Zhou Hui was stunned for a moment, the expression on his face shifting subtly, before he suddenly broke into a roguish smile.
The moment Chu He saw that look, he knew nothing good would come of it. Sure enough, he then heard Zhou Hui laugh and ask Maha, “My good son, since you’ve eaten someone, met your mother, and caused a disaster, are you planning to head back to the Sea of Blood next? Your dad here is in a bad mood lately. If my hand were to slip and I accidentally chopped you into three or five pieces…”
Maha retorted, “Who do you think is more likely to chop whom into three or five pieces?”
A sinister wind howled, and the sky changed color. The great commotion stirred up by the magic dragon finally alerted the clergy in the outer palace far away. On the long, snow-covered mountain path, one shrine after another lit up.
With a tremendous crash, the giant dragon slammed into and toppled a vermilion torii gate not far away. It opened its blood-red maw and let out an earth-shattering roar!
Father and son faced each other in the gale. After a long moment, Maha drew his sword with a sharp pull, the scraping metal producing a screech that could tear one’s eardrums.
“You no longer have any hold over me. The old should obediently exit the stage of history. You’d best interfere less in others’ affairs.”
Zhou Hui laughed. “Don’t speak so soon. It’s not yet certain who will exit the stage of history. But I am quite certain that you will be exiting the stage of life…”
Chu He’s eyebrow twitched.
However, Maha’s ice-cold face showed no sign of anger. On the contrary, he lifted his chin slightly, staring down at Zhou Hui from above, the corners of his eyes under his feathered lashes glinting with a strange light. “Let mother go,” he said coolly. “When you go to die, don’t let my mom shield you.”
Chu He moved abruptly, but in the next second, Zhou Hui grabbed his collar, threw him forcefully backward, then raised his saber and charged straight at Maha!
Chu He landed steadily and shouted sternly, “Zhou Hui! Maha!”
Amidst the hurricane, the father and son of demonic bloodline fought fiercely. The clash of saber and sword was like a ravaging storm, emitting thousands of flashes of brilliant light that made it impossible to open one’s eyes!
The vermilion wooden pillars cracked and toppled one after another, crashing heavily onto the ground and making dull thuds on the bluestone corridor.
“Are you two insane?” Chu He roared in anger. “Is this not going to end until one of you is dead?!”
At the same time, on the shrine’s altar.
Yan Lanyu gripped the edge of the spatio-temporal rift, his entire body erupting in the terrifying blue flames of a burning talisman. Not far away, Aida Yoshihide, his face covered in blood, knelt on the side, shaking his head hard to regain his senses.
“Mar… Martial Uncle…” a disciple from the esoteric school, half of his body pinned under collapsed rubble, managed to call out. “Please help, Martial Uncle Aida…”
“Damn it!” Aida Yoshihide cursed amidst the tremors. He staggered to his feet, kicked at the large piece of rubble pinning the disciple, and then, without caring if the disciple could free himself, turned and stumbled toward Yan Lanyu.
The spatio-temporal rift was erupting with a tremendous suction force, having already pulled half of Yan Lanyu’s body inside. At the same time, however, countless resentful spirits swirled around him. They wept and danced, innumerable withered hands extending from the void, gripping his ankles tightly and nailing him to the ground.
These were surely the countless vengeful spirits sealed in Ise Shrine over hundreds of years. Their power was so strong it had almost materialized—two clear black handprints appeared on Yan Lanyu’s ankles, like the marks left by a ghost in a horror movie, a truly terrifying sight.
“Damn it all!”
Anxious and furious, Aida pulled out the last talisman from his barrier, quickly chanted an incantation, and a rare, black, fierce flame ignited on the paper.
“Just go die already—” Aida yelled, slapping the talisman hard onto the crown of Yan Lanyu’s head!
With a whoosh, a wave of energy spread in all directions. The resentful spirits shrieked and fled, and the suffocating, sinister wind in the area instantly cleared.
Yan Lanyu’s body lost its support. With a long, ancient scream from the underworld soul, his entire body was swallowed by the spatio-temporal rift!
With a final whoosh, the rift closed, and Yan Lanyu’s figure vanished into the void.
Darkness, nothingness.
Time stopped flowing, the air was so light it was silent, and the void was like a vast, boundless ocean.
Yan Lanyu desperately reached upward, but his body slowly sank. He could only watch as the single point of light above him rose higher and farther away.
…What was this familiar feeling?
Yan Lanyu’s eyes widened, but his pupils were blank, unfocused.
That’s right. It was death.
Countless fragmented images flashed like a tidal wave from all directions, fluttering and spiraling downward.
They were scenes from many, many years ago.
