Chapter 167
“Why are you locking the door? Hey, why are you locking this?”
“Eunseong is currently in danger. We will protect you. Even if it’s inconvenient, please wait inside until the next location is decided. We won’t stay here long.”
“What’s going on that you’re doing this! Give me back my phone. That’s not why ahjussi doesn’t know our location! This is an order! You have to listen to me!”
Although he had felt constantly monitored since coming here, he hadn’t expected them to confine him in earnest like this. Eunseong panicked and grabbed the door handle tightly, shaking it. They had said that to them, Eunseong was no different from a living god. Even when that god shouted and yelled and called out, there was no response.
After making a fuss alone and struggling, Eunseong belatedly realized there was no one outside the door and let his hands drop in despair. Since he hadn’t eaten properly during this time, no matter what he tried to do, his body had no strength.
“…What the hell, why are they all acting like this?”
Lee Joon-seung was waiting for Eunseong to make up his mind. He had said that to strike a blow against this strange cult group and the Seongha Group, Eunseong needed to disappear from the world. If Eunseong disappeared, it would give Yoo Siwoon a shock beyond just hurt, and whatever he was planning, everything he had already achieved and everything he would achieve in the future could be ruined.
He needed to contact Lee Joon-seung, but his phone had been taken away. If he couldn’t be reached for several days, Lee Joon-seung might suspect something had happened to Eunseong. Or he might think he was deliberately avoiding contact because he didn’t want to stow away.
He had no energy in his body at all. Eunseong just slumped down onto the floor.
“Phone… I need to find my phone first.”
He needed to contact Lee Joon-seung. He had to leave this place, leave Yoo Siwoon immediately.
Eunseong found himself newly hating Yoo Siwoon, who made him desperately want to run away like this. He truly hated Yoo Siwoon, who had taught him how to find the North Star and would come back after checking the dark and scary garden without showing any sign of displeasure even when woken up in the middle of the night.
Of all people, it was Yoo Siwoon who had created a warm adult shelter for Eunseong and let him know what attention and protection felt like.
He cursed himself for unconsciously trying to take his side, thinking it couldn’t be true, that there must be circumstances Eunseong didn’t know about.
The emotional ups and downs were exhausting, and he just wanted to go back to before he knew him, before he met the man called Yoo Siwoon, and forget everything as if he had lost his memory.
While he was sitting there unable to do anything, the door clicked open and Mugeuk came in.
He helped up Eunseong, who was slumped down as if exhausted.
“You shouldn’t sit on the floor like that. Please sit comfortably in a chair. I brought porridge here, so please eat some.”
He seated Eunseong in a chair and brought a table to place the porridge on top. When Eunseong, whose lips were parched dry, only looked up with weakened eyes, he even put a spoon directly in his hand.
“You must eat. If you don’t eat, I’ll make you eat by force.”
“…Please tell me what’s going on. If you tell me, I’ll eat.”
“Sigh, Yoo Siwoon betrayed us.”
“Betrayed?”
“Fortunately, since Eunseong also rejects Yoo Siwoon, we’ll find another breeding partner.”
“…What did you say?”
Eunseong now knew what that statement meant. Mugeuk spoke matter-of-factly.
“There is another breeding partner. However, he’s still young… Eunseong will recover your health and mate when the breeding partner becomes capable of producing seed. It will take some time though.”
His head became completely dizzy. His stomach churned and he felt like he might vomit at any moment. He meant that they would confine Eunseong and then, when conditions were right, bring someone he had never seen and didn’t even know to rape Eunseong to make him bear their god. He was talking about such things naturally and comfortably.
“Are you alright?”
“…I’m fine. Give me back my phone.”
“Cheon Gwanghangja will keep that until the situation is sorted out. You need to be careful about even turning it on right now.”
“I’m not feeling well. I want to rest.”
“Eat this. Rest after you eat.”
Mugeuk held out the porridge bowl to Eunseong. His eyes flashed as he urged him to eat. If he didn’t eat, he seemed ready to force his mouth open with a speculum and pour the porridge down.
Eunseong swallowed the porridge. It was pine nut porridge. Under Mugeuk’s supervision, he had to eat all the pine nut porridge to the end.
“Well done. I’ll prepare nourishing food for you from now on. Fruit alone is inadequate.”
