Li Ke felt completely numb.
If his theory was correct, he didn't just need to figure out how to wipe out the monsters on the surface. He also had to find a way to soothe the dead below so they would stop feeding the anomaly with their perpetual terror.
"But the absolute worst part is, if the Underworld itself is crawling with those cosmic freaks, things are going to get incredibly messy..."
Li Ke turned his gaze back onto Kanae Kocho.
"Can you actually travel down into the netherworld? If you can, could you pass on a message for me? Tell them that we're up here fighting tooth and nail to slaughter these monsters. And while you're at it, check if the Underworld itself has been compromised... Oh, and another thing: the people who died recently, did their souls actually make it down there, or did they pass on to the afterlife?"
He pressed for answers with deep gravity. Mid-sentence, an even darker possibility suddenly flashed through his mind.
What if the souls harvested by these exact monsters were the ones being weaponized to fuel this systemic nightmare?
"I-I don't know," Kanae replied, looking thoroughly perplexed. "Passing on to the next life requires a soul to be entirely free of lingering attachments, so I've never actually traveled to that side. As for the recently deceased... come to think of it, I really haven't seen any of them around. Lord Li Ke, do you know something we don't?"
She stared at him intently. Her intuition told her that Li Ke had definitely unraveled some monumental, terrifying truth about the universe, which was the only reason he would ask such bizarre questions.
"Yeah, I have a pretty good idea. For instance, the monsters surrounding us right now are actually physical amalgams woven from your collective fear, your thoughts, and a corrupted alien energy."
Li Ke spun Kashu in his grip. In just this short span of time, the atmosphere inside his protective dome had already become noticeably thin.
The dropping oxygen levels warned him that he needed to launch his assault immediately. If he waited until they were forced to break the perimeter just to catch a breath of air, the tactical situation would spiral out of control.
"I understand," Kanae nodded. Even though she couldn't perceive the invisible spiritual tracking lines Li Ke was describing, the sheer gravity on his face proved he wasn't lying. She chose to trust his deduction completely.
"But if that's the case... doesn't that mean we have to stop being afraid of these things entirely? That's..."
Mai's voice trailed off as she frowned at the encroaching horde.
Given a bit of time to adapt, a seasoned martial artist like her could easily conquer her panic and face these phantoms without flinching. But the ordinary citizens were a completely different story. Even if he and the Corps slaughtered thousands of monsters, as long as the civilian population remained paralyzed by fear, their military efforts would basically amount to nothing.
Under those exact conditions, winning this war seemed completely impossible!
"Stressing over it won't change the reality of the situation, so all we can do is give it everything we've got," Li Ke said, taking a deep, steady breath.
"It's about to get incredibly hot, so bear with me. We need to move fast toward a less populated area. I'm going to coat your bodies in my flames to seal you off from the environment. Keep your eyes peeled, and if any monsters break through, help me take them down!"
The fire around him began to churn violently as the true power of the Red Dragon Fire surged outward. In the next heartbeat, the crimson flames descended upon Shinobu, Kanae, and Mai Shiranui, causing all three women to wince in sudden pain.
"This sensation..."
Shinobu tightly clutched her chest, panting heavily as if her entire body were about to be incinerated. Yet, through the searing heat, she could distinctly feel that her organs—which had been under immense, suffocating strain from her self-inflicted wisteria regimen—were miraculously beginning to recover, bit by bit!
In other words, the potent wisteria toxins saturated within her blood were actively being vaporized and purged from her system!
If it were just the phantom sensation of being burned, she could easily endure it; after all, the flames weren't actually damaging her flesh. However, the rapid extraction of the poison threw her internal equilibrium into absolute chaos, triggering a wave of intense physical exhaustion that left her feeling deeply weakened.
Had this happened before today, losing her poisonous edge would have been an entirely unacceptable setback. But looking over at Kanae, who was also gritting her teeth and enduring the burning sensation, Shinobu felt that the sacrifice was trivial compared to having her sister back.
