Why can't humans do it too?

"Um! Could you wait a moment?!" Compared to the easygoing Sue, Kagome Higurashi had always felt nervous and fearful towards Shinko, but at this moment she couldn't help but raise her voice to interrupt.

"What?" Xin Ke asked, her voice cold as she looked down at him.

“That, you know… I think these monsters probably don’t want to risk their lives to hurt each other like this, right? Didn’t you just say that it’s like the well is connected to some place, but there’s something terrifying there driving these monsters away?”

"So, um, I mean, if possible... could you spare their lives?"

Kagome Higurashi's voice grew softer and softer, as if even she knew how outrageous and unreasonable her request was, but she still insisted on expressing her thoughts.

Beyond the courage and kindness one should possess at her age, this middle school girl was not an ignorant saint, but rather, even knowing the cruelty of these monsters, she still put herself in their shoes and considered things from their perspective. In modern terms, the monsters were simply forced by life's hardships.

Since that's the case, why not give them a chance?

“You should know, right? If it weren’t for these spells I set up, they would probably have discovered your family’s shrine the moment they rushed out of the well, killed your family, and then killed every living thing they could see outside the mountain… Even so, you still insist?” Xin Ke raised her eyebrows and asked with great interest.

"That won't happen—I'll protect them!"

Kagome raised her voice sharply and shouted firmly.

There was no answer; Shinko simply watched the shimmering light emanating from Kagome Higurashi's chest as she spoke.

Chapter 44 The Shikon Jewel

Kagome Higurashi was still completely unaware of the power she possessed, but a mysterious sense of security compelled her to utter those words.

“Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? What can you do if that time really comes?” Xin Ke said calmly.

"I, I... I will kill them with my own hands!" Kagome Higurashi shouted through gritted teeth, though she seemed hesitant.

They might show kindness when the monsters are forced to, but they won't hesitate when the monsters are about to do evil—at least they don't seem to hesitate now.

As her feelings became clearer, the light emanating from her chest shone even brighter, to the point that Kagome herself could see it.

"Huh? Huh?! What is this?!" Kagome Himura raised her voice in alarm, looking to Sul for help, hoping to get an answer.

Compared to Kagome Higurashi, who panicked upon first witnessing her power, Sul and Shinko, who already knew about her unusual condition, were much calmer. They could feel that even when exposed to this pure white light at such close range, their bodies did not experience any adverse reactions.

"Don't panic, feel it carefully, try to control it with your heart... Can you control it?" Suer squatted down and said reassuringly.

"Control, control it?" After her initial panic subsided quickly, Kagome Higurashi took a few deep breaths and finally nodded, saying, "Okay, I'll try."

The girl is praying that she won't emit light.

However, the effect didn't seem to be very good. Perhaps it was because she sensed danger around the girl or was attracted by a large number of monsters. As Kagome's face gradually turned grim, she was shocked to find that the light on her chest not only did not diminish, but instead became even more intense.

"Give it to me!! Give it to me now!!!"

The pure white light seemed to stimulate the monsters who were still alive but bound by the spell. They screamed wildly and tried their best to spread their tentacles over.

However, no one had time to pay attention to them. Even Jibril, who had just been standing in front of them, came over. Kagome stared in disbelief at her chest. In the pure white but not dazzling light, a pink sphere slowly pierced through her chest and flew out, as if it had broken free from some restraint.

It has a jade-like texture, but is a soft pink color. It seems to have water ripples inside, or an entire starry sky. It is constantly changing, and what seems to be cloud-like smoke drifts out of it, yet it is constantly changing shape, sometimes resembling people, sometimes resembling objects, interweaving with each other.

The pink jade stone slowly landed on Kagome's outstretched palms. The next second, the little girl repeatedly touched her chest with one hand, still worried – her bones were intact, her skin was intact, and even her uniform was intact.

Do you think it's really okay for an ordinary human like me to suddenly have such a large rock pop out of my body?

Kagome Higurashi was lost in thought, feeling somewhat bewildered.

Compared to the warm pink color, the jade felt cool to the touch, just as I had imagined, and it even seemed to wobble slightly.

"The Jade of Four Souls!"

"It's the Shikon Jewel!!"

"Mine! That's mine!!!"

