Breathe—inhale. Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe…
She had to focus completely, utterly, devote every shred of her mind to breathing just to keep from being crushed by that overwhelming malice.
Is she human?
The thought had barely surfaced before she strangled it herself.
No. Impossible. How could any human possess an aura like that, like some demon or god? That was not the pressure of a strong person. It was something more abstract, something even more despair-inducing—as if she were staring death itself in the face, or plunging to the very bottom of an abyss.
So… is she actually one of my own kind?
Something older than her, nobler than her in its evil—something like herself, wearing human skin?
The question bobbed in the icy flood of her terror, yet she had lost even the courage to turn it into words.
Dorothy felt that any tiny movement she made—a tremor of her eyelashes, a twitch of her fingertips, even the sound of blood moving through her veins—could become sufficient reason for the other party to erase her from this world.
All she could do was remain like a frozen statue, using every ounce of strength she had to maintain that abject kneeling posture.
Breathing… breathing has to be allowed, right? She wouldn't kill me just for breathing… right?
At that moment, the shadow behind Xu Fu, which had been empty a moment ago, began to twist and writhe without warning, like ink dropped into still water.
Four figures slowly precipitated out of the deepest darkness.
At first they were only blurred outlines, ominous silhouettes. Then they rapidly sharpened and solidified, exposing their hideous true forms beneath the park's bleak moonlight and the dying glow of the distant streetlamp.
One wore a mask of human skin and carried a chainsaw.
One wore a white rubber mask and a blue coverall.
One wore a hockey mask and carried a machete and an axe.
One wore a red-and-green striped sweater and a metal claw glove, his face horribly scarred by burns.
They were the four great slashers of horror cinema, four icons of terror etched into film history, the source of countless midnight shudders.
The one wearing a mask that looked as though it had been flayed from a living face and crudely stitched back together, carrying an old gasoline chainsaw in hand, was Jedidiah Sawyer, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The one in the smooth, unnaturally blank white rubber mask and grimy dark-blue coveralls was Michael Myers from Halloween.
The hulking figure in the battered hockey mask was Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th.
And the slightly hunched figure in the filthy red-and-green striped sweater, his face covered in hideous scars left by severe burns, was Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
These four horror killers, beings that should have existed only in films and once brought fear and fright to countless people, now stood quietly behind Xu Fu like the most loyal of subordinates.
And yet the dreadful aura pouring off them was no less fearsome than the Graduates under Yayoi Hozuki's command. They were like four tombstones radiating blood and despair, and every last one of them made Dorothy's heart quail.
"Ah… I'm getting tired of standing."
Xu Fu complained softly, a trace of lazy impatience in her tone.
The instant the words left her mouth, the four slashers behind her understood at once.
Jason and Michael produced an old velvet sofa from who-knew-where and set it firmly behind Xu Fu. Its dark-red upholstery gleamed faintly under the moonlight, utterly out of place in the ruined park.
Xu Fu sat down as if it were only natural, leaned back lightly, braced an elbow on the armrest, and rested the back of her hand against her cheek.
It was a casual posture, but against the backdrop of those four terrifying beings behind her, it somehow radiated the oppressive majesty of a queen seated upon her throne.
She lowered her gaze slightly, and her cold eyes stabbed down like icicles at Dorothy, who was still sprawled in full prostration, wishing she could bury herself in the dirt.
At the same time, Leatherface and Freddy glided forward soundlessly like weightless specters and stopped on either side of Dorothy's body.
They did not lower their heads to look at her, but the gleam of Freddy's metal claws, the grime on the chainsaw blade, and the soundless cruelty rolling off both of them had already formed a tangible ring around her.
Dorothy could even feel, from the left, the slick, scorching psychic corruption unique to Freddy's nightmare-born nature, and from the right, the cold killing intent coming off Leatherface, thick with the stench of a slaughterhouse.
She herself was an extremely dangerous evil spirit. By the standards Yayoi Hozuki used, she too was a powerful evil spirit rated S-Rank in danger.
And yet, judging from their auras alone, each of these four slashers was more dangerous than she was.
