Chapter 54: The Wasteland, the Abandoned Village, and the Secret of the cursed womb
The night wind blew across the wasteland on the outskirts of Hokkaido, whipping up fine gravel.
Rin stood on the back of a Cursed Spirit Cursed Spirit with a wingspan of over eight meters, his black training uniform snapping in the airflow.
This Grade 1 Cursed Spirit was a flying Cursed Spirit specifically chosen for him by Geto Suguru. Its wings beat with a whistling sound, and its speed was astonishing. In just over ten minutes, the outline of the gray, abandoned village in the distance appeared clearly in his field of vision.
Before he even got close, Rin furrowed his brows.
The air was filled with a chilling Cursed Energy—cold, heavy, like cotton soaked in ice water wrapped around his heart. It was completely different from the "Grade 1 Cursed Spirit level" described in the file.
He patted the Cursed Spirit's back, and the Cursed Spirit immediately slowed down, landing slowly on the open ground on the outskirts of the village.
Rin jumped down without a moment's hesitation. Negi was still in the distance distracting Mei Mei and Aoi Todo; he had to find the core Cursed Spirit before reinforcements arrived. With every passing second, the variables increased.
Just as he stepped onto the village boundary, "rustling" sounds came from the shadows.
Strange-looking Cursed Spirits crawled out from behind broken walls, grass piles, and under the windowsills of abandoned houses. Some looked like melting mud, dragging long trails of slime; some had three eyes with limbs twisted like vines; others were covered in fine scales, with dark green drool dripping from their mouths.
In just a moment, over a dozen Cursed Spirits had gathered in Rin's field of vision. Most were at the Second-Grade or Grade 3 level, but this quantity far exceeded the scope of an "ordinary haunting incident."
"No wonder the police were able to escape unscathed." Rin understood. Although these Cursed Spirits were numerous, they didn't attack immediately. They just circled him from afar, their turbid eyes filled with a bit of wariness, looking more like they were "monitoring" rather than "hunting."
He couldn't be bothered with these small fry, so he swept his gaze over the faintly visible temple deep in the village and walked straight inside.
For him now, let alone a dozen Second-Grade or Grade 3 Cursed Spirits, even a thousand more would just be a minor trouble he could solve with a wave of his hand.
As he moved deeper, the surrounding Cursed Spirits gathered in greater numbers. There even appeared two Grade 1 Cursed Spirits with significantly stronger auras—one with huge pincers, and the other capable of manipulating surrounding gravel.
Yet they still just followed, not daring to make a move, as if waiting for a certain command.
Rin didn't stop his pace, his gaze locked on the temple. When he was fifty meters away from the temple, the Cursed Spirits behind him finally took action.
A Second-Grade Cursed Spirit lunged forward first, its sharp claws slicing through the air toward Rin's back.
Rin seemed not to notice, his pace not faltering in the slightest. Just as the Cursed Spirit's claws were about to touch his clothes, a pale shadow flashed through the air. A pure white giant snake appeared out of thin air, opened its blood-red mouth, and swallowed the Cursed Spirit whole, not even giving it a chance to scream.
Rin swept a glance at the white snake, his eyes calm.
These low-level Cursed Spirits were of no use to him. It was better to let the white snake store them and hand them over to Geto Suguru later.
He raised his hand and performed Finger Seals. Several ripples of Cursed Energy spread out. In the next second, more Cursed Spirits emerged from the void: a Long-Haired Cursed Spirit capable of manipulating hair, a rock Cursed Spirit skilled in ramming, and a Shadow Beast Cursed Spirit with extreme speed.
They tacitly divided the work: the Long-Haired Cursed Spirit used threads to entangle fleeing Cursed Spirits, the rock Cursed Spirit blocked the exits, and the Shadow Beast hunted down those trying to hide, finally tossing the prey to the white snake. This was the convenience of Cursed Spirit Manipulation; he didn't need to do it himself to easily handle these chores.
In less than half a minute, the Cursed Spirits gathered behind him were completely cleared out.
Rin recalled the summoned Cursed Spirits and walked up to the temple entrance. The wooden doors of the temple had long since rotted, covered in cracks and hanging with a few tattered red ribbons. He didn't hesitate, lifting his foot to kick the wooden door with a violent force. With a loud "creak," the wooden doors collapsed, kicking up a sky full of dust.
The scene inside the temple made Rin's pupils shrink slightly.
