Chapter 28: The Difference Between the Strange and the Uninvited (1)

As Jinseong passed through the vast airspace of the border, he entered enemy territory.

"Huh."

The first things to greet him were decorations that sat between nouveau riche and tradition. The airport was filled with a uniquely Japanese splendor that seemed gaudy at first glance. Interspersed among these were murals painted in the style of ukiyo-e, traditional Japanese paintings, as if declaring, "This is Japanese beauty."

They've manipulated the paintings.

A strange energy emanated from the pictures. It was a form of power different from sorcery, somewhat alien to magic.

Onmyodo?

Onmyodo was a power Japan had created by arranging the sorcery developed in China and Korea in their own way. Originating from East Asian sorcery, it used talismans as a base for power and adopted a method of enhancing effects by adding incantations.

Those who used this Onmyodo were called onmyoji, and they had maintained their power for a long time by occupying key national positions, reading the heavens, performing rituals, and doing the general work of sorcerers like geomancy.

In other words, it could be called Japan's unique form of sorcery.

They've manipulated things with Onmyodo.

And the ‘method to identify sorcerers’ that Jinseong had guessed early on was precisely Onmyodo.

In a way, this might be obvious.

Given that sorcerers themselves were unpredictable beings, how could one find them through ordinary methods?

Internal energy detectors were more effective for mages or martial artists than sorcerers, and otherworld trace detectors were only effective for summoners.

MRI or terahertz radiation body scanners might be effective in detecting the physical toll from using sorcery... but since that toll was no different from that of ordinary patients, it was meaningless as it couldn't distinguish between sorcerers and patients.

Therefore, it seemed Japan had engraved Onmyodo to detect sorcerers.

The method was a collision between sorceries.

Sorcerers, being able to use all kinds of sorcery, also prepared defenses against other sorceries. They usually used ‘warding dolls’ in the form of figurines, which shared the damage inflicted on the sorcerer.

In this process, traces of curse sorcery were dispersed, and the Onmyodo engraved in the airport seemed to capture this dispersion and send a signal.

They lightly probe, and if there's a reaction, immediate detection. Quite sophisticated.

Of course, ordinary people sometimes carried warding dolls too. After all, who didn't want fortune and disaster prevention?

It's probably linked with body scanners too.

Therefore, Jinseong guessed that they had not only used this Onmyodo but also linked it with science. It was entirely possible to be flagged as a patient by body scanners, and it was also entirely possible to carry warding dolls.

But it was not so common for both to occur simultaneously.

If both are triggered, there will probably be follow-up measures. Being put on the suspect list, contractors or other sorcerers coming to check... that kind of measure.

Jinseong thought of this as a spider web.

A sticky spider web to prevent sorcerers from entering Japan.

Perhaps that was why?

He felt his expectations grow even more.

What on earth are they hiding so tightly that they reject sorcerers to this extent?

He looked around the airport, acting naturally as if he hadn't noticed the Onmyodo.

In the airport foot bath that Kagoshima Airport boasted about, he could see Onmyodo cleverly hidden in the floor patterns, and the shuttle buses heading to tourist spots were also full of Onmyodo. No, there was an entire barrier set up outside the airport.

Impressive.

It was full of determination to prevent sorcerers from leaving the airport.

It was almost obsessive.

Let's see that barrier. Cursed objects... No. It's a barrier to detect talismans.

Clicking his tongue, he boarded a bus where dragons were elegantly drawn on the floor and ceiling, which was also Onmyodo.

This induces collision with cursed objects. It's a subtle manipulation that can't produce significant effects but leaves traces, difficult to notice.

And that wasn't all.

Throughout the bus were what appeared to be heat sensors. The explanation said they were for disease prevention, but how could one believe that? Putting such things up now, when there was no global pandemic, was just a waste of budget.

It was right to assume there was another purpose.

Let's see. As expected, it's not just a sensor but an internal energy detection sensor.

Unlike ordinary sensors, he could sense components containing minute amounts of various energies inside.

It was clearly the internal energy detection sensor he had seen countless times during his mercenary life.

They're trying to narrow down and confirm suspects by all means?

Internal energy detection wasn't effective for sorcerers. Sorcery itself didn't use a particular type of energy, and even assuming it did use a specific energy, it was difficult to stably accumulate energy because the body changed due to the toll.

In other words, these internal energy detection sensors were clearly being used not to identify sorcerers, but to filter out those who weren't sorcerers.

Huh. Truly persistent. What honey pot are they hiding to go to such lengths?

Jinseong sat quietly in an empty seat, looking out the window with an expectant expression.

