The Legend of the Fox Yokai of Jirisan

At times, there are people who deliberately ignore even blatantly obvious facts.
Confirmation bias.
Those who selectively accept only what they want to believe tend to be like that.
The Martial Artist Ha-neul never doubted that she was someone with an open mind.
Unlike those with confirmation bias, Ha-neul was someone prepared to humbly accept even the most shocking facts.

Yet for some reason,
Now, Ha-neul incessantly questioned and doubted the sight unfolding before her very eyes.
Like a foolish person with confirmation bias desperately denying visible reality.

Could it be because she had lost too much blood, impairing her cognition?
Or was the sight before her eyes simply too surreal?
The answer was both.
Not only was Ha-neul on the verge of death from excessive blood loss, scrambling her thought process,
But from the perspective of Ha-neul, who wielded the mysterious power of bakryeok,
The battle between the two fox yokai was indeed surreal.

…

…

…

The first to strike was the blue-furred demonic fox.
Contorting her body, she increased her size.
Having grown as large as a four-story building, the blue-furred demonic fox mumbled some indecipherable words and opened her gargantuan maw.

Sseoh-eoh-eok.

From her mouth gushed forth yogi blades, raining down upon
A girl around ten years old.

The girl’s face was familiar to Ha-neul.
She had already encountered her once partway up Jirisan before meeting the blue-furred demonic fox.
Indeed, the white-haired, fox-eared girl was the last being Ha-neul thought of as she resigned herself to death.

Seeing the girl torn to shreds, her mangled body strewn across the ground, Ha-neul felt utterly devastated.
Why, she wondered.
They had merely conversed once.
Moreover, the girl was not even human, but a yokai.
Yet Ha-neul could not fathom why she felt such devastation.

To make matters worse,
Having witnessed the fox-eared girl’s body being torn apart, Ha-neul fell into self-reproach for failing to save her and ended up losing all the bakryeok she had gathered.
Her last glimmer of hope had vanished.
All Ha-neul could do now was await her futile death.

It was then.
Pa-ak!
Pa-ak!
Pa-ak!
A strange sound came from the direction where the girl had fallen.

Ha-neul doubted her own eyes.
The ten-year-old girl she had known was nowhere to be seen, and
In her place stood a beautiful woman estimated to be in her late teens or early twenties.
The peculiar thing was, the woman’s tails numbered not three, but
Six.

Pak-jeuk.
Pak-jeuk.
Pak-jjeuk-jjeuk-jjeuk-jjeuk-jjeuk.

Soon, an intense yogi erupted from the six-tailed woman, in no way inferior to the monstrous blue-furred demonic fox.
Though Ha-neul was not yet a Martial Artist skilled enough to sense yogi, even to her eyes, the yogi of the two fox yokai was evidently formidable.

As her vision gradually faded,
Losing consciousness, Ha-neul looked at the six-tailed woman and thought
That her mysterious appearance and distinct aura
Somehow resembled the girl’s.

Heh.
I looked down at my body with disbelief.
All my wounds had healed, just like that.

[Si, si, six tails… Even the concubine Daji took a hundred years to manifest just five tails, yet at such a young age, how…!]

Brushing off my tattered, hole-riddled clothes, I approached the blue-furred demonic fox.
Instinctively, I knew that
Having manifested six tails,
I could [Command] her.

I felt things might progress more smoothly than expected.
To [Command] her, I needed to get closer.

Stumble, stumble.
I approached her defenseless state.
Naturally, she regarded me with awe and trepidation, never once attempting to attack.

Finally, within her close vicinity, I opened my mouth:
“Bow your head.”

[Graaaaaaaaahhhh!]
“Bow your head.”
[You dare, you dare mock me? I shall defy fate! For the shackles of fate cannot be easily twisted, such a trial is…]

“I said, bow your head!”

Kwaaaaaaahng!
She then bowed so deeply her head cratered the earth.
To her, a fox yokai, the words from my six-tailed mouth were no different than a sovereign’s decree.
No matter how much she wished to resist, she could not.

[Th, this is humiliating…! Even the king of Yuldo Nation could not handle me so easily…!]
[Even if I could defy fate, does this mean I cannot escape these shackles…?!]
[Outrageous. The fact that I am a fox yokai, the fact that you were born in this era, the fact that I am merely ordinary, all of it is utterly outrageous…!]

