Xu Fu formed a hand seal with one hand, her red lips parting as a vast, profound incantation echoed without end.
"Yinghuo enforces the law, illuminating the Three Luminaries."
"Divine fire refines within, forcing evil essence to reveal its form."
"Three Divisions, Eight Scenes, each return to its truth."
"Mystic spring pours down, washing foul qi clean."
"I command your name—return swiftly to your root!"
"Swiftly, as law and decree command—edict!"
As Xu Fu's final incantation fell, the Taoist patterns covering Sagami Kengyo erupted with golden light.
Sagami Kengyo's body suddenly convulsed even more violently than before. Then, even to ordinary human eyes, streams of black air could be seen being drawn out of his body through his pores and seven orifices. A shriek from some unknown thing seemed ready to pierce everyone's eardrums.
As though guided by some mysterious force, the black qi gathered into a shape above Sagami Kengyo and became a vengeful spirit with grotesquely long limbs and neck, its entire body pitch-black and rubbery in texture.
Unlike ordinary spirits invisible to the naked eye, this vengeful spirit could be seen by normal people.
Its whip-like neck suddenly twisted, and the monster snapped its gaze toward Xu Fu, opening its mouth.
"Ba—sa—"
An invisible slash abruptly split the monster's upper and lower jaws apart, stopping it from continuing to speak.
Xu Fu knew these monsters cursed people through sound. Once someone heard their whispers, they would be turned into a tiny person, and the monster could also turn humans who had already become tiny people into monsters like itself.
Without prior knowledge, it was truly easy to fall victim to them. But as long as one understood how their curse worked beforehand, dealing with them was very simple. All one had to do was make sure their voices could not be heard. Destroying their vocal organs worked, as did wearing earplugs or headphones.
"They're just a little hard to kill..."
Xu Fu raised one hand, and a small white flame ignited on each of her five fingers.
The five little flames transformed into five sharp nails. One stabbed into the monster's crown, two into its shoulders, one into its chest, and one into its abdomen.
In the next instant, the white flames surged in the wind. The monster's figure was completely swallowed by white fire and, in the blink of an eye, burned away without even ash remaining.
This monster's vitality was tenacious. It had no obvious weakness to speak of; even if it was chopped into pieces, the chunks of flesh could still move on their own. Burning it completely like this was the safest method.
The monster had been destroyed by Xu Fu, but that did not mean the incident was over. After all, this was only one of them.
And what Xu Fu truly cared about was not these four-legged black monsters, but the evil god brought to Japan by a Western missionary. At most, these black monsters were only advance pawns.
Elsewhere, Yayoi Hozuki's group had also encountered a monster.
"W-what is that thing?!"
A monk from Nissho Temple cried out loudly, pointing at the roof of a private residence.
A black monster was crouched on the rooftop, eyeing the group like prey.
"According to legend, spirits that stand on two feet still retain a 'human form.' Conversely, extremely dangerous entities that have completely lost their humanity take on... a four-legged crawling posture."
Monk Jogan stared fixedly at the vengeful spirit on the roof and murmured, "So it truly is just as the records say. An extremely ominous 'beast.'"
Xu Fu once again appeared among the crowd as if teleporting, carrying the unconscious Sagami Kengyo in one hand.
"Hmm~! Sure enough, there are some here too."
"Xu Fu-chan!"
"Abbot!"
Keitaro Gentoga's group and the monks of Nissho Temple cried out at the same time, though what they focused on and the emotions in their words were completely different.
Seeing Sagami Kengyo unconscious, Monk Jogan asked gravely, "What happened to Kengyo?"
"This old monk tried to run, and I caught him red-handed." Xu Fu pointed at Sagami Kengyo's luggage, which she had brought along as well. "All the evil desires in his heart made him the perfect seedbed for these dangerous monsters. When I found him, one of them was just about to be born inside his body, so I killed it early. I saved this old monk's life, but whether there'll be any aftereffects, I'm not sure."
The black monster leapt down from the roof and opened its mouth toward Xu Fu and the others.
"Ba—"
This time, before the black monster could even finish the first syllable, Xu Fu repeated the same trick and sliced off half its head with an invisible slash.
