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Chapter 105: End Times Judgment Salvation Sect 【Baekbaekgyo】 (1)

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The incident later known among the people of Gangwon as [The November Upheaval] began at dawn, the very moment a black-painted truck carrying a certain regressor rolled into the yard of the Inje military police detachment.

"Commander. Couldn't we start after daybreak...?"

"Tendo. Do you know what fish and people have in common?"

Clack!

Sawada rolled the steel ball in his hand and curled one corner of his lips.

"They need to be cleaned as soon as they hit the cutting board."

Sawada rolled up his uniform sleeves and headed down the basement stairs. His adjutant pressed a hand to his forehead at the energy radiating from the man's back, then followed him down.

"We won't say anything!"

"The Great Magistrate's divine power will protect us! Baek, baek, baek..."

The two Baekbaekgyo followers clamped their mouths shut. Even as they learned firsthand what a [basement] in this era was like, they did not yield.

What escaped through their clenched teeth were not confessions or pleas, but prayers and chants.

"A new world will soon come... A judgment of fire in the west, a judgment of water in the east...!!"

"When that day comes, all our suffering will be repaid twofold, and your brutality will return to you as twofold pain!"

That was fanaticism. Beatings alone could not break it.

Even Sawada Kazuo clicked his tongue.

'Stubborn bastards.'

But it did not matter.

Han San had handed over not two men, but three, and the third had opened his mouth.

"I, it's a mountain road...!!"

Driver Kim.

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.

The man who had upheld those three commandments as though his life depended on them became the most talkative man in the history of that basement just one hour after being dragged inside.

"Hongcheon! The road past the third ridge toward Hongcheon, there's a, a tree! A strange-looking tree! Turn left there and there's an abandoned mine!

I, I didn't unload the cargo! The Thunderbolt Masters unloaded it! The Thunderbolt Masters unloaded all of it!

I didn't see anything, no, I couldn't see anything! I didn't hear anything either, ahh! I, I did hear it! I couldn't help it! The cargo kept asking where they were going!

There was someone besides the beggars! One well-dressed person! Shoes! I saw shoes! Shiny leather shoes under the sacks, yes! Th, that person got out too! The Thunderbolt Masters unloaded that person at the abandoned mine!"

Once a breach opened, it could not be plugged again.

His confession carried through the walls, and the Baekbaekgyo followers screamed.

"You dog! You traitorous bastard! You're just like that driver from before!"

"See if there'll be a place for you in the world that comes after Judgment!"

Amid the chaotic mix of confession and curses, clack! Sawada twisted up one corner of his mouth again.

Now it was time to show what he could do.

"Separate them."

He placed one at each end of the hallway, far enough apart that they could not even hear each other's breathing. Then Sawada left both men with the same words.

"Your companion has started talking."

"Don't lie!"

"Believe whatever you want."

That was all. Sawada immediately walked out as though he had merely delivered a notice.

Left alone, the Baekbaekgyo followers ground their teeth.

"That man talked?"

"No way."

Their separate mutters seeped into the empty rooms. Wherever those voices faded, imagination spread like swarms of insects hatching from eggs.

Imagination was, by nature, the most diligent torturer of all.

And Sawada gave that diligence a helping hand.

"Kim Gang-cheol."

"Yes, sir!"

Kim Gang-cheol was assigned to the Inje police constable post.

This Korean police constable was famous for two things.

First, he hated Koreans more than anyone else in Inje.

When Kim Gang-cheol walked, he did so as though trampling on Korean heads. When he ate, he ate as though biting chunks of Korean flesh. When he slept, he dreamed of the swift destruction of Koreans.

Second, he was skilled at impersonations.

Whenever there was a drinking party at the police constable post, Kim Gang-cheol would imitate the Joseon king fleeing Hanyang or the Joseon king performing three bows and nine kowtows to the Qing emperor. Not once had he failed to send everyone present into uproarious laughter.

"Do you remember both their voices?"

"Of course, sir!"

While preparing the statements, Kim Gang-cheol had committed every word spoken by the two Baekbaekgyo followers to memory. From the older man's cracked voice to the younger man's snide accent, he remembered it all.

That night, Kim Gang-cheol's performance began in the room directly next to where the older Baekbaekgyo follower was held.

"Ahhh! I'll, I'll tell you everything! Just spare me!"

From his mouth came a voice that sounded exactly like the younger Baekbaekgyo follower.

