Chapter 43. About Faith (7)
“Enough!”
Suddenly, King Nampyeong rose from his seat.
“Enough! I’m sick of looking at all of you!”
The musicians immediately stopped playing.
Silence fell over the wide royal tomb grounds.
People looked around nervously.
The king spoke in an icy voice.
“So tell me.”
“Whose people are they?”
The moment Cheongyeon heard his voice, her heart seemed to freeze.
Nampyeong slowly looked around at everyone.
“Who is the king of whom?”
His eyes rolled from person to person.
He quickly began falling deeper into his own rage.
“How interesting.”
Then he laughed.
“This is exactly why I never trust any of you.”
By now, Nampyeong could no longer hear anything others said.
The hand holding his wine cup trembled.
Strange choking sounds mixed with his quick breathing.
Namwan looked at him nervously.
“Your Majesty, please calm yourself.”
“This humble monk will handle the matter properly.”
Namwan quickly ordered the servants to end the banquet.
Tables were removed.
Curtains were taken down.
Watching them, Nampyeong suddenly shouted,
“Who told you to remove the tables?”
“...”
“Bring more wine.”
Then he smiled.
“Tonight’s banquet will not end until morning.”
No official dared answer him.
So the king continued talking to himself.
“Spirits.”
“Everything is spirits.”
He looked toward the burial mound.
“Isn’t a royal tomb a place where the spirits of all our ancestors wander?”
“Even if you live as king, that is all that remains.”
“The power of this world is so boring.”
“So terribly boring...”
He slowly raised his head.
“I will gather every wandering soul from the mountains of the dead.”
“Then I will release them across the entire world.”
For one moment, Nampyeong almost looked dignified again.
“I will personally show all of you what a world swallowed by darkness looks like.”
The king rose.
At that moment, twilight spread across the western sky.
From within the fading light...
something began approaching.
A cold, sinister wind blew across the royal tomb grounds.
It made people’s bodies ache.
Dark shadows crawled over the surrounding hills.
They opened bright-red mouths and laughed in strange voices.
Everyone attending the banquet exchanged frightened looks.
One after another, they fell to the ground and begged for their lives.
“Your Majesty, please calm yourself!”
“Punish us instead!”
“Please withdraw those creatures spreading such evil energy!”
Then...
something enormous came charging over the hill.
It crossed the distance in moments.
With a single leap, it landed on the platform beside the king.
The impact shattered furniture.
Curtains collapsed.
It was a Yaksha.
Its horrifying face looked twisted.
Its hair burned like living fire.
The Yaksha scratched its head with long, sharp claws.
Then it lowered itself before the king like a hound from Hell.
Even a single glare from its vicious eyes filled the surroundings with cold, evil energy.
Nampyeong smiled with satisfaction.
“Look.”
“My spirit soldiers obey me so quietly.”
The entire world seemed to bow easily before the power of darkness.
Then the king looked toward the officials.
“To teach loyalty to all of you...”
“I would need to split your skulls open and tie your limbs until the bones broke.”
But his satisfaction soon disappeared.
His expression returned to bored indifference.
Nampyeong remembered when he had first obtained the power of darkness.
Because of King Namcheol’s active foreign trade policy, countless foreign goods had once entered the palace as tribute.
Of all those things...
why had that particular book been there?
The Book of Hell.
No one could know whether Nampyeong’s evil nature had led him toward his cursed fate...
or whether the curse had created that evil nature.
But one thing was certain.
The Book of Hell had completely consumed Crown Prince Nampyeong’s soul.
He tested the curses written inside.
He learned how to open the entrance to Hell.
And there...
he ate the True Body.
The True Body was primordial flesh.
An enormous mass of meat from the beginning of existence.
After consuming part of it, Nampyeong gained tremendous power over ghosts.
Afterward, he began offering many things from the living world as sacrifices to darkness.
All because he wanted to taste it once again.
Nearby, State Preceptor Namwan finally panicked.
“What are you doing?”
“Hurry!”
“Prepare my palanquin! We need to leave this place!”
Namwan tried to escape with his monks.
Seeing the monster his elder brother had summoned had terrified him.
But with a single gesture from Nampyeong...
the Yaksha blocked their path.
It smashed its club against the platform.
Wooden boards shattered.
Several monks rolled onto the ground.
Nampyeong tilted his head from the throne and looked down at them.
“Where are you going?”
“You’re a monk, aren’t you?”
“Sit there and chant your prayers.”
Chaos had also spread below the platform.
Some people cried beside those who had been hit by arrows.
Others clung desperately to Cheongyeon and begged for their lives.
“We barely escaped the village swallowed by darkness...”
“And now the darkness is here again!”
“Heavenly Maiden, please save us!”
“These are the same things we saw in Bullae!”
Cheongyeon spread a black curtain before the terrified commoners.
It moved like a dark sea.
Ghosts touching the barrier caught fire.
Their bodies collapsed into ashes.
Their ghostly energy was then absorbed into Cheongyeon.
It looked as though she were fighting evil with another form of evil.
But Cheongyeon had no other choice.
Seongha stayed beside her.
“Heavenly Maiden.”
“We need to leave this place.”
“It’s dangerous to keep enduring this.”
The Nine-Light Fan was open in his hand.
With graceful movements, he sent sacred attacks toward the ghosts.
Sometimes he closed the fan and struck enemies with it like a weapon.
Other times, he threw it through the air and attacked again when it returned.
Using fast footwork, Seongha moved repeatedly between Cheongyeon’s left and right sides.
He drove away every ghost trying to approach them.
Manwoo’s face had turned pale.
“Priest Jin!”
“What are those things?”
Even the people of Beopsindang had never seen ghosts like these before.
“What are we supposed to do now?”
Seongha quickly answered,
“Evacuate the people first.”
“We’ll decide what comes next after returning to Beopsindang.”
He ordered the lower-ranking priests to help the commoners injured by arrows into carriages and carts.
Then...
without meaning to...
Seongha looked toward his father sitting on the platform.
What is Chancellor Jin Sangwon thinking at this moment?
Sangwon was experiencing enormous emotional turmoil.
Yet not a single person around him could tell.
This was the royal tomb complex.
The ceremonial land where King Namcheol’s body rested.
