Blood on the Veranda
The blood that spilled out instantly soaked the shabby wooden veranda and still had plenty left to drip heavily onto the ground outside, spreading in dark puddles.
Even though he was investigating a forbidden technique, Han Yujin felt a chill as he watched the scene. Suddenly, the sight struck him as strangely familiar.
Thanks to his exceptional memory, he quickly recalled why.
It reminded him of a scene from the early chapters of the famous xianxia novel The Master of the Great Dream, which he had stumbled upon while researching after first hearing about the genre from his friend Park Heewon.
The middle sections had been so entertaining that he had forgotten his original purpose of gathering reference material and gotten completely absorbed for a while. Because of that, he even wondered for a moment if this blood belonged to a black dog, which was said to have exorcism properties.
But while the situation coincidentally resembled the novel, what happened next was naturally quite different.
Chiiiiik…!
The blood that had been spreading at a fairly rapid pace suddenly began to boil, releasing faint red vapor. At the same time, the metallic scent of blood grew much thicker, and the cool, damp chill of the night seemed to evaporate all at once.
This was clearly not the blood of an ordinary black dog. Fortunately, it also didn’t belong to a youkai or a ghost.
“Excuse me, I’m a human being. There’s no need for this kind of thing.”
- Hic…!
Even though he had spoken as gently as possible, the response from inside was not one of relief but of even greater terror.
This was a first for him, so he briefly debated whether to just fling the door open or wait until the person calmed down.
- Grrrrrrgh…!
A suppressed groan of immense pain leaked out from within.
At that, even Han Yujin, who had assumed there was a person inside based on the blood’s effect, felt doubt rise again. Instead of opening the door immediately, he decided to observe the situation a little longer.
A short while later.
The suppressed groans vanished, replaced by several ragged panting sounds. Then, from the middle of the wooden sliding door, a small specially installed wooden panel rattled and something popped out, falling onto the dirt floor with a soft thud.
“······.”
It was a palm-sized doll crudely made of straw.
The problem was that the doll was wrapped in talismans like clothing, and what it contained was unmistakably a human finger that had just been severed.
The fingernail protruding from the talisman paper looked particularly horrifying. The blood seeping from inside the yellow talisman only heightened the eerie strangeness of the situation.
Pasusuk…!
When he sent a thread of divine sense to touch it, the talisman paper wrapped around the doll burned away rapidly and disappeared. What was revealed was indeed a human finger.
‘They mistook me for a ghost and tried to exorcise me by cutting off their own finger.’
Now that he understood the situation more clearly, Han Yujin let out a small sigh. He felt like he was beginning to grasp the general atmosphere of this world.
This was a world where even a simple villager in a remote countryside could cut off their own finger and throw it out in the middle of the night to survive an encounter with a ghost.
In other words, it was a world where you had no choice but to do so, or you would die.
“Tsk.”
He clicked his tongue lightly, stepped onto the veranda where the blood had already completely evaporated, grabbed the door handle, and pulled. He felt the latch catch from inside, but it seemed like he could break it with raw strength. Naturally, there was no defense prepared against something like his fish-swallowing technique.
Not wanting to break it unnecessarily, he used the technique to undo the inner latch and opened the door. Inside, a middle-aged man with a completely ashen face was trembling violently as he stared at him.
Even in that state, the man was clinging as close as possible to an oil lamp, which suggested it was no ordinary object.
Around him lay a single talisman that looked faded from recent use, and a small hand cleaver that had probably been used to cut off the finger.
“Didn’t I tell you I’m a human being?”
He clicked his tongue again and stepped inside to treat the man.
“Th-the door…! Close the door—!!”
The middle-aged man screamed as if in a nightmare.
At the same time, Han Yujin sensed something and whipped his head around.
A woman dressed in pure white mourning clothes with her hair wildly disheveled was leaping over the wall and scrambling toward them on all fours like a madwoman.
Bang—!
Han Yujin hurriedly stepped inside and slammed the door shut. He blinked several times as he recalled the scene he had just witnessed.
Even Mu-yong in his arms had almost the exact same expression, blinking her round black eyes and forgetting to even twitch her nose.
“Huuup… huuuup…!”
Even then, the middle-aged man stared at Han Yujin with labored breathing, his whole body shaking violently as if he still couldn’t tell whether the young man was human or a ghost.
“Hey…”
“Shh…!”
Despite his terror, the man desperately gestured for silence.
Right after that.
- Krrgh… Krrghhhhh…
Under the faint moonlight, the shadow of the disheveled female ghost was cast onto the paper door. She was practically pressed right up against it.
Han Yujin had been about to extend his divine sense when he glanced at the talisman above the doorframe and stopped. It wouldn’t hurt to gather more information about this world by observing the situation for now.
The middle-aged man, who had been trembling on the verge of panic, suddenly realized that the oil in the lamp he was treating like a lifeline was being consumed at an abnormal rate. In a frantic rush, he pulled out a bottle of oil from the storage space beneath the lamp.
He yanked the stopper out and poured more than half the bottle in one go. A subtle scent spread through the room, and the flickering flame of the lamp finally stabilized.
As if influenced by the light.
The shadow of the female ghost, which had been practically glued to the paper door, slowly retreated and vanished.
“Huu… huu… huu…!”
Still breathing unsteadily, the middle-aged man looked at Han Yujin.
“Y-you… if you’re really a human… clap your hands…! But don’t make any sound!”
Watching the man speak in a hushed, fearful voice, Han Yujin obediently mimed clapping.
The middle-aged man watched with his eyes wide open, and a slight amount of tension finally left his face.
Perhaps he simply no longer had the stamina to remain tense.
“Why did you make me clap?”
