Chapter 6
He sat cross-legged on the spot, smiling with satisfaction. Then he focused on the movement he felt in his stomach.
"ॐ-"
He concentrated his spiritual energy, wrapping it around his index finger, then placed his fingertip on the skin over his stomach and began to draw a pattern.
A blunt line. The line drew vertically, then curved like a circle to draw horizontally. The horizontal line became vertical again, then horizontal once more. Thus, a square infinitely similar to a circle was completed, its shape resembling the Chinese character for 'mouth' (口) written in seal script.
Jinseong didn't stop there but put his finger inside the square and drew another smaller square. Thus, a pattern like a circle within a circle, a square within a square, was drawn with spiritual energy, emitting a bluish light, its shape resembling the Chinese character for 'return' (回).
A mouth within a mouth.
An enclosure within an enclosed fence.
It was a labyrinth drawn in Chinese characters, a symbol containing the meaning of endless continuation.
The pattern began to glow bluish and seep into his stomach.
The stomach became a prison, and the acid pooled in it began to boil fiercely, defying logic as it coiled along the walls. The gastric juice transformed into a sphere made of acid, and the snake meat that had flowed into the stomach began to dissolve, unable to withstand this gastric juice. And something small within the dissolving meat melted away, not by the gastric juice but by the spiritual energy that had seeped into the stomach, becoming a single meaning.
"One is gathered."
Starting with eating the snake, Jinseong began roaming the mountain. He walked around with his eyes closed, striking the air and gathering various creatures. Some were disgusting larvae, others were half-grown mushrooms. He roughly prepared what he collected and put them in his mouth as he roamed the mountain, eventually reaching a small valley deep in the mountains.
"ॐ."
As soon as he reached the valley, he took off his shoes, entered the water, and grasped at the air.
Splash!
Each time he grasped at the air, fish and crayfish hidden in the crevices of rocks were drawn out one after another. Jinseong tore off only their heads and put them into his mouth without hesitation.
Crunch! Crunch!
The crayfish's shells were mercilessly crushed by Jinseong's teeth, and the sharply broken fragments melted into his stomach without injuring any part of his mouth. The fish, too, except for their heads, all went into Jinseong's stomach, and as soon as they entered, they were instantly dissolved by the gastric acid that had turned into something like slime.
Jinseong repeated this process for a long time, and only when most of the fish and crayfish in the valley had been caught did he stop and mutter.
"One, two, and three."
Jinseong sat cross-legged on a rock and lit incense. The incense seemed to burn normally at first, but then flowed towards Jinseong as if blown by the wind, and while appearing to move towards him, it created a wall of smoke around him as if blocked by something.
"One."
Inside the wall of smoke, Jinseong concentrated and began to erase the '回' pattern he had drawn on his stomach and draw a different pattern. It was similar to the pattern he had drawn before but looked different. If the previous one was a square infinitely resembling a circle, what he was drawing now was a circle infinitely resembling a square.
It was a pattern that was just a geometric shape, not becoming a single meaning.
"Snake within a snake, one and many."
The drawn circle stimulated the skin, making blood vessels bulge out and reveal their shape. As if the blood vessels were stimulated only in the area where the pattern was drawn, they bulged out red and blue, then changed to purple as if forming a bruise, revealing their shape. This appearance sometimes looked like an ordinary geometric shape, sometimes like a snake crawling along blood vessels to form a shape, and sometimes evoked the image of a more primitive and smaller creature than a snake.
Shaaak-!
The blood vessels writhed as if alive, moving bulkily as if something was trying to burst out. The movement was so violent that it even caused an illusion that the snake he had devoured was being reborn and moving in his stomach, but Jinseong calmly moved his finger to the back of his neck.
He drew a single vertical line along the spine on his neck.
The area where his finger had passed turned gray this time. The part where his finger touched had turned corpse-like gray as if the flesh was rotting, or as if something impure had stuck to the skin. Some powder, different from dead skin, appeared on this grayness, and then, as if it had been an illusion, the powder instantly melted away, making the skin smooth again.
