The Divine Name / Making Up and Confessing? (End of Volume One)

She silently watched the Mountain God offer the bell, silently watched the Divine Attendant rebel against the Mountain God, and silently tore at her own Spiritual Sense as she drew the spiritual energy from the Talisman Iron Pellet Rom had returned to her.

This tiny amount of spiritual energy wasn't enough for her to perform any spell, but it could serve as a catalyst, just like the Soul Collision Art. She had once tried to avoid using that spell, but she had never considered that no matter what, after accepting the Nine Nether Profound Soul Treasure Record, she had already committed it deeply to memory.

Nightmare Refining Art.

As half of her Spiritual Sense was torn away, Miko's face visibly paled. At the same time, the Soul Devouring Tribulation that her Spiritual Sense had suppressed burst forth, pressing down on her reason and lucidity.

She could only grit her teeth and continue performing the art, until a woman with black-and-red hair, crimson eyes, and a face resembling her own appeared before her. Like the Mountain God before them, this woman was a monster, one that had grown out of Miko's memories.

"Please..."

She spoke, making her request of the uncontrollable monster. It was a gamble, but she believed in her memories, believed in the monster born from them.

Having barely finished speaking, the demonic cultivator known as Yotsuya Miko collapsed to the ground, exhausted. The Soul Devouring Tribulation had begun to consume her once more, and she had used every means at her disposal. Truly, she had done all she could.

"..."

The crimson-eyed monster said nothing. She looked at her host and made a disgusted face.

"You really are a complete meathead. You don't have even the most basic sense of responsibility as a demonic cultivator. And now, in a situation this dangerous, you're counting on something created by the Nightmare Refining Art to obey you. If you'd figured that out sooner, would things have come to this?"

As an individual born from Miko's memories, she knew everything that had happened to Yotsuya Miko. In a sense, she was another Miko—an enhanced version.

Seeing the two people in the distance about to be struck by the Mountain God, she swiftly cast several spells on herself and charged at the monster at several times Miko's speed.

"You seem to have completely forgotten about me."

As she spoke, she cast a streak of blood-red light over Takeda Mie and Rom, and both soon fell unconscious. She used blood-colored spiritual energy to carry them over beside Yotsuya Miko, then finally revealed a savage grin.

"That kind of frustrating fighting style doesn't suit me."

Staring at the Mountain God before her, she clenched her fist. Then she punched it in the face with enough force to break the sound barrier. The Mountain God was sent flying into the side of the shrine, smashing through its wall. Only then did the sonic boom arrive.

"That idiot didn't even notice what was inside the main shrine. Does she really think Spiritual Sense is just for show?"

After that punch, she rubbed her reddened right hand and glanced at the main shrine. The monster looked toward the Mountain God, whose face now bore a mark from her blow, and said nothing.

A red light flashed around her. Just as the Mountain God angrily swung at her, she leaped onto its back like a phantom and raised one leg high.

"You're hunched over, so get down on the ground."

As she spoke, her raised heel came down on the Mountain God's back. The crisp crack of breaking bones, the dull thud and tremor as it smashed into the earth, and the vast cloud of dust that rose up all formed part of the scene.

The Mountain God, most of its body sunk deep into the ground, let out a roar, as if cursing or begging. The monster paid no heed and mercilessly kicked it again.

"You hit me once, so me hitting you twice is only fair."

With that, she leisurely stepped off the Mountain God's back and walked into the main shrine, where the human skull had been kept. She crushed it into fragments.

"Still, who could've guessed this Mountain God was a human pillar, used to suppress an even more powerful Ghost? But you're free now."

She glanced at the girl emerging from the skull and the woman standing beside her, who had once been a Divine Attendant. Then the monster silently watched the shrine crumble. Feeling the tremors beneath the ground, she decided they were probably outside the scope of what she'd been asked to do. So she couldn't be bothered to deal with them.

But Okamotozuko, who was about to disappear, and the girl who had served as a sacrifice both looked at her. In the end, Okamotozuko asked the question on her mind.

"Who are you?"

"Me? That girl hasn't had the chance to give me a name yet."

That was what the monster said.

Chapter 79: The Divine Name

Yotsuya Miko woke up in bed, her body aching all over and extra Profound Nether Qi filling her Spiritual Sense.

She silently looked at her clothes. They were intact. She got out of bed and looked toward the full-length mirror beside her. Her reflection looked as if she had never fought the Mountain God; there wasn't a single one of those scraped-up wounds left.

But the faintest link in her Spiritual Sense had already made everything clear.

The Nightmare Refining Art. The creation born from her consciousness was now linked to her.

"Don't go into that mountain."

Those were the words her still-unnamed creation had left her, in a warning tone.

What had happened to that mountain?