From the moment this small stone appeared, it seemed to bestow boundless power upon the monsters restricted by the Xin Ke spell. They practically burst forth with boundless vitality, surging towards this side, even causing the already rippling air to become even finer.

Everything that had happened before clearly indicated that as long as Suer and the others were still here, they had no ability to obtain this jade. However, at this moment, they completely forgot this fact or this understanding. These monsters who had traveled through time and space were just frantically shouting the name of this jade and desperately trying to get closer to it.

To prevent other monsters from touching the jade before them, they used all their most vicious and damaging moves on the monsters closest to the jade and positioned at the edge of the spell.

They had gone mad. No matter how loudly they shouted, these monsters had no chance of obtaining the jade. However, they had lost all reason and their fighting for the nearest spot intensified.

"The Shikon Jewel? Have you heard of that name before?" Sour asked, frowning as he turned his gaze away from the crazed monsters. He kept looking at Kagome Higurashi and then at the pink jewel she was still holding in her hands.

“No…” Kagome Higurashi’s voice sounded ethereal, as if the girl hadn’t yet recovered from the series of shocking events that had occurred one after another. “It’s never been mentioned in any of the family’s books, and Grandpa never mentioned it either.”

“With this level of attraction to monsters, it can’t be something unknown,” Xin Ke said thoughtfully. “I originally thought it was the crystallization of something that was conceived from her body, but now it seems that it has been there for a long time, at least in the distant past, and for some reason it temporarily resides in her body.”

"Be careful," Su Er nodded in agreement with Xin Ke's assessment, then reminded Kagome Higurashi, "Can you sense its power?"

With the Shikon Jewel, the name that the yokai still roared over was etched into his heart. Sull decided that once things were settled here, he would definitely go back and ask Nurarihyon about the connection to this name. That was the advantage of knowing such an old yokai who had lived for hundreds of years.

"An ability...?" Kagome's bewildered expression deepened. She seemed to be being led by an invisible hand in the air, or perhaps she was seeing something that Sull and the others couldn't see. She was in a daze.

'Am I about to be possessed?!'

Startled by the sudden thought that popped into his mind, Sull raised his hand to signal Shinko and Jibril to be careful, and he himself became serious, watching Kagome Higurashi's every move.

However, the situation seemed much better than he had imagined. There were no extreme actions. Kagome Higurashi just walked forward blankly, step by step approaching the binding spell set up by Shinko, her hands still holding the pink jade.

"Did you hear sounds we can't hear? Or did you see sights we can't see?"

Suer asked tentatively, his tone serious.

Chapter Forty-Five: The Phantom of Time

"No...there's no...there's no such thing..."

Kagome Higurashi's voice wasn't loud; she seemed like someone who had just woken up from a dream. Although she was moving around, even she herself didn't know what she was doing.

"...I just suddenly felt...maybe...maybe it could be like this?"

Kagome raised the pink jade she was holding high, and as she did so, even more light suddenly emanated from the jade. The monsters reacted in two completely opposite ways when they touched this light.

Some of the monsters, who had been behaving madly, suddenly calmed down. However, another group of monsters let out pitiful cries for mercy, abandoning their previous intention to get closer even if they had to use all their strength, and instead desperately fled to the other side.

But no matter how hard they struggle, how could they possibly outrun the light?

These monsters are gradually disappearing, as if they are being assimilated by this not-so-bright, even somewhat gentle, white light, dissipating, dissolving, fading...

"You saw it too?" Sul asked in a low voice, narrowing his eyes.

“Hmm,” Jibril nodded, “The energy that those monsters transformed into was absorbed and flowed into that stone… It feels like it would be a very precious collectible?”

"Collectibles... let's ensure their safety first," Suer said, somewhat speechless. Although Jibril seemed to have changed her habit of collecting heads, her obsession with collecting rare items hadn't diminished much. In fact, it seemed to have shifted to other things because she couldn't collect heads anymore.

Finally snapping out of her dazed state, Kagome withdrew her raised hand. The pink jade that had been radiating boundless light no longer emitted that white glow, remaining quiet as if it were just an ordinary stone.

"The monster... disappeared?" Kagome murmured to herself, still seemingly unable to believe it.

She gradually realized a fact: those menacing monsters... seemed to have been purified by her own hands?

