"Things really were getting more and more complicated," Uchiha Naruto murmured as he opened his eyes.
His right eye still had two tomoe, but three black tomoe were now spinning in his left.
[Sharingan LV2 (50/100)]
The Three-Tomoe Sharingan in Uchiha Naruto's left eye had not awakened because emotional stimulation had caused his brain to secrete special chakra. It was entirely the result of allocating points through the system.
This bug had existed in the original Naruto game: upgrading the Sharingan in both eyes to LV3 required 100 proficiency points, but upgrading just one eye only required 50. The system had inherited that bug as well.
Although only one eye had the Three-Tomoe Sharingan, it was still a hypnotic eye capable of casting genjutsu.
When Uchiha Naruto first saw the blond delinquent hanging around with the True Faith Society's monks and gang members, he had thought it was the old story of a scumbag brother conspiring with outsiders to steal the family property.
If that had been all, Uchiha Naruto would not have needed to intervene. He could simply have informed Matsudaira Chiyo. With her influence, she would certainly have been able to protect the Takasaki sisters.
But he had never expected a kidnapping to be planned specifically because they were twins, or for it to involve the True Faith Society, a new religious movement. Anything involving religion became extremely troublesome once you got entangled in it.
And sacrifice? That was outright cult behavior!
More importantly...
The words "supernatural" and "sacrifice" struck a sensitive nerve in Uchiha Naruto.
Unlike those low-ranking gang members, Uchiha Naruto knew that monsters and evil spirits existed in this world, along with genuine supernatural powers.
Could this religious leader, who supposedly possessed real mystical powers, actually be a Superhuman too?
Yet according to the Six-Armed Monster he had encountered, there were no human Superhumans such as Onmyoji in this world. Uchiha Naruto alone wielded such powers.
Had the Six-Armed Monster's information been wrong, or was the world changing, with human Superhumans beginning to emerge after monsters and evil spirits?
The thought that events might spiral beyond anything he could imagine left Uchiha Naruto unable to eat or sleep in peace. Monsters and evil spirits were one thing, but if humans were also beginning to wield supernatural powers, that was definitely bad news for him.
"The leader will demonstrate his powers at the service, and there happens to be one at six this evening..." Uchiha Naruto mused, tapping his index finger against the table.
After school, Uchiha Naruto called Takasaki Tsuki directly to ask for time off, then left the school grounds and headed to Kita Ward. He transformed into an ordinary, unremarkable-looking student, went into an internet café, and paid for a computer.
Japan's household registration system was very loosely administered. After the war, wariness of the strict registration system established for conscription during the militarist era had made opposition to tight household registration controls politically correct. Internet cafés did not require identification either; you only had to pay.
Uchiha Naruto turned on the computer and searched for information about the True Faith Society.
These new religious movements were all legally established with official approval. Since they needed to spread their teachings, they also understood the importance of keeping up with the times. Many had their own websites, and some even opened Twitter accounts to converse with their followers, who could also make donations online.
The True Faith Society's website was polished and modern, far more attractive than the drab official websites of some Japanese prefectures, whose monotonous homepages had remained unchanged for ten or twenty years.
Uchiha Naruto browsed the information on the website. The True Faith Society was a new religious movement registered in Chichibu District, Saitama Prefecture, with religious corporation status. It had been registered for only three years, but its website claimed that it had more than two hundred monastics registered with the Ministry of Education's Religious Affairs Division, a hundred thousand lay practitioners, and three hundred thousand followers!
Of course, the True Faith Society would inevitably boast on its own website. There was no telling how inflated those figures were. The entire population of Chichibu District did not even add up to that many people.
Even so, if only a tenth or a twentieth of those numbers were real, its growth would still be nothing short of explosive for a new religious movement registered just three years earlier.
Uchiha Naruto raised an eyebrow, noted down the address of the True Faith Society's headquarters, and left the internet café.
Let me meet this leader and see whether he's a fraud deceiving the world or a genuine Superhuman!
Mount Bukō stood 1,300 meters above sea level in Yokose Town, Chichibu District, Saitama Prefecture. It had been named for the armor of Take-no-Mikoto enshrined there.
At the foot of Mount Bukō stood an enormous Japanese-style compound. Its main gate and several towers inside displayed a distinctly Buddhist style. Beneath the eaves of the main gate hung a plaque reading "True Faith Society," its bold, sweeping characters clearly the work of a master calligrapher.
A young monk with delicate features stood waiting anxiously, dressed in white robes.
"It's almost six! Why haven't the Iijima family's people arrived yet? Damn it, don't tell me they ran off with the money! I knew those yakuza were all scum! Useless trash! Parasites!"
The young monk cursed loudly, his face twisted with anger.
Just then, a Subaru pulled up. A handsome monk of about thirty, with thick eyebrows and large eyes, got out along with a married couple, who led a pair of children around ten years old out of the car.
"Praise be to our leader! For you two lay practitioners to offer your children to the True Faith Society is an act of boundless merit! Please enter here. The service will begin shortly."
With devout expressions, the couple led their bewildered children into the compound under the guidance of a monk.
"Junior Brother Kimura, have you still not completed the task our leader assigned you? I've already brought the twin boys," the older monk said, his expression provocative.
"Damn it... those twin sisters will be here any moment, Senior Brother Ida," Monk Kimura said, lowering his head reluctantly.
"You can't even manage such a trivial task. It looks like you'll soon fall out of favor! When our leader performed the initiation rite for me last night, he said he would impart supernatural powers to me after this sacrifice. Soon, I'll possess divine abilities and mystical powers just like him!"
Senior Brother Ida patted Monk Kimura's pale, pretty-boy face with a smug grin, then swaggered away.
"You bastard!"
Several staff-wielding monks stood guard beside the young monk, but they all stared straight ahead, pretending they had seen and heard nothing. Those two were the leader's most favored disciples, far beyond the standing of ordinary monks like themselves.
Over the next half hour, cars continued to arrive, and followers entered the compound. Dozens of vehicles filled the parking lot outside.
At last, six o'clock arrived. The sky was gloomy and overcast, and a fine drizzle began to fall, but none of that dampened the enthusiasm of the hundreds of followers gathered there. They stood in a dense crowd in the compound's central courtyard.
The True Faith Society's worship hall had a very unusual design. It was a semi-open structure, and its floor had neither wooden boards nor tiles, leaving the bare earth exposed.
Inside, the ground-floor murals depicted the Buddha subduing demons in vivid reds and greens. A clay statue of a Wisdom King, twenty feet tall, sat cross-legged on a lotus pedestal, its eyes glaring wide and its face terrifying.
"Leader!"
"Leader!"
"Leader!"
Amid the followers' fervent cries, a corpulent monk with a bulging belly appeared on the top floor of the tower, wearing an ornate purple kasaya.
The leader looked bloated and greasy-faced, no different from an ordinary office worker going through a midlife crisis except for his completely bald head. Yet a golden halo of Buddhist light actually shone behind his head!
It glittered in the darkness, brilliant and dazzling.
With a sweep of his sleeve, the leader leaped straight from the tower, seven or eight meters above the ground, showing no fear that his belly might hit the earth like an overripe, swollen tomato and burst into a pulpy mess.
A hazy golden Buddhist palm formed in midair, caught the leader's enormous body, and gently lowered him to the ground.
Thanks to all you dear readers, this book will get its first trial promotion tomorrow. As you all know, a new book's performance now depends entirely on how many readers keep up with the latest chapters. I hope you'll support it by bookmarking it and continuing to read. Thank you.
Before you continue