Transformed into the leader of an esoteric sect in Japan

Is her fate to stay in this false world, play false games, create false characters, and finally calmly face the false destruction, heading towards the real world where only despair exists?

"I hate it!" She covered her face with her hands, letting out a very low sob. "I hate it so much, I hate it so much, I hate it so much!"

She didn't want to go to the real world; for her, who had lived in the woods from beginning to end, the woods themselves were the most real world.

"So, I might as well leave everything to that guy to handle." She finally made this decision in her heart.

------

Behind them lay the crumbling Gothic castle, billowing dust that buried everything that had ever existed. A deafening crash of a heavy object collapsing followed, and finally, like a death knell announcing the end of something, it tolled.

Kurosawa Shizuki, Asakura Yuki, and Shibasaki, with their purple wings fluttering, soared through the cold night sky above the forest, overlooking the vast, boundless woodland. Beautiful winged creatures flew all around them, but the creatures seemed completely oblivious to their presence, ignoring them entirely. Those with purple wings were indeed not targeted by any being in the forest.

As she became more skilled and at ease in controlling her wings, Kurosawa Shizuki did indeed feel a sense of ethereal lightness, as if she were ascending to heaven. This crazy and brutal journey through the woods finally gave way to a period of tranquil and comfortable flight. Listening to the wind rushing past her ears and the flapping sounds of countless winged creatures beating their wings, Kurosawa Shizuki felt her chaotic thoughts gradually calm down, and her body became light and agile. Flying freely felt like a childhood dream.

As she drew closer to the Wheel Temple, which played mournful music, the air grew increasingly murky and humid. With a series of creaking sounds, Kurosawa Shizuki got closer and closer to the enormous, ever-rotating gears overhead. Finally, she realized something was amiss.

Between the meshing gears, strange sparks were constantly rubbed together, emitting a series of dull, hoarse sounds. Many of the gears, however, had already begun to spin wildly as if out of control. Tiny gears and metal fragments fell from the sky like raindrops. The huge machine structure that supported the operation of the forest was now perhaps heading towards going out of control.

“After we destroyed the two ‘superiors’ of the forest, it seems that the operation of this forest is finally heading towards collapse.” Yuki Asakura pointed to the vast forest beneath them, which was completely different from what they had seen when they first arrived. Everything was finally on the verge of destruction, and everywhere gave people a sense of apocalyptic collapse.

Centered on Dust Town, where the Centipede Sage resided, the enormous pit, which was initially thought to have been dug by the mole, continued to spread endlessly. Huge cracks grew rapidly, and everything in the forest was collapsing into the ever-expanding pit.

On the other side, the Scroll River, the source of all the rivers in the woodland, began to overflow wildly, rushing and raging unrestrainedly from the collapsed fairy tale castle, sweeping away everything in the woodland, and finally unleashing a monstrous torrent that threatened to submerge and devour everything.

To the east lay a bottomless abyss, and to the west, a raging flood. Anyone could see that this was a complete apocalypse. Faced with such a calamity, no life on the land of the woodland could possibly survive.

"Did we really destroy it with our own hands? Why do I feel like the Queen of the Woodlands foresaw all of this? Perhaps they were looking forward to this destruction all along." Chai Qi let out another strange chuckle, which then turned into a hoarse bark, like a drooling beast.

For no reason, Kurosawa Shizuki thought of the centipede sage who sent chills down her spine no matter how she looked at him. The centipede sage, wielding the golden branch, clearly possessed overwhelming power, but Kurosawa Shizuki felt that the centipede sage had been holding back in past battles. Even after he transformed into a worm, he still hadn't exerted his full strength. When he was finally destroyed by Eiko and Sand in a peculiar way, Kurosawa Shizuki felt that the centipede sage was less afraid of destruction and more like he was looking forward to death. His only regret seemed to be dying under the power of "Teresa".

Could it be that the Kamishiro Society allowed them and the Anti-Extermination Bureau personnel into the forest precisely because they expected them to destroy it? Was the destruction of the forest part of the Kamishiro Society's plan? Kurosawa Shizuki had this thought for no apparent reason.

"Don't you think everything is going too smoothly? Do we really have to destroy the forest?" Kurosawa Shizuki asked uneasily.

