Chapter 329: Two More to Go
"The human body is truly fragile."
Looking at Isayama Mei lying at his feet, Kazuhiro Mitogawa shook his head. Both of them had their cores pierced by a blade, yet he could recover rapidly relying on the powerful vitality bestowed by the Sessho-seki (Killing Stone), while Mei could only watch helplessly as her blood flowed unceasingly from her wound.
"Hey, let me ask you something."
Mitogawa knelt beside Mei and lifted her chin with his right hand, looking at her wretched state.
"Why did you refuse Shishio?"
Mei had trained arduously every single day for the sake of one day surpassing Isayama Yomi and reclaiming everything that originally belonged to her. Yet, when the goal she pursued was within reach, she gave it up. Mitogawa truly couldn't understand why such a stupid person existed in this world.
"Cough... what does that have to do with you?"
Blood was draining rapidly from her body; she could feel her life force fading. Mei struggled to raise her hand, gathering spiritual energy between her fingers to launch an attack. However, facing Mei's small movements, Mitogawa didn't even bother to pay attention.
"What?"
The attack Mei launched hit a point some distance in front of Mitogawa and began to dissipate rapidly. Finally, it completely turned into spiritual energy and vanished in the air without even touching the corner of his clothes.
"Do you see the gap in our strength now?"
Looking at Mei's dazed expression, Mitogawa asked with a hint of pity in his voice. As one of the important chess pieces he had selected, he had once deliberately collected intelligence regarding Isayama Mei. Looking back at the last decade or so of her life, it could only be summarized as a tragedy.
Because the Isayama family head, Naraku Isayama, had no children, Mei—the daughter of the head's younger brother—was initially raised as the future successor. However, for some reason, Naraku suddenly went mad and adopted Isayama Yomi, who possessed excellent talent in both swordsmanship and cultivation. In the end, he decided to hand the position of family head to that outsider, Yomi.
Everything that should have belonged to her was suddenly stripped away, and she was forced to live forever in the shadow of that outsider, unable to rise!
"You were pressed so hard you could barely breathe, yet in the end, you gave up a winning hand that was right in front of you. Your thoughts are truly incomprehensible."
Shaking his head, and noticing that Mei was about to die, Mitogawa stopped talking. Instead, he gouged out a small fragment of the Sessho-seki from his own eye and placed it into Mei's wound.
"What are you doing?!"
Seeing him place an unknown object into her body, Mei's tone became anxious. She did not fear death, but if she were to be used as a puppet by Mitogawa to do evil after dying, she could never accept such an outcome!
"Weren't you all curious why Isayama Yomi has been in a coma all this time?"
Facing Mei's interrogation, Mitogawa curled his lips. He then pinned down Mei's struggling body and summoned a butterfly from the void, branding it onto her forehead. Once all the preparations were complete, Mitogawa suddenly choked Mei's neck with both hands.
"!!!"
A sense of suffocation instantly flooded Mei's mind. Helplessness, regret, resentment, a craving for power, and the hope for someone to come to her rescue flashed through her mind. However, until the very end, nothing changed...
Feeling Mei's struggles grow weaker and weaker, Mitogawa looked down at the wound over her heart. The Sessho-seki wedged in the gap of her heart slowly began to melt along with the increasingly faint heartbeats, mixing with her blood.
After another minute or so, Mei had completely lost consciousness. Even though she had no breath and her heart had stopped beating, her bodily functions did not decline. On the contrary, they were climbing at a lightning-fast pace!
"With this, the puppet is finished, right?"
Though there was only one person left at the scene, Mitogawa began communicating with the air.
[......]
Silence hung in the air for a few seconds. Mitogawa's originally calm face suddenly showed an expression of disgust.
"I've already made two for you. Is that not enough?"
The air turned quiet again. Suddenly, Mitogawa threw an enraged punch against the nearby wall.
"You want me to make two more?! Don't you know how much trouble it is to make one! Besides, there's only one spare part left. Where am I supposed to find another one!"
[.......]
"I understand. I'll figure out a way regarding the materials. As a condition, you must speed up your end of the deal. Otherwise..."
At this point, Mitogawa suddenly paused. But both he and the entity he was communicating with understood exactly what his retaliation would be if the agreement was breached.
.
.
.
Realizing his work was not yet finished, Mitogawa instantly lost all interest in the newly converted Isayama Mei. He casually discarded her by the roadside, placed the broken kodachi beside her, and created an illusion of a fierce battle. Then, he rushed toward the Tsuchimiya residence.
If Mitogawa remembered correctly, his next target, Kagura Tsuchimiya, had an exceptionally close relationship with Isayama Yomi. Using Yomi as bait, he should be able to deal with Kagura quite easily.
Bang!
Just as Mitogawa was finalizing his plan to deal with Kagura, a stream of spiritual energy suddenly shot from a distant high tower. Although he twisted his head in time to dodge the ambush, the cost was that he was forced to stop his high-speed movement.
In the next second, a haggard-looking middle-aged man wearing a brown kimono appeared before him. A pigeon-egg-sized Sessho-seki was embedded in the back of the man's hand.
"What an honor. I didn't expect the number one spiritualist in Tokyo, Lord Garaku Tsuchimiya, would personally act against a small character like me~"
Seeing the full appearance of the man before him, Mitogawa's pupils shrank instantly, but his tone remained flippant.
"Powerful unknown spirit, you shall rest in peace here today."
Garaku Tsuchimiya had no intention of wasting words. His current physical state was quite poor. In fact, if he hadn't sensed Mitogawa about to infiltrate the Tsuchimiya estate, he wouldn't have acted tonight at all!
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