Chapter 51: Incarnation
Hikigaya Hachiman instantly understood why that skull, after being dug out, was furious and yelling, "Don't make me dig anymore."
It's easy to imagine how miserable its life was, being enslaved like a donkey to excavate the mountain and build a mausoleum for the Fujiwara family.
Since it had worked tirelessly like an ox, it was certainly fine to complain a little.
However, was the Heian-kyo era a thousand years ago really that outrageous? Even though a thousand years ago was known as the golden age of Jujutsu, they only used a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, one capable of conquering cities, simply to excavate a mountain and build a mausoleum.
The Fujiwara family was far too extravagant.
Furthermore, the fact that this Cursed Spirit appeared here suggests that it was likely buried deep underground as a funerary object after the mountain excavation was complete.
It was only when the development cooperation between the Yukinoshita and Shinomya groups accidentally released this funerary object that it began to follow its millennium-old instinct, digging and digging and digging.
This resulted in numerous landslides, which must have been caused by it hollowing out those mountains.
However, the appearance of this creature also confirms that the individual buried in the ancient tomb was absolutely no ordinary person.
With a Special Grade Cursed Spirit as a funerary object, the deceased must have been at least a direct descendant of the Fujiwara family.
"Is everyone okay?"
Hikigaya Hachiman looked at Todo Aoi and Mei Mei walking towards him, as well as Ui Ui, who was trailing his older sister and sticking to her side.
"We're fine."
Todo Aoi walked up, patted Hikigaya Hachiman's shoulder, and sincerely said, "As expected of my brother! Not only are your writings good, but your single Black Flash is several times stronger than the continuous Black Flashes I can sometimes pull off."
Although consecutive Black Flashes require luck, a massive amount of Cursed Energy can increase the destructive power of a single Black Flash countless times.
The same Cursed Technique, when used by different people, can have vastly different effects.
Gojo Satoru rarely uses Black Flash, simply because he possesses the Limitless Cursed Technique.
Hikigaya Hachiman also told them about the scene he saw in his mind right after killing the Cursed Spirit.
"Then we absolutely must go."
Mei Mei was even more eager to try.
She thought the same way as Hikigaya Hachiman: this ancient tomb was very likely for a direct descendant of the great noble Fujiwara family from a thousand years ago.
The funerary objects inside must be extremely valuable.
As for Ui Ui, he goes wherever his sister goes.
"I have no objection."
Naturally, Todo Aoi agreed as well.
"I haven't fought enough yet."
If that Cursed Spirit's recovery ability hadn't been so formidable, he wouldn't have been able to instantly kill it, and he wouldn't have used [Boogiewoogie] to swap his position with Hikigaya Hachiman, letting his good brother provide the finishing damage.
With that, Hikigaya Hachiman, for the sake of caution, made a cut on his wrist, just like the last time he used it to search for that spider beast spirit.
"This is an automatic search Cursed Technique."
Hikigaya Hachiman remembered that he hadn't used this technique in front of Todo and the others, so he explained first, lest they think he was committing self-harm.
An automatic exploration Cursed Technique is particularly useful in this situation.
When exploring ancient tombs in movies and TV shows, to guard against tomb raiders, they are typically filled with various lethal mechanisms to ensure no one returns alive.
The Fujiwara family, as great nobles at the time, would have been extremely cautious in this regard.
By relying on this automatic exploration Cursed Technique—which uses threads thinner than capillaries—Hikigaya Hachiman can find all these mechanisms down to the smallest detail. He can even firmly jam the gears of certain mechanisms when they are triggered, preventing them from moving.
This is also a method of utilizing this automatic search Cursed Technique.
Even Ui Ui, who had inexplicably disliked Hikigaya Hachiman since before, now had to admit he was completely won over by Hachiman's actual performance.
"Sister is really too amazing!"
Ui Ui only now remembered why his sister said the cost of hiring Hachiman was much lower than Gojo Satoru, yet the utility Hachiman could provide was greater than 1.5 Gojo Satorus combined.
Ui Ui had initially thought of Hikigaya Hachiman as a glass cannon—high offense, low defense.
But the sheer brilliance of that Black Flash punch completely changed his perception.
Hachiman's physical prowess was clearly not inferior to his sister's; in fact, it might even be much stronger.
Hikigaya Hachiman covered the entire underground tomb with these threads, thinner than capillaries. Simultaneously, the blood sphere outside displayed all the images detected by the probes, giving Mei Mei and the others a sense of involvement.
The range of this ancient tomb was quite vast. After all, it was excavated by the previous Special Grade Cursed Spirit, the Ancient Great Skeleton, digging at least five kilometers underground.
It was practically an inverted pyramid buried deep underground.
Through the Cursed Technique's feedback, Hikigaya Hachiman and the others saw that there were indeed many ingeniously constructed lethal mechanisms along the way. Poison and blades were only minor tricks.
Jujutsu families relied more on things like Cursed Spirits.
Although a thousand years of time had drained the life out of some Cursed Spirits, a significant portion remained in a hungry and frenzied state.
Their grades ranged from Special Grade to Grade 1, and so on.
Hikigaya Hachiman also searched for the missing people, level by level, which took some time.
However, apart from the bodies of some tomb raiders who had accidentally stumbled in, he saw no living beings.
Finally, the probe of the exploration Cursed Technique reached the lowest level, but it was blocked. The screen indicated that the area was covered by a large, special barrier and could not be detected.
"What's going on? Why is the image gone?" Todo Aoi wondered.
"A barrier is separating it."
The fact that this barrier could still function normally after a thousand years, and maintain a significant intensity, shows how powerful the original sorcerer must have been. The defense
was even strong enough to prevent the probe—whose tip had a Cursed Technique corrosion effect—from entering.
