Tokyo: Proving one's position from behind the scenes

On the Arakawa River embankment, three rubber boats were launched from a makeshift floating platform.

The boats were military green, and each boat carried two people: one to steer the boat and the other to handle the fishing nets. Small electric propellers were mounted at the stern of the rubber boats; the propellers churned the water with a low hum, leaving three white trails on the gray-green surface.

The fishing nets were supplied by the United States and are said to be made of a high-strength material. The Metropolitan Police Department was quoted three million dollars per meter. As for the quote to Capitol Hill, well, that depends on Commissioner Smith himself.

Three rubber boats were lined up in a fan shape, with fishing nets spread out between them. Sinking weights were submerged in the water, and buoys formed a discontinuous orange dotted line on the surface. The electric propellers were turned up to maximum power, and the white spray churned up by the propellers surged at the sterns as the three boats slowly towed the fishing nets upstream.

Naoya Taniguchi stood on the embankment, holding a walkie-talkie. His gaze followed the movement of three rubber boats, which were moving very slowly, as if someone were pushing them forward step by step with a ruler.

The boat operator's voice came through the walkie-talkie, accompanied by a hissing sound. The report said the fishing net was experiencing much greater resistance underwater than normal, as if something heavy and moving was inside it.

Naoya Taniguchi brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth and said two words: "Continue."

On the other side of the embankment, Commissioner Smith sat in a folding chair. The canvas seat of the chair was dented from his weight, his right leg crossed over his left, and he wore sunglasses, the lenses reflecting the dappled sunlight on the river. Beside him stood a technician in civilian clothes, a military laptop on his lap, its screen displaying real-time images of the underwater sonar.

The sonar signal painted an image on the screen composed of blocks of varying shades of color. The river wasn't deep, and the sonar could sweep across the entire stretch, including the silt layer at the bottom.

A larger block of color appeared on the screen.

The color block moved, entering the sonar's scanning range from the bottom of the screen, slowly and steadily moving against the direction of the water flow. Its shape changed, resembling an elongated spindle, broad and blunt at the head, gradually narrowing towards the rear, its tail outline indistinct. The color was deep, almost black, contrasting sharply with the surrounding gray-white background.

The technician slid his finger across the touchpad, zooming in on the image. The length of the colored block occupied nearly a third of the screen's width, and he handed the screen to Commissioner Smith so he could also see it clearly.

Commissioner Smith pushed his sunglasses up.

The boatman on the inflatable boat also felt it; the dragging sensation of the fishing net suddenly changed, from a uniform, continuous resistance to intermittent, rhythmic pulling. It felt like a large fish was caught in the net, struggling, and with each struggle, the entire net sank deeper into the water. The buoy was pulled underwater, its orange sphere becoming several blurry dots of light beneath the surface, then rising again, only to be pulled down once more.

As the fishing nets were tightened, the river surface began to churn.

The entire surface of the water was churned from below, as if something enormous was violently rolling beneath the surface. The grayish-green river water was stirred into a murky yellowish-brown, and silt was churned up from the riverbed, spreading out in an ever-expanding patch of yellowish-brown on the surface. Bubbles of varying sizes rose from the bottom, densely packed like a pot of boiling water.

The fishing net ropes were stretched to their limit, and the composite material netting made a teeth-grinding squeaking sound under the enormous tension.

The three rubber boats continued to move closer to the center.

The boatman shouted in terror as he steered the boats, but the fishing net was dragging them towards the center. The propellers of all three boats were running at full speed in opposite directions, and the white spray from the propellers almost covered the stern of the boats, but the rubber boats were still irresistibly sliding towards the center of the fishing net.

Suddenly, the water in the middle of the river bulged up, just like the night anglers had seen that night. An arc-shaped bulge rose from below the surface, and the river water poured outwards from the top of the bulge, as if something was about to burst out from underwater.

A brown back arched above the water, longer than the eyewitnesses had described that night, stretching nearly three and a half meters from its head to the part of its back submerged. The skin on its back was the smooth, mucus-covered kind of skin found on catfish. Its skin was a dark brown color, with a dull metallic sheen in the sunlight, and the ropes of a fishing net were tethered to its body.

Its body twitched.

The movement was subtle, a series of contractions and expansions from head to tail, like a spring compressed to its limit suddenly releasing a knot. A white wall of water erupted on the river, the splashes reaching above the heads of the boatman on the rubber dinghy.

One of the three rubber boats capsized, its hull sideways on the water, the side closest to the fishing nets being violently pulled underwater by a tremendous force. The boatman was thrown from the boat, his body tumbling through the air before crashing into the murky river. The other man, responsible for the fishing nets, grabbed the side rope of the boat, hanging from the capsized hull, his legs submerged in the water as he desperately kicked.

The second boat's propeller got tangled in the fishing net's ropes. The propeller blades struck the composite material netting, producing several sharp metallic scraping sounds, before the propeller emitted a puff of white smoke and stopped. The powerless rubber boat spun on the water, the helmsman paddling frantically to try and maintain direction, but the boat was still being dragged towards the center of the river by the fishing net.

The people on the third boat cut the trawling rope. The blade sliced ​​into the taut rope, and the strands snapped one after another. When the last strand broke, it made a crisp snap, and the rope end at the break sprang up and swung in an arc in the air.

The fishing net detached from the rubber boat's drag, but it was still caught on the catfish. In the instant it lost its drag, the net rope was stretched wider by the twisting of its body, but the depth into its flesh did not increase; instead, it was pushed out little by little by its skin and muscles.

Then it sank.

