Before Shinobu could press her argument any further, a jarring, unnatural sensation suddenly struck Li Ke.
He instantly maximized his "Observation Haki" to its full limit. Through his heightened perception, he could feel that something was rapidly condensing in the air all around them!
He immediately realized these were the folklore anomalies Shinobu had just described. What surprised him, however, was that these entities didn't seem to possess purely physical forms at first.
"They're here."
His blunt warning cut through the air. Shinobu and Mai froze for a microsecond before their combat instincts kicked in, their gazes snapping outward to scan the perimeter.
The moment the words left his lips, wisps of ghostly white vapor began rapidly assembling across the area. The mist rose simultaneously from every corner of the settlement. Through his Haki, Li Ke observed the phenomenon with absolute clarity—this white energy wasn't drifting in from the outside world.
It was leaking directly out of the living humans.
Triggered by the unseen force he had just detected, faint, hazy tendrils of white mist were actively bleeding out from Shinobu, from the cowering townspeople below, and even from the ground itself. Caught in an invisible, localized gale, the spiritual exhaust rapidly fused together, blanketing the streets in a dense, suffocating fog.
Neither Shinobu nor Mai could pierce the veil of the thick white smog with their eyes. Even Li Ke's Haki began to suffer from severe distortion, yet he could still feel the invisible pressure spiking exponentially. Within seconds, the anomaly fully materialized.
"How is it happening this fast?! The Night Parade is ahead of schedule?!"
Shinobu stared at the swirling fog in absolute shock. Historically, this mist served as the definitive harbinger of the Hyakki Yagyō, but it usually manifested after eight o'clock in the evening. Right now, it was barely seven!
Before she could form another thought, the gathered energy completely stabilized, triggering an even deeper anatomical mutation within the fog.
In the next breath, a massive, wheel-like monstrosity rolled into view through the haze. Calling it a wheel wasn't entirely accurate, though—the outer rim of the construct was actually a giant, circular razor blade!
Spinning at the center of this round, whirring saw blade was a grotesque, crimson-skinned imp. The creature's ragged breathing spat sparks of flame into the dark, its clawed hands gripping the internal handles of the blade as it sat nestled inside, scouting the surroundings with manic, bloodshot eyes.
Slick, foul pus continuously dripped from its warped hide. The overwhelming stench of decaying corpses blasted into the nostrils of the three fighters in an instant—a nasal assault so putrid and sharp that it made their stomachs churn.
Fresh blood dripped continuously from its jaws, and its twisted smile radiated nothing but pure, surreal absurdity. Its hide was completely littered with deep scars from spears, arrows, and katanas. Its bloated stomach featured a deliberate, cross-shaped carving, and its cranium had been crudely sawed off, completely exposing a raw, writhing brain within.
Its facial features weren't remotely human. The design completely lacked symmetry, achieving a truly bizarre, flesh-crawling horror.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. As the entity shifted, Li Ke and Mai Shiranui realized that the entire edge of the spinning circular blade was lined with human faces. The carved expressions actively twisted in agonizing pain, emitting hollow, wretched howls.
Li Ke observed the physics of the monster with a critical eye. The heavy razor rim bit deeply into the stone road beneath it. Its method of propulsion was incredibly jarring—it continuously manually cranked the internal handles, flipping and rolling its entire chassis forward.
"A Wanyūdō?" Mai whispered under her breath.
Yet, despite her voice being barely audible, the microsecond vibration instantly snagged the monster's attention from down the street.
The crimson imp violently snapped its head toward them, its asymmetric features contorting into a manic, ecstatic grin.
"You saw me! You saw me!"
Cackling wildly, it revved its internal handles. Within a heartbeat, the creature's body blurred into a hyper-velocity spinning ring of steel.
In the next breath, the wheel completely defied the laws of physics, launching itself straight toward them. Any structural obstacles along its trajectory were effortlessly carved in half by the whirring edge!
The moment it reached the base of the stone watchtower, it completely ignored gravity, driving its spinning mass straight up the vertical wall toward their position!
"YOU SAW MEEE!!!"
Its screeching, ecstatic roar climbed to a deafening pitch. Simultaneously, Li Ke noticed that Mai was visibly trembling beside him, forcing him to let out a quiet, internal sigh.
He honestly hadn't factored this into the equation: Mai Shiranui was absolutely terrified of ghosts!
