Taking down a countryside hitman outfit without breaking a sweat wasn't exactly a feat worth bragging about.
Li Pan couldn't be bothered to talk. He stuffed what was left of Hattori "Han"zō into the infantry pod and had a UAV crate him back to HQ for 0113007 to handle.
As for himself, he engaged optical camo and, with Eighteen's electronic cover, cleared the rooftops in a blur of superhuman leaps and parkour, vanishing into the night.
From takeoff to touchdown, the entire kidnapping incident had lasted under fifteen minutes. Forget scrubbing traces—NCPA hadn't even had time to dispatch.
He split the team: keep tracking Kotarō's trail and open lines with Iga to arrange a prisoner exchange. Then he called it a night.
All this for twenty-five hundred credits—what were they even fighting over?
Still, the mikoshi had to be found.
He kicked his SBS into overdrive, bounding in a straight line across blocks and rooftops back to the Fengmo family's ancestral manor, where Kotarō had been taken.
From Eighteen's reconstruction aboard the Whale, Li Pan knew Kotarō hadn't gone quietly. The sim showed a surprise strike—serious wounds—then a forced transformation and a stubborn stand. He'd even pried up a few floorboards before finally being overwhelmed.
Eighteen's response hadn't been slow; the ambushers were simply cautious—grabbed the live capture and pulled out fast, no cleanup.
Which meant Kotarō had enough time, mid-fight, to hide the mikoshi. It might still be on the premises.
So Li Pan decided to try his luck.
As close attendants to the Oda, the Fengmo had run the Oniwaban for generations—surveillance, assassinations, asset seizures. A shadowy portfolio, but enormous clout—and obscene wealth.
Across Sector 0791, Oniwaban properties—mansions, estates, safehouses, black sites—had fallen into Fengmo hands after the defeat. This manorial estate in Night City's rich district was one such holding—a private park in all but name.
When Li Pan arrived, NCPA bots had already cordoned off the grounds. But with nuclear pops going off every few days, the city had no time to pretty up crime scenes, and NCPA had little interest in laboriously investigating corporate messes. The place was quiet as a graveyard.
One super-jump and a cloak later, he slipped inside.
If Kotarō had stashed the mikoshi here… where would it be?
Li Pan swept the grounds.
Nothing.
After all, the mikoshi wasn't a magic weapon or a monster. It wouldn't glow or explode. It was an electronic reliquary—photonic quantum storage carrying data from Takama Ga Hara's "Demon King Plan": experimental logs, program blueprints, the Oda clan's digitized souls. In a city where any random bystander carried half a kilo of alloy under their skin, finding a "plain piece" of high-end storage was needle-in-a-haystack work—short of turning the manor upside down.
And even if he found it, he'd have to crack the data—encryption, self-wipe protocols, god-knew-what.
Back in his junkyard days, treasure hunters used to harvest dead drives and memory cards to extract sellable data—strike gold with a corporate blueprint and you were rich. Most of the time, you pulled… adult films.
No matter. He had other tools. Despite the hulking half-mech frame and the guns, Li Pan was, at the end of the day, a proper cultivator.
Cultivators could divine. That was the day job.
He grabbed a fistful of grass—real grass; fancy—and sat cross-legged, breathing a current of Daoist breath until the blades brightened to jade. Then he began the Great Expansion Method, deriving the King Wen Hexagrams.
Count fifty blades, discard one—"Great Expansion is fifty; the use is forty-nine." Split the remainder between both hands: Heaven in the left, Earth in the right. Take one blade from the right to the base of the left little finger—Human—to complete the triad. Now, begin the Changes.
Four operations make an Image; eighteen changes a Hexagram. Eight trigrams, and the small result is formed.
In layman's terms: divide and count by fours over and over; each remainder yields a line—6 (Old Yin), 7 (Young Yang), 8 (Young Yin), 9 (Old Yang).
Three changes give a line; nine changes give a hexagram—your "reading."
Truth be told, even in Li Qingyun's cultivation world, the art wasn't omniscient. At best, it added a ribbon to the gift. Many orthodox manuals even framed divination as self-suggestion—better no hexagram than blind faith in one.
Still, when you were stuck, throwing a hex calmed the mind, sorted causes and effects, and sometimes lit the path. And if you didn't like the result… draw again until you did. It was your reading; interpret as you pleased.
In essence, a street-corner "I sense doom upon your household—pay now to avert disaster!" was the Night City equivalent of "What are you looking at? Paid off your loans yet? No? Get back to work."
This time, though, Li Pan was truly out of leads. He focused on the word "mikoshi," and cast in earnest.
He finished a full sequence—and froze at the result.
