The chainsaw evil spirit came hurtling down and slammed heavily into the ground.
Because of Red Hood's sudden appearance, he had failed to land where he intended. His trajectory had been thrown well off target.
Red Hood landed not far from Xu Fu and the others. After touching down, she cast a sidelong glance in Xu Fu's direction, then said nothing and charged straight toward where the chainsaw spirit had fallen.
With a bang, the chainsaw spirit had already thrown off the rubble covering him and shredded the rest with the chainsaws in his hands. By then, Red Hood had already closed the gap and fired at his head.
The bullet, packed with tremendous force, slammed into one of the spinning blades. The metallic ring it produced was easily swallowed by the shriek of the whirring teeth.
Red Hood had never placed much hope in that shot to begin with. Using the instant her opponent was occupied blocking it, she rushed in at full speed and swung the Vorpal Sword in a movement almost like a dance. Six moon-bright slashes locked onto the chainsaw spirit's neck, both wrists, both thighs, and waist.
Clang—
The sword-light shattered. Sparks sprayed everywhere, and the chainsaws roared on without pause.
The three spinning blades bit down on the Vorpal Sword like the fangs of a savage beast. Red Hood gritted her teeth and, borrowing the momentum of her own charge, drove the chainsaw spirit backward, crashing through wall after wall.
As he was forced back, the evil spirit bent both arms behind his back once more, using only the chainsaw on top of his head to clash against Red Hood's Vorpal Sword. The speed of its teeth surged madly upward, and a terrifying killing intent began to gather and compress on the blade until it was almost tangible.
A suffocating chill filled the air.
There was no doubt about it—what came next would be a killing blow.
In the next instant, countless slashes exploded outward. The extending blade-light poured down like a torrential storm. The surrounding walls and floor split apart like butter under a hot knife. The entire corridor was torn to pieces in a heartbeat, while fragments of brick, rebar, and dust blasted upward—and the two combatants plunged down together with the falling rubble.
Good thing this was a paranormal space created by an evil spirit and not the real police station. With destructive power on that level, even the aftershock alone would have caused plenty of casualties.
Then again, looking at it from another angle, the chainsaw spirit probably only possessed strength like this inside his own paranormal space. Outside, he likely would not have been nearly this troublesome.
The roaring chainsaw ripped open the first-floor flooring, and just like that, Red Hood and the chainsaw spirit fell into the underground parking garage. Red Hood happened to smash down onto a sedan, leaving a huge crater in the roof.
She rolled away from the falling rubble, and the car she had just dented was buried under the debris the next second. Dust billowed everywhere. There was no need to think about it—that car was definitely flat now.
Then, all of a sudden, Red Hood felt a chilling killing intent rushing at her from behind.
She slammed a foot into the ground and shot sideways like an arrow loosed from the bow.
And in the very next instant—
BOOM!
The spot where she had just been standing exploded apart. Two crisscrossing slash marks bit deep into the floor of the underground garage, carving out a vicious cross-shaped wound. Ominous black qi leaked from the edges of the cuts, and the shriek of the wind carried a violent hatred with it.
If she had not dodged in time, that one strike would have torn Red Hood into pieces.
With the chainsaw engine erupting into a thunderous roar, the evil spirit lunged out of the darkness and collided with Red Hood in close combat.
Red Hood discarded her hand cannon without hesitation. Drake Sword in her left hand, Knight's Sword in her right, she charged straight at the chainsaw spirit without the slightest fear.
Blade met saw teeth in a violent clash, and the sparks that flew from the impact were like steel from a forge—or stars scattering through a rain-soaked night, blooming into a dazzling and deadly rain of light within the dim underground garage.
The ringing cry of sword against chainsaw continued without end, like a thousand great bells tolling at once. The two figures crossed and recrossed through the garage in blinding bursts, the speed of their blades pulling afterimages in the air—one instant like thunder tearing across the heavens, the next like a downpour hammering the earth.
The dragonfire of the Drake Sword and the cold gleam of the Knight's Sword wove together into a net of death, while the chainsaw's berserk rotation kept ripping open new paths through it.
"Well, well, well? This was supposed to be a horror movie, but the fight scene suddenly got seriously hype."
Xu Fu stood leisurely at the broken edge of the first floor, looking down through the hole in the floor at the fierce battle below.
The storm raised by those ultrafast slashes was so violent that by the time a car was torn apart by the aftershock, the two figures fighting had already flashed dozens of meters away into another section of the garage.