"Th, that old bastard made me do it! What!? Him. He's old, isn't he? He used his seniority to force me into it, even though I said I didn't want to do it!!

What could a young man like me do! That bastard, that old bastard is the one in charge!!"

A military policeman watching through the peephole later reported how the older Baekbaekgyo follower's face changed.

"It went pale, then red. He looked like some kind of transforming monster."

The next morning, when Sawada opened the door, the older Baekbaekgyo follower was red all over, like Form Change Red.

Sawada asked, "I heard you have something to say."

"Before that!"

The older Baekbaekgyo follower sprawled across the table, practically crawling over it as he desperately asked, "Wh, what exactly did he say? What did that bastard say!?"

Instead of answering, Sawada tilted his head.

"Do you know what fish and people have in common?"

"What!?"

"That one quickly gave up his flesh. It smelled a little rotten, but it was still edible. But you... at this rate, there won't be any part of you left worth eating."

The older Baekbaekgyo follower came to his senses, struggled with himself for a moment, then gritted his teeth and made his decision.

"There's a man in our sect named Do-yusa Mun..."

The older Baekbaekgyo follower began to talk.

At that very moment, the younger follower was desperately holding out.

"There's no way that senior would talk! You bastards planned this and are spouting nonsense! Did you think I wouldn't know? If he said even one word, tell me what he said!"

A little later, words came through the wall.

"I, I'll tell you everything! That young bastard is the ringleader!

Look at me! I'm this old! What strength could I possibly have? When that young bastard barked orders, I just ran his errands! That young man, you see? There's a man called Do-yusa Mun! He favors that young man terribly..."

It was, of course, another performance by Kim Gang-cheol based on the older follower's confession. Still, it was enough to turn the younger man's face the color of dirt.

A few hours later, the younger Baekbaekgyo follower confessed twice as much as the older one. Kim Gang-cheol's wrist was beginning to ache from writing down the statement.

Kim Gang-cheol moved his pen while grinding his teeth.

"Sir! Koreans truly excel at nothing but distrusting each other and dragging each other down, sir!"

"Mm..."

"The supposed purity of the god those lowborn Christian bastards prattle on about is shattered by the existence of Koreans, sir! If God were truly perfect, how could a cursed people like Koreans exist in this world, sir!!"

"Mm... Right, and then..."

"The sight of these inferior Korean savages displaying their boundless barbarity makes my hand shake uncontrollably, sir! Just like the faces of Korean savages when they heard the news of the union between Great Japan and little Joseon, sir!!!"

"Mm... Kim Gang-cheol?"

"Yes, sir!!! I'm listening, sir!!!!"

"Shut up and just write..."

"Yes, sir!!!!!"

Kim Gang-cheol's pen flew across the paper as he wrote the statements. Sawada watched his profile, so filled with zeal it bordered on fanaticism, with a rare look of weariness.

The statements came together quickly.

There was no loyalty among fools caught up in a cult, and fanaticism could turn completely around at the slightest sense of betrayal.

Several days passed.

Official letters flew back and forth while the statements were being prepared. Most of the locations mentioned in them fell under Chuncheon and Hongcheon, so Chuncheon had to be informed and Hongcheon had to be asked for cooperation.

The Hongcheon military police detachment commander, Sawada's equal in rank, sat on the official letter for half a day.

"What? A gang of beggars? For the sake of cleaning up the streets, maybe they moved a bunch of Korean beggars from here to there, huh? Isn't that bastard Sawada making a fuss again?"

Someone from another district wanted to investigate an abandoned mine in his jurisdiction for no apparent reason.

And it looked like it might turn into a fairly substantial achievement, which made it stick in his throat like a fish bone.

"As if it wasn't bad enough that Corporal Ishihara, that worthless bastard with no professional ethics, stole the Mogok School case in my jurisdiction..."

Saying the Hongcheon military police detachment commander was on Sawada's level did not refer only to their rank.

Even his conclusion, that he could not ignore a request for cooperation for more than half a day, was very much on Sawada's level.

"They say one of the victims wore leather shoes.

Investigate it."

The order had come from the Chuncheon military police.

Following the route Driver Kim had given them and the information spilled by the two proselytizers, who turned out to be members of the cult's enforcement unit known as Thunderbolt Masters, the Empire's security forces swept through Gangwon.

They reached an abandoned mine.

People were dragged out from inside. Some wore white clothes, while others were little more than skin stretched over bone, blankly blinking their eyes.

