ACSP: Chapter 195: Only Kotoamatsukami Can Undo Kotoamatsukami!
Although Lei Li's calculated suggestion sounded a bit underhanded and bruised Cai Kun's pride, upon closer reflection, it was actually an incredibly brilliant strategy.
If they wanted a city's population to grow exponentially within a critically short timeframe, the absolute most effective method was mass migration. Fortuitously, through his massive celebrity influence, Cai Kun happened to possess the perfect demographic pipeline to make it happen. If they could successfully utilize his reach, rebuilding the city's foundation was entirely feasible.
However, the logistical reality was never that simple. To convince people to permanently migrate from a region where they had established roots, built lives, and lived for a long time over to a completely unfamiliar, war-torn city, the guild would definitely need to put in some serious effort. Simply put, they had to dangle some highly lucrative benefits. It was no different from the massive relocation compensation packages offered during municipal demolitions in the old world; without a powerful incentive, why would anyone willingly pack up and move?
Regarding this critical bottleneck, after weighing the pros and cons for a long time, Jiang Chen finally stepped in and offered his own authoritative opinions.
He looked seriously at Cai Kun, explicitly indicating that if those high-tier fans and merchant clans were truly willing to migrate to Jinghai City and commit to developing the coastal bastion for the long term, he would personally instruct Li Yanran to carve out and share a generous portion of Jinghai City's local Secret Realm resources with them.
Furthermore, he was prepared to grant those incoming settlers substantial administrative leverage. For example, he would allow the most capable, loyal, and trustworthy family powers to directly serve in upper-management positions within the newly restructured City Lord's Mansion. After all, the previous generation of bureaucrats and officials who had followed City Lord Li Hongfei had already been brutally systematically executed by the Dongdao Contractors. Now, the administrative core of the City Lord's Mansion was completely vacant and desperately short on manpower; opening up these prestigious seats would simultaneously solve his staffing crisis and secure the loyalty of the new elite.
Of course, beyond the wealth of the Secret Realms and the allure of political power, the absolute most important bargaining chip was security: from this day forward, these people would receive the absolute, uncompromised protection of the Heavenly Court Guild.
Looked at from another level, as long as those wealthy families and independent cultivators were willing to relocate their entire estates to Jinghai City, it would be functionally equivalent to becoming an official affiliate force of the Heavenly Court Guild. Moreover, this specific type of affiliation was incredibly generous—it not only exempted them from submitting the standard heavy tributes required by other major syndicates, but it also allowed them to receive direct resources from the parent guild. For all intents and purposes, it was almost identical to joining the prestigious Heavenly Court Guild directly, granting them an ironclad shield against any future foreign invasions.
For those minor family clans or independent cultivators who lacked any formidable background or structural backing, these terms represented an absolutely fatal temptation.
After all, whenever they attempted to farm resources or enter the Secret Realms back in Kang City, they were subjected to heavy taxation, forced to surrender a massive percentage of their hard-earned loot just for entry rights. But if they relocated here to Jinghai City, the game completely changed. They would not only be granted unconditional, unrestricted access to pristine Secret Realms at will, but they would also walk beneath the ironclad aegis of a rising super guild.
To top it all off, they were being handed a once-in-a-lifetime golden ticket to be directly promoted into the executive management level of a strategic municipality, allowing them to ascend the socioeconomic ladder in a single, monumental leap. Opportunities of this magnitude were practically unheard of in this brutal era.
Even seasoned veterans like Lei Li, Yang Ke, and the surrounding elite were completely dumbfounded after hearing the staggering list of concessions and benefits Jiang Chen was willing to throw on the table. They never could have anticipated that the young leader would display such breathtaking, sweeping generosity simply to breathe life back into the ruins of Jinghai City.
"Fine! Since you've gone to such lengths and put such insane terms on the table, I'll swallow my pride and give it a shot..." Cai Kun agreed readily, his previous reluctance completely evaporating.
Initially, he had been entirely prepared to reject the proposal out of hand, unable to bring himself to act as a low-level lobbyist or sycophant for wealthy families. However, Jiang Chen was simply offering too much capital this time around. With such absurdly lucrative benefits up for grabs, Cai Kun felt it would be a disservice not to share this windfall with his loyal followers. Looked at from a different angle, this wasn't pimping himself out at all—it was the ultimate, god-tier fan welfare package.
With the grand strategy laid out, Jiang Chen knew that the complete reconstruction of Jinghai City fundamentally boiled down to solving two critical bottlenecks.
First, the active, functioning population within the municipal borders had to reach a baseline threshold to stimulate the economy and guard the walls. Second, the shattered skyline, obliterated residential sectors, and crumbled infrastructure had to be systematically rebuilt or repaired from scratch.
The demographic crisis was now effectively covered by Cai Kun's massive fan network, checking off the first box for the time being. As for the monumental task of physical urban reconstruction, Jiang Chen had actually already engineered a flawless, hyper-efficient countermeasure.
His secret weapon was none other than He Gen.
The legendary [Wood Release Kekkei Genkai] possessed the miraculous, reality-bending characteristic of creating organic matter from absolute nothingness. A master of this lineage was fully capable of manifesting thousands of tons of high-density timber out of thin air, and could even manipulate the growth to directly construct fully formed, multi-story housing complexes in a matter of minutes.
In the sacred archives of the original lore, the legendary ninja Yamato was famously heralded as the ultimate 'Construction Master' precisely because of this specialized architectural utility. And as the direct Contractor bound to Yamato's soul, He Gen obviously inherited that exact same god-tier blueprinting ability.