“It’s a pity. Whether this was the initial conspiracy of the Age of Gods or not, we had no choice from the moment we entered the forest…” Asakura Yuki glanced at Kurosawa Shizuki, who was certain that Asakura Yuki had similar doubts as her. “If we are trapped in the forest forever along with Mr. Shibasaki, then we will undoubtedly lose this war against the Age of Gods.”

“We have destroyed the land and rivers of the forest, and now we must pay homage to the ruler of the sky, Miss Kurosawa. There is no turning back.” Chai Qi gazed at the far north, which was almost the very edge of the forest, where there stood a towering pillar that seemed to reach the sky, a pure white stone pillar from top to bottom.

Not far above the stone pillar, suspended in the air, is the Wheel Temple, the abode of the woodland spirits. Now, the music in the temple is intermittent, like a broken record being forcibly played.

At the top of the pillar was a square platform surrounded by a railing. The railing posts were also made of stone, spaced very far apart, and topped with a row of handrails. In the center of the platform was a small hut. Because the space above the pillar was so cramped, one had to dangle their legs over the edge to sit down, and the hut could barely accommodate a person crouching down. An old man with white hair and a grime-covered face sat there, his legs dangling over the edge, and everyone could see that he was completely naked, like a worm.

The old man sat atop a pillar hundreds of meters high. He himself was a giant at least hundreds of meters tall. Even from such a distance, one could feel the terrifying power contained within his filthy, hairy body. As if sensing the visitor's gaze, the terrifying giant slowly turned his head, revealing his ugly face illuminated by the radiance of the Temple of the Wheel of Destiny.

His eyes had no pupils, only empty eye sockets. Even more bizarrely, two strange flowers grew from his eye sockets, one a violet and the other a poppy, or at least they looked like those two flowers.

The pillar-headed hermit gave a sinister yet gleeful smile to the three guests who slowly approached with flapping wings, as if welcoming their visit.

P.S., the original idea was for the hermit on the pillar to eat the protagonists and the others, followed by a grand adventure similar to the human hospital in Rick and Morty. However, this idea was abandoned because it would have slowed down the pace too much, and also because the author himself lacked sufficient knowledge of the internal structure of the human body.

Chapter 126, Section 127: The Pillar-Head Hermit

Stylites are a type of monk who have existed in the Christian Church since ancient times. They are known for their practice of sitting or standing on narrow pillars for extended periods. The most famous of them is St. Simeon the Long-lived, who practiced asceticism on a pillar for a full thirty years without interruption.

However, it is difficult to say exactly how many years the "pillar hermit" that Kurosawa Shizuki encountered in the forest had been cultivating on this giant pillar. Although the time scale in the forest is different from that in the outside world, it is not difficult to judge from his old tree-like wrinkled face and the decaying and dying aura around him that he may be an existence as ancient as the forest.

As everyone gazed at the hermit on the pillar from afar, a strange feeling arose within them—like seeing a sturdy reef weathered by the tides of time, unchanged by wind and rain. This giant, with strange flowers blooming from his eye sockets, was an existence almost independent of the river of time, or in other words—

His body contained time deeper than the ocean; every moment, the traces of time's rapid passage and constant cycle appeared and disappeared on this pillar-headed hermit.

Signs of aging and youth occur simultaneously in this man. His body changes every moment, like an old oak tree that has stood the test of time, aging, withering, and decaying rapidly, then shedding its outer skin like a worm to reveal new, baby-like skin underneath. The pillar on which he sits is piled with the skin peeled off his body, like fallen leaves from an old tree.

In Kurosawa Shizuki's eyes, the Pillar-Headed Hermit was like a burning torch, but the fuel he used was the almost endless time within him. The Pillar-Headed Hermit was burning himself to nourish the vast, illusory world of the woodland.

“The Giant of Time of the Holy Hydra, I didn’t expect the Age of Gods to have such influence,” Chai Qi groaned. “If we can capture a giant of this caliber, it’s no wonder the Age of Gods was able to construct this illusory divine kingdom through the endless false time within him. This Giant of Time can almost be considered the ‘world will’ of the entire forest. He sets all the rules and order, and he maintains the balance between order and chaos in the forest.”

