The wicked eye that had suddenly appeared on Angel-sama's forehead looked as though two facial organs—an eye and a mouth full of teeth—had been fused into one.
The instant it closed, Red Hood lost more than half her body, unable to dodge or defend in any way.
That was the curse formed when the infant evil spirit had taken the instinct of "eating," something shared by all living beings, and strengthened and evolved it to the absolute extreme.
Its grotesquely deformed proportions made it difficult for it to move. It could not, like an ordinary person, simply reach out and grab food that was right in front of it.
If it could not go over and take the food itself, then all it had to do was think of another way.
For example... bring the food directly to its own mouth.
The wicked eye reflecting Xu Fu's figure snapped shut.
Splurt!
Once again, the sound of flesh being torn apart rang out.
What had happened to Red Hood moments before was now replayed on Xu Fu.
Right before Eiko Hozuki's and Yayoi Hozuki's eyes, everything below Xu Fu's neck vanished into thin air, leaving only her head to drop toward the ground under the pull of gravity.
Eiko's eyes widened in disbelief.
"Xu Fu!"
Acting on instinct, she lunged forward and caught Xu Fu's head in both hands before it could hit the floor.
The weight in her arms was real.
This was no illusion, no nightmare.
"You've... got to be kidding me..."
That cute yet reliable little Taoist girl... had just died, like that?
Eiko's reason refused to accept the "reality" she was seeing.
Though they had only known each other for a few days, Eiko genuinely liked this capable, slightly vain, slightly wilful little girl.
It felt almost like meeting a second Yayoi Hozuki.
Xu Fu's dazzling performance against the evil spirits in the hospital, or the way she bickered with Yayoi over snacks at the Hozuki house—those scenes all surfaced in Eiko's mind at once.
"Eiko, are you sure you want to come? A friendly reminder from Xu Fu-chan: the evil spirit here might be really dangerous, you know~!"
"So~! Why exactly are you so determined to come with us? You're scared, aren't you? Your legs are still shaking."
"Well? You can still turn back now~, you know. Once you step inside, anything could happen. If you want to regret it, now's your last chance."
Xu Fu's warnings from before they entered kept echoing in her ears.
That was right. Xu Fu-chan had already warned them again and again how dangerous this place was, but Eiko had ignored her advice and insisted on coming inside.
This was all her fault.
She had taken everything too lightly.
Coming to a place this dangerous in such a joking, thrill-seeking mood was exactly how something like this happened...
Eiko clutched Xu Fu's head tightly to her chest, tears spilling down her cheeks as remorse stabbed over and over at her heart.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry, Xu Fu... It's all my fault... I'm the one who got you killed..."
Just as Eiko was drowning in grief, an extremely awkward voice suddenly came from her arms.
"Um... I really appreciate how worried you are about me, Eiko, but... Xu Fu-chan feels like I might still be salvageable?"
"!!!"
Eiko let out a yelp and reflexively threw the head she was holding.
Xu Fu's head traced a neat arc through the air before landing squarely in Yayoi's hands.
Yayoi held Xu Fu's head up, staring at her face-to-face in open amazement.
"How fascinating. You're still alive with only a head left? And you can still talk? Is this Taoism Arts too?"
"Of course it is." Xu Fu, now reduced to only a head, answered matter-of-factly. "Just look at Sun Wukong in Journey to the West. He doesn't die when his head gets cut off either, and he can still talk just fine."
"So what's the principle behind it?" Yayoi raised Xu Fu's head a little higher and curiously examined the severed stump of her neck. "You don't even have lungs left to breathe with, so how are you making sound?"
"I'm talking Taoism Arts and you're trying to explain it with science?" Xu Fu said, speechless.
"Xu Fu-chan! You scared me half to death!"
Eiko finally snapped out of her shock and panic. The moment she confirmed Xu Fu was still alive, the fear she had felt immediately turned into relief—and that relief lasted less than a second before becoming irritation and indignation instead.
"Why would you suddenly scare us like that?! Do you have any idea how worried I... we were?!"
"I'm sorry... I won't do it again... so stop pulling my cheeks already..."
