The cold stone brick pressed against Mahito's back, the chill seeping into his broken limbs. He lay on his back, his silver-blue hair splayed in the blood.
Pain was unfamiliar. Since his birth, he had never experienced such a complete, uncontrollable collapse. His vision blurred, then refocused.
The temple dome was high and dark. Thick wooden beams intertwined in the shadows, like the ribs of a giant beast. The air was stagnant, filled with old incense sticks, damp stone, and a deeper, sweet, rancid smell.
He turned his only intact neck.
To his left and right, figures stood silently.
They were dressed in uniform black monk's robes, the thick fabric wrapped around their necks. A wide-brimmed hat was pulled down deep, the shadow swallowing their faces. No, it wasn't just a hat.
Bandages.
Pale, tight bandages protruding from the lower edge of the hats, hermetically wrapping their exposed skin—if there was any beneath. Only a gap remained for the eyes, and there flickered two dim lights—no warmth, no emotion.
Mahito looked at these "eyes."
Cursed energy.
He could feel a mixed, sticky cursed energy fluctuation emanating from these bandage-wrapped bodies. It was the breath of a cursed spirit, but completely different. More sediment—more... muddy, as if mixed with impurities that shouldn't be there.
They weren't of a single type.
This realization pierced his chaotic consciousness more clearly than the pain in his limbs. A cursed spirit is the condensation of pure negative emotions, the embodiment of concepts. But these things... were a twisted mixture.
"Ha... interesting." He wanted to make some sound, but his throat only managed a wheeze like a broken bellows. His Idle Transfiguration instinctively flowed at the soul level, trying to repair the shattered vessel.
Ineffective.
No, not ineffective. It was that the "wound" itself was beyond repair.
The woman—the white-haired woman with a black halo—had left behind more than just a simple injury. The cursed spirit named Mahito possesses a technique called Idle Transfiguration, which transforms the body through the alteration of the soul. In other words, no matter how much damage the body takes, it can be restored by changing the soul.
But now, his wounds clearly told him:
His soul was wounded.
Fear? No, something more seething. Curiosity mixed with a trembling excitement.
His line of sight struggled past the silent monks and plunged into the depths of the temple.
There, the light was dimmer, only an ever-burning lamp flickering with a small bean-sized flame. Beside the lamp stood a woman quietly. Long white hair cascaded like a waterfall, almost reaching her ankles.
She wore a strange haori—not fabric, but woven from countless black metal feathers, their edges seeming to cut the light with her gentle breaths. Her face was shrouded in shadow, not clearly visible. Only a cold gaze fell on him from the darkness. No killing intent, no anger, only an inorganic, observational, dead indifference.
A suppressed cough came from the side.
Mahito rolled his eyes and saw Kenjaku lying under a pillar in the corridor.
His appearance at that moment was not good: his khaki jumpsuit was torn in many places, his face was pale beneath the stitches on his forehead, and dried bloodstains were at the corners of his mouth. He smiled bitterly, his gaze also falling on the white-haired woman.
"We were wrong..." Kenjaku's voice was very low, with rare vexation and a hint of... unbelievable inquiry. "The legendary leader of the Naraku Sect, the embodiment of the 'Immortal God'... is actually compressed with the absolute fear of death as its core... a cursed spirit of death?"
Mahito's mutilated body trembled slightly.
A cursed spirit of death? A pure, conceptual embodiment of "death"?
"No," Kenjaku's eyes grew sharper, staring at the woman, or rather, feeling the contradictory presence around her. "You're not just a cursed spirit. This mixed feeling of life, this twisted yet stable body holding an anchor..."
There was a slight tremor in his voice, as if he had uncovered a forbidden truth:
"You have human blood... a half-cursed spirit."
"Moreover, this aura... it's natural, not some clunky, acquired splicing transformation." Kenjaku's brow furrowed, as if turning over his own thinking. "Could it be... innate?"
Kenjaku had conducted experiments on half-cursed spirits under the name Kamo Kenren four hundred years ago. He himself was qualified to speak on the study of half-cursed spirits.
An innate... half-cursed spirit?
Mahito's amber right eye suddenly contracted. This information made his soul tremble more than discovering a cursed spirit's lair.
Idle Transfiguration could play with souls, distort bodies, turn people into monsters, and give them cursed energy properties. But this was transformation, a turning point. He could turn people into multi-armed monsters, give them the ability to breathe fire or poison, and even mimic the aura of a cursed spirit.
But at the core, these creations were still variations of "carbon-based organisms," deformations of the material world. He couldn't fundamentally turn a person into the pure, energy-based form of a "cursed spirit."
They were barriers at the soul level, two completely different "ways of being."
A cursed spirit is born from the negative emotions of humans, a projection of mental images, a compression of concepts. Humans are flesh and blood, a union of matter and soul. They are like water and oil; even if forced together, they will eventually separate or become unbearably muddy.
But the woman before him, these silent monks...
Mahito's perception swept cautiously. The aura of the bandaged monks was more complex and unstable, like poor imitations or unfinished defective products. But the woman in white, her sense of existence created a strange "harmony."
The conceptual coercion unique to cursed spirits, arising from the fear of "death" felt by all beings, was closely intertwined with the solid, living magnetic life field belonging to a top-tier predator. Instead of conflict, it formed a more suffocating whole.
She was simultaneously a personification of the concept of "death" and a living, flesh-and-blood human.