Not to mention Xu Fu, who had all four of them bowing at her feet.
Her body shook like a leaf in a gale, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably.
"I thought you'd at least drop to one knee to preserve the last scrap of your dignity," Xu Fu said again, her voice perfectly calm, each word tapping against Dorothy's already fraying nerves. "I didn't expect you to throw yourself flat on the ground without even a second's hesitation. Hah. Smart little thing, aren't you?"
The moment Xu Fu spoke, Dorothy clearly felt it—not just the icy gaze from above, but the eyes of the two at her sides and the other two behind her all landing on her at once like tangible blades.
It was the feeling of being locked onto and judged by several kinds of extreme malice all at once, as if she might be torn apart, sawn open, butchered, or dragged into an endless nightmare the very next moment.
Her fear pushed past some critical threshold and instead became a numb, rigid paralysis. Only the violent trembling she could not suppress proved she was still alive.
Xu Fu was in an atrocious mood.
That new house had felt utterly uncomfortable while it stood empty, so on Yoshida Saori and the others' suggestion, Xu Fu had decided to decorate it properly.
And the place she had naturally put the most thought into was her own room.
The walls were covered in Yu Mei-ren posters, every angle chosen with care to present that unique beauty from her memories in perfect, flawless 360-degree form.
Inside custom high-clarity glass display cases, Yu Mei-ren dolls of all sizes stood in neat rows, vivid in expression and form. The bed was piled with cushions printed with Yu Mei-ren's sleeping face. On the desk sat handmade Yu Mei-ren figurines. Hanging from her keys was a chibi Yu Mei-ren badge. Even the ceiling had been fitted with a specially made projector lamp that could cast a starlit silhouette of Yu Mei-ren into the darkness. Bookmarks, standees, photo books… every corner, every inch of that room had been filled, gently and tyrannically, with the presence of "Yu Mei-ren."
To Xu Fu, drifting to sleep each night in the quiet company of hundreds of Lady Yus was the height of peace. Waking each morning to be greeted by hundreds of Lady Yus' gazes was supreme happiness. That room was a paradise that belonged to her alone, the most precious anchor and comfort in her long life.
And it was all because of The Replaced that she could not go back and spend time with Lady Yu.
At Old I Watergate, after dealing with the evil spirit that had possessed Nagiko Shami, Xu Fu had used the remnants of its soul fragments to impersonate it and set a trap for The Replaced, intending to lure out more of their members. She had never expected to wipe them out in one stroke and end the problem forever. As long as she could draw out a few higher-ups, it would have been worth it.
Like that wheelchair-bound old man, skinny as a bag of bones.
To do that, she had been forced to temporarily leave behind the "Yu Mei-ren Sanctuary" she had only just finished arranging, stay awake in the middle of the night, and stand out here in the cold wind. That alone had already left her full of irritation.
She had thought she might reel in a few big fish. Instead, after waiting in ambush for ages, all she had caught was this minor underling in front of her.
That made Xu Fu feel she was taking a serious loss on this deal.
And yet if that had been all, then with Xu Fu's temperament, she might only have found it boring and annoying, and disposed of the problem without much fuss. What had truly set off her anger, what had nearly driven her to grind the thing to dust on the spot, was something else entirely.
Something that touched a line she would not tolerate being crossed.
"Lift your head."
As if granted amnesty, Dorothy trembled as she slowly, painstakingly raised the forehead that had been pressed to the ground. Dirt and bits of grass clung to her face and brow, mixed with cold sweat, leaving her in a miserable state. She did not dare look directly at Xu Fu. Her gaze wavered before finally dropping beneath the armrest of Xu Fu's seat.
Xu Fu did not speak immediately.
She narrowed her eyes slightly and examined the girl's face—now filled with panic—inch by inch, from brow to nose, from trembling lips to pale ears. Her hawk-sharp gaze seemed to pierce through the body itself and sink straight into the deepest part of the soul.
After staring for quite some time, her gaze slowly moved lower and settled on the Gothic doll that Dorothy was still clutching tightly in her hands even now, while kneeling and begging for mercy.
