'How could this be...!? This is this woman's shop?'
Hahn Cliff stood frozen on the bustling commercial street, his mind reeling. 'Where's that old woman? Where is she!? She was just talking to me!'
He stared blankly as the angry, heavily made-up middle-aged woman stormed back into the fortune-telling booth, muttering curses under her breath. The frail, kind old woman was nowhere to be seen. The booth itself was filled with cheap, dazzling crystals and velvet drapes—perfectly matching Cliff's preconceived notion of a fake swindler's setup.
For a moment, Cliff felt entirely lost. His grip on reality was slipping. What had just happened?
The high-pitched ringing in his ears was getting worse. It drowned out the ambient noise of the surrounding crowd. The chatter of the tourists and locals faded entirely, replaced by something else.
He heard whispering.
Cruel, echoing laughter right next to his ears.
"Look, what did I find? A lone little Hahn!"
"It's gone... the protection is gone!"
"Hahahaha…!! He threw it away! He threw the book away!!"
'Who!? Who's there!?' Cliff spun around, his fists clenched, cold sweat pouring down his bruised face.
He suddenly felt a suffocating sense of urgency that was intensely ominous. 'Is it a hallucination?'
He looked frantically at the passing crowd, but found nothing amiss. No one was looking at him. It was as if the mocking words he'd just heard were entirely in his own head. Yet, a heavy, oppressive feeling lingered in the air, as if countless unseen eyes were suddenly watching him from the alleys, the rooftops, and the shadows.
The gazes were mocking, malicious, bloodthirsty, and greedy. They seemed to be circling him, sniffing the air, trying to confirm one single thing…
Did Hahn Cliff really throw it away?
In an instant, a restless, terrifying heat surged within his chest. He didn't know the exact mechanics of the occult, but his survival instinct understood the truth.
'The book! That book!'
That book wasn't just a crazy old man's diary—it was a ward. A beacon. He couldn't be separated from that book! If he was alone without his surname's protection, whatever was hiding in this town would tear him apart.
Like a wild horse breaking free from its reins, Cliff began to run frantically back the way he came. He vaguely felt that he might have horribly wronged his father. His understanding of his father's madness was suddenly overturned. Hahn… what exactly did that surname mean to the underworld?
The more he thought about it, the faster his heart beat against his ribs. He yanked out his cheap cell phone and dialed the detective's number.
Pick up! Answer it!
"Mr. Kudo!" Cliff screamed the second the line connected. "Come back! Come back right now! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult your time, but something's wrong!"
Something was very, very wrong. Something he couldn't understand was hunting him in broad daylight.
"Listen to me! Mr. Kudo! Forget the traffic! I don't care what you have to do, take that book and come back right now!!"
Los Angeles: The Highway
Yusaku Kudo put down his satellite phone, his expression incredibly sullen.
'Has something happened over there too...?'
His eyes darted nervously, occasionally glancing at the human-skin book resting on the passenger seat.
In the back seat of his rental car, a square-faced, imposing man was still unaware of the supernatural gravity of the situation. He was one of Yusaku's closest law enforcement connections, a high-ranking LAPD officer—Chief Gray.
With Chief Gray's authoritative presence in the car, Yusaku's journey out of the city had become much smoother. Gray had flashed his badge at the random traffic cops and bypassed the sudden construction detours. But even that wasn't enough to dispel the eerie atmosphere.
As an elite cop, Chief Gray naturally gravitated toward hard facts. He was a fairly upright, no-nonsense man. At first, he was completely unconcerned when Yusaku called him in a panic, assuming his old buddy just wanted an escort to bypass LA traffic. Gray even jokingly suggested Yusaku was abusing police power.
But as the drive progressed, the sheer, mathematically impossible series of "accidents" they encountered—pedestrians tripping into the street, sudden gridlocks, malfunctioning traffic lights—made Gray silently look at Yusaku in the rearview mirror.
"...Who the hell did you piss off, Yusaku?" Gray finally asked, his hand resting near his service weapon.
"Heh... you know me, Gray. I just took a case."
"What case?"
"A poor blue-collar son is looking for his homeless father who disappeared ten years ago," Yusaku replied, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
???
Gray frowned. Could this trivial matter really cause such a massive, orchestrated commotion? All sorts of people—children, adults, women, and men—had "accidentally" appeared to block their car. A simple missing-persons request couldn't possibly explain this strange, Truman Show-esque occurrence.
"Are you sure you haven't gotten yourself into deep cartel trouble without knowing it?" Gray pressed.
Yusaku wanted to say yes, but a glimpse of the human-skin book made him less certain.
Perhaps he had indeed offended some people. And not the kind of people most cops would think of.
Driving back toward the coast, Yusaku's mood grew increasingly gloomy. He suddenly remembered his son, Shinichi, calling him from Japan a few weeks ago, during which the boy had uttered some inexplicable, terrifying "nonsense" about the Metropolitan Police Department and monsters. Yusaku had dismissed it as Shinichi working a stressful, hallucinatory drug case.
