Chapter 231: Gratitude To Mokumokuren, Eyeballs All Over The Ground! The First Battle After The Eerie Promotion In The Labyrinth’s Depths!
“Hold on a moment.”
Before stepping into the shadow cast by the cave entrance, Shangshan Che suddenly stopped.
He took out the headlamp of Yongming 【 from his storage bag 】 and handed it to Tamamo, who was still wearing a small yellow safety helmet in the center of the team.
“Tamamo, put this on.”
There was no way the depths of the cave would have constant light sources; even the flames maintained by Onmyōdō carried the risk of suddenly extinguishing.
A headlamp that could illuminate hidden demons and stay lit continuously was undoubtedly an excellent item for strategizing the labyrinth.
Tamamo acknowledged, stuffed the two black bricks she held in both hands into her pocket, skillfully put the headlamp on her head, and confirmed the strap’s security several times.
At the same time, Shangshan Che silently transformed into the Four-Tailed Fox Incarnation.
Then, without the others noticing, he avoided them and deployed the “Mirage” domain.
Mokumokuren could induce illusions, alter cognition, and use that as a fulcrum to disrupt one’s state of mind or even drive them insane.
As the same type of talent, Mirage definitely had a non-weak suppressive and weakening effect on it.
After stabilizing the Mirage domain, Shangshan Che did not keep the enhanced Hannya Mask at his waist—if he could still rely on the Jade Heart Incantation and Spirit Condensing Technique to blend in with the team now.
But if the Hannya Mask appeared, it would absolutely expose his unusual nature to an unknown number of Mokumokuren.
Most things in the labyrinth were unknown, and Shangshan Che was not in a hurry to reveal too many of his cards.
Yagyu Oshi turned his head in some confusion, feeling a vague change around them, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
He glanced at Shangshan Che again and, seeing the latter silent, said nothing more.
Because Shangshan Che’s perception was far stronger than his own.
Shangshan Che retracted all of his own qi and spiritual power fluctuations into his qi circulation and spoke: “Before entering the labyrinth, I need to confirm everyone’s information again.”
The tall and sturdy agent grinned: “Otomo Ken. Like you, Agent Shangshan, I cultivate the Corona Breathing Technique, at the muscle refining level, positioned as a guard in the team.”
The short-haired female agent calmly replied: “Fukada Mei. Skilled in the Astronomy Path and earth, wood-element Onmyōdō.”
The other three agents, their faces shrouded in opaque black cloth, said in unison: “C40, C41, C42. We can summon and manipulate shikigami for exploration and various other tasks.”
Otomo Ken looked at the serious-faced Shangshan Che and grinned, nodding his chin at him.
“Relax, Agent Shangshan. Don’t feel too much pressure about our safety… Even without you, we would still come at this time.”
He spread his hands: “It’s just that we might have been completely wiped out, causing the Special Affairs Office to raise this labyrinth’s danger level again.”
Otomo Ken seemed relaxed, but Shangshan Che heard no trace of open-mindedness in his words.
Only the resolve to face death head-on.
He glanced at the others and saw them nodding to him as well.
There was nothing more to say.
Accompanied by the surge of spiritual power from Fukada Mei, who opened a very faint warning barrier, Shangshan Che finally stepped into the range belonging to the Mokumokuren Labyrinth.
In an instant, the sunlight outside the cave, the wind sounds, and the natural ambient noises all vanished completely.
Deep, viscous darkness came rushing at them.
Deeper in, sparse dripping sounds flowed from the edges of the rock walls, echoing in everyone’s ears.
—In such an environment, voices could travel over a hundred meters without issue.
Shangshan Che looked toward Fukada Mei beside him.
She nodded in understanding, and after a moderate spiritual power fluctuation, a faint soundproof barrier enveloped the group.
The next moment, bright light shone from behind Shangshan Che, illuminating most of the distance ahead.
Tamamo turned her head up, down, left, and right, scanned the surrounding rock walls completely, and breathed a sigh of relief: “Nothing there.”
Yagyu Oshi touched the rock wall with his hand, his expression solemn: “The first time we came, it was a labyrinth; the last time, it became a castle; now it’s fully turned into a cave.”
—The Mokumokuren Labyrinth changes its environment over time, and the Special Affairs Office still hasn’t figured out the reason behind it.
Of course, it genuinely increased the exploration difficulty for Shangshan Che’s group.
At that moment, the sound of iron armor clashing appeared; Shangshan Che watched two wooden-faced men with two-star markers on their heads pass by his side.
C40 clearly spoke from behind.
“These are summoned shikigami Ironclad Soldiers, used for scouting ahead.”
