The aftershocks of Blue still lingered in the air, a faint, unsettling distortion of space that refused to fade.
The Hōzuki sisters stood numbly at the edge of the giant bowl-shaped crater. Their minds had gone blank after witnessing that miracle, as if their entire worldview had been crushed and reshaped by that man in the span of three seconds.
However, the crisis was far from over.
The instant those tens of thousands of infant spirits were erased, a special grade cursed energy, hundreds of times thicker than before and saturated with boundless hatred and grief, erupted like a volcano from the main shrine building at the end of the approach, the only structure that had survived Blue's erasure.
A thunderous crack split the air.
The rotten roof of the main hall was blown away by the force of the curse. On the altar, the soot-blackened statue of the mother-and-child deity fractured, spiderwebbed by countless blood-red cracks.
"My... child..."
A distorted female wail, soaked in pain and refusal, rang directly through their minds.
The statue shattered completely.
From its remains, a five-meter tall special grade cursed spirit forced its way into the world.
Its main body was a gaunt, skeletal woman. Her limbs were bound tight by countless black umbilical cords, coiling like thorny vines. The face was featureless, no eyes, nose, or mouth, only a single black hole that opened and closed, releasing a soundless scream. In her abdomen yawned a massive, gaping void, as if something had been brutally torn out from inside.
"Teacher, be careful."
Yashiro was the first to react. In her twin pupils, unlike those of any ordinary human, scenes invisible to normal eyes unfolded clearly.
In her vision, the cursed spirit's entire body was wrapped in human-made cursed threads, black lines of energy oozing malicious intent.
"Something is wrong... this cursed spirit was man-made."
Grimness and a flicker of genuine fear crossed her small face.
"Someone forcibly tore mother and child apart, ripping their souls away from each other, then planted the vilest curse into the mother. Using 'the endless pain of losing her child' as the core, they kept stoking her resentment, refining her into what you see now."
She came to the most rational conclusion she could.
"Teacher, we have to fall back. This thing was designed to vent hatred to the maximum. Its danger level is impossible to predict."
Natsume did not move.
He ignored Yashiro's warning. His pale blue Six Eyes were calmly fixed on the filth of cursed energy spilling off the special grade spirit.
This feeling...
There was no mistake.
That cold, sticky aura of malice, laced with a mocking cruelty, was the same as the curse that had targeted Eriri. The manifestation was different, but the "cursed energy fingerprint" at its core was identical.
The mother cursed spirit seemed to recognize Natsume as the murderer of her child.
It let loose a silent roar. Dozens of umbilical cords, each like a whip tipped with blades, tore through the air with enough power to pulverize a building. They lashed toward Natsume from all directions.
"Teacher!"
Eiko cried out.
Yet in the face of an attack that could shred concrete and steel, Natsume's expression did not change. He did not even take a single step.
Something strange happened.
The raging umbilical cords all stopped in midair, just before they could touch him, as if they had slammed into an invisible wall, absolute and impassable. No matter how violently they struck, they could not advance even a fraction of a millimeter.
Limitless.
The barrier that eternally existed between him and the world, an infinity no one could cross.
"Artificial tragedies do not deserve to remain."
Natsume slowly raised his left hand. He brought his index and middle fingers together, pointing straight at the raging curse mother.
"To completely purify this man-made sin, I will use this."
His voice grew solemn.
"Cursed Technique Reversal, Red."
In that instant, a blinding red light exploded at his fingertips, so intense it felt as though it could dye the whole world crimson.
If Blue was the gravity that devoured all things...
Then Red was the absolute repulsion that rejected everything.
A three-meter wide beam of red energy, packed with a colossal mass of positive cursed energy, shot out from his fingers faster than light.
The world turned red.
The detonation followed a few seconds later, a deafening roar that shook the mountain. The Hōzuki sisters were hurled away by the shockwave, rolling across the ground several times before they finally stopped.
Ignoring the pain in their bodies, they raised their heads, eyes wide with shock.
The special grade mother curse that had seemed strong enough to drive anyone to despair did not offer the slightest resistance. Its huge body, a mass of condensed resentment, began to evaporate from the core outward under the onslaught of Red, disintegrating and vanishing in an instant, leaving not even a trace behind.
And the beam did not stop there.
It punched through the curse, through the remaining ruins of the shrine, and drove straight into the mountain behind it, carving a vast tunnel into the rock. The cavern it left in the cliff face was huge, its edges glazed to glass by the tremendous heat.
The pure positive energy carried by Red swept through the entire corrupted area like a storm of purification. The chill, sticky foulness in the air vanished at once, replaced by a fresh clarity, like the sky after rain.
The battle ended the moment it began.
Natsume slowly lowered his hand. A faint red spark danced at his fingertips before fading away.
His certainty deepened.
A mysterious curse user was active in this region.
Like some twisted gardener, they were scattering the seeds of curses across the land, then watching with interest as those seeds grew and festered, nurturing them into dangerous special grade curses to serve some secret purpose.
Natsume closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Six Eyes had expanded his search range to its maximum.
In his vision, every current of cursed energy in the world was laid bare.
But the other party was already gone.
The one behind it all was incredibly cautious. The instant they sensed that their "masterpiece" had been erased, they severed every connection, disappearing without a trace.
In the end, all Natsume could catch in the air was a faint residue of cursed energy, already close to dissipating.
It seemed the quiet days he wanted were not going to last much longer.
He stood amidst the purified ruins, blue eyes glinting slightly.
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