His appearance was that of a typical tourist, so no one found it strange.

"Oh!"

Even his exclamation upon arriving at the destination and getting off the shuttle bus didn't seem strange to anyone. They merely felt pleased, thinking a foreigner was admiring the Japanese scenery as soon as he saw it.

Indeed, the scenery visible upon getting off the shuttle bus was truly excellent, but.

Jinseong saw something else.

There's a barrier even here! No. There must be barriers at all major tourist spots directly accessible from the airport.

He decided to take a regular city bus instead of the shuttle bus. He went to an unpopulated area and used space contraction repeatedly to get to a bus stop, and boarded a run-down bus that didn't seem to be for tourists, heading anywhere.

He had no particular destination.

It was just to get away from the major tourist spots directly accessible from the airport.

But could this action have been helpful?

As soon as Jinseong got off at a suitable place, he burst into laughter.

This is why they try to filter out sorcerers. Hahaha!

The place where he got off was a quiet rural village.

A rural village with nothing special.

At first glance, it looked infinitely similar to a rural village in Korea, undoubtedly far from being a tourist spot.

But to Jinseong's eyes, it looked more beautiful and impressive than any tourist spot.

He saw black heat haze.

A heat haze that looked like the darkness of night diluted again and again by light and spread thinly like the fluttering winged robe of the last remaining celestial maiden. Too weak to have substance, yet infinitely positive to be without substance. However, it was an incredibly weak black heat haze that seemed like it would surely take on the color of darkness if gathered again and again.

He also saw white powder.

Very fine and small powder that appeared when you tore open a bag of flour and sprinkled it in the air. If you changed its properties so that it could be transmitted through light, and lowered its presence infinitely to create snowflakes that didn't settle on the ground, wouldn't it look like that?

They tried to clump together but repelled each other as if magnets of the same pole were pushing each other, and their shape looked like white flowers blooming on wriggling seaweed.

There are so many scattered hon (soul) and baek (spirit)!

What he saw were hon and baek, components of the soul!

And these hon and baek were materials that could be used for various purposes in sorcery.

In other words, what he saw was no different from a gold mine or diamond mine surpassing in value.

As soon as he realized the secret Japan was trying so hard to hide, he smiled brightly and used space contraction to move around, checking the hon and baek.

And he realized that all of Japan, except for places with barriers set up to weed out sorcerers, was similar to this.

Of course. It doesn't make sense that messing with nature would only have the side effect of temperature increase. Now I understand.

The fact that the hon and baek remained like this when they should be disappearing naturally was a clear side effect.

With hon and baek remaining like this, grudges would’ve accumulated without being resolved, and evil spirits and demons would have proliferated everywhere. Disasters must have occurred frequently too. Everything fits!

And he also realized why Japan used Onmyodo, a unique form of sorcery.

I understand why Japan boasted about Onmyodo so much but only used it domestically.

Inside Japan, even roughly clumping hon and baek together would have been enough to produce powerful sorcery.

Even the things called shikigami would have moved on their own if they just gave well-tamed souls clumped together with hon and baek.

But outside Japan, it was impossible to use it like that.

Hon and baek were not something so common.

Hon and baek disappeared instantly even when continuously exposed to just the yang energy of the sun. Baek might be able to endure somewhat, but hon disappeared as if evaporating. To use hon and baek like in Japan, you'd need sorcery rituals or high-quality cursed objects.

'With this much hon and baek, a skilled sorcerer could turn a country into a wasteland alone!'

If you brought a skilled necromancer right now, it would be possible to turn a whole city into a wasteland. By bringing a vengeful spirit from a suitable place, refining hon and stuffing it in, you could create a powerful evil spirit, or in some cases, even a great evil spirit.

And that wasn’t all. You could create a yokai-level great demon by bringing a demon, refining baek, and stuffing it in. And if all of Japan was like this, you could easily create dozens of such monsters, potentially bringing a country to the brink of collapse single-handedly.

For talisman sorcerers, even talismans churned out in talisman factories could exert mysterious powers, and flame sorcerers who could use Soul Burn could turn any place into a sea of fire using the abundant hon and baek as a medium.

Of course, this was theoretical, and it wouldn't actually be possible.

They blocked sorcerers' entry with such a paranoid attitude, so wouldn't they have anticipated a situation where a sorcerer snuck in and ran amok? There would probably be several measures in place throughout Japan to find and block sorcerers.

"Excellent. Truly excellent!"

But what did it matter?

If you didn't get caught, that was all that mattered, no?

Jinseong sensed that he could gain tremendous benefits in Japan.

No.

He was certain of it.