The solid wood floor beneath Xu Fu's feet was polished enough to reflect light like a mirror, the walls on either side were spotless and freshly white, and even the shoe cabinet was free of a single speck of dust.
This was wrong. Far too wrong.
No one had lived in this house for years, and because of the deaths and the haunting, even contractors refused to work here. It would already have been impressive if someone had just cleaned away the bloodstains. There was no way it would be this immaculate.
"An illusion...?"
Xu Fu, like before, didn't bother taking off her shoes. She stepped straight onto the gleaming wood floor. After Red Hood wiped the blood off her kitchen knife with her red cloak, she quickly followed after her.
There were two doors to Xu Fu's left, leading respectively to the living room and the kitchen.
In the kitchen, Xu Fu saw the silhouettes of what looked like a family of three.
The mother was wearing an apron and carrying dishes in her hands as she smiled and said, "Saki made today's meal, you know."
The daughter added happily, "But Mom taught me how."
The father praised her from the heart. "You're so capable."
A warm, harmonious family—but the scene of happiness shattered almost immediately.
The image shifted. The mother lay in a pool of blood, and the daughter clutched her corpse in utter grief, calling out to her over and over.
"I... I didn't mean to... we just argued a little... I only pushed her lightly and then..."
The space twisted again, transferring Xu Fu from the kitchen to the living room.
She saw the father and daughter again. This time they were sitting on the floor in dejection, the living room carpeted with sheets of paper covered in writing.
"Murderer," "Go die," "Turn yourselves in," "How do you still have the nerve to live," "Hurry up and die"...
Every one of them was the same kind of vicious curse.
"I... I can't take it anymore..." the daughter wept into her hands, on the verge of a complete breakdown.
Then, in the yard behind her, an emaciated old man seated in a wheelchair appeared.
"Do you want to be saved?" the old man coaxed slowly in a hoarse voice, corroding her heart a little more with every word. "If you do, I can teach you a secret ritual."
"If you complete it... Angel-sama will save you."
The scene shifted again, and Xu Fu was sent to a room on the second floor.
There, she saw the daughter forcing herself on her own father.
"No! How could I do something like that with my daughter?!"
"Dad! I want to be saved! That person said so! They said this would save us! We have to make a child!"
The next scene was in the bathroom.
The daughter held a crying infant high in her hands and smiled in delight.
"Now... Angel-sama has a vessel... and we... will soon be guided to paradise..."
Her fingers closed around the baby's throat and gradually tightened. She ignored the agony in its cries, her eyes filled with nothing but yearning for salvation.
"Angel-sama... please save me..."
That was where the visions born from the father and daughter's memories came to an end.
Xu Fu already remembered what kind of tragedy had taken place in this house.
But even seeing it again now still hurt.
An ordinary family of three had once lived here. Then the father accidentally killed the mother during an argument, and that was where the tragedy began.
From that day on, the father and daughter became "murderers" in the eyes of everyone around them. They were constantly subjected to slander and abuse, while misfortune after misfortune piled onto them until their minds finally broke.
And then, at that moment, a mysterious old man appeared before them. He taught them a ritual and told them that if they completed it, they would be saved.
The daughter blindly believed his words. The father didn't trust the old man, but his guilt toward his daughter left him unable to oppose her. In the end, the two of them carried out the ritual together to create Angel-sama.
The first stage of the ritual was to turn the mother's remains—the mother the father had killed by accident—into an altar.
The second stage was that once the child fathered by the two of them was born, it was killed immediately. Its corpse became the vessel for Angel-sama's soul, and the child's soul, nourished by the mother, became the prototype of Angel-sama.
In the third stage, the father and daughter worked together to murder many ordinary people, allowing Angel-sama to devour a huge number of souls and complete its growth. The previous owner had already mentioned that part.
The fourth stage, and the final one, was to find a host mother and successfully give birth to Angel-sama.
That final stage was where things went wrong.
