Cursed spirits!
That's right. The monsters surrounding the barrier outside were cursed spirits.
They were special lifeforms born from humanity's negative emotions.
These lifeforms were composed of cursed energy and were invisible to ordinary people. Negative emotions directed toward specific targets could form corresponding cursed spirits. Financial crises, frequent exams, companies exploiting employees for long periods—all of these could lead to cursed spirits appearing frequently.
And Shuchi'in was a school that gathered Japan's finest talent. Most of the students there were children of social elites. It could be said to be a cradle for the future leaders of Japan.
Yet interestingly, it also accepted ordinary students with excellent grades.
Miyuki Shirogane from the original story was the most typical example.
This guy came from a poor family. Through extreme effort, he entered a noble school, maintained first place in his grade for a long time, and even became student council president.
You think he didn't have negative pressure?
And would ordinary students have negative pressure?
Therefore, it was actually not surprising for such an academy to produce large numbers of cursed spirits.
But what was interesting was that these cursed spirits had an extremely strong interest in hunting Asuna. That was very abnormal.
And the reason these cursed spirits were so interested in Asuna was entirely because of Asuna herself.
Rowan's mind turned slightly, and he understood the cause of the matter.
Asuna's name had been written on a page of the notebook. Her cause of death was very likely being killed by cursed spirits.
Only this kind of curse would attract the pursuit of cursed spirits.
In other words, Asuna had not actually been killed by a yokai back then, but by cursed spirits.
It was only because Asuna had never seen a yokai before that she mistook cursed spirits for yokai.
"Remove the barrier."
After understanding the cause and effect of the matter, Rowan spoke to Medea.
Perfect. He had just awakened a brand-new ability, so he could use these cursed spirits for practice.
Medea nodded and raised her hand, removing the barrier.
The instant the barrier was removed, the cursed spirits outside sensed it. One by one, they roared and swarmed in from all directions.
Their target…
Asuna.
At that moment, Rowan casually raised his right hand and said softly, "Technique Expansion: Soul Manipulation."
An invisible cursed energy burst from Rowan's hand and exploded outward, turning into threads that filled the sky. In an instant, they pierced through the bodies of every cursed spirit present.
Immediately after, all the cursed spirits seemed to have had the pause button pressed on them and stopped in place, motionless.
Some cursed spirits even froze stupidly in midair, unable to move.
Medea's eyes lit up, and she looked at Rowan's right hand with interest.
"An interesting power. This doesn't seem to be mana, Master."
"It's cursed energy," Rowan said lightly.
Seeing the surrounding monsters standing blankly in place without moving, Asuna immediately breathed a sigh of relief. The fear on her face gradually vanished, and intense curiosity gradually climbed into her heart. She could not help asking,
"What is cursed energy?"
"It is the power of jujutsu sorcerers."
Rowan seriously explained to Asuna, "So-called jujutsu sorcerers are people responsible for lifting curses and exorcising cursed spirits. The cursed energy they use is power extracted from negative emotions."
"As for cursed spirits, they are monsters born from humanity's negative emotions."
"These messy things you see now are all cursed spirits."
"Also, the monster that killed you yesterday was actually not a yokai, but a cursed spirit."
"Not a yokai?" Asuna was a little surprised.
She had thought the thing that killed her was a yokai, but it turned out to be a cursed spirit.
"Is there any difference between the two?"
Rowan thought for a moment and said, "The difference isn't actually that big, because cursed spirits are indeed somewhat similar to yokai."
"Aside from a small portion of yokai that are born naturally from heaven and earth, most yokai are actually born from human fear."
"Cursed spirits are born from humanity's negative emotions."
"But as everyone knows, dread and fear are themselves negative human emotions. From this, it can be seen that cursed spirits and yokai are not actually that different."
"The only difference is that cursed spirits don't really have any legendary status, while yokai generally have their own legends."
"For example, the Gyūki, the Kasha, the Aoandon, the Karasu Tengu, the Natto Kozō, and Ibaraki-dōji… These yokai all have their own legends and stories."
When Asuna heard this, she could not help nodding. Many yokai had their own stories and origins.
Especially those famous great yokai. Their backgrounds were more astonishing than the last.
But cursed spirits? She had never even heard of them before. They were basically no-name products.
"Aside from that, is there no other difference? Is it only because one is famous and the other isn't?"
Rowan nodded and said, "That's right. It's that simple. But if you insist on asking if there's any other difference, it's probably appearance."
"Appearance?"
Asuna froze for a moment and looked at the cursed spirits fixed motionless in place.
How should one put it? These cursed spirits were indeed rather hard to describe.
They were somewhat different from the yokai she imagined.
