The Curse Reveals Itself

Wheel of Time: Spin

With a kick, Shen Yuanyi shattered the wooden door leading into the corridor. Passing through the fragments hanging in the air, he made his way to where the screams had come from. The stench of the curse was at its strongest here.

He smashed through another door and stepped into the room, where a bizarre sight greeted him: a tattooed man knelt before two corpses with a short knife in hand, his face wearing a strange mixture of excitement and fear.

On the other side stood the most imposing thing in the room—a huge, grotesque monster. It looked like a square lump of flesh, with a massive eye split open vertically across its front.

Its black-and-red pupil looked like an insect sealed in amber, yet Shen Yuanyi could sense its gaze slowly shifting toward him.

The powerful Cursed Spirit had no limbs in the conventional sense. Instead, two enlarged humanoid arms extended from each side to brace it against the ground. On the underside of its body was a gaping, toothless mouth. Its six faces were dotted with uneven numbers of restless, darting eyes, making it look like some bizarre die.

At that moment, it was swallowing half a corpse, while splattered blood hung suspended in midair, forming a twisted tableau.

Without hesitation, Shen Yuanyi dispelled his technique and instantly poured the Cursed Energy produced by Reverse Cursed Technique back into it.

Wheel of Time: Reverse

His targets were the ordinary people who had been killed. As he applied Cursed Technique Reversal to them, Shen Yuanyi felt intense resistance, mainly coming from the three ordinary people the Cursed Spirit had devoured.

This involved the thing before him, which was very likely a Special Grade Cursed Spirit. Like a reef weathered by a river for years, it stood firmly in the way, making the already difficult Cursed Technique Reversal even harder. Not only was his Cursed Energy being rapidly drained, but a headache began to throb through Shen Yuanyi's head.

In the blink of an eye, as Shen Yuanyi felt the headache strike, something warm seemed to trickle over his lips. At the same time, the effect of his Cursed Technique Reversal was forcibly interrupted. Three women and one man stood in the room, their expressions dazed and lingering terror still visible on their faces.

After seeing the scene before them clearly, their minds could not process it for the moment. Only when they saw the tattooed man standing there blankly with his bloodstained short knife did they collapse to the floor in horror.

"What... what happened?"

The tattooed man's memories still stopped at the moment he had personally sacrificed the five offerings to the Upper God. But why were four of them alive now? He stared at the short knife in his hand in confusion, then suddenly looked up at Shen Yuanyi, blood streaming from his nose.

"It was you! You ruined the sacrifice to the Upper God! I'll sacrifice you to the Upper God too!"

The man charged at Shen Yuanyi with his short knife raised. Shen Yuanyi, having just wiped the blood from beneath his nose, paid him little attention. Most of his focus was on the Dice Cursed Spirit, which had begun to grow frenzied and had fixed its sights on him.

As for the tattooed man, just as he rushed before Shen Yuanyi and raised his blade to stab into Shen Yuanyi's neck, Shen Yuanyi suddenly lashed out with a kick. The man's figure blurred, and he was already plastered against a wall more than ten meters away. He smashed a huge crater into it and sprayed a rain of blood through the air, yet strangely did not die, instead sliding to the ground barely clinging to life.

"Genichi!"

Nanami Kento saw the Cursed Spirit the moment he entered. Its powerful presence made him instinctively tighten his grip on his weapon, and he entered combat readiness in an instant.

"Nanami-senpai, please get those four people out first."

Shen Yuanyi spoke with his back to Nanami Kento as he moved to meet the rapidly crawling Dice Cursed Spirit. Nanami Kento made his decision quickly, pulling up one woman whose mind had collapsed from excessive fear, then shouting to the other three, "Follow me, quickly!"

Wheel of Time: Spin

Godspeed Slash!

Several gashes suddenly split open across the Dice Cursed Spirit's body as though it were cloth. The black blood spraying out stained more than half of Shen Yuanyi's clothes. At the same time, the ordinary Cursed Blade in his hand shattered. To break through the Cursed Spirit's defenses, Shen Yuanyi had poured in too much Cursed Energy, and the weapon could no longer withstand the repeated slashes delivered all at once.

Amid the Dice Cursed Spirit's pained shrieks, the eye on its front suddenly emitted a blackish-gray glow. In an instant, it condensed into a pillar as thick as a barrel and flashed through the air, leaving behind a scorched scent.

Though the attack was swift, it could not possibly hit Shen Yuanyi. The eyes across the Cursed Spirit's body abruptly turned behind it. Someone was standing there, Cursed Energy surging around his raised fist, but in the next moment, every movement vanished from its sight.

