Following behind "Xu Fu," Nagata Takaya and the others stepped back into the abandoned temple.
"...Weird." The moment he crossed the threshold, Nagata Takaya suddenly felt a chill run through him and reflexively rubbed his arms. "Was it this cold in here before? It's almost dawn already. Shouldn't the temperature be going up?"
"No idea. I didn't really pay attention..." Morita Taku frowned as he looked around, his gaze finally settling on the burnt-out pile of wood in the middle of the temple. "It's probably because of that. There was still a fire going before, so maybe we just didn't notice the cold."
"Then... should we light it again?" Yoshida Saori could feel it too—that unsettling, deeply invasive cold. She shivered despite herself. "Did any of you bring something to start a fire with?"
Yasukawa Nagisa and Morita Taku both shook their heads. Only Nagata Takaya reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter.
Sensing Yoshida Saori staring at the lighter in his hand, Nagata Takaya immediately explained, "I don't smoke. I quit after I started dating you. I just still have the habit of carrying a lighter on me."
In truth, Yoshida Saori had never forced him to quit. Nagata Takaya had simply noticed, with his usual sharpness, that she frowned uncomfortably whenever she smelled cigarette smoke, so he had given it up on his own.
Nagata Takaya crouched beside the woodpile and brought the lighter close.
"Huh? Why won't it light?" he exclaimed in surprise.
The lighter itself worked, but the moment he brought that tiny flame near the woodpile, it went out. As soon as he moved it away again, it worked normally.
"What, is your lighter busted?" Morita Taku stood behind him and joked, "I told you ages ago to replace it, but you never listen."
"What do you know? This is a designer brand, okay? It was expensive!" Nagata Takaya snapped over his shoulder.
It was precisely because it was a designer brand that he kept it on him. The click when it opened really did sound nice, and ever since quitting smoking, he would sometimes take it out and fiddle with it just for that.
Nagata Takaya clearly wasn't getting anywhere, and at that moment Yoshida Saori suddenly remembered that this fire had already been burning before they arrived.
Which meant Xu Fu-chan ought to know how to start one.
"Xu-chan...?"
Yoshida Saori looked around the cramped temple for "Xu Fu."
Then she saw her.
"Xu Fu" was kneeling silently before the headless clay Buddha statue, her back to all of them.
Yoshida Saori slowly walked toward her and said, "Xu Fu-chan, do you have—"
BANG!
The four of them jumped and, hearts pounding, whipped around toward the source of the noise—only to see that the temple entrance they had come through was now tightly shut.
Nagata Takaya and Morita Taku rushed to the door and tried to force it open, but—
"No good! It won't open!"
"Damn it! Why won't it move?!"
The two of them used all their strength to yank on it, but the old-looking wooden door did not budge in the slightest.
And they remembered clearly that the door to this ruined temple had only had half a panel left.
But now the door was whole. Old, yes, but not broken.
"So we're... trapped in here?" Yasukawa Nagisa clutched at the hem of her clothes, but no matter what she did, she couldn't stop her hands from trembling.
"Uwaaa..."
At first, the sound was very faint—too faint to hear clearly.
But soon, the infants making those crying noises caught the scent of the living on Yoshida Saori and the others, and their cries immediately sharpened into purest hatred and curse.
"UWAAAAAAAH—!!"
"UWAAAAAAAH~!!"
"UWAAAAAAAH—!!"
The hatred was almost visible to the naked eye, mixed into those cries like a curse.
They hated the living. Envied them for having the right to go on living. Envied them for being allowed lives vivid enough to be called lives, while they themselves did not even have the chance to reincarnate, only endless suffering with no end in sight.
The overflowing malice was like a filthy swamp, staining the whole space with the same darkness.
All four of them collapsed to their knees, their heads hurting so badly they felt ready to split apart, as if countless invisible little hands were clawing at their brains.
Creak.
Creak.
A harsh sound that set their teeth on edge suddenly rang out.
It came from "Xu Fu," still kneeling before the clay Buddha statue.
"Children... are the cutest... angels fallen into the mortal world..."
Creak.
Creak.