Yotsuya Miko had no idea. She held her throbbing head with one hand as countless fragments of memory flooded her mind. They had come along with the warning.

Defeat... Mountain God... human pillar... alter memories... enter...

Only after accepting all the information did a complicated expression appear on her face. She sensed the abundant Profound Nether Qi stored in her Soul Repository—several times what she'd had before—constantly nourishing her Spiritual Sense. The Soul Devouring Tribulation, which should have flared up, had been suppressed and couldn't move. The new Profound Nether Qi seemed to have come from the Soul Body of an extraordinarily powerful Ghost, which explained its unusually low impurity. The Soul Devouring Tribulation couldn't break out.

But her memories hadn't mentioned where the Profound Nether Qi had come from. They had only told Miko that the shrine had been dealt with, that Rom and Takeda Mie's memories of its destruction had been altered, and that the credit for killing the Mountain God had been given to her. After that, there was the "door."

"The door," the unnamed creation had called it. It had gone through the "door" and never returned. The information had cut off completely after it entered, leaving only a faint link that she could sense.

After receiving all the information, Miko silently felt the Profound Nether Qi in her Soul Repository and looked around her room. She took from her pocket the tool that had been melted down into a piece of iron—the iron case that had once held the Talisman Iron Pellets.

She threw the iron scrap into the trash can.

"A failed battle."

That was how she judged herself. She recalled what had happened after she encountered the Mountain God: her recklessness, her failure to treasure the Talisman Iron Pellets, and how she hadn't even understood the Mountain God's form. She had only fought it with a crude use of spiritual energy.

The weak Ghosts around her had never given her much combat experience. Even the Kimono Ghost had been crushed by what she held in her hand. Those fights hadn't even deserved to be called battles; they had never changed her. She had even earnestly hoped that all Ghosts would be that weak.

And so, with more bluster than substance, she had suffered a crushing defeat at the Mountain God's hands. If she hadn't reacted quickly enough to defend herself, she might not have survived.

But perhaps only a crushing defeat like that could truly make someone wake up.

Miko threw away the iron scrap, suddenly feeling as though something had left her heart and made it easier to breathe. She looked at herself in the mirror: Yotsuya Miko, still pale and haggard, not yet fully recovered. For some reason, she smiled again.

"What a mess."

That downpour, that old Taoist, that sigh, and the unchanging truth of the Xuanhui Realm:

"The Demonic Path fears the strong and bullies the weak."

Suddenly, she understood those words in a new way.

"Then I should try going through the door, too."

The mountain still looked the same as always to ordinary people. Even the tremors had been mistaken by the people nearby for aftershocks from an earthquake. Still, some people realized that something unusual had happened there.

"Captain, there are several impact marks here."

"Captain, we found a lot of small silver iron balls in this area, though many of them are broken."

The man addressed as captain stared at the marks sunk into the ground and the bag of broken little balls a team member had handed him, lost in thought.

He glanced at the white-browed old man beside him, who was dressed in Buddhist robes. The old man's shock made him realize how serious the matter was.

"Master Sanliu... may I ask what you've realized?"

Sanliu didn't answer his question. He simply pressed his lips together and turned his prayer beads in his hand. It took several breaths before he finally calmed himself.

"Do you know the history of this mountain, sir?"

He asked in return. The captain had already looked through the files, and after a moment's thought, he recalled what made the mountain unusual.

"In ancient times, the people in this area had a custom of worshiping the Mountain God. They cruelly offered girls of suitable age as sacrifices to please the deity. After the Restoration, the new army forced the locals to change that custom and tore down the shrine on the mountain. Afterward, thirty-two members of the army mysteriously disappeared, and no information about them could ever be found. Since then, few people have gone up the mountain."

He paused, then continued.

"Even after the people living near the mountain were forced to stay away, several people still went missing there every so often. Among them were people who called themselves exorcists. But after Okamotozuko, an exorcist who had some fame on television, disappeared on the mountain more than a decade ago, there were no more cases like that. Still, what does that have to do with what happened on the mountain?"

The captain didn't connect the tremors to the ghost stories. He scoffed at stories like that, but he had to admit that his superiors had sent him to invite the "master" before him to help investigate the mountain.

"Someone... no, it should be a deity, killed the evil god that had occupied this mountain for a long time."

Sanliu looked at him and gave his conclusion.

"Its aura has completely vanished. The mountain's Ghosts have all disappeared as well."

Even as he spoke, he remained shaken by what had happened. The evil god he was talking about wasn't the one enshrined at the shrine. As the heir to an exorcist organization, he knew far more of the secrets than exorcists like Rom and Takeda Mie. That was why he had never interfered over the years, despite knowing that the shrine on the mountain lured people in. If the Mountain God keeping it in check were killed, the consequences would be even worse.

"Hm?"