The doll wore a black Gothic dress much like Dorothy's own, its features delicate yet utterly lifeless.
As Xu Fu stared at it, the air around her seemed to turn colder and harder still. The presence of the four slashers beside and behind her grew heavier, more threatening—Freddy especially, his metal claws seeming to rub together once with a faint, teeth-grating rasp.
After a long silence, Xu Fu spoke again.
Her voice was darker than before, every word soaked in icy anger.
"You… locked the body's original owner inside that doll, didn't you?"
"!!!"
Dorothy's pupils contracted violently.
A suffocating weight slammed down onto her shoulders.
At the same time, a drop of dark-red, viscous liquid slowly seeped out from beneath one of the doll's hollow glass eyes, slid down its porcelain-white cheek, and left behind a mournfully vivid streak in the moonlight.
Then came a second drop.
A third.
The doll was weeping blood in silence.
Those blood tears were no illusion. They were the despairing cries and wordless screams of the soul imprisoned inside the doll after glimpsing a sliver of hope.
Yes.
This was the thing Xu Fu could not tolerate most of all.
The current "Dorothy" was not Dorothy herself. Originally, it had been an evil spirit lodged inside the doll. After possessing the girl Dorothy's body, it had locked the real Dorothy inside the doll and taken pleasure in tormenting the body's rightful owner day after day.
That was completely different from what had happened to Nagiko Shami.
The evil spirit that had possessed Nagiko Shami had most likely brutally killed and devoured the original soul the instant it took over the body. Because of that, even after Xu Fu slew the spirit, she had been unable to save Nagiko Shami's life. It had been a total tragedy.
But the evil spirit that possessed Dorothy had not killed or eaten Dorothy's soul. Instead, it had imprisoned and tormented it for its own amusement. That vile disposition had, in the end, left the real Dorothy with the faintest, frailest thread of "life"—and in terms of pure outcome, perhaps that was a thin scrap of "luck" amid her misfortune.
But that did not mean Xu Fu would forgive this evil spirit for its sins.
Quite the opposite.
Compared to a clean death, this kind of wanton imprisonment and prolonged torture of a soul—treating the most fundamental core of another person's existence as a toy to be trampled and enjoyed—was the kind of evil Xu Fu could not abide in the slightest.
If Xu Fu had not been here, what kind of fate would have awaited the real Dorothy?
Her soul would have remained imprisoned inside that doll, unable to reincarnate, unable even to lose consciousness, forced to watch as a monster wearing her body committed one evil after another in the real world, never receiving salvation, condemned to endless loneliness and despair with no end in sight.
Compared to that kind of fate, simple death might almost have seemed merciful.
"Dorothy's" lips worked with difficulty, trying to force out words of explanation or begging.
But under Xu Fu's gaze, every lie was strangled before it could leave her mouth.
All she could do was gape soundlessly like a fish thrown onto dry land, gasping without a voice.
Clatter—!
A heavy, rusted iron chain tore through the air like a living viper and instantly coiled itself around "Dorothy's" body, the links screeching as they tightened.
The shadows behind Xu Fu churned again.
A fifth figure, even more terrifying than the previous four, stepped slowly out.
He wore a black leather jacket marked all over with the traces of wear, as though road dust and the smell of sulfur still clung to it.
And his head...
It was a flaming skull.
Hellfire danced wildly without cease in its eye sockets, nasal cavity, and between its teeth. The blaze lit up the surrounding darkness, yet somehow only made the chill deepen.
When "Dorothy" met his gaze, it was as though she saw all the sins she had committed reflected within those burning eye sockets.
She seemed to see herself heading for hell, where every one of her crimes would be reckoned in turn, one by one, case by case.
He was Ghost Rider, the dark hero who had given his soul to hell and scorched sin from the earth with hellfire and chains.
"Now then, count your sins," Xu Fu said, narrowing her eyes, her voice cold enough to make the heart shudder. "Brace yourself… this won't be over quickly."
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T/N: LMAOOOO THE SUKUNA PARALLEL! remember this scene guys