The black concept of death began to eat away at the evil spirit's body, little by little.
It was black as well, and yet the difference was easy to tell.
The blackness clinging to the evil spirit was foul, steeped in dense, violent malice, like filthy, viscous sludge that instinctively repelled all who saw it.
But the black that heralded death was tranquil, sacred, and pure. Like the night itself, it was something no living thing could escape. All could only meet their eternal sleep within its quiet embrace.
"Y-you... you're going to kill me...?!"
The evil spirit's voice sharpened. Before death itself could descend, the fear of death drowned her reason first.
"Y-you... weren't you trying to get information out of us?! Don't kill me...! I'll tell you everything...! Anything you want to know, I'll tell you...! Please, don't kill me. I don't want to die yet...!"
From the day she had become an evil spirit, she had been bound to Old K Tunnel. Only when Nagiko Shami arrived had she finally been able to leave that place—and find "companions" like herself, hiding among human society by stealing other people's bodies.
But even with human flesh to wear, they were still evil spirits in the end. The habits of evil spirits did not change.
Just as collective spirits joined forces to avoid being devoured by stronger evil spirits, The Replaced had only come into being because they did not want to be hunted down by the spiritualists of this country. In the end, it had always been about themselves.
And so, when death came knocking, this evil spirit from Old K Tunnel betrayed her so-called "companions" without the slightest hesitation. She had already used every trick she had to avoid being killed.
Then Xu Fu's next words made hope flare in the evil spirit's heart.
"Not kill you? Sure~. I'll ask you one question. If your answer satisfies me, I'll let you go this time. How about that?"
"O-okay...! Okay...! Okay...! No problem...!" Overjoyed, the evil spirit answered in a hoarse voice, "Please, ask whatever you wish, my lady...! I'll tell you everything I know without holding anything back...!"
The evil spirit assumed Xu Fu would ask some secret question about The Replaced. She had not joined them long ago, but because she had possessed a spiritualist with extremely high talent, her standing in the organization was actually quite high, and she had access to plenty of its secrets.
The reason she had come to Old I Watergate was to carry out the plan—to place a cursed object here and spur the evil spirits in this place to evolve.
As long as she could prove she was valuable enough, then Xu Fu would surely spare her. And if that happened, she would live.
"My question is..."
A wicked smile curled at Xu Fu's lips.
"'I don't want to die,' 'Please don't kill me'... Shami-san and your other victims said things like that to you too, didn't they?"
The evil spirit's body stiffened violently.
"So..." Xu Fu's voice dropped below freezing. "When they begged you for mercy, did you spare them? Did you give them a chance to go on living?"
The evil spirit could feel a gaze from above, cold and sharp as a blade, slicing through her skin and driving straight into the darkest corner of her soul. The crimes she had deliberately hidden and buried were now laid bare in the open, raw and bloody beneath the light of day.
There was no smile on Xu Fu's face now.
Only the solemnity of judgment.
"Good. I have my answer."
"No...! I... ughhhhhh—!!"
The evil spirit's death scream rang through the sky.
Xu Fu did want information on The Replaced, but she was not stupid enough to trust whatever came out of an evil spirit's mouth. Who knew whether it was lying or not?
There was no need to leave it alive. She had plenty of ways to get what she wanted.
By then, Keitaro Gentoga and the others understood as well: the Shami-san they had met had not been the real Nagiko Shami at all, but an evil spirit that had stolen her body.
After Xu Fu destroyed that evil spirit, Yayoi Hozuki started rummaging through the bag it had brought with it.
"Yayoi-chan..." Keitaro Gentoga said hesitantly. "Going through someone else's bag like that isn't really okay, is it?"
Yayoi Hozuki replied unhurriedly, "That evil spirit came all the way here for a reason. There should be some clues in this bag."
"Uh..."
Keitaro Gentoga had to admit that made sense.
What worried him more was this: they knew Nagiko Shami had already been body-snatched by an evil spirit, but nobody else did. A living person had just ended up dead like that, so the police were definitely going to investigate. What were they supposed to do then? The ones who had killed Nagiko Shami—or rather, the evil spirit possessing her—were Red Hood and Xu Fu, while what Yayoi Hozuki was doing now could, if you wanted to be harsh about it, be called tampering with evidence at a crime scene.
...
Keitaro Gentoga's worries were ignored by everyone, because Yayoi Hozuki actually did pull something out.
It was a small wooden box sealed with a talisman. Yayoi Hozuki found it extremely familiar, so she opened it right away.
Inside was a severed hand—withered thin as bone, with black fingernails. It looked like a mummified arm.
"This is...!"
Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki both jolted in shock, because they recognized the severed hand at once.
"Isn't that... the thing that drove the spirit at H Castle Ruins berserk...?" Keitaro Gentoga said, still shaken.
That day, [High Priest of the Evil Sutra] had devoured the hundreds of evil spirits in Yayoi Hozuki's room and become a Graduate. Then Yayoi Hozuki and Keitaro Gentoga had taken that new Graduate with them to the S-Rank haunted spot, H Castle Ruins.
