I'm a teacher in Tokyo!

Led by Yoshizaki Kawa, the two then arrived at a collapsed shrine, beneath which was an old tunnel.

After cleaning the tunnel, opening the cover, and walking back and forth through the tunnel, they finally found the actual place of worship.

After moving the sacrificial skeletons on the ground from the middle, Yoshizaki and Higa Kotoko looked at the desiccated corpse hanging from the ceiling by a dry red straw rope.

Although the body was desiccated, the skin and flesh still revealed the posture of the former girl. She was standing on tiptoe, with her hands hanging down vertically, and her neck was encased in flesh with a rope.

But in reality, in the dream, the girl in front of him wanted to kill the priest, but was killed in return and stabbed in the heart.

Now she is hanging in the air. It must have been after the so-called "great compensation" that someone deliberately made her body like this in an attempt to suppress the resentment of the gate.

Yoshizaki took a step forward, and almost instantly, the corpse swayed slightly, as if it wanted to retreat, but because its neck was hanging, it had nowhere to retreat at this moment!

The next moment, the corpse suddenly opened its eyes, its lifeless gaze fixed on Yoshizaki Kawa, its hoarse voice carrying a hint of tragedy and indignation;

"You've gone too far!"

"We made a promise, but you didn't keep it, and now you're...bullying me..."

"Take one more step closer, and I'll kill you even if it kills me!!!"

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 183 My lord, times have changed.

Ah this...

Yoshizaki Kawa was stunned for a moment when he saw the grief-stricken female ghost in front of him;

At times, he even felt as if he were the villain, like the cult leader in the dream world who wanted to escape while shouting about bonds and friendship, but whose survival bug he fixed.

He always felt that the person opposite him was the protagonist of a shonen manga, while he himself was the main villain.

Now the female ghost is the same; it seems she has been completely corrupted by the curse and doesn't even dare to resist.

He even felt that the latter was like a cat at this moment, fierce and threatening with its life, but... in the eyes of its master, its behavior was nothing more than "cute".

Yoshizaki was not afraid of the danger posed by the female ghost in front of him. He simply felt that since the female ghost possessed reason, he could continue to communicate with her.

So he took another step forward, and under the latter's extremely wary and bleak gaze, Yoshizaki Kawa spread his hands: "I have no hostility towards you. Everything between us was just self-defense. Now that we can talk calmly, why don't we have a chat?"

Just self-defense?

Upon hearing this, the female ghost's corpse trembled slightly. Was this self-defense?

Once that curse seeps into the door, it's hard to imagine the turmoil it will cause.

At that moment, looking at everyone's tragic deaths, Kurosawa Yae finally understood the true meaning of the ritual and his own duty.

That's why she asked Yoshizaki Kawa for help in her dream.

But that time, the Great Calamity descended, and all surviving life in the village—the elderly, children, young people, and even animals—was killed by the curse that overflowed from the underworld, and finally wandered forever in this place where the boundary between life and death was blurred.

But she could no longer fight the curse with her own reason, so she had to find her sister and complete the ritual they had performed.

Using the painful power of the door, she triggered an earthquake, burying the village beneath the mountain and collecting rainwater in a pool to close the only entrance. She even hung all the vengeful spirits of the village below the pool to resist the corrosive power of the curse behind the door.

The Japanese are a strange and twisted group. They have complex emotions and a spirit of dedication. Their emotions and the education they receive about dedication are intertwined like a spiral.

The barrier that I have been maintaining will also be destroyed by this curse. When the power of hell descends, this entire valley will become a world where life and death are indistinguishable!

Just now, my body was almost corroded by that terrible curse, and even at the last moment, the curse slowly seeped into the door behind me.

Kurosawa Yae is a classic example of a Japanese person who received a narrow-minded education. She loves her younger sister very much, otherwise she would not have chosen to disrupt the ritual in the past.

Kurosawa Yae had acted willfully once before, choosing to rebel against the priesthood and allowing her younger sister to escape.

But at the same time, she also loves her village, and the responsibilities she was given since childhood are firmly etched in her heart.

So, when these three complex emotions weighed on her, coupled with the mental damage caused by the door, and the fact that her sister hadn't even bothered to visit her for years, the resentment hidden deep within her that she had never acknowledged, she made this decision—

Find his sister, complete the ritual that was never finished, and with his last will, utterly sever ties with and bury the village.

By making this evil village disappear completely, he would essentially atone for his past sins.

It was precisely because of this sense of responsibility that she chose to hang her own body on the door and transform the village, using the twin Jizo statues outside and the cursed spirits inside the village to seal all the curses within the valley.

"I can't hold on much longer. If... I lose my mind, the Great Calamity will engulf the entire valley, turning this place into a boundary between life and death, and all creatures that enter here will become neither alive nor dead."

“Yoshizaki Kawa, you promised me that if I found my sister and completed this ritual, I could… completely shut down this world.”

Upon hearing the female ghost's noble thoughts, Yoshizaki and Higa Kotoko exchanged glances, never expecting that the female ghost would think this way.

Wouldn't that... make me look even more like a villain?

