Jinseong sat cross-legged on the spot with a satisfied smile. Then, he focused on the movement he felt in his stomach.
“ॐ-”
He concentrated his spiritual power, wrapped it around his index finger, and began drawing a pattern on the skin of his abdomen where his stomach was located.
A blunt line. The line drew a vertical stroke, a curve resembling a circle, and then a horizontal stroke. The horizontal stroke was followed by another vertical stroke, then another horizontal stroke. This completed a shape resembling a square that looked like the character for ‘mouth’ (口) written in seal script.
Jinseong didn’t stop there. He inserted his finger into the square and drew a smaller square inside. The pattern, with a circle within a circle and a square within a square, was drawn with spiritual power and emitted a bluish light, resembling the character for ‘return’ (回).
A mouth within a mouth.
A fence within a fenced enclosure.
It was a labyrinth drawn in Chinese characters, a symbol representing an endless continuation.
The pattern began to shine bluish and seep into his stomach.
The stomach became a prison, and the mountain stored in the stomach boiled fiercely, defying logic, and coiled around the walls. The gastric juice transformed into a sphere of acid, and the snake meat that had entered the stomach began to dissolve, unable to withstand the gastric juice. The small object within the dissolving meat also melted due to the spiritual power seeping into the stomach, becoming one with its meaning.
“One has been collected.”
Jinseong began to roam the mountain after eating the snake. With his eyes closed, he roamed and collected various creatures, some disgusting caterpillars, others half-grown mushrooms. He roughly prepared his collected items and put them into his mouth as he wandered, eventually reaching a small valley deep in the mountain.
“ॐ.”
As soon as he reached the valley, he took off his shoes, entered the water, and clenched his hand in the air.
Splash!
Each time he clenched the air, fish and crayfish hiding in the rocks were pulled out, and Jinseong tore off their heads and shoved them into his mouth without hesitation.
Crunch! Crunch!
The crayfish shells were mercilessly crushed by Jinseong’s teeth, and the sharp fragments did not injure his mouth but melted into his stomach. The fish, too, were swallowed whole, except for their heads, and quickly dissolved in the slime-like gastric acid.
Jinseong repeated this process for a long time, and finally stopped when most of the fish and crayfish in the valley had been caught, muttering to himself.
“One, two, and three.”
Jinseong sat cross-legged on the rock and lit incense. The incense seemed to burn normally, then flowed towards Jinseong as if caught by the wind, forming a wall of smoke around him.
“One.”
Within the wall of smoke, Jinseong focused his mind and erased the pattern of ‘return’ (回) on his abdomen, beginning to draw a different pattern. This new pattern was similar but distinct from the previous one. While the earlier pattern was a square endlessly resembling a circle, the current one was a circle endlessly resembling a square.
A pattern that, despite being a shape, did not form a single meaning.
“A snake within a snake, one and many.”
The drawn circle stimulated the skin, causing the blood vessels to protrude and reveal the shape. It looked as if the blood vessels were stimulated only at the part where the pattern was drawn, protruding red and blue, turning purple and showing their shape as if bruised. This shape appeared as an ordinary geometric figure, yet also resembled a snake crawling through the blood vessels, or perhaps some more primitive, smaller creature.
Ssshaa-!
The blood vessels wriggled as if alive, bulging as if something was about to burst out. The movement was so intense that it created the illusion that the snake Jinseong had consumed was reborn and moving inside his stomach. Despite this, Jinseong calmly moved his finger to the back of his neck.
He drew a vertical line along his spine on his neck.
This time, the area his finger touched turned gray. It looked as if the flesh was rotting or something impure had adhered to the skin, transforming only the part touched by his finger into a corpse-like gray. The gray area shed powdery flakes, distinct from dead skin, which quickly melted away, leaving the skin smooth again as if it was an illusion.
“Three.”
Muttering the last word, Jinseong brought his finger back to his abdomen.
His finger traced a triangle through his lungs, liver, and intestines, returning to the lungs. The areas his finger touched sank in as if the flesh beneath had disappeared, but then seemed to refill and return to normal. However, the marks were evident enough that a keen observer could tell that the skin there had significantly lost elasticity.
“From one to two, from two to three. All numbers gather to six. The beginning finds balance, so it’s not strange for it to grow wings.”
With Jinseong’s incantation, the marks engraved on his body began to disappear.
The protruding circle vanished, the gray mark on the back of his neck dissipated like smoke, and the skin that had lost elasticity regained its vitality.
When the incense burned out and the ashes were drawn into Jinseong’s nose, he finally opened his eyes and smiled.
“The foundation is set.”
Groaning like an old man, Jinseong stood up and used the Art of Shrinking the Earth.
Screech.
With the sound of the air twisting, Jinseong instantly returned to the mansion.
“It’s strange.”
“Right, it’s strange.”
In a room in the corner of the mansion, the sisters were whispering to each other.
Lee Serin, fluttering her pajamas adorned with a crow, spoke.
“Oppa has been acting really strange lately.”
Her usually gloomy impression was altered by the animal pajamas, making her look sleepy and tired. Consequently, her flapping arms seemed less like a witch performing a suspicious ritual and more like a crow, exhausted from escaping water, expressing joy upon reaching land.
“He is strange. He’s always been strange.”
Opposite her, Lee Ahrin, with her hair down and decorations removed, looked like an ordinary girl. Yet, her yellow pajamas gave her the semblance of a lioness.
“Remember that time? When he said he would become a master of curses and brought a bunch of strange bugs?”
“Yeah.”
“There was a cockroach among them, causing an uproar. Do you remember that?”
“I’d rather not…”
The two, resembling animals, sat on a fluffy bed, chatting softly. However, as the topic of conversation turned to something repulsive, Lee Serin’s expression soured.
[Ha ha ha, that child’s audacity was truly adorable. He couldn’t even control the bugs he brought yet spoke of curses. It was so like a young boy.]
“Ugh.”
“Thinking about what he did to those bugs gives me chills! Cockroaches that resisted poison, were unaffected by electric swatters. They said it was like a horror movie. My friend mentioned there are many weird horror movies featuring cockroaches.”
[It’s like a cat boasting about its catch and then losing it. Truly audacious and adorable, isn’t it? Especially considering how often he brought back insects, that child was like a cat.]
As the demon she had contracted with mentioned other insects, Lee Serin naturally recalled the numerous insects Jinseong had brought. Remembering those with too many legs or worse, none at all, made her grimace.
Ahrin’s recollection only added vividness to those horrible images, making it even worse.
“Other bugs were disgusting too, but that’s not what I meant. He’s been acting really strange lately. You know, right?”
“I know…”
I probably know better than you.
Lee Serin struggled to swallow the words she wanted to say to her twin. Although she could hold back her words, she couldn’t prevent the complex expression on her face, which in turn altered Ahrin’s expression.
[Contractor, my contractor, you saw it, didn’t you? That crude, lowly, and utterly undignified ritual.]
Lee Serin sighed at the demon’s whisper.
‘Yes, I saw it…’
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