Fang Zuo glanced at the living room clock. Time for work.
Shinjuku lay west of Chiyoda, roughly ten kilometers from Shiraishi's home.
Shinyo Kikaku's second floor? He recalled from Fujino's memories – right near Kabukichō, Shinjuku's notorious district. Combined with Tokyo Tower to the south, it formed a near-equilateral triangle.
"That woman is relentless!"
"If she weren't also..." Shiraishi Nagimitsu pouted, clearly frustrated at losing an hour of alone time with her master.
"Oh? How so?" Fang Zuo walked over, gently rubbing Nagimitsu's head, his fingers trailing down to lightly pinch her earlobe.
'Mmm...'
Nagimitsu leaned into the touch, eyes closing blissfully.
"Her clan is another prominent Onmyōji lineage, famed for mastering Shikigami," she murmured. "Despite her formidable talent, she was cast out solely for practicing their arts as a woman."
So the black-stockinged tyrant has that history, Fang Zuo noted inwardly. He caught Oda Yui's envious gaze and obligingly ruffled the girl's hair too.
"Ha!" Yui snapped to attention, adorably nuzzling his hand.
He headed out. Nagimitsu and Yui followed him to the entrance, reluctance heavy in the air.
"It's just work," Fang Zuo said, waving dismissively.
"Ha! Ki o tsukete!" The mother and daughter chorused their farewell with deep bows.
Two immense pendulums, two fragile snow hares. Gentle motion beneath fabric.
Fang Zuo merely shrugged. As he turned, his gaze snagged on the garden shrine.
Seems Nagimitsu truly knows nothing about it. Otherwise, she'd have removed it long ago.
"Jiě kāi fú yìn! Jiē!" A whisper of power. Golden light whipped out, coiling tightly around the grotesque idol within the shrine, constricting relentlessly.
"WHO DARES?!" An otherworldly shriek echoed solely within Fang Zuo's mind. The idol's face contorted. Black smoke billowed, straining against the luminous bonds.
"Dares?" Fang Zuo scoffed. "A petty spirit leeching off incense fumes and blood sacrifice? Back home, my Dao brothers would refine beings like you into ash."
Crack! Crunch!
A fissure tore across the idol's skull! A flash of crimson erupted, shooting skyward!
"Trying to flee me?" Fang Zuo's hand snapped shut in the air. The golden light snaked after the escaping spirit, capturing it instantly, crushing it into a shimmering, golden sphere containing the imp's shriveled consciousness. A decent material for refining, but sadly lacking in quantity.
Wonder if the other cultists harbor similar shrines?
Behind him, Shiraishi Nagimitsu and Oda Yui stared in frozen disbelief. They rushed over, each seizing an arm.
"Arrange its removal," Fang Zuo instructed coolly.
Nagimitsu nodded vigorously.
Shinjuku's Kabukichō district: a tidal wave of salarymen by day, a lurid neon swamp by night.
Fang Zuo arrived at the Shinyo Kikaku building.
The morning commute surge hit like a physical force, workers swarming from subway exits, pinning Fang Zuo in a sea of suits and briefcases. Tokyo's crushing taxi fares made them foot-soldiers of the rail lines. Unlike Fang Zuo, who'd arrived cocooned in Shiraishi's luxury Lexus LM. No wonder sponging off wealthy women has its appeal, he mused. Even a nascent soul can appreciate soft landings. If only it spared one from heavenly tribulation…
He stepped inside the Shinyo Kikaku building.
The first floor was a sepulchral void.
Fang Zuo sighed internally. His nascent soul, still fractured, made extensive use of divine sense taxing. It scraped raw. He reluctantly expanded a focused pulse. Dizziness washed over him, but the building's true nature snapped into clarity.
This is no company. It's a haunted tenement. From the third floor upward, every level teemed with... spirits. 'Various' was a gross understatement. The common thread? These entities were hideously impure. Their flickering cores held tangled strands of incense devotion, bloody ritual essence, spirit sacrifice, and corrupted yōki. Some even pulsed with fragmented bloodline traces. Souls interwoven with mixed bloodlines? It defied categorization. It reeked of perversion, of generations forced into unnatural unions, progeny raised and twisted with a slurry of incense and demonic energy to produce controllable entities – bound with servitude contracts, passed down, modified, fed grotesque concoctions…
Is this the vaunted "Shikigami"? Fang Zuo felt genuine disgust. If his Maoshan Daoist forebears – the true masters of restless spirits – witnessed this genetic butcher shop masquerading as spirit mastery, they would raze this tower to its foundations in pure, righteous fury. Even demonic cultivators, when utilizing spirits, held standards. They refined ghosts into disciplined tools or ambitious Ghost Kings through brutal but natural processes. Never this… genetic tinkering, this abominable livestock farming of souls! Higher cultivation bred respect for primal energies. Here? Only sacrilege and chaos.
Tragic. A pathetic attempt at cultivation on this confined island. Fang Zuo shook his head in disdain.
The tenth floor was a cage block. Strapped to a chair in its center, clad in tight black vinyl that gleamed under harsh lights, was Sakura Kuri. Her curves were painfully defined. Shapes flitted around her – twisted spirit forms shifting restlessly.
"Bakayarō!" A suited middle-aged man roared, slapping Sakura viciously. The crack echoed. "Exiled from the clan, yet you dare return to steal a Shikigami?!"
"That belongs to my mother!" Sakura spat blood onto the floor, glaring defiantly through disheveled hair. Her cheek burned crimson.
The man's hand froze mid-air at the mention of mother. Then, with a snarl, he delivered another blow.
"It is clan property! Compensation for you stealing Onmyōjutsu secrets!"
"Stealing? I learned entry-level techniques! Techniques any initiate needs! How does that grant you the right to seize my inheritance?!"
"INSOLENT!" A brittle, ancient voice rasped from the doorway.
Tap-tap-tap... Clack-clack...
An ancient man shuffled in, draped in a threadbare kimono, leathery skin blotched with age. Balanced impossibly behind him floated a massive, oil-paper umbrella in classical Tang dynasty style. At its apex, a single, bulging eyeball rotated wildly.
"Without those 'entry-level' clan secrets," the ancient man wheezed, his voice like dry leaves scraped on stone, "how would you have qualified for Sensō-ji's trials? How else would you be... Deputy Captain Sakura Kuri?" The title dripped with contempt.
The suited man bowed deeply and retreated.
"The clan graciously overlooks your intrusion... this time," the patriarch continued, a skeletal smile touching his lips. "Merely sever the pact with the Kaguya Akari Shikigami."
"Never!" Sakura met the ancient gaze without flinching. "Even if it costs my life. I won't break mother's gift. And you wouldn't dare kill a public officer on Tokyo soil. It would hand the government the perfect weapon against your families."
"Quite correct," the old man acknowledged, nodding slowly. He turned stiffly toward the hovering umbrella. "We cannot eliminate you. But learning how stubbornness crumbles... that would be most instructive. Onegaishimasu... Ichi-sama." He bowed deeply to the umbrella.