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Since the earlier massive light pillar had already attracted considerable attention, now that the pillar had dissipated and a mountain-sized baby floated above Kyoto, the entire tea house instantly erupted.
"Hey hey hey, what the hell is that thing?! That shape—is it a baby?!"
"When we looked earlier it was a light pillar, how did it turn into this?!"
"Maybe it's a hot air balloon for some show?"
"What show uses a hot air balloon that big?!"
In fact, not just inside the tea house—from the window booth where Gojo and the others sat, looking out the window and scanning to the horizon, pedestrians on the street below could be seen everywhere pointing at the strange phenomenon in the distant sky, their faces showing shock as they discussed it.
Though their reactions were hardly surprising.
It was like in The Avengers when Loki used the Tesseract atop the tower to summon the Chitauri army.
Before the summoning completed, ordinary people could only see really cool flashing lights at the top of the building, at most muttering to themselves about what new stunt was being pulled.
But once the portal opened and massive waves of Chitauri forces descended through the spatial rift—anyone whose legs didn't tremble at that point was superhuman.
And right now, the giant baby floating above Kyoto was equivalent to the Chitauri army summoned by the Tesseract. In fact, because it had the appearance of a human fetus but was scaled up to an absolutely absurd size, it gave people an eerie, taboo sense of wrongness.
Kyoto had long been called the Demon Capital of a Thousand Years. Plus, with the human and demon worlds having conducted commerce for over forty years, ordinary people were well aware that various monsters and spirits existed in this world. Seeing such a bizarre scene, it was hard not to imagine some terrifying possibilities.
Like horrible experiments that violated human ethics, and so on.
However, at the same time, outside the cave containing the spiritual spring, a certain young man lifted his head. The mountain-sized form of the sky baby reflected in his eyes, and he couldn't help falling into deep thought.
Bokue Keikain knew that hospitals weighed babies at birth, then informed the family of the weight.
Bigger ones might be 5 or 6 kg, smaller ones 3 or 4 kg.
But the one floating in the sky right now? It had to be pushing tens of thousands of tons, right?
"Is this... reasonable?"
So the founder of Onmyōji from a thousand years ago, Abe no Seimei, was originally something this massive...
"Hehehe, that's just the embryo."
Just as Bokue was muttering to himself, Hagoromo-Gitsune's voice drifted leisurely from the cave behind him.
Turning to look, he saw the pale girl who'd been soaking naked in the spiritual spring earlier had now dressed back into her signature pure black sailor uniform, her legs beneath the skirt hem slightly compressed by black stockings.
Perhaps because Bokue had earlier supplemented some of her consumed power with his own, Hagoromo-Gitsune—having completed the rebirth ritual—didn't show much weakness. She could even walk on her own. Following her out were Yasaka, her daughter, and Kyōkotsu.
"Embryo?"
Bokue raised an eyebrow.
Hagoromo-Gitsune had already walked out of the cave to stand beside the young man. She too looked up at the giant baby in the sky, continuing her explanation.
"The rebirth technique is a resurrection ritual that uses massive demonic power to reconstruct a perfect body and pull the deceased back from the underworld to the mortal world. The giant baby we see in the sky now is the aggregate of all my demonic power. It will reconstruct my child's flesh within the embryo. When the time is right, it will bloom and bear fruit..."
"Oh yeah, speaking of which."
Hearing the words "my child," Bokue suddenly seemed to remember something and made a sound of realization.
"I should probably remove that brain control chip first."
"Brain control? What are you talking about... what are you doing—!"
Before Hagoromo-Gitsune beside him could react, Bokue backhanded her with an Itachi-style finger poke to the forehead.
The soul manipulation techniques learned from Brynhildr penetrated directly into Hagoromo-Gitsune's soul. The thought stamp that Abe no Seimei had repeatedly reinforced over multiple reincarnations shattered like thin ice in an instant.
"I..."
Hagoromo-Gitsune—who'd been about to loudly demand what Bokue was doing—froze in place.
Seeing her elder sister "ambushed," Kyōkotsu could no longer care about the enormous power gap between them. She stepped forward, raising her skull with glaring eyes.
"What did you do to Ane-sama?! Get your hands off Ane-sama!!"
But Bokue didn't even look at her, only turning toward the blonde beauty behind him.
"Alright, Yasaka. This should do it—she should return to normal shortly. There's nothing else for me here, so I'll head up and check on things."
With that, the young man's form shot up from the ground, transforming into a white streak that pierced the sky.
Two seconds later, Bokue had already arrived directly above the sky baby.
He slowly descended, landing on the sky baby's surface. A quite solid sensation came through his feet.
Indeed, just as Hagoromo-Gitsune had said, this sky baby wasn't Abe no Seimei's true body but something like an embryo—more accurately, like an eggshell outside an egg.
Even the texture was identical.
In fact, through the sky baby's thick outer shell—comparable to a city wall—Bokue could clearly sense enormous energy inside converging toward a single point.
The entire process was neither fast nor slow—like pulling the plug after a bath to drain the tub.
Looks like it'll take a bit more time.
After brief consideration, Bokue simply sat down and began waiting patiently.
Moments later, as the "water level" formed by demonic power inside the sky baby kept dropping until it hit bottom, something changed.
CRACK.
Like a newborn chick using its head to break through the eggshell for the first time, a thin crack zigzagged across the sky baby's surface.
Golden light leaked through, as if some sacred object was about to emerge from within.
Then came the second crack. Then the third.
The cracks appeared faster and faster, the golden light leaking out growing increasingly brilliant.
Finally—
The giant baby shell covered in cracks could no longer hold together and shattered with a thunderous crash. The spectacle resembled a mountain collapsing, rumbling tremors cascading from a kilometer above straight down to the ground.
And from that embryo—now just a broken base—a majestic figure more blazing than the midday sun stood up.
Golden wavy hair danced behind him like a torch of divine flame. Golden six-pointed stars slowly rotated in his eyes as he gazed down upon the earth below.
Abe no Seimei—he was the founder of Onmyōji, the Dark Lord from a thousand years ago, the god of the mortal realm.
After a millennium, the first thing he did upon awakening was open his eyes to see if this world remained unchanged.
Amid howling winds at high altitude, Abe no Seimei vaguely heard a young man's voice from directly above his head.
"Ciallo~"
The next second, his perspective rotated ninety degrees.
A size forty-four shoe stomped onto his face, kicking him from a kilometer high like a meteor straight back down to earth.
In an instant, mountains and rivers shook.
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