Kurosawa Shizuki understood what the Time Giants Shizaki was referring to. She had summoned such creatures during her ascension as a member of the Secret History Cult in her previous life. These were extraordinary beings cultivated by the Hydra Society, the sacred secret society that oversaw the Secret History Cult. It was said that the Time Giants were descendants of a certain Secret History God. These creatures could almost endlessly devour and store time within others. The Hydra Society could also weave false time and inject it into the Time Giants, creating a false world that was infinitely close to reality, governed by laws completely different from the outside world…

So-called "false time" can only be obtained by converting real time. Even the most skilled cultists of the Secret History can only convert one year into five years of false time at most. As we all know, only by burning time can the existence of a world be maintained. Even in a false world whose level is far lower than reality, maintaining its existence still requires a massive amount of false time.

This forest is actually a false world constructed by the Age of Gods using the power of the Giants of Time? Why does the Age of Gods keep sacrificing false time to maintain the forest, and why do they release the Forest Fairy and the Centipede Sage into it?

"However, time within the Time Giant is ultimately just a false illusion, and the world created through this time is ultimately just a dream bubble destined to perish. The Age of Gods would support such a divine kingdom, could it be..." Asakura Yuki seemed to have thought of something as well, "...this is just a prison for a certain being?"

"Isn't the god of the forest hiding at the highest point of the forest? Why would the Age of Gods imprison its own god?" Kurosawa Shizuki asked in confusion.

"Because the being we protect is certainly not a true 'god,' but merely a false existence with the name of a god, and I am nothing more than her shackles." This time, it was actually the Pillar-Head Hermit who answered Kurosawa Shizuki. His voice resounded from within him like rolling thunder, yet he did not utter a sound. Was this ventriloquism?

Gazing at the hermit on the pillar, Kurosawa Shizuki felt a strange, inexplicable urge welling up inside her—

This terrifying giant seemed to be a very delicious being to himself, because his body was almost filled with time that would never pass.

Time is the scarcest thing for Shizuki Kurosawa.

Kurosawa Shizuki even had the illusion that she could swallow this hundred-meter-tall giant whole, so that she could absorb the almost endless time within him. Her body was like a void that no amount of time could fill. Even if it could not be filled, an almost instinctive desire always drove Kurosawa Shizuki to endlessly chase after time.

Kurosawa Shizuki lowered her head and bit her delicate lips until they bled. The blood flowed into her mouth, which slightly cleared her somewhat dazed consciousness. Kurosawa Shizuki could not understand what was happening to her. How could someone of her size possibly swallow such a tall and majestic giant?

"Pillar-headed hermit, what is it that makes you willing to guard that false god for such a long time?" Chai Qi asked.

"My Lord has made an inviolable pact with the Divine Age, and thus I stand here as His servant, feeding on all the 'pests' of the woodland, maintaining this false world with false time. But now, my long service is finally coming to an end. Conquerors, take my head! Through my head you will see the way to the gods. Only then will the prisoners be freed." The Pillar-Headed Hermit remained motionless, an indelible colossus.

"Did I hear that right? Another one willingly seeking death? Is he inviting us to take his head?" Kurosawa Shizuki thought to herself, "This guy seems to be offering himself up for free."

Moreover, the words of the Pillarhead Hermit made her ominous premonition grow stronger. Should the woodland really be destroyed? If the woodland is destroyed, will something even more terrifying happen?

"Didn't the two friends we met earlier say that you were troubled by the damage that pests were causing to the woodland? I thought you were going to ask us to find so-called 'pests' to kill again." Asakura Yuki looked at the pillar-headed hermit with great apprehension as he spoke.

"Besides the gods, everything in the forest is a pest, endlessly wasting precious time. Now that you have overthrown the forest, all the pests have perished, and you are the last 'pests' of the forest. So try to conquer me, or you will take my head and present it to the gods, or I will let you perish in the tides of time, assimilated and eroded..."

Around the Pillar-Head Hermit, spacetime was distorted, and unparalleled pressure was being released from his body. Kurosawa Shizuki discovered that time within his body was burning at an even more frantic speed. As he drove the time within his body, countless gears in the forest sky were spinning rapidly, and the entire forest was like an overburdened machine, mustering its last bit of strength to operate beyond its capacity.

Rumbling and booming—below the crack in the woodland, scorching lava surged rapidly from the crack, colliding and merging with the out-of-control flood of lava. Hissing and steaming, winged creatures that scurried about like headless flies were helplessly falling into the raging lava like raindrops in the dark blue steam.