In other words, the relationship between the blue-furred demonic fox and I
Was a perfect master-servant dynamic.
A sovereign and his subject.
A lord and his subordinate bound by absolute obedience.

…It was truly fortunate.
Manifesting six tails alone was an immense burden for me, so if she had defied my [Command], it would have been quite troublesome.

I asked her the main question:
“You were about to speak of the second method to absorb yogi. Recite everything you know about this second method.”

[Grrrrrrr…]
“Go on.”
[Krhuk… The second method… is written in the Taejasinggi…!]
“I’m not playing twenty questions with you here. I don’t know what this Taejasinggi is. Recite verbatim what is written about the second method in your precious Taejasinggi.”

[Grrrrr… That… I do not know…! You see, as an unworthy yahoe (wild fox), I lacked the qualification to read it…!]

“Then where can one obtain this Taejasinggi book?”
[Now, now it cannot be obtained no matter how much one tries…!]
“What?”
[The Taejasinggi was… written by the benevolent persona of the demigod Duuksin, and once widely spread across the world… But now, in this era where the dokkaebi have been exterminated by the usinmu and the king of Yuldo Nation, there is no way to obtain the Taejasinggi… This is all I know…]

“Fuck, is that all you have to say…”
[Kwaaaaaaaaahhhh!]

Sseoh-eoh-eoh-eok!
Having faithfully carried out the [Command] given to her, it seemed the compulsive force restraining her had lost its power,
As the blue-furred demonic fox once again opened her maw towards me.

[You dare, you dare mock me!]

Pa-ba-ba-ba-ba-bak!
The blue-furred demonic fox fired yogi blades at me, just like before.
Though a sudden ambush, the situation was quite different from before.

With my three tails, I could not even react to those yogi blades, but now,
[Fox Sorcery]
Fox Fire – Veil of Flames
I could easily deflect the demonic fox’s attacks with minimal yogi expenditure.

I nimbly approached the demonic fox again, but she seemed adamant about not letting me get close, unfailingly unleashing powerful yogi to repel me whenever I neared.
It was an inefficient, rather crude method of expending yogi, yet regrettably, her yogi showed no signs of depleting.
Having devoured the livers of countless humans, it was only natural her yogi would be overflowing.
Clearly, she was a cunningly devious 500-year-old fox yokai.
With that house-sized body just sitting there like a rock, only resorting to trivial attacks, it was understandably frustrating.
But by maintaining distance and dragging me into an attrition battle, she seemed to realize I would have no means to counter.

Moreover,
To make matters worse,
“Heok, heok, heok…”
My yogi was gradually depleting from this drawn-out battle of attrition.
The yogi I had initially was meager to begin with.
As a 500-year-old fox yokai, she could not have failed to notice my transformation.

[The vessel… is on the verge of shattering!]
“…”
[Kuhahahahahahaha! Daji’s vessel, are you already exhausted?]
“Shut up!”

Shudder.
Despite my [Command], she merely stirred her massive body once, not cowed in the slightest.
Far from cowed, as if sensing her victory, she defiantly raised her head to the sky and began taunting me with words as lethal as blades.

[Daji’s vessel, no, my lord.]
[Forgive my impertinence, but I shall crave your liver.]
[Those abhorrent tails, one by one,]
[Slowly,]
[I shall savor them.]
[Then, I shall pluck your head and hoist it in the marketplace.]
[All the people shall pelt your head with stones.]
[Humiliated by the lowly masses, my lord]
[Shall never find peace, even in the afterlife.]

“Heok, heok… This bitch, spewing such vicious curses has me at a total loss.”

In the end,
As she intended, I began wringing out my last remaining yogi.
I had no other recourse left.
Even if I tried to flee, my yogi would deplete and I would die anyway, so fighting her was my only option.

“Uup…”
[Retching. A typical symptom of a yokai whose yogi is depleted.]
[With this, fate has been twisted, and a new shackle begins to turn…!]

No.
No.
No, no, no, no.
I’m not retching from a lack of yogi.
It’s because if I go through with what I’m about to do, I may never be able to forgive myself.
Because I find it so revolting, to the point where I can’t stand myself.
That’s why I’m retching.

I truly have no choice left.
It seems I must
Kill that demonic fox.
I was glad we could communicate.
I thought I might be able to change her heart using [Command].
But I was merely a self-righteous hypocrite suffering from a ‘good person’ syndrome.

For the first time in my life,
I resolved to kill a sentient being.
The determination to take a life was so revolting that it made me retch.