The Ironclad Soldiers stepped out of the barrier and boldly advanced into the cave depths, making noise.
The group followed far behind them.
Every certain distance, Shangshan Che had Tamamo use the headlamp to illuminate the surroundings, but so far, nothing had happened.
There weren’t even the dense branching paths essential to a “cave labyrinth”—just a single, winding passage.
It was as if this were merely an ordinary rock cave, not a supernatural phenomenon cluster harboring a massive number of Mokumokuren.
“Elder Brother Shangshan, this feels really off… It wasn’t like this before; at this distance, we would have encountered several Mokumokuren already.”
Tamamo’s clear voice carried some worry: “Maybe we came at a bad time this time.”
“No, maybe we came at just the right time.”
Shangshan Che narrowed his eyes: “Something unusual must have a demonic cause; perhaps these Mokumokuren are undergoing some key transformation.”
The instant his words fell, Shangshan Che sensed the outermost warning barrier suddenly disappear.
He immediately looked toward Fukada Mei behind him and saw her inexplicably rolling her eyes, mumbling unclear words.
Hit?
Shangshan Che, detecting no anomalies in his perception range, clicked his tongue—this was a supernatural phenomenon that often activated its abilities without reason.
If these Mokumokuren were separate demons, he could cleave them into piles of charred remains in minutes.
But gathered together forming a new supernatural phenomenon prototype, that was indeed troublesome.
Tamamo seemed to have foreseen this; she immediately smeared something on her palm and slapped Fukada Mei’s face twice hard.
Slap slap!
The latter shuddered, her eyes confused amid the pain: “Wh-what happened?”
Within seconds, Fukada Mei recovered, her face grim: “Their illusion technique ability has gotten stronger.”
“Let’s hurry forward.”
Shangshan Che drew Kaga Kiyomitsu, letting pale white and black drip from the blade tip, beginning to spread the Sorrow of Parting domain: “Tamamo,”
During the subsequent quiet advance, the two Ironclad Soldiers far ahead showed no issues.
Instead, everyone except Shangshan Che was “remotely” confounded for a while.
It varied in duration based on each person’s state of mind before they snapped out of it.
For example, Yagyu Oshi was dazed for only an instant, while Otomo Ken took a while to recover after being shocked by Shangshan Che’s lightning.
And this was after the weakening effect of the Mirage domain.
“As for me…”
Shangshan Che, still concealing his qi, pondered.
—Probably because the previous special salvage had elevated his state of mind to the peak of Hundred Refinements in essence, even surpassing that stage.
Amid the monotonous footsteps, C40 suddenly shouted: “Lost contact with the Ironclad Soldiers at the same time!”
The next instant, Shangshan Che sensed a very clear malicious gaze swiftly pass over the edge of the headlamp’s illumination range and land on them.
The first Mokumokuren appeared!
“You’re asking for it!”
Otomo Ken’s eyes bulged in wrath, raising his fist with fine steel knuckledusters and smashing heavily into the center of what looked like a black carpet crawling with scarlet eyeballs—the body of the Mokumokuren.
But in Shangshan Che’s eyes, he had punched an empty rock wall.
Otomo Ken thought he had finished it with one punch and grabbed the “Mokumokuren corpse” to show Shangshan Che.
In the instant he turned, the malicious gaze hidden in the darkness swelled massively, trying to envelop Otomo Ken.
Shangshan Che somewhat regrettably withdrew his attention from the perception circle.
It seemed there were no deeper-hidden Mokumokuren.
Footsteps overlapped and crossed; Kaga Kiyomitsu’s blade tip flicked upward.
With the extreme speed from the Eightfold Fence, the airborne Mokumokuren hadn’t even reacted before Kaga Kiyomitsu cleaved it from bottom to top in half.
Split open as easily as paper.
The effects of Sorrow of Parting and Plague hadn’t even activated yet; the physically frail Mokumokuren had already lost its life qi.
Yagyu Oshi stayed by Tamamo and the fragile C40 trio’s side from start to finish, steadfast in his guard duty.
【You killed a Mokumokuren（ two-star）, obtaining 81 Soul Ash.】
This Soul Ash was a bit low compared to same-star demons.
Shangshan Che didn’t relax his vigilance; as soon as this Mokumokuren died, he scanned the surroundings again.
Still nothing.
【You obtained a large number of Mokumokuren Eyeballs!】
The new prompt startled Shangshan Che slightly, then he smiled.
His guess was right; upon death, Mokumokuren indeed dropped a bunch of eyeballs useless to ordinary people and carrying considerable malice.
So, Special Affairs Office agents who had strategized this labyrinth many times wouldn’t bother collecting these things.