"Block your ears. As long as you don't listen to their voices, you won't be cursed. Leave the rest to me," Xu Fu said in a low, unquestionable tone. She raised her hand again and burned the still-twitching black monster to nothing with a burst of fire.
"Them?"
Before Keitaro Gentoga and the others could even rejoice, one black monster after another appeared in their field of view, as if proving Xu Fu's words.
On rooftops, on utility poles, in the woods, on the overpass... Like sharks that had smelled blood, they gathered toward Xu Fu and the others.
After putting in earplugs, Yayoi Hozuki's group personally witnessed the process by which these black monsters cursed others.
Because Xu Fu had set up a barrier in advance to disperse bystanders, there was not a single ordinary passerby on the road. However, there were many small animals in the mountains and woods, and birds would occasionally fly overhead.
Three little birds heard the monsters' whispers and suddenly fell from the sky, landing on the ground as they began to convulse. In the blink of an eye, their bodies shrank into dry corpses, which one monster grabbed in its hand.
The monster placed the three dried bird corpses into the pouch on its abdomen. The next moment, its body began swelling rapidly before finally bursting apart. Three brand-new monsters tore out of its body and began creating more of their kind.
"Saijo! Zenjin! Kakucho! Prepare to act! We absolutely cannot let these things reach a place with people!"
At this point, it was already too late to pursue the issue of what Xu Fu had done. The urgent priority was to destroy these black monsters as quickly as possible, resolve the incident before any casualties appeared if at all possible, and prevent the disaster zone from spreading. That was why Monk Jogan gave the order for the others to fight.
But Xu Fu moved faster than all of them.
"Didn't I already say~? This is Xu Fu-chan's one-woman show. All of you just need to watch from the side~"
She formed hand seals with both hands. As Buddhist monks, Monk Jogan and the others recognized it at a glance.
It was the mudra of Enmaten.
"[DOMAIN EXPANSION]—"
In an instant, a black curtain deeper than the night itself descended. This space seemed as though it had been cut away and separated from the world.
At the same time, almost everyone felt a terrifying chill.
Highly condensed, overwhelming malice filled the air within this space like viscous mud, as if it would burn through their lungs and freeze their souls.
A shrine built from piles of white bones rose from the ground behind Xu Fu. At that moment, in their eyes, Xu Fu seemed to have leapt beyond an evil god and become the greatest evil in the world.
"[MALEVOLENT SHRINE]."
The domain stolen from Ryomen Sukuna once again shone brilliantly in this world.
Yayoi Hozuki and the others behind her did not suffer the slightest harm. By contrast, the black monsters were decomposed in an instant by countless invisible slashes, reduced to dust too fine for the naked eye to see.
Only one second passed from the domain's expansion to its release.
In one second, every black monster on the street was wiped out. The atmosphere became so silent one could have heard a pin drop, and even the sound of the wind seemed noisy now.
Keitaro Gentoga stared at the orderly street, cold sweat soaking his shirt. He could only stand there stupidly, his mind blank, to the point that he even forgot how to breathe.
This... This wasn't a fight at all...
It was a massacre.
In the past, whenever Xu Fu was with them, she had always let Red Hood fight their enemies in her place. Keitaro Gentoga had assumed that Xu Fu herself was not actually the type who was particularly good at combat... He had never expected her to directly display such terrifying strength today.
Although Xu Fu often said, "Xu Fu-chan is a very, very outstanding Taoist," Keitaro Gentoga only gained a concrete sense of just how "outstanding" she meant today.
"A monster even our ancestors were helpless against was... truly dealt with?"
Even Monk Jogan was startled. He was not only amazed by the strength she had displayed, but also shuddered at that overwhelming malice that had vanished almost as soon as it appeared.
He felt as though he had seen an evil god who had gathered all the evil in the world into itself.
Was that truly malice a human being could possess?
Monk Jogan mistakenly believed that malice belonged to Xu Fu. In truth, however, the source of this cursed technique domain was Ryomen Sukuna from the world of Jujutsu Kaisen. Back then, after she had obtained Ryomen Sukuna's finger in that world, she had borrowed Ashiya Douman's experience in the world of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan to reproduce and steal this cursed technique for herself.