Therefore, Jiang Chen wasted no time and simply left He Gen in Jinghai City to lead and organize the monumental task of architectural reconstruction. After the crushing display of dominance back in the forest, He Gen had long since been utterly subdued and reformed by Jiang Chen's overwhelming strength. At this moment, facing the young leader's commands, he naturally raised no objections, bowing his head in respectful compliance.
Just as Jiang Chen finished putting these administrative gears into motion, a stir at the edge of the plaza caught their attention. Ronan, who had previously been left behind to secure the area inside the [Forest of Death] secret realm, had finally returned. He walked into the ruined square under the watchful escort of two of Jiang Chen's [Shadow Clone]s.
Perhaps because his mind was still warped and rewritten by the insidious influence of Shimura Kenta's [Kotoamatsukami], Ronan's reaction to the scene was entirely wrong. When he looked around and learned from the clones that every single one of those invading Dongdao Contractors had been ruthlessly annihilated, a trace of imperceptible complexity and profound sorrow flickered across his face.
He hesitated for a long moment, struggling against some internal cognitive dissonance, before finally looking up at Jiang Chen. His voice carried a bizarre, bleeding-heart tone that sounded utterly alien coming from him:
"Boss... although these Dongdao Contractors are undeniably unforgivable, isn't slaughtering them all to the last man just as cruel as the atrocities they committed? As the old saying goes, when will the cycle of vengeance ever end? Hatred only breeds more hatred. I truly think we should find an opportunity to sit down and talk to them properly. We are all humans surviving this era; it doesn't always have to be a fight to the death..."
The moment the words left his mouth, everyone in the vicinity was instantly stunned.
They stared at Ronan in absolute disbelief, their eyes filled with a mixture of pity, horror, and profound strangeness. They had known Ronan to be a fierce warrior who loathed evil with a passion and hated the Dongdao invaders to his very marrow. To hear him spouting pacifist platitudes in defense of murderers was jarring. It was a terrifying testament to the monstrous power of the [Kotoamatsukami] genjutsu—it didn't just force compliance; it entirely rewrote a person's core values, making them believe the lie was their own organic thought.
"Boss... can this Kotoamatsukami be broken?" Yang Ke asked, his expression turning incredibly grave as he stepped closer to Jiang Chen. Ronan was his sworn brother, and the thought of him living out the rest of his days as a brainwashed puppet under the lingering ghost of a Dongdao Contractor made his blood run cold. Heaven only knew what kind of deeply buried, self-destructive triggers or dangerous sub-commands Shimura Kenta had planted in the depths of his subconscious.
Upon hearing Yang Ke's tense question, Lei Li, Cai Kun, and the rest of the vanguard also turned their gazes toward Jiang Chen. Their eyes were taut with an anxious, breathless anticipation. They had already received a chilling lecture from Jiang Chen regarding the absolute danger level of this god-tier illusion, but understanding its threat was one thing—they desperately needed to know if there was a cure. Was there truly a definitive way to undo this absolute rewrite of the human mind?
Looking at his brainwashed subordinate, Jiang Chen frowned. He naturally had no intention of allowing Ronan to remain enslaved by the deceased Shimura Kenta's technique forever. However, a bitter truth weighed on his mind: while he currently possessed the absolute power and mental fortitude to resist falling victim to [Kotoamatsukami] himself, undoing its established effects on someone who had already been deeply struck was a completely different story. To be entirely honest, he didn't have much confidence.
He rapidly combed through the sacred archives of the original lore in his memory. In the original series, after Danzo's subtle manipulation of the Five Kage Summit was exposed by Mifune's guard, Ao, using the captured Byakugan, Mifune had seemingly relied on his own shock and willpower to break free from the illusion.
But looking at Ronan's severe state right now, it was clear that relying on a victim's own self-consciousness to snap out of it was a dead end.
However, after deeper analysis, Jiang Chen realized that this discrepancy made perfect sense. If the strongest genjutsu in the entire Ninja World could be shrugged off by sheer willpower, it wouldn't have been feared as an absolute, unstoppable god-tier technique. Jiang Chen deduced that Mifune's sudden "awakening" in the original work was very likely only a temporary byproduct of the specific command structure. Danzo's mental setting for Mifune was highly contextual: "Support Shimura Danzo to become the Supreme Commander of the Allied Shinobi Forces."
Therefore, the moment Danzo's conspiracy was dragged into the light and Danzo himself subsequently died, the highly specific parameters of that [Kotoamatsukami] command lost their anchoring reality, fading into irrelevance.
Unfortunately, Ronan's situation was vastly more complicated and deeply rooted than Mifune's. Shimura Kenta had deliberately altered Ronan's fundamental stance on the entire geopolitical conflict, embedding a viral pacifism into his psyche.
Jiang Chen pondered the mechanical rules of the jutsu for a long, heavy moment. Finally, he slowly raised his head, his dark eyes meeting the tense gazes of his companions as he spoke in a low, resonant tone:
"The only thing capable of shattering the absolute authority of a Kotoamatsukami... I'm afraid, is Kotoamatsukami itself."
Lei Li's sharp gaze flickered with immediate comprehension as he caught the underlying theory. "Are you saying that the exact same tier of conceptual illusion can be used to overwrite and cancel each other out? A diamond cuts a diamond?"
Jiang Chen nodded slowly, a grim "Hmm" escaping his throat. "Precisely. To undo an absolute rewrite of the subconscious, you need a second, identical force to forcefully break into that mental landscape and overwrite the foreign code."
Seeing Jiang Chen confirm the hypothesis, Lei Li's brows furrowed even deeper, a look of profound helplessness washing over his rugged face. "While that method is theoretically sound in terms of skill mechanics... where on earth are we supposed to find a second Contractor in the entire Great Xia Empire who possesses the [Kotoamatsukami] Shisui template?"
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