Taira no Masakado.
In life, he had possessed peerless martial skill. After surviving a family power struggle, he declared independence from the imperial court, unified the Kanto region in opposition to the Emperor, and even called himself the "New Emperor." For that, he was branded a rebel and put down roughly two months later.
His head was taken back to Kyoto and displayed in public. Over time, his ghost, steeped in rage and hatred, transformed into a vengeful spirit. It was said that, in search of a body so he could wage war once more, his severed head flew east.
People built the Taira no Masakado Head Mound where his head was first said to have landed, hoping to soothe his resentment.
As one of Japan's Three Great Vengeful Spirits, he should not have been this weak.
And yet, even he had been unable to withstand the erosion of time. Over the long years, he had lost both his strength and his memories.
Yayoi Hozuki had encountered him at the Taira no Masakado Head Mound, just before he was about to fade away. By then, Taira no Masakado had already lost almost all of his power and memory, so although Yayoi had her suspicions about who he was, she had not been able to confirm it.
Several evil spirit clones wrapped his arms in their hair, trying to pin down his movements, only to be yanked toward him by sheer brute force.
Taira no Masakado's hand, like an iron vise, clamped down on one of the dragged-over clones. The muscles in his arm tightened like drawn bowstrings, and with a howling rush of air, he swung it like a giant hammer into the others.
A series of crisp cracks rang out as bones shattered. The struck clones flew apart like bowling pins, their foul black blood and shredded flesh bursting through the air in a gruesome rain.
By the time he was done, the clone still clenched in Taira no Masakado's hand had been reduced to a short length of spine still connected to its head and scraps of organs. He swung that too like a flail and smashed it into the other clones.
The scene was hideously bloody.
Taira no Masakado was strong, but one evil spirit could only handle one side at a time.
"Behind us! Those evil spirits are coming from behind!" Keitaro Gentoga suddenly cried out.
The clones that had been blocking their retreat had finally started to advance as well. Their black hair writhed across the floor, the strands scraping along the ground and walls with a scalp-prickling rustle.
Xu Fu turned to Yayoi. "Do you have any other Pokémon on you... ah, no, I mean other evil spirits?"
Yayoi shook her head. "No. But... I still have this child."
In front of Xu Fu, Yayoi raised her right index finger. It wasn't some meaningful gesture—rather, she was wearing a kangaroo-shaped finger cover on it, and tucked into the kangaroo's pouch was a bit of stone that looked like a finger broken off from some statue.
The spiritual power lingering in that severed finger gathered into an invisible blade, effortlessly slicing through the clones' hair.
It naturally made one wonder: if even a single severed finger still held such immense spiritual power, just how powerful must its owner have been?
Kishimojin.
That was who the finger had belonged to.
She had originally been an evil deity that devoured infants. But after Shakyamuni hid her own child and made her experience the pain of parents who lose their children, she turned over a new leaf, stopped eating infants, and became a guardian deity of children instead.
However, the Kishimojin Yayoi had encountered had been surrounded by a great mass of infant spirits. Before she could send them all on to the afterlife, she herself was corrupted by their influence, underwent a malignant transformation, and fell into becoming an evil spirit.
At first, Yayoi had wanted to subdue that fallen deity. But in the end, she had underestimated the power of a god, and had no choice but to lower her expectations and take only one of its fingers.
First Red Hood, then Taira no Masakado, then Kishimojin's finger—Xu Fu and the others' seemingly endless array of methods cowed the evil spirit clones into hesitation. For the moment, they no longer dared approach.
Seeing that, Yayoi turned to Xu Fu and asked expressionlessly, "What about you, Xu Fu? Do you have any other methods you can use? Can the doll you're holding fight evil spirits like Red Hood can?"
"No way~!" Xu Fu blurted out in sudden agitation, like a cat that had just had its tail stepped on. "How could my great and beautiful Lady Yu possibly fight disgusting filthy things like these~? Xu Fu-chan would never allow it~!"
Yayoi, Eiko Hozuki, and Keitaro all froze for a moment. There was no way they could understand why Xu Fu treasured a doll this much.
