The rumbling sounds echoed through the mountain forest, and the earth continued to crack amidst the tremors.
Yan Lanyu fell to the ground as a missile whizzed past, grazing the tips of his hair.
He got up, caught his breath for a moment, and used the cover of night and firelight to run to the edge of a mound. The magic dragon had at some point stopped spewing its toxic breath. Its ferocious body was bathed in the moonlight, casting a huge black shadow on the mottled, rugged snowfield.
Yan Lanyu scrambled up the mound on all fours, his movements swift, seemingly oblivious to the sharp stones cutting his calves.
He slapped a hand on the edge of the mound’s summit, the blood seeping from under his fingernails instantly dyeing the gravel red. He then pulled himself up, his knees trembling slightly as he knelt on the ground.
After a moment, he rose and looked at the magic dragon. He saw the three blood-red lanterns in mid-air converge and turn towards him.
At that moment, sporadic gunshots rang out from a distance, the muzzle flashes blinking in the night.
The swirling air currents seemed to freeze. Under the vast night sky, only the young man and the magic dragon stared at each other.
“Nigini-kun,” Yan Lanyu said.
The giant dragon’s head drooped slightly. After succumbing to demonic transformation, its powerful demonic nature had completely replaced the last vestiges of its personality. It could no longer recognize who Yan Lanyu was.
“I know none of this will ever end. The Esoteric School will hunt me to the ends of the earth for the rest of my life. Even if everyone disappears, as time passes, another Esoteric School will be born.”
“But I’m so tired of this endless repetition, constantly causing trouble for others, putting truly good people in danger, and after letting others bleed and sacrifice for me, being brought back to that absurd cycle of fate again and again. If I don’t disappear, none of this will end.”
Yan Lanyu bit his index finger and drew a series of characters in his palm with his heart’s blood. Then he opened his hand, and the crisscrossing bloodstains in his palm instantly glowed red!
The magic dragon seemed to sense some kind of danger and suddenly raised its head.
“These are your Four Pillars of Destiny,” Yan Lanyu said with a slight smile on his cold, pale face.
“I never told you, but thank you for the New Year’s gift. I’ve owed you this favor for many years. Today, I’ll repay it all.”
The magic dragon suddenly roared and charged forward, but Yan Lanyu’s movements were faster. He took out the lighter, flicked it on with a click, and pressed it directly onto his bloody palm!
—Burning is actually the simplest way to activate a talisman. When Yan Lanyu drew the talisman in his palm with blood, he was essentially using the other’s birth date and time to create a temporary fate talisman. Although this talisman was so crude it lacked even half a spell scripture, it was, after all, made with the Four Pillars of Destiny.
For some onmyoji, mastering another’s Four Pillars of Destiny was almost like mastering half of their life force!
A cyan flame whooshed up, enveloping Yan Lanyu’s entire hand. Amidst the crackling sound of burning, the magic dragon charged with a roar. In the chaos, its fangs caught his collar, lifting him into the air and flinging him away!
BANG!
Yan Lanyu slammed heavily onto the ground, a terrible cracking sound coming from his chest as he rolled down the slope. The cyan fire on his hand, instead of being extinguished by the tumbling, burned even brighter. The magic dragon let out a heart-wrenching roar and, ignoring everything, crashed through countless trees to reach him, biting him again and lifting him high!
Yan Lanyu let out a distorted scream, and large amounts of blood mixed with flesh spewed from his mouth and chest. His mangled hand, engulfed in cyan flames, desperately gripped the fangs!
—In that flash of lightning and fire, his entire body was suspended high in the air, with the magic dragon’s bottomless throat right below his feet.
The next moment, toxic breath erupted from the magic dragon’s throat, instantly enveloping him completely!
Dizziness, suffocation, excruciating pain.
Flames blazed on one arm, but they couldn’t stop the icy cold that came with the rapid loss of blood.
So cold… The thought flashed through Yan Lanyu’s hazy mind.
The familiar feeling of death, as bone-chilling as the last time, like falling into a bottomless abyss.
“The four pillars of year, month, day, and hour for divination; the eight characters of heavenly stems and earthly branches to determine fortune.”
“The five elements overcome and restrain each other; punishment, clash, combination, and harmony are the basis of the Way of Yin and Yang.”
Nigini-no-Mikoto paused, poured a cup of yellow wine from a small red clay pot, and leisurely crossed his legs.
Outside the paper door, heavy snow was falling, blanketing everything in silver. The crunching sound of the night watchman’s footsteps in the snow could be heard in the distance, his lantern flickering in the night as it gradually moved away.
