personal fuck toy.
“That filthy old bastard…”
But it was a exquisite trap.
Chairman Kang Rokgi was already caught in the dense web the Triads had woven.
After all, Woo Minjung had already been turned into a Half-Human Half-Shikigami just like Kang Minah.
“If I cooperate with Detective Nam Gyuho’s special unit, rescuing her should be more than possible.”
Assuming she was still alive, that is.
At that moment, as if reading my thoughts, a call came in from Detective Nam Gyuho.
# # #
Yunnan Province, Miao Autonomous Region.
The village, located on a high plateau at an average elevation of 1,980 meters, was hidden among rugged mountain valleys wrapped in thick fog.
At the village entrance stood a massive ancient tree that looked at least several thousand years old, grotesquely twisted. Along the steep slope, precarious stilt houses hung like the ribs of some giant beast.
Among them, the tallest and most ominous wooden house.
Animal skulls and dried venomous snake corpses dangled from the eaves. Inside the deepest secret chamber of that house, a woman sat in lotus position in a scene that clashed completely with the grotesque surroundings.
Skin so pale it was almost translucent. Lips as seductive as if crushed red camellias had been smeared across them.
Her long, ebony hair shimmered faintly under the moonlight. She was Chunmei, the genius Gu Poison shaman hailed as the greatest prodigy in Miao history.
“Ugh…!”
The silence of the secret chamber shattered as Chunmei’s body arched violently like a drawn bow.
Black blood carrying a nauseating stench poured from between her crimson lips.
The blood soaked her pure white silk robes horrifically and dripped onto the floor.
“Haa… haa…! Wh-what is this?”
Chunmei braced herself against the floor with trembling hands, gasping for breath.
Her beautiful eyes shook violently with shock and terror.
Just moments ago, the spiritual link to her life-bound masterpiece—refined at the cost of her own lifespan—had been completely severed.
“The Spirit-class Gu, the Heavenly Spider, betrayed me?”
The souls of the tens of thousands of venomous insects that formed the Heavenly Spider, along with the deep grudges of the unfairly murdered children, had been sliced off as cleanly as if cut by scissors.
The backlash from losing a Spirit-class vengeful spirit refined with one’s own life force was enormous.
Cough…
Black blood kept spilling from her mouth without end.
And her heart had stopped.
“…Damn it.”
At the same time, fangs slowly pushed out from beyond her beautiful lips.
“If I were still human, I would have died.”
Stab!!
Her sharp nails tore into her own chest, heading straight for her heart.
Red blood gushed out in all directions.
Squish. Squish.
Incredibly, she shoved her hand into her own chest and began manually massaging her stopped heart.
There was no pain on her face whatsoever.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her stopped heart began beating again.
She withdrew her hand—Sssk—and the wound healed rapidly.
Undead Blood Ghost.
Chunmei, who had replaced her humanity with disaster-class spiritual malice to obtain eternal life, was the greatest shaman of the Miao tribe who had overcome death itself.
At the same time—
Crack!!
The Gu jar containing the Heavenly Centipede that Chunmei had created shattered.
“This can’t be…”
It meant the Special-class vengeful spirit, the Heavenly Centipede, had been annihilated.
She touched the fragments of the broken Gu jar, her entire body twisting in agony.
“The Heavenly Centipede I lent to that horse-faced shaman was destroyed, and the Heavenly Spider I sent to kill has betrayed me? Does this even make sense?”
Chunmei’s eyes flew wide open.
She roughly wiped the black blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
“How dare… a mere human steal my Heavenly Spider…”
Chunmei ground her teeth fiercely.
# # #
The smell of disinfectant.
The steady beep of a heart monitor.
Detective Nam Gyuho slowly lifted his heavy eyelids.
The blinding fluorescent lights stabbed at his vision, but strangely, his mind had never felt clearer.
He took a deep breath, confirming that he was still alive.
“Honey…”
His wife, Eunjin, who had been crouching beside the bed with a haggard face, jerked her head up.
Deep dark circles hung beneath her eyes, and both eyes were horribly swollen.
Damn… I made her worry again.
Upon confirming her husband was awake, she rushed over and tightly grasped Nam Gyuho’s rough hand.
“Are you awake? Do you have any idea how terrified I was?”
“……How long was I out?”
“I don’t know. You weren’t just sleeping…”
Her voice trembled.
She glanced nervously toward the hospital room door, then lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Right after you collapsed, I had Kim Dosa—who’s contracted exclusively with the violent crimes team—sent straight to the hospital. His face went completely white. He said you were hit with a ‘Gu Poison Killing Intent’ cast with full force by a Special-class shaman. If we had been even a little later, your vital energy would have been completely drained and you would have died of cardiac arrest.”
At his wife’s scolding filled with resentment, Nam Gyuho swallowed dryly.
“Come on, that’s nonsense. Kim Dosa got last year’s fortune reading completely wrong too. If I had been under a continuous Killing Intent, he should have noticed. That guy’s probably not even a 1st Class shaman—just a fraud.”
In modern society.
Even though science and reason ruled the world, in the shadowy criminal underworld where politics, economics, and all kinds of interests collided, shamanism and curses were openly used as weapons.
Especially in violent crimes involving foreign mafia or massive cartels, it was almost guaranteed that shamans were involved.
That was why the National Police Agency had made it standard procedure to assign at least 2nd Class nationally certified shamans as advisors to every investigation team.
“No. Kim Dosa arrived at the hospital and urgently used talismans to drive out the curse. That’s why you’re alive.”
“……Kim Dosa drove out the Killing Intent?”
“Yeah. He came, set up a barrier in the room, and even performed a ritual.”
Nam Gyuho abruptly sat up in bed.
It was because he remembered the Killing Intent right before he lost consciousness, and realized his wife couldn’t distinguish between a malevolent aura and an actual killing curse.
“The exorcism wasn’t done by Kim Dosa. That man only performed a simple curse-breaking ritual.”
Killing Intent was a type of malevolent aura that used vengeful spirits to kill the target.
Nam Gyuho touched his own neck.
The sensation of the massive centipede biting and tearing into him with its Gu Poison Killing Intent was still vivid.
Kang Suho was a Special-class… no, an even higher-ranked shaman.
The dignified figure of Kang Suho from that moment flashed through his mind.
He hadn’t been a twenty-three-year-old college student on leave. He was a shaman with spiritual power so immense the country would drool over him.
The hand seals and true words… that would be from the Buddhist school.
“Honey, are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry for worrying you.”
He cupped her cheeks and planted a kiss on her lips.
“I’m all better now!”
“No. Stay lying down! You really were on the verge of death. It’s past two in the morning.”
“You know better than anyone how strong my body is.”
Nam Gyuho thumped his own chest.
Then he reached over, pulled his coat close, and took out his smartphone.
When he turned on the screen, there was a welcome notification.
Approval from above for the Cambodia missing persons case had come through.
Two 1st Class shamans and two platoons of the police special forces had been assigned.
The corners of Nam Gyuho’s mouth rose.
With this level of support, they could launch a swift rescue operation inside the Cambodian crime syndicate’s territory.
Without hesitation, he dialed Kang Suho’s number.
Before it could even ring a few times, a dry, calm voice answered.