Strips of cloud drifted across the blue sky overhead. A breeze passed through, drawing a rustling whisper from the leaves.
Even from far away, you could already feel the heavy dampness in the air.
With Eiko Hozuki driving, Xu Fu and the others arrived at the entrance to their destination, Old I Watergate.
As they got out of the car, Yayoi Hozuki spotted that someone had gotten there before them.
"Looks like someone's already here..."
Eiko Hozuki had originally been planning to pull out her phone and look up the local ghost stories online, but at Yayoi Hozuki's words, she turned to look at the figure in the distance instead.
The moment she did, she felt a faint sense of familiarity.
"That's weird... Keitaro-kun, don't you think that person looks familiar?"
"Huh?"
Now that Eiko Hozuki mentioned it, Keitaro Gentoga realized she was right.
Rubbing his chin, he said in confusion, "Yeah... I feel like I've seen her on TV before..."
Then, suddenly, he smacked his right fist into his left palm as the memory clicked into place.
"Ah...! I remember now! Isn't she that spiritualist who used to show up on paranormal shows all the time?"
"Ahh, you're right! Now I remember too!" Eiko Hozuki's eyes lit up with surprise.
The moment she heard the word spiritualist, Yayoi Hozuki perked right up and started yanking hard at Keitaro Gentoga's sleeve with enough force to nearly tear his clothes.
"A spiritualist? Tell me, tell me! What kind of person are they?"
"Hey, hey! I'm looking her up right now, so stop pulling on my clothes, Yayoi! You're going to rip them! Seriously, why are you this interested?"
The old woman who had arrived at Old I Water Gate before Xu Fu and the others was the well-known paranormal researcher Nagiko Shami.
Based on what they found online, around ten years ago she often appeared on paranormal programs, visiting haunted spots to use Spiritual Sight, burning spirit photographs, and the like.
Lately, she seemed to appear mostly on paranormal web shows, and not long ago she had gone viral online because of the incident where she performed an exorcism for a taxi driver acting strangely at Z Graveyard.
"Z Graveyard?" Eiko Hozuki was visibly taken aback. "Isn't that one of the A-Rank haunted spots we were planning to visit?"
Yayoi Hozuki reacted just as fast. "...She got there before us?!"
Keitaro Gentoga kept scrolling through the information on his phone. "And what she did after that overlaps with our plans too... Apparently, after that, she went to Old K Tunnel and came back safely."
Old K Tunnel, completed in 1912 and 79.4 meters long, was the site where the victims' bodies in Tsutomu Miyazaki's world-shocking serial child abduction and murder case were abandoned. Even before that incident, the tunnel had already been famous because people claimed to have seen ghosts there. After the murders, people often said they had seen the spirits of the murdered girls inside the tunnel.
Its danger level had been classified by Yayoi Hozuki as S-Rank.
"Old K Tunnel is S-Rank too... which means..." Eiko Hozuki's lips trembled as she slowly parted them, her voice full of tension and unease. "It's the same as... as this place, right? The same as Old I Watergate?"
Someone had gone to an S-Rank haunted spot alone and come back unharmed...
That person clearly had the real thing.
At the very least, the sort of people who struggled just to drive off even "kindergarten kid" level evil spirits definitely could not have pulled that off.
Yayoi Hozuki was extremely interested in the elderly spiritualist. Turning to Xu Fu, she asked curiously, "Xu Fu is a really amazing Taoist too, so that old lady should basically be in the same line of work as you, right? Do you know her?"
Xu Fu had not interrupted the three of them once during their conversation. Her eyes had remained fixed on the elderly spiritualist in the distance the entire time, and only when Yayoi Hozuki asked her did she casually look away.
"Nope~! Xu Fu is a super important figure, you know? For someone to be remembered by the cutest Xu Fu in the world, they'd naturally have to be some giant name known far and wide, someone the whole world has its eyes on~!"
People like Kiichi Hogen, Minamoto-no-Raikou, Abe no Seimei, Ashiya Douman, and Kichijouin Kiara—Sessyoin Kiara—those were the truly famous names in Japan when it came to exorcising evil.
Since she was not getting anything useful out of Xu Fu, Yayoi Hozuki decisively ran straight up to Nagiko Shami.
"Hey, granny! Are you really some amazing spirit medium? Let me see what you can do!"