But inside the room, the underfloor heating was as warm as late spring. Several cherry blossom branches were arranged in a glass vase by the paper window, and the faint fragrance of plum wine steamed from the stove.
Several disciples knelt on the tatami mats, bowing their heads to show they had taken note. One female disciple pressed her forehead deeply to the floor, then looked up and asked cautiously, “Then, what is the effect of using someone’s Four Pillars of Destiny to create a fate talisman?”
“There are many effects, mostly aimed at harming the soul.”
“Can it kill someone?”
Nigini-no-Mikoto teased, “Who do you have a grudge against that’s so serious it’s a matter of life and death, Yuko?”
The disciples all laughed, and the female disciple named Yuko quickly said she wouldn’t dare.
“Using the Four Pillars of Destiny to kill its owner requires a profound spiritual power as a foundation, and the caster will, in all likelihood, have their soul scattered. It is a dangerous technique. In reality, there are many ways to kill without spilling blood, so this kind of self-destructive curse that kills a thousand enemies at the cost of eight hundred of your own has long been classified as a forbidden spell.”
Yuko quickly stood up and acknowledged, and the disciples all took notes.
“It is freezing cold now. When spring comes, I will teach you the method of Four Pillars calculation.”
Nigini-no-Mikoto paused, a thoughtful look on his face, his fingertips gently rubbing the fine patterns on the wine cup. Everyone fell silent. After a moment, they heard him say lazily, “That’s all for today… Lanyu.”
Behind him, a young man in a purple robe stood up and gently slid open the paper door.
Everyone bowed their heads in respect, then stood up and filed out backward.
Yan Lanyu kept his eyes lowered to the ground. Only after the last female disciple had left did he close the paper door almost silently.
Nigini-no-Mikoto sat by the stove, staring at the cup in his hand, as if he had suddenly developed a great interest in this everyday colored-glaze wine cup.
Yan Lanyu didn’t find it strange. The man before him, who had been the Headmaster of the Esoteric School for eight years, was usually like this.
He would often become suddenly interested in something he saw every day and get to the bottom of it. From the color of the repainted roof tiles of the mansion to the roundness of the pearls on the door curtain, he even once enthusiastically took out and sorted through all the calligraphy he had messed up over the years, savoring each one for an entire afternoon before setting them on fire.
It was actually a sign that he was thinking about other things.
Whenever he did this, he was actually pondering problems no one could imagine.
This Headmaster’s actions and thoughts were always unpredictable, yet exceptionally precise. That venomous insight could sometimes even make one’s blood run cold.
Yan Lanyu walked behind him as usual and knelt down. Just then, he suddenly heard him call out, “Xiao Lanyu—”
“Yes.”
“We’ve known each other for so long. Thinking back, it’s really quite a fateful connection!”
“…”
Yan Lanyu looked up and saw the Headmaster turn his head, smiling at him.
“…So?” Yan Lanyu asked impassively.
“Nothing, just a random thought. Ah, the fate between people is truly wonderful. When you were a teacher at Todai, you probably never dreamed you would meet me, right? So for us to be sitting here today, it’s not an exaggeration to call it the fickleness of fate.”
The candle flame crackled softly. Yan Lanyu quietly met Nigini-no-Mikoto’s gaze. In the dim light, his eyes showed not a flicker of emotion.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“…”
The Headmaster blinked, sighed with a lack of interest, and muttered a few things like “denying it again” and “why always deceive yourself” before taking a sip of wine.
Yan Lanyu lowered his eyelashes, picked up a hairpin from beside the candlestick, and used it to trim the wick.
The hairpin had actually been left there by Nigini-no-Mikoto, perhaps as a very subtle way of saying, “You should grow your hair out.” In fact, it was normal for a boy of his age to grow his hair out according to custom, but Yan Lanyu was indifferent, so the Headmaster dropped the subject.
“Hey?” Nigini-no-Mikoto covered the wine pot on the small stove with his hand, as if he had suddenly remembered something. “Speaking of which, we’re so fated, and we’ve been together for so many years, but there’s one thing we’ve never done.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“…”
The Headmaster waited for a moment but got no response. He sighed and said, “You really are a person with no curiosity… I say, we’ve never had our fortunes told. Aren’t you curious about the result?”
Yan Lanyu put down the hairpin and stared at the candle flame without blinking, saying nothing. After a long moment, he took an almost inaudible breath and said, “Not really. Fate is not something that can be calculated.”
Silence fell in the room. Besides the sound of the burning candle, there was only the soft rustling of the heavy snow falling outside the window.
The Headmaster laughed. “Don’t be so pessimistic, Xiao Lanyu. Please go get my divination board… it’s in that locked cabinet.”
