Guided by Dorothy, Yayoi Hozuki arrived at the entrance to an abandoned classroom.
There was no telling how long it had been since anyone had come here. The walls and door were marked by age and decay, and the class sign at the entrance had worn down so badly that the words on it could no longer be read.
The classroom had two entrances. The back door had been sealed off with several wooden boards. The front door was not boarded up, but there were obvious little holes in the wall beside it, so this door had clearly once been sealed off with boards as well, only for them to be removed later for some unknown reason.
Even without the boards, however, the front door still could not be opened.
It was locked.
Before this, Yayoi Hozuki had not even known there was a place like this in the school.
"Do you have the key?"
"Y-yes. After that evil spirit possessed me, it kept the key to this classroom on it the whole time…"
Dorothy held the key out and showed it to Yayoi Hozuki.
"Then what about protective measures?" Yayoi Hozuki asked worriedly. "This room hasn't been opened in a long time, right? The spirit inside has been sealed in there for so long that the moment we open the door, its aura is definitely going to leak out. If it's serious enough, it might even drag everyone in the whole school into its curse… Did Xu Fu leave you with any kind of protection?"
School was already out, but there were still plenty of students playing on the sports field. They were not the only ones who had stayed behind because they had something to do, and many teachers had yet to leave as well. Yayoi Hozuki did not believe Xu Fu would simply ignore so many innocent people in the school.
"Th-that… I'm not sure…"
Dorothy said nervously, "Xu Fu-sama only told me… that as long as we can deal with the spirit inside, that's enough… She said she would handle everything else…"
"I see… I understand. Then let's do as Xu Fu said."
Xu Fu had given the task of eliminating the evil spirit to her and Dorothy because she needed to protect the ordinary people in the school, right? Yayoi Hozuki felt she had more or less guessed what Xu Fu was thinking.
Though she still had no idea exactly how Xu Fu intended to do it. All kinds of Xu Fu's miraculous Taoism Arts were far too mysterious to her.
With her worries behind her, Yayoi Hozuki decisively took the key from Dorothy and began unlocking the door.
As the long-sealed classroom door opened, pitch-black curse energy instantly surged out through the gap.
All the students and teachers in the entire school, no matter whether they were playing or working at the moment, inexplicably fell unconscious at the exact same time.
That included Yayoi Hozuki and Dorothy. The instant the black aura struck them, the two of them were uncontrollably dragged into a dream created by the curse.
...
"Mm… Yayoi and Dorothy have finally started."
Xu Fu stood at the edge of the school building's rooftop like a lone pine. One hand formed a spell gesture, and the crisp wind stirred her hair and sleeves. Profound Dao markings emerged one after another from the empty air around her, flickering in and out like breathing, sketching an ancient, mysterious rhythm.
The moment the curse rushed out of the classroom, Xu Fu had used Taoism Arts to restrict it within a certain range. The only ones truly affected by the curse and pulled into the dream were Dorothy and Yayoi Hozuki. As for everyone else in the school suddenly passing out, that was Xu Fu's doing.
She had used Taoism Arts to make everyone in the school fall asleep.
Xu Fu was helpless too. Only by doing this would Yayoi Hozuki's school give the students and teachers time off, and only then would Yayoi Hozuki have time to go to Kyoto.
Such a major incident would inevitably have some negative impact on the school, and it would make many people worried and anxious. But compared to the original plot where Xu Fu had not interfered, this was already much better.
In the original plot, although Yayoi Hozuki defeated the evil spirit in time and none of the cursed teachers or students at the school died, several children still suffered severe psychological trauma and needed therapy. Xu Fu was only making them have a pleasant dream.
She had even checked beforehand to make sure no one at the school happened to be using the bathroom or doing anything else where they absolutely could not afford to lose consciousness. Only after confirming there were no problems did she make them all fall asleep.
"Sorry about this~! Please just sleep for a little while. Xu Fu will compensate you." Xu Fu rubbed her chin and thought for a moment before saying, "As compensation… I'll extend each of your lives by five years. I hope every one of you lives to a natural death, or my life extension will go to waste."
