"Room 611, this is the one." With the help of a flashlight, the three of them reached their destination. After a brief exchange of glances, they nodded in unison.
Zhang Yu, the master of Hua nation cuisine, cracked his wrists. Yukie, the beautiful miko from the shrine, pulled out the spirit blade · Shirayuki-zakura and the spirit blade · Sakurafubuki from her guitar bag, dual-wielding them in her hands. Mo Bai, possessing superhuman physical fitness... found a quiet corner and silently pulled out a bag of potato chips.
Crackle! The light sound of the bag tearing made both Zhang Yu and Yukie shudder simultaneously.
Under the gaze of two pairs of angry eyes, Mo Bai resentfully stuffed the potato chips back into his waist-bag snack pouch.
"Hmph!" Zhang Yu withdrew his gaze and let out a muffled grunt as he exerted force, twisting the entire doorknob off without making a single sound.
Yukie immediately kicked the door open and performed a tactical roll. Aided by the mystical glow of her spirit blades, the girl's sharp eyes, having shed their usual ditsy air, scanned the surroundings like a hawk.
"No miasma?" Finding no familiar corrupt energy or sign of their target, Yukie sheathed her blades with a look of doubt.
"How is it?" Zhang Yu asked hurriedly, seeing Yukie lower her guard.
"Senior, what do you think?" Yukie didn't answer him, turning instead to ask Mo Bai.
Zhang Yu's face went dark, almost blurting out the famous line: 'Chang Wei, you still dare to say you don't know martial arts?!'
"What can I think? Let's just look around first." Mo Bai rolled his eyes and kept a wide distance from Zhang Yu, fearing he might trigger the man's fragile, high-voltage psychological tripwire.
The absence of miasma at the scene led to two possibilities: either the target had already left, or it wasn't a malicious spirit, and the attacks on Zhang Yu and Sena Hiromi were purely accidental.
The three of them searched the kitchen thoroughly but still found no clues.
"Has the target left the kitchen?" All three were frowning in frustration. They all knew that regardless of whether it was a malicious spirit or not, simply leaving it alone was not a good solution.
"How about we search the rest of the sixth floor to see if anything is out of place?" Mo Bai had a sudden brainwave, planting a classic flag for a total party wipe in a horror movie.
===
The night was as still as water.
Under the magnificent lights illuminating the exterior of the Tōtsuki Detached Palace, the sixth floor stood out in total darkness, appearing even more sinister.
Walking through the hallways, Mo Bai felt a chill that he hadn't noticed when they were together as a trio. A gust of eerie wind blew through the massive corridor.
It was true that he could beat down malevolent spirits with his bare hands, but that was by relying on his cunn—utterly brilliant wit to seize the initiative before a head-on clash. Being the one hunted in a high-tension encounter... that was a different story, and even he felt a bit weak in the knees.
"I must have been stupid to suggest searching the sixth floor."
After Mo Bai proposed the idea, the conversation naturally shifted toward splitting up for the sake of efficiency, and they decided to implement it. At the time, Mo Bai thought it didn't matter, but now—he just wanted to hop in a time machine and beat his past self to death.
Incidentally, the area Mo Bai was responsible for exploring included the staff room, which was also where the breaker box was located.
In horror movies, the guy who goes looking for the breaker box dies a miserable death nine times out of ten.
Good grief... why does it get creepier the further I walk?
Shivering, Mo Bai inadvertently looked back. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted an abnormal dark shadow at the turn of the corner, and his entire body froze.
Was this that... whatever-it-was law about thinking of a shitty situation and it actually happening? Murphy's Law?
"Damn it all!"
Mo Bai's palms began to sweat, yet he had to pretend nothing had happened and keep walking forward.
Soon, Mo Bai heard light footsteps hidden within the sound of his own, constantly drawing closer. Nearer, even nearer!
The empty, dark corridor echoed with Mo Bai's quickened breathing. At the moment he prepared to face a surprise attack, a foul wind came from behind him.