Yan Lanyu stood up and went to the inner room. A moment later, he returned with a wooden board like a zitan chessboard, with sixty lines crisscrossing it, filled with the heavenly stems and earthly branches for year-counting. There were also several pieces of yellow paper and an ink brush. The Headmaster dipped the brush in ink and wrote a string of characters on the paper. “These are your birth characters.”
Then he picked up another piece of paper, wrote on it, and said, “And these are mine.”
Yan Lanyu’s pupils constricted in horror.
But Nigini-no-Mikoto acted as if he didn’t see it. He smiled and crumpled the two pieces of yellow paper into a ball. A flame ignited at his fingertips, instantly burning the paper to black ash, which scattered on the divination board. Then he took another piece of yellow paper and wrote a series of complex calculation symbols, tapping his knuckles on the board. He seemed very serious, completely oblivious to Yan Lanyu’s pale face beside him.
After about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, he finished his calculations and wrote the final result of the divination on the board.
“Hmm.”
“…What is it?”
The Headmaster shook his head, looking very regretful. “We have no marital affinity.”
Yan Lanyu’s nerves had been stretched to the limit. Hearing this, he didn’t react for a moment and subconsciously let out a “Huh?”
The Headmaster laughed and looked him up and down with a teasing gaze for a long time.
Although the room was very warm, that gaze sent a chill up Yan Lanyu’s back, like the prick of thorns. It felt like a big cat’s careless play before killing its prey.
“Is it necessary to be so nervous?” the Headmaster said leisurely. “Why don’t we make a pact?”
“…”
“Although the eight characters can be used to kill someone, as long as you don’t touch my eight characters, I won’t touch yours. How about it, is that fair?”
Yan Lanyu’s throat was so tight he couldn’t make a sound.
The candlewick popped, and tiny sparks flew into the air.
“…Haha, look how nervous you are.” The Headmaster waved his hand and took a sip of wine with a smile. “Just kidding. I’m such a nice person, what reason would you have to want me dead?”
In the mountain forest, towering ancient trees, uprooted, lay across the snow. The dragon’s body spasmed and writhed in immense pain, crushing countless dead trees into sawdust.
“Roar—!”
The magic dragon shook its head violently, and Yan Lanyu’s body was slammed against rows of sharp fangs!
His ribs were broken, his chest was torn open by the sharp teeth, and blood was streaming down his thighs and arms.
So cold.
Yan Lanyu tried desperately to lift his flame-engulfed hand, to bring it closer for a bit of warmth, but he couldn’t feel that hand at all.
He could almost clearly feel the final moment approaching. Although he wanted to embrace death, the last bit of consciousness was forcing him to hold on.
He had to persevere.
The magic dragon’s soul had not yet suffered the most fatal damage. He had to hold on at least until the fate talisman burned out.
With a screech, a tire scraped against the ground, making a sharp, piercing sound. Then a car door opened, and Yu Jingzhong shot out, starting to climb the mound with his bare hands!
The dragon’s struggles sent large chunks of rubble falling from above. Yu Jingzhong’s face and hands were scraped in several places, but he seemed not to feel it. He grabbed a protruding rock and leaped, cleanly flipping onto the mound.
He caught his breath and looked up to see the giant dragon suddenly let out a furious, shrill cry. It raised its head high, then smashed it down onto the ground!
With a deafening crash, the rocks split, the earth churned, and trees flew into the sky. Yan Lanyu’s body was flung from the fangs and crashed heavily onto the ground with a thud!
Yu Jingzhong cried out, “Yan Lanyu!” and then staggered forward amidst the violent tremors.
Not far away, Yan Lanyu’s body was convulsing and trembling, blood pooling all around him.
His jeans were torn by the rubble, a long rip from the back of his knee to his pocket. Two small yellow paper balls rolled out of the pocket.
No one saw this happen, and Yan Lanyu, struggling and gasping in agony, was completely unaware. The next moment, the yellow paper balls touched the cyan flames burning on the ground and instantly ignited into two golden balls of light—
They were Zhou Hui’s peace talismans.
The giant dragon coiled its body, sweeping up several towering trees, and brought them crashing down on Yan Lanyu!
Yu Jingzhong roared and shot like lightning through the rain of falling dirt and rubble, but he couldn’t make it in time with the ground shaking and cracking so violently. He could only watch as the black shadow descended from the sky. At that critical moment, two incredibly brilliant golden meteors suddenly rose up beside Yan Lanyu.
Deputy Yu didn’t even have time to register what was happening before the meteors shot across the sky and exploded violently beside the giant dragon!