Host hexagram: Kǎn (Water). Guest hexagram: Xùn (Wind). Combined: Huàn (Dispersing).
Across a river you spy a bar of gold;
The banks are wide, the waters deep—no place to ford.
Wealth glitters far and out of reach;
Day and night you yearn—in vain you seek.
Wind over Water—waves whipped up, undercurrents in every direction; turbulent flow, scattered hearts, rot hard to mend.
Even with all effort, hard to turn peril into safety. Avoid harm while you can.
A dire hex.
Li Pan's head throbbed.
Rude as it sounded, Kotarō really did seem cursed—calamity magnet, thin fortune, short life. Leave him alone and the man would die eight hundred times over…
He hovered on the edge—cast again or chuck the grass and declare, "My fate is mine to shape! I'll bend Heaven to my will!"—when something flickered at the edge of his vision.
At first he thought it was a plastic bag caught in the wind. Then he focused.
Oh. An actual ghost wisp.
A figure in a white dress with empty sleeves and hem—just a head peeking from the collar, long black hair veiling the face, cinema-classic schtick so old-school it only turned up nowadays in cosplay skits.
In an age soaked in gore-stream content, the look was quaint rather than scary. Most civilians would assume a prank—hidden cams and drone rigs.
The problem was that Li Pan toggled his SBS tactical visor—low-light, IR, rangefinder—and got nothing. No return, no heat.
A real ghost, then.
He watched it drift into an inner courtyard.
Moments later, it floated back out, cradling a rectangular crystal.
Even if the camera couldn't capture the specter, that crystal was unmistakable. A quick search would label it as a high-purity photonic quantum chip—in plain terms, cutting-edge storage.
Could that be the mikoshi? The hex did say he'd "see a bar of gold across the river." Likely.
But what was the ghost? A bound spirit? Five-Ghost Transport sorcery? That didn't fit—the people of this world supposedly only had one breath (one life-soul), no wandering shades.
He could blitz it with a friendly little punch and send it onward—but remembering the ominous hex, he chose to play it safe.
Without a ripple, he pretended to see nothing, engaged optical cloak, and silently chanted the Heart Sutra of Severing Evil. Azure light shone from his eyes—his spirit stepped free.
The blue wisp curved through the air and adhered to the specter's back, shadowing it.
The ghost had no real wits; it ignored Li Pan's spirit and arrowed straight into Neo-Tokyo Sub-City, weaving the sewers until it entered a derelict metro station.
A dead underground mall yawned beyond—shops in ruin, garbage strewn, breath like winter. Char and blast marks scarred the walls; chalked human outlines and NCPA markers lay scattered—site of a firefight, explosion, or fire with heavy casualties. Classic horror set-dressing.
The specter drifted into the depths—what looked like a food court, now worse. Sigils smeared in red paint—or animal blood—covered the walls. The floor had been set up as a cult altar.
Li Pan circled the altar. Nine man-high candelabra ringed it; pale wax burned with blue flame, barely lighting the space. Shells of blue light bubbled into a field, some kind of ward.
Inside the array, beneath each candelabrum, lay a human sacrifice.
From their gear, they were ninjas, strapped to field cots—limbs bound, IVs of saline, muscle relaxants, vitamins dripping. Their neural jacks were locked; talisman seals slapped to their brows. Eyes wide, pupils skittering epileptically—dreaming.
Each abdomen had been slit from chest to groin; clamps peeled fat and flesh aside to expose the organs. In the gut lay a parasitic mass—a pulsing white mucus-cyst sporing like a slime mold, rooting into the viscera like a cocoon.
To Li Pan's shock, Kotarō was among them.
He was in slightly better shape—no drugs, no parasite. Stripped of equipment and bound in red cords laced with talismans, cinched tight into flesh. Some seals barely, awkwardly covered the essentials—an eye-searing sight.
And he wasn't the only familiar face.
Ashiya Shigui wore an old-style priest's robe, seated at a wooden table in the center of the formation, brush flying in cinnabar as he dashed talismans. Before him sat nine lidded jars, each sealed with sigils—odd shapes, big and small, like pickle crocks—no, not pickles.
Li Pan recognized several from TV—the exact, heirloom tea jars the Oda had gifted their vassals. Not replicas—genuine "antiques". Or rather… monsters.
The ghost arrowed into one jar with a soft plop. Ashiya paused, peeled the seal, and drew out the crystal chip.
His face darkened. He pointed. A paper man stood up on the table.
"This is it?"
The paper man nodded rapidly, squeaking gibberish.
Ashiya sneered. "The Oda clan is dust, and you're still daydreaming Spring and Autumn fantasies."
More papery babble.
