An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 98

“The Jangseungs, do they all look like that? They’re usually beady-eyed and scary.”

 

I thought she would get angry at me for thinking such a silly thing, but she answered me sincerely.

 

“No, I mean, don’t you think the Jangseung looks a little hollow, or should I say, too plain…”

 

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say they’re ugly.”

 

“No, I’m sure I’m missing something important, but I don’t know what it is. Is it just my mood?”

 

“Hmm…?”

 

She gave me a knowing look. She thought for a while, then asked me.

 

“Are you talking about the hat?”

 

A hat.

 

My jaw dropped automatically as soon as I heard the word.

 

A typical Jangseung wears something on its head. It’s like the kwanmo worn by the nobles of the Joseon Dynasty.

 

“Seon-yeo! That’s it! The head! The head! That’s what I was talking about!”

 

“Baek Iri, calm down.”

 

“It wasn’t wearing anything on its head! Isn’t that funny?”

 

“Well, I don’t know if it’s that weird, there are so many different kinds of Jangseung.”

 

I started to get excited, feeling like I had stumbled upon a huge clue, but Seon-yeo’s calm answer brought me back to my senses.

 

“I see. I don’t know why it bothered me all of a sudden. It could have just been that the wood wasn’t long enough. I don’t know why it seemed so strange to me…”

 

I felt embarrassed, as if I had gotten into trouble for something that didn’t matter. 

 

After I shut up, there was about ten seconds of silence.

 

‘Uh-oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.’

 

But it was Seon-yeo who spoke first.

 

“Come here.”

 

“Ugh.”

 

“I’m sorry. Your idea wasn’t wrong.”

 

“What?”

 

“That was “too weird to be true,” Baek Iri, your instincts were right.” Seon-yeo said as she melted one of the ghosts that had approached her with a single blow.

 

“The Jangseung is the village’s guardian against evil spirits. If the Jangseung is working properly, there’s no way the ghosts could run amok like this. It’s just that things have come to this.”

 

I swung the baseball bat and listened as she spoke.

 

“It’s because the Jangseung is severely damaged and cannot function properly.”

 

Seon-yeo produced a lotus flower and spoke.

 

“I was wrong. Someone deliberately removed the guanmo hats that were still attached, not that they weren’t there when it was first made.”

 

I’m thrilled to realize that I wasn’t talking nonsense.

 

“So, it must be the sculptor who removed the hair?”

 

“Yes, the sculptor did it, I’m sure of it.”

 

By defacing the guardian deity, the sculptor made the forest a place of bad luck, and people who were overcome by negative energy would hang themselves here.

 

“I wonder if the stone pile was originally near the statue. The shape of the stone pile is one of the typical shapes of a Jangseung, and the sculptor used it to destroy the real thing and make himself look like a god.”

 

“Oh, Seon-yeo, you’re so smart, you’re like a detective.”

 

She shrugged.

 

“It’s only because you brought up the story of the Jangseung that I got a clue.”

 

“How modest of you.”

 

“Anyway, I think the purpose of question 13 is to restore the Jangseung and stop the ghost.”

 

“Then we need to get the guanmo hats back first.”

 

The biggest obstacle was not knowing where the sculptor had hidden it.

 

“Do we have to search the entire forest…”

 

I sighed.

 

“Hey, back off. Don’t be stupid. I know where the hats are.”

 

Seon-yeo poked me in the side, a curious smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

 

“Think about it. Why would the sculptor put the statue so far away from his domain? Why would he bother if he was getting his power from the suicide spirit in the statue?”

 

I took another swing at the baseball bat and thought about Seon-yeo’s words.

 

She must have meant that where the statues were kept, there were the guanmo hats, but as far as I remembered, there was nothing else there but the statues. Besides, what the hell does the statue have to do with the headdress?

 

I involuntarily scratched the back of my head.

 

The unpleasant pressure on the back of my head one morning about a month ago flashed through my mind.

 

The cold hand of a water-dissolvable ghost pressed tightly against my skull as I emerged from the storage of ”Tongue and Arm” in an incorruptible treasure trove.

 

‘Press…?’

 

Aha! I get it.

 

“They’re buried under the statues.”

 

“Right.”

 

Seon-yeo nodded with satisfaction.

 

The sculptor buried the guanmo hats  in the ground and placed the stone statue on top, pressing down on the Jangseung’s energy.

 

“I’ll take care of the ghosts. You go and bring guanmo hats back to me!”

 

“Understood.”

 

The golden halo of Seon-yeo radiated light.

 

Taking advantage of the pause, I broke into a run.

 

***

 

The black rope I’d stretched while following the ghost, Lee Dae-wook, finally glowed.

 

I ran nonstop, following the black rope, the only signpost in the forest.

 

“Heh, heh, heh…”

 

I arrived at the starting point of the rope.

 

The thirteen statues were lying on the ground, just as I had last seen them.

 

I dug into the dirt where they had first stood.

 

“There it is….”

 

A square piece of wood emerged from where the statues had stood.

 

I dug into the ground where the other statues had stood and unearthed an elongated piece of wood from each one.