"Three."
Finally, Jinseong muttered and brought his finger back to his stomach area.
His finger moved through the lungs, liver, intestines, and back to the lungs, drawing a triangle. The areas his finger touched this time sank in as if there was no flesh inside, showing a sense of incongruity, but then seemed to fill up with something again, returning to their original state. However, the trace remained clear, and someone with good observation skills would be able to tell that the skin in that area had severely lost its elasticity.
"From one to two, from two to three. All numbers gather to six. What has begun has found balance, so it wouldn't be strange if wings were to grow on it."
With Jinseong's incantation, the traces engraved on his body began to disappear.
The protruding circle vanished, the grayness engraved on the back of his neck scattered like smoke, and life began to return to the skin that had lost its elasticity.
Finally, when the incense had burned out and its ashes went up Jinseong's nose like they were being sucked in, only then was he able to open his eyes and smile.
"The foundation is laid."
Groan.
Jinseong made a sound like an old man as he got up and used space contraction.
Creak.
With the sound of space twisting, Jinseong instantly returned to the mansion.
* * *
"It's strange."
"Yeah, it is strange."
In a room in a corner of the mansion.
The sisters were whispering to each other there.
Lee Serin, fluttering her pajamas with crows printed on them, said,
"Oppa has been so strange lately."
Her usually gloomy impression had changed to a sleepy and tired look, perhaps due to the animal pajamas, and because of that, her flapping arms looked not like a witch performing some suspicious ritual, but more like the joyful gesture of a crow that had climbed onto land after exhausting all its strength in the water.
"He is strange. He's always been strange, though."
Perhaps because she had let her hair down and removed all decorations, Lee Arin who was sitting opposite looked like an ordinary girl, but there was an aspect about her that reminded one of a lioness, perhaps due to her yellow pajamas.
"When was it? Remember when he brought a bunch of weird bugs, saying he was going to become the master of curse magic?"
"Yeah."
"There was a cockroach mixed in with the bugs, and it caused a commotion. Remember that?"
"I don't want to remember..."
The two animals sat on the soft bed, chatting casually.
However, when the topic of conversation suddenly changed to something disgusting, Lee Serin made a sour expression, as if she didn't feel good about it.
[Hahaha, the little one's audacity was truly adorable then. It was so boyish, rattling off about curse magic while unable to control the insects he had brought.]
"Ugh."
"I don't know what he did to those bugs, but just thinking about it gives me goosebumps, you know? What kind of cockroaches resist poison and are fine even after being hit with an electric fly swatter? If we had left them alone, we might have ended up shooting a horror movie or something, apparently. Whatsit, my friend was saying there are a lot of weird horror movies with cockroaches."
[You know how cats sometimes boast about their prey and then lose it? It was exactly like that. Isn't it both audacious and adorable? Especially since he often brought things like bugs, that little one was truly like a cat itself.]
Especially when the demon she had contracted with mentioned other insects as well, Lee Serin naturally recalled the numerous insects Jinseong had brought then. And remembering those creatures that had either terrifyingly many legs or, even more terrifyingly, no legs at all, her face contorted even more.
Lee Arin's subsequent reminiscence also helped vividly recall those horrifying forms, making it even more terrible.
"The other bugs were creepy too, but~ Ah, that's not what I'm trying to say. It's that he's been too strange lately. You know? Right?"
"I know..."
I probably know even better than you do.
Lee Serin barely managed to swallow the words she was about to spit out to her twin. But while she could swallow her words, she couldn't stop the complex expression from appearing on her face, and seeing her face, Lee Arin's expression changed subtly.
[Contractor, my contractor. You must have seen it. The scene of that extremely low-grade, rootless, and undignified magical ritual.]
Lee Serin sighed at the whisper of the demon she had contracted with.
Yes, I saw it...