Chapter 096: The Longest Night at Atsuta Shrine (Part 2)

“What is this...?”

Asano Shoji stared at the pillar of light, then at the serpent.

“What have you done?” he demanded.

“Guess.”

The serpent smiled and offered no answer.

Qiao Qiao, however, had no such reservations. He stepped forward.

He invoked a direct spirit reading.

A low hum rang out.

The serpent’s long life unfolded before Qiao Qiao’s eyes.

The moment it was born, it awakened to spiritual awareness and learned the truth of its own origin.

It was a descendant of the Great Serpent, destined one day to lead their kind to a restored age of glory.

It watched the human world develop from the shadows, coldly observing, stirring up all manner of uncanny happenings behind the scenes.

“That one is far too strong. We should avoid him for now.”

The genius onmyoji Abe Seimei had driven the hundred demons into silence. The serpent could not match him and could only lie low, waiting for the day the prodigy’s life came to an end.

“A descendant of the Great Serpent? I wonder whether I might study you a little.”

Another voice, branded deep into its blood, filled the serpent with terror. If Abe Seimei merely made it wary, this one was enough to inspire outright fear.

“The age has changed. The world of monsters is long gone.”

A great yokai said this to the serpent. One year later, that very yokai was crushed by humans and left with no corpse at all.

“I have a plan that will let you take back the Sacred Sword.”

A gentle yet seductive voice drifted over, and hope flared once more within the serpent.

Qiao Qiao held nothing back.

He tore everything from the serpent’s mind.

That included even the uncanny incidents in Tokyo that it had only heard rumors of, some of which had been resolved by Qiao Qiao himself.

At the same time, the serpent’s eyes went wide; even its vertical pupils rounded out. Its whole body spasmed violently, and in the end it foamed at the mouth and fainted.

When the spirit reading ended, Qiao Qiao opened his eyes.

“Damn it. It’s the Jewel of Four Souls.”

What had spread across all of Nagoya was the formation used to forge the Jewel of Four Souls.

The array was anchored to the previous uncanny incidents in Nagoya, using as conduits the snake scales the exorcists had failed to notice.

Under ordinary circumstances, Atsuta Shrine might already have detected something amiss.

But with the Sacred Sword stolen, far too many things had been obscured.

The theft of the Sacred Sword and the forging of the Jewel of Four Souls: one in the light, one in the dark, each hiding the other and leaving the exorcists completely off guard.

And once the formation was fully activated, the citizens of Nagoya would become the fuel for the Jewel of Four Souls.

They would be forged into a Jewel of Four Souls containing the power of a million vengeful spirits.

At that moment, the Nagoya Onmyo Bureau remained unaware.

Atsuta Shrine’s main force had been split apart by the giant serpent and the python.

The Exorcist Association had no time to send a warning.

No one could stop what was about to happen.

“It’s over...”

A voice rose in Qiao Qiao’s mind.

“As I feared, that curse was real.”

The Sacred Sword let out a sorrowful sigh.

Though it was a divine weapon, it had always been believed to carry a curse.

Yamato Takeru had once wielded the Sacred Sword. He won glory after glory in battle, yet in the end he met a miserable death.

For that reason, the Sacred Sword, born from the world of yokai, came to embody not only conquest, but also the curse of bringing ruin and a violent end to all around it.

Because of this, it had not been enshrined in the Imperial Palace or Ise Shrine like the other two imperial regalia. Instead, it had been placed in Nagoya’s Atsuta Shrine, far from the emperor.

“As expected, a weapon is still only a weapon. No matter how it is used, it brings calamity to people.”

The Sacred Sword sighed.

“Do you know how to break this formation?” Qiao Qiao asked.

“Even if I do, what difference does it make?”

The Sacred Sword replied, “A grand array must have a core. Destroy the core, and the flow of spiritual power will be thrown into chaos, halting the formation.”

“This formation is obvious. The core is in that tower.”

“But it’s already too late. If we had only been fifteen minutes earlier, there might still have been a chance. But now there are only five minutes left before the entire array is complete. Even if you know where it is, how could you possibly destroy it?”

“It’s hopeless. If you have any last wishes, I can at least hear them for you.”

