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Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 106: End Times Judgment Salvation Sect 【Baekbaekgyo】 (2)

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The very people in this room who had changed history had no way of knowing it.

"Money! People! Use all of it, you fucker!"

Jeon Yong-hae hurled anything within reach as he vented his fury.

"Find out why this happened! Find where we got bitten! Which bastard talked! Why this happened! Do you understand? I said, do you understand, Yi Gyeong-deuk, you fucker!"

"Yes, Great Magistrate! I understand!"

Yi Gyeong-deuk, Baekbaekgyo's only remaining do-yusa, lowered his head.

Jeon Yong-hae continued to pant, as though his rage had not eased in the slightest.

"Fuck! If the informant had told me even half a day later, huh? The whole cult could've been wiped out! That fucking Mun Bong-jo, damn it! I want to kill him all over again!"

Jeon Yong-hae threw his water cup.

For the briefest moment, Yi Gyeong-deuk wondered if he should dodge.

Then he pulled himself together and leaned his face toward it instead.

Crash! The cup shattered, and Yi Gyeong-deuk's left eye swelled black and blue.

"That was a wise judgment, Great Magistrate!"

Jeon Yong-hae watched Yi Gyeong-deuk's performance.

He was still furious, but now that he had sent Mun Bong-jo off to the new world, he could not get rid of even a second-in-command this devoted.

"Get out! Handle things properly. Let me tell you, if you screw this up, you'll go sit right beside Mun Bong-jo, and...

"Ah, when I say things like that, I sound exactly like some third-rate movie villain! Hey! Am I a villain? I'm not, right?"

Jeon Yong-hae sounded genuinely wronged.

With one eye bruised and the other untouched, Yi Gyeong-deuk opened both eyes as wide as he could.

"Who would dare call the Great Magistrate a villain? This do-yusa will never forgive such people!"

"You're full of shit, you little bastard. Still, it sounds nice. Fuck it, enough. Get out already!"

"Yes! I'll take care of it properly!"

Still bent deeply at the waist, Yi Gyeong-deuk backed out of the room.

Once the door closed and he was alone in the corridor, he stared at the carpet beneath his feet and fell into thought, his left eye swollen black and blue.

'Mun Bong-jo is dead...'

His left eye throbbed. It seemed to be bleeding too.

It did not hurt much.

Instead, a crooked grin formed on his lips.

'Now there's only that bastard Jeon Yong-hae above me, isn't there?'

And so, the holy Do-yusa Yi Gyeong-deuk, second only to the Great Magistrate and above all others in his world, headed to Chuncheon to clean up the mess.

Then he got hit with another water cup.

"Who the hell do you think you are, charging in here like this!? Are you crazy or not!?"

The one who threw it was the operations chief of the Chuncheon military police.

Yi Gyeong-deuk watched the water cup fly toward him again. It seemed to move very slowly. He felt like he could dodge it...

But he gritted his teeth and brought his face closer to it again.

Crash! The cup shattered, and Yi Gyeong-deuk's right eye swelled black and blue as well.

With both eyes bruised like a panda's, Yi Gyeong-deuk demonstrated the advanced culture of the Mainland: dogeza.

"I'm sorry, Your Excellency!"

The Chuncheon military police operations chief ground his teeth as he looked down at Yi Gyeong-deuk, who lay prostrate before him.

The scoldings he had received from the battalion commander over the past few days flashed through his mind.

[Operations Chief. Didn't I tell you those Baekbaekgyo bastards looked suspicious?]

[You did...]

[What? Divide and rule? You said those obvious cultists were just a handful of clowns, so it would be fine to give them a little support and let them tear the Protestants apart, didn't you?]

[I did...]

The operations chief could not say, 'But Battalion Commander, you agreed to that plan too, didn't you?'

Did final responsibility mean the position held by the person who took responsibility?

No.

Final responsibility meant possessing the ultimate power to avoid responsibility!

The battalion commander, the person with final responsibility, had ultimately avoided responsibility. As a powerless operations chief, all he could do was lament that he had stepped on a land mine.

From his point of view, it really was a land mine. The plan had been working perfectly, supporting cults in secret to keep institutional religions in check while dumping all the exhausting, thankless work on them.