Mugeuk got up with the cleanly emptied porridge bowl. As he left, he checked on Eunseong sitting there blankly and closed the door. Then he locked the door from the outside so it couldn’t be opened from inside.
The executive directors ransacked the apostle’s summer villa for several days. They pulled out all the drawers and rummaged through everything, starting to collect bundles of cash and gold bars. In the process, they also found a laptop that had been shoved in a corner.
“Ah, here’s the laptop the former apostle used. Since it picks up wifi, we should be able to contact the main church.”
Taeho, who found the laptop in the drawer, hurriedly turned it on. Fortunately, the laptop wasn’t password protected.
“Since messengers and phone calls are dangerous, I think it’s better to contact them by email first. We need to convey our situation. We need to quickly inform them that Yoo Siwoon is part of that group of non-believers we thought had disappeared before. We need to know how much damage they’ve suffered too.”
“You don’t think he killed the executive directors, do you? He was just threatening us pointlessly, right?”
Mugeuk, who had spoken of raping Eunseong as if it were nothing extraordinary and perfectly natural, trembled with anxiety as he approached Taeho and looked at the laptop together.
“CCTV!”
Cheon Gwanghangja, who had been stuffing bundles of cash into a bag, shouted. He also rushed over to the laptop. They all looked at the laptop screen together.
“Can’t we access the CCTV management page? Doesn’t Mugeuk know the password and ID?”
“That’s right! There was CCTV! Okjin said several council members had fled for safety. We should be able to find out who’s being held at the main church now.”
Mugeuk hurriedly accessed the CCTV management site. When he entered the ID and password, dozens of CCTV screens monitoring the main church appeared like small thumbnails.
“Let’s start by showing the main hall.”
“Huh? Wait a minute. What’s this?”
Among the dozens of small screens, Mugeuk first clicked on one that was covered with something black to expand it.
“…Gasp!”
What they thought was a black cloth covering the camera was actually black smoke rising from flames.
“Fi-fire, there’s a fire!”
Cheon Gwanghangja and Taeho, who were looking at the screen with Mugeuk screaming in horror, also gasped in shock.
In the CCTV screen, one of the main church buildings was engulfed in flames, sending up bright red fire and pitch-black smoke simultaneously.
“Isn’t that building B-dong where the safety vault is? Fortunately, isn’t that a place with no people?”
“The treasures of the Yongse Pacheon Church are in that vault. The original scriptures are there too – surely everything inside didn’t burn completely?”
They were shocked and expanded other screens too. Only the B-dong building was burning, and fortunately the flames hadn’t spread to other places.
“What the hell is everyone doing instead of putting out the fire?”
Taeho grimaced with regret and stamped his feet. Cheon Gwanghangja, realizing something suspicious, asked:
“This CCTV is showing real-time footage, right?”
Cheon Gwanghangja asked while turning on his phone as if he was about to call an executive director managing the main church to assess the situation.
“Can you rewind this CCTV footage?”
Cheon Gwanghangja asked, pointing at the laptop in bewilderment. Mugeuk nodded reflexively. Calming his excitement, he operated the laptop to rewind the footage of the blazing fire. When he rewound to just before the fire and searched, a silhouette of someone approaching the building appeared.
“Stop there.”
Mugeuk took his hand off the laptop trackpad. Cheon Gwanghangja pulled the laptop toward himself and directly moved the footage back and forth. His fingertips trembled anxiously.
“This is Yoo Siwoon, right? I hoped against hope, but this crazy bastard!”
“This doesn’t make sense. No matter how much of a non-believer he is, no matter what! Out of anger? Or madness? He wouldn’t do something like this unless he was insane!”
The silhouette entering B-dong of the main church building where the safety vault was located was definitely Yoo Siwoon. All three pairs of eyes were fixed on the screen, unmoving. Yoo Siwoon, holding something in his hand, went inside and came out, and not long after, flames began flickering beyond the windows. Soon the glass windows shattered and bright red flames exploded, sucking in the surrounding air. Then uncontrollable fire instantly devoured the building and pitch-black smoke covered the sky.
“That human burned the scriptures… he burned our scriptures. Our treasures… he burned all our treasures! He’s determined to kill us all!”
Cheon Gwanghangja, who had been staring blankly at the back figure indifferently looking back at the burning building, spoke with trembling lips.
“Let’s leave here quickly. We need to move The Great Crevice to a safe place immediately! Right now!”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