"Here... are the established ones," Mahito's hoarse voice sounded. He looked at the bandaged monks on both sides and finally understood the source of the feeling of disobedience. "Everything... hybrids of humans and cursed spirits. Half-cursed spirits."
Dead silence fell over the temple. Only the crackle of the ever-burning lamp. The black-robed monks didn't move, as if they were just sculptures. The woman's gaze remained indifferent; she didn't react to Kenjaku's insinuations or Mahito's words, neither confirming nor denying.
Leaning against the pillar, Kenjaku struggled to adjust his breathing, wiping the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. He looked at Mahito with complex eyes. "It seems we all underestimated the depths of the South China Sea." "The 'immortality' of the Naraku Sect is probably not just a simple deception and low-level curse at all."
"A half-cursed spirit… If they are born into a stable existence, they could have a lifespan far exceeding that of ordinary people, or even… in a sense, an 'immortal' characteristic," Kenjaku analyzed, his eyes shining with calculation. "After all, the existence of a cursed spirit is closer to a 'concept.' If the concept of 'fear of death' does not disappear, then as its embodiment…"
He looked at the woman in white and didn't continue. But the meaning was obvious: as long as humans still feared death, this "cursed spirit of death" could continuously draw strength and be difficult to completely destroy.
"What should we do?" Mahito laughed instead, his heterochromatic eyes flashing with a crazy light. "Just become a pile of rotten meat that can't be changed anymore? Fun… This experience of 'death'…"
"She won't let you die," Kenjaku interrupted, his gaze again deep and calm. "We are still useful to her. At least, I still have benefits to negotiate with her."
He raised his head, met the cold gaze of the woman in white again, and raised his voice, though every word caused internal injuries:
"Your Excellency, is this the truth of the Naraku Sect? Using 'immortality' as bait to screen believers, ultimately transforming them into… beings like them?" He pointed to the bandaged monks around them.
"Or are these just failures? Unfinished 'gifts'? And you… are the only perfect, natural 'god'?"
The woman remained silent. But the air in the temple seemed to grow a bit colder. The flickering lights in the eyes of the bandaged monks wavered slightly.
"We are not enemies," Kenjaku continued, an unusual persuasive power in his voice. "On the contrary, we can help you. Whatever you are doing? More 'compatriots'? Perfecting the transformation technology? Or… something else?"
He paused for a moment and slowly played his trump card:
"A more troublesome guy is approaching from outside. His name is Zen'in Genji. He is the 'god' of jujutsu, and he doesn't have a good impression of all 'unnatural' beings, especially those involved in forbidden experiments."
"We can cooperate," despite the embarrassment, his voice was calm and persuasive. "You heal us, provide shelter and intelligence. We… can help you deal with the approaching storm, and even provide special 'assistance' for your path."
---
A long silence.
Only Mahito's soft gasps and suppressed coughs were heard.
Finally, the woman in white, like an ice sculpture, moved slightly.
She stepped forward.
The feathers on the black haori rustled against each other, making a soft whisper particularly noticeable in the dead temple. The light of the ever-burning lamp finally illuminated half of her face.
Her skin was light, untouched by sunlight, almost translucent. Her features were delicate but cold, without a trace of human warmth. Her lips were purple and tightly pressed. The most striking were her eyes—her pupils were a chaotic dark gray, as if endless death and emptiness swirled within them. After looking for a long time, even one's soul would be sucked in and frozen.
She looked at Kenjaku and then at Mahito, who couldn't move on the ground. Still, no emotion appeared in those chaotic eyes.
Then, she raised a hand so pale that blue veins were almost visible.
Her fingers were slender and thin, her nails black as ink.
She grasped at Mahito.
There was no sign of an explosion of cursed energy, but Mahito suddenly widened his eyes and let out a short, pitiful howl unlike a human voice!
He felt the "dead silence" force that had been lodged in his soul, like a larva on a tarsus, being attacked by a more dominant and original force... forcibly retreating!
The pain caused by this process was far more than a thousand times greater than the original injury—it was the intense pain of a soul being roughly torn and scratched!
But at the same time, his soul's damage, which had been "frozen" and "rejected," began to regain its "activity." Although it was still broken, at least the Idle Transfiguration technique could be used to repair it, and it began to slowly recover.
The woman withdrew her hand, as if she had just done a trivial thing. A very light, gray-black aura lingered on her fingertips. The aura struggled, writhed, then disappeared into her pale skin and vanished.
She had absorbed the "dead silence" force.
"Yes."
A cold, ethereal voice, as if coming from afar, sounded for the first time. No inflection, no emotional fluctuation—just a simple statement.
"He," she meant Mahito, "will be useful after recovery. You," she shifted her gaze to Kenjaku, "know too much."
She paused, and her chaotic gray eyes looked directly at Kenjaku:
"Prove your worth. Otherwise, 'death' here will become nourishment."
As the words fell, without waiting for Kenjaku's response, she turned around, the black haori drawing a cold arc towards the deeper darkness of the temple. Her figure gradually sank into the shadows.
The silent, bandaged monks seemed to receive silent instructions and began to move. Four stepped out of the line and went to Mahito, lifting his mutilated body stiffly but precisely. Two others approached Kenjaku, and although they did nothing, an invisible sense of observation and oppression was palpable.
"It seems we are safe for now," Kenjaku smiled bitterly. Under the "escort" of the monks, he struggled to his feet and followed the team that was taking Mahito away.
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