Chapter 90: Kagome Hall (18)
Chapter 90: Kagome Hall (18)
“Do not listen to his nonsense. He only relied on the power of the Vinaya Mirror. Go and hand the mirror over to me…”
Because her hands and feet were tied, Toriumi Arisu could not move either. Utsumi and Wakae were in the same situation.
Just then, Toriumi Kotaro’s voice came from above the basement.
The basement had no lighting, only a few candlesticks, so the light was still very dim. Toriumi Kotaro could not see what was happening below.
After the wooden ladder broke, he immediately ran to find another replacement ladder.
“Hey! Nishizuka… what’s going on down there? I found a ladder outside.”
“Almost everything is under control, Toriumi. Come down and rescue everyone!”
Fang Jing shouted upward. Toriumi Kotaro lowered a collapsible ladder and finally made his way down belatedly.
“Wow! The situation is really bad.”
He glanced around and found that only a few people had survived.
“Hurry up and rescue the others…”
Fang Jing did not release Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi but instead found a rope to tie him up.
Toriumi Kotaro first freed Utsumi and then rescued Wakae.
“Utsumi, take Wakae and get out first.”
“Okay!”
Utsumi cast a disgusted look at the demon’s nest-like basement, picked up the young maid Wakae, and climbed up the collapsible ladder together.
Toriumi Arisu stood up. She picked up a sharp knife that Nagakabe Fuyuko had dropped on the ground and walked toward the Hexagram magic circle.
“Arisu, what are you planning to do?”
Toriumi Kotaro was somewhat surprised and also a bit uneasy. He did not understand why the girl was holding a knife and walking toward that spot. The Hexagram magic circle on the ground and the eerie bronze mirror gave off an extremely unsettling feeling.
“To end this tragic misfortune.”
The girl spoke as she walked. “Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi, you have no idea what this mirror truly represents. The Vinaya Mirror is something that should never be touched by human children. It originates from the darkness of the netherworld. Kagome Hall itself was built to bury this mirror from another realm.”
“This land and the mansion are fused together, forming a mirror-like world. Only in this world can the power of the Vinaya Mirror be gradually sealed.”
“If the mirror’s power were to recover again, it would create unimaginable disasters.”
She held the knife in her right hand, made a cut on her left palm, and then clenched her fist, intending to let drops of blood fall onto the mirror.
Thud!
The ground shook, and the mirror on the Hexagram magic circle trembled.
Whoosh! The candlesticks on the distant table swayed as well.
Toriumi Arisu’s blank eyes shifted to the Vinaya Mirror. On the bronze mirror lying flat on the ground, a grotesque, uneven human face eerily appeared.
It was an expressionless, pale, mask-like face. “It” pressed against the other side of the mirror, as if the mirror were a pane of glass separating “it” from the world on this side.
The uneven face opened its right eye—a red, slit-pupiled eye, like that of a snake or a cat, staring directly at Toriumi Arisu on the other side of the mirror.
Although her eyes were supposed to be blind, at that very moment, this scene was clearly imprinted in her mind.
Ah!
She cried out, her hand trembling, and a drop of blood fell to the ground.
The next second, she was repelled by an invisible force, her body going limp as she collapsed to the ground.
Strangest of all, the sharp knife in her hand was also thrown off and pinned to a corner of the wooden ladder.
“Arisu!”
Toriumi Kotaro rushed forward and held her.
“No, the Vinaya Mirror… seems to have reacted somehow.”
Toriumi Arisu frowned, showing a pained expression. Her bright eyes fixed on the ancient bronze mirror named the “Vinaya Mirror.”
The mirror trembled again, shaking incessantly. The basement also shook eerily, as if a minor earthquake had been triggered somewhere. But this was not normal because this was not the real world.
Dust fell rustling from above, and looking up, fine dust could get into one’s eyes.
“Huh!”
Fang Jing had been keeping an eye on Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi, but at this moment, he also noticed that something was wrong.
The dust on the ground floated upward, as if disturbed by tiny air currents, and began to move forward—no, toward the mirror, as if the mirror had an abnormal gravitational pull.
With a clang, Fumiko’s large corpse was pulled by an invisible force, swiftly sucked toward the mirror, and strangely drawn into it.
“What!”
As this thought of “what” just occurred to the three of them, the mirror began to release a pulling force like a vortex, drawing everything around it deep into the mirror.
Air, dust, and debris were all pulled by the abnormal force. Even several corpses lying on the ground were swiftly dragged into it as if pulled by strings.
The sacrificial eyes, left and right ears, nose, and tongue were all sucked deep into the mirror’s surface.
“Oh no! We need to leave this place quickly.”
Toriumi Arisu knew the situation was getting worse. She pushed her father.
“Nishizuka, let’s go together.”
Toriumi Kotaro stepped back while calling out to Fang Jing.
“Understood.”
Without a second thought, Fang Jing dragged Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi, intending to leave. This guy probably still had some information, and he did not plan to let him go easily.
But who would have thought that Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi, while climbing the stairs, roared and struggled free from his grip, stubbornly falling back into the basement.
“You!”
Fang Jing only managed to grab his broken wrist. At that moment, Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi suddenly gave a strange smile: “So you’re also… never mind. Since you want to die, I’ll grant your wish.”
He kicked down a chair, showing no intention of saving anyone.
Thump!
Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi, now on the ground, laughed maniacally with his only remaining arm and gripped the sharp knife he had grabbed from the wooden ladder.
“Only a heart is missing for the ritual to be complete. I’ll use my own heart as a substitute!”
He took the sharp knife and frantically pierced his own chest, pulling out a heart.
“Vinaya Mirror, I offer my heart to…”
Fujimatsuri’s voice trailed off. His lips trembled silently, muttering, “This can’t be.”
“No, no, my heart… why is it a lump of mud?”
The heart he pulled from his chest was nothing but a blurry yellow lump of mud.
Crumbling sounds came from behind. The three who escaped reunited with Utsumi and Wakae.
“Find a place to flee! The unsealing of the Vinaya Mirror requires a living sacrifice. If Fujimatsuri also dies inside, there will be no way to seal it again…”
Toriumi Arisu bit her lips tightly. In the end, she had failed to prevent the continuation of this nightmare.
“A living sacrifice requires a living person, right?”
Fang Jing smirked. “Fujimatsuri Shigeyoshi wasn’t a living person. He was some kind of clay doll. When I twisted off his wrist earlier, I found it was just a lump of mud.”
“You… are you telling the truth?”
Toriumi Arisu rushed over and grabbed his collar.
This made Fang Jing, who disliked others getting too close, frown inwardly.
Toriumi Kotaro was shocked. He did not want Arisu to anger this Nishizuka Tsukasa.
This young man gave him the impression of a professional hitman, a mercenary, or perhaps the heir to some assassination martial arts school from a comic—someone who might kill at the slightest provocation.
“It’s true. I’m certain. He, Nagakabe, and Watanabe are all the same kind of thing… he wasn’t alive; he was a clay doll.”
“If that’s the case, then maybe…”
Before she could finish her words, a strange noise came from the collapsed pit in Kagome Hall. Dozens of yellow mud-formed hands stretched out from the hole, and a bizarre mass emerged from the cavity in the ground.