The Mantis Stalks the Cicada

Gen Naine stood amid a scatter of unidentifiable fragments, her hand gripping Dojigiri so stiffly that even letting go was difficult. She had never experienced anything like this. Growing up, the most she had ever seen were flyhead-grade cursed spirits. Even the cursed spirit from the Curse User incident had been the most threatening thing she had ever encountered.

Though the curses before her were not particularly strong, she still had to cut them down one by one. Unlike last time, when merely wounding her opponent had forced them to retreat, the sight of flesh and severed limbs flying everywhere was still deeply shocking to Gen Naine.

Shen Yuanyi, standing beside her, had barely needed to act. Once they had cleared out the curses, the doors along the corridor stopped flying open. Shen Yuanyi tried walking toward the pitch-black end ahead, but the corridor seemed endless; that patch of dense darkness remained neither near nor far in front of him.

Only after Gen Naine, who had been standing still, vanished from view behind him did Shen Yuanyi pause to think before continuing onward. Before long, however, two figures emerged from the darkness ahead—Gen Naine, holding Dojigiri, and White Wolf crouching beside her.

Hearing footsteps behind her, Gen Naine turned around in surprise. "Genichi-kun, weren't you ahead of me? How did you come from behind?"

Shen Yuanyi did not answer her immediately. Instead, he activated his technique. Like a ghost moving through the Time Crevice, he walked forward and backward once each. The result was the same both times: every time, he would encounter Gen Naine ahead of him again.

Returning to where he had started, Shen Yuanyi deactivated his technique. Gen Naine, whose vision had blurred for an instant, looked at him. Had Shen Yuanyi shifted from where he had been standing just now? Before she could think it over, she heard him say, "This Innate Domain is structured like a ring. No matter which way we walk, we return to the starting point."

Gen Naine offered a suggestion. "Then what about these doors? If the corridor is a ring, where do the doors on either side lead?"

Shen Yuanyi had already walked up to a nearby door. "That's what I'm going to test next. I'm opening it. Stay alert."

With that, Shen Yuanyi turned the handle. Prepared to face danger head-on, he found no curse beyond the opened door—only his own back.

Shen Yuanyi whirled around and opened the door directly opposite him. Sure enough, he saw his own back again. Neither version of himself was some physical entity created by a curse. It felt more like looking into a mirror, except the reflection on the other side was not facing him.

Gen Naine came over as well, staring at the scene in amazement. She kept turning her head back and forth, clearly bewildered. After some thought, Shen Yuanyi had her stand in the middle while he faced her and backed into the door behind him.

Thus, in Shen Yuanyi's field of vision, the "himself" beyond the opposite door was also backing away until it entered the corridor Shen Yuanyi had just occupied. The other him gradually retreated until he finally touched Gen Naine, who stood where she was—and at the same time, Shen Yuanyi felt a touch against his back.

"A spatial fold? These two doors are actually connected. Crossing through one is equivalent to arriving at the other, and what we see is merely a phantom?"

"Then... what would happen if we kept opening the doors opposite each other?"

Thinking of this, Shen Yuanyi decided to test it. It was like placing two mirrors facing each other. In theory, their reflections would multiply endlessly through repeated reflections, but due to angles and the loss of light as it traveled, people would ultimately see only darkness at the end of the reflections.

So what about this curse? If he kept opening doors, how many "reflections" could it create?

"Click."

Shen Yuanyi pushed open the door in front of him and, unsurprisingly, saw Gen Naine's back again. From Gen Naine's perspective, however, as one door after another swung open, she saw more and more Shen Yuanyis appear.

White Wolf curiously shifted when it saw another version of itself, then spun around in place. As a result, it saw more than a dozen White Wolves spin around in unison.

As Shen Yuanyi repeatedly opened doors, Gen Naine kept seeing him run past her, and her field of vision expanded a little further each time.

"Too slow. Let's probe more at once."

Wheel of Time: Spin

Amid the nearly overlapping, oddly elongated sounds of shattering, Shen Yuanyi drifted past like a wisp of mist too faint to see clearly. In an instant, that bizarre sight extended beyond the limits of vision again. Then something shattered, and a section of that "line" abruptly vanished.

Shen Yuanyi looked at the missing stretch. Though it quickly reconnected, he still sighed. "One thousand three hundred and sixty-four. Is that the limit? I'd wanted to see if I could make it truly loop infinitely..."

He turned to Gen Naine. "Get ready. I'm breaking this place open."

"Ah..."

Gen Naine had barely steadied herself when Shen Yuanyi's figure blurred before her eyes. A harsh, distorted screech rang out, and everything around them began to collapse.

Gen Naine felt as though she were standing on a washcloth being twisted tighter and tighter over and over. In the blink of an eye, the ceiling was already to her left.

Then the world spun around her, and she was about to fall toward the wall that had become the floor when a hand reaching out from midair grabbed her arm.

Holding Gen Naine with one hand and lifting White Wolf with the other, Shen Yuanyi activated his technique the moment he leaped into the air. He then freed both hands, took down Annihilation, drew the string, and condensed an arrow in one fluid motion.

