Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes.

Chapter 39: Strange Reasoning
"Body swapping is a very dangerous spell. I must make careful arrangements. If anything goes wrong, I will die."

"To ensure I have options if the ceremony fails, I need a child as a backup."

"That is the adopted son I took in for this purpose."

Ping Shenglong stroked the rusty chair: "After the body swap, I was afraid that Nobi would use this adult body to take revenge on me, so I needed to lock myself to the chair beforehand. But in the end I didn't do that because I was afraid the ritual would fail and then I wouldn't be able to switch bodies."

Tetsuro Muto, who was standing in front of him, was squatting down, lighting candles on the ground and placing magatama.

Finally, he silently recited something, sat in the corner, and the ritual began.

With a sudden, erratic flicker of the candlelight, Nobita snapped back to reality, fiercely resisting Muto's spirit.

"The ritual failed, so I had no choice but to kill Nobi and throw him in a corner. I placed my adopted son on the stone platform as a backup plan. This was my last chance; I had no room to back down, so I locked myself to the iron seat."

Ping Shenglong could see that the middle-aged man, whose aura was waning, had locked himself to the iron seat, staring at his adopted son on the stone platform with a glimmer of hope amidst despair.

"But my adopted son woke up, resisted me, picked up a knife, and killed me. He won't be able to escape now. No one knows where the exit is except for me."

Clang.

The adopted son killed Muto, the knife fell to the ground, and he retreated hastily, guarding the two corpses, shrinking into a corner, until the last candle went out.

The candle went out, plunging the secret room into complete darkness.

Ping Shenglong let out a long breath and reopened his eyes. The cold light of the LEDs filled the sealed room again, and the memory of what had just happened dissipated like particles.

clap clap.

Kurosaki nodded and clapped: "As expected of the head of the First Investigation Division, you really have some skills. Even without scientific methods, you can get into the zone so quickly."

Ping Shenglong looked at him and said, "I used scientific methods."

"A dagger was found lying next to the iron seat, indicating that Muto was murdered."

"Given the confined space at the time, there were only two people who could have killed him: Nobita or his adopted son."

"Since you're so sure this is a ritual, considering the illogical bone age of Muto's remains and the iron seat, the only explanation you can think of is body swapping."

"He chose a secret room at the school instead of his home for the ceremony, which most likely means that his adopted son was the backup, and Nobita was the main choice."

"Given the location of the two skeletons, one of the smaller ones was very close to the iron seat. It's unreasonable to assume that he was alive until he suffocated or dehydrated to death. Human instinct is to stay away from corpses, even if it's due to hunger. After that, people would choose to stay away."

"So he was probably killed as well. On the contrary, although the other skeleton is missing, the traces left behind indicate that he was curled up in the corner furthest from the two of them, which is consistent with the instinct of fearing corpses. So he was alive after the two of them died."

"Based on this information, I arrived at the reasoning I just made." "Isn't that science?"

Kurosaki, biting the pen cap, spread his hands: "Okay, okay, it's quite scientific. But some things, while logical, aren't very scientific. For example, you didn't mention why the old wooden school building caught fire, which means there aren't enough clues, and the logical chain doesn't make sense."

Ping Shenglong admitted that his reasoning did indeed have a fatal flaw.

There's no way to explain why Muto became the "Calm Teacher" or why the old school building caught fire.

"First of all, you need to understand one thing: possession-type spells, regardless of the system, are all evil arts! People who practice this kind of spell are absolutely selfish; they would not care about sacrificing an entire city just to survive."

“I studied here, and I’ve always had a question: why are there so many eyewitnesses to ghost stories at our school? Is it simply because there was a fire? The school buildings that burned down were even demolished and rebuilt, so why are there still so many cases?”

"In addition, some seniors who attended school in those wooden school buildings during the Showa era, whom I contacted, said that they were particularly tired when they went to school back then for some reason, and it was easy to lose energy. This was not an isolated phenomenon, but a common one. It wasn't until they went to university or started working that they realized that the kind of tiredness was somewhat abnormal."

"What comes to mind when you combine these ideas?"

Ping Shenglong stroked his chin and slowly uttered two words: "Barrier".

"No, it's an array!" Kurosaki pointed outside. "The school is a place with abundant yang energy during the day, and yang energy has the effect of prolonging life in many cultivation systems. Why would Muto become a teacher? I'm afraid that in addition to finding a suitable body to possess, he also intends to plunder the yang energy of the students here as much as possible to extend his own lifespan."

“I don’t know how the fire started, but it must be related to Muto’s ritual. Perhaps it was the backlash from the failed ritual? And then, in this backlash, Muto and his adopted son became earthbound spirits, replacing the library that was originally the core of the array.”

Ping Shenglong stared at the search results for information about formations on his phone: "The old school buildings were all burned down, so why can the formation still continue?"

Kurosaki chuckled and wagged his index finger: "Have you noticed the trees near the old school building?"

Ping Shenglong recalled carefully: "It was mainly cherry blossoms, mixed with some other trees."

“Locust trees.” Kurosaki nodded. “I just discovered that there are some locust trees scattered around the school. For an array, these trees and the array’s core are key. Since the trees are fine, and Mutou has become the new array core, why can’t the array continue?”

"Of course, such a formation is bound to be incomplete, and it is quite difficult to operate."

"But that's enough. Some students who are already lacking in yang energy will be sucked in and frightened. Whether it's real or a hallucination, they will easily see all sorts of strange things. That's why there are so many campus legends."

"Originally, this was a formation that plundered yang energy, but coincidentally, because of the large quantity of plundered yang energy, it was able to suppress Muteng, this earthbound spirit."

"But later this place was abandoned, and the yang energy could not be collected. Since the locust tree is yin, it gradually turned into a place that gathers yin energy. Don't you feel that it is abnormally cold here?"

"Nourishment of Yin energy for Mutou, this earthbound spirit, he remembers that he is a teacher, he also remembers that great fire, and a few days ago, he heard the students’ legend about the charred teacher. At the same time, he also drank the blood of a young man. Thus, he slowly awakened as the charred teacher."

"That concludes my—Strange Path's—reasoning!"

(End of this chapter)