[We'll take charge of street cleanup! Leave the beggar hordes that ruin Chuncheon's appearance to us!]

Mun Bong-jo's Baekbaekgyo faction had thumped their chests, and the number of beggars on the streets had fallen. On paper, Chuncheon, Gangwon's eldest daughter, grew cleaner by the day.

[Those Mogok School bastards are planting rose of Sharon!]

Corporal Ishihara had reported it excitedly. He claimed it was intelligence passed along through Father Cho, who was said to be a Kakure Kirishitan.

Thanks to that, they had turned Mogok School upside down and implicated Namgung Eok, a prominent local figure who had grown increasingly uncooperative with the Empire.

Everything had gone according to plan!

The operations chief had felt like a baduk master moving across the board. A sense of omnipotence, as though he controlled the vast board itself, spread through him.

Then Baekbaekgyo was exposed.

And it happened at the hands of Sawada, that bastard with no flexibility whatsoever.

Could his luck get any worse?

Even now, the operations chief boiled with rage when he remembered Sawada coming up with his report, wearing an almost innocent smile like a dog waiting to be praised.

[Didn't I do well?]

Even the battalion commander had clicked his tongue, perhaps feeling a little sorry for him.

[Operations Chief. How should I put this? This phrase, "let them tear each other apart." It seems to have some bad energy attached to it.

Whenever you bring it up, it reminds me of something. Back when I was in the Kwantung Army, there was a fellow soldier who stared at his family photograph whenever he had a spare moment. That's what this phrase smells like. I can't explain it well...

Well, that's beside the point. If it hadn't been for Sawada this time, you would've taken the whole blame and been thrown out, wouldn't you? If you look at it that way, you owe Sawada a debt.

Let's take the proper path from now on. Unlicensed cults, officially approved Christians, or those bald Buddhist bastards! Stop all this complicated secret support business. Just watch them, and if they get caught, let them get caught...

Hmm, Operations Chief? Hey? Are you listening?]

'No!'

The operations chief shook his head wildly.

'That can't be true. This was a land mine. It was a literal natural disaster. Right? Isn't it?'

Even after asking himself, he reached the same conclusion. Divide and rule! Making them tear each other apart was an eternal method of governance, unchanged across all times and places!

Grinding his teeth, the operations chief looked down at Do-yusa Yi Gyeong-deuk, who was still prostrating himself in dogeza.

"Hey... What happened? I can understand beggar gangs and people without household registers, but ordinary citizens who paid their taxes and ran businesses properly in the public market? An entire family at that... Are you people really like that?"

"No! Absolutely not!"

Speaking with such desperate sincerity that he seemed to mourn his inability to tear out his heart and show it, Do-yusa Yi Gyeong-deuk said,

"Do-yusa Mun! That bastard was always crazy! That's why the cult leader expelled him! We are never! Absolutely never! People like that. Like these white clothes we wear, we're pure, white, good people, Your Excellency!"

He had called the operations chief Your Excellency. The man found the flattery unpleasant, but did not correct him.

Looking down at Do-yusa Yi Gyeong-deuk's panda-like face, both eyes swollen and bruised, he asked,

"Really?"

"Really, Your Excellency!"

"This really was just isolated misconduct by a few individuals, right? You aren't all crazy bastards like that, are you?"

"Absolutely not, Your Excellency!"

The operations chief took a deep breath. He could not shake the feeling that something was off, but the thought, Come on, surely not? barely won out.

After all, the stock he had picked could not possibly be bad.

The supreme strategy of [letting them tear each other apart] could not function as some symbol of defeat, as the battalion commander claimed!

"Fine. Work hard."

As the operations chief spoke, a satisfied smile flickered across Yi Gyeong-deuk's lips.

"Then the investigation..."

The operations chief immediately glared at him.

"Are you crazy? Headquarters is moving too, so what do you expect me to do? You people should make damn sure my name doesn't come up. Isn't that right?"

Yi Gyeong-deuk swiftly bowed his head again.

"Of course, Your Excellency! We will never cause you trouble!"

"Make sure of it. I may not be able to pull you out of a pit of fire, but I can throw you into a pit of water. Don't I look like someone who can?"

"You do, Your Excellency!"