The Cursed Energy arrow, trailing a ribbon of blue through the air, blew a gap in the twisting corridor. Shen Yuanyi grabbed the girl and dog again, then deactivated his technique.

Then Shen Yuanyi leaped out through the gap with the shrieking Gen Naine and White Wolf, who barked along with her. The scene before them shifted, and they had returned to the school corridor from the very beginning.

The instant Shen Yuanyi set down Gen Naine and White Wolf, he heard wind whistling behind him. Turning around, he saw a massive chunk of wall crashing toward him.

Bang!

With a thunderous blast, Shen Yuanyi punched the wall fragment—nearly as tall as a person—into egg-sized pieces. Under the deliberate guidance of his Cursed Energy, those fragments shot out to both sides and straight ahead.

Looking at the lumps of flesh continuously pouring from a gap in midair, Shen Yuanyi said to the uneasy Gen Naine, "Take White Wolf and get out of this building first."

Gen Naine immediately picked up White Wolf, handed Dojigiri to Shen Yuanyi, then turned and jumped out through the corridor window.

The fleshy tumor monster soon struggled free and revealed its entire body. The stairs and walls around it were immediately burst apart by its massive frame.

"Good thing the curtain's down. Otherwise, cleaning this up would be a pain."

The monster had six frog-like limbs. A vertical mouth lined with rings of fangs ran down its face, while the rear half of its body ended in a thick, reptilian tail.

Shen Yuanyi did not activate his technique right away. Looking at the ugly thing before him, he could not help sighing. "These curses... every one of them is more unbearable to look at than the last. Ones that fit mainstream beauty standards are practically nonexistent."

While complaining, Shen Yuanyi charged at it with Dojigiri in hand...

Gen Naine had just breathed a sigh of relief after landing outside when a series of explosions rang out. Looking back, she saw huge swathes of glass across the main teaching building shatter all at once.

Immediately afterward, three entire floors of wall were smashed through in an instant by an enormous creature. A figure flew out through the rising smoke—it was Shen Yuanyi, splattered with some purple-black fluid.

The cursed spirit's full form was now bathed in moonlight. On closer inspection, its two left limbs had been severed at the roots, and a long wound had been torn across its chest, exposing the writhing flesh within.

"Woof!"

White Wolf suddenly barked beside Gen Naine. Startled awake, she caught sight of a shadow darting out from what had been a blind spot.

Gen Naine had just raised her guard when a sharp pain tore through her abdomen. Then something like a rope wrapped around her neck and upper body.

"You brat over there! If you don't want her to die, throw the blade in your hand over here!"

Shen Yuanyi landed on the ground and looked toward the sound, only to see a sinister-looking man had already subdued Gen Naine. She was bound by a strange fish as long as a rope, while White Wolf nearby was being held back by a millstone-sized toad.

Behind him was the enormous cursed spirit charging at him, enemies threatening him from both front and back, yet Shen Yuanyi smiled. "You want this? Here, take it!"

Seeing Shen Yuanyi raise the blade as if to throw it at him, the Curse User relaxed slightly, but a strange feeling rose in his heart...

"Why... does it hurt so much? My hands... where are my legs?"

As the Curse User gradually collapsed to the ground, he thought feebly. Segments of the long fish shikigami's body fell across his face and slowly dissipated. With pain swallowing his last consciousness, he was left with one final thought: I was tricked...

Shen Yuanyi appeared behind the Curse User, Dojigiri in hand, and looked at the man on the ground, now missing all four limbs. After some thought, he used Reverse Cursed Technique to roughly treat the wounds on his limbs, chest, and abdomen. Otherwise, he might die before Shen Yuanyi could question him...

Put simply, Shen Yuanyi had first imbued the thrown Dojigiri with his technique, allowing it to pierce through the Curse User's body. Then he dispelled the technique on Dojigiri and imbued himself with it again.

After pulling out Dojigiri, he casually severed the Curse User's limbs, along with the two cursed spirits he had summoned. As for why he had gone through the trouble of doing it in two steps?

Wasn't Shen Yuanyi, ever so good at fulfilling others' requests, granting him one last mercy? Since he wanted it, Shen Yuanyi gave it to him. Too bad he failed to catch it...

"Oh... there's one more. You're pretty interesting. Too bad your rank isn't high enough. If you were special grade, you'd probably be quite strong..."

Forming a hand seal with one hand, Shen Yuanyi activated his technique once more. He stepped on the giant creature and leaped onto its head, while Dojigiri hanging in the air reflected the moonlight in a shimmering gleam.

A line of blood suddenly appeared from the giant cursed spirit's head down to the bottom of its body. Then, amid its wail, it split open down the middle. Because of the sheer breadth of its body, it did not immediately separate into two halves, with parts of it still connected at the back.

Looking at the creature barely clinging to life, Shen Yuanyi decided to be a good person. With one slash, he severed its head and exorcised it for good.