Han Yujin asked, lowering his voice as well. The man stared at him as if wondering how anyone could not know something so basic, which only made him suspicious and scared again, before answering.
“Because… if you were a ghost… you wouldn’t be able to do it properly.”
“What do you mean?”
“…Y-you clap with the back of your hands…!”
Aha.
Han Yujin nodded inwardly with a sound of understanding.
There were similar stories back on modern Earth. Tales about how ghosts mimic human actions in reverse—if a person on the verge of death visited a shaman’s house, the shaman would see them walking in upside down, that sort of thing.
“So does that mean you now acknowledge that I’m human?”
“······.”
His silence suggested that wasn’t entirely the case.
“L-let’s… not talk anymore… w-we might get dragged away… they’ve already come….”
The middle-aged man was still half-hyperventilating.
Han Yujin couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s severed finger, or rather the wound that had been crudely wrapped in cloth but was still oozing blood.
“I’ll treat that for you.”
“…How? Do you have a Life-Growth Pellet or something?”
“Life-Growth Pellet?”
There was far too much he didn’t know about this world. He was just thinking that since he had already been rude, he might as well use the Dream Illusion Mind Snatching Art, when the middle-aged man suddenly recoiled as if the mere question was absurd.
- Krrgh…!!
The female ghost’s guttural screech, which they thought had retreated, rang out right in front of the paper door. It was so close that for a moment he thought it had come from inside the room.
Susususuk…!
Following the spine-chilling noise, the shadow of the female ghost on the paper door crawled upward and disappeared. Then an unidentified gnawing sound began to echo continuously.
It sounded exactly like something being chewed with teeth.
“Th-the light of heaven and earth never dims… the vital energy of humans never dries up… the protection of the divine names never breaks… the ghosts that pursue me shall turn back… the yin that covers me shall vanish… O energy of the Supreme One, envelop me….”
The middle-aged man squeezed his eyes shut and muttered what sounded like a prayer, desperately trying to calm himself. But his efforts were in vain. The gnawing sound suddenly stopped, and shortly after—
Thump thump thump…! Thump thump thump thump…!
From the upper part of the house, in what was clearly a very cramped attic space, came the sound of something scrambling around on all fours.
The floor of the attic, made of not particularly sturdy wooden planks that also served as the ceiling of the living space below, shook visibly with every movement.
At the same time, the darkness inside the room grew thick and viscous, pressing down on the brightness of the oil lamp. It felt as though the female ghost could leap out from anywhere in that darkness at any moment.
At this point, the middle-aged man was shaking so badly he could barely hold the lamp stand, his breathing completely erratic, like a man on his deathbed.
“Don’t you have any other countermeasures?”
At that moment.
The calm voice made the middle-aged man reflexively turn his head. His eyes met those of the young man whose nature he still couldn’t determine.
In those pupils, he thought he saw the bizarre sight of the six realms revolving in samsara. An inexplicable sense of relief washed over him, allowing him to regain his senses.
“Th-there was… a Yang-Blood Talisman….”
His gaze turned toward the already faded talisman nearby. It was probably the one that had produced that blood-like substance when Han Yujin had first arrived.
“Then I’ll take care of it.”
Immediately after.
A single streak of crimson flame bloomed at the tip of Han Yujin’s finger.
The moment it appeared, it completely swept away the darkness that had been slowly thickening around them. It pierced a small hole in the ceiling and vanished into the attic.
- Kiiiiiiiaaaaaak…!!
A bizarre scream that seemed to echo from far away and yet from every direction at once rang out before fading away.
“It’s taken care of.”
“…Wh-what?”
“First, let me treat you.”
As he spoke, he activated the Taecheong Hyeonsu and wrapped it around the middle-aged man’s finger. The finger of an ordinary mortal healed the instant it touched the energy, as if it had never been severed.
“It looks like you wasted all your means of blocking that ghost because of me, even cutting off your own finger. I’ll compensate you for that. Now, what would be good….”
The middle-aged man watched Han Yujin mutter to himself in contemplation. He alternated his gaze between the now ghost-energy-free atmosphere around them and his perfectly restored finger before finally managing to ask a question.
His voice still trembled, but the tremor was of an entirely different nature than before.
“B-by any chance… are you a Ghost Extermination Master?”
A specialist who deals with ghosts.
That was roughly how Han Yujin interpreted the question. Without much hesitation, he nodded.
“Something like that.”
Along with the answer, a purple glow flashed in his eyes as the Dream Illusion Mind Snatching Art unfolded.
The middle-aged man’s face relaxed noticeably as he slumped over and fell asleep. Han Yujin looked down at him for a moment, unconsciously stroking his chin as he reviewed the basic information he had gained about this world.
It had been a while since he had used the speech patterns of the murim world, and his old habits had resurfaced.
‘Surprisingly, even ordinary mortals can craft and use talismans in this world…?’
He had only come to gain knowledge about ghosts, but it seemed he would reap quite a harvest regarding talisman techniques as well.
Especially if he could meet those called Ghost Extermination Masters.
‘The problem is…’
Things probably wouldn’t go entirely smoothly.
He glanced toward the attic where the “ghost” he had just dealt with had been.
‘No matter how I look at it, that didn’t feel like a real ghost. It seemed more like some kind of phenomenon…’
In short, this world might not only have real ghosts but also be overflowing with unknown spiritual phenomena that mimicked them.
After pondering for a while longer, he opened the entrance to the Mountain Sea Pearl and stepped inside.
He intended to use one of the jade materials stored in the smoke room warehouse to create something that would compensate the middle-aged man for his loss.
After that, he planned to head to a larger nearby village where Ghost Extermination Masters were likely to be found.