…
“Mr. Yan, we suspect you are connected to a software engineering leak incident. Please come with us.”
“What are you doing? I’m just a lecturer… Hey! Let go of me!”
The aged scene descended like a movie screen. In the yellowed light, a group of people forcibly handcuffed the man in the middle, pushed him into a car, and sped away in a cloud of exhaust fumes.
Behind them, the door to his home opened, and the wind swept up a newspaper from the living room, sending it fluttering to the floor.
In the darkness, Yan Lanyu’s numb face was pale and cold, like a doll that had lost its last sensation.
But the tidal wave of images continued. They were demons spreading from the depths of the sea, wrapping him in their giant hands, crushing him, squeezing him from the inside out into a bloody pulp mixed with bone fragments.
A foul stench filled the dim prison cell. A gaunt young man lay on an iron bed, his wrists and ankles locked in rusty iron shackles, the blood-stained chains extending to the corner of the wall.
Not far away, a clang was heard as the cell door opened. Several men in uniform rushed in, respectfully inviting in an old man with white hair and a beard, dressed in the kariginu robes of an onmyoji.
“Is this the lecturer from Todai?” the old man asked in a hoarse voice, glancing at the motionless young man on the iron bed.
“Yes, Lord Headmaster. He is an intelligence agent who infiltrated one of our country’s top-secret experimental projects. We tracked him for six months before capturing him, but no matter how we interrogate him, we can’t force out his contact or more information about the enemy’s spy organization…”
The old man’s milky white eyes stared at the young man. Although his eyes were open, they were devoid of life, showing no signs that he was still alive.
“May I take him?”
“This—”
Sensing their hesitation, the old man said slowly, “If he hasn’t talked by now, he won’t talk even if interrogated to death, not to mention he’s already dying. It is very rare to find someone whose age, gender, and Four Pillars of Destiny all match so precisely. More importantly, I have been searching for such an extremely unyielding soul for a very, very long time…”
The men hurriedly and humbly agreed. The old man added, “Don’t worry, I will speak with your Metropolitan Police Department.”
He raised a wrinkled hand and clapped his hands unhurriedly. With a few soft pops, several low-level shikigami appeared in the air behind him. They went forward, yanked the iron chains from the young man’s hands and feet, and lifted him from the filthy, cold iron bed.
“Cough! Cough cough!” The change in position put pressure on the young man’s chest, and he immediately let out a hoarse, grating cough, spitting up flecks of dark red blood.
The old man watched with heavy-lidded eyes as the shikigami carried him out of the cell. As they passed, the young man suddenly tried his best to lift his head and said hoarsely, “…I… will not… say anything…”
“It doesn’t matter,” the old man said impassively.
“From now on, no one will be able to hear your voice anyway.”
In the alternate dimension, the vast, empty space around Yan Lanyu suddenly shifted, as if time and stars were reversing. The next moment, his feet touched solid ground.
He was like a senseless doll. It took a long moment before he turned his head and looked behind him.
That’s right, he remembered this place.
It was an abandoned Japanese-style building, empty and desolate, covered in dust and cobwebs.
All the windows were boarded up with blackened wooden planks, and light seeped through the cracks, casting patterns on the floor, the walls, and the iron bars welded shut over the entrance.
The afternoon light was hazy and dreamlike. Dust motes floated slowly in the beams of light, like silent plankton in the deep sea.
Yan Lanyu’s gaze was scattered and unfocused. After a long while, it fell on a wooden post erected in the center of the large room.
A young man was hanging from it.
The young man’s head hung limply. Although his feet touched the ground, his entire body was leaning forward, supported only by his hands, which were bound separately to the wooden frame, preventing him from collapsing.
His face was ashen, the damp gray of the rainy season, and even his chapped lips were the same color. His nose was straight and his features were sharp, not having completely lost their shape; but his eye sockets were sunken and dark, making him look like a wretched corpse.
Yan Lanyu’s gaze showed no flicker of emotion as it fell upon him.
It was a horrifying body.
There were marks on his chest, arms, and thighs where large pieces of muscle had been carved away with a knife. The flesh was blackened and dry, revealing stark white bone beneath. The gruesome wounds emitted a strong, strange odor, attracting swarms of buzzing insects that vied to land on the rotting flesh.
The frightening thing was that, even at this point, he was not yet dead.
Though it was hard to tell, his chest was still rising and falling faintly.
Why am I not dead yet? Yan Lanyu thought as he watched him.
Why, at this point, am I still not dead?
He staggered one step forward, then another, finally standing unsteadily before the young man. After catching his breath, he reached a hand toward that ashen, withered neck.
—End my suffering.
Just like this, quickly end my suffering…
But the next moment, his fingers passed through the young man’s neck as if through an intangible illusion and came out the other side.
