The Mole

Run!

That was the only thought in his head.

Crow had barely scrambled up from the sheet metal on his hands and knees when an icy, rigid hand settled on the back of his neck.

There was no warning. Not even the air stirred.

Yang Jian stood behind him, his left hand in his pocket.

"Nice camera setup." Yang Jian's voice was flat. "Since your superiors sent you here to work, you ought to bring something back to report."

Ghost Shadow invaded his body directly.

Crow's body froze at once, his limbs hanging limp.

Crow's personality, his memories, and his loyalty to those rigid old men at Jujutsu Headquarters were being brutally kneaded, shredded, and pieced back together by Ghost Shadow inside him.

The shocking sight of Yang Jian tearing apart cursed spirits was forcibly erased from Crow's memory.

The new memory implanted in its place was this: the quasi-special grade cursed spirits had destroyed themselves through infighting, and Yang Jian had merely cleaned up a small amount of cursed residue when he arrived.

Crow developed an obedience and fear toward Yang Jian rooted deep in his soul. He would never reveal a trace of what had truly happened in the battle.

Crow sank to his knees, coughing nonstop.

When he looked up at Yang Jian again, the probing look and terror had vanished from his eyes, leaving only dull acceptance.

"Write your report according to what's in your head." Yang Jian looked at the largely ruined camera on the ground. "Leave the scene as it is. Go back to your paperwork. I'll contact you through a separate channel."

"Understood, Lord Yang Jian." Crow bowed his head low.

With the Ghost Newspaper providing the underlying framework, this planted spy from Jujutsu Headquarters had been completely uprooted and driven back into their own stronghold.

With a few more puppets like this, the secrets of Jujutsu Society would become an open-book exam laid out before Yang Jian.

Yang Jian glanced at the system panel.

Including the proceeds from this trip, his current point balance had barely passed fifty-five thousand.

The shortfall in points was still painfully large.

He had to cast a wider net.

He took the Black Umbrella from Crow's suit pocket, opened it, and walked unhurriedly down the iron ladder.

As soon as he stepped outside the factory, another message from Shiu Kong popped up.

[Finished cleaning up the mess? Those surviving fringe members of the Time Vessel Association are making new moves. They've put a thirty-million bounty on your head in the Underground Black Market and gathered a dozen or so low-rent curse users. They're planning to buy some powerful special grade cursed tools.]

Yang Jian sheltered from the rain at a corner of the wall and typed with one hand: [Meeting location.]

[Tomorrow night, the Old Quarry on the outskirts of Kyoto. Cover your face if you go, so you don't attract unnecessary attention from other organizations.]

A bunch of curse users who treated their lives as worthless.

They were walking ATMs and hubs of information.

A large gathering delivered right to his doorstep like this would be much faster than searching all over Japan for scattered cursed spirits.

The following day, at noon.

The underground Dissection Room at Tokyo Jujutsu High.

Shoko Ieiri wore a long white lab coat, a cigarette held between two fingers. White smoke formed thin rings above her head.

Yang Jian approached from this end of the corridor, dressed in an ordinary lightweight dark jacket.

"I heard you sent the person the higher-ups assigned to watch you back empty-handed." Shoko stubbed out her cigarette beside the sink. "Crow's observation report was complete bullshit. He insisted you just happened to pick up the scraps after the cursed spirits destroyed themselves. The old men were pounding the conference table, but they couldn't charge you a breach-of-contract penalty."

"The clerk they chose lacked mental resilience. He was prone to hallucinations under pressure." Yang Jian stopped beside the dissection table.

Shoko opened a sheet-metal drawer beside her and took out a high-strength glass dropper as thick as a finger.

It held a mass of viscous, dark red blood.

The clot slowly writhed, defying gravity.

"I added some leftover tissue from a wild grade 2 cursed spirit to this retained sample of yours." Shoko raised her head. "It ate all the cursed energy."

Yang Jian glanced at her.

"It wasn't fusion. It was one-sided consumption and digestion." Shoko's voice was colder and harder than ever. "Your internal circulation is already far beyond the bounds of a normal carbon-based lifeform. If you lose control one day, what will this body become?"

"As long as I can act as needed, there's no difference between being human or a ghost."

Yang Jian reached out and took the glass dropper.

His thumb applied a little pressure.

The instant the glass shattered, the dark red blood fell into Yang Jian's palm.

A narrow slit opened in his flesh, and the blood slipped inside without resistance, leaving not even a speck behind.

Shoko rubbed the corners of her eyes, sore from staying up too many nights.

"Forget I said anything. Looking at you, at least I don't have to worry about you ending up on my table anytime soon."

Before she had finished speaking, hurried footsteps sounded from the other end of the corridor.

Satoru Gojo pushed open the partition door, his collar askew, several bags of Tokyo-exclusive desserts in his hand.

Suguru Geto followed behind him, holding a thick stack of mission files.

"Shoko! I've been so bored these past few days I'm going to lose my mind!" Satoru Gojo casually tossed the bags onto the table, then turned to stare at Yang Jian. "Heard you made the old men eat shit in Nagoya. Nice work."

Unmoved, Yang Jian looked at Satoru Gojo. "Do you have any bank cards with no names registered to them?"

Satoru Gojo lowered his sunglasses a little. "The Gojo Clan's Black Accounts are a dime a dozen. What do you need them for?"

"To collect a debt." Yang Jian's tone was bland. "Give me two if you have them. I'm taking a trip to Kyoto tonight."

"Kyoto? Other than a few shady underground gatherings, there hasn't been any decent prey there lately." Suguru Geto set the files aside, keenly sensing Yang Jian's intent. "You're going to wade into the black market?"

"A thirty-million bounty for my head." Yang Jian glanced at Suguru Geto. "The clients are surviving fringe members of the Time Vessel Association."

Suguru Geto went still, a shadow settling in his eyes.

The name "Time Vessel Association" struck a nerve somewhere in his subconscious.

The ugliness of those ignorant non-sorcerers was a stain he still had not fully come to terms with.

"Do you need Jujutsu High to put together a list?" Suguru Geto asked.

Yang Jian tossed the broken glass dropper into the wastebasket. "No need to be so meticulous."

Night fell.

The Old Quarry on the outskirts of Kyoto.

It was a large, abandoned funnel-shaped mining pit.

Several large iron drums filled with kerosene stood at the bottom, their flames bathing the surroundings in red.

A dozen or so curse users in assorted clothing gathered around them.

Several surviving fringe members of the Time Vessel Association carried black leather cases as they negotiated with a hooded figure.

The cases contained gold bars.

They intended to use this fortune to organize a hunt.

Yang Jian stood atop the cliff at the very edge of the pit, coldly watching the people below.

He took the new Untraceable Phone Shiu Kong had given him from his pocket, aimed it downward, snapped a photo, and pressed save.

He would trade these heads to Shiu Kong later for information on higher-grade cursed spirits.

His flesh split open, and red light erupted without warning.

The space below was instantly hollowed out and stripped away. Several curse users on the perimeter had no chance to react before their upper and lower bodies were bizarrely separated and pulled far apart.

Their screams were still caught in their throats when Ghost Shadow spread across the entire pit floor.

Holding the rust-covered Chopping Knife in one hand, Yang Jian leaped from the cliff, red light sealing off the bottom of the pit like chains.

This harvest would leave no survivors.