That sticky whisper squeezed out of "Xu Fu's" throat, every word dragging with it a horrifying echo.
Amid that scalp-prickling creak creak noise, he remained kneeling as his head slowly rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees.
The instant that face was fully exposed to everyone's sight, icy terror shot through all their limbs.
That deathly pale face had no features left but a mouth split all the way to the ears and two empty eye sockets with nothing inside them. Dark red blood streamed out from those black, cavernous eye sockets and from that gaping mouth.
"So... bad children... are poor souls possessed by demons... they must... be given salvat...ion..."
His arms began to twist and deform. His shoulder blades cracked like dead branches snapping. His elbows rotated a full three hundred and sixty degrees, and amid the sickening rasp of bone against bone, those pallid arms finally met behind his back in a prayer pose no normal human body could ever achieve.
Then the skin of his neck split with the sound of tearing cloth. A bloody seam burst upward from the Adam's apple, and white cervical vertebrae pushed out section by section, trailing sticky strands of blood as they emerged from the wound, writhing like the segmented legs of a centipede.
That head dangled at the end of the winding spine. His severed windpipe swayed like feelers. When his lips split open again, dark blood dripped steadily from the gaps between the exposed vertebrae.
"Namu... Amida... Butsu..."
A horror beyond ordinary understanding, beyond comprehension, was happening right in front of them.
It was so clear. So real.
Fear of the unknown. Fear of that which brings death. Fear of that overflowing malice.
All of it took root in their hearts like poisonous weeds in rich soil, spreading wildly.
"IIIIIIIIIIH—!!"
It was the final scream of reason on the verge of collapse—the instinctive reaction of a living creature venting its terror.
That instinctive scream was both a warning to companions that something here was lethally dangerous, and an unconscious plea to be saved by them.
At a moment like this, every action was pure instinct.
Morita Taku hurled himself at the wooden door blocking their way, slamming into it with his elbow and kicking it as hard as he could.
Nagata Takaya sprinted to Yoshida Saori, who had screamed herself hoarse, and pulled her tightly into his arms.
Yasukawa Nagisa crumpled to the floor entirely limp, her throat making strangled gasping sounds. She could do nothing at all, only tremble as she clutched the two dolls in her arms.
They had come here because they had heard there were supernatural phenomena on this mountain. They had come to test their courage, chasing novelty and the thrill of proving themselves.
Yet the moment they truly faced something twisted, abnormal, and inhuman, the defenses in their hearts collapsed with shocking speed.
Then darkness fell without warning, swallowing everything around them in an instant.
And in the very next moment, light returned.
But when Morita Taku saw where he was, his pupils contracted violently, and his limbs went rigid as if frozen solid.
Nagata Takaya, the others, the tightly shut wooden door—all of them were gone.
Only he remained, standing there blankly in a long, narrow corridor. In that enclosed space, the pounding of his own heart sounded as loud as a war drum.
Morita Taku's feet began to move on their own, carrying him forward down the corridor.
Gradually, a strange sound reached his ears.
"That's... a wooden fish?"
Wooden fish were ritual instruments in Japanese Buddhism too. They represented discipline and purity, and monks struck them repeatedly to remind themselves to remain vigilant and inwardly pure. They also served a ceremonial role, bringing comfort and peace of mind to believers.
And listening to that wooden fish, Morita Taku really did feel a kind of peace and calm too deep for words.
What he failed to notice was what was happening to his own body.
His flesh was visibly growing younger. His frame shrank bit by bit. His pant legs dragged across the floor from being too long, and his shoes slipped off and were left behind because they no longer fit.
He had been a college student, but now he had become the age of a high schooler, then quickly the age of a middle schooler.
And the change was still going.
Yet he seemed to have lost his soul entirely. He remained utterly unaware of what was happening to his body, his vacant eyes fixed only on the sound of the wooden fish.
Bok.
Bok.
At the end of the corridor, "Xu Fu" sat upright, chanting sutras with his mouth, turning "prayer beads" in his right hand and striking the "wooden fish" with his left.
