In front of the Saeki house, by the time Ago came back to her senses, the Ikiryo that had been dragged into the darkness had already severed its connection with her.
"So creepy!"
She patted her chest, still shaken.
She'd run into her share of ghosts, and killed her share of people too, but a monster this terrifying was truly a first.
"Really hiding up there? Then what are we waiting for? Get in there!"
Azuki didn't hesitate for a moment. Catching Ago's expression, her thoughts shifted, and the Ikiryo in the bedroom lunged as one toward the closet, slipping through the gaps in the cabinet doors and rushing up into the compartment above.
But that patch of darkness was like the vast maw of an abyss. The Ikiryo that charged in were swallowed by the thick blackness, their connections snapping one after another, and in the blink of an eye every Ikiryo that had rushed into the closet lost contact with Azuki.
Like clay oxen sinking into the sea, they didn't stir up so much as a ripple.
"Huh?"
Azuki started, turning her head toward Ago.
"I can't feel my Ikiryo anymore. Is the signal up there really that bad?"
Ago rolled her eyes and said sourly, "Idiot! It's not that the signal's bad, they got beaten until they shut off! Looks like the landlord upstairs isn't too fond of uninvited guests like us."
"Oh my, then what do we do? Call the property manager and file a complaint? No matter what, you can't just attack your visitors."
Azuki scratched her head and fished out her phone.
"Complaint my foot!" Ago smacked her palm against the back of Azuki's head, baring her teeth in a savage grin. "Obviously we crank up the intensity! Make her feel our sincerity!"
The two of them traded their clumsy stand-up routine, matching grins of mixed malice and excitement rising on their faces.
Retreat just because they'd taken a loss? That would never happen. They'd only lost less than a hundred-millionth of their power. As long as they could pull off the silencing, losing a few tens of thousands more shares of power would be well worth it.
The two exchanged a glance, and the air around them twisted violently.
A scalp-crawling scene unfolded. Hundreds upon thousands of blurred, wavering silhouettes erupted from the heads of Ago and Azuki like floodwaters bursting a dam. The dense mass of Ikiryo nearly blotted out the night sky above the alley.
No spirit-sight was even needed. Ago and Azuki hadn't bothered to make their Ikiryo transparent, and the vast horde released with a silent shriek merged into a pale torrent that once again surged toward the Saeki house, boring in through the cracks of doors and windows, the fissures in the walls, every hole they could seep through!.
First floor, second floor, staircase, hallway... every corner was instantly packed with these white invaders. Their target was clear: they swarmed toward the second-floor bedroom, that closet, and the compartment above it.
At the same moment, in the second-floor bedroom of the Saeki house, the ceiling covered in spatter-like stains grew darker. Those filthy marks deepened.
What had been merely slightly darker specks now spread like thick ink dripped into water, blooming rapidly, joining into a single sheet.
Dark brown turned to pitch black, the wood grain utterly buried. Then the black ceiling began to writhe. And it began to flow down along the walls.
"Blurp..."
The next instant, accompanied by a sound like surging mud, the thickest patch of darkness at the center of the ceiling suddenly bulged downward!.
Then a black waterfall came pouring down.
It wasn't water.
It was hair!.
Thick, greasy black hair, tangled into strands, poured madly from every inch of darkness in the ceiling like a mass of living tentacles, carrying unmistakable malice and force, spreading toward every white Ikiryo in the room.
The Ikiryo threw themselves recklessly against the sweeping masses of black hair. The strands coiled around the Ikiryo's shells like living snakes, twisting and constricting. Each ensnared Ikiryo was like a crushed glow stick, its light dimming and dissolving into nothing.
One, two, ten, a hundred... the Ikiryo hurled themselves forward wave after wave, while the black hair grew and spread without end. The black hair and the white torrent clashed fiercely. Though both were forces with extremely weak physical interaction, their collision produced power enough to shake the material world. The bedroom walls trembled faintly amid the soundless struggle, dust sifting down.
"Wh-what is this?!"
The exhilaration finally drained from Ago's face. She realized the owner of this house didn't seem to be someone they could silence so easily.
"An old lady who over-conditioned her hair?"
Still, even so, it didn't stop their snark.
It looked impressive, sure, but it was no big deal.
"Let's put in a bit more effort. The audience is still waiting for us!"
As if psyching each other up, Ago and Azuki raised their right hands and clapped them together.
The next second, an even more terrifying sight unfolded.
The entire Saeki house, and even the air all around the alley, suddenly lit up.