The music playing inside the Temple of the Wheel of Life is now completely out of tune and distorted, becoming incredibly sharp and mournful, reminiscent of a dying girl's scream.

“My lords, it seems that this hermit on the pillar is the kind of person I hate dealing with the most, which is why he is so fearless—” Chai Qi smiled bitterly.

"You mean he's the source of all order in the woods, right? How can we destroy a set of rules? With a mortal body, we have no chance against the rules of the world, even if they're false rules." Asakura Yuki gazed intently at the towering body of the pillar-headed hermit. On his half-withered, half-new flesh, strange, shimmering threads appeared, each thread recording a year's passage.

"Hey, wait, Kurosawa, what are you doing?" Asakura Yuki turned her head and was shocked to find that Kurosawa Shizuki had already flapped her wings and was flying towards the pillar-headed hermit without looking back. "If you recklessly charge at him like this, you will be assimilated by the false time he releases!"

Kurosawa Shizuki couldn't hear Asakura Yuki's calls at all. She was driven by a strange impulse that was almost impossible to suppress and flew towards the hermit of the pillar. That instinct did not come from her as a transmigrator, nor was it the original owner of the body. Rather, it was a more distant instinctive desire hidden within this strange body.

Just as a jackal craves delicious flesh and blood, and a sunflower longs for the sunshine, Kurosawa Shizuki's body thirsts for more and more time...

Even if the time stored within the pillar-headed hermit's body is merely a cognitive "illusion" fabricated by the sacred secret Hydra.

"So that's how it is. It turns out everything is fate's arrangement. You are actually a descendant of that ruler..." The pillar-headed hermit seemed to realize something, and a relieved smile appeared on his face.

In Kurosawa Shizuki's ethereal, deep blue eyes, a beastly savagery emerged. She wanted to eat, wanted to eat, wanted to eat, wanted to collect more and more time, to become an insatiable beast. Perhaps for a long time, this was the only desire of her body.

Like every "family member" among the liquidators, Shizuki Kurosawa was once a member of that vast family.

Kurosawa Shizuki lunged towards the Pillar-Head Hermit. From the direction of the Pillar-Head Hermit, a surging tide of false time instantly engulfed her. It was a tide woven from threads that shimmered with strange light. Time, which was originally formless and intangible, seemed to become a visible entity here. In the flow of time, Kurosawa Shizuki vaguely saw that incredibly familiar back. The distant years flowed backward, and countless fragmented and chaotic scenes rushed towards her.

P.S. I haven't been in a good state of mind lately, and updates have been sporadic, but I will still continue to write.

Chapter 127, Section 128: The Ashes of the Ledger

Kurosawa Shizuki saw a long table. She sat at one end of the table, where dim candles were lit. In front of her was a half-burnt candle, its color a dark blue like the sky. The similar light danced in Kurosawa Shizuki's deep blue eyes, and also in the eyes of the stranger at the other end of the table.

On the other side of the long table, a man with an indistinct face stood in suffocating silence, the pressure in the air like a snow-capped mountain about to collapse at any moment.

The man stretched out his rough, heavy hand and placed it on the flickering candlelight. The dancing flames scorched his hand, making a sizzling sound, but he seemed to feel no pain at all. He then extinguished the flame with his hand.

"Who are you? Where am I now?" Kurosawa Shizuki asked in a panic. Her last memory was of her spreading her wings and rushing towards the pillar-headed hermit, her body almost completely out of control. How did she end up standing here in the blink of an eye?

A dimly lit villa, through the gray windows on the wall, one can see the boundless sea outside. She has suddenly appeared somewhere by the sea.

“My junior, you are still a member of the family. Wolves will eventually bare their fangs, eager to devour the world. Our flames will eventually ignite.” The man gave her a smile that was hard to decipher, whether it was one of relief or joy.

"What are you saying? I don't understand." Even though she couldn't understand what the man at the other end of the long table was saying, just listening to him talk about things like "wolf" and "fire" made Kurosawa Shizuki feel almost suffocated, as if she were facing a blazing furnace.

The man walked step by step toward Kurosawa Shizuki, his steps calm, composed, and elegant. He extinguished the candles one by one with his hands. Kurosawa Shizuki felt as if some incredibly dangerous and enormous entity was approaching her in the darkness, a sense of crisis that almost suffocated her. The light in the hall was being extinguished inch by inch.