As she complained bitterly, Eiko had already reached out and pinched Xu Fu's cheeks, tugging them hard to either side.
...The feeling was actually kind of nice.
Eiko almost seemed reluctant to let go.
Xu Fu honestly felt pretty wronged here. She really had not meant to play dead. It was just that Eiko had been crying so hard and so beautifully that Xu Fu got startled and couldn't find an opening to explain.
The reason she finally spoke up instead of continuing to pretend was simple:
Eiko had been hugging her head so tightly she was starting to feel like she couldn't breathe.
Watching Xu Fu's cheeks turn red under Eiko's merciless pinching, Yayoi asked flatly, "Can you restore yourself?"
"Obviously I can. Life would be very inconvenient if I stayed as just a head."
Xu Fu's head rose up from Yayoi's hands, and in the blink of an eye, the torso, limbs, and everything else Angel-sama had eaten reformed completely. Even the clothes she had been wearing were restored without a trace of damage. When her feet touched the ground again, Xu Fu even gave a light twirl.
"It really did come back..." Yayoi looked Xu Fu over from head to toe in astonishment. "There's not a scratch on you. Are you immortal?"
"It's only a false immortality. Or rather, a lie wearing the name of 'immortality.' Once upon a time, someone commissioned me to research humanity's ultimate dream—the legendary secret of everlasting life..."
As if recalling something unpleasant, Xu Fu's lips pouted slightly and her gaze drifted away.
"The research failed, of course, but along the way I got a lot of by-products out of it. They always seem to come in handy at times like this."
The moment Xu Fu brought up "everlasting life," Eiko's imagination began to run wild.
Xu Fu was right—immortality and eternal life really were humanity's ultimate dream. From ancient times to the present day, people had never once given up on it.
But to Eiko, it all felt far too distant and unreal to stir any especially deep thoughts.
"Oh, and by the way, the reason I ran all the way to Japan was because the research failed and I was afraid the client would kill me."
"Uh... your client was really that overbearing?"
"Sure was~." Xu Fu nodded, deeply agreeing.
After hearing that, Eiko's expression turned instantly complicated.
Commissioning a Taoist to research immortality, then deciding to kill her when the research failed...
Did that person seriously think they were Qin Shi Huang or something?
...Wait a second?
The Taoist who accepted Qin Shi Huang's commission and sailed east to Japan in search of the elixir of immortality was named...
"Xu Fu—?!"
"Huh? What? Why are you suddenly shouting my name?"
Their eyes met.
Eiko stared at Xu Fu's delicate, adorable face, then fiercely shook her head as if trying to throw the absurd thought out of it.
There was no way. Absolutely no way.
That was a historical figure from thousands of years ago, a great ancestor of countless people in Japan, a legendary figure honored with multiple shrines and statues...
Even setting aside suddenly coming back from the dead, there was no way she had turned into a narcissistic, wilful little girl like this...
Who would believe that—?!
"Eiko, did your brain finally snap after all those mental shocks? Your face keeps cycling through shock, then resignation, then enlightenment, then helpless laughter; first pale, then dark, then red, then purple... Wait, why are you pinching my face again~?!"
"And whose fault do you think all that is?!"
"How should I know~?! I'm telling you, don't just dump every random blame on me!"
Eiko kept complaining while pinching Xu Fu's cheeks, and Xu Fu firmly insisted she would never accept this ridiculous attempt to saddle her with responsibility. This had absolutely nothing to do with her!
Looking at Xu Fu's face being squeezed and stretched into all sorts of shapes under her hands, Eiko finally became sure.
It had to be a coincidence.
There was no way this was their illustrious ancestor.
Meanwhile, Angel-sama's third wicked eye had fixed itself on Taira no Masakado. But after seeing what had happened to Red Hood and Xu Fu, Taira no Masakado quickly grasped how that eye attacked. Before it could close, he seized both sides of the split with his hands and used sheer brute force to keep it from shutting.
Simple. Crude.
And effective.
Angel-sama's curse really could not activate.
Moreover, Angel-sama had three faces on its swollen head, with one wicked eye on each forehead. Just as a person cannot see their own ears without using a tool, Angel-sama's other evil eyes could not curse Taira no Masakado while he was clinging directly to one of them.
