"Hey, please have Shimizu Tenpu come to the office."
"The Shepherd, right?"
Okita watched him silently as he hung up. Before the man named Shimizu Tenpu arrived, they had one last conversation.
"Mr. Sakamoto already told me what happened to this man. I understand the situation very well. But it's precisely because I understand it that I've tried so hard to persuade him to join the Investigation Department."
"Because the Investigation Department can investigate the Shepherd more easily?"
The head of the Special Affairs Department shrugged. He had no intention of handing Shimizu Tenpu over.
"You know, people from the Special Affairs Department can investigate just as well—"
"Investigation Department personnel can coordinate and work together across different regions with the local governments. That includes checking whether any Divine Gates in a particular area have changed, and conducting investigations and crackdowns on large-scale groups. Furthermore, because of the nature of the Investigation Department, it's the leadership core of the Divine Gate and has special review authority over the Special Affairs Department, including its personnel changes, although those powers require authorization."
Okita spoke suddenly, looking at the head of the Special Affairs Department. Then he smiled.
"I've already invoked that authority with my superiors in handling the Shepherd matter."
"...I see."
As he looked at the young head of the Investigation Department, the trace of contempt vanished from the Special Affairs Department head's face.
"I'll transfer those people back to your department. But you'll have to persuade Shimizu Tenpu yourself."
He watched Okita, a smile appearing on his own face as he relented.
"Still, if the Investigation Department comes up with nothing, I think those people should be put under the command of a more effective department, don't you, Director Okita?"
"If we find nothing, you won't need to worry about that."
Okita glanced at him.
"Deputy Director Oine will take my place. But compared to a kind fellow like me, he's someone you really shouldn't cross."
At those words, the head of the Special Affairs Department's expression darkened again. His gaze toward Okita held a little more wariness.
"Okita Qishen, what are you planning?"
"You'll find out."
An Unaffiliated Exorcist
"Powerful spirits and weak spirits wander the human world. These inhuman beings have been divided into three ranks: Wolf, Tiger, and Dragon. But those aren't the only ranks. There are even stranger beings above Dragon-class, though they're rarely seen. In fact, people didn't always classify spirits this way. Exorcists and Onmyoji alike used to judge a spirit's strength solely by its form and its aura."
Takeda Mie spoke slowly as she looked at Yuria. The younger woman quickly understood what she meant.
"Who decided to classify spirits like that?"
"It was an organization that had been demonstrating its strength since the modern era: the Divine Gate."
"The Divine Gate?"
"Yes, it's an official organization. But there are conflicts within it, so many exorcists like me haven't joined. We've chosen to remain unaffiliated instead. The Divine Gate is the country's most fundamental exorcist force. It maintains stability between the human world and the spirits, deals with disasters caused by spirits, and protects the beings known as Gates."
"Gates?"
"Yes. They say there are countless powerful monsters inside them. If one were to appear in the human world, the consequences would be unimaginable. But I've never seen a Gate myself. There probably aren't many of them."
She spoke with regret. Exorcists like Takeda Mie, who had no inherited tradition, weren't uncommon. Their understanding of spirits came from their teachers, not from a complete lineage. Even if some of them were exceptionally talented, it was difficult for them to gain a thorough understanding of spirits and the world they inhabited without someone to guide them.
"Still, even if we did see a Gate, exorcists like us wouldn't stand a chance against it. Miko might be able to handle one, but with her personality..."
Takeda Mie paused. The last time she'd invited Yotsuya Miko, Miko had asked her and Rom not to reveal her existence.
"She probably wouldn't get involved in something like that. So, Yuria, you'd better have nothing to do with those people."
"Okay."
Yuria agreed. Takeda Mie was about to say something more, but then she looked toward the two people approaching the fortune-telling shop, her expression turning sour.
"What a nuisance for these old bones."
She muttered under her breath. The last people she wanted to see had arrived.
"Yuria, since you've learned how to use Spiritual Power today, you should go home for now."
Was it because someone had come?
Yuria realized what had caused Takeda Mie to act so strangely. She looked at the approaching pair, but couldn't see any distinctive markings on them. She simply did as Takeda Mie said, quietly leaving the fortune-telling shop and heading home.
As she walked, she naturally associated the two with the organization Takeda Mie had told her about.
The Divine Gate?
"Downtown Godmother Takeda Mie, correct?"
The two checked the information on their phones and questioned the old woman before them.
"That's right. What could two esteemed guests from the Divine Gate want with an old woman like me?"
There was no need for small talk. She got straight to the point, speaking in a brisk, businesslike manner.
"The Shepherd group has recently spread from the Kawamori region to this area. Those villains may well target exorcists outside the Divine Gate. Please be careful and look after your disciples. They've already committed several heinous crimes in the Kawamori region, targeting people with Spiritual Power."
"I see. Then this old woman thanks the Divine Gate for the warning."
"Mm. If you're interested, you can apply to join the Divine Gate. That would also keep them from targeting you."
"We'll give it careful consideration."
Seeing how calm Takeda Mie remained, they realized that no matter what they said, they wouldn't persuade her to join. So they decided to take their leave.
"Then we'll be going."
"By the way, does the Divine Gate know anything about Kamikakushi Mountain?"
"Kamikakushi Mountain?"
The two turned back toward Takeda Mie. After thinking it over, they realized they hadn't been told to keep the matter secret, so they answered casually.
"As for Kamikakushi Mountain, the Dragon-class spirit there has been eliminated. No one will be harmed by that mountain again."
They had learned from the documents their superiors gave them why the old woman was asking about Kamikakushi Mountain. They didn't find it particularly strange. After all, exorcists could hardly have missed the disturbance on the mountain.
"Ms. Takeda, you can rest easy. The dead are gone, but the monster responsible for the tragedy has disappeared as well."
"Mm. I understand. Thank you very much, everyone from the Divine Gate."
She bowed slightly to the two before her. Only when she noticed their awkward expressions did the corners of her mouth lift.
So they hadn't found out?
She'd originally thought the Divine Gate had sent people to question her whereabouts, suspecting that she'd killed the Mountain God. After all, it was Yotsuya Miko, who had been with them, who'd ultimately destroyed it. If they'd already traced it back to her, it would only be a matter of time before Yotsuya Miko was exposed.
But as things stood, it seemed that wasn't what was happening.
"There's no need to thank us. It's our duty as members of the Divine Gate."
"Right... our duty."
Of course, the two knew who had really killed that Dragon-class spirit. But telling Takeda Mie that the spirit had been killed was all they could say. If they brought Silver Ball God into it, then even if they weren't explicitly forbidden to share that information, their superiors wouldn't look kindly on them for telling an outsider about Silver Ball God.
Just as they hadn't mentioned the Gate on Kamikakushi Mountain. Within the Divine Gate, there was opposition to revealing too much information to unaffiliated exorcists. After all, no one knew whether that information might reach the public. They found it difficult to trust those exorcists.
"Then we'll take our leave."
Without waiting for Takeda Mie to say anything more, the two turned and walked away.
The Downtown Godmother, who had been wearing an expression of mourning mixed with gratitude, let her feigned expression fade. She watched the two depart, then considered the information the Divine Gate had given her.
"The Shepherd?"
Though she knew very little about the organization, that didn't stop her from recognizing the Divine Gate's wariness toward the Shepherd in the way they'd sent people to warn unaffiliated exorcists like her.
"Looks like I'll have to get in touch with Miko."
Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art
Though Yuria's training with Takeda Mie had been cut short by the arrival of outsiders, she could still feel the Spiritual Power in her body. The new sensation was as delightful as getting a new toy.
After learning to control Spiritual Power for the first time, she walked along the road, repeating what she'd done earlier and steadily getting used to channeling it. After trying dozens of times, she looked at her fingertips and grinned as if she'd just pulled two SSRs in her first ten-pull in a new game.
She was one step closer to becoming a powerful exorcist.
She thought to herself happily, her good mood spilling into a quiet hum.
The blurry shadows in her field of vision vanished as she passed. That was the result of the accessory Yotsuya Miko had given her. A tremendous power was contained within that tiny trinket.
But as Yuria looked at the Spiritual Power in her hand, she knew that soon she wouldn't need the accessory to deal with these inhuman beings known as spirits. She'd handle them with her own skills as an exorcist. She had no doubt about it.
Watching the shadows fade away, Yuria walked toward an office building. She casually took an access card from her pocket, tapped it against the sensor by the entrance, and strolled inside.
The daytime security guards happened to pass her, chatting as they went.
"Looks like we'll have to work overtime soon. I wonder why."
"Who cares? We're getting paid for it."
"Fair enough."
They seemed to be complaining about overtime. Yuria thought about it, then promptly put the trivial matter out of her mind as the guards walked farther away.
The two grumbling guards opened a door and checked the surveillance cameras around the building.
"I heard from the people coming off shift that they found someone suspicious around here?"
One of them looked at the monitor, then seemed to remember something and mentioned it.
"Apparently, a few people have been showing up around here a lot. The cameras picked them up, and the frequency caught the security department's attention."
"They don't live around here?"
"Who knows? They probably don't live in this building, anyway."
"Is it really necessary to be so cautious?"
"...If the boss hears you say that, you'll probably get stuck working overtime for months again."
"Hey, I'm just saying. I get it, I get it. Rich people value their lives... But their kid really does have it rough."
He spoke with an implication.
"That kid seems to go out alone all the time, doesn't she?"
"Who knows?"
After their casual conversation, they checked the cameras around the building one by one, making sure each one worked, then went back inside. As they did, they couldn't help remarking that it was good to be rich.
"Even if I worked for hundreds of years, I still couldn't afford a place like this."
"Yeah."
"Not a chance."
Yotsuya Miko put down her phone and flopped onto her bed.
On the still-lit screen was the price of jade. Seeing all those zeroes, she once again realized just how expensive cultivation was.
She needed jade because one of the cultivation arts she had required it as a material: the Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art. The other arts that involved words like "demon" or "soul" were manageable. The Profound Nether Qi's ability to connect with the netherworld let her bypass their material requirements. But the remaining arts were more troublesome. Some required jade, some the corpses of birds of prey, and others the blood of a hundred kinds of beasts, along with items that carried their auras.
Yotsuya Miko had initially thought jade would be the easiest thing to obtain. But after checking the price of high-quality jade, she'd started to feel faint. It was completely beyond her means. Why not buy low-quality jade? Because the art's effects depended on the jade's quality. In the Xuanhui Realm, practitioners used all kinds of precious jade as materials for the Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art, allowing it to take on the qualities contained in the stones. She couldn't find any precious jade, and if she used low-quality stones instead, there was no telling how well it would work.
But it wasn't too big a problem.
Yotsuya Miko checked her phone again, placed an order for an ordinary piece of jade, the cheapest kind, and then got out of bed.
"Fortunately, the Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art doesn't require any specific kind of jade. According to Master Zhang Qiudao's understanding, any old piece of jade can be used as a material if you infuse it with Spiritual Power. But that would waste the art's advantage of being compatible with many different qualities."
While other cultivation arts combined fixed properties with the properties of Spiritual Power, the Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art combined the jade's own properties with those of Spiritual Power. If the jade was of exceptionally high quality, it could have two or three properties of its own, making the resulting combination quite remarkable. That was where the art got its name. Because of this feature, practitioners in the Xuanhui Realm could choose jade with properties suited to their Spiritual Power. Even if the jade had no special properties, it could still be used. They could simply infuse it with their Spiritual Power, imparting their own Spiritual Power's properties to the jade, and practice the art as usual.
Thanks to these qualities, even though the Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art required materials, the materials needed depended entirely on the practitioner. It was also more effective than arts that required no materials, making it an ideal choice for many practitioners. If that were all there was to it, the art would have long been considered top-tier in the Xuanhui Realm. But in reality... it had no offensive capabilities whatsoever. To accommodate all kinds of combinations, it had given up all its destructive power. In other areas, such as healing, it was still inferior to arts designed specifically for healing. It was thoroughly mediocre, with its adaptability maxed out and almost everything else reduced to nothing.
Zhang Qiudao had originally treated the Spirit Jade Myriad Transformations Art as some bizarre technique created by his predecessors. It was rare to see an art so badly skewed just to solve the problem of material requirements. Orthodox practitioners generally tried to reduce the amount of materials required, while demonic cultivators tried to make the materials as common and easy to obtain as possible. But after he'd practiced the art himself for some unknown reason, using Profound Nether Qi without adding any other properties, he'd stopped treating it as a joke.
Just as Yotsuya Miko was wondering whether low-quality jade would affect the art, she glanced at her phone and saw a call coming in.
"Granny Saegusa? That's a surprise."
She looked at the name on her phone, paused for a moment, then answered the call.
"Hello? What did you need, Granny Saegusa?"
The New Transfer Student
It was another ordinary school day. Yuria had learned how to use Spiritual Power and had started learning how to make puppets from Takeda Mie. As usual, she ignored her classmates' deliberate attempts to distance themselves from and tease her.
Before you continue