He tried again, with the same result. And again, it was the same.
What was past was past. History was frozen on the page, unchangeable no matter what.
Yan Lanyu stared blankly at the man, his lips trembling violently. Tears slowly welled up in his eyes, and he let out a suppressed, trembling, hoarse sob.
The iron door creaked open, and footsteps approached from a distance.
Two onmyoji in kariginu robes entered the large room. They were both young, around their early twenties, their faces familiar across the passage of time—one was Aida Yoshihide, and the other was the future Headmaster of the esoteric school, Nigini-no-Mikoto.
Nigini-no-Mikoto stood by the door with his arms crossed, looking around with great interest, saying nothing.
Aida Yoshihide, however, walked closer to inspect the man. He did not see Yan Lanyu from another time standing beside him. He pinched his nose and shook his head. “Tsk, how is this person still not dead after being sliced for so long.”
“It’s not that easy,” Nigini-no-Mikoto said. In his youth, his voice was deeper and had a careless tone. “This is the process of soul refining. The resentment of the living soul must accumulate to a certain level before it can be sent to the underworld.”
“Doesn’t that mean he’ll have to suffer for a lot longer?”
“More or less.”
“Truly tenacious!” Aida Yoshihide shook his head with some emotion. He drew a strangely shaped short dagger from his waist and turned to ask, “So, where should I cut today, Senior Brother Tenji?”
They looked at each other for a moment. Nigini-no-Mikoto blinked and smiled. “Anywhere is fine… just be quick about it.”
In the void, invisible to anyone, Yan Lanyu gasped in pain, his whole body trembling violently.
His fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. He used so much force that red marks of blood seeped from between his fingers, yet he had no reaction.
He knew what was going to happen next.
He knew what kind of pain it was.
Why did he have to experience it all over again?
The humiliation and despair he had paid every price to forget—why had time turned back, why was fate so cruel as to make him re-live it, so vividly, right before his own eyes?!
Aida seemed very interested in this sort of bloody affair. He looked the young man up and down, pressing the blade against his ashen face, but then moved it away again.
“Hmm, I guess a place with more flesh is easier to start with,” he muttered to himself, but his gaze fell on the buzzing insects, and he suddenly lost interest.
“It’s so filthy. I wonder how many more days he can live.”
Aida casually chose a spot on the outer edge of the wound on the thigh where a piece of muscle had already been gouged out and pressed the blade against it. The torture instrument was very special; below the tip was a sharp, spoon-like shape that glinted coldly. If the blade was inserted, a slight twist of the tool would conveniently scoop out an entire piece of muscle.
Yan Lanyu reached out his hand in vain, but it was useless.
He was an illusion that had traveled through time, a resentful soul returned to the mortal world from hell.
He tried again and again to grab Aida’s hand, but each time he passed straight through the air. He let out a desperate cry, a distorted, beast-like sob of defiance, but nothing he did worked.
Don’t…!
Don’t do this to me!
Stop! Stop!!
But he could only watch, his eyes wide with fury and hatred, as Aida easily pierced the blade into his own body and dug out a gruesome, dripping piece of flesh.
Yan Lanyu fell to his knees, his convulsing fingers digging into his hair as he let out a ghastly, trembling wail.
“Alright, let’s go report back,” Aida Yoshihide said casually as he turned around.
“Mhm.”
Nigini-no-Mikoto pushed himself off the wall he was leaning against. Just as he was about to step out the door, he suddenly paused.
“What’s wrong?” Aida asked.
“…”
Nigini-no-Mikoto didn’t answer. Instead, he turned back and stared at the young man on the wooden frame, who was trembling slightly from the pain and making muffled whimpering sounds. His expression was a little puzzled.
“What is it, Senior Brother?”
Nigini-no-Mikoto frowned and stood quietly for a long moment before shaking his head with a smile. “It’s nothing… I just thought I heard someone crying and found it a bit strange.”
Aida laughed. “You must have misheard, right?”
“I don’t know. It sounded so miserable. It was… the kind of crying that makes you feel terrible when you hear it.”
Nigini-no-Mikoto seemed to find it a bit absurd himself. He smiled, waved his hand, and walked out the door.
At some point, Nigini-no-Mikoto began to frequent the abandoned building.
Sometimes he came with Aida, which was mostly for torture. More often, he came alone, like he was studying some profound problem, looking the battered young man up and down with curiosity and interest.
Sometimes he would bring some wine, but he would only drink by himself, seemingly completely unfazed by the smell of rot and decay.
“To become a lecturer at Todai at this age is actually quite remarkable.”
“The weather is getting colder. By the way, where is your home? What is your hometown like this season?”
