Rabbit Escape X Zetsu X Exorcism

Everything Jiang Ye knew about this Shikigami flashed through his mind.

Rabbit Escape was the only purely utility-type Shikigami in the Ten Shadows Technique. Its individual offensive power was almost zero, and it couldn't even beat an ordinary adult in a head-on fight.

But what made it unique was its ability to summon thousands upon thousands of rabbit clones.

They could blanket a battlefield, block sight, and interfere with perception.

Every clone was solid. Running into one could trip someone, and one pouncing at them could block their vision. When the dense white tide of rabbits swept across the ground, it could even drown out an enemy's footsteps completely.

More terrifying still, as long as the core body wasn't destroyed, the clones could be generated endlessly, replacing as many as were killed.

The corners of Jiang Ye's mouth curled up slightly.

The thing was fucking useless on a frontal battlefield, but in a place like Meteor City, it was practically a god-tier skill for escaping, relocating, sowing chaos, and gathering intelligence.

But his smile soon faded.

To bring Rabbit Escape under his control, he first had to complete the Exorcism Ritual.

The Ten Shadows Technique's rules for exorcism required the sorcerer to defeat the Shikigami personally and complete the ritual alone from beginning to end. If an outsider intervened, the ritual would immediately fail.

So he had to get stronger first-at least strong enough to beat a rabbit.

Jiang Ye sat in the shack, leaned against the cold sheet-metal wall, and slowly let out a breath.

He had already learned Ten.

Next were the other three of the Four Major Principles.

The second of the Four Major Principles was Zetsu.

It involved completely closing all Aura Nodes, cutting off the flow of Aura between the inside and outside of the body.

The film of Aura over the body vanished completely, and one's presence fell silent.

Zetsu served two purposes.

The first was to conceal one's presence in battle, preventing enemies from using Aura to sense one's location.

The second was to stop the constant consumption of Aura, giving the body time to devote itself fully to generating more.

Before he learned Ten, his Aura Nodes had been wide open, and his Aura had constantly leaked out.

Now that he had learned Ten, it was like narrowing a water outlet, but the water was still flowing.

Zetsu, on the other hand, shut the valve off completely, putting the body at rest so it could devote itself fully to generating new Aura.

Jiang Ye didn't rush to start training.

He looked up at the acid rain gradually easing outside the shack, then cocked his head and listened to the sounds outside.

He could still hear metal clanging and faint voices in the distance, but there was nothing obviously unusual.

"I can't stay here."

He murmured to himself.

He still wasn't sure which gang the bald man belonged to, but a dozen or more dead members would be a major matter for any gang.

The gangs of the central district would investigate this part of the outskirts sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before they followed the clues to this shack.

In Meteor City, the first rule of staying alive was not to remain somewhere that had been marked.

He stood, stuffed all his meager belongings into the shadow space, and took another look at the ramshackle shelter he had lived in for who knew how long.

A plastic sheet that let the rain through, moldy cardboard, and half a bottle of murky water in the corner.

At a glance, there was nothing worth missing.

Jiang Ye stepped across the wet ground and walked into the shadows outside the shack.

A length of rusty iron pipe cast a long, thin shadow there, slanting across the muddy ground.

The moment Jiang Ye stepped into it, he seemed to be sucked into a pool of black water, instantly merging with the shadow.

He then began moving forward at an extremely fast speed.

Edge of the central district · abandoned scrapyard.

Jiang Ye emerged soundlessly from the shadow of a pile of discarded iron drums. Only after confirming that no one was around did he crouch down and catch his breath.

Shadow Stealth didn't consume much Aura, but it was still somewhat taxing on this malnourished twelve-year-old body.

Before him lay a vast open-air scrapyard.

Rusted metal frames were piled haphazardly together, like graveyards of steel skeletons.

Broken glass, rags, rusty screws, and scrap parts whose original forms were impossible to make out covered the ground.

The air was thick with the mixed smell of rust and machine oil.

In Meteor City, scrapyards were the most common and safest hiding places.

They were so dirty and chaotic that no one wanted to search through them, making them natural shelters for the drifters.

Jiang Ye found a relatively flat metal plate and sat down, surveying his surroundings.

Once he was sure it was safe, he crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees.

"Training first."

He closed his eyes and began using Ten.

A thin film of Aura quickly covered his body, its warm, gentle glow clinging to his skin. His Aura Nodes closed, and his Aura stopped leaking out.

He then began gradually drawing it inward.

He pulled all the Aura back from the surface of his body, like dragging a spread-out blanket back bit by bit.

The Aura film gradually thinned and disappeared. His Aura Nodes closed one by one, his skin cooled, and his breathing became barely audible.

A few seconds later, every trace of Aura around Jiang Ye had completely vanished.

The person sitting there seemed to be nothing more than an ordinary, frail twelve-year-old drifter on the verge of starvation.

There was no oppressive presence, no glow, and even his breathing was as faint as the wind.

Zetsu, complete!

A wholly new current of warmth welled up from deep within his dantian.

It was pure Aura generated by his body working at full capacity without any being consumed, like a stream flowing into a dry riverbed.

Jiang Ye quietly sensed the rate at which the Aura was being generated. It was faster than he had expected.

Though his body's foundation was poor, once his Aura Nodes had been forced open, his efficiency at regenerating Aura was far greater than an ordinary person's.