“I’m telling you, you should be more careful, my junior. I am the true custodian of the Ashes Ledger. I will be the first to know if anyone in the world uses the power of the Ashes Ledger.” The man grinned.

Using the power of the Ashes Ledger? When? Kurosawa Shizuki looked completely bewildered, utterly unaware of the strange power hidden within her body.

Kurosawa Shizuki finally saw it clearly: every time the man extinguished a candle, a desiccated corpse would appear on the seat directly opposite that candle. The corpses all looked as if they had been dead for countless years, and they were all completely different in age, gender, and gender. However, all the corpses had the same characteristic—a circular hole between the eyebrows of the corpse, like a third eye.

Just like Teresa, just like Ai Kurosawa, just like... Shizuki Kurosawa herself.

Kurosawa Shizuki pressed her hand to her forehead and was horrified to discover that there was a hole in her forehead that had been drilled out sometime during the day. She felt warm liquid flowing out, and blood gushed out from her forehead, flowing all over her body. She wanted to run away, but her whole body was as if nailed to a chair, unable to move.

With five candles remaining, Kurosawa Shizuki saw the body of a woman without a shadow, lying dead in a prayer position on a chair.

With four candles remaining, Kurosawa Shizuki saw a man with blood streaming from his eyes, his chest ripped open, lying on a chair.

With three candles remaining, Kurosawa Shizuki saw Kurosawa Ai, covered in filth and with her eyes gouged out, silently leaning back in her chair.

...The dim flames disappeared with an inevitable rhythm. The man was getting closer and closer to her, but in the thick darkness, Kurosawa Shizuki still couldn't see his face at all. She could only see his ghostly blue eyes burning like will-o'-the-wisps.

"What do you want to do?" Kurosawa Shizuki finally realized who was approaching her. She really hadn't expected to meet Him at this time.

"What do I want to do? Just collect the debt, of course. Keep running. The more panicked and frightened the beasts are, the more tracks they will leave, and the more fun the hunter will get from the hunt."

The Great Enemy extinguished the second candle. Kurosawa Shizuki saw Lu Jingxi's corpse sitting to the side. Kurosawa Shizuki never expected to see this young man's corpse here. The Great Enemy used a black feather to scratch Lu Jingxi's forehead. The next moment, Lu Jingxi's corpse withered and decayed into dust and dissipated.

"No! Don't come any closer! I don't know you!" Kurosawa Shizuki felt a desperate fear grip her heart. She sobbed uncontrollably and struggled frantically, but to no avail. She could only sit in the chair, waiting in vain for her fate.

“I sent Scarface to Heijing just to verify some absurd rumors, but I didn’t expect you to jump out and start absorbing time again,” Da Di gently brushed a black feather across Kurosawa Shizuki’s eyes. “You actually escaped to Heijing, which was an extremely unwise choice. You will either be swallowed by Kirie or found by me. The fate awaiting you is truly despairing to me.”

Her eyes, grazed by the black feather, were plunged into complete darkness. Kurosawa Shizuki felt as if she had gone blind. All she could see was the faint candlelight remaining in the hall.

"My dear junior, keep struggling. I hope you can survive the arrival of Kirie. I will be disappointed if it ends so easily." The great enemy's voice echoed almost in Kurosawa Shizuki's ears. She lifted Kurosawa Shizuki's face and kissed her cheek. His kiss was so cold that it had no warmth at all, just like death itself.

The great enemy extinguished the last embers of the flame.

"Do everything you can to prepare. After Kirie, I will come looking for you. I will make you pay back everything you owe me, with interest." These were the last words Kurosawa Shizuki heard.

Something was severed, and Kurosawa Shizuki opened her eyes again. She saw that her hands were covered in blood, and her hands were trembling. She looked around in confusion:

"Huh? What did I do?"

Kurosawa Shizuki looked up and found herself standing in front of the Pillar-Headed Hermit. Countless tiny threads of light still swirled around the Pillar-Headed Hermit's body, but the light flowing over the surface of each thread had become incredibly dim, because strange bite marks kept appearing on the giant's body...

It's as if there really is a shapeless wolf, constantly gnawing at the giant's towering body. If such a wolf truly existed, what a terrifying and majestic physique it would possess!