The Legend of the Fox Yokai of Jirisan

Bangta.
An old-fashioned bag designed to carry items on one’s back.
The size of a bangta depends on the maker’s intention, but like old objects in general,
It is much larger than modern handbags meant to store just phones and cosmetics.
How large, you ask? Large enough to easily fit a child inside.
“There’s no such lunatic who would put a child in a bag and carry them around!”, you might say?
Surprisingly, there is.
The ancient yokai known as ‘Old Monk Bangta’ is precisely that lunatic.

[If children don’t listen, Old Monk Bangta will come take them away!]
A folk legend and urban myth, but regrettably, Old Monk Bangta is a real existing yokai.
In fact, he is a yokai one can encounter in this inner realm of Jirisan.

Old Monk Bangta would occasionally visit the tree I was nestled in and beckon me into his bangta.
Naturally, I could not welcome a lunatic obsessed with children.
While he was amicable towards me, I was not so amicable towards him.

Ironically, now that I needed clues about the Taejasinggi, I wandered this vast inner realm on foot searching for him.
Meeting him was certainly off-putting, but better than asking the Lord of the Mountain about the Taejasinggi.

Before long, I was able to find Old Monk Bangta.
Figures, given how long he has lived.
Never would I have thought I’d be glad to see Old Monk Bangta.
I approached and greeted him.

“Old Monk.”
“Huhuhuh.”
“Monk, I have something to ask you.”
“Huhuhuh, where is this insolent fox pup yapping from?”
“…What?”

Stunned by his unexpected rudeness for a moment.
Regardless, he continued without sparing me a glance.

“Huhuhuh, not a beauty at all… If you have no business, be gone, filthy fox yokai.”
“…Monk, you don’t know who I am? Perhaps you haven’t heard the news about me?”
“I know, I know. The six-tailed fox yokai, Miho, isn’t it? Kuh… Just uttering your name makes me nauseous. Be gone, quickly.”

Despite clearly recognizing who I am, he reacts so coldly?
It feels strange saying this myself, but
Normally, Old Monk Bangta would have welcomed me with open arms.
He was a lunatic obsessed with children, and at best, I appeared as a ten-year-old girl.

How absurd.
Just because my outward appearance changed, his attitude towards me has done a 180.
No matter how much I tried speaking to him, he eventually treated me as if I didn’t exist at all.

Left with no choice,
I had to retract my tails.
It was not easy due to the surging yogi within me, so I first retracted one tail.
My height shrank slightly, and my chest became smaller.

“Huhuhuh…”
Yet Old Monk Bangta still did not respond to me.
With no choice, I forcibly retracted another tail.
My height shrank further, and my chest became flat as a board.
I now appeared as a young girl who had just entered middle school, before losing her baby fat.

“Huhuhuh.”
However,
This lunatic old yokai obsessed with children still did not react to me.
What a stubborn old monk.

Inwardly cursing Old Monk Bangta, I braced for the backlash and retracted another tail.
Perhaps due to the intense concentrated yogi within me, my breathing became ragged.
Unable to even support my legs, I unceremoniously crumpled to the ground in an unsightly heap.

“Ack!”
Old Monk Bangta approached with seeming genuine concern and spoke to me.
“Are you alright, Miho! Are you hurt anywhere! This monk shall support you, give me your hand.”
“Haah, haah… Monk, do you know what’s really disgusting?”
“Huhuhuh, quite the coarse mouth today, Miho. But that too is part of your charm. Huhuhuh.”

Even as I panted, I swatted away the hand he offered.
Sicko with a child fetish, that’s what he is.

Maintaining this state was no easy feat, so I hurriedly got to the point with Old Monk Bangta.
“Monk, I have something to ask you.”
“Ask anything, my lovely child.”
“…Monk, by any chance,”
Thump.
Thump thump.
“Have you heard of a book called the Taejasinggi (太者神記)?”
Thump, thump.
Thump, thump, thump.
I tensed up.
If need be, I was prepared to instantly manifest my six tails and flee from Old Monk Bangta.
I was worried that like the singing tree Jang Hwa Hwanno transforming into a screaming tree, this monk might turn into an evil spirit just from mentioning the Taejasinggi.