If those had truly been ordinary prayer beads and an ordinary wooden fish, the sight might have held a trace of solemnity. A trace of sanctity.
But in reality, the "wooden fish" being struck was a white skull.
And the "prayer beads" in his hand were not strung beads at all, but one blood-slick brain after another.
As for the blood-red kasaya draped over "Xu Fu"—a closer look revealed that it had been sewn together out of one bloodstained human face after another.
It was precisely because of those things that the scene held not the slightest hint of holiness or dignity. Instead, it radiated desecration and grotesquerie.
Darkness swallowed everything around them once more, then abruptly receded.
On both sides of the corridor, where there had been nothing just moments ago, kneeling child spirits now sat in rows, black miasma rising from them. Their hands were pressed together in prayer as though devoutly worshipping some existence.
These child spirits blackened by resentment all had their faces flayed off, and each one's skull was split down the middle. Their brains, still attached by nerves, floated above their heads, hollowed out in the center into rings—like halos imitating the ones above angels.
"Cute children... are all angels..."
"Bad children... are evil demons..."
"So... they must be redeemed... forgiveness must be prayed for in their name..."
A vicious smile spread over "Xu Fu's" face, cold enough to freeze the body through, as he watched Morita Taku grow younger and younger, into a child.
He could barely wait to grant him "salvation" as well.
Almost. Almost...
One more person would soon be delivered from suffering through his efforts, and he would earn another measure of merit.
And just then—
BANG!
The ceiling above "Xu Fu" suddenly shattered. The real Xu Fu dropped from above, landed beside "Xu Fu," and drove the kitchen knife clenched in her hand straight into the skull he had been using as a wooden fish.
"Kekekeke..."
The skull trembled.
Then, in its hollow eye sockets like empty holes, eerie red light flared to life.
In the next instant, a scream sharp enough to rupture eardrums exploded from the skull's mouth.
"IIIIIIIIYAAAAAAAH—!!"
The piercing shriek shook the air, replacing the uncanny wooden fish sound that had brought that false inner peace.
That scream not only snapped Morita Taku out of his stupor, it also affected the human-face kasaya draped over "Xu Fu's" body.
One by one, the faces sewn into the robe opened their mouths and began to cry loudly, like babies startled awake from sleep.
"UWAAAAAAAH—!!"
"UWAAAAAAH—!!"
"UWAAAAAAAH—!!"
"Xu Fu" froze for a moment, then his whole face twisted hideously with rage.
"Children...! The children...! You demon...! Unforgivable...!"
"Oh, shut up! You think you get to be angry? I'm the one who should be furious!" Xu Fu shouted, fuming. "Xu Fu-chan is this cute, and yet you evil spirit actually dared to impersonate me and go around doing evil! Even a beautiful girl like Xu Fu-chan has a temper, okay?! Beautiful-girl Xu Fu-chan is very angry right now! The consequences are going to be severe! Just watch me buzz-buzz-buzz you to pieces, you bastard!"
After making that bold declaration, Xu Fu pulled a new doll out from her robes.
The doll had golden hair, blue eyes, and wore a red hooded cloak with a pair of wolf ears on the hood. Under the cloak, its outfit was rather revealing.
Xu Fu set the doll on the ground and shouted,
"I choose you! Go—Red Hood!"
The instant the words left her mouth, the doll vanished.
In its place stood a blonde girl in a red cloak.
The girl shot "Xu Fu" a cold look, her emotionless eyes as sharp as a blade that would not return to its sheath until it had cut down its target.
Faced with the raging "Xu Fu," the blonde girl simply pulled a firearm from beneath her cloak and, without a word, unleashed [Gun Break]!
BANG!
The bullet shot straight for "Xu Fu's" head and blew his face apart.
---
T/N: the ghosts pronouns was he, so even if his name is currently "Xu Fu" he is referred to with he/him pronouns heh, and red hood is from black souls
i couldnt figure out what skill she used so i just picked a random skill she has
ALSO LOOK AT THE NEW RECOMMENDATION!! MISS HEBE IS CHARGING THROUGH THE LOSTBELTS
ITS TYPE MOON AND SOME ARKNIGHTS