Miss Delia, the Special Grade Imaginary Vengeful Spirit

Establishing this binding vow had consumed roughly thirty percent of his cursed energy. That was perfectly acceptable.

Because now I've mastered "Falling Blossom Emotion," a secret art of Jujutsu Society's Three Great Families.

No hand signs were necessary, nor did he need to focus on the direction or timing of attacks within the domain. As though it had gained a will of its own, cursed energy spread evenly around Dai Li's body, forming an invisible barrier just beyond his skin.

The spikes fired by the cursed spirit had yet to dissipate and shot straight toward Dai Li's abdomen.

But the moment the spikes of pitch-black cursed energy grazed the barrier, an equal amount of cursed energy automatically surged out and shattered them. Not even a wisp slipped through.

Now Dai Li's cursed energy could automatically counter a domain's sure-hit attacks and repel every physical strike.

How convenient. This is nothing like those projected shields that need my attention to control and crack on impact-fully automatic defense. No matter what angle an attack comes from or how densely they rain down, my cursed energy neutralizes them the instant they touch me.

"Now it's my turn to attack, you cursed spirit wearing human skin!"

"I am... Miss Delia."

A thin, cold little girl's voice drifted through the gaps of every stall at once, softly drowning out the knocking that filled the corridor.

"Huh? Who cares what your name is? You made an enemy of me the moment you locked me inside your innate domain. It's too late to beg for mercy now!"

Dai Li stopped holding back. With a thought, he sent thirty projected cursed tools sweeping toward the doors on both sides like a sudden downpour.

Dull crashes rang out one after another as blades smashed through the wooden doors. Rotten boards speckled with mold and black stains flew in all directions, and door after door was cleaved open.

Yet there was nothing behind them, only a few wisps of mist that vanished almost immediately. The cursed spirit's true body remained nowhere to be seen.

Cursed spikes still shot at him incessantly from all around, but Falling Blossom Emotion blocked every one. Dai Li continued forward over the shattered wood.

He reasoned that destroying the wooden doors within the domain should not only stop "Miss Delia" from continually attacking, but also draw her out. She could hardly remain unaffected while her innate domain was being destroyed. It would probably keep breaking down until she could no longer sustain it, then collapse.

When the axe-shaped cursed tools had reduced dozens of doors around Dai Li to bare frames, the unusually dark door of the third stall at the end of the corridor quietly stirred.

With a faint creak, the door swung inward, and Miss Delia slowly stepped out.

She wore an old sailor uniform washed almost white. Her bare feet were wet, and her black hair hung over most of her pallid face.

"Who... are you? Why... are you disturbing me?"

"Stay... here."

Her young, childish voice rang through the domain, and layers of echoes surged in from every direction.

More deadly than that eerie, childish voice was the wooden floor beneath Dai Li suddenly splitting open. It did not burst apart under a blow of cursed energy; it silently disintegrated. The floor of the entire corridor vanished as though it had melted away.

"This is her domain, after all. Did she change the environment with just a thought? What's down there?!"

Directly beneath the floor sat an old-fashioned ceramic toilet of impossible size. Dark curses and water stains covered its ivory body. Its opening was wide enough to swallow several people with ease, and murky, blackened sewage filled more than half its bowl.

"A toilet?!"

Dai Li now remembered the Japanese legend of Miss Delia: she was the vengeful spirit of a girl who had died from bullying in a girls' restroom. Knocking three times on the third stall would summon her.

Furious at being disturbed, she would stuff whoever had awakened her into the toilet, and that person would disappear from the world forever.

Dai Li knew perfectly well that if he fell into the sewage formed from the powerful curses inside this toilet, he would never get out. The curses within were enough to engulf him. Even Falling Blossom Emotion could not protect him; his total cursed energy could not match the curses in that pool. This had to be the finishing move of Miss Delia's domain.

"A binding vow that lets her store up massive amounts of curses and blend them into this sewage by reducing her usual cursed energy?"

Dai Li plummeted. He immediately twisted at the waist and projected cursed tools, trying to hook them onto the remaining doorframes on either side for leverage. But the walls were dissolving too. The entire domain was tilting and collapsing toward the giant toilet, leaving him nowhere solid to plant his feet.

Miss Delia said nothing more. Her hollow black eye sockets remained fixed on Dai Li as the thick curses surrounding her slowly spread across the water, waiting to swallow him whole the instant he fell in.

Just before he plunged into the bone-corroding sewage, Dai Li's cursed energy surged. Two broad tower shields appeared beneath his feet. He planted his toes on them and used the opposing force of their descent to launch himself upward. Cursed energy poured continuously into the shields, holding him steady above the sewage.

At the same time, Falling Blossom Emotion resisted the relentless downward pull within the domain. Without this means of countering a domain, standing on shields in midair would have been useless.

Miss Delia has poured almost all her cursed energy into her finishing move. Her cursed energy defenses are weak. Now's the time to land a fatal blow!

Once he steadied himself, Dai Li did not pause for even a moment. He drove his Projection Cursed Technique at full power. More than a hundred cursed tools of varying lengths materialized in succession-katanas, short daggers, long halberds, and faceted darts. Their blades reflected the sewage's dim gleam as they packed together, all aimed at Miss Delia above the porcelain.

With a thought from Dai Li, the cursed tools poured forth like a torrential rain. Their piercing whistles drowned out the echoes within the space.

Miss Delia hurriedly summoned curses to defend herself, but she could not withstand the cursed tools' saturation attack. More than a hundred weapons pierced her shoulders, abdomen, and limbs in succession. Gashes split her pallid skin, and foul blood gushed out.

She staggered violently. Cursed energy shredded her flimsy sailor uniform, and she nearly toppled off the toilet's rim. Most of the cursed energy roiling around her dimmed in an instant.

Gravely wounded, Miss Delia neither screamed nor retaliated. Her hollow black eye sockets stared fixedly at Dai Li, as though committing his face to memory.

A damp, blackened wooden door abruptly appeared in the void behind her, indistinguishable from the countless doors within the domain.

"Hah... whew."

Dai Li was panting heavily now. That last attack had taken a considerable toll on him.

She's trying to escape! But I can't stop her inside her own domain. Can I only stand here and watch her get away?

Dai Li now understood profoundly just how great an advantage Domain Expansion offered in a battle between opponents of the same level. Even after learning a countermeasure like Falling Blossom Emotion, there was still an enormous gap.

Just as Miss Delia, the special grade imaginary vengeful spirit, tried to escape using her cursed technique-

The domain collapsed.

Dai Li and Miss Delia returned to the school. The closed-barrier Domain Expansion had crushed and demolished the entire restroom, leaving heaps of broken bricks and tiles scattered beneath their feet.

Miss Delia's greatest mistake was trying to escape with her cursed technique after Dai Li had gravely wounded her. A domain collapsing because there was not enough cursed energy to sustain it would also trigger the penalty period of cursed technique burnout.

Miss Delia's body fractured along with her domain. In cursed technique burnout, she could barely even use cursed energy to repair herself, let alone mount another counterattack or escape.

Dai Li did not hesitate. Every remaining cursed tool bared its edge at once. Thirty weapons converged on a single point, piercing straight through the core of the red-clad cursed spirit before him.

The special grade imaginary vengeful spirit "Miss Delia"-successfully exorcised.