Chapter 32: Hidden Truth
"The evil fruit born from Mingao Village is finally coming to an end."
The old woman stood beyond the barrier, gazing at the distant Wedding Dress Tree as it writhed inside the raging fire. Its roots lashed wildly, pouring out the last of its strength in a desperate attempt to tear apart the [Fire Boundary Spell], but the struggle was already beginning to look futile.
Within those eerie eyes that held no trace of white, there was pain, regret, relief, and resignation.
Then she turned toward Ogiso Setsuna and Touma Kazusa inside the barrier and bowed deeply.
"Thank you, young ladies, for bringing that young onmyoji lord here. Only now can our sins truly be brought to an end."
She paused for a moment, her voice growing even lower.
"And I am deeply sorry for dragging you into all of this."
Setsuna and Kazusa exchanged a bewildered look. Neither of them understood why this ghost servant, who had once seemed half mad, would suddenly say such things.
But both girls remembered one thing with absolute clarity.
They were not to leave the barrier.
That was what Gin Tsumugi had told them before he entered the battle.
"Please do not be afraid," the old woman said softly. "Once the Wedding Dress Tree is destroyed, all of us ghost servants will vanish with it. It was the root of our sin... yet it was also the god we once worshipped."
Her gaze drifted back toward the Wedding Dress Tree, which was still shrieking beneath the holy flames.
That complicated expression in her eyes made the scene feel even stranger.
Setsuna hesitated, then finally spoke. "What do you mean by that?"
The old woman let out a dry, bitter laugh.
"If I had known it would all end like this, I would never have asked that noble lady for a seedling of the Wedding Dress Tree, let alone brought it back and planted it in Mingao Village. But regret now means nothing. Perhaps the real mistake was that I never understood just how bottomless human greed could be."
Setsuna's eyes widened.
"You planted it?"
The old woman nodded slowly.
"Many years ago, while gathering herbs in the mountains, I encountered a noble lady who had lost her way. She was terrifyingly powerful. The beasts and Yokai in those mountains were wiped out by her as easily as dust swept from a table."
Her voice became distant, as though she were speaking to herself as much as to the girls.
"To thank me for guiding her out of the forest, she promised to grant me one wish, so long as it was not too difficult. At the time, I asked for only one thing."
A faint smile, filled with self mockery, touched her lips.
"I wanted a power that could protect Mingao Village. I wanted my home to survive in those chaotic times."
"And she gave you the Wedding Dress Tree?" Setsuna asked.
"Not the tree itself. A seedling."
The old woman looked up, her expression hollow.
"Before she left, she told me there were two ways to raise it. One was slow, through faith. The other was quick, through sacrifice."
Touma Kazusa, who had remained silent until now, frowned. "Faith... and sacrifice?"
"Faith would have allowed it to grow into a true guardian deity. It would have protected Mingao Village without danger, without corruption, without sin. That was the path we chose in the beginning." The old woman closed her eyes. "But the process was too slow. Far too slow."
Her voice sharpened with bitter memory.
"Mingao Village had fewer than a thousand people. Even if every single one of us offered our faith for a hundred years, it would still not have grown fast enough to shelter us from the yokai of that age. We might have been slaughtered long before then."
At those words, both Setsuna and Kazusa understood what came next.
"So in the end..." Setsuna whispered, "you abandoned faith and chose sacrifice."
"Yes."
The old woman's answer came without hesitation.
"And from that choice, everything else followed."
Her face twisted with pain.
"At first, the villagers only wanted protection. Then the tree began granting more than protection. It brought safety. Then prosperity. Then wealth. The greed in human hearts swelled along with its appetite."
Her voice trembled.
"The villagers lost even the last scraps of their conscience. They began by sacrificing the girls of their own village. When that was no longer enough, they lured travelers here. Bought them. Kidnapped them. Lied to them. Anything to offer more young girls to the tree."
Kazusa's fingers clenched unconsciously.
Even after hearing the truth of Mingao Village from Gin before, hearing it from one of the people who had lived through it made it feel even more horrifying.
The old woman lowered her head.
"Fortunately, that noble lady returned in the end and stopped everything."
As soon as she finished speaking, her body began to blur.
The edges of her figure softened, dissolving into drifting particles of pale light.
Before fully disappearing, she bowed once more to Setsuna and Kazusa.
It was an apology.
And a farewell.
Then she vanished.
At almost the same moment, the two girls realized what had happened.
The Wedding Dress Tree had been completely destroyed.
Its trunk had been burned away to nothing under Gin Tsumugi's flames. And now that the core of this domain had been erased, not only were the ghost servants disappearing, but the entire supernatural domain itself was beginning to collapse.
The ground cracked.
The sky split apart.
Jagged fractures spread through the world like a shattered pane of glass. The houses, the roads, the trees, even the darkness itself began to warp and tremble.
The whole domain looked as though it might break into pieces at any second.
Then, in a blur of motion, Gin Tsumugi appeared beside them.
"We're leaving."
There was no wasted movement, no excess words.
He seized both girls at once and activated [Uho], launching them forward at terrifying speed.
Ahead of them, the dozen golden chains Gin had planted earlier reappeared in the fractured sky, tearing open a temporary exit through the collapsing domain. The dark void beyond the cracks twisted violently around it, trying to swallow everything whole.
The opening would not last long.
Without slowing for even an instant, Gin shot through it with Setsuna and Kazusa in tow.
The next second, the three of them disappeared from the domain entirely.
Behind them, Mingao Village continued to break apart.
The Wedding Dress Tree's domain, the village steeped in a thousand years of sin, and the hatred and resentment it had nurtured for so long all collapsed into the rising darkness.
Then, little by little, everything was swallowed by the void.
And at last, it vanished completely.
.....
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