Nagiko Shami stared straight at Yayoi Hozuki, her brows drawing together slightly.
"What's with this pushy little squirt...?"
"Yayoi! Hey...! Yayoi-chan!"
Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki hurried over at once.
Keitaro Gentoga grabbed Yayoi Hozuki and said in a panic, "Yayoi-chan, doing that the moment you meet someone is seriously rude!"
Eiko Hozuki bowed to Nagiko Shami over and over in apology. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! We heard you were famous, so she got a little too excited... We really don't mean any harm. We just like you that much, that's all..."
Nagiko Shami said nothing. She only kept staring fixedly at Keitaro Gentoga's face.
Then, all at once, Keitaro Gentoga's pupils contracted and his whole body gave a violent shudder.
What was that? Just now... I suddenly felt something really awful...
Unlike the others, Xu Fu did not come running over. Instead, she walked over at an easy, steady pace to Keitaro Gentoga's side and gave Nagiko Shami a long, hard look.
Then Nagiko Shami abruptly asked, "Did you come here knowing what kind of place this is?"
That bone-deep chill, as though it might freeze his spine solid, still lingered in Keitaro Gentoga's body. Even so, he forced himself to act calm and nodded.
"Yeah... This is Old I Watergate, commonly known as the Red Watergate. It's an S-Rank haunted spot."
Nagiko Shami lifted her eyes slightly and noticed the alien doll cradled in Yayoi Hozuki's arms.
That... didn't seem to be an ordinary evil spirit at all. It felt like something far more exalted.
"S?"
"We made the danger ratings for haunted spots ourselves, just to make things easier," Yayoi Hozuki explained flatly. "S-Rank means the kind of place where, once you get involved, there's no escaping. You might get trapped inside, or you might get hit with a curse that ignores distance. That kind of bad."
"Knowing how dangerous this place is, I'm impressed you still dared come here," Nagiko Shami said with feeling.
Eiko Hozuki asked curiously, "Shami-san, are you here to perform an exorcism?"
"Mm... something like that."
As she said it, Nagiko Shami instinctively glanced at her bag.
"If you're curious about this place, you can follow me." Her gaze swept across Xu Fu and the others, lingering on Keitaro Gentoga a little longer than on the rest. "With my abilities, I should be able to keep you all safe."
"Huh? Really? Then thank you so much—"
Their conversation was warm, almost absurdly harmonious.
But Xu Fu had already lost all patience with it.
"Hood."
The instant Xu Fu called out, Red Hood's figure appeared behind Nagiko Shami like a phantom.
Her face was completely swallowed by shadow. Only her crimson eyes shone there, like soul-lanterns heralding death.
She drew her sword—
And swung.
There was not a trace of wasted motion in the entire sequence. It was so clean and direct it bordered on beautiful.
The ringing cry of the blade as it split the air was the evening bell for the dead.
One stroke was all it took.
Nagiko Shami's head flew high before she had even realized she was dead.
The same went for Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki. They could only stand there numbly, watching Nagiko Shami's head arc upward and crash back down, their minds unable to catch up.
Only when that severed, bloodied head rolled across the ground and, by chance, met their eyes did they finally snap back to themselves, their faces going deathly pale in an instant.
"Ah... aaaahhhhhhh—!!"
For a moment, everything before Keitaro Gentoga's eyes turned black and white.
He staggered backward, his legs giving out under him until he collapsed to the ground. His voice shook violently with terror.
"Xu Fu-chan...! Y-you... you killed someone...?!"
Of the three, only Yayoi Hozuki remained completely unfazed.
She trusted Xu Fu. If Xu Fu had done something that looked this monstrously cruel, then there had to be a reason for it.
"Shami-san... had something wrong with her?"
"Yes. I knew it the moment I saw her." Xu Fu never turned to look at Yayoi Hozuki. Her gaze stayed fixed on Nagiko Shami as if she were talking to the dead woman herself. "So don't think a cheap trick like playing dead is enough to fool me~."
But no answer came.
Nagiko Shami looked truly dead. There was not the slightest movement.
"...I see. So you really like this body, huh."
Xu Fu's expression gradually darkened. A yellow talisman slipped between her index and middle fingers, and when she spoke again, her voice was cold.
