Where is this now?

I hadn’t wished for anything, and still I’d apparently been invited into the world of the gods again.

But unlike the times before, there were no splendid buildings in sight.

A blue river flowed by, lofty and calm.

Clear and blue, a scene you rarely see in the human world.

But the far bank shimmered, as though fog lay over it.

The sky was clear, which made it stranger still.

“A boat?”

Right there at the landing by the riverside, a small ferryboat was tied up.

The weeping willows hanging down over it made the view spectacular.

“Welcome, young master.”

“Ha!”

A voice came suddenly from beside me and startled me.

An old man in fine white robes, his white hair neatly tied up—a stylish grandpa.

The kind of looks that would turn the grandmothers’ heads at the afternoon dance halls.

“Wh-who are you?”

“They call me Jo So-and-so.”

“What? Jo So-and-so?”

The old man had a fine bearing.

His complexion was so fresh that anyone would have believed he was a man in his thirties.

“For one who must soon cross the River of Three Crossings, what does a name matter?” (TL Note: 삼도천 — the river between this world and the next in Korean and Japanese Buddhist belief; the dead cross it, and drinking its water washes away the memory of the life just lived.)

“Th-the River of Three Crossings!”

The River of Three Crossings is the boundary between this world and the next, and I must certainly have crossed it too, though I don’t remember it.

In a word, a river you can only cross once you’re dead.

Now I understood why the far bank couldn’t be seen.

Oh, hell!

He isn’t a reaper, is he? Ah! I just made three trillion—this isn’t fair!

My heart shrank for no good reason.

I’d done nothing wrong since being born again, but a man always turns solemn in front of death.

“Don’t worry. It’s the boat I’ll be riding.”

“Ah… right.”

The old man looked straight into me and smiled gently.

I felt embarrassed for nothing.

Only then did my mind settle.

“Then you’re not a god, and yet you were able to call me. How?”

Today too I was meeting an unusual case.

Not a god, but a dead man on his way to the next world, and he had summoned me.

“A god, is it… I was called that once.”

“What? You were a god?”

At my question, Jo So-and-so, the former immortal, smiled gently.

“Didn’t you cross the River of Three Crossings long ago?”

“An immortal who has achieved Ascension to Immortality does not cross that river.”

“Ah! Ascension to Immortality!”

If you become an immortal while still alive, that could be so.

An Ascension to Immortality that takes even the human body with it, complete, is something only masters manage.

So why is he crossing that river now?

“The River of Three Crossings has another name: the river of rebirth. Only by crossing that river can one walk the road of rebirth again.”

“Has your term as an immortal run out?”

I know a little about the world of the immortals myself.

When your karma points run out, you have to come back out into the world.

“That may be so, and it may not.”

This former immortal grandpa’s manner is decidedly suspicious.

I couldn’t understand why he wanted to show me his crossing of the River of Three Crossings.

Does he have no friend to say goodbye to?

Even so, calling out a busy man like me made no sense.

“Er, but what tie do you and I—”

“I offer you my heartfelt and reverent thanks.”

Good grief! I’m not a mobster, so let’s not do ninety-degree bows!

I bent at the waist ninety degrees toward the former immortal grandpa too.

A very strange feeling.

Standing face to face with an immortal grandpa about to cross the river of rebirth and walk the road of rebirth—this feeling…

I really don’t recommend it.

“Seeking Ascension to Immortality, I abandoned my family for long ages and followed the Way.”

With the bowing over, Jo So-and-so, steeped in regret, opened his mouth.

I opened my ears wide and listened.

Stories from immortal grandpas are guaranteed entertainment, however you hear them.

“At a hundred years of human age, I achieved the Way on Mount Geumgang and became an immortal.”

It seems he studied the Way for a long time.

Mount Geumgang, Mount Gyeryong and Mount Baekdu have been famous candidates among the immortals since the old days.

“Are you out of the Jade Emperor Cup for Ascension to Immortality?”

I showed off a little of what I knew.

“No.”

“Then…”

“I studied alone and became a self-made immortal.”

“Ah! Self-made!!!”

Damn it, there really are a lot of ways to become a god.

Now we’ve even got self-taught, self-made immortals.

“The world of the immortals is as fine a place as I had imagined it. A place where you can live as you please on the karma points you’ve built up. You can drink immortals’ wine as much as you like without getting drunk, and there were group dates with the heavenly maidens from time to time.”

G-group dates too!