...
When Dorothy slowly opened her eyes, she found herself sitting all alone in the middle of an unbearably gloomy classroom. The air was stagnant and damp, thick with dust and the rotten smell of mold.
The ceiling was covered in large black-and-green mold stains, like some kind of spreading skin disease. The ruined curtains had been reduced to a few tattered strips of cloth, hanging listlessly beside the rusted window frames.
Scattered across the floor tiles were shriveled erasers, broken pencils, and sharp fragments of window glass and fluorescent tubes. Outside the windows, everything was pitch-black. Not a trace of light could be seen.
"This place…"
Before Dorothy could figure out what was happening, a memory suddenly flooded into her mind.
It was an unbearably sorrowful memory.
Because he loved children very much, that man had become a teacher.
However, the students in his class were a group of demons.
They used box cutters to slice up the lilies he loved. They scratched up his lectern, his textbooks, and his car. They wrote vile words in permanent marker across the lectern—"Die," "Idiot," "Disgusting," "Filth," "Trash," "Lolicon." They threw stones to smash his car and split open his head.
Later, a student falsely accused him, claiming he had used his phone to secretly take pictures of her. Because of that, the teacher was disciplined, ended up on the news, and became the kind of human trash everyone in the neighborhood wanted to condemn. Even his wife divorced him and took their daughter away.
The truth, however, was that the photos on his phone had been taken by the female student herself. She had seen that the teacher's phone was not locked and thought it would be funny.
Abandoned by everyone, the teacher chose to take his own life in despair.
In an empty classroom, he filled the room with candles and crow corpses. The crows' heads had been cut off, and photographs of each demonic student in the class had been inserted into their necks. With crow blood, he wrote on the blackboard: "I curse you demon children to struggle and die in unbearable agony."
Then he sat on the floor, put a burlap sack over his own head, and cut open his neck with a pair of large scissors, letting a flock of crows devour his flesh and blood.
...
"Too naive to tell good from evil, never considering the consequences of their actions, thinking they were only playing a few 'little pranks' when they destroyed someone else's entire life… They really are alike. Just like those newborns in the Fairy Kingdom."
In reality, Xu Fu sighed. The moment she thought of those newborn fairies from the Fairy Kingdom, her mood turned foul.
She also felt that the ghost of this Sakashita-sensei was truly too pitiful. It had been a completely undeserved disaster.
The reason Sakashita-sensei had never locked his phone and thus ended up being falsely accused was because his daughter often asked him, "Daddy, can I borrow your phone to play?" Whenever he watched his daughter play childish little puzzle games or browse photos and videos, he would smile happily. So that his daughter could take the phone and play with it on her own, he had not set a password.
Sakashita-sensei's wife only saw the so-called "evidence" and refused to listen to his explanation. She decided he was guilty and divorced him. Only when she heard the news of his suicide did she begin to wonder whether she might have misunderstood him.
Only Sakashita-sensei's daughter believed from beginning to end that her father was innocent. But she could not win an argument against her mother. Reportedly, in order to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again, she was now studying hard to become a lawyer.
As for the students who had driven Sakashita-sensei to his death, Xu Fu also knew what had happened to them.
After Sakashita-sensei committed suicide, his curse did not successfully activate. However, after the female ringleader advanced to middle school and began sleeping with bad upperclassmen and classmates, she started selling herself among students in the same year and carrying drugs, which led to her being sent to counseling.
Once this matter surfaced through a lawsuit, her parents suffered social death and were turned away by friends and family. Her household soon collapsed, and she ran away from home.
Afterward, in order to earn living expenses, that female student began selling herself even more actively. As a result, she contracted a disease that damaged her immune system and died before adulthood. Nearly all the female students who had taken part in the bullying met the same end, while the male students joined biker gangs and all died in traffic accidents or violent brawls.
This was not because Sakashita-sensei's curse had worked. It was simply that these students' usual evil deeds had come back on their own heads. Almost all of them had died.