'Could it be…?'
Thinking of this, Yusaku immediately grabbed the human-skin book and shoved it deep into his inside coat pocket. His brilliant eyes held a heavy hint of doubt and uncertainty.
'Could Shinichi's ramblings be true?'
Otherwise, he couldn't rationally explain that bizarre time-loop encounter in the alley just now. It defied physics. Yusaku Kudo couldn't understand it, and logically, he adamantly didn't want to believe in any rumors of Gods or Buddhas.
If omnipotent deities truly existed, would mortal kingdoms like the US or Japan still have any so-called autonomy? The entire globe would likely be under the direct, tyrannical rule of Gods. Since this dystopia hadn't overtly occurred, Yusaku had always assumed talk of the divine was merely a coping mechanism for the weak. Like the idiom of Lord Ye's love of dragons, people only liked the idea of Gods; no one actually wanted an omnipotent, ruthless God hovering above their head.
He squinted his eyes, racking his brains to decipher the events that had just transpired.
'If I were injected with a hallucinogen, and a syndicate of people "performed" an elaborate play, would it achieve the same effect?' he wondered. He wasn't sure. But even if it were logistically feasible, who would expend such astronomical resources to put on a spectacular, reality-bending "play" just to scare a retired detective?
He was just a novelist. Why? Was it worth the effort?
Suginami Ward: The Mizunotsuki Residence
Of course it was worth it.
Far away in Japan, Seiran lounged in his master bedroom, marveling at the incredible practicality of his newly acquired templates.
Using a Shadow Clone deployed overseas, combined with the sheer, reality-warping effectiveness of Genjutsu (Illusions) from the Naruto template, was flawless. It was far more elegant and convenient than laying down complex Cursed Energy traps to set up a scheme. And the psychological terror it inflicted on brilliant, rational minds like Yusaku Kudo was exquisite.
With the first seeds of his global scheme perfectly planted, Seiran's mood instantly improved.
'Excellent,' Seiran thought, a dark smirk playing on his lips. 'This is the style the mystical side of the underworld should have. What is the point of always resorting to brute-force violence to scare people into submission? It's much more entertaining to shatter their reality before harvesting them.'
"Wait a minute!"
A sharp, indignant voice broke his train of thought.
Eriri Sawamura had finally cleared her sensory overload and snapped back to reality. Her blue eyes widened in sudden, furious realization. She had been completely tricked! She was being forced to eat cream puffs by this arrogant God, and her own mother had served her up on a silver platter!
Although as a prolific doujinshi artist she sometimes privately fantasized about being humiliated and dominated by a powerful figure, Eriri absolutely couldn't accept actually being treated like a disposable toy in real life.
'Sayuri! That's my own mother!' Eriri screamed internally. 'She just sold me off like livestock! This is even more outrageous than the darkest tags in my doujinshi!'
Even though this guy was super handsome and radiated an intoxicating energy, her tsundere pride flared up violently.
"Get off me, you jerk!" Eriri bared her little fangs, her signature twin-tails thrashing as she started wrestling with him, trying to push him away.
No luck.
With a lazy smirk, Seiran simply caught both of her wrists in one hand, flipped her effortlessly onto her stomach, and delivered several sharp, resounding slaps to her pert, bare bottom.
Smack! Smack!
"Kyaa! Stop it!" Eriri squeaked, her face burning crimson.
To her absolute horror, she glanced over and saw Sayuri standing by the edge of the bed, covering her mouth and secretly giggling at her daughter's rebellion.
At this moment, Eriri felt utterly ashamed and violently indignant.
'Fine. Fine!' Eriri gritted her teeth, her blue eyes flashing with competitive fire. 'So you like dominating people, huh? You like using my twin-tails as a steering wheel?'
Today, she was going to drive him hard. She was going to make this arrogant jerk die a horrible, drained death! After all, she hadn't drawn thousands of pages of explicit eroge doujinshi for nothing. If we're talking about bedroom tricks and stamina-draining techniques, Eriri's theoretical knowledge was vast.
Of course, the main reason behind this sudden burst of aggressive courage was that Eriri had ultimately resigned herself to her fate.
Although Sayuri's betrayal felt like a stab in the heart, Eriri wasn't entirely oblivious to her mother's desperate intentions. If it weren't for absolute, inescapable helplessness, why would Sayuri ever sacrifice her most beloved daughter to a man like this? Clearly, a catastrophic, unavoidable threat was looming over the Sawamura family, and this man was their only shield.
So, Eriri gritted her teeth, arched her back, and fully committed to her new role.
'If I'm going to be your toy,' Eriri thought spitefully, wrapping her legs tightly around his waist, 'I'm going to wring you completely dry. Let's see who breaks first, you bastard!'
.....
.....
.....
Support me and read advance chapters on patreon.com/ImmortalDaoWriter