All Yayoi Hozuki could see were fleeting streaks of light crashing together in the dark.
Xu Fu, however, could make out every detail with perfect clarity—the sparks flying every time the Drake Sword collided with a chainsaw, the arc Red Hood's cloak traced when she dodged, and the black qi pulsing and burning off the evil spirit's body.
"So this is what that evil spirit looks like after evolving?" Xu Fu brushed her fingertips along her chin. "To think he can fight Red Hood on this level... that does make me see him in a new light."
The chainsaw spirit who had appeared before Xu Fu and the others several times earlier had looked nothing like this. Back then, he had only been a burly man with a strip of red cloth wrapped around his head, carrying a chainsaw. He could revive endlessly, but every single time he came back, Red Hood and Taira no Masakado had butchered him like a dog.
Only after Xu Fu and Yayoi Hozuki found the true body he had hidden away did he finally lose his composure and deliberately speed up his own evolution, turning into what he was now.
Before, Xu Fu had been thinking that this evil spirit was strange. He clearly had the power to create a paranormal space this large to trap his prey, yet the way he attacked and killed was so ordinary—he still had to show up in person and murder people with a chainsaw.
But now...
With speed like this, it hardly mattered that his method of attack was simple. Sometimes, straightforward and brutal was the most effective of all.
While other evil spirits were all playing gimmicks, this chainsaw spirit had chosen to stack raw stats instead.
That said, because he had forcibly accelerated his own evolution and fused himself with the chainsaw that served as his true body, he had most likely lost his infinite resurrection. From the way he was fighting Red Hood, it was obvious he was trying his best to avoid getting hurt.
Which meant that if they could defeat this chainsaw spirit, she and Yayoi Hozuki would be able to leave this paranormal space.
Or rather, defeating him was the only way out.
"Do we... not need to go down and help?"
Yayoi Hozuki was a little worried about Red Hood. Their battle was so intense that she could not tell who had the upper hand. The only thing she could tell was that this chainsaw spirit was monstrously strong and unbelievably fast.
"Help? How?" Xu Fu's gaze flicked quietly toward the alien doll in Yayoi Hozuki's arms as she asked in return, "Can the kid you're carrying even cut into a fight on that level?"
At his peak, Taira no Masakado had possessed both mechanics and raw stats—or rather, his mechanic had been the ultimate raw stat.
The curse of Taira no Masakado turned the feelings of the people who had trusted him in life and died because of him into an overwhelmingly terrifying pressure. Under that crushing weight, even time itself would warp, producing a phenomenon close to a cosmic black hole.
Not even gods could escape a gravity field that resembled a black hole, not until their souls were utterly crushed into nothing.
But the one who possessed both broken mechanics and overwhelming stats was the fully restored Taira no Masakado—not the current one. The current Taira no Masakado had neither the mechanic nor especially high stats. If he dared interfere in a fight between Red Hood and the chainsaw spirit, he would probably be hacked into pieces in the blink of an eye.
Yayoi Hozuki shook her head.
"Not this child... He has a lot of potential, but he still hasn't reached the level of a Graduate. He can't deal with the thing down there."
"So you want to send in a Graduate?"
Xu Fu frowned slightly.
Most of the Graduates Yayoi Hozuki possessed were not exactly obedient. Every waking moment, they wanted nothing more than to kill her, their master, and win their freedom back. Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran, for example—Xu Fu and the others had just fought her earlier today.
If they summoned her here, no one could say for sure whether she would attack the enemy first, or come after the two of them instead.
High Priest of the Evil Sutra and Sainou Sarashira]were much the same. Both of them hated Yayoi Hozuki intensely, and Sainou Sarashira in particular had been a terrifying murder addict in life, a serial killer who loved skinning people's faces and pasting them over his own, and digging out people's innards to play puzzle games with them. Ever since Yayoi Hozuki subdued him, though, he had not gotten a chance to kill anyone, which left him deeply dissatisfied.
Strictly speaking, The Imprisoned Demon Sergeant who Died for his Country was the gentlest of the Graduates. When he was alive, he had been a soldier who protected his country and had a strict principle of never harming women or children. In a strict sense, he was not even an evil spirit. But the ghosts of the hundreds of enemy soldiers he had killed still clung to him to this day, preventing him from passing on even after death.
Because Graduates were too powerful and too laden with resentment to be completely sealed, Yayoi Hozuki only ever carried one or two with her at a time. The Imprisoned Demon Sergeant who Died for his Country himself disliked hurting people, but the enemy ghosts that haunted him would still attack the living.