Its stubby little arms also could not reach its own forehead to yank him off.
Then Angel-sama suddenly noticed that the "little insect" it had reduced to nothing but a head had come back to life.
It could not understand what Xu Fu had done, but that did not stop it from trying to curse her again.
The wicked eye's gaze locked onto Xu Fu once more, her figure reflected clearly in its pupil. At first glance, everything seemed exactly the same as before.
But just before the eye closed, it was as if a mirror had suddenly appeared in front of Xu Fu.
The figure reflected inside the evil eye changed.
Instead of Xu Fu, it now showed Angel-sama itself.
"Idiot~! What do you think Xu Fu-chan was doing when I deliberately let your curse hit me without putting up any resistance?"
Xu Fu narrowed her eyes at Angel-sama, a triumphant, wicked smile spreading across her face.
"Now that I've personally experienced the power of your curse once, I understand its principles perfectly and have already built the most ideal counter-technique~! Let me return this curse to you exactly as it came!"
There was a wet tearing sound.
A full third of the infant evil spirit's head abruptly vanished.
That curse born from the instinct to feed had now turned back upon its owner, forcing it to taste the bitter fruit of what it had created.
The face turned toward Xu Fu disappeared as though erased by a giant rubber, along with nearly a third of the exposed brain tissue.
"Gyaaaaaaahhhhhh—!!"
"Gyaaaaaaahhhhhh—!!"
The two remaining faces screamed in unison, shrill and heart-rending, the distorted soundwaves making the entire space tremble violently. The pain of losing one face sent the giant evil spirit's whole body into wild convulsions. It had clearly taken severe damage.
"Ah~~ ah~~"
The remaining spirits hanging from the dead branches began humming their eerie song again. A gentle power wrapped around the mangled head, and the torn flesh was already beginning to regenerate.
And at that exact moment, a dragon's roar exploded through the air.
"ROOOAAARRR—!!"
The dragon's howl became a visible torrent. It not only blasted apart the spirits' song, but also shattered those half-transparent figures like fragile glass, turning them into a rain of drifting particles.
A figure hidden beneath shadow and crimson cloak moved like a silent reaper harvesting lives.
Red Hood, back in the fight, raised her short firearm and aimed at the infant evil spirit's forehead, her expression cold as she pulled the trigger.
The gunshot rang out.
The bullet streaked past Taira no Masakado's face and struck the wicked eye he was holding open, immediately bursting it into a spray of black-red blood.
"Gyaaaahhhhhh—!!"
The infant evil spirit let out another shriek of agony.
Taira no Masakado did not waste the opening Red Hood had created. The muscles in his powerful arms bulged as he drove his fingers like steel claws deep into the flesh around the wicked eye.
With a sickening ripping sound, he tore away an enormous slab of flesh straight from the infant evil spirit's forehead. Filthy blood splashed across his clothes, and the damaged eyeball beneath—still bleeding from Red Hood's shot—was laid bare before him.
Taira no Masakado did not stand on ceremony.
Like a wolf seizing a rabbit, he bit into the wounded eyeball in one savage snap.
The enemy's screams and spurting blood only fanned his ferocity further. He could feel his weakened body drawing ever closer to its former peak as it was nourished by the enemy's flesh and blood, and he immediately feasted with great relish.
Angel-sama, meanwhile, could do nothing to stop him.
Even when it steeled itself to form telekinetic shells at a cost to itself, it still could not interrupt Taira no Masakado's feeding.
And while Angel-sama struggled desperately to shake Taira no Masakado off, Red Hood had already erased the last "healer" spirit hanging from the dead branches, cutting off Angel-sama's final chance of healing itself.
As more and more of Angel-sama's flesh was devoured by Taira no Masakado, its struggles grew weaker and weaker. Even the telekinetic shells it formed became feeble and powerless.
There would be no more surprises now.
Angel-sama had finally run out of tricks.
And when the last scrap of its flesh vanished into Taira no Masakado's maw, Xu Fu and the others were finally expelled from the special space the evil spirit had created and returned to the haunted house itself.
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T/N: i thought i had to end the story here...