Rain

The sky outside the window had darkened.

Clouds rolled in from the west, blocking out the morning sunlight completely.

The forecast said it would rain tonight.

Rain was good.

Visibility was poor in the rain, sounds were muffled, and footprints in the mud would wash away.

Yang Jian drew the curtains.

Eight hours remained until dark.

He lay back on the bed and, with his eyes closed, ran through Sagamihara's terrain three times in his head.

The direction the entrance faced, the windows of the Prefab House, the routing of the outdoor AC unit's pipes, the gradient of the concrete ramp.

Every detail was a variable.

The fewer variables, the fewer surprises.

The springs creaked beneath his back.

Under the pillow, the Chopping Knife's cold handle rested against the back of his neck. The smell of rust was so faint he could barely detect it.

He rolled onto his side and glanced outside.

The clouds hung low, and the western sky was already pitch-black. Wind bent the trees in the yard. Tonight's rain would be heavy.

Good weather for getting things done.

At ten to six that evening, Yang Jian stood outside his dorm room with the black cloth bag containing the Chopping Knife on his back, adjusting where he had tucked the blade inside his coat.

The smell of instant noodles drifted down the hallway.

Blue light shone through the gap beneath Satoru Gojo's door, from either a phone or a television, with the volume turned low.

Yang Jian headed straight for the stairs without stopping to say hello.

He traveled using his Ghost Domain-from Jujutsu High to the mountainside in Sagamihara.

It was still dusk outside, but he was already standing at the entrance to the dirt road.

The gravel road beneath his feet was uneven, with straight cedars on either side. Darkness was falling fast, and the light between the rows of trees had already been smothered.

Yang Jian turned his phone's brightness down to its lowest setting and checked the satellite screenshot Shiu Kong had sent: the concrete entrance ramp was on the east side, the main entrance faced southeast, and the large prefab building faced due west.

He did not take the dirt road.

Yang Jian stood among the trees for two minutes, mapping the entire clearing in his head.

Then he circled around to the north side and sent Ghost Shadow ahead-silent, giving off no heat, and incapable of triggering any alarm designed to detect cursed energy.

The large prefab building's north wall had no windows, only two exhaust pipes extending through the roof.

Two people, one heading south and the other north, exchanged a few words as they passed.

A shift change.

His timing was perfect.

Yang Jian waited thirty seconds after the two went their separate ways, then stepped out of the trees and headed toward the small prefab building.

The door was unlocked.

Inside were a folding table, two chairs, and a radio with a blinking red indicator light.

A paper cup held half a cup of cold coffee. Beside it lay a convenience store receipt timestamped 4:17 p.m.

He checked the radio, switched it to a different channel, and stuffed it into the black cloth bag.

The underground entrance was at the concrete ramp on the east side of the large building.

The talisman papers pasted on the rolling shutter followed Kusumoto's standard format: two sheets, one on either side, written in ink that set hard and would not bleed.

Yang Jian sent Ghost Shadow through a crack in the ground to release the shutter's latch from inside. The shutter rolled up just far enough for someone to duck beneath it.

Two flights of stairs led down between cement walls. Recessed yellow ceiling lights stood four meters apart. Several were out due to faulty connections, and slight traces of seepage marked the floor.

The corridor forked at the end: a storage room to the left, a deeper passage to the right. The temperature on the right was noticeably two degrees lower, and the AC pipes ran along that side.

Yang Jian went right.

Two guards stood at the exit on the second basement level.

They were back-to-back, about five paces apart. One was looking at his phone, while the other ate from a boxed meal.

Yang Jian paused for a second at the bend in the corridor.

Ghost Shadow rose from the floor-without a sound.

Not even a stir of air-

He seized both guards from behind by their necks at once, suppressing their cursed energy circuits. Neither had time to react before they slumped to the floor.

They were not dead, only temporarily unconscious.

Yang Jian dragged them into the storage room and wedged them into gaps between the shelves, taking their radios and the keys clipped to their waists.