“No wonder the Headmaster wants to use you to refine a yin-yang soul. How are you still holding on?”
…
The young man’s body decayed further. He spent his days in a coma.
But Nigini-no-Mikoto didn’t care. He seemed to have found a certain pleasure in this one-sided relationship of drinking and talking to himself. Sometimes, he could happily spend a whole afternoon there without saying a word.
“Speaking of which, we’ve known each other for so long, but I still don’t know your name,” he said one day as he was about to leave, looking at the young man with what seemed to be a hint of regret.
“If you could still speak, would you tell me what your name is?”
The young man’s eyes were tightly shut, his breathing gone.
Only the extremely faint rise and fall of his chest proved that he was not completely dead yet.
Nigini-no-Mikoto sighed.
“What a shame… If I don’t know your name, then we can’t be considered truly acquainted.”
The first snow of winter finally fell. White flurries drifted down, and the cold wind carried fine ice shards, making a whimpering sound between the eaves.
As night fell, the lively sounds of people could be heard in the distance. Fireworks bloomed in the night sky, painting it with brilliant colors.
The iron door of the cell opened again. Nigini-no-Mikoto, wrapped in a thick robe and carrying a lantern and a small jug of wine, walked in with a chill. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” he said with a smile.
“The new year is almost here. It’s a day for family reunions. They say the fireworks will go on all night.” He sat down on the floor, poured himself a cup of wine, and smiled. “Well, here’s to my own happy new year, health, and long life… No need to wish you the same.”
The young man’s head moved slightly.
At that moment, fireworks bloomed in the night sky outside. The instantaneous flash of light illuminated his barely raised eyes.
“…”
“Hm? You’re awake?” Nigini-no-Mikoto was very surprised. He put down his wine cup and asked, “What did you say?”
“…”
The young man’s lips moved, but no sound actually came out.
Nigini-no-Mikoto stood up and walked to his side.
The young man’s condition was very bad. His face was a grayish-white, his pupils were dilated, and his eyes were cloudy—signs that his time was short. One of his arms was already just a skeleton with dried flesh clinging to it. The rest of him wasn’t much better, but he likely couldn’t feel the pain anymore.
Nigini-no-Mikoto looked at him, a faint hint of pity in his eyes.
“Well, since you’ve held on for so long, I’ll give you a New Year’s gift.”
“…”
“You state your wish first, then I’ll state mine. A fair trade must be reciprocal—as long as it’s not asking me to kill myself, anything else is fine. How about it?”
The young man made a muffled sound. Nigini-no-Mikoto watched him with great interest.
“…I…”
“Kill…”
“Kill… me…”
A long silence fell over the cell.
Outside, fireworks soared into the sky, illuminating the heavens, followed by the brilliant boom of their explosion. Further away, the bustling sounds of the New Year’s Eve festival carried far on the wind.
The cold wind whistled through the cracks in the window.
“Alright,” Nigini-no-Mikoto said after a long time.
“But you have to tell me your name in exchange. That’s the New Year’s gift I want.”
But the young man’s head drooped, as if he no longer had the strength to say another word.
His head hung low, and not a sound was heard, as if even his heartbeat had stopped. Nigini-no-Mikoto waited for a long time, but heard nothing but his own breathing.
He finally gave a helpless smile.
“…Looks like I’m going to be stood up.”
Nigini-no-Mikoto raised his hand, his four fingers held together, and pressed them against the young man’s cold chest.
Right beneath his fingertips was the faintly beating heart—it had persisted for so long, so long that it almost made one want to see it beat forever.
“Goodbye, the one who owes me a New Year’s gift.”
His four fingers easily sliced into the chest. Amidst the soft crackle of bone, they touched the heart.
The young man convulsed slightly, then black blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and a ragged gasping sound came from his throat.
The next second, his heart was pierced through. His body gave a violent jerk, then went limp without a sound.
—He would never move again.
That battered soul, which had held on for so long, finally, in the bitter north wind of New Year’s Eve, howled past the mountains and wilderness, crossed the frozen Miyako Strait, and sped toward its homeland.
Bells chimed in the distance; midnight was approaching.
The shrine would strike the bell one hundred and eight times, a solemn and dignified sound that lingered in the air. It signified that the evils of the old year were driven away and the blessings of the new year were about to arrive. When the bells stopped, it would be exactly midnight, and the new year, long-awaited by all, would descend upon the world.
Fireworks bloomed, and laughter was endless.
Nigini-no-Mikoto withdrew his hand with the slight sound of tearing flesh. He looked at the young man’s broken corpse, his expression obscured by the shadows.
“…Happy New Year.”
He said softly, then turned and walked out of the cell.
