If Silk Flowers Bloom by the Water’s Edge Chapter 96

“Yirok!”

Splinters of wood thrown up by the gunshot grazed Chaehwa’s cheek. However, watching Yirok, she had no time to care about the stinging wound. Having accurately struck Shinwoo’s shin, Yirok rolled in a circle to evade the bullets. The bloodstains smeared across the floor felt as if they were piercing Chaehwa’s eyes.

Bang, bang, bang!

A thick cloud of dust rose, obstructing their vision. His eyes bloodshot, Shinwoo fired blindly while spewing incomprehensible curses.

“This… fuck.”

When he finally ran out of bullets as a price for shooting so recklessly, Shinwoo momentarily looked flustered. Seizing that opening, Yirok rose despite his injury and shoved Shinwoo down. With a heavy thud, the wooden floor, which was suffering quite a lot today, took the weight of the two men. After a brief tussle of pride and strength, it was ultimately settled with Yirok pinning him down from above.

“You, motherfucker…!”

“Shut your mouth.”

The skills of a wild haenang raised free in the fields and Shinwoo, who grew up as a young master, were simply incomparable. Chaehwa found it hard to believe her own eyes even though she was seeing that Yirok was safe. Only after successfully suppressing him by pinning his neck did Yirok let out a groan. Chaehwa could not bring herself to look at the bloodstains spreading across his entire thigh.

“I’m sorry, Yirok. For now, please keep holding him down.”

“Young Lady! Why, why is it this bastard and not me? Why…!”

Since he was no match for him in physical strength, Shinwoo’s struggles grew vulgar. He grabbed anything on the floor and struck the ground with it. Even while watching that sight, Chaehwa’s hands could not become merciless all at once. It wasn’t that she was saving face for Shinwoo, but rather the friendship built over many years guided Chaehwa’s hands. Chaehwa, who was no less of a total wreck herself, swept her hair back and said:

“Originally, I could have made it painless. But you are the one who escalated things to this point, Shinwoo. Consider it better than getting struck by Grandmother’s iron mace.”

“Young Lady!”

“Even at a time like this, you still call me Young Lady.”

There was no time to get sentimental watching Shinwoo blindly cry out for his Young Lady. Yirok, with his injured thigh, wouldn’t be able to block him forever. Dirt and sweat were tangled on his pale face. There was no telling when the gaze looking at her might go pitch-black and lifeless.

“Just hold on a little longer, Yirok.”

Briefly caressing Yirok’s cheek, her hand left him and covered the eyes of Shinwoo, who was now confusing himself with the character inside the vision-grass and even throwing out Japanese curses. A shaman with a crack in their heart must never step into a ritual. It was safer to postpone the contract as well.

Even Grandmother probably didn’t know that the beautiful bird raised within the walls of Nanjubeol would fall prey to the Maeng shamans. Beneath her palm, she could vividly feel Shinwoo’s eyeballs rolling rapidly. The anguish lingering in Chaehwa’s eyes lasted only a moment.

“Yirok.”

Holding down the thrashing Shinwoo, Yirok replied with ragged breathing.

“What.”

“I’m sorry, but don’t look into my eyes. If possible, keep your head lowered.”

It felt as though Yirok’s response reached Chaehwa’s darkening ears as she entered the ritual. Her eyes, which briefly flashed a smile before wiping it away, began turning into the color of the sea. As her pupils transformed as if filling with deep blue water, heavenly script was written within them. The character for Heaven (天), a divine authority granted by the heavens as a mediator, surfaced in her right pupil.

At the burning pain in his eyes, Shinwoo stopped struggling and opened his mouth. It was a scream in the midst of silence. Shinwoo, who tried to turn his head as if making a final desperate struggle, knocked out cold at some point. Not forgetting her advice, Yirok’s profile as he kept his head lowered was intensely strained. He was so focused that he didn’t even realize Shinwoo had fainted.

If only to stop making the admirable Yirok suffer, she had to draw out the vision-grass gatherer. Scanning carefully with her heaven-engraved eyes, Chaehwa inserted two fingers into Shinwoo’s open mouth. Hooking the tip of her fingers around the energy of the bizarre demon, which was slimy like a translucent jellyfish, she dragged it outward. The vision-grass gatherer looked flustered as it was caught and pulled out, as if it never expected the place where it hid its clone to be discovered.

“Now….”

The moment the vision-grass gatherer, which must be maintaining a dual contract with Shinwoo and the Maeng shamans, saw Chaehwa’s blue right eye, it was frightened out of its wits.

[No, no….]

“Make a contract with me, too.”

When she cut off its faltering excuses and made the proposal, the vision-grass gatherer’s movements stopped for a moment, as if caught off guard. Though her eyes throbbed and dealing with the aftermath would be overwhelming, Chaehwa intended to play the joker card she held. The other side was the one who had started this foul game first. The unfair conditions were a burden they would have to bear. After all, the one who gifted her the divine eyes in the first place was Sarira.

“Shall we go?”

Though he himself would never know even if he died and came back to life.