And here she was earlier, delivering those grand, righteous speeches and acting completely fearless and matchless!
Granted, Li Ke had been terrified of ghosts once upon a time too. But after surviving endless waves of viral zombies and staring down monstrous Sea Kings, this abstract, Lovecraftian anomaly didn't faze him at all.
At its core, it was just another piece of rotting meat.
But Mai was having a completely different reaction. She stared in absolute horror at the oncoming aberration, her legs freezing up as her survival instinct screamed at her to flee. All the confidence she had boasted just minutes prior completely dissolved into thin air.
She had anticipated that ghosts would be hideous, but she had never expected something so utterly abstract and grotesque!
On top of that, its speed was terrifying!
She instinctively reached for her folding fans to block it, but immediately realized her weapon stood no chance against that spinning edge. She had just seen the creature slice through solid stone as if it were mere paper. She tried to dodge, but her legs felt like lead.
"You're seriously afraid of ghosts..."
Li Ke muttered in disbelief. Beside him, Shinobu was faring much better. Her hand was already clamped firmly on the hilt of her blade; though she hadn't expected Mai to freeze up, she could still manage an enemy traveling at this speed.
But she didn't need to step in.
"If you're this ugly, don't come out to scare people!"
Raging fire violently swirled around Li Ke's greatsword. A torrent of flames erupted toward the oncoming monster, and his heavy blade crashed dead-center against the whirling saw-wheel.
A sharp, metallic clang echoed through the night. Li Ke could see the monster's circular blade biting deeply into his greatsword. However, its momentum was utterly useless. His fire ignited the creature's body in a split second, and the immense kinetic force of his counter-strike locked the wheel against his sword, violently redirecting the monster's trajectory and sending it flying off course!
"AAAAHHH!!"
The creature let out a wretched shriek as Li Ke's flames continuously licked at its hide. To Li Ke's irritation, however, the standard elemental fire wasn't doing enough damage.
Even after slamming hard into the ground below the watchtower, the monster still possessed enough strength to thrash around. It was clear that while ordinary fire had some effect, using it to secure a one-hit kill against these anomalies was going to be difficult.
"Tch. What a pain."
Wisps of Dragon Fire manifested around Li Ke. Swinging his blade once more, he launched a crescent arc of concentrated, intense heat straight at the creature. The searing blast instantly consumed the anomaly, cutting off its screeches entirely as the dragon flames reduced it to nothing but ash.
To Li Ke's surprise, the monster didn't vanish completely. The whirring circular blade it had ridden remained behind, miraculously morphing into a traditional Japanese katana.
"This sword..."
Shinobu stared intensely at the blade currently resting amidst the dying embers of Li Ke's dragon fire. A look of profound shock washed over her face because she recognized the weapon.
"Is that... the legendary cursed blade said to have taken ten thousand lives? The demon sword, Hamonjō?"
Staring at the distinct crest on the scabbard and the archaic inscriptions etched onto the hilt, she was entirely certain—this was the exact cursed artifact that was supposed to be securely enshrined and sealed away inside a distant Shinto temple.
"Taking ten thousand lives..."
Li Ke didn't even want to comment on that. Weapons were consumables by nature. No matter how sharp a katana was, it would blunt over time, and clashing a fine edge against heavy armor a few times would turn it into scrap metal.
Japanese swords, in particular, were notorious for snapping if they hit the wrong angle. Claiming a single katana had slain ten thousand men was completely ridiculous.
Every weapon faced this reality.
But since this was an anime universe, Li Ke kept his mouth shut.
"Even if it killed ten thousand men, it's useless now. It's nothing but scrap metal against my flames. But was that thing really a Wanyūdō?" he asked, watching the blade melt away in the embers.
"No, that was just my guess. A Wanyūdō is a yokai that specifically targets women and children, so that's what I thought at first. Also... I'm sorry, I panicked just now. But that monster wasn't a Wanyūdō..."
Mai spoke up, her face flushing with embarrassment. If she hadn't blurted that name out, they wouldn't have been ambushed in the first place.
But she had been genuinely terrified when she mistook it for that specific yokai.
According to legend, a Wanyūdō targets women by calling their names from behind. If the woman turns around, her soul is violently stolen.
And if she refuses to turn, but has a child, the yokai will tear off the child's leg as a vicious punishment.
That was exactly why she feared it so much.