Rowan explained, "Because there are no specific legends, cursed spirits look however they want. They come in all kinds of bizarre forms. As you can see, cursed spirits basically come in every shape."
"As for yokai, although some of them are strange too, most of them roughly have human shapes, and there are even many beautiful yokai… such as yuki-onna, fox women, and hone-onna. They are all publicly acknowledged beauties."
"Compared to that, there are hardly any good-looking cursed spirits. Each one is more abstract than the last."
"As far as I know, the only cursed spirit that looks like a human is called Mahito."
"The reason that thing looks like a human is because he is a Special Grade cursed spirit born from humans' hatred and fear toward their fellow humans."
"Aside from him, there are also cursed spirits born from fear of volcanoes, cursed spirits born from fear of the sea, cursed spirits born from fear of the sky, and cursed spirits born from fear of forests."
"But these cursed spirits are uglier than the last. Compared to yokai, they're far inferior."
After listening to Rowan's explanation, Asuna suddenly understood.
But Medea did not care about any of this. What she cared about was how Rowan had mastered cursed energy.
"That's a long story."
Rowan briefly told Medea and Asuna about what had happened yesterday, with special emphasis on Tanaka Asahi.
That guy was a jujutsu sorcerer, and Rowan had found the method to extract cursed energy from negative emotions in his memories.
Last night, before sleeping, Rowan tried this method.
He successfully extracted cursed energy from negative emotions. Here, he had to praise the Golden Gate.
The instant cursed energy appeared, Rowan mastered this power, and through the Golden Gate, he could convert all the powerful mana inside his body into cursed energy.
After the conversion ended, Rowan's body was filled with powerful cursed energy, stimulating him to awaken an innate technique.
"Innate technique? What is that?" Medea asked.
Rowan said, "An innate technique is actually an ability that jujutsu sorcerers are born with. Not every sorcerer is born with a technique, and it is almost impossible to acquire one later."
"Not every jujutsu sorcerer can awaken an innate technique, but those who do are definitely outstanding among jujutsu sorcerers."
"And the innate technique I awakened is Soul Manipulation. It allows me to freely manipulate souls."
"For example, these cursed spirits standing in place without moving are because I used my technique to fix their souls, making them unable to move. They can only stand in place like puppets."
"Is that all?" Medea curiously observed the cursed spirits fixed in place.
She did not believe Rowan's Soul Manipulation technique was that simple.
"Of course not."
The moment Rowan finished speaking, the cursed spirits he had fixed in place began writhing madly in appearance.
In an instant, they transformed from bizarre cursed spirits into Rowans one after another.
"I mentioned earlier that Special Grade cursed spirit called Mahito, right?"
"He has a technique called Idle Transfiguration."
"That guy believes the soul is born before the flesh, and that the shape of the body is influenced by the shape of the soul."
"So his technique allows him to touch souls and change their shape, thereby modifying the body."
"My Soul Manipulation can do the same thing. In fact, it can do it even better."
As he spoke, the cursed spirits' appearances changed from Rowan to Medea, then from Medea to Nero, then from Nero to Asuna.
In the end, they actually changed from Asunas one after another into angels with wings.
Sacred and noble.
"As long as I want, I can reshape their appearances into anything. Angels, or demons."
The moment he finished speaking, the cursed spirits changed from winged angels into fallen succubi. Each one had a voluptuous figure, with curves in all the right places and a fiery body.
Asuna's face instantly turned red.
"That's… that's too shameless."
She had only seen such things online before. This was her first time seeing them in reality.
She could not take it. She really could not take it.
Rowan did not mind and continued, "Aside from that, I can also use Soul Manipulation to fuse all these cursed spirits together."
Under his control, the voluptuous succubi instantly turned into huge meatballs.
Then these meatballs collided with one another and fused together, turning into one super-large meatball.
Medea's eyes lifted slightly. She could sense that after these cursed spirits fused, their cursed energy was rising at an astonishing speed.
Rising, rising, and rising again.
At first, in Medea's eyes, these cursed spirits were nothing special. Aside from their number, everything else was a complete mess.
But as large numbers of cursed spirits fused, their power rose sharply.
Then the meatball began shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Its cursed energy increased greatly, reaching the level of a third-rate Heroic Spirit in the blink of an eye.
This surprised Medea somewhat.
After all, every Heroic Spirit was a famous person in history. Even a third-rate Heroic Spirit was the same.
Yet Rowan had used a pile of trash to synthesize a monster comparable to a third-rate Heroic Spirit.
This so-called Soul Manipulation ability was a little too powerful.
Rowan smiled faintly.
"You think this is the end? No, no, no. This is only the surface."