It wasn't just because her drive for a suicidal revenge plot had evaporated; there was another, far more practical reason.
Judging by Li Ke's dominant nature, he likely wouldn't permit her to throw herself onto the front lines anymore anyway. Besides, her physical constitution down the line probably wouldn't allow it either. After all—
Glancing at Li Ke's towering, incredibly robust physique, Shinobu shot a slightly apprehensive, lingering look toward Mai Shiranui beside her.
"If I don't drag Miss Mai into the mix to share the load later... I might actually die, won't I?"
She couldn't help but fret over the looming domestic reality. She was acutely aware of her own fragile cardiovascular limits and knew she couldn't shoulder such an overwhelming responsibility entirely on her own. From her perspective, the absolute best strategic move was to firmly bind Miss Shiranui to her side.
Furthermore, she harbored deep doubts about whether her severely damaged body could ever bear children. If she was completely infertile, then having Miss Mai Shiranui in the picture became a absolute necessity to carry on a family line.
Her mind continued to race with these chaotic, unbidden domestic worries as her physical chemistry shifted. Sensing her distraction, her temporarily revived sister, Kanae Kocho, cast a deeply worried glance her way.
"What is it, Shinobu? Are you alright?"
Kanae had been quietly watching when Li Ke and Shinobu finalized their pact. She knew her younger sister's temperament was as stubborn as an ox; once Shinobu set her mind to a path, no amount of persuasion would ever make her turn back.
Consequently, Kanae's thoughts were perfectly aligned with her sister's: if Mai Shiranui could shoulder a portion of this burden, it would be an absolute godsend for Shinobu.
Besides, Kanae harbored her own selfish motives in this arrangement. It wasn't that she was desperate to remain among the living forever; she simply wanted to drag both Shinobu and Kanao entirely out of this blood-soaked, lethal line of work so they could finally live normal, peaceful lives.
"It's nothing, Sister. Let's fight together!"
Shinobu shook her head, forcing herself to stand tall. She actively willed her breathing to adapt to the foreign heat and the rapid internal shifts inside her organs. When Li Ke turned his gaze back to her, she offered him a completely genuine, unforced smile.
"I am ready."
"Good."
Li Ke gave a firm nod before shifting his attention squarely onto Mai Shiranui.
"Your fire truly is a miracle..." Mai murmured, staring intensely at the crimson aura enveloping her skin. "It stings, but I can actually feel my fatigue washing away. What an unbelievable power."
Even though the heat radiating off the shroud felt intensely high, it left her t-shirt and flesh entirely unscathed. Instead, the raw energy was aggressively accelerating her physical recovery, making her muscles feel remarkably light and revitalized.
It was an entirely unique, highly specific sensation—simultaneously stinging yet profoundly comforting!
As far as the actual pain went, it was well within her tolerance limits. The Shiranui clan possessed a massive, generational resistance to thermal elements. Unlike the severely compromised Shinobu, Mai adapted to the flame shroud with absolute velocity. She fluidly slashed Kashu through the air, flinging a loose arc of his dragon fire outward to cleanly incinerate a stray paper-lantern yokai that had tried to ambush her flank!
"Hey! That burns through my stamina!" Li Ke snapped, glaring at her deadpan.
Watching her analyze his elemental shield like a curious toddler was amusing, but throwing his fire around as a projectile was a purely physical action. Any flame she flung away required him to actively burn his own energy reserves to replenish!
"Bottom line—if we are going to throw down in a real brawl, we need to locate a completely open area! Otherwise, my flames will effortlessly reduce this entire port city to absolute ash. Shinobu, is there a designated clearing nearby suitable for a high-intensity engagement?"
Li Ke turned back to query the Insect Hashira.
"Yes! Head directly east—there is a massive expanse of open terrain that the Corps originally cleared to serve as an auxiliary base!" Shinobu replied, leaning slightly on her older sister for structural support as she gave the heading.
