BSA Ch 19

Agriculture is a labor-intensive industry. Since he was too busy farming, he didn’t even care whether a clan of swindlers claiming to be gods monopolized power for over 800 years. The ‘land of gods’ is a country of simple-minded farmers. Mukso thought so.

First, Mukso tested the waters. He dispatched advance troops disguised as bandits to observe the power status in the border region of the ‘land of gods’ for two years. The following year, under the pretext that “Historically, weren’t the continent the hyung and the peninsula the younger brother? This hyung will liberate the common people of the peninsula who are groaning under a tyrannical power,” Mukso deployed a force of one hundred thousand to the border line. It goes without saying that they called themselves the “Peninsula Liberation Army.”

However, Mukso decided not to march south immediately, but to station at the border for ten days and watch the trend. It was a measure to wait a moment until the leaders of the East peninsula sold out their country themselves.

On the seventh day of the stationing, hundreds of makeshift outdoor screens were suddenly set up at the border. Without even giving the snakes time to carefully consider the purpose of the screens, the first screening was carried out promptly, and even the snakes, who boasted a reputation as a slaughter group, were dumbfounded by that work. The lead actors who appeared on the screen were the vanguard unit members and officers of the “Peninsula Liberation Army.”

The four hundred vanguard unit members were massacred with extreme cruelty over the course of seven hours. The officers praised god and gang-raped each other. All the killers appearing in the video wore black masks revealing only their eyes and black uniforms.

Shockingly, that cruelty was performed in the form of a ritual. The masked men prayed enthusiastically and wailed throughout the whole time they were violating the snakes. The screen video mobilized even an interpreter to explain the ritual in detail. It was about how, to resist the snakes eyeing their land, they had no choice but to rely on the clairvoyance of the great Lee Hwa—the god and ruler they served—and that to receive foresight from Lee Hwa, they had to offer blood rituals every night.

As much as he had concluded the ‘land of gods’ was merely a land of simple-minded farmers, the shock Mukso received was immense. It was an act utterly impossible without going mad. In particular, the video of officers gang-raping each other brought the snakes a sense of absurdity that went beyond fear. Of course, the snakes also openly gang-raped male prisoners behind the scenes. Sometimes they cut off the throat of an occupied territory leader’s wife or young daughter just to flaunt their cruelty. However, they did not execute the act of filming that and holding a large-scale public screening under the guise of a military operation.

It was excessively cruel and extreme to be dismissed as a show put on by desperate rats scurrying to survive. Even if it stopped at murder and torture, which army of which nation would film the officers of an enemy country gang-raping each other and publicly screen it?

The ‘land of gods’ was not a country of farmers, but a country of religious fanatics. Mukso concluded so. There is no medicine for a madman; if the entire citizenry were fanatics, he expected resistance to be immense. Thinking that he needed to boost the morale of his soldiers first, Mukso delayed the peninsula liberation project by two weeks.

Right the next day, the officers who had appeared naked in the screen video were found near the snakes’ supply base with their eyeballs gouged out. They stated to Mukso that they had been attacked in the middle of the night by a tall man.

“As soon as the man appeared, half of the vanguard unit members died with their heads exploding. As if that wasn’t enough, swords moved on their own to target us. In this terrifying situation, we had no choice but to follow the man.”

In summary, it was an absurd claim that a single person killed four hundred people in one minute and kidnapped four hundred people without shedding a single drop of sweat.

“In the barracks of the fanatics, there was a pyramid-like giant temple… From a certain moment, a burning worship toward god welled up in my heart… When I came to my senses, I was praising god and ecstatically entangled with my fellow officers… God has a mysterious ability to manipulate human minds…”

The officers said, sniffling. Enraged, Mukso ordered them to commit suicide.

The next day, the screen showed a new release. The actors in this new release were the secret unit members stationed at the interception site. In a single night, out of seven hundred fifty unit members, four hundred fifty died with their heads exploding, and three hundred were kidnapped and appeared naked on the screen. The snakes praised god and gang-raped a superior officer before being brutally slaughtered by the fanatics at the very end.

The ritualist standing tall in a black cloak at the altar said that the great god had given a revelation to inform them of the secret unit’s stronghold, and urged them to perform the rituals even more enthusiastically as his clairvoyance increased the more blood he drank. The fanatics wept and vowed to catch snakes and perform rituals even more passionately.

Right after the screening of the new release, deserters popped up everywhere in the snakes’ units. The number of deserters generated in that single night alone approached four thousand. Among them, even seven field-grade officers were included.

For the next two weeks, seven units were attacked, resulting in a total of two thousand seven hundred deaths and two thousand one hundred appearances in the ‘blood ritual ceremony’ video. In front of the fanatics wailing while hacking snakes to pieces with swords, the ritualist said that god was still thirsty.

Mukso was convinced there was a spy among the staff. After beheading all the strategists who participated in the operation, just in case, he delayed the peninsula liberation project by one week. The concern proved correct. During that one week, the screen showed a total of five new releases. Eight hundred thirty people died and about four hundred appeared as lead actors.

What was even more surprising was that the released officers unanimously stated that they had been targeted by a single tall man. They consistently claimed that he appeared in a way that was utterly impossible unless he fell from the sky. Mukso beheaded all the officers.

However, the feeling of fear had already spread like a plague. Field-grade officers deserting occurred day after day. Company-grade officers, who watched screen videos every night of field-grade officers being gang-raped by an average of about one hundred people, walked around wearing their subordinates’ clothes. The top-down command system was completely paralyzed. Sinister rumors circulated among the soldiers. God foresees the future a thousand years later. God drinks human blood every meal. God manipulates people’s minds. The people of the ‘land of gods’ are overjoyed at the arrival of snake intrusion as sacrificial food to be offered to god. The man who fell from the sky is the angel of death sent by god.

In fact, the snakes were missing an important point, having been dumbfounded by the frenzy of the ritual ceremony. The fanatics appearing in the ritual ceremony video amounted to only about a hundred people, and they had only killed about seven thousand people over three weeks. Humans, unlike animals, have imagination, it is said. The ritual ceremony video had dramatically developed the snakes’ imagination, in a way pumping up the presence of the fanatics in their heads to rival a million-strong army.

At that opportune moment, ‘Ilhwawolguk (日和月國)’ led by Wang Hui invaded the snakes’ western border and caused a disturbance. Mukso gave up and turned back. However, the ‘Peninsula Liberation Army’ was deployed at the border as is, so that they could march south at any time. Even after Mukso left, the fanatics caught snakes about once a week and offered them to god as a meal. The screen repeated live broadcasts, reruns, and third-run broadcasts.

The fanatics’ rituals spread by word of mouth and hit the Western continent. Eventually, a reporter sneaked into the snakes’ barracks, filmed this shocking continent-scale cult religious ritual, and broke it as a scoop. The fact that the “Feathered Snakes”—the invincible slaughter group counted among the best on the Western continent—was served as food to a mere cult leader on average about once a week became known throughout the Western continent as well as overseas. Mukso felt immense shame.

Gradually, the fanatics took to haunting the area even in broad daylight to hunt snakes. Not only that, they raided only strongholds like ghosts and ran away nimbly just before reinforcements arrived. Since the fanatics always wore masks and committed suicide immediately if they were ever caught, information could not be squeezed out of them. In addition, the fanatics distributed Lee Hwa’s statements in leaflets once a year. The terrifying prophecies printed on the leaflets hit the mark without a single exception, and the morale of the Peninsula Liberation Army plummeted endlessly. As a result, during just one year of stationing at the border, a staggering twelve thousand deserters ended up occurring.