No, even though she was still completely ignorant of these supernatural things, Kagome Higurashi had a clear understanding in her hazy mind. Rather than saying that those monsters were completely purified from this world and no longer existed, it would be more accurate to say that the jewel in her hand complied with her wishes, preventing those monsters from dying, but indeed preventing them from causing any further harm to this world.

The ancient well, which had just been incredibly crowded with monsters fighting each other, suddenly became quiet and somewhat empty. Apart from the ground, which was now devoid of any grass and soaked with the dark purple blood of the monsters, all evidence of the monsters' existence had vanished, and even the wind blowing by seemed refreshing.

“...Grandpa is probably going to be angry.” Kagome looked blankly at the well opening, which should have been made of four horizontal beams but was now almost completely bare. She began to rack her brains trying to figure out how to explain this to her grandfather.

Things that have been passed down for hundreds of years have just disappeared like this. Isn't this already considered a crime of damaging cultural relics?

Recalling the knowledge she had learned in school, Kagome Higurashi turned her pleading gaze to the semi-transparent, large-breasted female demon. She knew that these barriers were set up by this female demon, so... uh, could you help her restore them?

However, Xin Ke didn't have time to care about her right now. She already knew Su Er's and Jibril's intelligence levels very well, so she didn't look down on them... What she meant was that it was better to leave professional matters to professionals. Right now, if they really wanted to analyze what had happened and detect and analyze the subtle changes in energy, they would have to rely on her.

"Let's just use that one," Xin Ke said, frowning as she flew to the edge of the former well and peered down for a long time.

"Huh? No need to do any more testing?" Jibril seemed a little hesitant, which was uncharacteristic of her. "Although it's not using a spirit, pouring in so much spiritual power... I don't really care, but if a big explosion really happens, Sul will probably have a real headache, right?"

The pink-haired winged creature kept glancing at Suer.

"...Why did it explode? By the way, how much power did you use to activate the spell? The one you were working on together a while ago?" Su'er felt his eyelids twitching wildly. "Could you have tried to prevent it from exploding?"

“It’s normal for unexpected accidents to happen in any research, don’t be so nervous,” Xin Ke waved her hand calmly. “Don’t worry, I’m a genius, I’ll be fine—just throw it in.”

The last few words were spoken to Jibril. Shinko made the decision so casually, and Jibril's hesitation just now was obviously just a kind of, uh, humble excuse.

In short, the way she unhesitatingly took out the crystal ball containing a large number of intricate spells and threw it into the well after Xin Ke finished speaking was as if she had been waiting for this moment for a long time—Jibriel had wanted to see what kind of effect the thing she had painstakingly made would have.

Kagome wanted to protest against this behavior of casually throwing things into her old well, but obviously her protest was useless. In the end, she could only hide behind a few people after being repeatedly signaled by Sul, so that she could run away quickly if something really happened.

"...Is everything alright? Right? There really won't be any problems, will there?" Su Er couldn't help but confirm again and again.

The ancient well, which was originally pitch black, emitted a bluish-green electric light after Jibril threw out the crystal ball. Vein-like patterns, or the veins of leaves, extended from the ground and stretched all the way to the huge sacred tree, and then covered the trunk of the tree.

In the end, the core of the sacred tree seemed to transform into a dazzling source of light, with fine, bluish-green veins undulating along its deeply grooved bark, flickering and shimmering, echoing the entire ancient well.

"Assuming that whether we come to this era or go back to the past, we rely on that energy that exists between the tangible and the intangible, then if we need to make this abnormal reaction occur more often, we only need to increase that energy."

Xin Ke squinted her eyes and looked at the changes with satisfaction. She could control the entire spell and understand what every change in the spell meant. She could now detect the energy that Jibril had mentioned, which only she could see before.

"If you can't understand it, just imagine it as a powerful catalytic spell."

With a simple and easy-to-understand summary, as Xin Ke finished speaking, Su Er clearly saw that the bottom of the ancient well was emitting swirling smoke like clouds.

Amidst the illusory smoke, he clearly saw a scene completely different from his surroundings—a dense forest.

Chapter Forty-Six: A Hundred Years Ago

It was vague and indistinct, like a mirage in the desert; it appeared to exist, but in reality, it was just an illusion.