Tokyo: Proving one's position from behind the scenes

Having witnessed the Americans' moves toward supernatural powers, Akira Nagayama did not rush to withdraw his senses.

He tapped his fingers lightly twice on his knee, and the phantom images of three copper coins reappeared from his fingertips. This time, the divination pointed not to Yokosuka, but to the Metropolitan Police Department. Since the Americans had already embarked on the path of the "Miscellaneous Qi Pill," the Metropolitan Police Department couldn't possibly be idle. Old cop Naoya Taniguchi wasn't the type to sit in his office waiting for reports, and neither was Chief Inspector Yamazaki.

The illusory image of the copper coin twirled between his fingertips, the invisible destiny connected by the divination. The secrets of this world were clear, and the divination unfolded almost on its own, as clear as a map being laid out in his consciousness.

The image appears.

The conference room of the Special Operations Division at the Metropolitan Police Department headquarters. A huge map of the island nation lay spread out on a long table, dotted with dozens of locations marked in red, stretching from Ainu to Ryukyu, from the coast of the Whale Sea to the Pacific coast. Next to each dot was a name, address, person in charge, and contact information for the shrine or temple written in small print. Naoya Taniguchi stood in front of the map, a marker in his hand, adding new marks. His cigarette was tucked behind his ear, the cigarette slightly deformed from being squeezed.

The red dots on the map mark shrines and temples.

The scene unfolds further. The Metropolitan Police Department is divided into more than a dozen teams, each equipped with a vehicle, a portable testing device, and a technician drawn from the forensic division, and dispatched to various locations across the country. The testing device, provided by the United States, can detect traces of energy remaining on the coral and Yoshida Sho's corpse. While its accuracy is not high and its detection range is limited, it is sufficient to determine at close range whether a location retains traces of supernatural power.

Famous shrines and temples were the first targets for investigation—although they were collectively overlooked in the ghost incident. Senso-ji Temple, Ise Grand Shrine, and Izumo Taisha—these names were most densely clustered in the locations marked with red circles on the map. Metropolitan Police Department personnel, equipped with detection equipment, traversed every corner of these shrines and temples: the main hall, worship hall, shrine administration offices, storehouses, and even some inner courtyards and warehouses not open to tourists. The detection equipment readings remained at background levels, showing no anomalies.

There was no Inari, no Amaterasu, no Hachiman, no Tosho Daigongen. Those gods, so renowned in mythology, left not a trace in the face of the Metropolitan Police Department's most advanced detection equipment.

After listening to the reports from each group in the conference room, Taniguchi Naoya remained silent for a long time. He took the cigarette off his ear, put it in his mouth, then removed it and put it back on his ear.

The Metropolitan Police Department's line of reasoning is probably correct. Since Hoshimiya Akira's power comes from the Inari Shrine, and Yoshida Sho and Yoshida Nobuko's mutations are also related to some kind of "supernatural existence," then among the tens of thousands of shrines and temples throughout the island nation, there might be other similar "miracles" or "demonic phenomena." Yamazaki No and Taniguchi Naoya are using the most foolish method to cast a wide net, hoping to catch whatever they can.

He then ordered the scope of the investigation to be expanded.

No longer limited to famous shrines, all registered shrines and temples will be checked, regardless of their size or remote location.

The Metropolitan Police Department officers began heading to more remote areas: shrines in the mountains, temples by the sea, and monasteries deep in old streets—small shrines whose locations were known only to locals, their torii gates almost completely overgrown with weeds. The monitoring equipment readings in these places remained unchanged; the background was flat and lifeless.

The interpretation of the hexagram continues to deepen.

The Metropolitan Police Department expanded its search area further. This time, even abandoned shrines and temples were included in the list. Those names that had been crossed off the map, those shrines with collapsed foundations, those torii gates broken off on the approach paths, and those where the shrine's head priest had passed away and no one had taken over—all of them had to be investigated. In some locations, there were no roads at all, and the Metropolitan Police Department personnel had to carry their equipment on foot through the mountains and forests, pushing aside tall grass to find those forgotten ritual remains.

Akira Nagayama's fingertip paused for a moment on the illusory image of the copper coin.

His lips twitched slightly as an idea came to him.

Akira Nagayama, playing the Inari deity, fabricated a lie about "Ryoumen Sukuna's twenty fingers" through Ei Hoshimiya's words to the Metropolitan Police Department. So far, only two fingers have been used. One was "sealed" and stored by Ei Hoshimiya after Shoichi Yoshida transformed into a demon, and is now locked in a safe at the shrine. The other was fed to the catfish and is slowly metamorphosing in the silt at the bottom of the Arakawa River. The remaining eighteen fingers are empty, like eighteen blank talismans without names.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police Department is searching the entire island nation for any trace that might be related to supernatural powers.

These two things can be combined.

Nagayama Akira flicked his fingertip lightly across the illusory image of the copper coin, and the divination image shifted from the Metropolitan Police Department's investigation to a new direction. He needed to train another cultivator. He already had water, wood, fire, metal, and earth, but the cycle of the five elements was only the foundation. In his previous life's cultivation world, the virtues of Yin and Yang were the manifest path. His own destiny involved the [Bi Yue] metal element due to forging a bit of it, so he already had half of the lunar virtue, but the solar virtue was still unfulfilled.

This time, we will choose someone whose destiny is "Yang".

And it can't be in Tokyo.

Tokyo already possesses the Wood element of Hoshimiya Ei, the Fire element of Yoshida Nobuko, and the Earth element of Arakawa River, plus his own Metal element and the Water element of the "bad place"—and the Water element of those Americans who took the Water-elemental mixed energy pills. The Five Elements imagery in Tokyo's spiritual network is already dense enough. Adding more people to Tokyo would cause the imagery to start crowding each other, actually reducing the efficiency of spiritual disturbance. A person not in Tokyo is needed to establish a new spiritual node in another location, resonating with the Moon element in his destiny, allowing the spiritual disturbance to spread out from the Kanto Plain.

The hexagrams unfolded layer by layer, and the entire map of the island nation spread out in my mind, from Kanto to Kansai, from the East China Sea to the Hokuriku region, from San'in to San'yo. Countless tiny fragments of celestial secrets gathered within the hexagrams, like stars lit up in the night sky, each star representing a potential seed of destiny.

Akira Nagayama's consciousness swept rapidly among these points of light.

Kansai, the divination indicates the direction of Kansai.

He opened his eyes. Moonlight shone on the tatami mat, and the shadow of the nandina swayed gently on the paper window.

He doesn't need to personally complete the lie. After all, Ryomen Sukuna's fingers are scattered throughout the island nation, and it's entirely possible that some of them are sealed in abandoned shrines and temples. The Metropolitan Police Department's investigation can serve as a cover for discovering the fingers, and in the process, they can also find a way to create some spiritual objects, allowing more "superpowered individuals" in America and the island nation to absorb impure energy.

As for those whose destiny is "Yang," the divination has already given a general location. Not in Tokyo, but in the Kansai region. The specific person will need to go to the location and use copper coins to pinpoint the exact location, but the direction and imagery are already clear.