But so many eyeballs were a huge boon for him!
While Otomo Ken recovered, Shangshan Che tossed dozens of eyeballs—much smaller than Hundred-Eyed Ghost Eyeballs—into the Edo Castle gacha pool.
Then, before Hundred-Eyed Demon could react, he exited the gacha pool and looked at the embarrassed Otomo Ken.
“I wonder how much progress these eyeballs will provide…”
The thought flashed, and Shangshan Che asked him.
“If a single two-star Mokumokuren can trap you in an illusion, how did you strategize it before?”
Otomo Ken opened his mouth: “Before, it took double-digit numbers of Mokumokuren targeting me together in combat to trap me in an illusion, but this time…”
Shangshan Che’s first reaction was—Mokumokuren had evolved over time?
Like his demon incarnations, star level unchanged but quality improved.
But he quickly realized that wasn’t it.
Based on his careful perceptions along the way, the truth should be “the deeper into the Mokumokuren Labyrinth, the stronger the mental influence effect from Mokumokuren.”
Even if not exact, it was close enough.
If so, further in, those with weak willpower might even become the enemy’s living combat forces.
“Otomo, Fukada.” He called the two agents’ names. “You two temporarily withdraw from this strategy; follow the white markers on the retreat path out.”
“Remember, do not step outside the white boundaries.”
Besides them, Tamamo was barely affected, and the C40 trio weren’t even normal humans.
“Understood.”
The two replied unwillingly.
After seeing several quiet-moving cloth-armored soldiers leave with them, Shangshan Che continued: “Let’s keep moving.”
So the C40 trio summoned new Ironclad Soldiers to scout.
After several more minutes, the group passed the spot where the previous Ironclad Soldiers were lost without incident; Tamamo checked her mobile phone and said,
“We’ve never gone deeper than this time before… By now, we would have encountered dozens of Mokumokuren.”
Shangshan Che looked up, staring into the seemingly endless black cavern, sensing deep malice from an immense distance in the unknown darkness.
Even though this malice wasn’t explicitly targeting him or even aware of him, Shangshan Che could feel its vastness.
At the deepest part of this Mokumokuren Labyrinth, something terrifying matching this eerie calm was absolutely waiting for them.
“Tamamo, does the mobile phone still have signal?” Shangshan Che infused threads of lightning into the qi sphere at his fingertip. “Call for available support, Ghost God level.”
Facing an unknown supernatural phenomenon born from demons, though confident, Shangshan Che didn’t dare guarantee he could handle it alone.
“Huh?” Tamamo’s raised finger paused; she was astonished. “Elder Brother Shangshan, is it that serious…”
“Just in case.” He added.
Tamamo fell silent, choosing to trust him.
After a brief pause, the seven continued forward.
While walking, Shangshan Che, focused on the absent Mokumokuren, suddenly realized.
Right.
After those two left, they should be six people, right?
Shangshan Che whipped around and saw a shadow at the team’s rear, nearly identical to C40 and the others.
The shadow, noticing his gaze, looked up; a massive black pupil swirling with eerie laughter and mockery opened on its face.
‘I see you.’
In an instant, the malice Shangshan Che sensed surged several magnitudes, almost becoming the surrounding darkness, surging toward him overwhelmingly.
He sneered coldly: “You eyeball… since you’ve seen me, you still want to run?”
Pale blade light flashed; without damaging the eyeball at all, it perfectly gouged it from the shadow’s face, which had completely vanished by the time the light ended.
Thus, sharp killing intent and malice swelled again, even making the most perceptually weak Tamamo swallow hard.
She stammered,
“Sh-Shangshan Elder Brother, shouldn’t we wait a bit…”
“Too late.”
Shangshan Che cut her off.
He looked up slightly and saw a vast cavern dozens of meters high suddenly opening up.
Unbeknownst to them, they had reached the deepest part of the Mokumokuren Labyrinth!
Not far ahead, an indescribable black mass writhed slowly; aside from Shangshan Che, no one dared look it straight in the eye amid such immense malice.
Yagyu Oshi looked back and saw dozens of Mokumokuren blocking the path, their countless pupils emitting twisted grins.
“Plan change; you all leave first.”
Shangshan Che glanced behind, flicked his finger, and launched the lightning ball accumulated for dozens of minutes.
With a boom, the piled Mokumokuren turned to ash in an instant.
The retreat path cleared again.
He took a lifelike Hannya Mask from the void, grinned, baring his pale white teeth toward the thousands upon tens of thousands of incoming gazes.
“I’ll test how deep this thing really is.”
Poor condition today, 4.3k
Sorry orz
Will make it all up in a couple days