Its back submerged in the water, creating a whirlpool. At the center of the whirlpool was a concave funnel-shaped area, with surrounding water swirling and pouring into it. The fishing net's buoy spun in the whirlpool, its orange spheres colliding with each other as the current swirled around them, producing a series of dull thuds.

A few seconds later, the whirlpool subsided. The buoys lay motionless on the surface. The netting was barely visible underwater, like a discarded spiderweb.

On the embankment, Taniguchi Naoya put the walkie-talkie down from his mouth.

His cigarette had burned down to the edge of the filter, a long, grayish-white ash hanging in front of it, trembling slightly in the river breeze. He flicked the ash away, and with the extinguished cigarette still dangling from his lips, he looked at the few battered rubber boats on the river.

Commissioner Smith stood up from his folding chair, walked to the edge of the embankment, took off his sunglasses, and squinted at the river.

After about ten seconds, he spoke. His voice was soft, almost as if he were talking to himself. He had underestimated the fish; that kind of strength was not something a three-meter-long catfish should possess. It wasn't something within the realm of biology; it was something else entirely.

The technician standing next to him closed the laptop.

In the distance, the white light vehicle belonging to Hoshimiya Inari Shrine was parked in the parking area below the embankment. Akira Nagayama sat in the driver's seat, the window rolled down halfway, his arm resting on the window frame, his fingers tapping idly on the car door.

Hoshimiya Ei sat in the passenger seat, dressed in white robes and crimson hakama, her hands resting on her knees, her fingertips slightly curled. Her gaze passed through the windshield, over the busy figures on the embankment, and landed on the scattered buoys on the river.

The spiritual energy was surging, and Akira Nagayama sensed it. From the moment the catfish emerged from the water, the spiritual energy of the Arakawa River section was as if a piece of red-hot iron had been thrown in. The aura of earth element rose from the silt at the bottom of the river, warm and carrying the sweet, fishy smell of rotting rice straw, intertwining with the water element of the river itself. Water and earth complemented each other, their images intertwined, like two snakes mating.

The fingers inside the catfish's body, serving as the core of the inner elixir, are blending the earth element imagery of "Turbid Earth Qi Under Rice" with the water element imagery of the Arakawa River.

His fingers tapped the car door one last time, then stopped.

Deep within the drainage pipes below the embankment, Nobuko Yoshida stood at the edge of the pipe opening. Her hoodie hood was still on, but half her face was visible in the shadows. Reflections from the river shone into the pipes, casting a small, shimmering reflection in her pupils. The tip of her demon-slaying sword rested against the concrete floor, its dark red sheen flickering in the darkness.

She watched where the catfish sank into the water, watched the buoys scattered on the surface, and watched the people in the rubber boat frantically paddling towards the shore.

Her fingers gripped the sword hilt tightly.

Two fingers of Sukuna. Inside the fish's body. She should go and get it back; it was part of the deal. But just now, the moment the fish surfaced, she saw its back, saw the fishing net ropes digging into its flesh, saw the white wall of water it created on the surface.

She was only fourteen years old, but she wasn't stupid; if the fish were in the water, it wouldn't be something she could handle right now.

Her fingertips rubbed back and forth on the flame-patterned grooves of the sword hilt, making a soft rustling sound. She retreated into the shadows of the pipe.

As evening fell, all the rubber boats and divers on the river were withdrawn to the shore. New warning tape was put up on the embankment, the yellow and black striped tape fluttering in the river wind. Several uniformed police officers stood guard at the edge of the cordon, persuading the few onlookers to go back.

Fifty meters above the embankment, a military-green command tent had been erected. Inside the tent were several folding tables, on which sat computer monitors, communication equipment, and several instruments that Nagayama Akira couldn't name. Commissioner Smith sat in a folding chair, a cup of coffee in his hand, watching the underwater sonar recording on the screen, repeatedly replaying the dozen or so seconds before the catfish emerged from the water.

Outside the tent, Naoya Taniguchi squatted on the edge of the embankment, watching the river. He had changed to a new cigarette, lit it, and held it between his fingers.

The action team set up observation points on the embankment, requiring shifts to be changed every two hours, with two people per shift, and any abnormalities to be reported immediately.

Next to the tent at the observation point were several black equipment boxes, containing spare sonar probes, signal cables, emergency lights, and two dry suits. The dry suits were spares, but Taniguchi Naoya's orders clearly stated that no one was allowed to go into the water without approval from superiors.

The sun set behind the factory chimneys on the opposite bank, and the reflection on the river changed from silvery white to orange-red, then from orange-red to dark purple, and finally went completely dark, leaving only a few broken reflections of the lights on the opposite bank on the water.

The lights at the observation point came on. The white light shone on the river, creating a patch of light about twenty meters in diameter. Beyond the patch of light, the river was black, and nothing could be seen. Occasionally, a fish would leap out of the water, creating a small splash that flashed past the edge of the light's illumination.

Akira Nagayama stood in the courtyard behind the main hall of Inari Shrine. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the clouds, shining on the leaves of the nandina, where dewdrops reflected shimmering silver light.

Perception extends along the course of the Arakawa River, probing the slowly transforming aura deep within its depths. The earth elemental energy is condensing, gradually acquiring a deeper and heavier texture from the gentle, lingering warmth of the "turbid earth energy beneath the rice paddies."

That's the effect of "Wall Water." The loach has the "Wall Water" destiny. Wall Water is underground water, which governs the storage of water. It devours mud, sand, fish, and shrimp at the bottom of the desolate river, and also consumes the spiritual energy of water contained in the river, causing the water and soil to blend together.