In the center of the main hall, a Cursed Energy sac half the height of a person was floating.
Inside the blood-red transparent membrane, a curled-up humanoid object could be vaguely seen, gently rising and falling like a fetus along with the sac's pulsations.
Dark purple Cursed Energy flowed on the surface of the membrane. With every contraction, fine black mist seeped out from the surrounding walls and was absorbed by the sac.
"Bang!"
The moment Rin kicked open the door, the sac suddenly contracted violently, collapsing rapidly like a balloon pricked by a needle.
In the next second, countless pale skeletons gushed out from the sac, scattering across the hall with a "clatter." Some skeletons were still clutching tattered clothing.
A rough count revealed that the number of skeletons exceeded one hundred, piled densely on the ground—a scene that made one's scalp tingle.
This matter was indeed not that simple, Rin thought.
After the blood-red sac completely collapsed, a small-statured Cursed Spirit slowly walked out from the membrane.
It was only a little over a meter tall, with eerie, greenish-blue skin, but an unusually large head. Its facial features were crowded together, resembling an enlarged Goblin. Only those eyes were shockingly bright, revealing a cunning and madness that didn't match its appearance.
The greenish-blue Goblin Cursed Spirit had just stepped out of the blood-red sac when its eerily bright eyes locked onto Rin, who had entered the temple. Its shrill voice sounded like rusty metal scraping against rough wood, filled with unconcealed malice:
"Do you know? It was only three days away. If you had just given me three more days, or if I had caught three more living people as nourishment, I could have descended in the most perfect form and become a true Special Grade Cursed Spirit!"
As it spoke, its greenish-blue fingers curled into claws at its sides, with dark red stains still remaining under its fingernails—evidently left over from dealing with the "prey" earlier.
Rin stood where he was, not moving. The hem of his black training uniform was still stained with grass clippings from the wasteland. He just watched the Cursed Spirit coldly, without even furrowing his brows.
From the moment this Cursed Spirit spoke, he concluded that it possessed intelligence far surpassing ordinary Cursed Spirits. It could plan hunts, hide tracks, and even knew how to "bide its time and develop." Key information was bound to be hidden in the words of such an opponent.
The Cursed Spirit seemed to see through Rin's thoughts but didn't care at all. Instead, it walked step by step toward the pile of skeletons in the corner, poked the eye socket of a skull with its slender finger, and said with a tone full of smugness:
"Since the day I was born, I have been different from those trash outside that only know how to bite and chew randomly.
I knew Jujutsu Sorcerers were my natural enemies, and I knew you could easily tear me apart, so I hid in the sewers, surviving by eating rats and stray cats until I found 'that thing'."
When it mentioned 'that thing,' its voice rose sharply, and its greenish-blue skin flushed with an unnatural red from excitement, as if it were showing off some rare treasure:
"With it, I had the power to control other Cursed Spirits, and the capital to condense a cursed womb! But I wasn't stupid enough to jump out immediately. I knew I wasn't strong enough yet, and I knew you guys from Tokyo Jujutsu High had noses sharper than dogs, so I hid here, letting those low-level Cursed Spirits help me catch homeless people and exploring students. I even deliberately let those two policemen go, just to avoid attracting your attention!"
"But it's a pity..." It suddenly paused, turned its head to look at Rin, its eyes full of venom.
"We were still found by you. That woman who can control crows killed my most capable subordinate and cut off my 'food' source. If it weren't for her, I would have become a true Special Grade Cursed Spirit by now!"
The mystery in Rin's mind was instantly solved.
The "being discovered" that the Cursed Spirit mentioned indeed pointed to Mei Mei. The "police escaping unscathed" mentioned in the previous file was not a coincidence, but a "disguise" deliberately orchestrated by the Cursed Spirit.
As for himself and Negi, they were just a third party who had accidentally intruded into this game between Tokyo Jujutsu High and the cursed womb.
Having figured out the cause and effect, Rin no longer had the patience to tangle with it.
He raised his hand, and black-red Cursed Energy slowly condensed in his palm, like a mass of burning dark fire.
"Starting, are we?" Seeing this, the Cursed Spirit suddenly laughed maniacally, its laughter sharp and ear-piercing:
"Poor little thing, do you think you can beat me with that little bit of Cursed Energy? Although I haven't reached my perfect form, the power I've accumulated by biding my time for so long is not something a brat like you, who hasn't even grown all his hair, can imagine!"