In the blink of an eye, Mo Bai spun around with a beautiful empty-handed blade catch!
"Nani?!" An exclamation of surprise came from the shadow whose blunt weapon had been caught.
Eh? A loli's voice?
Just as Mo Bai felt this, he suddenly sensed another foul wind attacking from behind.
"Hotaru-chan! I'll help you!"
Whoa~ an even younger voice!
"Bah! Is this the time to be distracted by that?!" Mo Bai snapped out of his trance and shouted loudly, "Stop! Don't you dare move!"
Domain of the Heart's Manifestation was instantly activated. The second shadow lunging toward him suddenly found that no matter what, it couldn't take that final step to reach Mo Bai.
"Waaaah! What's happening? Hotaru-chan, save me!" The second shadow let out a panicked cry for help.
"Dagenzi!" The shadow struggling with Mo Bai grew frantic.
The floorboards creaked loudly under the force of their struggle.
Perhaps sensing the commotion, the stuffed Little White Dragon poked its head out from Mo Bai's collar, its body a whole circle rounder than before. Its misty eyes snapped open with rage as it took in the situation.
"Moo~~!" A low yet massive Deep Sea Roar echoed through the entire Tōtsuki Detached Palace.
"Senior?!"
"Little Mo!?"
When the other two arrived, they saw two monster girls knocked unconscious on the floor by the Little White Dragon's Deep Sea Roar.
===
The breaker was flipped. In the staff room, which was now as bright as day, Mo Bai finally saw the two "malicious spirits" who had ambushed him.
One was a loli with a long ponytail, dressed in a green and white kimono. The leaf crown on her hair ornament and the plant with a fluffy pom-pom on one end clearly indicated her identity—Hotarugusa, known in the pugilistic world as Grass Daddy.
The other was a white-haired young girl with the build of a seven or eight-year-old child, wearing lantern pants and an outfit resembling a plush suit. The emerald-green radish sprouts on her head and the two long, radish-like appendages by her ears that looked like drooping bunny ears were highly recognizable—she was Dagenzi, from Monster's Heart.
"Senior, what should we do?" Seeing that the targets were such cute little girls, Yukie's maternal instincts immediately overflowed.
"First, let's ask them why they attacked Zhang Yu and Sena Hiromi." Mo Bai massaged his temples with both hands.
He hadn't expected the Little White Dragon's voice to be so loud despite its small size. He had taken that Deep Sea Roar head-on, and now his head was ringing.
"Chef Zhang Yu, what do you think?"
"Mm." Zhang Yu signaled his agreement.
Dagenzi, who had been disarmed, puffed out her chubby cheeks, tears of grievance and anger shimmering in the corners of her eyes.
"Hmph! We didn't attack anyone first!"
"It was clearly you bad people who wouldn't give Dagenzi food and even locked Dagenzi and Hotaru-chan in a room. That blonde bad guy even wanted to pinch Dagenzi's radish sprouts!"
Mo Bai's gaze remained somewhat reserved, but Yukie's gaze was one of blatant contempt.
"That was the mess Sena Hiromi made. What does that have to do with me, Zhang Yu?" Zhang Yu immediately distance himself from the situation.
"Then why did you attack me?" Mo Bai let out a long sigh of relief when he saw that Zhang Yu wasn't going to pursue the matter of being knocked out that day; it would have been quite difficult to handle otherwise.
"That's because—" Hotarugusa quickly pulled the tearful Dagenzi into a hug, patting her head to comfort her.
Gurgle~~~
The sound of hunger echoed from the bellies of Hotarugusa and Dagenzi.
"Alright, I understand." Mo Bai looked at his waist-bag, which he had originally intended for storing snacks while watching the show. The open bag of potato chips was releasing the thick, appetite-stimulating aroma of fried food.
"If you don't mind, why don't you have some snacks to tide you over?" Mo Bai handed over the bag.
________________________________________
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