LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 47
The hand gestures were skilled.
If you didn’t pay close attention, they were designed to catch the eye and distract you; but if you focused, they transformed into the foamy wave, mocking you again. Just like that, the foam would shift back to the hand, creating an entrancing sight that made you lose your focus.
And simply gazing at it, you’d find yourself gradually enchanted.
It was a typical method used by the water ghosts to lure and drown people.
“To move in groups and to have such cunning tricks, they must be well-honed creatures.”
However, Jinseong rather celebrated the sight, unpacking his belongings.
What he retrieved was an earthen jar slightly larger than his palm. It was a sturdy jar he claimed to have gotten from the pottery town of Imari in Saga Prefecture.
The jar was crammed with contents, looking like something tacky mixed with ashes. Unpleasant odors wafted from it, and white maggots wriggled in places, poking their heads out.
On the jar’s lid was a yellow paper talisman, adorned with some illustrations. The design of mixed red and black characters resembled a disturbing piece of art more than an ordinary talisman, yet also seemed like a child’s meaningless scribbles.
Jinseong tied each of the jars with long strings and lifted all 20 of them into the air, tossing them over the mesh fence.
The jars, as if sprouting wings, flew smoothly to the area where the ghosts beckoned, gliding gracefully before they began to plummet to the ground.
Splash—Bump!
Splash—Bump!
The jars sank into the depths with a splash.
As Jinseong silently watched this, he pulled out a bundle of white silk from his belongings.
The lustrous white silk seemed like it would melt in your hands just by touching it; when he lightly lifted it, it felt as if he was raising air, utterly weightless.
At the end of this luxurious silk was a brown lump wrapped in it, somewhat resembling soybean paste from Korea, but not quite the same.
It was Japanese rice miso called kome miso (米味噌).
There were a total of five silk bundles.
He levitated the silk bundles like the jars, tossing them over the mesh fence.
The fluttering silk, as if denying its fabric nature, danced over the barbed wire gracefully, draping down like a delicate curtain beneath.
Splash—Bump!
Eventually, with five splashes, the kome miso sank into the sea.
Splash—Thud!
And with the kome miso’s descent signaling it, the water ghosts began an uproar.
Like throwing meat into a river swarmed with piranhas, the water ghosts went wild as if splattering blood in a gathering of sharks, each struggling and flailing in a frenzy. The intensity was so fierce that water splashed even to where Jinseong stood.
Splash!
Just moments ago, they had been beckoning at him, but now, the water ghosts entirely surrounded where the jars and kome miso had sunk, seemingly forgetting about Jinseong as they fought among themselves, giving him a chance to observe their raucous skirmish in comfort.
And how long had this madness lasted?
The movements of the water ghosts started to slow.
Splash!
Though splashing could still be heard, it was undeniably less frequent, and the splashes became rare.
Seemingly feeling the time had come, Jinseong stood up, pulled out an incense stick, and lit it.
Whoosh!
Unlike typical incense, this one ignited with a bang, flaring up and producing an enormous amount of smoke in an instant. This smoke, not typical but rather tinged with red, swirled around him as if alive, getting pushed by his hand gestures toward the mesh fence, spreading out.
As if an invisible wall was there, the smoke spread sideways.
The smoke billowed for quite a while before it began to punch holes, resembling Swiss cheese with holes poked through it.
‘There sure are gaps in the barrier.’
A barrier is a wall.
A wall denotes boundaries, and boundaries imply separation.
If the barrier were properly established, there wouldn’t be deaths caused by water ghosts, nor would they have gone wild trying to enchant those who sensed Jinseong’s presence.
Every year, people jumped from this bridge because it was reputed as a suicide spot; while the tales of people coming here played a part, those gaps in the barrier likely had a hand in it too.
‘Looks like they won’t spend proper money on it.’
But what could be done?
It was not that Japan’s onmyoji and monks hadn’t properly erected the barrier; they probably had to cut corners due to budget constraints.
Magic costs money.
Especially when it comes to erecting a powerful barrier to ward off a strong horde of water ghosts like this one, spanning the entire bridge, it would be a significant financial burden for the prefecture. Thus, the best effort they could muster, within the budget’s limits, was to make a barrier and block it with mesh fencing.
‘Let’s see. A hole in the mesh. Right here!’
Jinseong carefully examined the barrier and discovered a sizable gap near the top of the mesh.
Splash!
Splash!
Jinseong’s hand reached out into the air again.
And just like before, with a splash, the jars and silk bundles he threw returned, floating up into the air again, stacking neatly before him through the hole in the mesh.
Clink.
Clink.
Clinkclinkclinkclink.
Clinkclinkclinkclinkclink.
The jars piled in front of Jinseong swayed fiercely, as if there were fish inside. The intensity was so great that it felt like the jars might break, yet oddly, they neither toppled nor tilted.
Boom!
Boom—!
Did the trapped beings inside realize they couldn’t escape by shaking around?
They tried to get out through the hole on top of the jar.
But the yellow talisman stuck on the jar, despite being merely paper, resisted all attempts to exit like it were made of steel, sealing the top without tearing, even as it stretched and quivered.
However, the strange part was that the illustration on the talisman had transformed into the shape of a talisman inscribed in cursive.
The black ink that made the talisman resemble an artwork had vanished, with only the red ink remaining to form the characters, which resembled the cursive writing of “seal” (封).
Jinseong watched silently as the water ghost inside the jar flailed futilely before lifting the silk.
The silk was wet but still retained its former appearance.
But as Jinseong loosened the end of the silk, the lumps of kome miso tumbled down with a plop, and colorful, elongated strands of hair that hadn’t been there before now sprouted from the thick brown lump.
Jinseong carefully extracted all the hairs from the kome miso and levitated them, shaking off the water, before softly blowing like dandelion seeds.
And just like that, the hairs fluttered, resembling paper airplanes catching the wind, as they found their respective jars. Some jars received long, black straight hair; others got short, bleached blond hair, while some contained white hair.
As the hairs found their owners, he retrieved from his pack the dolls that Kenji had prepared.
Three-headed dolls no larger than his palm.
These tiny figures, known as Nendoroid in Japan, were delightful little figures.
Jinseong placed a Nendoroid atop each jar and poured the blood of a rooster over them. Then he began the invocation.
“————-”
It lacked the form of a sentence, seemed meaningless as a word, and was as close to the sounds of animals or screams as an invocation could get. Yet, the invocation soared around the jars, constantly shifting in pitch, gradually becoming sharper and refined until it finally transformed into a high-pitched tone.
And just as that high-pitched sound felt heavy and descended, Jinseong grabbed the talismans from all the jars.
Whoosh!
The talismans detached.
And upon those, the figures that had been placed above the jars plummeted like people fall into the sea, and as if they had been waiting for this moment, the water ghosts sealed within the jars rushed towards the dolls, exuding a foul, fishy odor. At the same moment, the hairs that touched the dolls entwined with them and vanished like they melted.
And as the water ghosts entered and stirred inside, the dolls rattled for a while; the blood smeared onto the dolls gradually faded as if something invisible was licking it away, leaving them looking as good as new.
Once the water ghosts settled inside the dolls, Jinseong then moved to float the dolls back into his bag.
Twenty water ghosts.
“Great! Awesome!”
Jinseong, patting the bag that had turned into a ghost den, smiled with satisfaction.
Time passed, and the day to head to the villa arrived.
“Next Shinto Priest, we have come to escort you.”