Thousands upon thousands, no, tens of thousands of Ikiryo erupted from their heads, shoulders, necks, backs... from every pore.
They were no longer the half-transparent wisps from before, but so densely solid it hurt the eyes, like countless ghastly pale humanoid figures crammed into the narrow alley, even crawling up the walls and rooftops of the buildings on either side.
For a moment the alley was lit as bright as day, yet with a kind of pallid whiteness that carried no warmth.
The tens of thousands of Ikiryo were no longer a trickling stream but a tsunami, unleashed by Ago and Azuki, ferociously engulfing the Saeki house!.
The walls, floor, and ceiling of the haunted house's second-floor bedroom groaned under an unbearable, indescribable weight of spiritual force.
The Ikiryo made a torrent of themselves, scouring everything with brute force, crowding into every inch of space, and with their pure, immense energy level, they crushed Kayako's resisting power.
The thick patch of darkness on the ceiling began to churn violently, as if seared by scorching flames, and it actually started to shrink inward?.
Was this defeat?
Faced with the invasion of Ago and Azuki, could even Kayako, the grudge itself, only fall back in defeat?
Amamiya Rin's jeep stopped at a street corner a little way from the alley.
Sitting in the driver's seat, he looked toward the alley where the Saeki house stood.
In his field of vision, milky-white halos drifted above the alley, and the white halos were steadily multiplying. Dense humanoid shapes floated in the sky like will-o'-the-wisps, forming a sea of fire.
The next moment, the white sea of fire swallowed the Saeki house. The raging blaze had grown so fierce that the building inside was no longer visible, only a great blurred mass of white light and shadow.
"The commotion keeps getting bigger..."
Amamiya Rin muttered to himself.
First over at the Takaichi residence, where the Soul Reviver used surging life force to fire off cannon blasts of light and bombard the place, and now the Saeki house was hardly outdone. The power of these souls was vast enough to easily swallow an entire building. Why would a world with no proper cultivation system produce monsters like these?
Grumbling inwardly, Amamiya Rin checked his weapons.
Three grenades, one Molotov cocktail, a pistol he'd brought back from the Takaichi residence yesterday with three magazines, and a tachi likewise brought back from the Takaichi residence.
OK! Time to move!.
With his weapons arranged, Amamiya Rin pushed the door open and got out. Without hesitation, he strode toward the alley.
The closer he drew to the alley's entrance, the heavier the cold, dank feeling in the air became.
It wasn't the temperature dropping, but something that soaked into the marrow, the instinct the human body naturally produces when facing a threat, and also the residue that escaped from the fierce collision between Kayako's curse and the power of Ago and Azuki.
If this were on the set next door, some xianxia or fantasy production where one could actually cultivate, in a situation like this the aftershock alone would be enough to wipe out every living person within a kilometer.
Then again, in that kind of setting, I'd be at least a Bodhisattva-level powerhouse.
Amamiya Rin walked into the alley, musing calmly. His whole body gave off not a shred of malice, not even a flicker of emotion. His steps made no sound, his body melting into the moonlight like an invisible man.
Straight ahead, Ago and Azuki stood in profile to him, outside the courtyard gate of the Saeki house.
Their whole minds and bodies were fixed on the haunted house ahead of them, utterly unaware that a visitor had come. Even the Ikiryo spread across heaven and earth showed no reaction to Amamiya Rin's arrival.
Amamiya Rin watched the two women ahead with cold detachment, his pace unhurried.
His aim was clear: to strike while Ago and Azuki were tangled up with Kayako, their power dispersed and their minds fully absorbed, and to drag one of them into the [Tomie Network] as fast as possible.
His left hand gripped the scabbard, thumb pressing against the guard, his right hand resting lightly over the hilt. The Crimson Lotus Breathing Method turned quietly, breath and stride fused into one rhythm, his senses honed to their limit. Like a leopard before the kill, he silently closed the last of the distance.
Fifteen meters, ten meters, seven meters...
Just as he was about to cross some invisible threshold, the scene before his eyes twisted without any warning.
Not a blur, not a flicker. It was as if someone had violently yanked away the painting of reality in his vision and swapped in another.
The alley, the night sky, the backs of Ago and Azuki, even the rough concrete under his feet, all of it vanished!.
In its place was dim, lightless indoor air reeking of the sweet, bloody tang of rust, and Ikiryo crowding everywhere in overflowing numbers. He could no longer even tell how many of them floated in midair, their whole forms giving off a faint white glow.
Beneath his feet was a wooden floor layered with thick dust. Ahead was the staircase leading to the second floor, and behind him was a tightly shut door.