There was no doubt that Chuncheon's beggar gangs were mixed among them, but no one could tell them apart. Those not dressed in white all looked the same.

Still, they were the fortunate ones.

Some people never came out.

In front of a deep pit at the back of the mine, the Japanese military policemen, police constables, and their assistants who had initially complained about how uncivilized Koreans were and why they had been dragged into such a remote mountain village gradually fell silent.

"Hey, this..."

"Mm..."

Kim Gang-cheol alone stared down into the pit with bloodshot eyes, endlessly muttering, "Koreans should perish already." One Japanese police constable he was at least somewhat close to put a hand on his shoulder and led him outside.

The joint investigation team returned.

Chuncheon was turned upside down.

"What!? They found twelve bodies!?"

"Yeah. Most of them are said to have no relatives. Beggars, or slash-and-burn settlers without household registers..."

"What? You had me worried for nothing."

Unlike the investigation team that had directly seen the condition of the bodies, rumors could convey only so much. Death in this era was treated with that kind of indifference.

But then.

Just as Chuncheon, turned upside down once already, was about to settle down again, another incident overturned it anew.

"What!? There were ordinary people with household registers among the bodies!?"

"An entire family!?"

"Yeah, you know President Choi's family..."

There had been a man called President Choi who ran a fish stall at Chuncheon's public market. Two months earlier, his entire family had suddenly vanished. Since not a single scrap of property remained, rumors said they had borrowed money and fled in the night.

President Choi and his family were found inside that pit. Their missing property was discovered at Baekbaekgyo's Chuncheon Third Branch.

The whole world learned that Baekbaekgyo was a cult that even preyed on ordinary people.

"Well, beggars are one thing. Slash-and-burn settlers too! But how could they take someone like President Choi..."

"They say his daughter is eighteen now..."

"Those white-clothed bastards. Aren't they the ones who came through our alley too?"

"I ate their porridge a few times too. It was free, after all..."

In just one day, anyone in white clothes and a white cap could no longer walk around freely, and police constables and military police jointly nailed a seal notice to the door of the building used by Baekbaekgyo's Chuncheon Third Branch.

Four years earlier than history had planned, the world began paying attention to Baekbaekgyo.

And slightly earlier still, the news reached someone discussing the Way with [fairies] in a hideout somewhere in Gyeongseong.

"What?"

Jeon Yong-hae.

The leader of Baekbaekgyo. The incarnation of the Great Magistrate. The captain of the ark that would survive between the judgment of fire and the judgment of water.

A single glance from that august person could make ten thousand believers fall prostrate, and with a stretch of his hand, the chosen fairies would approach and offer up their bodies. Yet from his sacred, heavenly mouth came these divine words.

"Fuck, Mun Bong-jo! That fucking useless piece of shit!"

The decision was swift.

That evening, Do-yusa Mun Bong-jo was found hanged in the Baekbaekgyo hall of Gyeongseong's Fourth Branch. Excrement and urine dripped from his feet, and a suicide note lay beneath them.

[ I have learned that certain heretics who went about using my name have walked a blasphemous path.

I never gave such instructions, nor was it ever my intention. Yet I may have failed to guide the believers and led them down the wrong path. If that too is a sin, then it is a sin. With agonizing remorse, I wish to fulfill my responsibility in this manner.

All of this is my mistake alone and my responsibility alone. I pray that no other members of the faith suffer harm because of it. ]

The handwriting was neat. Far too neat for writing produced just before taking one's own life.

The cult then did everything it could to reassure its believers, though naturally only those worth reassuring.

- This incident was no more than the deviation of Mun Bong-jo, who falsely claimed to be a do-yusa, and a few heretics who followed him. The Great Magistrate saw through Mun Bong-jo's evil long ago and expelled him from the faith.

- Do not be swayed by the false rumors spreading through the streets. Think of this as a test of your hearts before the judgment of fire and water, and recite the Great Magistrate's chant often.

It was an attempt to cut off the tail, but whether it would work remained to be seen.

There was only one thing.

In the original history, Baekbaekgyo's crimes would not be exposed again until four years later, and Mun Bong-jo would not lose his life until after several more years of trials.

But in this world.

The system comprising Sect Leader Jeon Yong-hae and the two do-yusa, Yi Gyeong-deuk and Mun Bong-jo, had already lost one of its wings!

No one could have known that at that turning point in history stood a black-painted truck and a certain regressor.

Footnotes:

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