He waited until his Aura reserves were about thirty percent full, then activated Ten again.

A film of Aura instantly covered his whole body. His Aura Nodes opened just the right amount, neither leaking nor strained, as if his skin had been dressed in a perfectly fitted garment.

Ten, switch.

Zetsu, off.

Ten, on.

For the next few hours, Jiang Ye practiced alternating between the two states over and over.

Ten → Zetsu → Ten → Zetsu, repeating the cycle until there was no longer any gap in the moment of switching that caused his presence to fluctuate.

Beads of sweat slid down his temples, soaking his worn collar.

The twelve-year-old boy sat in the middle of the scrap pile, his back straight, his breathing as calm as a lake.

Toward evening, he opened his eyes.

The switch was smooth, with no gaps and no fluctuations.

"I've got the basics of Ten and Zetsu down."

He rolled his stiff shoulders and looked up at the sky.

There was no real sunset in Meteor City. The sky only went from grayish white to dark gray, then from dark gray to pitch-black.

There's still the third principle, Ren.

Jiang Ye thought it over.

Ren involved releasing a large amount of Aura far beyond normal levels in one burst while maintaining Ten.

If Ten was a wrapping, Ren was an eruption.

Training Ren required a sufficiently stable Ten. Otherwise, the moment the Aura burst out, the Aura Nodes would explode.

Jiang Ye didn't rush to try Ren.

Instead, he began testing the Ten Shadows Technique's auxiliary abilities. Besides the shadow space, shadows could also be used in combat.

For example, shadow threads for keeping watch, and shadow barriers and shadow armor for defense.

After familiarizing himself with them a little, he stood and began walking through the scrapyard.

As he walked, he studied the terrain, looking for a suitable place to perform the Exorcism Ritual.

The Exorcism Ritual didn't require an altar, but it did require a relatively enclosed space where, at the very least, outsiders couldn't interfere.

Otherwise, if the ritual was invalidated, all his efforts would be wasted.

He made his way through the scrap heaps for nearly two hours before pushing aside a hanging curtain of rusted iron and discovering a narrow entrance.

He turned sideways and squeezed in at an angle, finding an enclosed space of roughly fifty square meters inside.

Thick metal plates surrounded it on all four sides, several beams crossed overhead, and a layer of dried rags covered the floor.

After setting up a layer of shadow threads outside to keep watch, Jiang Ye entered.

The entrance was extremely narrow. His twelve-year-old body could just squeeze through sideways, but an adult definitely couldn't get in.

He walked around the space and tapped the walls with a finger.

The iron plates were thick, and the sound was dull.

"This is the place."

Jiang Ye sat down and shook everything he had left out of the shadow space.

Two daggers, half a bag of hard biscuits, his last Jenny banknote, and two strips of dried meat taken from corpses' clothes.

The biscuits were nearly gone, and only the last two strips of dried meat remained.

He picked up a strip of dried meat and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly as his gaze fell on the shadow lying quietly on the floor.

"If I put this off any longer, I'll starve to death before the gang finds me."

Jiang Ye swallowed the last mouthful of dried meat and rose to his feet.

Deep inside an abandoned scrapyard on the outskirts of Meteor City, in an enclosed space made of scrap iron, the twelve-year-old boy slowly raised his hands in the light coming through the gaps.

He interlaced his fingers, arranging them into an unfamiliar hand shadow.

It was completely different from the wolf's head of the Divine Dogs.

He crossed his hands with their backs facing each other and hooked his little fingers together, then hooked his index fingers together. The upper index finger and thumbs formed the rabbit's head, while the lower middle and ring fingers stood upright to imitate a pair of long rabbit ears, projecting the outline of a rabbit's head.

The shape projected onto the wall looked like a crouching rabbit.

Jiang Ye took a deep breath.

The Aura he had just fully replenished began to surge. All his Aura Nodes opened, and the flow of Aura rushed along his arms to his fingertips.

"Exorcism Ritual... begin."

Jiang Ye's voice echoed through the enclosed space with a low hum.

"Rabbit Escape!"

The instant the words left his mouth, the rabbit-shaped hand shadow on the wall trembled violently.

The next second, the shadow burst apart.

Thousands upon thousands of white shapes poured out from its depths, churning, spreading, and exploding outward like a fountain.

In the blink of an eye, the enclosed space was filled with white, red-eyed rabbits, each the size of a fist. They hopped on the floor, collided with the walls, and trampled one another in the air, every one of them making a faint rustling sound.

Packed densely together, they filled the entire room.

The tide of rabbits engulfed Jiang Ye up to his chest. Countless paws trod on his shoulders, head, and arms, their furry touch coming at him from every direction.

And in the deepest part of that white sea, a rabbit with a pattern on its belly was quietly watching Jiang Ye.

That was Rabbit Escape's core body!

It crouched in a corner against the iron wall, a size larger than the clones around it. Its entire body was snow-white, and the pattern "品々物之比礼" was printed on its belly.

It tilted its head, looking at the human who had entered the ritual's domain.

The next second, thousands of white rabbits turned their heads in unison.

The rustling stopped.

Every red eye turned toward Jiang Ye at once, an exceptionally eerie sight in the pitch-dark surroundings.

"..."

Jiang Ye swallowed, and his mouth slowly widened into a grin.

"Come on."

"Let me exorcise you properly."