He was standing in the entryway of the Saeki house's first floor!.
One second he'd been slinking through the alley, the next he was inside the haunted house. There had been no process, as if this movement itself had never happened, as if he'd been here all along.
Space and time had been swapped without any reason at all.
Amamiya Rin's pupils contracted, every muscle in his body drawing taut. The tachi was already half an inch out of its sheath, the cold blade reflecting the faint light seeping through the crack in the door.
Yet even as his body took a defensive stance, he immediately grasped his situation.
The power to manipulate space and time, it was Kayako!.
She had dragged the cursed ones approaching the haunted house inside along with it.
Almost at the same moment, Amamiya Rin heard a woman's voice come from beside him.
"Huh? We're inside the house?"
It was Azuki's voice, carrying a touch of surprise, as if bewildered as to why she'd ended up here.
"Why is there one more person?"
Another voice rang out at the same time, and Amamiya Rin felt himself being watched.
Amamiya Rin turned his head and saw Ago and Azuki standing in the first-floor living room. They stared blankly at the suddenly changed scene, and at him, who had suddenly appeared.
Then Ago's gaze fell on the tachi in Amamiya Rin's hand. Her eyes went wide, and she shrieked, "It's you! You're the one who sent those texts, aren't you! You stalker! You peeping pervert! So you finally show yourself!"
"That's right! The only person who'd show up here is that creep who was spying on us!"
The words had barely left Ago's mouth when Azuki caught on too, realization dawning across her face.
Then that expression instantly turned vicious, and she screamed in fury, "How dare you play us! Do you know we canceled a super important livestream to rush over here?! You rotten bastard, do you have any idea how much loss you've caused our adorable audience?"
Amamiya Rin didn't answer, because the instant Ago opened her mouth, he had already moved.
His left heel twisted hard, hips and waist snapping with force, and his whole body shot forward like an arrow off the string, hurtling straight at the nearest one, Azuki!.
A distance of less than ten meters, and driven by the Crimson Lotus Breathing Method, he was there in two strides!.
His right hand had drawn the tachi fully from its sheath, trailing a mournful pale arc of light, thrusting straight at Azuki's throat!.
Shinkage-ryu - Evil Thrust, a still, ultimate stab aimed at the opening! At a distance this close, there was no way to miss!.
And yet, the impossible happened.
The blade had extended only halfway when the air froze.
No! It wasn't the air that froze.
Amamiya Rin simply felt layer upon layer of resistance, resistance that had nothing to do with the air, nothing to do with space. The reason for its existence was simple: the countless Ikiryo filling the surrounding space were not phantoms or air.
They possessed genuine, actual mass!.
The resistance came from all directions, from countless half-transparent Ikiryo. Floating in midair, they lacked the ghostly ability to possess or pass through solid matter. As long as they existed there, they would interact with Amamiya Rin's body.
A single Ikiryo's mass was less than twenty-one grams, but along the path of Amamiya Rin's charge, the Ikiryo were far too dense. They existed with the will to stop Amamiya Rin, blocking his movement with their bodies.
His speed decayed at a rate almost too subtle for the eye to catch. For every inch Amamiya Rin advanced, he had to smash aside dozens of Ikiryo. It felt less like sprinting and more like wading through a viscous swamp.
But if the Ikiryo barred his way with the will to stop him, then wasn't Amamiya Rin advancing with an equally resolute killing intent?
Resistance? Then cut through it.
The Dhyana state opened fully, his consciousness sinking into the [Tomie Network].
No words were needed. The Tomie scattered everywhere responded in an instant, their breathing synchronizing back into Amamiya Rin's body through invisible nerve lines.
The world began to slow.
Crimson Lotus Breathing Method - Limit Burst!.
With the double boost of adrenaline and the neural overclock brought by synchronization, his blood surged like magma. The muscles of his sword arm bulged, veins standing out, and the blade, condensed with his will, drove into the swarm of Ikiryo.
Scattered white light burst out like sparks. The Ikiryo blocking his path were forcibly plowed open into a brief corridor!.
But more Ikiryo silently filled in.
The blade's speed slowed at a visible pace, until finally, less than ten centimeters from Azuki's neck, it was jammed completely dead.
The resistance transmitting through the blade was like sinking into a mire of mixed steel and rubber.
Azuki finally snapped out of it. Her face went ghostly white, and with a strange yelp she scrambled backward, half stumbling, half crawling, opening the distance between herself and Amamiya Rin.
____
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