I’d had some idea of it from the way Nova hyungnim lives in the world of the immortals, but I hadn’t known Korean immortals were the same.

Immortals, going on group dates!

Just how beautiful are these heavenly maidens?

“Because it is a place where the body exists and does not exist, one can taste the five desires and the seven emotions through energy alone.” (TL Note: 오욕칠정 — the five desires (wealth, sex, food, fame, sleep) and the seven emotions (joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred, want); the Buddhist inventory of everything a person feels and wants.)

I know. I’ve had a sample of the immortals’ five desires and seven emotions myself.

Nova hyungnim, truly a blessing~.

I was looking forward to when he’d bring the newest version along.

“But I came to see that all of it, too, is empty.”

“What? Being an immortal?”

“Do you know that immortals have as many torments as humans do?”

“Yes… I know.”

Roughly, I know.

“One day, with plenty of karma points built up from my former life, I was enjoying myself as I pleased. By chance I came to look down at the lower world… and there, a tie I had sown was living out a life. I had thought I’d forgotten it all, but that was not so. Perhaps because the Three Spirits looked unkindly on a man who abandoned his child and left in search of the immortal Way, the line came down through a single son in every generation.” (TL Note: 삼신, the Three Spirits — the household goddess of childbirth in Korean belief, who decides which child comes to which house and how many.)

“!!!”

Grandmother Samsin’s power seems to be considerable.

It sounds as though even with immortals, if she isn’t pleased, she withholds the blessing(?) of children from their descendants.

“I tried not to look, but I had not drunk the water of the River of Three Crossings, so I still held every memory of my life. It was painful. Dragged along by affection, I could not help worrying about my descendants over and over. What is this thread of ties, after all… haha.”

Even after becoming an immortal, worry about your offspring is apparently unavoidable.

I understood the old man’s heart.

It’s for the same reason that I got a second life, through a grandpa whose name I still don’t know.

“You can’t help them directly?”

“Gods cannot intervene directly in the human world. Now and then a god with regrets left in worldly matters descends into a disciple, but that is only for the moment. Many gods live alongside young disciples who have not attained understanding and end by having their divine standing stripped away.”

Huh? Then what about me?

The grandpa in my dream said he had rubbed the mirror of Heaven’s Reversal and sent me back.

That can be seen as direct intervention in the human world.

“Of course, in the case of the highest heavenly gods, of the Emperor on High’s rank, direct intervention is also possible.”

“The highest gods?”

“But such cases are extremely rare. The balance between the factions can easily break, so there are many difficulties.”

“Factions?”

“…Beyond that, I would commit the sin of leaking a secret of heaven.”

Ah, the complicated world of the gods~.

For now, one thing was settled: I’d been helped by a god of the highest rank, of the Emperor on High’s class.

But the balance between the factions?

What is this now!

“The boatman is coming. It seems my time to go has arrived.”

The boatman? A reaper?

A cold feeling went right through me.

I turned my head, following the former immortal grandpa.

“Ha!”

What kind of boatman is that!

Normally, when you think of a reaper, you picture a gloomy sort of fellow in a black woven hat and an all-black robe.

But the reaper I was looking at…

Swish, swish.

He came walking over the water without any boat at all.

He was cooler than the masters in the movies.

And what is he wearing!

All black, the reapers’ signature item — that part was right. But instead of a robe he had on a leather jacket and skin-tight leather pants.

Muscles that looked ready to burst rippled under them.

Black long hair tied back tight, that rough, handsome, beast-smelling man’s man!

There’s no way on earth that’s a reaper! He looked like a legend among the Hongdae rockers.

“Did the honored elder make a reservation for the River of Three Crossings?”

“That’s right.”

Oh! The old man spoke casually to a reaper.

“It’s been a long time, honored elder. I’m Richard Kang, the underworld guide assigned to you today.”

Whoa! Richard Kang, he says!

Richard Kang the reaper was extremely courteous.

Completely different from the cold reapers who kept throwing out lines like Come now, tsk tsk, a creature who can’t let go of this life.

I’ve nothing more to say.

My whole idea of reapers has flipped over.

“Thank you for coming all this way.”

“Don’t mention it. Coming to the old harbor after so long brings it all back. These days everything moves by speedboat, and a ferryboat… how little time cares for us.”

Staying crumpled up and quiet looked like the best policy.

Nothing was to be gained from getting tangled up with a strange reaper and a former immortal grandpa.

“But this gentleman looks like someone I’ve seen somewhere… do you know me?”