 

Each piece of wood was a splintered piece of a long-lived guanmo.

 

The longer they were crushed under the spirits of the suicides, the more ashen the wood became.

 

The wood under the stone statue that housed the first suicide’s spirit had turned concrete gray, with no trace of the wood’s natural light.

 

The pieces were buried so shallowly that it didn’t take much effort to dig them out.

 

This allowed me to dig up the pieces of wood more quickly than I had expected.

 

After digging out the last thirteen pieces, I took all thirteen pieces of wood to the Jangseung on one side of the road.

 

First, I assembled the thirteen pieces on the ground into two fully formed coffin heads that fit together perfectly with no missing pieces. 

 

Now it was just a matter of placing them on the Jangseung’s head.

 

Fortunately, the Jangseung weren’t very tall. If I stretched out my arms, I could touch the top of their heads.

 

I stacked piece after piece of wood on top of the Jangseung’s heads. 

 

The pieces were large and neatly divided vertically and horizontally so they stacked nicely without wobbling or collapsing.

 

Stacking the pieces in this orderly fashion was the best restoration I could do.

 

I made my way to Seon-yeo, who was alone with the ghost.

 

We met in the middle of the black rope.

 

“I exorcized the ones I could see right away, but I waited a while to see if they would come back, but they didn’t, so I was on my way to you.”

 

“I did what I could too, but I found the guanmo in pieces and buried. I put it back in its original form.”

 

I brought her back to the Jangseung to show it.

 

“What, you said it was in pieces?”

 

“Uh, yes, it was…”

 

When she saw it again, there was no sign of the split in the guanmo. It was as intact as if it had never been torn.

 

The Village Guardian had regained his entire body.

 

And that’s how we solved question 13.

 

 

***

 

 

Tears of blood trickled from the face painted on the left side of Mushindo’s bushy hair. The colorful eyebrows were torn and covered in a thick liquid.

 

The ghost’s eyes glowed eerily through the scattered white hair. The scales that covered its skin from head to toe turned another shade of black.

 

“Damn, not again…”

 

Hwang Hanju quickly backed away.

 

The scales turning black meant that the spirit had regained the power of the curse.

 

This was the second time. 

 

Hanju and Sep Jun had brought the ghost to the brink of destruction twice, and each time, the ghost had recovered by absorbing the portrait’s power into the unbelievers.

 

There was a heavy tension in the darkened shrine hall.

 

Seo Jun clicked her tongue. If they don’t seal this unbeliever properly, it will only be a repeat of the same situation.

 

Until every portrait in the painting is stained with blood.

 

The number of faces painted on the martyr was far more than twenty.

 

Even if Seo Jun and Hanju were both A-class experts, it would be impossible for them to do this more than twenty times.

 

In fact, as soon as Seo Jun realized the connection between the shaman’s power and the ghosts, she had drawn the symbols on the four corners of the shaman’s ears.

 

Her intention was to block the ghosts outside the Mushin from accessing the power in the painting.

 

Seo Jun’s attempt was successful.

 

The ghost was unable to absorb the power of the shrine, and it was soon destroyed for the second time.

 

They thought that was the end of question 16.

 

But why did the same thing happen again?

 

Because the sigils on the four corners of the shaman could not withstand the power in the unbeliever and broke.

 

“…It will take a long time to seal it completely.”

 

If the entire painting could not be sealed at once, there was only one option left.

 

They would have to seal each of the portraits individually, one by one.

 

The problem was, there weren’t just one or two.

 

“I’ll wait.”

 

Hanju stepped between Seo Jun and the ghost.

 

The ghost had a snake-like face, but it spoke human language.

 

Every time it opened its mouth, a surprisingly soft voice came out, not unlike a snake’s tongue.

 

“This is the product of your greed, and for fear of its venomous fangs, I will drain all the blood from its neck and fill it with liquor, and it will be fragrant, and I will soak it from skin to entrails with cursed liquor, and it will be fragrant…”

 

The gray-haired ghost muttered over and over again, its tongue lolling. 

 

The words contained the power of a curse that drained all of its physical and mental energy.

 

In order to be less affected by the curse, Hanju and Seo Jun had closed their ears as much as possible earlier.

 

However, as long as they kept their ears open, they couldn’t block out even the faint sounds that pierced their eardrums.

 

The resulting fatigue was slowly but surely building up.

 

“Hanju…, you’re a little distracted, let’s calm you down for a while.”

 

Still, the pauses between the ghost’s words were bearable.

 

Hanju bit the inside of his mouth and activated his skill.

 

 

❰Skill: ‘Compatibility’ has been activated❱

 

 

“Soul-melted liquor is sweet, hateful poison, don’t dodge my fangs, block my breathing hole…”

 

“Krrrr…….”

 

A naked beast’s scream cut off the ghost’s words.

 

Black lines were drawn on Hanju’s right arm like rough brush strokes.

 

The black strokes extended from the arm to the outside of the skin, creating a figure that looked like a tiger’s black stripes were drawn in thin air.

 

Hanju waved his hand, and the tiger in the air roared and charged at the ghost.

 

At the same time, the ghost kicked the ground and jumped up.