After all, she was the type of traditional woman whose lifelong dream was to become a devoted, perfect wife and mother.
"Look, if you can't handle it, head back inside with Shinobu. I can scout these things on my own," Li Ke said, rolling his wrist.
He didn't judge Mai for being scared. Anyone would be terrified looking at something that abstract; he had just grown used to dealing with grotesque monsters.
But Mai was different. Her usual opponents were martial artists who fought by strict competitive rules. While her raw stats on paper were vastly superior to someone like Shinobu, Li Ke knew that in a chaotic, no-holds-barred deathmatch, Shinobu would be the one walking away alive.
They lived in two entirely different worlds. Mai's exposure to the criminal underworld amounted to standard syndicate turf wars, while Shinobu spent every single day licking blood off her blade just to survive.
"...I just wasn't mentally prepared yet."
Mai knew her defense lacked conviction, but she immediately got a chance to prove her resolve. In a sudden flash, the stone walls surrounding the watchtower erupted with hundreds of blinking eyes!
These eyes burned with a blood-red glare of pure hatred. A twitching eyeball stared down from every single brick and roof tile, and a sea of pupils blinked beneath their very feet!
Simultaneously, the city itself seemed to come alive. Stark white wall barriers wrapped in countless staring eyes violently manifested on all four sides of them. High above, flocks of ordinary-looking birds blacked out the sky, flying alongside endless sheets of spectral white cloth that floated rhythmically through the freezing air.
The standard paper lanterns decorating the streets suddenly burst open, revealing rows of razor-sharp, jagged teeth. Elongated, crimson tongues dripping with fresh blood slithered out from their gaping maws!
"Ah..."
Mai's breath caught, her instincts forcing a sharp gasp that she and Shinobu quickly choked back by clamping their hands over their mouths.
But hiding was entirely pointless now. The exact microsecond these yokai materialized, their lethal focus locked squarely onto the three individuals stranded out in the open.
"Well, look at that..."
Li Ke could feel the strange, unnatural pressure in the air spiking to an obscene degree. With the arrival of this massive horde, the hazy white mist bleeding out from the soil and the cowering citizens amplified exponentially, fueling a vicious cycle that birthed even more phantoms into the thoroughfares.
Though completely encircled, his Haki mapped out the wider perimeter. Beyond this immediate swarm, a never-ending wave of fresh anomalies was flooding the district. Among the ancient mythological ghosts, several modern silhouettes stood out—tall women wearing surgical masks and long travel trench coats.
Their appearance clashed violently with the classic Edo folklore aesthetics. They were a modern urban nightmare: the Kuchisake-onna—the Slit-Mouthed Women.
Their sudden manifestation confirmed Li Ke's long-standing theory.
"So it really is fueled by raw human terror?"
Grip tightening on the hilt of his sword, Li Ke began aggressively burning through his stamina. He unleashed a massive barrier of Dragon Fire, blanketing their position in a defensive dome of blinding, intense heat to hold the encroaching horrors at bay.
Yet, he knew this desperate containment strategy couldn't last forever. No matter how mystical or supernatural his dragon flames were, fire still functioned on the core laws of physics—and a blazing inferno of this magnitude would rapidly consume all the oxygen on the watchtower.
This was precisely why he had wanted to handle this solo. If he were entirely on his own, he would feel zero pressure; he could simply focus on a non-stop, ruthless slaughter of these entities.
He was at his absolute strongest when he didn't have to play defense!
But right now, he was saddled with the responsibility of protecting Shinobu Kocho and Mai Shiranui, neither of whom had much practical experience in dealing with abstract yokai.
"Lord Li Ke, I am entirely certain of one thing," Shinobu stated, unsheathing her specialized stinger-blade as she pointed out the glaring anomaly. "I have no idea what caused this sudden shift, but the rules regarding the manifestation times of these yokai have definitely warped."
Beside her, Mai Shiranui tightly gripped Kashu—the sword Li Ke had tossed to her earlier. Although the grotesque, abstract shapes of the phantoms had initially triggered a primal panic, she was still a battle-hardened tournament veteran at her core. Once she forced herself to lock into a serious combat mindset, it was impossible for her to choke.
"Ah, that."
Li Ke wasn't remotely surprised by Shinobu's observation. Considering he was actively carrying the remnants of the 7 Days to Die world energy within his own system, his mere presence triggering a massive escalation in the local anomaly was entirely par for the course.