The second basement level held two rows of culture dishes on iron racks. Black light-blocking covers concealed the contents of each dish, while the numbers on the measuring instruments glowed green in the darkness.

He counted sixteen in all.

They were not cursed spirits, at least not within the normal definition.

This was what Shiu Kong had meant by "still operational."

Yang Jian took a series of photos with his phone, leaving the flash off. The equipment's green glow provided barely enough light. He sent them to Shiu Kong with a line of text: "Check the purchase records for this batch. Find out which supplier it came through."

Farther inside, an iron door stood at the deepest end of the second basement level. Its lock was mechanical rather than electronic, suggesting they did not want electronic records of whatever was stored inside.

He tried three keys. The third opened it.

Beyond the iron door was a separate room, wider than the corridor, with a metal table in the center. Three sealed glass containers sat on it.

The things inside the containers were very quiet.

Yang Jian did not approach. He scanned them with the Ghost Eye from two paces away.

Of the three containers, two held things shaped like fingers. The third contained an irregular grayish-purple fragment, with fine black veins extending from its edges, pressed against the glass and writhing very, very slowly.

It was still alive.

Yang Jian took half a step back and closed the iron door again.

He stood there for three seconds, considering the significance of this discovery.

Kusumoto's budget category was "sealing maintenance," but this place was not maintaining seals at all-it was conducting experiments.

Purchase records, suppliers, corporate registration details: they were all threads. At the other end lay Kusumoto's accounts, and behind those accounts lay an unknown number of places like this.

He sent Shiu Kong a second message: "This site in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, has two basement levels and sixteen culture dishes. Behind the iron door at the far end are three sealed glass containers. Two hold finger-shaped objects. The third holds a living sample that's still proliferating."

He paused, then added one final sentence.

"Keep an eye on the Ichikawa site. I want to know whether its layout is the same."

Shiu Kong replied almost immediately: "Understood."

Then came a stretch of silence. About two minutes later, he sent another message: "What are you planning to do with this place?"

Yang Jian put his phone back in his pocket and stood there for a while, listening to the outdoor AC unit overhead. Its sound was even, its frequency steady.

He left the three containers and the culture dishes untouched and examined the memories of the two subdued guards.

All they knew was that they guarded this level. They did not know the name of the person in charge upstairs. Their assignment had been subcontracted through an intermediary, they were paid in cash each month, and they had never met the actual client.

The chain ended here.

Yang Jian put those memories back exactly as they had been, then erased three hours of their memories from tonight.

When they woke, they would think they had fallen asleep at their posts.

Getting out was faster than getting in. The rolling shutter lowered back into place, and he returned to the dirt road's entrance. As his Ghost Domain receded, he was already out of the mountains.

Rain began to fall just as he withdrew his domain.

It was raining in Tokyo too. The pipe outside the hallway window began to drip with a chaotic rhythm, tap-tap-tap-tap, without any pattern at all.

Yang Jian returned to his dorm room, hung up his coat, adjusted the Chopping Knife's position, and sat on the edge of the bed.

His points stood at 57,660, unchanged.

He had killed no people or cursed spirits tonight, so naturally he had earned no points.

But Kusumoto's route map now had one more confirmed location.

He picked up the Flip Phone and looked through the photos he had taken that night.

The green glow of the culture dishes, the iron door's keyhole, the grayish-purple thing in the glass container slowly writhing against the wall.

The flow of money was a map. The more points marked on that map, the more he could uncover in the end.

Enough. This would do for now.

The springs creaked as Yang Jian flopped onto the bed.

The Chopping Knife's handle under his pillow pressed into the back of his head, and he habitually pushed the blade aside.

Yang Jian closed his eyes.

Tomorrow, he would start with Ichikawa.

P.S. (There will still be three updates tomorrow. As for this character's unnatural dialogue, I'll study how to improve it and try to make the reading experience smoother for you. I won't revise the chapters I've already stockpiled, though; those only go up to around chapter 50.)