Chapter 152: Early Coming of Age Ceremony (4)

There was no answer to his question.

The garden, slowly turning dark, was filled only with silence. Even the usual sounds of insects were absent, perhaps because they had fled due to yesterday's events. Only the flickering lights from the distant mansion, the sky turning red, and the surreal scene of spiders swarming in masses remained.

But in this soundless space, Jinseong asked again:

"Who knows one?"

Silence.

A chilling silence as if the underworld had been pulled up.

The mushrooms kept their mouths tightly shut, and even the tree branches that should have been swaying eerily seemed to control each leaf to prevent any rustling sound. The ground, trampled by combat boots, had its lips closed under Jinseong's standing weight, and in the hazy sky above, something - perhaps a satellite or a star - asserted its presence.

Wrapped in this terrible silence, Jinseong asked for the third time:

"Who knows one?"

Then one mushroom opened its mouth:

"I know one."

A mushroom swollen to the size of a small person.

The mushroom moved its horizontally split gap like a mouth, and from the cross carved on what would be its forehead on a person, red liquid flowed. Like blood forming and flowing from a wound, the blood trickled down the mushroom's stem, and strangely, as it neared what looked like the mouth, it suddenly curved, refusing to touch the lips.

"One is the Great One. The One above heaven and earth."

The mushroom's voice was deep and thick.

Unlike the mushroom that appeared in Russia before, there was not a trace of joy to be found, and only melancholy and solemnity occupied the voice. It was the voice of a criminal making confession, and at the same time, a voice unsure of what to do out of embarrassment.

Jinseong opened his mouth again:

"Who knows two?"

"I know two."

Then the mushroom next to the one that answered the first question opened its mouth. The second mushroom also spoke while moving its horizontal lines, and dropped blood drops from the cross-shaped wound above.

"Two tablets of the covenant. But One is the Great One above heaven and earth."

And with that, the question-and-answer session began in earnest.

"Who knows three?"

"I know three."

When Jinseong asked, the mushrooms answered.

The mushrooms opened their mouths in the order they had settled, and following the direction Jinseong had circled, they answered one by one, creating lines drawn with blood drops on their stems.

And finally, when it came to the thirteenth mushroom, almost completing one full circle:

"Who knows thirteen?"

"I know thirteen."

The thirteenth mushroom answered as the previous mushrooms had done:

"Thirteen attributes of God, twelve tribes, eleven stars, ten commandments, nine months before birth, eight days before circumcision, seven days of the week, six orders of the Mishnah, five books of the Torah, four matriarchs, three patriarchs, two tablets of the covenant, but One is the Great One above heaven and earth."

Jinseong nodded as if satisfied with that answer.

Then he moved to stand in front of the fourteenth and fifteenth mushrooms.

He made a gesture as if suspicious, bringing his face close to examine them, and looked around at the surrounding mushrooms as if he couldn't understand what these were.

Then he shouted:

"I ask. From one to thirteen. From thirteen to one. A number has been added to the praise completed only by those numbers. Who knows fourteen?"

Then all the mushrooms opened their mouths at once:

"I don't know fourteen."

"I don't know fourteen."

"I don't know fourteen."

"I don't know fourteen."

Twelve mushrooms said they didn't know.

But the sixth mushroom didn't join in this chorus, and only after the others had finished saying they didn't know did it open its mouth and speak:

"I know fourteen."

The sixth mushroom spoke amidst the flowing blood:

"Fourteen is the unholy. That which has become impure by touching a corpse, that which has retained seven days of impurity. The father of impurity (אב הטמאה)."

As those words ended, the slug-like pattern carved on the large mushroom began to writhe. The pattern crawled, changing its size and length according to the mushroom's twisting movements, and began to move downwards as if alive.

Downwards.

Further down.

And finally, aided by the twisting, shrinking, and stretching movements of the mushroom's body, the pattern reached the position of the mouth and overlapped with it. The slug devoured the horizontal mouth, erasing it.

Seeing this, Jinseong opened his mouth again and asked:

"Who knows fifteen?"

"I know fifteen."

Then the slug wriggled its antennae and stretched its body. It split its body in half to create a gap, and through that gap, it opened its mouth, emitting a terrible smell of rotting flesh.

"Fifteen is that which has become impure because of me. That which receives my seed, grows its body, retains impurity, and spreads it everywhere. It is the child of impurity (ולד הטמאה)."

As those words ended, the surrounding mushrooms all moved away from the two. Unlike before when they were huddled together, they took positions surrounding the two in a circle, and using two white tentacles as legs, they circled around.

