Giant Serpent Shadow in the Bamboo Forest

Beyond the point Kurozawa crossed lay the sealed gate.

He landed on a narrow path, roughly a meter wide, still paved with pebbles.

Amid the silent green bamboo on both sides, which trembled faintly only in the night breeze, Kurozawa blanked out for a breath before his expression returned to calm.

"So the Iguro family gets its food from the bamboo forest?"

Crash! Before him, Iguro Sayaka stared at Kurozawa in shock. Startled by his sudden leap down from two meters up, she lost her grip on the tray in her hands, and it fell to the ground and shattered.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. A string of white smoke rose from the ground.

Kurozawa lowered his gaze. Transparent liquid had spilled from one of the shattered cups, corroding the pebbles with a sizzling sound.

"Yes, some liquor is stored in the bamboo forest." Iguro Sayaka had yet to recover from her shock, and her voice stammered. She had not even noticed the pebbles on the path smoking beneath her feet.

"Your liquor is this potent?" Liquor was poison that burned through the gut, in the literal sense.

Kurozawa stepped forward and heavily pressed a finger to Iguro Sayaka's forehead. As if struck by lightning, before she could voice her explanation, her body went limp and collapsed to the ground.

Looking at Iguro Sayaka lying on the ground, her graceful figure unchanged even in unconsciousness, Kurozawa recalled a saying from his previous life and sighed softly.

"You were a beauty. Why become a thief? What a pity."

He still could not fully determine the role Iguro Sayaka and the other Iguro women played in this matter, so he merely knocked her out rather than killing her.

"There really is something strange about this bamboo forest."

Iguro Sayaka had suddenly appeared in the bamboo forest carrying poisoned liquor. Something was clearly wrong. The sealed gate to the bamboo forest had to be a decoy. Otherwise, how had Iguro Sayaka entered, and why did she need to leave through here?

Kurozawa rolled his neck, ignored the unconscious Iguro Sayaka, and followed the winding pebble path forward step by step.

Whenever a light breeze swept through the bamboo forest, green bamboo leaves spiraled down from the stalks, spun a few times, and fell to the ground. Thick green leaves carpeted the earth everywhere, while the pebble path seemed to be regularly swept and traveled, with only a few freshly fallen leaves upon it.

Before he had gone far, Kurozawa encountered another exquisitely beautiful Iguro woman.

"Who are—" The woman was startled, but before she could finish speaking, Kurozawa knocked her to the ground. Like Iguro Sayaka, she went limp and lost consciousness.

After advancing several dozen meters, his visual perception began warning him. Kurozawa halted, feeling as though needles pricked his back, as if countless dense gazes were fixed tightly upon him.

Hiss, hiss, hiss. The continuous sounds of snakes flicking their tongues rang beside his ears. Kurozawa frowned slightly and swept his gaze in every direction.

Snakes of every color, tongues flicking, coiled throughout the bamboo forest. Some wrapped around green bamboo, while others hid beneath the thick layer of leaves on the ground, watching Kurozawa with curious yet dangerous eyes.

"A lot of snakes."

Perhaps their animal instincts sensed the strength of the person before them. The hidden venomous snakes did not attack Kurozawa, merely slithering about in the shadows, flicking their tongues and hissing endlessly.

Without lingering, Kurozawa moved on. He encountered another Iguro woman and used the same trick to take her down.

"Come out."

After knocking the woman down, Kurozawa did not leave immediately. He spoke calmly, but after waiting for a moment, there was no movement aside from the wind and the hissing of snakes.

"You're quite patient."

Boom! The ground cracked, spiderweb-like fissures spreading across it as Kurozawa vanished from where he stood.

The next second, Kurozawa appeared in the bamboo forest beyond the pebble path. Amid the dense hissing, his gaze was icy.

However, when he clearly saw the person lying on the ground, full of vigilance, the chill in Kurozawa's eyes faded, replaced by surprise.

It was a boy with bandages wrapped around his face and a white snake coiled around his neck. His mismatched eyes were particularly uncanny.

The boy was frightened by Kurozawa's near-instant appearance, but his expression quickly changed. Raising the wooden hairpin in his hand, he leaped up and viciously stabbed it toward Kurozawa's eye.

The little white snake around his neck also bared its fangs and claws, trying to bite Kurozawa's face.

The future Serpent Pillar. The boy's appearance overlapped with someone in Kurozawa's memories.

At the same time, Kurozawa caught the boy's wrist with one hand and pinched the little white snake between the fingers of the other, easily neutralizing their attack.

"Don't move."

"I mean no harm."

Staring into the boy's strange mismatched eyes, Kurozawa spoke in a low voice.

His voice possessed a deep, trustworthy power that soothed the boy, who had been constantly restless. Yet the boy did not lower his guard. His eyes remained full of wariness as he stared fixedly at Kurozawa.

"L-Let Kaburamaru go..."

Following the boy's gaze, Kurozawa saw the little white snake pinched between his fingers, still baring its fangs and claws, hissing threateningly.

"Kaburamaru? Not a bad name." Kurozawa smiled faintly, then released the white snake and returned him to the boy's neck. At the same time, he let go of the boy's hand.

His smile held a strange magic, further easing the boy's vigilance and leaving him slightly dazed.

In a haze, the boy seemed to see a rising sun in the eternally dark place that had never known daylight—warm and filled with radiance.

Gradually, the boy's eyes grew moist, and his voice choked with emotion.

"Y-You finally came to save me."

What? Kurozawa was somewhat surprised, unable to understand what the boy meant.

He did not know that the boy had been imprisoned in a dungeon since birth and had imagined countless times that someone would save him. At this moment, the feeling Kurozawa's smile gave him was exactly like the figure from those fantasies: warm and bright as sunlight.

"What is your name?"

"Why are you here?"

Although he already had a guess, Kurozawa still asked the boy to confirm his identity.

"Iguro... Iguro Obanai. My name is Iguro Obanai." Iguro Obanai paused, then added again with complicated emotion, "This is my home, the place where I was born."

Iguro Obanai's voice was not pleasant. It carried the slick, murky quality of a snake, and the emotions within it were intense and complicated. Even with Kurozawa's experience, he could not discern Iguro Obanai's mood at that moment.

Then, as if he had suddenly recalled something, Iguro Obanai urgently urged, "Quick, go."

"She should have discovered that I escaped by now."

Just as Iguro Obanai spoke, the ground began to shake violently, and a shrill female voice sounded nearby.

"Obanai! Where are you?!"

"You cannot escape from my grasp!"

The voice was shrill and grating, like claws scraping glass, making one's whole body uncomfortable. Kurozawa stood in front of Iguro Obanai and looked toward its source.

Within his field of view, the ground continued to tremble. Amid rumbling sounds like a road roller starting up, stalk after stalk of green bamboo was crushed, smashed apart, and knocked to the ground.

Within the massive cloud of dust and bamboo leaves rising through the forest, a thick snake tail and a woman's face could vaguely be seen.