But, sir, times have changed!

Why would you need to offer any sacrifices? If you want to close the door, all you need to do is bring in a few excavators and block the door. Why bother with all that sacrifice stuff?

Thinking of this, Yoshizaki said, "Well, we don't need to use the sacrifice method now; we have a better way."

Upon hearing this, the corpse in front of her swayed, staring wide-eyed at the man and woman in front of her. If she hadn't been unable to defeat these two, she would have even considered taking action herself.

After all, her family had searched for countless years and failed to find a way to seal the gates of hell without sacrifice. How could she believe these two guys saying that?

However, looking at the seemingly simple amulet hanging around Yoshizaki's neck and the bronze mirror that Kotoko carried on her back with half of it showing, Kurosawa Yae decided to swallow his anger and choose to temporarily trust the two guys in front of him.

So, half an hour later.

Kotoko Higa appeared in the secret room with a videotape and a simple light bulb projector, and then quickly assembled it in front of Yae Kurosawa.

Moments later, a video of the excavator at work was projected onto the screen, followed by videos of explosives exploding and rocks splitting open.

“Look, you just need to suppress the resentment temporarily and prevent it from rising. We can fill the well in about half an hour, and with a few more days and the help of explosives, we can even pile up this village into a mountain. The door will then be sealed.”

"Moreover, this kind of sealing is much more durable than your so-called sacrifice. Your sacrifice can only guarantee forty or fifty years, but once I bury it, as long as no one digs it up, it can be sealed for a lifetime!"

Yoshizaki Kawa spoke eloquently, pointing to the images on the screen, leaving the spirit born before the Industrial Revolution utterly shocked.

"There's...there's another way to do this, that's amazing..."

The simplest way to close the gates of hell is to bury them, since the gates were accidentally dug out. But burying such a large village by hand, while risking a curse, is simply impossible.

However, this monster called an excavator can easily close the door in just half an hour and completely seal it in just a few days.

For a moment, the vengeful spirit Kurosawa Yae felt a mix of emotions. In the village, the twin ritual had been going on for hundreds of years. The twin Jizo statues that were once enshrined outside the village were the pairs of sisters and brothers who had sacrificed themselves.

Because of their sacrifices, the village was able to continue to exist, so the village built the Twin Jizo statues to commemorate their existence.

Now, Yae Kurosawa suddenly doesn't know what the meaning of his past sacrifices was.

"Then, I will try my best to suppress it. In fact, I can suppress it for about another six months, but I have a favor to ask. I still really want to see my sister, Kurosawa Sae."

“I haven’t seen her for decades, and I miss her very much.”

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 184 Tomie's Path

“The target has come out of the house and is moving along the planned route. There are no exorcists around her, but police are secretly following her.”

"No problem. We've set up a maze on that road. The police will be intercepted there. Those who are there to meet you, please be prepared. The target is expected to arrive at the designated location in half an hour."

"The target was carrying a large golden retriever,"

On the dimly lit street, a crow perched on a telephone pole, its eyes gleaming eerily in the dim light of the streetlamp.

Tomie Kawakami clutched the note tightly in her hand. Behind her, the golden retriever wagged its tail and looked around.

Its eyes showed some worry. Of course, as its owner's pet, it naturally had to obey its owner's commands. So even though it vaguely sensed some danger, it could only choose to follow after it could not stop it.

After all, there is a fundamental difference between the golden retriever and Kayako's cat. Kayako's cat is not very obedient and may even rebel against Kayako and the curse, but Tomie's golden retriever is completely assimilated and naturally only has the idea of ​​obedience.

Moreover, cats and dogs are inherently like this: one is assertive and the other is stubborn. You can kill me, but you can never subdue me. Once one is subdued, it will serve you as its master.

The name "Supernatural Affairs Research Institute" kept repeating in Tomie Kawakami's mind.

Faced with such an unfamiliar organization, as a flower that had never experienced hardship and had grown up in a greenhouse, she had no experience of these things and therefore had no confidence at all.

Worried? Heartbroken, or perhaps—

Because from that letter, Tomie knew that there must be many people like herself in that organization.

—In a corner of a park, a man dressed entirely in black sat on a bench.

Walking on the gloomy path, Tomie suddenly regretted it. The organization that made her go out so late didn't seem like a good organization at all.

But then, Tomie suddenly remembered Yoshizaki Kawa walking with Kayako, laughing and joking.

The organization's invitation was not mandatory.

Therefore, she naturally harbored a sliver of hope that if the organization was legitimate, perhaps she could learn to control her own abilities.

A strange sense of vengeful pleasure welled up inside her, but she quickly suppressed this thought of harming herself.

With this expectation in mind, she took the golden retriever out in the middle of the night.

She was lost in thought, but her feet kept falling, one step after another. When she came to her senses, she found herself at the place mentioned in the letter.

Tomie was angry at her own ridiculous idea, and even more afraid. When could she ever do something like that for a man?

Yoshizaki Kawa is the only guy who has ever made her have such a masochistic thought. She can't imagine what she would do for him if things continued like this.

However, Tomie wanted to go.