Qiao Qiao looked up at the Nagoya TV Tower.

He could sense it: the flow of spiritual power in the air had changed.

It was converging on the tower.

Even young exorcists like Koutokuin Masato were beginning to feel dizzy.

As for ordinary people, their minds were likely already growing dim.

In five more minutes, this city would die completely.

Qiao Qiao had neither the strength nor the leisure to investigate who had laid all this out.

“This place is about five kilometers from the Nagoya TV Tower. Driving won’t make it in time. A grenade launcher only reaches three kilometers, so that’s too short.”

“A rocket launcher? No, the range still isn’t enough.”

“Turning it into a missile has too high a failure rate. Otherwise, that might still be worth trying.”

“Wait.”

Qiao Qiao suddenly had a bold idea.

“Sword, if I understand a weapon’s structure clearly enough, can I make anything at all?”

“Of course. But what are you planning?”

The Sacred Sword sounded puzzled.

Around them, the exorcists had already begun their final resistance, desperately reaching out for outside contact and rallying every available force.

Qiao Qiao walked over to Asano Ariko.

The girl was sleeping peacefully, completely unaware of the catastrophe outside.

That sleeping face truly was adorable.

Qiao Qiao reached toward Asano Ariko’s chest and picked up the Yamato model.

Yes.

He had studied the Yamato model in earnest, consulting numerous historical references while assembling it.

As long as he closed his eyes, he could reconstruct every detail of the battleship in his mind.

“W-wait, what are you doing?”

The Sacred Sword was suddenly flustered.

“What else?”

Qiao Qiao tossed the Yamato model upward.

The light from the revolver flowed into the model.

It burst suddenly into brilliance.

Within that light, the plastic model gleamed with the luster of steel.

It grew larger and larger, like a construction of blocks unfolding into reality.

Clank, clank, clank, clank—

The earthshaking crash of metal upon metal drew everyone’s eyes to that spot.

Above Qiao Qiao’s head, over Atsuta Shrine, a colossal phantom, never before seen in this world, came fully into view.

It was the last glory of the battleship era.

The final and strongest warship on earth.

Battleship number one of the Yamato class: Yamato.

“This is way, way too reckless!”

While saying so, the Sacred Sword obediently controlled the barrel.

The 460-millimeter triple main battery.

Maximum range: forty-two kilometers.

Its power was enough to flatten a mountain ridge with a single shot.

Now, its muzzle was trained on the Nagoya TV Tower.

It was a shell of spiritual power, so there was no need to worry about harming ordinary people.

And so Qiao Qiao spoke.

“Fire the main battery!”

Boom—

A thunderous blast erupted, powerful enough to shatter every pane of glass within three kilometers.

Black smoke engulfed all of Atsuta Shrine.

At the same time, the shell struck the Nagoya TV Tower with perfect accuracy.

There was no need to identify exactly where the formation’s core lay.

The explosion of spiritual power destroyed the entire tower outright.

For the next thirty years, no spiritual incident occurred anywhere within three kilometers of the tower.

Boom—

The spiritual power that had been surging toward the Nagoya TV Tower like a vortex exploded apart at once.

In the sky, it was as though fine snow had begun to fall.

The enormous phantom of the battleship also slowly vanished into that snowfall.

“What a thoroughly exhilarating shot,” the Sacred Sword said in Qiao Qiao’s mind, full of feeling.

“Too bad there will never be another chance.”

The light was fading.

“Boy, my blade body is already shattered. Without anything to bear my spirit, and after spending so much divine power, I expect I shall fade away very soon as well.”

“To be able to experience something like this at the very end, I suppose I have not lived in vain for so long after all.”

The Sacred Sword’s voice grew increasingly distant.

“Please pass on my words to the people of Atsuta Shrine. Tell them to keep going. Keep protecting this city.”

“No.”

Qiao Qiao shook his head.

“For something like this, it’s better if you tell them yourself.”

“W-wait, what are you doing?”

The Sacred Sword watched as Qiao Qiao gathered the dispersing light and placed it into something entirely unexpected.

“I said before that any weapon can serve as a vessel for me, did I not?”

Qiao Qiao’s words left the Sacred Sword blinking in confusion.