The daughter had intended to use herself as the host mother and bring Angel-sama into the world, but she failed. Angel-sama died after bursting through her stomach, and she herself died horribly in the house.
When the father came home and saw his daughter's corpse, he completely broke down and hanged himself inside the house.
So when the owner had said earlier that the father and daughter "killed many people and then committed suicide," that wasn't actually correct. The only one who committed suicide was the father. The daughter died because of the evil spirit's curse—or, if you wanted to put it another way, because she dug her own grave.
The gaunt old man from earlier was one of the villains from the original story, a member of The Replaced.
They were an organization formed by evil spirits that had possessed spiritualists, though twenty years earlier the whole group had nearly been wiped out by a single spiritualist, and only that withered old man had survived by sheer luck.
Over those twenty years, The Replaced had recruited many new members. They not only spread various cursed objects, but also created all kinds of evil spirits, including Kuubou. The House of Annunciation where Xu Fu now stood was one of the many tragedies created by The Replaced.
"There's nothing of value left here anymore."
Red Hood's voice came from behind her.
"It seems something here has changed. I compared this place to our memory and found some abnormalities... We need to leave. We have to get back to Eiko and Yayoi-chan as quickly as possible."
"...You're right. Staying here any longer would just be a waste of time."
Xu Fu nodded, then turned to Red Hood and asked, "Can't you get me out of here?"
Red Hood shook her head, looking around as she analyzed the surroundings. "This is probably some kind of territory or Bounded Field. Ordinary attacks don't seem to be especially effective. If we want to get out, then either we use overwhelming destructive force, or..."
"Counter it with a territory of our own, right?"
Red Hood gave a slight nod. "Unfortunately, that isn't my specialty. This one's on you."
"All right~! Who could blame you, when Xu Fu-chan is both adorable and reliable~? This is what they call 'the capable work harder,' huh? Truly the troubles of a genius. 'Heaven envies talent,' and all that~!"
Xu Fu shrugged, the corners of her mouth lifting in smug satisfaction.
"Here~! Hold this for me."
She carefully handed the Lady Yu Doll she had been hugging the whole time to Red Hood, then repeatedly warned her, "Absolutely do not let my Lady Yu fall on the floor, got it? You need to cradle her even more gently, like you're protecting the most precious butterfly or flower in the world. Understood?"
Red Hood: ( -_- )
Red Hood said nothing. She just stared with her usual dead-fish eyes, wearing an expression straight out of a Bronya reaction image.
After temporarily entrusting the Lady Yu Doll to Red Hood, Xu Fu freed both her hands and formed the Enma Ten mudra.
"[DOMAIN EXPANSION: MALEVOLENT SHRINE]."
In an instant, all light around them was stripped away, and from behind Xu Fu, a shrine piled high with human and beast bones abruptly rose from the ground.
The next moment, countless invisible slashes surged out like a tidal wave and engulfed everything around the two of them.
It was a gigantic infant evil spirit, as large as a hill. Its appearance somewhat resembled Konjiki Ashisogi Jizō Matai Fukuin Shōtai from Bleach, except far more disgusting and deformed than even Mayuri Kurotsuchi's Bankai.
It had an absurdly swollen head and belly, but its arms and legs were short and underdeveloped like those of a larva. Altogether it looked like a tumorous gourd with limbs attached. Its distorted proportions made it unable to walk or move properly on its own, so it could only sit there in place.
Even more horrifying was its body, which looked as though it had been stitched together. Three infant faces were set into the rotting flesh at grotesque angles, its enormous brains exposed to the air. Six arms and six legs jutted from the main mass like grafted tree branches, and dense stitching crawled all over its body like centipede legs, as though it were a monster forcibly pieced together out of three dead babies.
Two withered branches protruded from its back in imitation of angel wings, and hanging from each branch were dozens of swaying human figures. The hanged souls swung gently like strips of dried meat with every motion of the massive evil spirit.
"..."
"..."
"I'm hungry..." The three faces of the infant evil spirit said in turn.