"If you like it that much, then I'll seal you inside this body completely. For a thousand years, ten thousand years, until your soul is annihilated. I'll make sure you can never leave this tiny cage for all eternity."
That expression. That tone.
That surging, blazing power.
That crushing pressure, heavy as a mountain.
She did not sound as if she were joking in the slightest.
Even Keitaro Gentoga and the others, who had known Xu Fu for a while now, believed she meant every word.
Which meant the thing hiding inside Nagiko Shami's body and pretending to be dead believed it even more.
Like a bolt of lightning, a streak of black aura suddenly shot out of Nagiko Shami's corpse and fled without a backward glance.
That body was rare, and its talent in spiritual matters was incredibly high—but if she got sealed inside it for a thousand years, ten thousand years, she might as well just die for real! Damn it, damn it, damn it! She had only come out for a casual stroll, so why had she run into someone this unreasonable?! How had that terrifying little girl found her? How had her neck been cut off without the slightest warning? Why was any of this happening?!
The evil spirit that had stolen Nagiko Shami's body ran with all its might.
And still, Xu Fu caught it by the head and slammed it brutally into the ground.
"Brat, brat, brat... you hateful little brat...!"
It was an evil spirit with disheveled hair and a body over three meters long, everything below the head wrapped tightly in a filthy rag.
Its face was hidden behind that curtain of hair, but that did not stop it from hurling every filthy curse and insult it could at Xu Fu.
Xu Fu ignored all of it completely—the stream of abuse spilling from the evil spirit's mouth, and the black mist coiling around it that could steadily eat away at the life force of the living. None of it affected her in the slightest.
"You're the evil spirit haunting Old K Tunnel, aren't you?"
Looking down calmly at the spirit struggling desperately beneath her palm, Xu Fu said, "So it seems Shami-san didn't go to Old K Tunnel, perform an exorcism, and return safely like the internet claimed. You stole her body there instead, didn't you?"
"So what if I did?" Mockery thickened in the evil spirit's voice. "That woman may have been born into a highly respected spiritualist family, but her own talent was mediocre. So she chose to stay active online and build up fame that way. Then, in the end, she overestimated herself and came to Old K Tunnel. Thanks to that arrogance, she handed me the perfect vessel on a silver platter. A spiritualist's body is just too useful!"
"What a shame. I have no interest in your personal opinions."
Xu Fu's fingers pressed down slightly.
The evil spirit pinned beneath her hand began shaking all over as though some unbearable torment had suddenly descended on it.
It could not understand it at all. Since when had a monster this terrifying—and this young—appeared in the world? Why was there nothing in Nagiko Shami's memories about someone like her? Had she crawled out of some crack in a rock like Sun Wukong or something?!
Then Xu Fu spoke again, and the evil spirit's body went rigid all at once.
"There are some things I want to ask you... about The Replaced."
"!!!"
Even without being able to see its face clearly, the shock rolling off the evil spirit was unmistakable.
"Y-you... how do you know that? What exactly do you know...? Gahhh!!"
"I'm the one asking questions here. You have no right to question me back."
Xu Fu's voice was glacial. Beneath her lowered lashes, her eyes were colder than the dead of winter.
Suddenly, the evil spirit felt an incomparably terrifying chill descend over it.
At the core of that chill...
DEATH.
Death ought to have been nothing more than a concept.
And yet here, it felt as though it had taken on form—clear enough to be seen with perfect clarity.
Death by old age.
Death by illness.
Death by poison.
Death by blood loss.
Death by wasting away.
Death by fright.
Death by knife.
Death by strangling rope.
Death by the jaws of beasts.
Death by crushing stone.
Death by flame.
Death by explosion.
Death by natural disaster.
Death by human calamity.
Death by accident.
Death by murder.
Death by curse.
Ten thousand kinds of death.
Every concept of death had been gathered here.
A god of death?
No...
Nothing so minor as that.
This was something far more terrifying, far higher in the order of things.
The true supreme being who held all the "deaths" in this world within itself.
The evil spirit could not say a word.
Xu Fu raised an index finger to her lips, the corner of her mouth lifting into a smile that was not quite a smile as she looked down at the evil spirit trembling on the ground like a dying dog.
"Mind your words and actions if you want to live longer... isn't that right~?"
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T/N: AURAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA