Trial

Kenjaku paused, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. "Heavenly restriction?"

Leaning against a broken wall, Mahito flashed a smug smile at that. "You noticed? This guy's original body really was a rare find."

"He was born with only as much cursed energy as an ordinary person, in exchange for a body far beyond human limits. When I found him at the Movie Theater, he nearly hit me with a punch-an ordinary human couldn't do that."

"Then you really did strike gold." Kenjaku took two steps closer and tapped Gu Yanzhi's shoulder with a finger. It felt dull and solid, like tapping a thick iron plate.

"A body with heavenly restriction, modified by Idle Transfiguration on top of that. Material like this isn't something you find every day."

"It took me ages just to refine this guy." Mahito walked up to Gu Yanzhi and patted his arm as well, his voice full of pride.

"He's probably about as strong as a Grade 1 Sorcerer now. Want to test him?"

Kenjaku smiled. He raised his right hand, palm up, and a mass of dark red cursed energy gathered in it.

A fissure opened in the air, and a twisted figure crawled out-a centipede more than three meters long, every segment of its shell gleaming with a dark metallic sheen. Its densely packed bladed legs scraped across the rubble, throwing up a trail of sparks.

Its head was a swollen human head, its features twisted out of place. Its mouth opened and closed, letting out broken murmurs like an infant's whimpers.

"This little one is a genuine Grade 1 Cursed Spirit." Kenjaku withdrew his hand and stepped back twice, speaking casually, as though introducing a piece from his collection.

Gu Yanzhi stared at the slowly writhing centipede cursed spirit, his pupils contracting slightly.

He could see it.

The patterns on every segment of its shell, the light reflected off every bladed leg, the rolled-back eyes in that swollen human head-all of it registered on his retinas with perfect clarity.

Mahito's modifications hadn't stopped at his flesh. He had also etched some kind of change into Gu Yanzhi's visual system.

He had gone from an "ordinary person who couldn't see cursed spirits" to a "transfigured human who could."

At the same time, an icy command surfaced from the depths of his consciousness.

It was like a wire piercing the back of his skull, its ends branching into every muscle fiber.

Kill the Grade 1 Cursed Spirit before you.

Mahito's command bypassed thought, skirted reason, and drove brutally into the depths of his instincts.

Gu Yanzhi didn't resist. First, he couldn't expose his self-awareness yet. Second, he wanted to test it too-just how much could this body, modified to its limits, really do?

His two thick legs kicked hard against the ground, blasting apart the rubble underfoot. He became a blur as he lunged straight at the cursed spirit, both hands raised overhead, fingers spread, and brought them crashing down on that swollen human head with crushing force.

The centipede cursed spirit didn't take the blow head-on.

Its body, more than three meters long, abruptly contracted and sprang out. Its shell scraped with a shrill metallic screech as its entire body bowed into an arc and slipped past the edge of his rushing fists.

Both fists smashed into the ground where it had been coiled. Rubble flew, and a crater half a meter across burst open in the hard concrete.

Even as the cursed spirit dodged, it had already launched its counterattack.

Its arched body shot forward, each segment of shell tightening and extending in succession. It skimmed along the ground in a curve and came around from the side to coil around Gu Yanzhi.

Its bladed legs trailed a sheet of brilliant steel as it sped along, carving dozens of deep cuts into the rubble-strewn ground.

Another pair of eyes opened on Gu Yanzhi's back.

The new visual feed poured straight into his brain-the image was painfully clear. That swollen human head opened its mouth, revealing ring upon ring of tiny, densely packed teeth as it lunged for his neck.

At the same time, dozens of bladed legs closed in from different angles, trying to lock him inside its killing coil.

He still had two more hands. The instant the centipede lunged, he left his upper pair extended while raising both lower hands-one clamped onto the human head's jaw from below, while the other seized the densest row of bladed legs along the centipede's body.

The hand gripping its jaw tightened, fingertips digging straight into the folds of swollen skin and forcibly clamping the human head's mouth shut.

The blades sliced open the palm gripping its legs, pouring paralytic venom into the wounds. But his modified muscles were so dense that the venom's spread was visibly slowed.

Caught by its head and body, the centipede cursed spirit thrashed desperately.

Its remaining bladed legs flailed wildly, every slash landing on Gu Yanzhi-his chest, shoulders, arms, and thighs.

The blades split skin and cut through muscle, leaving wounds deep enough to expose bone. Paralytic venom flooded in through more than a dozen wounds at once. An ordinary person would already have collapsed into a helpless heap.

Gu Yanzhi could feel the edges of his wounds going numb, his muscles twitching, his body's instinctive reactions slowing. But he didn't let go.

Because he had noticed something-the wounds sliced open by those bladed legs were healing on their own.

Along their edges, muscle fibers writhed like living creatures, reconnecting and drawing tight. The shallowest cuts had healed within seconds. The deeper ones still seeped blood, but far less than they normally would have.

Mahito's modifications hadn't just given him four hands, four eyes, and a larger body-they had also given him the ability to heal himself.

Regrowing severed limbs would take time, but his body could endure ordinary cuts and tears.

A light began glowing deep in the cursed spirit's throat-it was gathering power, preparing to fire a beam of cursed energy.

A fraction of a second later, a dark red beam shot from the human head's nostrils and eye sockets.

Gu Yanzhi didn't let go.

He shoved the hand gripping the human head sharply downward, forcibly wrenching the beam's aim from his face to his chest. The dark red column pierced the left side of his chest, blasting a fist-sized hole beneath his collarbone. Ribs cracked inside him, and shredded flesh and bloody mist sprayed from his back.

It hurt. The pain tore through him, but he didn't stop.

The wound began healing the instant it burst open-new flesh surged wildly from its edges, tangling and weaving together to fill the bloody hole at a speed visible to the naked eye.

He knocked aside the tail spike the cursed spirit shot at him and kept his eyes fixed on the swollen human head before him without looking back.

Now it was his turn.

He pushed off with both legs and hurled himself at the centipede cursed spirit, despite the still-unhealed hole through his chest.

Two hands kept a death grip on the human head, while his upper pair clenched into fists and aimed at the shell joint just behind it-the weakest point in the centipede's entire body. The shell's patterns broke off there, exposing a short stretch of soft gray tissue.

Fragments of shell flew, exposing the gray tissue. The human head let out a piercing shriek, its mouth finally wrenching free of his fingers and stretching open at an unnatural angle. Dark red light flared deep in its throat again.

Gu Yanzhi didn't dodge.

He pulled back all four hands, drove his legs against the ground, and charged straight into the human head, facing the beam as it gathered power.

The instant his shoulder struck the head, he pressed his body over the beam's opening. Two hands clamped onto the back of its skull from above, while the other two clenched into fists and aimed at that exposed stretch of gray tissue-

One punch drove straight through. The moment his fist smashed into the soft tissue, it met almost no resistance.

The force of both fists combined with all the explosive power of his body, punching through the gray tissue and bursting out through the human head's mouth.

Under that tremendous force, the entire human head exploded from within, spraying shell fragments and bloody flesh in every direction.

After losing its head, the centipede's body convulsed violently for several seconds before going limp, segment by segment.

Grade 1 Cursed Spirit: killed.

Gu Yanzhi stood where he was, all four hands still held in their punching positions.

His fists had passed through the exploded human head, and the cursed spirit's remains filled the gaps between his fingers.

His body was still healing-the hole through his chest was already mostly filled, and the cuts the bladed legs had left on his arms were reduced to faint bloody marks.

A few slow claps sounded behind him.

Mahito leaned against the broken wall, smiling like a spectator who had just watched a splendid performance.

"He really is at Grade 1 Sorcerer level."

Standing beside Mahito, Kenjaku looked at the cursed spirit's remains scattered across the ground and nodded slightly. "Excellent material indeed."

His gaze settled on Gu Yanzhi, his tone laden with meaning. "Take good care of him. Don't let him go to waste."

"This transfigured human will be useful for even greater things later."