Suddenly, its grotesquely swollen belly began to expand and writhe without warning, as if something inside it was about to tear its way out.
"Ogug...? Agggh... Agugugug...!"
At first it was only a confused groan, but as the pain came and worsened, its mouth split wider and wider, the three faces twisting in unison as it let out a heart-rending scream.
Then, with a wet burst, countless invisible slashes tore open the evil spirit's bloated stomach. Chunks of viscera and reeking black blood spewed out together—and Xu Fu and Red Hood leapt out from inside.
Tucked under Red Hood's arms were Yayoi and Eiko, whom she had brought out of the evil spirit's stomach as well.
"Ugh... So we were inside that so-called Angel-sama's stomach that whole time? I think I'm going to throw up..."
Even though she had kept herself perfectly clean with Taoism Arts like cleansing and dust-avoidance, Xu Fu still felt unbearably disgusting, like after finishing a basketball game in summer gym class when your clothes stuck to your skin with sweat.
At that moment, Yayoi and Eiko both gradually came to.
They too had been trapped in the illusion created by the evil spirit, but the moment Red Hood rescued them, the illusions holding them had broken as well.
"Where... are we...?"
Eiko held her head, still dazed.
Yayoi, on the other hand, recovered quickly and thanked Red Hood and Xu Fu.
"Thank you, Hood. Xu Fu. Good thing we brought you with us... I didn't expect us to get dragged into an illusion the moment we stepped through the door." Yayoi frowned slightly, clearly annoyed at how easily she had fallen for it.
"That... is Angel-sama, right?"
Yayoi quickly noticed the enormous, bloated infant evil spirit ahead of them.
It was impossible not to. The thing was currently screaming its head off because its stomach had been ripped open and its food had escaped.
"...!"
"It hurts...! It hurts...!"
"My belly's ripped open...!"
This evil spirit had only been a newborn infant while it was alive, so naturally it had very little intelligence—nothing beyond the most basic instincts of a living thing: hunger, and attachment to its mother.
This evil spirit was different from the Angel-sama in Xu Fu's memory. The one before them was closer to a completed form—larger, with stranger abilities. And Xu Fu distinctly remembered there being three Angel-sama in this house.
Which meant that, for some reason, the three Angel-sama here had devoured one another and ultimately evolved into the winged Angel-sama before them.
Ah. So it was basically a Magneton. Or maybe a Dugtrio.
Xu Fu withdrew her gaze from Angel-sama, tilted her head toward Yayoi, and asked, "You saw the father and daughter's memories too?"
Yayoi gave a slight nod.
Xu Fu then looked toward Eiko.
Eiko was sitting collapsed on the floor, face deathly pale. One hand was gripping Red Hood's hand tightly, as if doing so could reassure her. Her other hand was pressed over her stomach, and she was breathing hard.
"Take it slow. Deep breaths."
Red Hood crouched beside Eiko, soothing her in a low voice while rubbing her back to help her steady her breathing.
With Red Hood's help, Eiko's face was still awful to look at, but her breathing gradually smoothed out, and the unfocused look in her eyes slowly returned to clarity as Red Hood's face reflected in them.
"Thank you, Hood... I'm feeling a little better now."
Xu Fu walked over to Eiko's side, her eyes holding both concern and curiosity.
"You look terrible. What did you see in the illusion?"
All three of them had been caught in the evil spirit's illusion, yet Eiko's condition was far worse than Xu Fu's or Yayoi's—and that was definitely not because Eiko had a weaker mind.
Unlike Xu Fu and the others, who had watched the whole sequence unfold like a film from the perspective of outsiders, Eiko not only saw the father and daughter's memories, but at the end she personally experienced the daughter's death.
She saw her own stomach ripped open by the evil spirit inside her, felt the agony spread through her entire body, passed out from the pain only to wake back up from it again and again, and in the end died a miserable death under a level of torment beyond what any normal person could imagine.
It left Eiko with severe psychological trauma.
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T/N: domain expansionnnnnnnnnnnnn