Seol Young looked down at the ground. What he thought was an assassin’s dagger was an unexpectedly black branch.

‘What is this?’

When he hit it, it made a metallic sound. It flew with incredible speed for a tree branch. Seol Young’s eyes stared straight at the opponent in the darkness.

His form was bizarre.

His robe was left open to expose his chest, and his wide pants were tightly tied at his ankles. With a wooden mask on his face, it looked like he was both smiling and crying. And he had ears like a donkey.

“What is that? I thought someone like a Taoist would appear?”

When Zaha looked, the strange man on the other side seemed taller.

“He isn’t human.”

Seol Young shouted at him,

“Let us talk.”

With those words, he cast a talisman for bonding. The talisman turned into a noose and hit him.

The man moved immediately and dodged it. He must have thought that the suspicious people who had caused the strange happenings would run away from him.

On the contrary, when the two tried to capture him, he seemed a bit flustered.

He looked their way and straightened his body. Then the sound of joints crunching and snapping rang out.

In the next moment, the figure of the man suddenly increased to dozens.

They surrounded them in a circle on all sides, naturally shaking off the binding.

“Illusion?”

Zaha held the Dead Slayer sword under his clothes.

Wasn’t there a Yin-Yang plaque on this world?

Seol Young also looked at the plaque hanging from his sword. There was no change to it. It meant that it was neither a monster nor a ghost.

“As expected, some secret power guards of this world?”

“As long as this plan worked. If it uses its qi, we can find out what it is, so do something.”

Even so, Seol Young was already throwing talismans.

The talismans flew in groups. It was stuck close to one of the figures.

“That is mine.”

Before he could finish his words, Zaha’s sword flew towards him. It was an ordinary sword, and the opponent wasn’t human, so it shouldn’t matter if it got hit. But the opponent didn’t know that.

Right before it hit him, his body disappeared.

“Wait!”magic

Seol Young hurriedly performed a spell, making several beams of light spread out on the ground, and one of them was dazzlingly shining.

“There!”

And the two followed it.

An unexpected chase took place on the street at night. There were some people passing by, but they didn’t seem to see the strange man.

On the other hand, they could see the two people in ritual outfits moving around. And at this bizarre sight, they were all shocked and moved far away.

“Let us talk!”

Zaha took off his mask and shouted in irritation. But the man continued to run to the west side of the palace.

Then the man disappeared into a forest.

Seol Young asked in shock.

“Isn’t that the royal residence?”

“It seems to be it.”

Zaha also seemed confident as he looked at the forest in front of them.

The royal residence was, as the name said, the forest of the royal family. Legend has it that the son of King Jinji summoned the goblins to play there.

They didn’t know if it was a true legend, but goblins often appeared in the forest. Which was why it was called the Goblin Forest.

It was a place that the Hwarangs had to know about. However, there was a reason why Seol Young and Zaha were puzzled.

In the forest, covered in darkness, lights like fireflies rose slowly. And a thick moss on the ground was shining purple. In addition, each old tree looked like it held a purple halo hanging down from its branches.

Then the two began to whisper.“Isn’t this the Goblin Forest that we know?”

“Why is it like this in this world?”

The Hwarangs’ Hall and the bridge were all similar to the other world, although there were some differences. But this forest was entirely different.

The Goblin Forest in the original world was, as the name suggested, very dreamlike. It wasn’t such a mysterious place. So they stepped inside with caution.

On the ground with moss was the shape of JIN. 1

The man from earlier suddenly appeared. And that wasn’t all. A variety of bizarre looking people appeared one after another.

In the middle of all of that, there was a man who was small but seemed to be the leader. And he had a mask on too.

The mask of the leader was clear, with a crown on it. His face seemed to have something written on it, with his eyes bulging and his eyebrows raised.

The leader asked,

“Why didn’t you follow them and bring them here?”

To which the man they had dealt with earlier lowered his head and said,

“These two people tried to harm the people by pretending to be demons on the Wolha Bridge. They used this strange spell, and it seemed to be related to dark qi.”

At those words, everyone in the forest was surprised.

‘As I thought.’

Seol Young and Zaha exchanged glances over the veil. The demonic qi that Zaha just showed didn’t create the same mess as the God of Cataclysm.

But its roots were the same, and this group in the forest noticed that.

‘They must know something about the God of Cataclysm.’