But this was no trouble for Hikigaya Hachiman.
Cursed Energy couldn't break it, but what about Spiritual Energy?
Hikigaya Hachiman, who was trained as a primary think tank after his Spiritual Energy aptitude was detected, could meet the think tank standards set by even the Red Mage [Magnus] with excellent scores.
Invading the barrier with a capillary-thin probe from five kilometers away—such fine control was not difficult for Hikigaya Hachiman.
Hikigaya Hachiman placed one hand on the blood mass he had formed. Very quickly, he found the one probe among the tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, of branch probes that had touched the barrier.
When blue Spiritual Energy was injected, the entire fine red probe began to shine faintly.
The area connected to the barrier immediately began to yellow, like concentrated sulfuric acid dropped on white paper. Then, it began to turn a scorched brown, and finally turned completely black, as if corroded by fire.
Although it only burned a breach invisible to the naked eye, several thousand probes immediately streamed in along the hole that had just been corroded.
Hikigaya Hachiman made only a small crack out of caution; if he hadn't been afraid of triggering the entire barrier's defense, the hole would have been much larger.
However, the images transmitted through these tiny probes made those who saw them feel extremely uncomfortable.
In an instant, the nausea level felt like entering an outer-space latrine.
Hikigaya Hachiman saw that it was permeated with monstrous resentment.
What met their eyes was an incredibly vast underground space. The surrounding walls were carved with thirteen statues of grimacing, evil gods, each with two faces and four arms, holding the hand seals of Yama-ten. It looked extremely ominous.
Hikigaya Hachiman frowned. Was the Fujiwara family worshipping Ryomen Sukuna as a deity?
The boundless pool of blood was packed with various grotesque, completely rotten Cursed Spirits. It was hard to imagine these Cursed Spirits had existed for a thousand years, and all were Special Grade Cursed Spirits.
Only the tenacious vitality of a Special Grade Cursed Spirit could allow them to survive for a thousand years in the form of severed limbs and still provide continuous resentment and Cursed Energy to the blood pool.
In the center of the blood pool, a demon god statue stood. Its four hands held a completely black coffin, which was tightly wrapped in chains connected securely to the statue.
The few missing people Hikigaya Hachiman was looking for were also there. They were hung like candied hawthorns, covered in wounds. The blood dripping from their bodies ran down the chains onto the coffin.
But suddenly, the image, which had been clear at first, mysteriously became blurred.
The last thing the group saw was an extremely withered hand punching through the outer shell of the coffin and extending out. It made a dismissive gesture, and almost simultaneously, the thousand or so probes Hikigaya Hachiman had infiltrated into the area lost contact at the same time.
They vanished as if erased from thin air.
Only the initial probe, which contained Hikigaya Hachiman's Spiritual Energy, continued to corrode the barrier, unaffected.
A single probe could not perform a large-scale, detailed survey.
However, Hikigaya Hachiman did not withdraw the Cursed Technique and maintained the overall exploration Cursed Technique.
After all, only the deepest part was affected; the probes in the other layers were completely fine.
Hikigaya Hachiman still needed to use these probes to provide them with a safe guide when they descended.
With the probes' invasion gone, the hidden underground barrier returned to peace.
The mummy-like withered hand retracted, and a dry, raspy voice could faintly be heard.
"...Invaders..."
Then, from the edge of the damaged coffin, a dry, bloodless dead branch curled around a shriveled eye and directly stuffed it into the mouth of one of the men hanging on the chains.
He was the Grade 1 Sorcerer recruited by the Shinomya family with a high salary.
The man, originally unconscious, immediately woke up after being forced to swallow the shriveled eye.
The rejection reaction was extremely violent. Cursed Energy constantly erupted from his body, and he twitched repeatedly, frothing at the mouth.
Another wave of Cursed Energy, not belonging to the sorcerer, began to directly devour the sorcerer's own Cursed Energy as nourishment. Soon, the Cursed Energy that did not belong to the original man completely took the dominant role, attaching itself to the man's body.
But this was only the beginning of the change. The man's originally unpleasant face began to turn feminine; he looked like he was transitioning from male to female.
His gender, height, and bone structure completely changed, and his hair and hair color changed as well.
His flat body gradually became fuller.
Finally, he truly transformed into a fiercely-looking woman with long hair.
At this point, her appearance was completely different from the original; it should be said that she had completely become a different person.
The woman simply shook, and the chains binding her were instantly torn to shreds.
Waking up again from a thousand years of confinement, the woman was still somewhat uncomfortable with her new body. It took a moment for her consciousness to return fully.
"I'm alive again... What that guy with the stitched scar on his forehead said was true."
The woman touched her face in disbelief.
However, before she could fully recover from the joy of her incarnation and resurrection, she showed a look of disgust, clearly repulsed by the scene before her.
"Where is this?
And where is that bastard with the stitch on his forehead?
He resurrected me, and now he's gone?"
But when the woman inadvertently cast her gaze upon the coffin marked with (Fusa), she immediately showed a horrified expression, even involuntarily shivering as she thought of something.
"Ryofusa's coffin?"
She instantly wanted to leave and was about to activate her Cursed Technique to escape.
But an incredibly fast, hideous tentacle pierced right through the woman's chest.
Evil Cursed Energy completely bound the woman, and the pale skin near where the tentacle penetrated her chest began to ulcerate. Her skin and face became incredibly ferocious, like bulging veins.
This poisonous Cursed Toxin was integrating into the woman's body, suppressing her own consciousness and transforming her back into a slave of the Fujiwara family.
"Damn Fujiwara family!
I served your family tirelessly as an elite Sorcerer of the Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad!
You won't even let me go after I'm dead?"
Wicked and shrill wails echoed throughout the underground space.
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