Chapter 234
Nam Min-hyuk ran around the cult headquarters, flashing his light.
“Everyone, come out quickly! Hurry up! This is our chance to escape!”
He had never shouted so loudly in his life. But he was too immersed in the situation to care about that.
Park Moon-chul had locked up those who opposed his will in solitary cells. There were almost thirty people who were trapped inside, unaware of what was happening outside. Nam Min-hyuk used the key he found on the floor to free them all. His girlfriend Kim Ye-eun helped him.
As they opened the last cell door, Kim Ye-eun’s face brightened when she saw a middle-aged man sitting dejectedly in front of it.
“Huh? Dad!”
“Ah, dad?”
Nam Min-hyuk realized that the man was his girlfriend’s father, whom she had been desperately looking for.
“Ye, Ye-eun?”
“Dad! What are you doing here? Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Look at your pale face. I told you not to come to this place. Let’s go.”
“The agent, the agent of God, he abandoned me…”
“He’s not an agent, he’s a psycho and a cultist! Get up. Let’s go quickly.”
“I, I…”
“Sir. Please come with us.”
Nam Min-hyuk intervened. As the man’s empty eyes turned to him, Nam Min-hyuk shrank his shoulders involuntarily. Did he make a mistake by calling him sir?
“Who are you?”
“Uh, I’m, um. Well…”
“My boyfriend.”
Kim Ye-eun spoke up first. Kim Cheol-ju, her father, widened his eyes. So did Nam Min-hyuk, who was standing quietly next to her.
Before Kim Cheol-ju could say anything, Nam Min-hyuk hurriedly spoke.
“Anyway, let’s get out of here quickly! If we waste time here, more dangerous people might come after us.”
“Right. So move it, dad!”
“O, okay.”
The three of them finally escaped from the cult headquarters. Maybe it was because they had reached a safe distance, but Kim Ye-eun, who had been panting, asked Nam Min-hyuk cautiously.
“Are you okay, by the way? You said someone came to help you earlier. Isn’t it bad to leave him like that?”
“It’s okay.”
Nam Min-hyuk’s voice was flat and calm, without any worry.
Kim Ye-eun realized for the first time that her boyfriend of one year could make such a face.
He was timid and couldn’t speak long, always lacking motivation and energy.
“He’s, he’s very strong.”
Now he felt somehow, much more reliable.
“Kugh! Cough!”
Park Moon-chul flailed his arms and legs in pain as his breath was choked. He tried to endure it by grabbing his neck with both hands, but the wire that wrapped around his neck didn’t break and tightened his throat.
He wished he could faint or die, but the devil didn’t give him even a moment of rest.
“You can’t run away so soon.”
Yu-hyun didn’t intend to stop at killing Park Moon-chul. Sometimes, death was a relief from pain. Yu-hyun didn’t allow that.
“You caused pain to many people. You had no qualms about trampling on others for your vile desires. I don’t feel any conviction in your actions. You just live to satisfy your lowly pleasures.”
What would have happened if he had left him alone?
Using his newly acquired power, he awakened his followers and used them for terror, brainwashing them with excessive fanaticism.
People would have died, and the public perception of the Collectors would have become even more dangerous.
Barely able to breathe, Park Moon-chul coughed harshly and shouted desperately.
“Cough, cough! Stop, stop! If you kill me, you’ll be no different from me!”
“How pathetic and obvious your logic is.”
“Aaaargh!!!”
This time, the wire turned into a drill and pierced his right wrist. Park Moon-chul screamed in pain and drooled from his mouth.
“You’ll be the same as me? Is that what you should be saying right now? Then tell me. Where are you and I the same?”
“Krrrrr.”
“Tell me. Where are we, the same?”
This time, it pierced his left wrist. The room was filled with a tearing scream, and Park Moon-chul couldn’t bear the pain and rolled on the floor.
A strange power seeped into Park Moon-chul’s body, which was about to faint. It was the power of the story called The Shape of Azure, which Yu-hyun possessed.
As the life force of the blue plants filled his flesh, the pain subsided, and his reason, which was about to break, returned to normal.
But Park Moon-chul knew that this was not to save him. Rather, because he didn’t faint, he had no choice but to feel the next torture vividly.
“Please, please…”
“Oh. Now you know how to beg?”
“Please…spare me. I beg you.”
There was no longer the arrogant con artist who ruled this place like a god. With just a few bouts of pain, Park Moon-chul’s heart was completely broken.
He nodded his head and pleaded with Yu-hyun. Please spare him. He would never do it again.
Yu-hyun watched him silently and clenched his fist.
How disgusting he was. Compared to the pain he had experienced in the apocalypse, it was not even one hundredth of a billionth of physical pain, and he acted as if he had repented everything.
“An agent of God, you say?”
“No, no. That’s not it.”
“I’m a devil, you say. Can an agent of God beg a devil? Can you kneel before a demon?”
“I’m not, I’m not an agent of God. I’m sorry. I, I was crazy for a moment. I did wrong. I, I’m a really bad guy.”
Yu-hyun stroked his chin as he watched him desperately repent his sins.
“Did you really do wrong?”
“Yes, yes! Yes, I did. I did wrong. So please, please have mercy…”
“Hmm. Really? Is that so?”
Yu-hyun raised a finger as if he had a good idea.
“Then, pay me.”
“What?”
“You did it often, didn’t you? To confirm your faith, you had to make a donation. I agree with that. If you want to repent your sins, and if you want mercy, you have to pay. You know that, right? I’ll personally give you absolution.”