The spirit that had attacked the two of them there had not been an evil spirit, but a benevolent one. The reason it had lashed out at Yayoi Hozuki and the others was because someone had planted a cursed object at H Castle Ruins, and that cursed object had driven the benevolent spirit mad, causing it to attack anyone who came there indiscriminately.
After Yayoi Hozuki discovered the truth, she took the cursed object away. In gratitude, the benevolent spirit of H Castle Ruins gave her a token. As long as she used that token, then no matter where she was, Yayoi Hozuki could summon that benevolent spirit into battle, which meant she had effectively gained another Graduate-class fighting force.
The cursed object they had found at H Castle Ruins was almost identical to the one they had just pulled out of Nagiko Shami's bag. The only difference was that the cursed object at H Castle Ruins had been a left hand, while this one was a right.
"Obviously, this thing is part of a pair with that one. We may have found the culprit behind the spread of these cursed objects." Yayoi Hozuki fell into thought. "Of course, it's also possible the real culprit is someone else, and Shami-san only found this cursed object and temporarily kept it in her possession... We still have too few clues to say for sure."
Red Hood suddenly spoke up. "But whatever the truth may be, it would still be better if something this dangerous stayed in our hands. The people searching for these lost cursed objects may come looking very soon."
They already had one cursed object in their possession anyway. As the saying went, herding one sheep or two was still herding, so they might as well take the whole lot.
When Xu Fu returned, Red Hood asked coolly, "Did you finish off the evil spirit that stole Shami-san's body?"
"Heh heh heh! Who do you think I am~?" Xu Fu planted both hands on her hips and said with extreme smugness, "With the cutest beautiful girl in the world, Xu Fu, taking action, something on that level was naturally easy pickings—child's play~!"
Red Hood merely gave a flat "Oh," then turned her head away again, utterly unwilling to offer even a shred of emotional payoff.
"...Hey~! I said all that, and you're brushing me off with just an 'oh'?"
Xu Fu scampered over behind Red Hood and tugged on her cloak with one hand, her stubborn little eyes wide.
As if she did not understand what Xu Fu was getting at at all, Red Hood replied in the same even tone, "Didn't you say that kind of small fry was easy for you to deal with? What else is there for me to say?"
"Mmph...!" Xu Fu ground her teeth in indignation.
"Uh... well, Xu Fu-chan really is amazing~!"
Eiko Hozuki, the one with the highest emotional intelligence present, immediately sensed that the atmosphere was starting to go off and hurriedly stepped in to praise Xu Fu.
"The evil spirit that possessed Shami-san seemed to be from Old K Tunnel, right? That's an ultra-dangerous S-Rank haunted spot, and yet Xu Fu-chan dealt with it so easily... th-that's really incredible! You think so too, don't you, Keitaro-kun?"
At the end, Eiko Hozuki even turned to Keitaro Gentoga for backup.
"Me? O-of course I think so too!" Catching Eiko Hozuki's look, Keitaro Gentoga immediately played along. "Yayoi-chan and I have gone to several S-Rank haunted spots ourselves. Even with the katashiro protecting us, there were still quite a few times we almost died... Looking back on it now, the fact that we've managed to stay alive all this time really is pretty unbelievable."
Take H Castle Ruins, for example. Back then, only Yayoi Hozuki and Keitaro Gentoga had gone there. Keitaro Gentoga had been responsible for drawing the spirits out, while Yayoi Hozuki had handled the fighting.
And yet at H Castle Ruins, Yayoi Hozuki—the team's heavy hitter—had been the first one to get hit. She became trapped in an illusion and separated from Keitaro Gentoga. If Keitaro Gentoga had not been running around frantically at the time and shouting her name at the top of his lungs, Yayoi Hozuki might really have died there.
The katashiro Yayoi Hozuki made could only take attacks from spirits in their place. They could not block physical harm. So having katashiro on them did not mean they were absolutely safe.
"So you do know that the fact you're still alive is pretty unbelievable?"
"So you do know that the fact you're still alive is pretty unbelievable?"
Xu Fu and Red Hood spoke in perfect unison, and with equally perfect timing, both rolled their eyes at Keitaro Gentoga. Then the two of them looked at each other, seemingly startled by their own absurdly good synchronization.
That evil spirit wearing Nagiko Shami's body had already delayed them quite a while, and Xu Fu and the others still had not finished the main reason they had come to Old I Watergate.
Ever since the place was built, hangings had been happening around Old I Watergate without cease. From around the latter half of the Showa era onward, it had become quite a famous haunted spot.
Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki, the two without Spiritual Sight, could not see it—but the water at Old I Watergate was packed full of evil spirits, so many of them that it made hot pot ingredients look sparse by comparison. Granted, all of them were the weak kind that did not even have the ability to actively harm the living.
Even so, sheer numbers like that still were not enough to make this place an S-Rank super-dangerous haunted spot, much less enough to warrant Xu Fu making a special trip here.
Xu Fu had known from the start that Old I Watergate housed something truly dangerous.
It was the evil spirit of a little boy.
The boy's life before death had been utterly miserable. He had originally lived alone with his father. Then one day, his father found him a stepmother, and that stepmother abused him every day. But because he did not want to make his father sad, he kept it hidden from him the whole time.