After all, these mutated horrors originally traced back to that exact same wasteland.
"Since the shift has already triggered, there's no point in overanalyzing it, right? This dragon fire dome can only shield us for a limited window. The oxygen inside is going to bleed out very soon, so in just a moment, I'm going to completely wipe the floor with these things."
Li Ke rolled his wrists, a savage, bloodthirsty smirk spreading across his lips as he locked his gaze onto the squirming mass of monsters eagerly testing his perimeter.
When he had permanently put down that saw-wheel entity earlier, his heightened perception had clearly registered a substantial influx of World Energy fusing into his flesh, instantaneously replenishing a chunk of his expended stamina.
With a self-sustaining loop like that, a battle of attrition wasn't a problem at all.
There was only a singular anomaly he couldn't quite wrap his head around.
If these yokai were truly a composite manifestation woven from concentrated human terror, collective subconscious thoughts, and the corrupted cosmic shards, then why on earth was such an immense, overwhelming volume of raw dread actively bleeding right out of the soil itself?
Was it a massive, subterranean reservoir of stored fear, or was it...
Li Ke stared intently down at the ground, temporarily lost in thought. But right at that exact split second, a sharp shout shattered his focus.
"Incoming!"
Li Ke reflexively snapped his head upward, tracking a paper-lantern yokai that had split its jaws open, diving straight toward Shinobu's blind spot!
The entity looked exceptionally grotesque, prompting Shinobu to rapidly shift her footing, driving her blade forward to execute a defensive parry-and-counter strike.
Yet, Li Ke didn't care about the grunt anomaly at all. He didn't even waste a glance on the leaping lantern monster as it violently smashed against his passive Dragon Fire shield, instantly incinerating into a cloud of gray ash. Instead, his eyes locked dead-center onto a different figure that had just materialized in the courtyard below.
It was a woman sporting two distinctive butterfly hairpins. Structurally, her appearance bore a striking resemblance to Shinobu, yet she exuded an entirely distinct, vibrantly warm and gentle aura.
Kanae Kocho.
She screamed as the lantern demon dissolved into ash, shrieking in terror as other yokai lunged from the shadows. Her panic stood in stark contrast to her younger sister, who, despite her own fear, calmly gripped her sword.
More importantly, Shinobu didn't seem to notice the woman at all.
Even though her sister was right beside her, Shinobu showed no reaction.
Li Ke reflexively lowered his greatsword, training his gaze on the beautiful Kanae Kocho. He immediately noticed that she, too, was emitting the same faint white mist that was invisible to the naked eye—the exact same vapor drifting from Mai and Shinobu.
"..."
A dark premonition gripped his heart. He raised his hand, and a brilliant golden light erupted from his palm. Kanae, who had been ducking on the ground, gasped in astonishment and looked up at Li Ke.
"I'm... alive again?"
Her voice caused the already-tense Shinobu to whirl around. Seeing her older sister manifest before her eyes a second time, Shinobu's pupils contracted in sheer disbelief, and she instinctively reached out to grab her.
However, Li Ke, having used his resurrection power to confirm this woman's identity as the genuine Kanae Kocho, cut in with a deadly serious voice.
"I need answers, Kanae Kocho. Can the inhabitants of the Underworld see these yokai? Are they being affected by them?! And is the Underworld physically located beneath the earth?"
Li Ke demanded to know the truth.
Kanae looked at Li Ke with deep curiosity, knowing he held the power to revive her.
Yet, she also harbored a strong dislike for him, knowing he had leveraged her revival to make Shinobu his wife. But seeing the grim gravity etched onto his face, she suppressed her conflicting emotions and spoke up.
"I don't know about the true Underworld, but it is indeed beneath the earth. Why ask such a bizarre question? As for us—I can't speak for the denizens of the netherworld, but those of us who linger on this earth due to lingering attachments are unaffected by the monsters. We just can't help but feel terrified. After all, the ones these creatures are harming are our living loved ones! The dead always worry about the living. If the living are suffering, the dead can never rest in peace!"
She propped her hands on her hips righteously, leaving Li Ke internally cursing up a storm.
He finally figured out where the massive eruption of white mist from the soil was coming from!
It was being generated by the accumulated souls of the deceased in this world!
Where the hell is Yama, the King of the Underworld? And what about the gods of Takamagahara?!
Somebody do their damn job and save this place!