That night, the group finalized their agreement to take the job.
Yang Yi and the others accepted the mission.
Early the next morning, the sky was still a hazy gray.
However, the "Jujutsu Girl Squad" had already fully assembled and boarded the Batmobile, whose lines had become even more menacing.
Yang Yi slammed on the gas pedal, and the engine let out a deep, muffled roar that tore through the silence of the Tokyo dawn.
Their destination was Kurouzu Town.
The vehicle drove along the winding mountain road, its wheels kicking up the thin morning mist.
Half an hour later, as the vehicle rounded a corner in a mountain pass, Kurouzu Town appeared before their eyes.
It was a dead, silent town enveloped in a gray aura.
The gloomy and oppressive atmosphere was almost tangible, weighing heavily on the hearts of everyone in the town.
There wasn't a single trace of the living to be seen in the entire town. It was as if it were a completely different world from the other side of the mountain range, seemingly separated by an invisible wall.
Sitting in the backseat, Miko had already contacted the desperate client using the phone number provided by the exorcism app.
"Hello? Is this Miss Goshima? We've reached the mountain road near Kurouzu Town."
An excited girl's voice came from the other end of the line, carrying a hint of a tremble.
"Is... is it really you, the 'Jujutsu Girl Squad'?"
"Yes, Miss Goshima, it's us."
"Thank goodness! My boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, and I will head to the town entrance to wait for you right away!"
Kirie Goshima's voice cracked slightly from excitement; the group was her last lifeline.
She knew of this team. This mysterious organization that had risen to fame on the internet, resolving several S-grade supernatural incidents with the force of a thunderbolt, was her only hope.
At first, she hadn't even dared to imagine that this team would accept her commission, as their past missions were all massive jobs worth tens of millions.
How could they possibly care about her meager 100,000 yen?
So when Miko first contacted her, she thought Miko was a scammer. After verifying their identity, she was so thrilled she couldn't sleep all night.
During their brief exchange last night, Kirie used chaotic and rushed words to recount the recent bizarre phenomena in Kurouzu Town, as well as the tragedies that had occurred in her and her boyfriend's homes.
Shuichi's father was a somewhat famous potter who, one day, suddenly became insanely obsessed with spiral patterns.
His obsession ultimately evolved into an incomprehensible disaster.
In the end, he forcefully twisted himself into a spiral shape and stuffed himself into a wooden bathtub, shattering every bone in his body and dying in extreme agony.
On the day of his funeral, a massive, eerie black spiral cloud appeared in the sky above the town and lingered without dissipating.
After witnessing her husband's tragic death and the spiral in the sky, Shuichi's mother suffered a complete mental breakdown.
She recently developed an extreme phobia of spirals, going so far as to cut off her curly long hair and even attempting to snip off her spiral fingerprints with scissors. Fortunately, Shuichi discovered her in time and stopped her.
At this point, Kirie Goshima and Shuichi Saito had long been tortured to their limits, constantly lacking energy during their usual school days.
(A quick complaint here: even with all this happening, they still insisted on going to school.)
They had desperately tried to flee this cursed town.
But the results were despairing.
No matter which path they chose or how far they walked, they would ultimately, unknowingly, return to the center of Kurouzu Town. It was as if they were trapped in a loop they could never break free from.
Little did they know, a massive and mysterious organization had already discovered the anomalies in Kurouzu Town and quietly intervened.
...
Several kilometers away from the entrance of Kurouzu Town, inside an observation station disguised as a forest fire watchtower.
Several observers wearing uniform attire with stern expressions were staring intently at the live feed transmitted to their screens.
In the center of the footage was the speeding Batmobile.
"Target has entered Surveillance Zone Three."
"Identity confirmed... The emerging exorcist organization, 'Jujutsu Girl Squad'."
One of the observers quickly pulled up the relevant data, and a cold electronic voice echoed through the observation station.
"Organization member composition: Several high school girls, one ordinary corporate slave (Kyoko)."
"Notable anomalous individual: Codename 'Tomie'. Danger level extremely high. Possesses infinite proliferation and mental pollution traits."
"Leader: Yang Yi. Observation records are extremely scarce; incomprehensible. High Command assesses that he himself may be an unrecorded humanoid anomaly."
Another observer's finger hovered over a red alarm button, his brows furrowed.
"Should we initiate interception protocols?"
Just as he spoke, a line of text popped up on the observation station's main screen, displaying a supreme directive from Headquarters.
[Directive Content: Observe in silence. Any form of contact or interference is strictly prohibited.]
A flash of confusion crossed the observer's eyes, but he immediately obeyed the order.
He couldn't understand Headquarters' decision, but his only job was to execute it.
What they didn't know was that Headquarters had already glimpsed the end of human civilization through an anomaly capable of predicting the future.
The apocalypse would descend in a few months.
At that time, containment would breach, and the Old Gods would awaken. Their descent would utterly destroy existing human civilization.
And that anomaly's prophecies had never been wrong.
The apocalypse was inevitable.
Even if they exhausted all their power to stop the descent of the Old Gods, another form of apocalypse would strike. When that happened, the end would manifest in an even more unpredictable and uncontrollable manner.
Therefore, High Command made a decision.
To intentionally make a mistake, release the Old Gods from their cages, and let humanity meet its end in a foreseeable apocalypse.
Afterward, they would use an anomaly to reset the timeline and reboot human civilization.
Across the ocean, the "Cabin in the Woods" branch responsible for holding the annual sacrificial ritual had also received this order—to intentionally mess up this year's ritual, resulting in a containment breach.
...
*Vroom—*
The roar of the Batmobile's engine approached from a distance.
Yang Yi held the steering wheel with one hand, his expression completely unruffled.
His gaze fell upon a seemingly ordinary warning sign by the side of the road ahead.
The sign was made of rough wood, with a few words hastily scrawled on it in red paint.
[Landslide Ahead, No Entry]
Miko, Hana, and the others all saw the sign.
"Master, it looks like the road is blocked."
The corners of Yang Yi's mouth curled up. He sensed a barrier ahead, but instead of slowing down, he slammed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
*BOOM—!!!*
Under the shocked gazes of all the observers in the station.
The black vehicle didn't pause for a single second. Like an arrow piercing through an illusion, it crashed straight ahead.
When the front of the vehicle made contact with the invisible barrier, a violent ripple spread through space.
In the next second, the entire vehicle forcefully smashed its way through, vanishing from the mountain road.
Only the lingering ripple remained, proving that what had just happened was no hallucination.
"The blockade of the anomaly 'Isolation Signpost' has been breached!"
An observer's voice was hoarse, filled with unbelievable horror.
They couldn't be more familiar with this anomaly.
The anomaly [Isolation Signpost]—once planted in a specific location, it would completely seal off an area on both a physical and conceptual level.
Humans within its range could not enter or exit, and even the vast majority of physical anomalies could not pass through its barrier.
Its usage cost was extremely low; it merely required consuming the existence of one D-Class personnel per kilometer every time the sign was moved.
To the containment organization, this cost was practically nonexistent.
Therefore, this anomaly was hailed within the organization as the most stable and reliable containment object for blockades.
But now, this powerful anomaly had actually been ignored.
That humanoid anomaly named Yang Yi was definitely far from simple!