Only after taking a long breath in and out did the operations chief's anger subside somewhat as he watched Yi Gyeong-deuk grovel.

"Right. Stop doing stupid things. Whether Military Police Headquarters or the Government-General's Police Affairs Bureau calls you, go running the moment they do.

"I hear something happened in your cult leader's father's generation too. But you got back on your feet, didn't you? You've got some money too, don't you? Then go do something useful for society. Is that so hard?"

Yi Gyeong-deuk cursed inwardly. If it were that easy, why would he have joined a fraudulent cult?

Of course, he could not say that even if his mouth were torn apart.

"It isn't hard! I'll do it properly!"

As befitted the second-in-command of a fraudulent cult, Yi Gyeong-deuk was sensitive to power and understood the implication behind the operations chief's words.

He had no intention of helping them. But he would not kick them any further, so they should weather the storm themselves.

Lowering their heads and enduring. That was what the Jeon family had done since they first founded the Baekdo Cult, and it was what Baekbaekgyo needed to do now.

Living like decent people was hard, but pretending to be decent people was not that difficult.

The act worked again this time. The operations chief sighed as though they could finally have a proper conversation.

"Right. Get yourselves together."

"Yes, Your Excellency. Then, since one must untie the knot one tied, to help society, we'll continue the Chuncheon street cleanup project..."

The operations chief frowned deeply.

"You don't need to worry about that anymore."

"Ah... Has someone else already taken it over...?"

"Yes. Someone else will handle it."

"Who...?"

"That's none of your business either."

The operations chief stood without explaining further. Covered by his shadow, Yi Gyeong-deuk lowered his head even deeper.

His heart sank as low as his bowed head. It was called a [street cleanup project], but in truth, it had practically given them full authority over Chuncheon's underbelly with the operations chief's tacit approval.

That honey pot had been handed over from Baekbaekgyo to some other bastard he did not even know.

All because of that idiot Mun Bong-jo!

Still, he could not dare voice his dissatisfaction.

"I understand, Your Excellency. For the time being, we'll focus only on paying taxes, paying money, and such matters."

"Good. Especially the railway station. Do you understand or not?"

"I understand."

"I truly hope you do. I keep having to say this, but if I hear one more piece of dogshit news about you people, then I'll really gather every soldier in the Chuncheon military police and start shooting...

"Ah, when I say things like that, I sound exactly like some third-rate movie villain! Hey! Am I a villain? I'm not, right?"

The operations chief sounded genuinely wronged.

Yi Gyeong-deuk opened his panda-like, blackened eyes as wide as he could.

"Who would dare call Your Excellency a villain? This do-yusa will never forgive such people!"

"You're full of shit, you little bastard. Still, it sounds nice. Damn it, enough. I'm leaving for real now!"

After laying down a mountain of threats, the Chuncheon military police operations chief left.

Yi Gyeong-deuk looked down at the shattered pieces of the water cup scattered across the floor through his swollen eyes and sighed.

"For a while, we'll have to put aside kidnapping and proselytizing, then shift toward supporting believers who run businesses..."

Baekbaekgyo.

An ark meant to carry them to a new world, beyond judgments of fire and water.

If they grovelled and plugged the holes in the ship, would a day come when they could stand tall again?

"Even if it doesn't, so what? Am I the cult leader? That fucking Jeon Yong-hae is."

Yi Gyeong-deuk felt at ease.

"Let's make money. Money."

To plug the holes in the ship, they needed banknotes to paste over them.

"There was one Chuncheon believer who had an incredible talent for making money. A bastard who was apparently brilliant at copying products and ideas..."

As Baekbaekgyo was battered by a storm far ahead of its time and struggled to survive, the [someone else] the operations chief had mentioned, the person who would take over Chuncheon's street cleanup project in place of Baekbaekgyo, was...

"Sajang! We brought in another group of little beggars!"

"Got it! Baechil-hyung! Please get some water ready! Uncle Gomchi too!"

"Got it, President San!"

Amazingly enough, it was Han San.

The Chuk Brothers, Han's Myriad Commerce's executives, Im Baechil, a full-time employee, and Gomchi, who was effectively a contract worker, had all been mobilized to work on the so-called [street cleanup].

To explain how that came to be, it was necessary to turn back time a little.

Footnotes:

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