At that moment, the evil spirit clones stopped hesitating and charged again.
"There's no need for Lady Yu to step in against small fry like these~! Let me show you what a real curse looks like~!"
Xu Fu strode forward calmly, shielding Eiko behind her without drawing attention to it.
Faced with those strands of hair rushing toward them like black pythons, Xu Fu slowly raised her right hand. She pressed her index and middle fingers together into a sword seal, her sharp eyes widening slightly as her red lips parted and a single metallic, cutting syllable left them.
"[CLEAVE]"
The instant the word fell, it was as if an invisible slash had passed through the hall. A savage gash abruptly appeared in the corridor wall, while the onrushing hair suddenly halted—then snapped apart a heartbeat later.
Then came a second slash. A third. A fourth. A fifth...
In the span of a single breath, hundreds upon thousands of invisible slashes filled the corridor.
"With hair that long, you really ought to get a trim~," Xu Fu said lightly, almost as a joke.
No matter how tough it was, hair became fragile under that barrage. The unseen slashes not only shredded the hair lunging at them, they also sliced apart the bodies of the evil spirit clones themselves.
It was like being hit by Gildarts's [Crush Magic]—every single clone was diced into evenly sized chunks of flesh.
Though what lay before them now was far bloodier than Gildarts's magic ever was. At the very least, being hit by [Crush Magic] didn't spray this much blood or leave things this thoroughly minced.
"Ugh..."
Keitaro covered his mouth, his face turning ugly. The sheer gore of it made him queasy.
"Uh... sorry. I wasn't trying to scare you." Seeing his reaction, Xu Fu reflected seriously. "Maybe I should've cut them into even smaller pieces?"
Human flesh triggered an instinctive wave of revulsion in people. But if you minced it finely enough and told them it was beef or pork, they wouldn't feel nearly as sickened by it.
Unlike Keitaro and Eiko, who had both been frightened, Yayoi was not scared in the slightest. On the contrary, her eyes were shining.
"Hey~! Hey~! Xu Fu-chan~! What was that?" Yayoi dashed forward in one step and hugged Xu Fu, speaking in a soft, syrupy, coaxing tone. "That thing—that thing that went bam and wiped out all the evil spirits—what was it? Taoism Arts? Or a curse? Can I learn it? Can you teach me? I want to learn that move~!"
Yayoi went around capturing evil spirits because she wanted to find Kuubou and rescue her mother. So as long as something would help with that, she was willing to do it. She was not limiting herself to the single path of capturing evil spirits.
Xu Fu's sudden burst of force startled even the giant evil spirit's main body.
Compared to the power shown by those invisible slashes, what was truly terrifying was the malice buried inside that curse... And because it was an evil spirit, it could feel with exceptional clarity just how deep and vile that malice was.
And in that single moment of distraction, Taira no Masakado seized his chance to rush in front of it, his fist blasting forward on a storm of brutal force.
Thoom!
The air compressed to its limit, then burst apart into a sweeping gale.
"Gyiiiiiihhhhhh—!!"
The blurry face on the wall shattered apart by nearly a third under Taira no Masakado's punch. It had only just let out a shrill scream when his next fist was already crashing in.
With a roar, Taira no Masakado pressed on, his presence blazing like fire, his fists raining down in a merciless storm until the giant evil spirit's main body was smashed completely to pulp.
"Gyaaaaaahhhhhh—!!"
"Gyaaaahhhhhh—!!"
"Nagugugog...!!"
The surviving clones all dissolved amid shrill wails, turning into black ash that scattered on the wind.
Silence fell over the corridor once more. Even the clones Xu Fu had chopped into chunks with [CLEAVE] crumbled away on the air. Only the savage slash-mark on the wall remained behind, stark and shocking to the eye.
Xu Fu: "..."
...Oops. Did I go a little too hard on the showing-off?
Keitaro looked around and saw that every last evil spirit was gone without a trace. The corridor had returned to its former stillness, and only the pounding of his own heart refused to calm down.
"Did we... win?"