Seol Young kept a sharp eye on their movements and their leader shouted,

“If that reappears on the land, a disaster will happen! No matter what happens, we need to get rid of them!”

“Yes!”

A radiance erupted from the ground beneath Seol Young’s and Zaha’s feet.

At that moment, Zaha pressed it with his sword, and Seol Young said to them,

“If you don’t want to see all the trees in this forest blown away, you better listen to us.”

“It is a good thing, but you are misunderstanding something. We are really worried for you.”

Zaha said that. However, it looked like they only got more riled up.

“You people?”

Their group burst into anger.

But…

Their leader had no reaction. The masked faces were fixed on Seol Young and Zaha, as if they had lost their minds.

“…?”

Seol Young and Zaha glanced at each other in doubt.

Why were they acting like that?

Then the forest group also looked at their leader.

“What is it?”

“You people…”

A trembling voice came from behind the mask as the leader stretched out his hand and took off the mask.

He shouted in disbelief.

“Strange people!”

Seol Young’s eyes widened. The person he never thought of seeing again was right in front of him.

He uttered the name that had been buried in his memory,

“Miss Jung Myung!”

The two of them took their veils off.

The eyes of the girl holding the mask in her hand went wide. She was Jung Myung, the shaman whom they met in the village that had been flooded.

Jung Myung had died a long time ago when her village was flooded with water by a demon called Sabiso.

When their resentment was released, everyone was released from their bondage to that place.

Then how was she able to appear in front of him now as a real person?They couldn’t figure it out.

Well, thanks to her, it seemed like they had found out the secret of this world.

The reason why the God of Cataclysm didn’t exist here.

It was because this was a world where the last shaman of the Tree God existed.

They finally found out the identities of these people. All of them must be those who were under the command of the Tree God.

Jung Myung seemed to have taken over and begun to command the wood spirits and protect this world.

“….”

Jung Myung looked at the both of them with shocked faces.

Then she told the wood spirits,

“They are the people who saved me in the past.”

“Ah, yes.”

The spirits released their alert forms. It seemed like they held an absolute loyalty toward Jung Myung.

“I will take you inside.”

At Jung Myung’s words, the two came to their senses and returned to reality. Zaha asked her,

“Ah, this body belonged to Jung Myung, the shaman. It would be nice if we could continue to borrow.”

“No. Borrow, you say? God has decided to help you two and has led you here. Besides….”

She pointed to her chest. It seemed that there was something on her clothes.

“Let us head inside.”

The two followed her into the forest.

There was a majestic, gigantic tree in the middle. There appeared to be a purple halo of light behind the tree. There was no tree like this in the other world.

Seol Young looked up at the giant tree.

“As I thought, the Tree God exists in this world.”

“Yes.”

Jung Myung nodded.

“When I first came here, the trees were almost dying, but I somehow managed to save them. I am a shaman for them, after all.”

There were several stumps in front of the giant tree, and Jung Myung made them sit there.

“The name of this nation is also Silla. However, here, it is more commonly referred to as the Sara nation. Other than that, most of it is similar. There are Hwarangs too…”

Jung Myung looked at both of them.

“But the two worlds are so different. So how did you come here?”

Rather, they were curious about how she had managed to come here, but Seol Young decided to answer her first.

“Princess, we are actually after this powerful evil spirit called the God of Cataclysm. That was the reason we even came to your village to begin with. To obtain the power of the old God, the one that works against it.”

“I see.”

As if recalling the past, her eyes were brimming with emotions.

“Even after we parted ways, we continued to investigate and found out that the evil spirit had actually appeared several times for over a hundred years. Among them, we found the oldest record about the evil spirit that turned out to be damaged. When we were trying to find out more about it, we were brought here.”

“We thought the evil spirit did this to keep us from finding out its secret.”

Zaha said,

“But seeing Miss Jung Myung like this, I think that maybe you also had a part in this happening?”

“I really don’t know.”

Seol Young added,

“The main difference between the two worlds is this. Because the last shaman of the Tree God is guarding this place, the God of Cataclysm couldn’t resurrect itself here.”

And he looked at her and said,

“The name of the evil spirit we found is Mita. It continues to appear under that name.”

“Miss Jung Myung. Do you recognize that name?”

Zaha asked.

“…”

She looked at both of them and slowly nodded her head.

TL/N: This is a Chinese character that says ‘Jin’️