Chapter 36: The Beginning of the Conspiracy
Aize’s story finally came to an end.
Even after hearing everything, I still didn’t like that guy named Taebaek.
“You don’t remember that promise, do you?”
Aize’s gaze suddenly became sharp.
Why is she acting like this all of a sudden?
I was flustered.
Aize had always seemed like some dreamy, slightly strange girl living in her own world.
Seeing her glare at me like a gangster trying to collect an unpaid debt was a first.
“Ah! That promise? The one about treating you as something precious until the end of the world?”
“Ah... So you really don’t remember.”
Aize let out such a deep sigh that it seemed the ground itself might collapse.
Her expression was full of disappointment.
I sensed danger.
For some reason, I suddenly understood how Xiang Yu must have felt when he was surrounded by enemy soldiers and facing certain death.
“Aize, listen. Honestly, I’m an idiot. Memory? I don’t think I was born with one.”
I knew that in a crisis like this, aggressively admitting everything was sometimes the best escape route.
“Seriously... You’re unbelievable. Inhwang, you know that I’m connected to you, right?”
“I know because you told me.”
Actually, deep down, I had already vaguely realized it myself.
Why am I so twisted inside? I could just honestly admit something like this....
Even I didn’t understand the strange object called my own heart.
“When I connected with you this time and examined your soul power, I realized something. When you were banished from Heaven and reincarnated, your heart must have been badly wounded.”
Aize looked at me seriously.
“That may be why your personality became so twisted.”
“...Arang also said before that I committed some great crime in Heaven. What exactly did I do? Do you know?”
“....”
Aize shut her mouth.
That was proof that she knew.
“What is it? Tell me. Maybe then I can repent and become a better person.”
Now that I had found something to grab onto, I had no intention of letting go.
Aize awkwardly avoided my gaze.
Her expression said she was trapped between telling me and keeping silent.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because if I tell you, Hwayeong unnie will be sad.”
“Hwayeong? Arang’s older sister? The woman who supposedly turned the Inhwang from a monster into a human? What exactly was my relationship with her?”
For once, Aize did something unlike herself.
She completely turned her head away and tightly closed her mouth.
The phone! Answer the damn phone!
As if it had no sense of timing, my phone suddenly rang.
“What is that sound? It sounds like your voice, Inhwang.”
“Yeah. That’s my ringtone.”
Ignoring Aize’s dumbfounded stare, I pulled out my phone.
Detective Park’s name was on the screen.
I thought about rejecting the call, but it didn’t seem like Aize would tell me anything more anyway.
So I answered.
“Yeah?”
“Senior, you’ve been doing well, right?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
Of course, I couldn’t exactly tell him that I had spent a sleepless night in a love motel, developed giant dark circles, had Aize destroy a car during one of her rampages, and nearly died fighting a Pokgwi.
“You know the thing you asked me to check? Han Manduk’s call records and phone location.”
“Ah, right. Did you find anything?”
“We couldn’t track the location. Either he threw away his phone or it was destroyed. The signal is completely gone.”
“What about his call records?”
“We found something. Most of the people he called were contacted maybe once or twice a day at most. But there was one person he called around twenty times.”
“Who?”
“The president of a modeling company called Crisis Model Line. His name is Terius Hyun.”
“Teri what?”
“Terius Hyun. You know, Terius, the male lead from that old manga Candy Candy.”
“Male lead? Terius? What the hell is that?”
“Search it on your phone. That’s what I did. Anyway, I’m busy, so... Ah! You remember that out of the six servings of pork belly you promised me, only one is left, right? Bye.”
The bastard hung up immediately after mentioning the terms of our pork belly agreement.
I had a feeling he might even have recorded the call so he could use it as evidence later.
“Aize, do you know an old manga called Candy Candy?”
I was too lazy to search for it myself, so I asked her.
Aize immediately pulled out her newest-model phone, tapped it a few times, and shoved the screen toward me.
Either she didn’t know either, or she simply couldn’t be bothered explaining.
“Ugh! Why does he have so many pupils?! Is he some kind of monster?!”
Candy Candy was a Japanese romance manga from around fifty years ago.
Terius was the name of its male lead.
The guy was drawn prettier than most women, and his eyes seemed to contain more than ten circular highlights that looked like extra pupils.
“Sigh... It looks like this version of the Inhwang has terrible artistic taste too....”
Aize sighed in despair after seeing my reaction.
Anyway, if I wanted to trace Han Manduk’s movements, it looked like I needed to visit that modeling company.
There was a European-style villa built on a mountainside outside Seoul.
It stood in an area that was difficult for ordinary people to approach, but a private road allowed cars easy access.
The villa was said to have been built by one of Korea’s chaebol families.
Tall walls and security cameras surrounded it, completely blocking outside access.
Inside the luxurious first-floor living room sat two men and two women on soft sofas.
The younger of the two men was Cheonjin, the director designated as the next successor of Daemang Group.
The other man was Han Manduk, who had disappeared from the Land of Zion.
One of the women was Cheonjin’s secretary, Yang Nahee.
Cheonjin looked toward the remaining woman.
“Mongra, you did well this time.”
The woman wore tight leather pants and a leather jacket.