Li Ke watched the writhing, asymmetric wall of yokai edge closer to their shrinking perimeter, letting out a sharp, highly irritated click of his tongue.
Truth be told, throwing down right here alongside Mai Shiranui and Shinobu Kocho wasn't an issue in terms of his combat capability. The real crisis layout lay in the domino effect: brawling in the residential quarters would inevitably terrorize the civilian masses and reduce their fragile homes to splinters. If that happened, there was no telling what kind of hyper-mutated, nightmare yokai their concentrated panic would manifest next!
"These freaks are absolute cancer! Move! Shinobu, take the vanguard and lead the way!"
Barking the command, Li Ke gave Shinobu the green light to navigate without a second thought.
Forcing her physically spent body past the exhausting balance shift, Shinobu executed a sequence of rapid, fluid leaps, vaulting off the low parapet of the watchtower and sprinting hard toward her heading.
Li Ke and Mai followed in lockstep with her velocity, while Kanae closely matched their retreat pace.
The exact millisecond they cleared the threshold of the outer gate, Li Ke looked over his shoulder to see a colossal, ten-meter-tall abomination slam violently down onto the watchtower platform they had occupied just a heartbeat prior! The giant entity's entire chassis was entirely encrusted with slavering, snapping maws, its elongated limbs flexing unnaturally. Li Ke had no idea what specific mythological name to attach to the beast, but the monster locked its gaze onto their trail and let out a piercing, blood-curdling screech.
The sonic wave acted like a homing signal, turning the entire city into a boiling hive of violence. The swarming yokai completely abandoned their siege on the cowering citizens trapped indoors. They rapidly pooled into the thoroughfares, morphing into a singular, raging current that pursued Li Ke's vanguard with terrifying speed.
Worse yet, as the entities coalesced into a massive military formation, a visible wave of thick white mist surged around their collective ranks, making their silhouettes look infinitely more grotesque and imposing in the dark.
Li Ke's squad didn't have to wait for the main horde to catch up before facing resistance. The moment Shinobu's feet touched the terrain outside the walls, the dense woodland lining the path violently gave way as dozens of twin-headed feral wolves with blood-red pupils lunged into the open. As these two-headed beasts sprinted, a localized razor-wind erupted from their pelts, systematically slicing through surrounding timber and thick overgrowth like a buzzsaw.
The kinetic turbulence coming off their bodies was intense enough to rattle and warp the edges of the flame shields Li Ke had gifted them!
"Impudent brutes!"
Li Ke harbored absolutely zero mercy for the ambushers. Transforming his kinetic output into a high-speed blur, he bolted straight to Shinobu's flank. Swinging his massive greatsword in a devastating, sweeping horizontal cleave, a violent arc of Dragon Fire instantly engulfed the lead pack of two-headed wolves. The sheer physical payload of his heavy swing smashed the remaining beasts off the path, sending them crashing back into the secondary ranks of their own pack.
But before the disoriented creatures could claw their way back onto their paws, the intense dragon fire coating their skin collided with the razor-wind swirling around their bodies. The elemental interaction triggered a violent thermal reaction, aggressively spreading the blaze across the rest of the pack like a wildfire.
The wolves let out terrified yelps, several younger beasts violently pivoting to flee the inferno. But Li Ke had no intention of leaving money on the table. Channeling his energy into the heavy steel of his blade, he unleashed a massive, crescent-shaped wave of concentrated Dragon Fire that slammed dead-center into the fleeing pack, setting the entire cluster ablaze!
The woods echoed with the desperate, agonizing howls of the dying beasts, but the magical wind feeding their speed only served as an ideal accelerant for his supernatural element. Subjected to a thousands-of-degrees inferno, their physical structures stood no chance, reducing them to gray ash in a matter of seconds!
"Keep moving!"