Fortunately, my worries were unfounded.
“Huhuh. The Taejasinggi, a nostalgic name… The first time I’ve heard it in 500 years.”
Relieved by Old Monk Bangta’s reaction, I asked:
“Ah, so you know about it?”
“Of course. Not only did I know of it, I once directly possessed it as well. Not just me, but every yokai alive at that time knew of and possessed the Taejasinggi.”

As expected,
Asking Old Monk Bangta about the Taejasinggi instead of the Lord of the Mountain was the right choice.
I immediately asked him what exactly this book called the Taejasinggi was.
Being uncharacteristically amicable towards me, he offered the information about the Taejasinggi without any resistance.

The Taejasinggi was a mystical book authored by the dokkaebi king Duuksin (頭抑神), a demigod.
The demigod Duuksin had two faces, a benevolent side and an evil side.
This book named the Taejasinggi was written by Duuksin’s benevolent side.

For reasons unknown, Duuksin’s benevolent side had his subordinate dokkaebi widely distribute the Taejasinggi he authored to all the yokai living at that time.

According to Old Monk Bangta, the yokai of that era were utterly primal.
They endlessly craved food.
Killed humans for pleasure.
It was an age of savagery with incessant fratricide.

“However, with the appearance of the Taejasinggi, everything changed. Huhuhuh… The Taejasinggi left to us by Duuksin’s benevolent side contained the truth of life, and also…”
“…Knowledge of ascension, right?”
“Precisely. As expected of the clever Miho. While the methods of ascension varied, the method presented in the Taejasinggi was undoubtedly the truth and hope for us yokai. Huhuhuh…”
“…”
“Why the grim face, Miho?”
“Something doesn’t add up. If the Taejasinggi was indeed a book authored by the benevolent side of that Dokkaebi King Duuksin,”
“That’s right.”
“Then, the method of ascension the Taejasinggi presented to the blue-furred demonic fox:”
[‘Devour one thousand human male livers’]
“This is, by anyone’s standards, not a benevolent act, but an atrocity.”

“By any chance, what method of ascension did the Taejasinggi present to you, Monk? Please don’t tell me it was to kidnap one thousand human children…”
“No. Regrettably, this monk was not chosen by the Taejasinggi. Only a select few yokai were chosen by the Taejasinggi. The role it bestowed upon this monk was merely that of a loyal servant.”
“Then, the yokai who succeeded in ascension…”
“Not a single one. Why they failed, even this monk does not know, Miho.”
“…”

Though I asked Old Monk Bangta more about the Taejasinggi, that was the extent of his knowledge.
I fell into contemplation for a moment.
I felt I could vaguely guess why those yokai failed to ascend.

The blue-furred demonic fox had clearly stated that just as she was on the cusp of ascension, she encountered the king of Yuldo Nation, who stripped her of all her yogi.
A coincidence?
I don’t think so, the timing is too astounding to be mere coincidence.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that entity called the king of Yuldo Nation deliberately obstructed the blue-furred demonic fox’s ascension…

But the question is ‘why’.
Why did he obstruct her ascension?
The word ‘ascension’ undoubtedly carries a sacred, benevolent, positive image, yet why did the king of Yuldo Nation deliberately obstruct the yokai’s ascension?
And if the Taejasinggi was a book written by the ‘benevolent’ side of the Dokkaebi King Duuksin, why was the method of ascension an atrocious evil act?

I don’t know.
If even a single dokkaebi was still alive in this inner realm, I would have threatened or coaxed them somehow to get answers.
Unfortunately, the dokkaebi have been completely exterminated by that king of Yuldo Nation.

Damn it.
Not a single thing has been properly resolved.
It seems I’ll have to see this Taejasinggi book with my own eyes to find any leads.

“So then, where is it?”
“What do you speak of, Miho? Huhuhuh.”
“The Taejasinggi. You said you possessed it. So where is it now? And why the past tense?”
“Gone. By modern times, there may not be a single yokai possessing the Taejasinggi, Miho. Huhuhuh.”
“Why? Books don’t just sprout legs and walk away. How did you manage it, for a book to disappear overnight like that?”
“Precisely.”
“…What?”
“The Taejasinggi disappeared overnight, Miho. Huhuhuh.”

Old Monk Bangta’s tale of the past continued.
“One day, Duuksin’s evil side, Eodukin, awoke.”
“It was an existence that heralded the end, an existence that foretold the end of the era.”