Chapter 236: Origin Of The Curse
In the car, He Jia’an remained silent throughout, while the Chosen Alliance investigators in the car acted as if nothing had happened. The driver was driving, occasionally chatting and joking with nearby teammates. Some were recording and reporting work, while others were helping each other treat wounds.
Matsumoto Gin sat across from He Jia’an, his face expressionless at this moment, no longer maintaining the relaxed and composed smile from before. He had also been silent for a long time, and after letting out a sigh that broke the deathly silence-like atmosphere between the two, he spoke: “Mr. He, do you have any questions you’d like to ask?”
“Do you mind sharing your investigation results and progress with me?” He Jia’an instinctively wanted to cross his arms, but the movement tugged at the wound under the bandage, so he immediately put his hands down.
Matsumoto Gin raised his eyebrows and said, “If you want to hear it, of course that’s fine.”
“I’m sure you know that recently on Sakura Island, a kind of epidemic called ‘curse’ has become prevalent. They spread using urban legends as carriers, like ‘the name that cannot be recited,’ ‘Ushi-Oni that steals infants,’ ‘Kuchisake-onna,’ and so on, including the urban legends from Taomuki City that have caused casualties and have adverse influence, such as Miyako’s Curse and Hanako’s curse.
Of course, I think you should also know that Miyako’s Curse and Hanako’s curse didn’t appear recently. They existed before the ‘prevalence of curses,’ but during this period of prevalence, they developed stronger destructive power.
According to incomplete statistics, the number of people who died from Miyako’s Curse has already exceeded 20, most of whom were students from Kisaragi High School. As for those who died or disappeared from Hanako’s curse, the number cannot be fully determined, but if we consider all the mysterious disappearances within the school since Kisaragi High School was built as being influenced by Hanako’s curse, then the number has reached 50!” Matsumoto Gin explained to He Jia’an.
He Jia’an: “Why didn’t you make Kisaragi High School suspend classes earlier?”
“Unfortunately, if it weren’t for the recent strengthening of Miyako’s Curse and Hanako’s curse, which led to observable abnormal death phenomena, we really wouldn’t have noticed the strangeness of this high school.” Matsumoto Gin said with some regret, “After we locked onto the anomaly at Kisaragi High School, we immediately had the school cooperate to suspend classes.”
Then, Matsumoto Gin continued: “After some data analysis by our Chosen Alliance investigators, if we take Kisaragi High School as the radiation source point, the closer to Kisaragi High School the curse is generated, the more terrifying its effect, and the farther the distance where the curse is born, the weaker its effect.”
“Does that mean that people afflicted with Miyako’s Curse or Hanako’s curse, as long as they leave Taomuki City immediately, such as fleeing directly to our inland Shenzhou region, does that mean they would be safe?” He Jia’an proposed a bold constructive idea.
“It’s not like that. Perhaps I didn’t express it clearly. The power of the curse has nothing to do with spacetime distance. It’s just that the birth of the curse is related to the distance from the birth point to Kisaragi High School, and the strength of the generated curse is also related to this. For those afflicted with the curse, what effect the curse will have depends only on its performance at the birth point. For example, people afflicted with Miyako’s Curse will inevitably face misfortune—either death or disappearance. Even if the afflicted person flees to the Cape of the Horizon, it won’t change that result.” Matsumoto Gin shook his head.
Hearing this, He Jia’an let out a long sigh through his breath. He had been thinking that if they could evade disaster this way, he could simply take Naomi back to Shenzhou, and she would be safe.
Matsumoto Gin said gravely: “After we conducted an investigation of Kisaragi High School, I finally confirmed one thing: the recent prevalence of curses is closely linked to the space channel gradually opening to the Inner World. Most of those urban legend curses are powers that escaped from the Inner World. None of us know why the Inner World has such a massive amount of curse power, but what we do know is that more than one malicious incident has occurred on the land of Kisaragi High School.
Over a thousand years ago, the ancestors in this place worshiped a sea monster living near the sea. That sea monster had a bald head, and someone had seen it reveal a pair of huge human-like eyes, like a human demon monk, so it was named ‘Sea Monk.’ The villagers regularly prayed and made offerings to the Sea Monk. Fishermen going out to sea did so for safe voyages, and others did so to gain benefits from the Sea Monk, so they held necessary Ritual of Wishing ceremonies.
But later, a righteous general passed by this place. He and his soldiers saw those horrific rituals and in anger slaughtered all the decayed and degenerated villagers clean. However, the village’s shaman, before dying at the end, hid a incantation with mysterious power in his last words. The incantation took effect immediately, causing phenomena on this land that humans could hardly understand to frequently appear from then on.
And the general, who was unaware of this at the time, buried all those spiritually corrupted villagers they had killed under the land of Kisaragi High School. The area near that land of Kisaragi High School has the most abnormal phenomena, so it became a famously dangerous place known far and wide locally.
From ancient times all the way to the Showa period, countless dangerous events have occurred in the dangerous place, but modern people, having accepted scientific rationality, gradually stopped taking the dangerous place seriously. This gave the first principal of Kisaragi High School, who was not of upright character, an opportunity. As a descendant of the survivors from that slaughtered village over a thousand years ago, he actually wanted to emulate his ancestors and restart the ritual!
This first principal learned from an ancient book that the Sea Monk his ancestors worshiped was merely one splitter of a great being in the Inner World, so he wanted to use the power of the ritual to try summoning the abnormal god Thousand Illusions Moon living in the Inner World. But this was not easy. With just the accumulation of his generation, it was hard to achieve success, so the first principal patiently formulated a grand plan. They wanted to emulate the fool who moved the mountain, continuing the ritual from generation to generation, believing that one day it would surely succeed.
But what the first principal didn’t know was that the ritual he half-bakedly created had an unexpected effect. While opening the space channel to the Inner World, the special magnetic field environment of the Inner World unexpectedly attracted curse power, and the curse power began to aggregate massively into the Inner World, eventually becoming part of the air in the Inner World.
In such a space, the gathered curse power, under the irrigation of human malice, naturally turned into the various urban legends people know today.”
Too sleepy, that’s all for now.