Neither Ryomen Sukuna nor Ashiya Douman were good people, obviously. That was why the Malevolent Shrine Xu Fu deployed looked so terrifying. The dreadful malice mixed into it did not actually have much to do with Xu Fu herself... probably?
Our Xu Fu-chan was obviously so cute. How could she possibly have any malice~?
Although Monk Jogan did not know any of that, he at least understood one thing. No wonder this girl named Xu Fu refused to listen to anyone and insisted on breaking the seal. The confidence behind it was not born of ignorance, but genuine strength.
The other party was a practitioner of Taoist arts, so Monk Jogan naturally thought of Japan's strongest practitioner of Taoist arts, Yoshiro Rinsen, who stood alongside him at the peak of the spiritualist world.
Monk Jogan had never seen Yoshiro Rinsen's full strength, but somehow, he felt that this girl's strength might even surpass Yoshiro Rinsen's.
Younger than Yoshiro Rinsen, and even stronger. How strange. When did someone this formidable appear in this country?
Everyone else had been frightened speechless. Only Yayoi Hozuki remained expressionless.
"Xu Fu, are all the monsters dealt with?"
"Wait a little longer."
Xu Fu stood in the middle of the road as if waiting for something.
"What happened just now was only the prelude. The real performance begins next~."
Those with stronger spiritual sensitivity, such as Keitaro Gentoga and Monk Jogan, were the first to sense that abnormal aura.
A translucent door abruptly appeared in the middle of the road. The door had no handle, only incomprehensible rune-like patterns.
The door slowly opened, and from the deep darkness within, two black monsters crawled out.
These two black monsters did not attack Xu Fu and the others. Instead, they cried and wailed while dragging a very thick iron chain, like horses pulling a cart, or lowly servants forced into slavery.
Through the efforts of those two black monsters, that "thing" emerged from behind the door.
Something close to a god, yet absolutely impossible to call a god.
On the small cart pulled by the black monsters sat a snow-white existence in the lotus position. It had pure white wings that seemed to shine with sacred radiance, and a face so beautiful, so androgynous, it could be called "divine."
But at the same time, it had goat hooves, goat horns, goat ears, and a goat's tail.
"Ngh... gog..."
From the moment it appeared, Keitaro Gentoga could no longer control his own body.
His body trembled nonstop as if he were sifting chaff. Cold sweat dripped down one drop after another. His pupils shrank to their limits, and meaningless groans kept spilling from his mouth, which he could no longer close.
The being before them was a transcendent individual capable of controlling those horrifying black monsters like slaves.
Until now, Keitaro Gentoga had felt the pressure of all sorts of powerful evil spirits, pressure that seemed capable of crushing a person into mud.
And yet... something even more sinister and uncanny than all of them, something with an incomparably powerful presence, was right in front of him now.
It exhaled, and one feather on its wings was blown loose, drifting down onto the head of a black monster so exhausted it could no longer walk.
In the blink of an eye, countless white threads grew from every part of the black monster's body. Covered head to toe in white fur, the monster could only barely be recognized as humanoid.
The threads wove together, pierced into the monster's head, and tore its skull open with a wet rip. Blood splattered, revealing the brain inside, covered in blood and brain matter.
After the monster's brain was removed whole from its head, the threads pierced into the brain as well, tearing and stitching it.
"Aheh... ahehehe..."
Its head had been pried open, its brain toyed with by those threads at will, yet the monster suddenly split its mouth wide and laughed madly as it convulsed.
"Ahehehehehehehe— ahehehehehehehehehehe!!"
Madness, chaos, disorder, the indescribable—both the sound and the sight seemed to overflow with chaotic magical power that ran contrary to reason, sending one's SAN value plummeting.
"Oho, ohohohohoho..."
The godlike yet ungodly existence also began to laugh.
It raised a hand and pointed at Xu Fu, then suddenly opened its eyes.
Whether this should be called unexpected or only natural, they were the eyes of a goat, with especially long horizontal pupils.
And the source of the laughter was not the mouth on its human face, but a little lower down... Beneath that refined human face was not a neck, but a goat's lower jaw. It bizarrely possessed two faces and two jaws.
The human face had a row of teeth beneath its chin. Its beautiful human face was actually the upper jaw of its second face.
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T/N: errr here is that thing at the end