Knowing all this, Xu Fu could not help feeling deeply rueful… To gather so many newborns into one class, this school had some real talent.
Those demons were dead, and they deserved to die. But so what? The person they killed would not come back to life because of it. The tragedy they had caused would not disappear because of it.
...
When Yayoi Hozuki transferred into this school, Sakashita-sensei's ghost had been on the verge of fading away, so Yayoi Hozuki had left him alone. She had not expected someone to make use of him and artificially strengthen him to this degree.
Inside the dream, Dorothy suddenly caught sight of a figure holding a candle in the corridor outside.
He walked and walked, repeating the same whisper over and over.
"Are you hiding…? Then I'll start killing…"
"Eek—!"
Dorothy hugged the doll in her arms tightly. To her relief, when she became trapped in the dream, the doll had come in with her too.
"If you run into danger, call this doll's name and ask her for help…" That was the warning Xu Fu had given Dorothy when she handed her the doll, and Dorothy did not dare forget a single word.
She closed her eyes and, with trembling hands, lifted the doll dressed like a witch, with a purple pointed hat, high above her head.
"P-please help me! Master Dorothy!"
A shockwave wrapped in flame smashed through the wall and, in the blink of an eye, burned the figure in the corridor to nothing.
"You may not be my foolish disciple, but I'm still quite happy to help a cute little girl like you."
A tall, mature young woman with long orange hair suddenly appeared in front of Dorothy and smiled faintly.
She wore a purple pointed hat and a dress primarily in purple, accented with white. The strands of hair falling by her ear were tied with a yellow ribbon.
She remained in the pose of someone who had just released magic, a small flame still lingering at her fingertips.
"I'll protect you, so don't stray too far from Big Sister, all right?"
With Master Dorothy protecting her, little Dorothy's safety was basically nothing to worry about.
In reality, however, several uninvited guests had arrived.
...
On the roof of a building not far from the school, a blond foreign man set up a sniper rifle. Through the scope, he saw the unconscious teachers and students inside the school, along with Dorothy and Yayoi Hozuki.
Standing beside the blond foreigner were a man and a woman. The two of them were local Japanese spiritualists, while the blond foreigner was an overseas mercenary.
Of course, those were only their identities on the surface. In truth, all three had long since been possessed by evil spirits. The ones appearing here now were, in reality, members of The Replaced.
"I found the target… Looks like 'Dorothy' has already been dealt with. The one there now should be the original."
Hearing the blond foreigner's words, the male spiritualist beside him frowned slightly.
"You're sure?"
"Should be. That girl isn't wearing that flashy black dress now. She's wearing a white dress instead. You both know how much 'Dorothy' loved black Gothic dresses, right?"
Last night, "Dorothy" had volunteered to go pick up their companion, only to lose contact completely. The people in The Replaced were paying close attention to the matter, which was why these three had come to gather intelligence.
"Looks like 'Dorothy' ran into a very powerful spiritualist last night."
The female spiritualist's expression was grave. Among the members of The Replaced, "Dorothy" had been an extremely dangerous and powerful one. Though she could not compare to the higher-ups, she was at least stronger than the three of them. And yet she had been killed without even managing to send back a single message?
"Didn't you say there's another little girl around Dorothy's age beside her?"
"Yes, I did say that… And that little girl is very strange." Through the scope, the blond foreigner began carefully observing Yayoi Hozuki again. "She's carrying an extremely terrifying, extremely noble Oigami with her."
"She carries an Oigami around with her? Could she be the spiritualist who killed 'Dorothy'?"
"Probably, right? Judging from the current situation, the two of them were most likely trying to deal with the evil spirit 'Dorothy' arranged here, only to pass out because of the curse… Heh. This is a fantastic opportunity."
The blond foreigner grinned and said, "Neither of them is on guard right now. As long as I pull the trigger, both their heads will explode on the spot! This is practically the best possible chance to kill them!"
"Oh~! Then go ahead and try. I'm very curious how you plan to kill someone right in front of me~"
A playful voice suddenly came from behind the three of them.
---
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