Ashiya's voice turned cold. "Don't panic. It's no use to me; I don't care for it. I'll return it when I can. For now, let's settle our account."
Gibbering protest.
Ashiya roared, "What?! I should've killed you back then, you worthless wretch! You tricked me into this demonic pit—enslaved to another, damned beyond rebirth!"
He flicked a bamboo fan from his sleeve and cracked it across the paper man.
On the cot, Kotarō convulsed—tears streaming, teeth grinding the cords—foam bubbling from his mouth.
The paper man whimpered.
Ashiya hammered it again and again with the fan. "Die! Heh! Heh-heh-heh! You think you get to die? Think you can? You can't. None of us can!"
"Eternally slaves—forever and ever! Idiot! Trash!"
Seventeen, eighteen blows. Kotarō seized, then sagged limp, muscles slackening.
Ashiya, sated, took a breath, then crumpled the paper man and flicked it away. It shot like a dart, snuffing the candle over Kotarō's head, then caught fire and burned to ash.
Kotarō spasmed and growled, then his head snapped, back arched, legs straightened—stillness…
Was he passed out—or dead?
The scene was so grotesque Li Pan hesitated to move closer.
Seconds later, under Li Pan's cold gaze and Ashiya's icy stare, Kotarō gasped and sat bolt upright. Hair and muscle surged; bone horns budded from scalp and elbows. He was unlocking his seal—shifting into Shuten-dōji. Yet the talismaned cords flashed gold and bit into the oni's swelling frame, refusing to snap.
Shuten-dōji strained in pain, unable to exert full power. He forced the transformation down and glared at Ashiya, seething, jaw working as if to tear and devour him. The roar that burst from him barely sounded human—like a hundred war drums in a storm, like…
"Liùdào—!! (Six Paths!)"
Ashiya snapped his fan open and slashed it through the air. A chill gale rolled in; every other candle guttered out.
He covered his mouth with the fan, leaving only a fox-narrow gaze.
"Since you're here, why hide? Come out and talk, all of you."
Li Pan kept still and silent—Ashiya wasn't talking to him.
In the dark, the other eight sacrifices trembled. Then their flesh collapsed—skin, bone, and meat sucked dry by the mucus clinging to their stomachs. Blood and marrow melted into the slime, which heaved and split into twisted faces, wailing like a thousand damned souls—mountains collapsing, seas roaring—crying one name:
"Six Paths—!!!"
Ashiya seemed to understand their meaning and answered in a voice like black ice.
"No need to be grateful. I've already said—I'm not like the other Ashiyas."
"As long as you're useful to me, I don't care how many fields you devour, or how much land you blight."
He snapped a fresh talisman alight and lifted the jar the ghost had entered. He tossed the burning slip inside.
A bang like a firecracker—flame whooshed skyward. A shriek ripped the air, and blood boiled up over the rim.
Ashiya gestured politely. "Who will enter my jar?"
"Six Paths—!"
A white mucus mass keened and leapt, plunging into the jar with a wet thump, sending up gouts of blood-foam.
Ashiya smiled thinly and clapped the lid on.
"Good. The wise know the times. You relics can see it—Heaven cracked, Earth broken, demons everywhere. Without a patron, you won't cavort for long."
He repeated the process, jar after jar—purging whatever had been inside and inviting new tenants.
Then he slanted a look at Kotarō—no, Shuten-dōji.
"And you? Care to come out? Don't worry—even if you break free, he won't die."
"Six Paths!" Shuten-dōji roared.
Ashiya sniffed. "I've no idea what you see in that waste. Guard him if you must."
One by one, the slime masses entered jars, until only a final one remained. This one refused the jar; instead it flowered into half a human female body, lush and sinuous, with half a mouth that sang like a harp:
"Six Paths~"
Ashiya snapped his fan wide, hiding his face. Blood beaded at the corner of his left eye.
"…Tamamo-no-Mae. I knew you wouldn't bend. But with so little flesh, how long can you last?"
The woman's voice chimed like water on jade. "Six Paths~~~"
Ashiya coughed blood behind the fan, eyes narrowing in a smile.
"Cough… Oh, I see. You've set your sights on him, have you? Don't waste your schemes."
"Even a real Dragon King can't touch Six Paths and walk away whole. And that thing—it returned by way of the Dao itself, without shedding so much as the shape of a man…"
"That's no man, nor any apostle… It's a monster that's touched the Root more times than I can count."
He snapped the fan shut—revealing insect mandibles beneath—and whoomp, blasted a tongue of fire that caught the woman unawares.
The mucus-woman writhed and shrieked in the flames—the wild dirge of a forest beast burning alive.
"Six Paths!!!"
She crumbled into ash and was gone.
.
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⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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