One punch, then two. Black Flash activated! Then came Cursed Technique Reversal, reversing himself. The Dice Cursed Spirit, which had just been blasted into the air by the tremendous force, once again froze completely in Shen Yuanyi's eyes.

Pseudo Black Flash Double Strike!

Black Cursed Energy surged like frenzied electric serpents and crashed into its largest central eye. Like a waterlogged marble being struck apart, the eyeball burst beneath Shen Yuanyi's fist. But it was not over. Shen Yuanyi reversed his technique once more!

Enduring the discomfort already rising within him, Shen Yuanyi reversed himself again. Frenzied black light roared around his fist, its gaping bloody maw biting toward the wound where the Cursed Spirit's eye had exploded.

Pseudo Black Flash Triple Strike!

The technique was released. The Dice Cursed Spirit's body, suspended in midair, suddenly convulsed violently before erupting with a mass of liquid like cannon fire, smashing through wall after wall behind it. Looking through the smoke-filled hole, it had already been blasted outside the building.

"What... is that? Is that the Upper God's form? Did I see the Upper God with my own eyes?"

The tattooed man lying on the ground, barely alive, seemed to have seen the Cursed Spirit. A look of supreme joy appeared on his face through his daze, but then a shadow covered him. The figure looking down at him had dark red hair, as though it had been dyed in blood. His clothes, stained with large amounts of unknown blood, made his obscured face look like that of a ghost.

"Demon."

Shen Yuanyi grabbed the man and walked out through the hole that had been blasted open. The Cursed Spirit had already struggled back to its feet. Its warped body was rapidly recovering, and even the single eye Shen Yuanyi had destroyed was beginning to regrow. The sight was grotesque beyond words.

In his final moments, the tattooed man finally saw the full appearance of the "Upper God" in his heart. Its terrifying visage overwhelmed even his perhaps genuine, perhaps false devotion. Especially when those bizarre eyes stared at him, it was as though some inexplicable voices were whispering and wailing in his ears.

"Hm?"

Shen Yuanyi watched in surprise as the Cursed Spirit's recovery speed visibly increased, and its aura inexplicably grew stronger by several degrees. Was this the effect of its technique?

"It's fear!"

Nanami Kento walked over from the side. Hearing that, Shen Yuanyi looked down at the tattooed man he had thrown onto the ground. The man had been terrified just moments ago, but his face was now strangely calm. His gaze toward the Cursed Spirit held every kind of emotion—except the fear from before.

Shen Yuanyi narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Nanami-senpai, are you saying this Cursed Spirit's technique can absorb fear and turn it into its own power?" Curses were born from negative emotions in the first place. But if this curse could actively absorb the fear of those around it, then under certain circumstances, it would become extraordinarily terrifying.

Already strong enough to qualify as a Special Grade, it could absorb even the slightest fear its opponents felt toward it and grow stronger, creating a snowball effect—stronger itself, more fear from its opponents, then stronger still!

There might be some upper limit, but before reaching it, the Cursed Spirit could likely grow to a terrifying level. Perhaps it had reached its current strength precisely because it had been born in this hellish place and absorbed the fear of all its victims?

Thoughts raced through Shen Yuanyi's mind. Then his foot moved, flicking the tattooed man into the air and hurling him toward the Cursed Spirit. It would not distinguish between companion and enemy. To it, the tattooed man was merely another source of food that could provide convenient food. Enraged after being inexplicably wounded, it reached out with one hand, grabbed the tattooed man, and crushed him flat like a sponge.

Nanami loosened his tie slightly but said nothing. He had naturally witnessed the tattooed man's earlier actions. Jujutsu Sorcerers could not casually kill ordinary people, or they would face investigation and might even be judged as Curse Users. But the Cursed Spirit had killed that man, hadn't it?

Just as Nanami Kento prepared to attack the Cursed Spirit alongside him, Shen Yuanyi stopped him. "Nanami-senpai, let me handle this. Their leader is still on the rooftop over there, and there are many victims inside the building. Please keep the situation under control. I need to lure this Cursed Spirit away. Otherwise, it'll have an endless source of power."

The enormous crash from earlier had already been heard by the people within the barrier. Though they did not know what had happened, that did not stop them from feeling fear, especially after their previous hellish experiences.

Fueled by that fear, the Cursed Spirit had recovered almost completely at a glance. Its massive body charged forward on all four of its arms, while the eyes across its body lit up again and several black beams shot through the air.

The beams Shen Yuanyi dodged instantly blasted several large holes through the building behind him. At this rate, the building would not last much longer under such destruction. Shen Yuanyi immediately activated his technique, then vanished from the spot with the Cursed Spirit, leaving behind only a large hole in the surrounding wall.