That was why Yayoi Hozuki currently had only two Graduates with her—Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran and the newly subdued Black Asura of the Eclipse.
Since Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran did not distinguish friend from foe, Yayoi Hozuki really had no choice. The only option left was Black Asura of the Eclipse.
But the problem was...
"Didn't Black Asura of the Eclipse just get badly injured by us today? He still hasn't recovered, right? And are you sure he won't see the rest of us as his 'stepmother' too?"
"But..."
Yayoi Hozuki had to admit Xu Fu was right about all of that.
But they had no other choice. If Red Hood lost to the chainsaw spirit down below, then even if Black Asura of the Eclipse and Taira no Masakado joined forces, they still would not be able to handle that absurd, unreasonable speed.
"All right, enough."
Xu Fu patted Yayoi Hozuki on the shoulder and smiled faintly.
"Just leave this to Red Hood. She'll definitely win."
Yayoi Hozuki looked steadily into Xu Fu's amber eyes, but she could not tell at all whether Xu Fu was merely comforting her, or whether that was what she genuinely believed in her heart.
Down in the parking garage below, dual-wielding Red Hood faced off against the three-bladed chainsaw spirit. In terms of sheer weapon count, Red Hood was at a disadvantage, which meant blocking every attack head-on was bound to be difficult.
But then again, she had never needed to block all of them.
The flame-wreathed Drake Sword was knocked aside once again by the enemy's saw blade. The two speeding figures flashed to opposite sides of a concrete support pillar like bolts of lightning.
The Drake Sword wrapped in dragonfire and the Knight's Sword flowing with cold light slashed at the same time, splitting the thick pillar cleanly into three sections.
And yet—there had been no sensation of flesh being cut.
Red Hood's eyes widened sharply.
There, with both feet off the ground, the chainsaw spirit was hiding behind the middle section of the broken pillar. His arms were bent back at impossible angles once more, taking up the starting posture for that attack again.
The saw teeth spun wildly in the darkness, building up an astonishing killing intent.
Even though his entire head was nothing but a chainsaw, for some reason Red Hood felt as if she could see a smile on his face.
In the next instant, an endless bloom of blade-light exploded outward.
Countless cold flashes whirled through the darkness like dandelion seeds caught in a gale, every drifting scrap a lethal slash. Light and razor-sharp, they wove together into a death storm both dazzling and dangerous, cloaking the entire space in brilliant killing intent.
Caught inside that storm of slashes, Red Hood was like a lone boat tossed about in a violent tempest. She dodged and twisted with all her strength, both swords spinning into an airtight shield, but even so, she could not fend off every last blow.
Amid the flying sparks, one cold flash skimmed across her shoulder and ripped open her crimson cloak. Another brushed past her calf, leaving a wound deep enough to expose bone. As her body wheeled through the storm, blood traced vivid arcs through the air, and the storm of slashes gradually took on a scarlet hue.
The engine let out a bloodthirsty roar.
The suddenly accelerating saw blade tore through the air—and split Red Hood's body clean in two.
Scalding blood rained down across the chainsaw spirit's face and body, outlining his silhouette in the dark like some demon just clawing its way up from a lake of blood. Thick drops slid off him and splashed onto the ground, every step leaving a crimson footprint behind, his whole body exuding a murderous ferocity that made it hard to breathe.
The evil spirit lifted his head, about to laugh.
This hard-won victory delighted him.
The feeling of his blade sawing through flesh thrilled him.
And then—the powerful enemy he had thought was absolutely dead, Red Hood, rose from the pool of blood completely unharmed. Her lips parted slightly, and the quiet words she murmured to herself were swallowed by the roar of the chainsaws.
"It's about time..."
Crack—!
Something had broken.
This was not the end.
It was only the beginning.
Crack—!
Crack—!
The fractures spread—until the saw blade atop the evil spirit's head snapped off completely.
The chainsaw spirit stared in disbelief as the broken segment of blade yielded to gravity and fell to the rubble-strewn floor.
---
T/N: once we finish xu fu's arc, we will be increasing powerstone requirements... sorry cant let u catch up teehee
bonus chaps
100 stones -> 1 chapter
200 stones -> 2 chapters
300 stones -> 3 chapters
and so on
hehe every 100 followers on either instagram or twitter is a bonus chapter...?
discord.gg/wisetl
patreon.com/wisetl
instagram: hanbaowise
twitter: WiseKingOfUruk_