Requiem of Subdued Souls

Chapter 34: Lion Dance (2)

Ah.

Seol Young was a little taken aback.

Among those who surrounded them, he looked at the person who lent him the bow and went straight for him and said,

“I apologize.”

“For what? It was something I was about to throw out away, and you used it to catch a ghost, so it worked out.”

“No. Here, this…”

Seol Young took out the coins from the money pouch his hyungs had given to him and gave them to the man.

“…?”

Zaha stared at him with a puzzled expression. Seol Young ignored him and asked the people,

“Is there anything else strange besides this?”

“Strange? Well, let’s see…”

An old man spoke cautiously.

“It feels like there have been more water ghosts by the river these days.”

Look at this.

Seol Young sent Zaha a look as if saying that.

“As I thought?”

Zaha walked around.

The black water near the river reflected the moonlight. And it was quiet.

But…

As a test, he threw a piece of paper into the water, and….

Splash! Splash!

Dozens of arms came out. They looked bizarre, as if they were entangled snakes.

Seol Young had grabbed one of them and pulled it out. He inspected it, but it seemed normal. It was like there was nothing strange about it.

“A normal water ghost.”

“I don’t think it is anything but an ordinary water ghost.”

Zaha pointed out, but Seol Young didn’t care.

“We have to catch them all.”

“All? Wouldn’t it be better to bring in the Blue Dragon Troops?”

“Well, I guess so.”

Seol Young squatted near the water and unwrapped the cloth around his wrist as he rolled the sleeves to his elbow and put his arm in the water.

A water ghost immediately grabbed his hand, and he pulled it out.

When he put his hand back in, something grabbed it again, and he pulled it out again.

Zaha looked at him, puzzled.

“What is wrong with them?”

“I don’t know.”

Seol Young replied.

“When they see my hand, they seem to want to grab onto it, without another thought they…”

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As he spoke, he continued to grab them and pull them out. When they were out of the water, he threw them to the ground.

The water ghosts struggled as one after another was thrown on top of each of them, and Zaha mumbled, watching them disappear.

“The White Tiger Spirit Troops have been the best among all the Troops in recent years, and I have a rough idea why.”

Right. It wasn’t that Seol Youn gained notoriety among the ghosts for no reason.

After a while.

The river became clear.

“That was wonderful, Seol Young-rang!”

Zaha, who had been watching this, shouted.

“The water ghosts are all dried up. And the place looks a lot better now that the Yin in the air is gone, right?”

And he glanced around.

“But…”

“…”

“This also has nothing to do with the premonition that the pavilion had given though, right?”

Seol Young didn’t respond.

Before he knew it, the sun was rising, and a blue-gray hue was spreading from the edge of the sky.

“Seol Young-rang, why don’t you finally admit it? I’m not sure how you could be so certain about this when you didn’t even communicate your intentions for all of this. I seriously do not understand it.”

“You do not know much about this world. You have never communicated with the souls or summoned beings, so it is natural that you do not understand this. But there really is something here. I am sure of it.”

They soon got out of the riverside and headed to the streets, and the smoke was rising.

The smoke was a symbol of people getting ready for the morning.

“Weird. I surely….”

Seol Young was walking around and bumped into someone at a store where the fire was put out. He quickly caught the person who was about to stumble.

“I apologize.”

“No!”

He stopped and turned to see Zaha staring at him.

“…”

He had a puzzled expression, and Seol Young turned around.

“What? Does something feel strange?”

“You. You are the strange one.”

Zaha asked with a frown on his face.

“In such cases, what do we do? What if you were walking on the streets, got into another fight, and stabbed another Hwarang from a different troop?”

“What good would it do to know about that? Want to pick a fight now?”

“What if, in response to your annoyance, you knock down and destroy a stall as a result of a fight?”

“That will never happen! I would just apologize if so.”

“No wonder. They all looked at me like I was a madman when I broke down the wall of the tavern.”

Zaha mumbled.

“It is good to think about the damage you would do to another person’s property. Rather, it is quite ideal. But a person who lives with that kind of thinking who broke down some tombs and is now leading others to a place where a ghost is…”

When the story of his past came up, Seol Young’s face turned cold.

“Did you know?”

He turned and heard a voice from behind.

“That you asked for the White Tiger Spirit Troops?”

Seol Young flinched at those words.

It is always better to speak for ourselves than have someone else do it for us.

He said,

“I didn’t pay much attention to that at first, but I came to reflect on it. How can I not reflect back? I bowed my head in person whom I had to apologize to because Teacher took me in.”

“Aha.”

Zaha nodded as he understood.

“I guessed as much. Since you caused a lot of damage in different places, the White Tiger Troops couldn’t have simply accepted you. And no matter how famous your teacher is, just an apology from you wouldn’t have been enough either.”

“Right. The house was blown away due to it.”

“House?”

“My parent’s house. While Teacher was looking for me, I took care of the house, but then I had to sell it because there were too many places I had to compensate for the damages I did.”