Jinseong moved along with the slowly spinning mushrooms, rubbing their stems with his hand until their entire faces turned bright red, and dotted visible points in between. After performing the same work on thirteen mushrooms, he brought black ink and sprayed it on their faces.

Then, stepping outside the circle drawn by the mushrooms, he spoke with a solemn face:

"With faithfulness, only with faithfulness I speak. Impurity is unclean, and the unclean is that which is not permitted. It is the grace and rule given to us in the name of the great and only God of four letters."

Jinseong spoke like a preaching pastor:

"Believers! There are things that the Great One has not permitted, namely dead meat, blood, pork, and meat not slaughtered in the name of the Great One!"

The faces of the mushrooms that heard Jinseong's words began to change.

The cross-shaped marks carved on them began to change as their bodies twisted, like the two impure mushrooms in the center. The shape looked somewhat like a distorted cross, or similar to a roughly drawn crescent moon.

"I ask. What must not be eaten as food?"

When Jinseong asked, the mushrooms spoke without stopping their spinning:

"That which was strangled to death."

"That which was killed by beating."

"That which died from falling."

"That which died fighting each other."

"That which was partially eaten by other wild things."

"That which was offered as a sacrifice to idols."

"That which was caught by divining with arrows."

To the mushrooms' answers, Jinseong replied:

"That's right! Faithful ones, these are unclean things and must never touch your lips. Those who reject faith try to hand these over to you out of fear, but you should only fear the Great One and must not fear them!"

Shouting thus, Jinseong levitated the leather he had piled up.

He threw it at the two mushrooms in the center of the circle, wrapping them tightly, and levitated straw to put in their mouth positions.

Then he tightly bound them with long leather straps to restrain them from moving.

He then picked up a long stick he had prepared and set it on fire.

The stick, wrapped with oil-soaked cloth, blazed up, and in the center of the windless garden, it moved around as if teased by invisible hands, creating shadows. The torch's light illuminated the garden, and the mushrooms moving in a circle cast gloomy shadows over the two leather-covered, crouching sacrifices beneath.

Jinseong approached the mushrooms with the blazing torch.

The mushrooms, as if they had been waiting, extended hard white branches from their arms, and Jinseong brought the torch to them to ignite flames, as if lighting candles. Small flames bloomed at the ends of the branches, and soon they flared up as if soaked in oil, becoming flames as large as the torch.

After performing the same work on all the mushrooms, Jinseong squeezed between them and began to move in a circle with them. Sometimes he moved as if dancing, sometimes he waved the torch around to make the shadows dance. When the circle narrowed, he approached the mushrooms, brandishing the torch in front as if threatening them, and when far apart, he showed movements as if surrendering to instinct.

As this work continued, the smell emanating from the sacrifices in the center intensified.

Not only was there a stench like rot, but also a terrible gamey smell as if from wild animals, and on top of that, the smell of urine and feces. It was so severe that it not only numbed the nose and filled the entire mouth with a disgusting taste, but also made the head throb.

Jinseong continued to circle, inhaling this smell for a long time.

And finally, when the smell suddenly disappeared.

Thud---!

Jinseong slammed the torch he was holding onto the ground with all his might.

The mushrooms followed suit, slamming their burning arms onto the ground.

Thud---!

The resonating sound of something hollow spread.

The flames that collided with the ground burst into pieces, erasing their traces, and the sparks rose into the sky, emitting their last light. The mushrooms, too, as if they had fulfilled their roles, collapsed one by one, and eventually became a handful of blood, seeping into the ground.

The two sacrifices in the center of the circle also disappeared into a handful of blood.

But unlike the other mushrooms, they simply shrank without emitting any bloody smell or stench, and the leather wrapping the mushrooms was crumpling and tangling due to the disappeared body, creating some kind of shape.

That shape looked similar to a wild boar.

From the mouth part of the wild boar-like shape, it was spewing out the traces of the mushrooms that had turned into blood, and the dark red liquid, almost black, disappeared into the ground as soon as it came out of the wild boar's mouth.

When the wild boar finished spewing out the liquid, Jinseong approached. He then picked up the sacrifice that had become a leather bundle about the size of a human head.

The leather, which should have been smooth, felt stiff and rough, and looking through it with eyes enhanced by sorcery, he could see an unknown sticky liquid mixed with straw pieces forming something like hair.

The leather bundle was quite heavy, and each time it was shaken, there was a feeling of something sloshing inside.

Jinseong roughly estimated the amount of liquid remaining inside by listening to the sloshing sound, then turned around and returned to his room.

In the place where Jinseong had left, only a faint smell of blood and animal remained.