At the northern border of Great Xia's imperial domain, Yuya stepped out of thin air.
His expression was indifferent, his white robes purer than snow.
He surveyed the region.
The area was sparsely populated.
There were no towns clustered here.
The terrain was rugged, backed by mountains, with a few scattered villages settled among them.
So even though imperial soldiers had swept through the region many times,
some followers of the Jashin Cult had always slipped through the net.
Upon arriving, Yuya could clearly sense a strange energy permeating the world around him.
There was something familiar about it.
The heart of that energy seemed to lie in a mountain village.
Yuya did not hesitate. A moment later, he traversed space,
arriving at the source of the strange energy.
But he found rivers of blood and corpses strewn everywhere.
The villagers from almost every household had been drained of their flesh and blood,
reduced to skeletal remains.
The only one still alive
was a little girl, standing in the center.
Skeletal corpses lay piled beneath her feet.
Black and white stripes spread across her body, making her look utterly eerie.
She looked exactly like the future Akatsuki member named Hidan
when he performed his ritual to the evil god.
Sensing Yuya's arrival,
the little girl slowly turned toward him.
Her eyes held no spark of intelligence, only an instinctive fear and murky confusion.
Perhaps out of fear, she bared her teeth and clawed at Yuya like a wild beast.
In an instant, her tiny mouth split open, the slit stretching all the way to her ears.
Like a slit-mouthed woman, she looked hideously terrifying.
Yuya frowned. A moment later, he formed a Truth-Seeking Orb in his hand.
He sent it down toward the little girl.
Boom!
The terrifying energy of