“Then this means you don’t have a house? Where do you sleep?”

“Do you think I am crazy to let you know? Never…”

It was then.

Someone grabbed the arm of Seol Young from behind, making him look back.

“…?”

An old woman.

A woman he had just met for the first time was glaring at him. She didn’t say anything and continued to look at him.

Pinch.

The fingers of the old woman began to dig into his arm, but Seol Young didn’t feel any pain. It was his first time seeing someone with such an angry expression.

“What is it?”

Zaha asked.

It was at that moment that some people were running towards them.

“Mother!”

One of them hastily grabbed the old woman.

“You cannot just do that to anyone! This person is a Hwarang! They help us catch the ghosts!”

“Look at that! Their dress shows how different they are!”

As the people who approached them explained to her, they tried to make the old woman let go of Seol Young’s arm, but she continued to glare at him with some unknown resentment.

Seol Young asked her children,

“What is it?”

“Sorry. You see, our mother has been going through some psychological problems…”

The one who looked like the eldest son spoke to him.

“Well, it might be because my younger brother was killed by a Hwarang…”

What?

Seol Young gave Zaha a quick glance.

‘Finally got it.’

It was that kind of look, and Zaha seemed to say….

‘No.’

Looking at those eyes, he turned to the people.

“As if. There must have been a mistake. Hurting a civilian is a direct violation of the teachings in the Hwarangs…”

“We know that too.”

Her children bowed their heads, looking equally embarrassed.

“But we saw him with our own eyes. He was obviously a Hwarang. His clothes were also the same, and his sword had a mark of a Hwarang too. Although the situation was a bit strange…”

And he tugged his ear, making Seol Young ask,

“Strange, you say, in what way?”

The children took turns talking.

“When my younger brother was very young, he came into contact with a certain elder and became a monk. When the temple closed, he returned home, and there he made a living by carving out statues of the Buddha. Several guests would visit my brother because of that.”

“Then one day, a Hwarang came over to visit in the middle of the night. At first, everyone was surprised to see him standing outside the fence. When we asked him what was wrong and if he wanted to say anything, he didn’t answer, and he just passed by us and went into my younger brother’s room.”

“It was odd, but all we could do at that time was think about what had happened and not act. As I said, there were a lot of guests who came to visit my brother, as he had been with the temple for a long time. Some would ask him to carve out small Buddha statues to gift their parents and such.”

“We thought their talks inside were getting long. But even if it was long, it felt like the room was too quiet.”

“Thinking it was strange, I headed to his room, opened the door, and the entire room was covered in blood. The Hwarang was nowhere to be found, and only the dead body of my younger brother was there.”

Seol Young raised an eyebrow at this.

“The Hwarang didn’t come out then?”

“Yes. We were all sitting in the yard and talking. We didn’t see him. And it wasn’t like he could sneak out when there were so many people in the house.”

“Couldn’t he have sneaked out through the window?”

At Zaha’s question, they shook their heads.

“There are no holes in the room, let alone a huge window.”

“After killing him, couldn’t he have gone into hiding somewhere in the house, then used the commotion to sneak out?”

Even at Seol Young’s words, they shook their heads.

“Our house is very small. There is no place to hide unless one is a rat. The man just disappeared. And it was like he sank into the ground.”

“That couldn’t happen. Of all the five troops the Hwarangs have, there are no troops with the skill to fly to the sky or sink to the ground.”

Seol Young agreed with Zaha’s words.

There was something strange about this.

“Do you remember what this Hwarang looked like?”

“Yes.”

All the family members responded.

“Rather than forgetting, it is a face that is difficult to forget once seen. Before finding out that he is a beast who had murdered my younger brother, he seemed like a good person, you know? That was what I thought. I know that all the Hwarangs are great, but this man felt different, so different that we could instinctively feel it. You can immediately recognize these kinds of things at times.”

“His clothes?”

Seol Young asked again.

“Among the Hwarang troops, there are different colors we have on our robes depending on the troop we belong to. In particular, the overall…”

“Jade green.”

The woman’s children answered, and Seol Young wanted to confirm by asking,

“Are you sure it is jade green and not blue?”

“Yes. We all saw the same color. My younger brother works long hours, so we tend to leave the lights on. It was clearly jade green.”

The Hwarang troops had blue for the Blue Dragons, white and black for the White Tigers, gold for the Golden Rings, purple for the Black Tortoises, and red for the Red Vermillions.

In other words, this wasn’t the clothing of the clans.

‘Then…’

Seol Young fell into deep thought.

As he listened to these people, he could think of something, but it was just a feeling. There was no evidence to corroborate it.

‘But this is a serious thing.’

He glanced at Zaha, and their eyes met.

“Right…”

He shrugged.

“Seol Young-rang, I am glad that what you claimed has been proven.”

“…”

Seol Young stayed silent.

This was not a happy situation. Even the Great Demon might be aware of the seriousness of this incident.

A Hwarang visited a citizen’s home and killed him inside.

This meant that something bad was about to happen.