🌹₊ ⊹

A dreary wind rattled the door of the detached villa where the ritual was being performed. Savoring the peculiar, rancid smell characteristic of corpses, Sarira’s closed eyes snapped open. Because dozens of people were eating and sleeping in the detached villa, the surroundings were an absolute mess. While over four days had passed inside the vision-grass, three months had flown by on the outside. Although Nanjubeol was keeping quiet about the incident of Chaehwa’s disappearance, it was already a known story to those in the loop. The fact that the Young Lady Chaehwa, who was supposedly recuperating, was nowhere to be found.

They ought to be celebrating their victory during these days when Nanjubeol, the root of the orthodox shamans, was faltering. However, the situation of the Maeng shamans gathered around Sarira was not entirely favorable either. In the task of maintaining the vision-grass world, where meticulous realism was its very life, Sarira—the contractor—and the subordinates in charge of assistance were dying of overwork.

Sarira had been maintaining the vision-grass world by inserting a contractor named Shinwoo in the middle like a host, but unfortunately, that contractor lacked the capacity and was not big enough to control such a massive vision-grass world. If she wanted to tie Chaehwa’s feet down for about a year, Sarira herself had to step in.

Just then, sensing a bad omen, Sarira’s fingertips trembled convulsively. Shinwoo, who was synchronized with the vision-grass world, had been playing the role of the villain quite well. Had it been ten minutes, or twenty minutes since she smirked, thinking she would see Chaehwa flawlessly poisoned by the vision-grass?

“Argh, ugh….”

“Old woman.”

“S-Sarira… my body!”

The head housekeeper old woman, who was helping as an assistant by making a contract just like the bizarre demon vision-grass gatherer, dropped out of the ritual. The mountain range where the blizzard raged, the frozen riverbank—the flawlessly beautiful background was collapsing. There was a proper order to a ritual. The price came back to the old woman who had ignored the sequence and forcibly stopped the ritual.

“Gasp, uhu…!”

People rushed around the head housekeeper old woman as she vomited blood mixed with bits of flesh. Because she had spent three months clinging to the ritual, her cheeks were hollow and her cheekbones protruded. The light in her eyes, which used to gleam like a wildcat’s, had long since grown dim. Sarira looked indifferently at the head housekeeper old woman, whose chin was stained with black blood.

“Sarira, Ms. Sarira!”

“Yes?”

The servant who was supporting the fainting head housekeeper old woman was now making a fuss while looking at Sarira. Unable to rashly pull out in the middle of the ritual, Sarira merely knitted her brows. Just as Sarira was about to tell them to shut up because they were being a distraction, her eyes instantly rolled back. It was not by her own will that her pupils rolled up, leaving only the whites showing.

“Ms. Sarira! Why….”

“Quick, support her….”

“Sarira….”

Six waiting servants rushed forward and caught Sarira’s collapsing body. Sarira, who ended up dropping the corpse and the bronze mirror—the essential tools of the ritual—was thinking even at the moment she collapsed.

Even if they discovered a rift in the vision-grass and broke it, they shouldn’t be able to harm her, the one who conducted the ritual. Ultimately, the person who called the vision-grass gatherer was the haenang named Shinwoo, and she was merely the one who drew the background and characters. Even if someone got hurt, the damage to the haenang named Shinwoo should be the greatest.

Yet, the head housekeeper old woman was receiving artificial respiration, and she herself was collapsing like a fragile, pitiful flower. If they were at this level, then the haenang named Shinwoo must be dead. Is that orthodox shaman bitch truly that wicked? According to her investigation, she was just an apprentice haenang who was even being talked about for a betrothal.

To think that a Young Lady who would chop down her own fiancé or whatever if they got in her way was the future of the orthodox shamans. She self-deprecatingly thought that the kind and tender Maeng shamans stood no chance against her.

“Ms. Sarira!”

“The head housekeeper old woman… is not breathing, Ms. Sarira.”

Opening her eyes after drinking cold water mixed with medicinal herbs, Sarira stared blankly at her own trembling hands.

“She’s not dead. My gut says so. So stop making a fuss….”

It felt as if she could hear the sharp clink of glass shattering in the abyss. It was something felt only when a bizarre demon broke a contract because the conditions were not satisfied. The bizarre demon vision-grass gatherer had not only erased the world it created with illusions, but it had also broken the contract while bearing the burden. A contract broken without keeping the promise would impose a severe burden on both sides. Taking even that into account, the bizarre demon had gone over to Chaehwa.

“Ms. Sarira….”

Around the head housekeeper old woman, who had turned as white as a living corpse, the servants were weeping. Sarira wiped the blood flowing from the corner of her mouth and laughed as if drained.

“This is possible?”

The contract between a bizarre demon and a shaman was something secretive and precious; it was impossible for another shaman to intervene and cut it off in the middle. Sarira lay powerlessly and peered into the broken pieces of the bronze mirror. Over the bronze mirror where nothing could be seen, her drops of blood dripped down.

“This makes no sense….”

To break the contract with Sarira and the assistant Maeng shamans who would create the illusion, and make a contract to exceptionally save only her fiancé, huh. By a shaman’s common sense, such an unfair contract that was advantageous to only one side could not exist. It was a contract condition that no bizarre demon would ever accept.

“This….”

Spitting out a mouthful of blood mixed with bits of flesh once more, Sarira placed her hand over her mouth. Trapping Chaehwa for three months was going to leave her bedridden for ten.

However, it was definitely worth investigating. Sarira’s narrowed eyes flashed with a blood-red light.