Consumed by One's Own Ghosts
The Dharma-Breaking Lightning Wall Technique offered weaker physical defense than the Golden Radiance Spell, but it possessed far superior resistance against magical attacks.
Moreover, by the very nature of lightning, defense and counterattack occurred simultaneously. If another lightning-based spell was cast in tandem, the two would merge on their own and amplify the overall power.
As a result, the lightning energy Han Yujin had fired through his Ohaeng Sword was nearly twice as strong as it would have been on its own. On top of that, having ascended to the Dharma Soul stage and gained the ability to wield true dharma power, its might was fundamentally seven or eight times greater than before.
In other words, the current attack was easily fifteen times more powerful than when he had last wielded the Ohaeng Sword.
By the time the thunderclap reached the ears, a blinding flash had already swept across the entire alley, turning the world into stark black and white. The lightning that struck its target erased the two ghosts—beings capable of effortlessly handling an A-rank hunter—as if evaporating them from existence.
At the same time, the spiritual eye technique unfolded and fused with his divine sense, granting him an entirely new dimension of vision.
Ascending to divine sense did not render the spiritual eye technique obsolete. On the contrary, it allowed him to deploy the technique at an even higher level. Discovering “traces” that would have been invisible to him before was now effortless.
He took a single step, following the faint residual energy that had been connected to the two ghosts he had just destroyed.
CRACKLE—!
Accompanied by flashing light and rolling thunder, he vanished from the spot. This was the lightning evasion technique—the fastest among all Ohaeng evasion arts at short distances.
To anyone without a similar level of perception, it would feel no different from teleportation.
On the rooftop of a building roughly two hundred meters from the ambush site, a shabby-looking man sensed the annihilation of the ghosts he controlled and flinched in shock.
At that exact moment, a low rumbling sound rolled in with a flash of blue-white light. Han Yujin, the very target the man had been aiming for, appeared right before his eyes. Before the man could even resist, a hand shot forward and seized him by the collar.
“Eternal Goddess Cult. Correct?”
The man recoiled in terror but reacted on trained instinct. In one fluid motion, he drew a military combat knife from his waist and thrust it straight toward his captor’s throat.
His original mission had not been assassination but incapacitation and possession through the ghosts. If that failed, the goal was to let the spirits devour the target’s soul and salvage at least fragments of memory.
In this situation, however, killing was the only option.
It was a swift and ferocious counterattack born from pure instinct, yet…
Han Yujin caught the tip of the incoming blade between two fingers. A faint golden radiance clung to them.
From what he could tell, the opponent was clearly a well-trained assassin of some sort. However, unlike the ghosts he commanded, his own physical strength was barely above that of a D-rank hunter.
With perception sharpened by the Dharma Soul stage, failing to react to this speed was impossible. His strength was greater than an ordinary person’s, but still nowhere near enough to surpass the refined physique of a Dharma Soul investigator.
CRACK!
“Ghk…!”
A hand the man never even saw coming slammed into the side of his face. The sound was far too heavy to be a mere slap—more like the crack of a fracturing skull. The man’s mind went blank for a split second.
“You should have assessed the situation by now. Stay still if you don’t want to die.”
With those words, Han Yujin snatched the combat knife away and demonstrated his power once more.
Red flames bloomed across his palm. The knife melted into a trickle of glowing molten iron that dripped between his fingers. The non-metallic parts of the handle didn’t even produce smoke; they simply crumbled into faint ash.
“M-monster…!”
The man, already half-dazed from the powerful slap, stared in horror and let out a groan.
“This… there was no information about this…”
“I suppose they only told you I was around A-rank? Who did you hear it from? Are there still Eternal Goddess Cult members active in Korea? Or did you come from China? Your Korean is surprisingly good for a mainlander. Korean-Chinese? How did you learn to control ghosts? Did you obtain the knowledge from a rift?”
Han Yujin fired off questions in rapid succession, his eyes gleaming with a cold, piercing light that suggested he hardly expected answers.
The man felt a chill race down his spine at the sight.
Something was wrong. An overwhelming pressure bore down on him, as though he had touched an existence on an entirely different level.
“You’re not Korean-Chinese,” Han Yujin stated, as if reading the man’s very thoughts.
“Doesn’t seem like you’re from mainland China either. What are you?”
“I-I’m Goryeo… Korean…”
“Goryeo Koreans usually don’t speak Korean this well, do they? Whatever. I’ll spare your life, so surrender. You can’t be fanatical enough about that cult to throw your life away, right? You already know they’re not exactly sane.”
It was a relentless barrage of questions that blurred the line between interrogation and casual conversation. Yet the man had the distinct impression that his captor was already piecing together the answers from the questions alone.
And it was not mere imagination.
Han Yujin’s divine sense caught even the slightest twitch of the man’s reactions, while his enhanced intellect analyzed those micro-expressions with terrifying speed and accuracy.
“Your mission was doomed from the start anyway. Though it’s not entirely your fault. The idiots who gave someone like you the order to deal with someone like me are the real fools. Besides, even if I let you go right now, what guarantee do you have that they won’t simply dispose of you?”
“Th-that…”
“What kind of promises did they make when they taught you how to control ghosts? That they’d grant you wealth and power? From what I know, handling ghosts like this is extremely dangerous. It’s practically like scooping up poison with your bare hands. Did you sign up for it even after knowing that?”
“I… I did hear something like that…”
“Did you really listen properly? If they didn’t fully disclose the risks during the contract, that’s fraud. Do you know what recoil is?”
Recoil, broadly speaking, referred to the side effects of dharma techniques. More specifically, it described the phenomenon of being attacked in turn by the very entities one commanded.