Li Ke didn't linger to see if the ashes would materialize into a weapon or a stat-mark. His advanced perception had just warned him that the heavy pressure from the wolves' wind barrier had successfully shaved away a portion of the protective flame shield wrapping around Shinobu's body.
But right as they pushed forward to resume their trek, several bizarre birds abruptly dived straight toward their position.
Li Ke's advanced sensory perception immediately flashed a frantic warning of imminent danger. Stiffening for a fraction of a second, he rapidly willed his energy outward to reinforce their thinning defensive shields. In the very next heartbeat, a dense plume of ghostly blue smoke violently erupted right above Shinobu's head.
Li Ke stared up at the avian anomalies in pure confusion, entirely uncertain of what specific mythological traits these monsters possessed.
But regardless of what they were, the rule remained the same: if it breeds danger, kill it!
He didn't even bother to waste kinetic energy swinging his blade. Taking a deep, sharp breath to lock his focus, he executed a sequence of seamless Firebending gestures. Within a microsecond, a barrage of high-velocity plasma fireballs shot into the sky, blasting the phantom birds out of the air.
Yet, right as he neutralized the aerial threat, the colossal ten-meter-tall abomination pursuing them from the rear executed a monstrous leap. Vaulting high into the sky, it aligned its massive trajectory directly with Li Ke's squad and crashed down like a meteor.
Staring up at the giant, slavering beast soaring dozens of meters above them, Li Ke found himself entirely at a loss for words.
Through his analytical gaze, he realized that this mouth-encrusted giant possessed absolutely zero flight correction or mid-air maneuvering capabilities!
If you can't even change directions in mid-air, why the hell did you jump so high?!
A high-pressure jet of Dragon Fire erupted from Li Ke's back, serving as a roaring thermal cape that propelled him forward. Simultaneously, a blinding aura of concentrated heat completely shrouded his greatsword. Under his absolute physical acceleration, he transformed into a human rocket, launching himself straight into the core of the monster's falling mass. Without a shred of suspense, his heavy blade sliced the ten-meter-tall giant clean in half from head to toe!
Subjected to a thousands-of-degrees inferno paired with Li Ke's maximum physical output, surviving the clash was a mathematical impossibility.
The creature's split anatomy carbonized into charred husk fragments almost instantaneously, crashing onto the dirt below as dead weight.
Regrettably, the massive greatsword he had looted from the One Piece universe reached its structural limit. The severe thermal expansion from his prolonged dragon flames, combined with the extreme kinetic impact of the kill, caused the central spine of the blade to warp and buckle visibly.
It was blindingly obvious that this weapon was on its absolute last legs.
At the end of the day, the blade was forged from ordinary mortal iron. Deprived of the passive structural reinforcement granted by the Haki of its home universe, it stood absolutely zero chance when subjected to the sheer destructive parameters of Red Dragon Fire.
Metal inevitably melts. While the exterior hull of this specific greatsword was technically crafted to be heat-resistant, the inner core and the outer shell weren't forged from the same uniform material. In the hands of a conventional swordsman using standard fire, it would have lasted a lifetime. But under Li Ke's unrestrained dragon flames, the outer steel had long since become incredibly brittle, and the internal spine had finally liquefied during this extended engagement.
Or to put it more accurately—
The Dragon Fire Li Ke wielded was simply too far outside the standard tier of this world's physics.
When deployed in its soothing, passive healing state around a human body, it was completely safe. But the version wrapping his greatsword was strictly locked into absolute, unadulterated destruction.
"Looks like I seriously need to get my hands on some top-tier legendary gear. No matter what happens after this mission, I need to find a way back to the Arad continent or another high-fantasy universe. These standard iron blades can't even survive a handful of strikes," Li Ke muttered, shaking his head in annoyance.
Right as his complaint left his lips, the remains of the giant abomination he had systematically dismantled completely disintegrated, scattering into the wind as nothing but fine gray ash.
However, the brief delay caused by that monster allowed an endless sea of yokai to flood into the open space right behind them.