The abuse was not the only thing. The boy's stepmother also brought a lover home with her, only for the boy's father to catch them in the act. The two of them then joined forces to murder the boy's father. In the bathroom, they turned his body into meatballs and ordered the boy to take them outside and throw them away.
The stepmother never fed the boy. And because the boy had no idea that the meatballs in the box were his father, he was so starving that instead of throwing them away, he ate them.
Later, the stepmother got into a fight with her lover and stabbed him to death. The little boy happened to witness it. He ran, but in the end his stepmother caught up with him here at Old I Watergate and killed him too. Both bodies were made into meatballs.
The guilt he felt toward his father, and the hatred he bore for his stepmother, turned the boy into an evil spirit after death.
The good news was that even as an evil spirit, the boy only hated his stepmother. The only one he wanted to attack was her.
The bad news was that after becoming an evil spirit, he could no longer control it—he saw everyone as his stepmother.
The little boy evil spirit's power was peculiar as well.
Whenever he wanted to attack someone, figures corresponding to each person would appear in the sketchbook in his hands. Using his power, he would black out parts of the figure's body in the sketchbook, and the corresponding body parts of the real target would vanish into thin air and turn into meatballs inside the box he carried. He would then eat those meatballs to heal himself and strengthen his power.
In other words, once he had drawn someone into that sketchbook, he could curse them regardless of distance.
So if you wanted to deal with this little boy evil spirit, the first thing you had to do was take away the sketchbook in his hands.
And once he lost the sketchbook, he would enter a second phase.
In that second phase, an armor-like layer of ultra-dense curse power would wrap around the little boy evil spirit's whole body, so dense that not even Kishimojin's finger could break through his defenses.
At the same time, he would sprout six enormous hands that could stretch freely. Anyone—or any spirit—caught by those six hands would likewise be turned into meatballs and eaten by the boy.
Even among S-Rank threats, this little boy evil spirit ranked among the strongest.
To fight him, Yayoi Hozuki summoned [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran].
The two evil spirits' abilities were highly similar. Both could strengthen themselves while damaging the other side.
[Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran] could summon countless Flame Butterflies. Anything touched by one of those butterflies would have its life force continually drained away, and that stolen life force would in turn feed back into [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran].
Both evil spirits basically came with built-in lifesteal. Their battle was like two Hou Yis with lifesteal standing there trading shots—the one with the better sustain would win.
The eventual winner was [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran].
The little boy evil spirit had to physically catch the other side in order to drain it, while the number of Flame Butterflies [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran] could summon only kept increasing as the battle dragged on.
On top of that, [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran] could also inflict a triple curse of burns, plague, and aging. The longer the fight lasted, the worse it became for the little boy evil spirit.
Other than snatching the sketchbook away from the little boy evil spirit right at the start, Xu Fu and the others basically did not do a thing. They only watched from the edge of the battlefield as the little boy evil spirit and [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran] fought, because there had been absolutely no room for them to interfere in a battle between those two evil spirits.
But the little boy evil spirit's collapse did not mean the battle was over.
[Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran] deeply hated Yayoi Hozuki for imprisoning her in a doll. So as soon as the fight with the boy ended, she immediately turned thousands upon thousands of Flame Butterflies loose on Xu Fu and the others in an attempt to avoid being sealed away again.
Unfortunately for her, those Flame Butterflies could not break through Xu Fu's defenses and harm them in the slightest. All she could do was watch in bitter hatred as Yayoi Hozuki sealed her up again.
"Ngh...!"
"One day... one day for sure... I'll break free...!"
Tears of blood running down her face, the oiran evil spirit spat her curse through gritted teeth. "And then... I'll wring you dry until there isn't a single drop of blood left...! You, your children, your children's children... every last one of you will burn to ashes...!!!"
"......"
Even after her figure had completely vanished, Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki still looked badly shaken.
As for the oiran evil spirit's terrifying curse, Xu Fu not only was not frightened by it, she almost found it funny.
"Sorry, but these little ones are under my protection. If I really let your curse come true, wouldn't that just ruin my reputation?"
She was a Taoist, after all. Was dealing with things like this not exactly her job?
Then there was the matter of what to do with the little boy evil spirit. After losing to [Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran], he had regained a little of his reason and no longer mistook Xu Fu and the others for his stepmother.
Taking advantage of that, Yayoi Hozuki spoke with him.
Since becoming an evil spirit, the boy had been tormented every second by a hunger that could never be eased. Yayoi Hozuki promised him that she would take him to eat all kinds of things—lots and lots of food—until the wound in his heart healed and the day came when he no longer felt hungry.
In the end, Yayoi Hozuki successfully subdued the little boy evil spirit and gave him the name [Black Asura of the Eclipse].
As proof of friendship—and so that his fighting strength would not be diminished—Yayoi Hozuki returned the sketchbook to him.
Only then did their trip to Old I Watergate finally come to an end.
Xu Fu and the others did not drive straight home. Instead, they were taken to the police station.
"That fight with the evil spirit at Old I Watergate was so intense, I almost forgot all about Shami-san..." Keitaro Gentoga muttered to himself awkwardly, covering his face.