She was Mongra, the Soul-Replacing Pokgwi who had followed Cheonjin’s orders and removed an evil spirit from Hell.
“It was hardly worth calling difficult, Lord Cheonjin. It was so easy that it felt like I went on vacation.”
Mongra gave him a seductive smile.
“Even so, you deserve a reward. Mongra, tell me what you want. If money can buy it, I’ll give it to you.”
Cheonjin thought that Mongra certainly deserved her reputation as one of the Five Great Pokgwi, the strongest among Pokgwi-class evil spirits.
She claimed it had been easy, but extracting an evil spirit from the eighth level of Hell was by no means a simple task.
Mongra narrowed her eyes.
“Mongra would like to spend one night with Lord Cheonjin together with Lady Gwangsal.”
“Hehehe. Mongra, you little bitch. Are you dragging me into this just to fulfill your own desire?”
Secretary Yang laughed.
Secretary Yang did not particularly dislike Mongra’s suggestion.
Sleeping with Cheonjin together with one of her subordinates would normally irritate her.
But if it meant she could spend even one night with him, she thought it might still be interesting.
Mongra, meanwhile, saw Secretary Yang’s expression and smiled inwardly.
Just as I thought. Bringing Gwangsal into this was the right choice.
But Cheonjin rejected them immediately.
“Sorry, but I cannot grant that request.”
Disappointment filled the faces of both women.
They had attempted to seduce Cheonjin countless times, but he seemed completely uninterested in women.
He was the heir to a chaebol family, had more money than he could ever spend, and countless women in the living world would willingly throw themselves at him.
Yet Cheonjin never approached women at all.
That remained true even with Secretary Yang and Mongra, both of whom overflowed with sensual charm.
Secretary Yang knew it had something to do with Princess Hwayeong of Hell.
But that only made her want Cheonjin even more.
Besides, in his previous life as Iljik Chasa Taerang, he had already been the man whom Gwangsal Magwi secretly loved.
Cheonjin reached into his clothes.
“Instead... I’ll give you this.”
He pulled out a blood-red bead.
“Is that... a Blood Soul Pill?”
A Blood Soul Pill was created by a resident of the Underworld by gathering their own soul power and blood into a single bead.
Since one could only be made around once every hundred years, it was usually given as a gift to someone the creator deeply treasured.
Its effects also varied depending on the soul power of its creator.
In Cheonjin’s case, or rather Taerang’s, carrying the Blood Soul Pill greatly increased the owner’s soul power.
If it was directly absorbed, it could even rapidly heal most wounds.
“Yes. This is the Blood Soul Pill I recently created.”
“Thank you, Director. This Blood Soul Pill is a reward more valuable to me than anything else.”
Mongra accepted Cheonjin’s Blood Soul Pill with both hands.
Her face flushed with strange excitement at the thought that from tonight onward, she could sleep while enjoying the scent of Cheonjin’s soul power and blood coming from the pill.
“Hehehe. How fortunate for you, Mongra. You received Lord Cheonjin’s Blood Soul Pill before even I did.”
Secretary Yang smiled.
However, inside, she was furious.
So this bitch is the obsessive type. I’ll have to teach her about proper hierarchy later. She should know better and offer it to me herself.
She didn’t show her irritation in front of Cheonjin.
No matter how powerful Mongra was among the Five Great Pokgwi, her behavior toward Cheonjin had become far too obvious.
It was as though she had forgotten the existence of Gwangsal Magwi, whose position stood far above hers.
Cheonjin then looked at Han Manduk sitting across from him.
“What is your name?”
The man lowered his head.
“Murayama Kenji. My Korean name is Kim Junseop.”
Kim Junseop was the spirit currently possessing Han Manduk’s body.
“Do you like your current body?”
“The soul wavelength matches mine almost perfectly. It feels so natural that it is difficult to believe this was not originally my body.”
Kim Junseop looked over Han Manduk’s body with satisfaction.
“That is fortunate. I examined the Underworld database. It says you conducted human experiments at a place called Unit 731.”
“That is correct.”
“But according to what I discovered, you also conducted another unusual experiment besides human experimentation.”
“Yes.”
“Explain it yourself.”
Kim Junseop began to speak.
Near the end of World War II, Germany and Japan were gradually moving toward defeat.
At the time, Kim Junseop had already taken Japanese citizenship and become famous as a genius surgeon.
He volunteered to serve as a military doctor.
There was only one reason.
On the battlefield, he could operate as much as he wanted without anyone caring whether the patient lived or died.
Every day, soldiers arrived with bodies torn apart and terrible wounds.
Kim Junseop performed surgeries like a madman day and night.
He even received a military service medal of appreciation from a Japanese commander.
Then one day, he received orders transferring him to Unit 731 of the Kwantung Army in Heilongjiang, China.
He disliked leaving the battlefield, but orders were orders.
When he arrived at Unit 731, he discovered something even better than the battlefield.
It was a place where human beings were called maruta and could be experimented on however they pleased.
Horrific surgeries and experiments beyond imagination were carried out there.
Kim Junseop felt as though he had entered paradise.
Then one day, he received a strange order from the Kwantung Army command.
He was told to study human brain waves through human experimentation and create a weapon capable of winning the war.
