Igor closed his eyes to calm the bubbling rage and overwhelming indecision. His focus had to remain on the god responsible. Once he was strong enough to harvest that god into the time chamber, he could spend hundreds of years training to get stronger and once he did, he could start thinking about other gods and races. His naive ideals would have a strong fist backing them by then. He just had to be patient.
[One step, Igor. One step at a time.]
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|DxD|- Chapter 53- Ritual Reincarnation
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29/Nov/1996- January 16, 1997, Thursday, Remote Region, China
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Reincarnation was a very obscure concept. The methods were broad, yet the results were almost the same: change from one body to another.
Liu Xin didn't care much for the semantics. His role was very simple. Get heads and deliver them to the buyers. It was easy money and had given him a stable livelihood for over sixty years.
Deep in the mountains of Asia, Liu Xin moved along the forest floor. He carried a worn backpack and wore coarse simple grey clothes. He blended in as a typical middle-aged farmer with a bamboo hat. His line of the job was a bit dangerous, especially as the demands of his clients grew more…profound.
He shuffled along the dirt path. There were sixteen heads collected in his bag. A simple spatial storage space ensured easy transportation. By remaining low-key, he ensured continuity with his little entrepreneurial venture.
The morning steadily shifted to late afternoon. His walking pace remained fairly constant but still within acceptable human limits. He never knew who might be watching. After all, his last kill had caused quite the stir and brought the wrong kind of attention.
[The things I do for money.]
Liu Xin lamented. But behind that lament was a smile. He trailed the outskirts of the small village towards the agreed-upon meeting point hours in advance. He scouted the area and confirmed there was no waiting ambush.
Still, he kept up his act and went to his old hut, one of many that he owned. Along the way, he greeted several old folks and made light conversation. He preferred remote villages like this. This new technology only muddled things
Liu Xin didn't stay inside his hut for long. Once the evening drew close, he left his hut again. It was a bit chilly as he went up the mountain. He carried a straw basket with him along with a small sack. It was this very sack that held his latest goods.
He sang some old folksongs of his homeland and made a show of hacking through shrubs and gathering some herbs. He reached the meeting point and the moment he got there, instinct told him something was wrong.
He stopped and frowned. Atop the hill was a wide clearing with an old wooden watchtower that had rotted beyond salvation. The grass was sparse, but steadily reclaiming what was once a training field years ago.
In the middle of that field stood his client. It was a young man in elegant robes no older than twenty. But Liu Xin knew the truth. This person was perhaps more than a hundred years old. All of his clients were like that—people who relied on body-hopping to live long lives. And the key to that were the heads he brought to the deal.
Liu Xin maintained caution. He walked out to meet his client—and there was another person, a masked man who was not agreed to be there.
[This is an ambush.]
Whoever this masked man was, was sloppy. His real client was visibly nervous. At least to him, that was the case. This was a sting operation. A classic tactic of using bait to lure out the big dog.
[Perhaps I've been too low-key.]
Liu Xin kept a friendly smile as he walked. He was still quite a distance from them. He's mostly been dealing with normal humans in the last few years, rich moguls who wanted eternal life, even if it meant robbing the life of another. It wouldn't be strange if these swine who've never wanted for anything could keep a secret.
Perhaps his client was stupid and got caught by some government supernatural bureau and they assigned an agent to lure out the snake.
[He already has his eyes locked on me. How cute.]
This man, even if masked, was clearly a rookie given how he didn't even bother controlling the client's emotions. Just from this alone, Liu Xin deduced this masked man would be no more than twenty-five at best.
Liu Xin closed the distance. He adopted a fawning merchant's face and servile attitude. He'd keep the facade a bit longer to see if he can gather more information.
"Good day, sirs. I—"
*Crack*
"..."
Liu Xin watched in mild surprise. The sound of cracking bone snapped, and his client fell over. He was dead, several finger-sized holes punctured deep into his neck. Liu Xin leaped back, putting several more metres of distance between them.
"Removing pretenses so soon?"
The masked man didn't answer. In his empty palm, a glaive suddenly appeared in a flash of white light. Liu Xin only smiled in response.
"The silent type, eh?"
He fished into his sack and pulled out a sickle connected to a long chain.
"Don't worry. I have experience in prying mouths open."
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|DxD|
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Two weeks—that is how long Igor spent tracking this monster. Baraquiel had handed him a strange request. A mayor from China requested assistance in finding the person who decapitated his daughter and took her head away. It was rare for a request to come through from there, but he took it.
He could never imagine that what he believed to be a murder of sick pleasure was in fact, ritual reincarnation. It was a forbidden procedure designed to circumvent the afterlife and be reborn as an infant in a body of their choosing.
When a human dies, their souls are pulled into the afterlife or the cycle of reincarnation. Attempting to circumvent that draws attention from gods of death. This ritual was a workaround. By releasing the soul of an innocent person at the same time as theirs, they could use the other soul as a distraction to sneak off and reincarnate into a vessel of their choosing. The more innocent the soul, the better. And more often, that meant children were decapitated for this ritual.
Igor investigated this matter fully. With some help from Baraquiel, he found one of the men who used this sick ritual. He was a majority shareholder in a thriving company. For generations, he has been impregnating women and reincarnating as his own son.
Outwardly, this man seemed no different from other humans. But inwardly, there was a clear mismatch between the energy of his soul and his body. A deep imbalance can even affect lifespan. Close investigations revealed generations of men with declining lifespan. That alone was more than enough. Now, after five days, Igor had the opportunity to kill the mastermind.
This hilltop region was sparsely forested and far below was a small village. It was almost sunset, perhaps a poetic end to the life of a man who ruined families.
Once Igor saw the dealer, he crushed the man's neck and readied his glaive. He would kill Liu Xin today.
Igor didn't respond to the provocative words. Vitality churned within him. With his actions, he would bring closure to many families who lost their children.
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AN: Let me try and balance myself here because I'm very confused. So when a person has their head cut off, does that mean their soul still lingers in their skull? Is there like a cooldown timer where their soul still stays? Or do people like Liu Xin just know how to trap the soul in the skull? Questions, questions.
Chapter 53
END