His gaze passed over Eiko, Yayoi, and Xu Fu in turn. Seeing that all three of them were safe, Keitaro felt as though a great burden had been lifted from him, and he smiled.
"Thank god..."
Before he could fully voice his relief, an icy chill suddenly raced through his entire body, as though a giant hand had seized his heart and flooded him with cold deep enough to reach his bones.
Almost on instinct, Keitaro shoved Eiko away from his side.
And in the very next second, the solid reassurance of the floor beneath his feet vanished.
The giant evil spirit they had thought Taira no Masakado had already destroyed suddenly appeared beneath Keitaro and opened its mouth to devour him.
Because she had been pushed away in time, Eiko did not fall into the giant evil spirit's mouth along with him.
I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead...!
His body dropped into a bottomless darkness. Sight, hearing, smell—every sense was stripped away. All he could feel was his body heat slowly draining from him, while endless fear and unease gnawed at his sanity and threatened to crush his soul to pieces.
In a daze, it felt as though several years had passed—or perhaps only a single instant.
Then the gold bracelet on Keitaro's wrist suddenly burst into brilliant light, and in an instant all darkness, all fear, all unease were swept away.
Everything around him was flooded in holy gold.
"Gyaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh—!!"
Under that golden radiance, the evil spirit let out a scream as shrill as Tom Cat falling into boiling water.
Wherever the light touched its body, it melted like snow beneath the warm sun. And what made it worse was that the source of the light was inside it—there was nowhere it could flee from it.
"No...! No...! I don't want to die...! It hurts...! It's hot...! It's too bright...! I'm burning up...!"
Keitaro crashed heavily onto the hospital corridor floor.
The badly wounded giant evil spirit had spat him back out.
This proved, once again, that you shouldn't go around eating random things. It was a good way to upset your stomach.
The weakened giant evil spirit no longer wanted to keep fighting. It wanted to flee. That battle had cost it too many clones, and even its main body had suffered severe damage. It needed to devour other spiritual bodies to recover, just like that old woman evil spirit from before.
It had complete confidence in its ability to escape. If it could slip beneath Keitaro's feet without anyone noticing, then naturally it could also vanish just as silently.
But just as it tried to use the same trick again and disappear from right under Xu Fu and the others' noses, chain after chain suddenly appeared out of the void and bound the giant evil spirit fast in place.
The iron links clashed with cold metallic rings. No matter how hard it struggled, they only drew tighter and tighter, utterly cutting off its chance to escape.
"Because of my carelessness before, that old woman got away. But... I won't make the same mistake twice."
A streak of red shot in through the broken window, and Red Hood's declaration rang through the corridor, her words steeped in icy killing intent.
During her battle with Leaf in the dungeon, Red Hood had learned the skill [Execution], which bound an opponent for one turn.
And aside from [Execution], she had learned one other skill in that battle as well.
"[BLESSED DELIVERANCE]!"
That was the final blow Red Hood had unleashed to sever forever the hateful fate Leaf had laid out for her. Used together with [Execution], its power could be pushed to the limit.
In an instant, black-and-white sword-light shattered everything!
"Gogogog...!!"
That cry was the giant evil spirit's end.
Not a fake death like before, but complete and utter annihilation.
Red Hood, having returned in time, delivered the finishing blow.
Even though Xu Fu had already guaranteed it, Keitaro and Eiko—who had only just escaped death—still couldn't fully put their hearts at ease.
Yayoi, meanwhile, felt it was a pity. This time, she had failed to catch either the old woman evil spirit or the giant evil spirit. Her only gain was that Taira no Masakado had devoured several clones, bringing him a tiny bit closer to his peak.
Oh—and almost forgot. There was also the greater half of the old woman evil spirit's body, the part she had abandoned when she pulled that lizard-tail escape. Yayoi had already sealed that into a doll.
"It's over~! Finally, we can go back and sleep~!"
Out of the four of them, only Xu Fu was smiling brightly.
While the other three weren't looking, Red Hood checked today's haul.
"That giant evil spirit gave quite a respectable amount of souls~. I can strengthen Red Hood again~"
At that thought, Xu Fu's smile turned even brighter.