There were spectral sheets of white cloth drifting endlessly through the night sky, grotesque humanoids covered from head to toe in ragged, weeping gasps, and a bizarre procession of Kappa, horned Oni, and one-legged hopping paper umbrellas (Kasa-obake) [INDEX]. Traveling as a singular pack, they were completely wrapped in a heavy, swirling vortex of dense white mist—a visual that screamed they were exceptionally dangerous to provoke.
Li Ke didn't know the formal mythological names for most of these creatures, nor did he fully comprehend the mechanics of their distinct folklore abilities. But the one thing he knew for a fact was that this horde was going to be incredibly stubborn to put down.
Through the radar of his "Observation Haki," he could perceive that as these phantoms massed together, the volatile World Energy leaking from their mutated frames mixed with the concentrated "fear" of the populace, weaving into a massive, shimmering barrier that resembled a conceptual Shinto bounded field. Though he hadn't mapped out its exact functions yet, an integrated defense of that magnitude was bound to be a major headache.
Should I poke it and find out?
Weighing the heavy greatsword with its warped, buckled spine in his grip, Li Ke felt a familiar surge of competitive excitement flare up inside his chest.
Yet, right as he hesitated on whether to launch a vanguard strike, a fascinating anomaly triggered before his eyes.
The swarming yokai abruptly ground to a complete halt.
They continued to writhe, gnash their fangs, and snap their clawed hands menacingly at his squad, but not a single phantom took another step forward. Li Ke's brow furrowed tightly as he scrutinized the bizarre, asymmetric shapes of the frozen vanguard.
"The mist wrapping around their bodies is starting to evaporate!"
Beside him, Mai Shiranui's martial intuition picked up on the sudden shift instantly. Her sharp eyes tracked the phenomenon with absolute clarity—the exact moment these monsters crossed a boundary roughly a hundred meters away from the city walls, the dense, spectral white fog shielding their ranks began to visibly thin out and dissolve into the air.
Li Ke blinked in surprise, then immediately maximized his "Observation Haki" to scan the stationary wall of phantoms. He observed that the entities situated furthest from the city walls were experiencing a rapid decay; the white vapor structuring their anatomy—the very essence known as human fear—was systematically dissolving into nothingness.
This was the smoking gun. It perfectly explained why these monsters refused to step any further into the wilderness.
Li Ke cast a lingering glance at the charred remains of the ten-meter-tall abomination he had just cleaved in half, focusing his sensory perception back onto the dead flesh.
In the next breath, his Haki confirmed that the presence of fear within the giant's corpse had completely evaporated, and the corrupted World Energy was actively converging toward his own system.
Shimmering motes of golden light fused into his skin, instantaneously replenishing his expended stamina. Yet, despite the welcome buff, Li Ke's brow furrowed into a tight frown.
"If they physically can't survive outside the city limits, hunting them down is going to be a real headache."
He stared at the writhing, gnashing sea of yokai, the blade in his grip practically vibrating with the sudden urge to test their defenses.
Then, his gaze snapped up toward the dark sky. He spotted multiple aerial anomalies circling above, but curiously, the white mist wrapped around their airborne frames showed absolutely zero signs of evaporating. He couldn't quite fathom why.
"Are they not fully matured? Is it only the ripe, complete variants that can break away from the human population hub? Or is there some other underlying law at play that I'm completely missing?"
Li Ke immediately flashed back to the abstract saw-wheel entity that had terrified Mai earlier. But—
A lack of theoretical data wasn't about to stop him from slaughtering these things right now!
Raging fire violently erupted from his warped, dying greatsword. From a professional swordsman's perspective, this piece of iron was completely ruined and entirely unfit for combat; the buckled central spine meant the blade could splinter or snap permanently at any moment. Fortunately for him, his impending tactical approach didn't require a physical edge!
Concentrated plasma fire tightly coiled around the steel!