“That, that’s…”
Park Moon-chul rolled his eyes. He didn’t really think he had done wrong and begged. He just tried to look as pitiful as possible and somehow get through this situation.
Yu-hyun saw through his ugly intentions from the beginning.
If someone who had been doing this for decades had given up everything because of a moment of pain, the world wouldn’t have become like this.
“Why. Can’t you do it?”
“Uh, how much…”
“It depends on how much you think your sin is worth.”
Park Moon-chul broke out in a cold sweat. He could almost hear the sound of his brain working hard. He had to protect his hard-earned fortune without offending the other person.
“I, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Don’t you know how many sins you’ve committed so far?”
“Th-that is…”
“Fine. Then let me help you. I’ll tell you about the price of your sins.”
“What?”
Yu-hyun got up from his seat. He walked over to a bookshelf full of religious books.
Why there? No, no way. That can’t be it. Park Moon-chul’s anxious gaze never left Yu-hyun.
As he did, Yu-hyun tapped a few books on the shelf.
Rumble.
Then something astonishing happened. The bookshelf suddenly moved to the side, revealing a hidden safe behind it.
Park Moon-chul’s eyes widened. That was his secret stash that he had accumulated over a long time of his activities. He had deliberately kept it in cash and valuables, fearing tax audits if he left it in an account. He never expected it to be exposed so easily.
“H-how?”
He had never told anyone about the location of that secret safe. It was his and his alone. But this man who came out of nowhere knew not only his secrets, but also the location of the safe that he could never let anyone find out.
Since he had come this far, it wouldn’t be surprising if he knew the password of the digital safe as well.
Yu-hyun grabbed a handful of the contents of the open safe and showed it to Park Moon-chul.
“You’ve taken a lot. This should be enough. You can pay back the people you’ve been ripping off, with interest.”
Bang!
Park Moon-chul’s reason snapped there. The middle-aged man, whose desire had drained and twisted him, was pathologically obsessed with his wealth.
But when Yu-hyun touched it and even said he would return it all to those pathetic believers, he couldn’t keep his sanity.
“That’s mine! My property! No one can take it away from me!”
Park Moon-chul rolled his eyes and screamed as he rushed at Yu-hyun. He forgot the pain of his arms pierced by the awl. He was seized by the urge to strangle that wicked devil.
Yu-hyun flicked his hand lightly. Then the white lotus that turned into a thin thread bound his body again. Park Moon-chul glowed like a madman.
“Aaaah!! No! No way! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!!!”
If he lost that too, he would have nothing left. He would become a pauper.
Park Moon-chul hated Yu-hyun. He felt that he was deliberately tormenting him.
“Why me! Why are you doing this to me! What did I do wrong! What did I do so wrong!”
[…How disgusting.]
‘This is his true nature.’
Yu-hyun knew that was his real face. He didn’t know he was a sinner even when he did wrong. He even had the nerve to ask why he didn’t do it.
He didn’t even try to learn when he taught him. His head of that kind had already hardened and refused to change.
That’s why he enjoyed it more.
The sight of someone who was angry and resentful, and eventually fell into despair of this reality where he could do nothing.
It was the best.
“Huff. Huff. Why, why are you doing this to me.”
Yu-hyun burst into red eyes as he watched Park Moon-chul gasp for breath after struggling by himself.
“There’s no need to waste my breath on someone who won’t listen even if I tell him.”
“I am…”
“So remember this. I’m going to dispose of all your former assets and return them to other people. Your solid castle here will soon be trampled by the heretics’ boots and taken away by the association. The believers who trust and follow you?
“They will curse and point fingers at you. They will claim that you were not God’s agent, but a mere cultist.”
“I am, I am…”
“Human Park Moon-chul will die with nothing, without anyone’s sympathy, and be forgotten as people talk about him. In this country and in this world. To have no one remember you means the eternal death of your existence.”
“Gurgle!”
The thread that wrapped around Park Moon-chul’s body soon became a rope and tightened around his neck. His legs left the ground and hung in the air.
Park Moon-chul saw a hallucination.
He saw himself flying endlessly towards the light of the sky, and then his golden wings on his back breaking and tearing, and falling down to the depths of the abyss.
Below the people he had stepped on and climbed up.
Much lower than that.
Swoosh.
Thud!
And his feet stopped in the air before they touched the ground.
Park Moon-chul’s body, fixed in the air, was supported by a single strand of rope and swung like a pendulum.
“It’s over.”
Yu-hyun didn’t even look at Park Moon-chul’s dead body and scraped up all the loot in the secret safe. He planned to convert them into money later and ask Sung Yoo-chan to send them to the victims.
The death of a cult leader would be a hot topic for a moment, but then it would disappear.
He took all the evidence of Park Moon-chul’s secret corruption and was about to leave.
Whoosh!
“Hmm?”
Yu-hyun turned his head towards the source of the light that he felt flowing from somewhere.
The light came from Park Moon-chul’s body. The rope that held him disappeared and his body fell to the floor. Then a light came out of his body and slowly formed a shape that floated in the air.
‘That is…’
Yu-hyun felt a huge sense of awe from the light.
It was not just what he saw with his eyes. All his senses told him that the light was extraordinary and that he had a great connection with it.
Yu-hyun immediately remembered what the golden light was.
Yes.
It was the same as the something golden that he had seen right before he died at the end of the apocalypse.