Richard Kang the reaper made out that he knew me.

“No. This is the first time I’ve met you.”

I became careful and courteous right along with him.

I had no wish to get marked down by a reaper for nothing.

“Is that so? You look like someone I’ve seen somewhere…”

He seems extremely quick on the uptake.

The suspicion about me hadn’t left him.

“Ha… hahaha. It’ll be because I have rather an ordinary face.”

I dragged my face muscles into a smile.

The reaper’s huge round eyes ran over me, and every hair on my body stood up.

“Is that so? Well, this is a tie too, so I’m glad to have met you. I’m posted here for the next hundred years anyway, so get in touch when you come next time. I’ll take special care of you.”

“Special care?”

“To cross the River of Three Crossings you have to pay the fare. I’ll apply the guide’s special discount. If you meet an unlicensed guide you can end up wandering the road to hell. You have to use a licensed guide to arrive safely in the land of King Yeomra. There are cases of people being robbed by drifting spirits while trying to save a few coins of travel money.”

I’d just realized that getting safely to the next world after you die is a big undertaking in itself.

Having one reaper I know doesn’t seem like a bad thing.

“Ah! I see. Then next time…”

Damn it, what does this mouth of mine think it’s doing!

I barely got my mouth shut as the words about booking next time were coming out.

That’s how much this reaper called Richard Kang inspired trust.

“It’s all right. I’m aiming at Ascension to Immortality.”

“Ah! Magnificent. You look young still…”

“No. That’s only the dream. I have a long way to go.”

“If you’re preparing for Ascension to Immortality, avoid taking life as far as you can. Once you get blood on your hands, it doesn’t wash off for a long time.”

“…”

The reaper threw out his advice to me in a voice steeped in regret.

It seems there’s quite a story behind it.

“Haha. Envoy Kang. That blood was washed off your hands long ago. The trouble is that it remains in your heart. Who would reproach you for putting the blood of bandit hordes on your hands for your king and your people? A thousand years of service as a reaper, and it’s past time you understood…”

“I’m sorry. It seems I still have far to go. But a thousand years ago, in the war with the Khitan army, I put too much blood on my hands.”

“Wasn’t Envoy Kang’s position that of supreme grand general? It could not be helped, so let your heart rest now.”

A story from a thousand years ago came out of the two of them.

If it was the Khitan invasion, it was certainly the Goryeo era.

And the supreme commander of that time was a name everyone knows.

And if the surname is Gang…

Grand General Gang Gam-chan??? (TL Note: Gang Gam-chan (948–1031) led Goryeo’s armies against the invading Khitan and destroyed them at the Battle of Gwiju in 1019; he is one of the two or three generals every Korean schoolchild can name.)

“It’s all empty. If you forget the sin in your own heart, that’s the end of it… Envoy Kang, ready the boat.”

“Yes, honored Daoist Official.”

“There is no Daoist Official any more. I’m the same soul as any other, going to the next world to walk the road of rebirth.”

Daoist Official? Ah—this former immortal grandpa’s post was clearly a senior one in the world of the immortals.

If a reaper is that careful with him, he’s no ordinary person.

“Young master. I’ll be going now. Please, don’t let that good heart of yours change, and look after the children, all of them.”

I nodded at the immortal’s words.

“I’ll do my best.”

“The young master’s merit has changed my descendant’s road ahead… and that merit I will certainly repay.”

Who on earth is this descendant?

I know exactly two people named Jo.

Attorney Jo and my friend Hyeong-seok.

My gut said it was the ancestral god on Hyeong-seok’s side.

“Not at all. Merit, you say? I never did it expecting anything.”

“Heaven’s law of interest is colder than this world’s. We will meet again. And then… give me just one thought, young master.”

What’s this? That look of certainty in his eyes?

“Let’s go, honored elder.”

“Let’s. Young master, I pray you achieve everything you wish for.”

“Go safely, honored elder.”

“I’ll see you next time.”

“General Gang—no, Envoy, go safely too.”

I bowed my head and saw the two of them off.

Swish.

The two forms stepped up into the ferryboat.

A technique of instant movement.

Before I knew it, an oar was in the hand of the reaper I suspected of being General Gang Gam-chan.

Creak, creak.

The boat moved, and though it looked slow, in an instant the two of them vanished into that unseen world across the river.

An old man who had been an immortal and became one of the dead, and a reaper who had been the grand general who beat the Khitan army.

My tie to them floated away downstream too.

(End of Chapter 69)