It couldn’t be described with grenades or sniper cannons; even high-energy rocket launchers wouldn’t have that kind of yield. Half the night sky was lit up as bright as day. For several seconds, Yu Jingzhong’s retinas were overwhelmed with white light, and he couldn’t see anything. Even sound seemed to stop completely.
Then, the ground collapsed in a massive chunk, the mound became a giant pit, and the trees silently turned to dust in the brilliant light.
Afterward, Yu Jingzhong couldn’t remember what he had done. His memory had blanked out for those few seconds.
When he regained his senses, he found himself lying protectively on top of Yan Lanyu. All around them were thick clouds of dust that made it impossible to open his eyes. The ground was still trembling with aftershocks.
He lay there, numb, for a long time before he could barely lift his head. The joints in his neck made a cracking sound as he moved. He saw that the surroundings had been flattened into a pit. He and Yan Lanyu were lying at the bottom, thickly covered in a ruin of dead branches, wood chips, rocks, and dirt. The air was filled with the choking smell of a massive explosion.
Yan Lanyu’s eyes were tightly shut, his face ashen. It was impossible to tell if he was alive or dead.
“…” Yu Jingzhong tried to call his name, but his throat was so hoarse from inhaling so much dust that he couldn’t make a sound. He reached a trembling hand to check for breath under his nose, then pressed his fingers firmly against his pulse. Finally, he let out a choked, distorted roar, like a huge stone had been lifted from his heart.
Zzzt, zzzt—
A sound like passing electricity came from behind him. Yu Jingzhong propped himself up on his bloody elbows and looked back. Only then did he realize why he had managed to survive such a violent explosion unscathed.
In the air behind him stood a golden, shield-like light barrier, forming a huge hemisphere with a radius of three or four meters, completely shielding him and Yan Lanyu. Electrical currents crackled across the translucent golden shield, and a burning symbol was imprinted on its surface: a pentagram.
Yu Jingzhong had studied this field. He knew at a glance what this symbol represented—
The Yata Mirror.
It was the unfathomable power of the Yata Mirror Heart that Yan Lanyu had placed in his soul!
Yu Jingzhong staggered to his feet, panting heavily, and reached out to the light shield. With a whoosh, the light retracted, crawled up his fingertips to his palm, and condensed into a dazzling pentagram. Each point was like a ray, with dense, indecipherable, complex runes inscribed outward.
Yu Jingzhong clenched his fist and leaned down to hold Yan Lanyu tightly in his arms.
“Don’t… don’t be afraid,” his voice was hoarse and barely recognizable as he murmured. “Don’t be afraid, I’m taking you home now.”
The harsh wind left a lasting, cutting pain on his face. The sharp stones on the ground pierced through the soles of his shoes, pressing heavily into his feet with every step. But it was as if he felt nothing. He walked forward, staggering slightly, through the gentle shaking of the ground.
Just then, something moved in the bushes at the edge of the pit.
Then, half of a broken dragon’s head rose from the shadows, almost blown to bits, its fangs bared and its giant mouth wide open.
Yu Jingzhong stopped and faced the dragon’s head. At that moment, his heart was unusually calm. He felt no fear at all, even a sense of acceptance.
The life in Yan Lanyu’s arms was draining away rapidly. They would either escape together before the final moment came, or they would die here together.
There was nothing to be afraid of. The worst outcome was just this.
Of the three blood-red eyes on the dragon’s head, all had dimmed now, except for the one in the middle, which suddenly lit up in the night, emitting a ferocious red light. The red light then projected a human figure into the void. It was very blurry at first, but slowly became clearer within a few seconds, the features, clothing, and figure taking on a familiar outline.
Yu Jingzhong’s breath hitched.
The man descended from the red light to the ground, found his footing, and waved his hand very casually with a smile. “—Yo.”
He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, wearing a simple, loose-fitting yukata that revealed a strong neck and chest. There were bloodstains on his clothes and cuffs, making him look a little disheveled, but his amiable smile still gave him a very relaxed and leisurely air.
“Tsk, tsk, Xiao Lanyu,” he said, shaking his head with apparent regret. “In the end, you broke our pact.”
Yu Jingzhong narrowed his eyes coldly.
—He recognized him.
The man before him was the only person in the history of Japanese onmyodo to become a demon while still alive, the Headmaster of the Esoteric School, the soul of the magic dragon, Nigini-no-Mikoto!
__
Author’s Note:
To avoid any controversy, a little preview: This chapter is the Yu-Yan vs. Headmaster battlefield, followed by the much-anticipated husband-and-husband mixed doubles battle against their child. The scenes will switch back and forth. Then, the two battlefields will conclude, with hugs, lyrical moments, and holding hands as they go home to welcome a bright new day. Report complete.