“Have the ghosts never looked at you while licking their lips?”
They had.
The man couldn’t help but recall several chilling memories. His body trembled. There was no way Han Yujin could have missed such a reaction.
“Stop hesitating and surrender. It’s the only choice that lets you live. There’s no need to stay loyal to the bastards who gambled with your life. Just spit out everything you know and naturalize here. You have no idea how well hunters live in this country, do you? Once you learn, this conversation will become much easier.”
“But…”
“I’ll overlook the assassination attempt if you decide to surrender quickly.”
“Are you… really serious?”
“I need the information you possess. In short, I’m proposing a deal.”
Han Yujin fell briefly silent, as if giving the man time to think, then spoke again.
“If those cult fanatics scare you too much to decide right away, think carefully about whose fist is closer to your face right now. After all, while exercising my right to self-defense, I might accidentally apply a little too much force and end up blowing off one or two of your limbs or eyes.”
The man shuddered violently. The calm tone made it clear there was no bluff behind the words.
Yet the trembling did not subside. It grew steadily worse. Han Yujin, who had been monitoring him with divine sense, pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Damn it… I just told you this was dangerous, didn’t I? You really thought you could control two ghosts stronger than yourself and come out unscathed?”
“Huk… khhhk…!”
Blood vessels burst across the whites of the man’s bulging eyes. His pupils dilated massively before a black energy erupted like spilled ink, drowning them in complete darkness.
No proper scream escaped his gaping mouth. The tremors turned into full-body rigidity, making even struggling impossible.
Through his divine sense, Han Yujin clearly perceived the man’s soul being violently torn apart by the two black ghostly energies. It did not feel like a simple ripping—it was closer to being devoured.
The ghostly energy had apparently fused with the man’s soul as a means of control. Unfortunately, the healing techniques Han Yujin had learned were ineffective against such spiritual damage, especially when the destruction was this rapid and ferocious.
“I can’t save you. No one could, even if they came instead of me.”
Han Yujin spoke calmly. From the man writhing in agony, a wave of pure despair radiated outward.
“So let’s get revenge on the ones who sent you to die like this. Who are they? Who told you to do this?”
“Khhk…!”
The man convulsed even more violently for a brief moment, then his mouth opened and closed. He seemed to want to speak, yet had no idea what to say.
He was a disposable piece from the beginning… He doesn’t seem to know much.
While Han Yujin analyzed the situation with a clear mind thanks to his calming techniques, their eyes met.
The eyes that had become as terrifying as the ghosts themselves stared at him clearly through unimaginable pain and despair.
“Be…ijing…!!”
The word came out like a scream.
The moment it left his lips, the man vomited blood. It sprayed not only from his mouth but from every orifice as his body gave one final violent spasm.
With his soul torn to shreds, he sank into eternal silence along with the remnants of the ghosts he had controlled.
“……”
Han Yujin stared at the gruesome corpse in silence for several minutes before finally pulling out his smartphone.
The number he dialed belonged, of course, not to the police but to the case officer at the Ability Management Bureau.
What exactly “Beijing” signified remained unclear.
It could refer to a specific faction or individual located in that region. It might point to influential figures who mainly operated there. Or perhaps it meant that additional clues could be found in the place where the man had lived.
It’s unlikely the Chinese government is behind this.
While Han Yujin pondered, the assigned case officer, Kang Min-ah, arrived on the scene far quicker than expected, accompanied by police personnel.
As the once-quiet surroundings grew noisy, she approached with a male investigator from the Ability Crime Investigation Division at her side. It seemed a murder case could not proceed without an investigator present.
Han Yujin explained the sequence of events in detail from the beginning, answering her questions. At the same time, he gauged the rigid, inflexible-looking investigator’s rank.
Doesn’t seem lower than the case officer.
Using his divine sense to read the atmosphere, he determined the man was at least a Level 6 civil servant—roughly equivalent to a police inspector. He didn’t appear to be Level 5, since he had come directly to the scene.
“One moment,” the investigator cut in once the explanation was finished.
“Mr. Han Yujin, you are a reserve A-rank hunter, correct? Does that mean the two summoned entities the deceased controlled were around C-rank?”
In other words, even though you are merely a reserve A-rank, you claim to have dealt with them so quickly. Wouldn’t that imply they were only C-rank rather than B-rank?
It wasn’t exactly an interrogation; he simply seemed to be verifying the objectivity of the statement. Han Yujin therefore answered without any sense of displeasure.
“That’s not the case. I had originally planned to report it in a few days, once the preliminary hunter education was complete, but I have become S-rank.”
“Pardon?”
The case officer reacted first, questioning as if she had misheard. Even the stone-faced investigator’s expression turned strange.
The difference between A-rank and S-rank could not be measured by a single grade.
One had to understand that fewer than a hundred S-rank hunters existed worldwide. Their importance and danger as human resources to a nation could not be overstated.
Korea currently had only two. Considering one was a seventy-year-old man whose retirement date was uncertain, this was nothing short of a bombshell announcement.
I should reveal this much in advance to avoid unnecessary complications.
Even if there were slight ambiguities in viewing the incident as pure self-defense, they would now officially classify it as such. Taking Han Yujin’s unique circumstances into account, it was not an incorrect judgment.
“Since I’ve revealed it, I’d appreciate it if you could verify it as well. Also, I hope you’ll take my words with the utmost seriousness.”
He spoke while gazing down at the corpse of the man who had died from recoil.
“I wasn’t attacked without reason.”
He did not know if it would work, but he wanted to teach those who had dared to send retaliation exactly what it meant to stir up a hornet’s nest.