The captain grunted, taking that mystical talk as a joke. Still, he patiently continued questioning Sanliu.

"I wonder which deity could have such power. Could it have been the Great God Sorateru?"

His words were mocking. But Sanliu carefully studied the bag of broken Iron Pellets in the captain's hand and thought for a moment.

"Perhaps... it was that silver god who descended here for some unknown reason. It never revealed its name, though."

"It never revealed its name?"

The captain probably hadn't even heard the legends about the silver balls. After hearing Sanliu's explanation, he glanced again at the bag of tiny Iron Pellets.

"Then why not call it... Broken Ball—"

Before he could finish speaking, the bag of Iron Pellets suddenly burst open. Their fragments formed a single hiragana character on the ground.

The eerie scene cut off the captain's words. As if he had realized something, he stiffly turned to look at Sanliu. The latter simply stared at the character on the ground without saying much, offering only a brief remark.

"It seems the deity doesn't appreciate your jokes."

Chapter 80: Making Up and Confessing? (End of Volume One)

Yotsuya Miko didn't have many friends.

Since starting high school, Hana had probably been the only person she could really talk to. Now she had Yuria as well.

Because she had so few friends, she treasured them deeply. She never wanted her own problems to cause any trouble for her best friends.

That was just how she was. She wanted to deal with everything by herself, face the Ghosts that frightened her alone, and keep it all hidden from Hana.

Of course, in the end, she hadn't managed to hold herself together well enough to keep it hidden. Her anxiety and sorrow were impossible to conceal from anyone who cared deeply about her—including her closest friend, Yurikawa Hana.

This was probably the first time the two of them had ever fallen out.

But if anyone had felt better about it, it wasn't as if either of them could feel anything but sad about losing a friend. It was because she valued their friendship that Hana wanted to share Yotsuya Miko's worries and anxieties. And it was because Miko didn't want to hurt Hana over something like this, or even make Hana distance herself from her, that she'd kept it from her.

When the two met at school again, they awkwardly looked at each other, then silently walked past one another. They both wanted to say something, but neither could bring herself to speak.

But after they had already walked some distance apart, Yotsuya Miko abruptly turned and called out to Yurikawa Hana.

"Hana, can I talk to you?"

She looked straight at the girl, who hadn't stopped walking, and prepared herself to be rejected. As expected, the other girl only paused for a moment before continuing on. She still seemed angry with Miko.

I knew it...

Even though she'd prepared herself for it, Miko still felt disappointed. She sighed and turned away, ready to wait as long as it took for Yurikawa Hana to forgive her. Even if Hana really didn't want to make up with her anymore.

After all, she had so few friends. If she lost one, it would be hard to find another.

But perhaps that would be better for her. Then she could focus completely on her training until she could truly fight like a demonic cultivator and protect herself and everyone around her in this world overrun by Ghosts.

But the next thing her Spiritual Sense picked up made her freeze. She slowly turned around as a figure, seemingly not expecting this at all, hurriedly crashed into her arms—and knocked the not-yet-fully-recovered "patient" to the ground.

Pain flared in her back, but Miko paid it no attention. She simply wrapped her arms tightly around the person who'd thrown herself into her embrace, and the sunlight drove the clouds from her heart.

"You've forgiven me?"

"When did I say I'd forgiven you? Let go of me already!"

Hana struggled in her arms, annoyed that the plan she'd meant to carry out had been completely ruined.

"Why did you know it was me, even in a situation like that? And let go of me already!"

"I won't."

The girl named Yotsuya Miko smiled and closed her eyes, completely unconcerned with the eyes watching them.

"I'll let go when you forgive me."

When she noticed the flying tackle, Miko understood. Hana didn't hate her; she was willing to listen to her explanation.

"If you don't get up, more and more people are going to stare! Let go of me!"

Hana said that, but when she saw Miko finally smiling, the corners of her mouth lifted too. She gave a quiet snort, then buried her face against Miko's chest and spoke muffledly.

"Fine, fine, I forgive you. Now get up."

After she got home, the girl named Yurikawa Hana finally understood. Perhaps Miko had hidden the truth not because she didn't trust Hana, but simply because she didn't want Hana to worry too. Yotsuya Miko hadn't changed at all. She was still quietly protecting Hana in her own way. So instead of making her sad by staying angry, Hana should understand—and take on some of the burden when this idiot finally couldn't bear it alone.

But understanding it didn't mean she shouldn't still be angry. She'd planned to ignore Yotsuya Miko for the whole day, but when she saw the bitter expression on the girl's face, she couldn't do it. This girl named Hana had already let go of all her anger, leaving only regret.

So she rushed toward Yotsuya Miko, just as she always did.

Miko let go and watched Yurikawa Hana get up from on top of her. She gazed into her beautiful eyes, and all her worries melted away.