Bella had no real need for White Ghost. Saving him was incidental—no point making a big deal of it.
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrived quickly. Just an ordinary-level containment object. Neither side placed much importance on it. Bella handed over the spirit shrine, and that was that.
The agents still had work to do—cleaning up the scene and rescuing survivors still bound to the pillars.
"You're busy. I'll head out." Bella turned and left.
The agents seemed to have received orders. None asked who she was. Both parties ignored each other as if the other didn't exist.
What no one noticed: two of the survivors tied to the wooden stakes had already awakened.
Ganta was an unlucky bastard. So was Kyujiro. Both unlucky bastards had been subjected to Madame Gao's mind-reading techniques. Combined with vivid impressions of certain events and certain people, they'd regained consciousness earlier than the others—and recovered most of their memories when the Shura was extracted from their bodies.
Watching Bella cut through red-robed ninjas like a hot knife through butter, then coordinate with the Divine Dragon to kill Madame Gao—it sent chills down their spines. They exchanged glances while the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents weren't paying attention.
You're awake?
You too?
Neither dared make a sound. Bella's bizarre abilities terrified them. Then one phone call had summoned a swarm of strange agents and soldiers, demonstrating her enormous influence in the real world.
Both squeezed their eyes shut. They were ordinary people—but also not ordinary. Behind them stood a massive organization. Being dumped into the Ashina realm had been pure accident.
They possessed a secret technique for controlling their breathing—useful for playing dead or feigning unconsciousness. This very technique had kept them alive in Ashina and gotten them through to today. Now they slowed their breathing, appearing completely comatose.
With Madame Gao eliminated, Bella didn't pause to rest. She immediately destroyed another Hand stronghold.
Madame Gao had been guilty, and the Hand was no better. The best fate for this organization was annihilation.
Genichiro Ashina had offered to help, but that was just politeness. Bringing a bunch of ancient Japanese warriors here would be more trouble than acting alone.
She swept north from Chiba Prefecture into Fukushima, then continued to Iwate Prefecture before turning west.
When she reached Toyama Prefecture to destroy the Hand's fourth stronghold, her divination returned a "danger" omen.
She observed carefully for half a day.
Three days had passed since Madame Gao's death. The enemy had prepared. Armed soldiers patrolled outside; over a hundred red-robed ninjas waited within. Deep underground, a staggering quantity of explosives lay buried.
Mutual annihilation. The enemy's ruthlessness exceeded Bella's expectations. They didn't care about those soldiers or the hundred-plus ninjas or the surrounding neighborhood spanning over a square kilometer. If those bombs detonated, the entire district would become an inferno. Casualties wouldn't number in the dozens or hundreds—but tens of thousands.
"Little Bella, let it go for now," the Divine Dragon advised.
Bella deliberated for a long time before reluctantly abandoning the assault. The sheer volume of explosives made it impossible. From what she could tell, they might detonate the moment she showed her face. How could anyone fight that? Even Thanos would be blown senseless.
She circled the rest of Honshu, discovering that the Hand was consolidating all its forces. The few remaining strongholds bristled with security. You want to come? Come. We'll blow everything sky-high. How many people die? How many innocents? We don't care!
"Damn it!"
Bella wouldn't gamble with tens of thousands of lives. She had no choice but to abandon her plan to wipe out the Hand in one stroke.
Fine. You want to hide? Hide. Eventually you'll let your guard down. I'll be back.
The discovery of some crash survivors from Chiba Prefecture—combined with survivors from two previous accidents—raised interesting questions.
The incidents had occurred at sea. Why were survivors turning up on land? And all of them had partial memory loss. The question became: who was orchestrating all this behind the scenes?
The Hand controlled several major conglomerates and pressured the government through their consortium.
Japan's response mirrored France's: government apology, admission of fault, then mass resignation followed by early elections!
These resignations happened without hesitation—swift and decisive. Bella took a car back to Tokyo. By the time she'd heard the news on the road and stepped out of the station, political parties were already holding rallies for their candidates. Crowds gathered everywhere, festive as a holiday.
Bella couldn't sue the airline this time. Her name had been scrubbed from the records. Oh well. She could only wish the other survivors luck.
The exchange students from Tokyo University began arriving, and Bella settled into her academic life in the East.
She'd once promised to take the Divine Dragon back to Kunlun. In practice, however, complications arose.
The Divine Dragon perched on her shoulder, little head swiveling left, right, up, down, sensing in every direction—practically tracing the shape of a figure-eight.
Her face fell. "Kunlun is gone?! I can't sense it at all. Does this mean I can never go home?"
Bella also used divination to search for Kunlun's location. The results were strange—almost like "no such place exists."
"Is Kunlun not in the material world?" she asked.
The Divine Dragon looked at her pitifully and could only shake her head.
When it came to spatial perception, Bella couldn't match the Divine Dragon. But she could analyze with available data: "Maybe it works like this—Kunlun and the material world are two wave patterns that occasionally overlap. Every so often, Kunlun enters our reality, then leaves. After some years, it returns?"
The Divine Dragon's expression shifted to deep thought. Suddenly, realization dawned: "Yes! Ten years! I remember the elders saying something about ten years... It must be ten years! The realms intersect once every ten years!"
She'd been too young and too playful back then. Only draconic memory had preserved even this fragment.
They discussed further. Was it ten years in the material world or ten Kunlun years? Different dimensions had different time flows. Even if it was ten years here, how many remained until Kunlun next entered their reality?
Neither could say for certain. A rough estimate: maybe five, six, seven, or eight years? Definitely not ten, but not one or two either.
So we wait. The Divine Dragon needed time to regain her full dragon form anyway. Dragons perceived time differently than humans. Waiting five to eight years was nothing—she wasn't anxious at all.
If she wasn't anxious, Bella wasn't either.
They'd wait patiently. Every few months, they'd check again. The moment Kunlun entered the material world, they'd cross over.