Why can't humans do it too?

Although it is cruel, it is unreasonable to judge ancient things from the perspective of modern people, not to mention that Suer is sure that he has no intention of bearing the casualties and impact on the future after the sudden collapse of this situation that has been maintained for hundreds of years.

He already knew that every time he returned to the past, he was changing the future, and he didn't want to become a sinner who helped monsters become extinct or suppressed humanity, even if he didn't want to personally participate in human development anymore.

then……

"Are you really not going to reconsider?"

"..."

"What about now? The weather's so nice today, how about we look at it from a different angle?"

"..."

"Ah~, such a beautiful and kind girl, she was about to give up her life because of the decisions of those who came before her. This world is so cruel!"

"..."

"Please have some water, please have some snacks."

"..."

Good morning! How are you feeling today? Want to talk about the lovely You?

"..."

The above dialogue, and similar dialogues, can occur anytime and anywhere. Relying on her increasingly proficient and advanced skills in using her gaps after tens of thousands of years of evolution, Yakumo Yukari can always emerge from an unexpected angle to spur on Sul's soul.

Suer felt like Sun Wukong being subjected to the spell of Tang Sanzang tightening the headband.

You can't hit her, you can't scold her away. No matter what she says, Yukari Yakumo will always smile and offer the most sincere service and the most genuine comfort. There's no need to make a big fuss about it. Sue would call this female demon's tormenting skills the strongest.

It's strange that the female youkai Yukari Yakumo cares for an ordinary human far more than Sue does for an ordinary human.

Even though Sull discovered in their occasional conversations that Saigyouji Yuu had already accepted her fate, Yakumo Yukari still did not give up, even if it meant going against the wishes of the person involved.

Is this the power of love?

However, when Suer asked Yakumo Yukari this question with a strange look, she received a denial from the female youkai without the slightest hesitation.

"I just couldn't bear to watch such a pure and kind person die so easily."

Suer still remembers the gentle smile on Yakumo Yukari's face when she said those words; it was very calm and composed.

Without even needing confirmation, Suer believed her.

The relationship between humans and monsters... is really interesting.

Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Interweaving of Past and Future

Xin Ke immersed himself in the study of the entire formation and the earth veins, which also required Su Er to stay in the ancient world at all times. But to be honest, as time went by, he could even see the shadowy modern high-rise buildings in his line of sight when he was in the ancient world.

The ever-expanding portals of time and space have become so vast that they can hardly be concealed anymore, regardless of the era.

Modern governments rely on information control to restrict the spread of various supernatural phenomena, and have even reinstated curfews in modern society. Ancient societies, on the other hand, relied on the inherently slow and unreliable flow of information to restrict the information from the portals of time and space. Even so, the news of the magical creations within the Saigyouji family's territory still spread among the yokai, and yokai from afar could often be seen arriving there out of curiosity.

And so time continued to pass.

In the eyes of the immortal race, it was only a little over two years, but these short two years had already affected the lives of two worlds.

Even though Xin Ke had tried her best, the mirage-like bubble continued to slowly expand until it enveloped the entire city.

The ordinary people in the city had long been evacuated. Now, the only people left in the city are Onmyoji, monks, shrine maidens, various kinds of yokai, and a very small number of experts on the strange. These seemingly chaotic beings are the last guardians of the city.

Well, we should also include the Self-Defense Forces and U.S. troops that have come in, plus scientists from all over the world.

In just two years, things that had been covered up were brought to the surface. After all, the migration of a million people was no small matter, and people were nervously and expectantly wary of everything in the mirage—the menacing monsters, the antique buildings, and the humans with accents from hundreds of years ago.

The shells are so effective that this once-human city is now armed like a military fortress, with large amounts of supplies being delivered to it every day, along with all sorts of new weapons... new weapons yet to be tested.

It was like a different kind of carnival.

Even those defending the city were wary of each other. Surprisingly, the Onmyoji family from Kyoto, the Kagein family, formed an alliance with the Nura Clan. Instead of guarding against them, they were also wary of the army or scientists who stared at them with predatory eyes.

What allows them to maintain a semblance of stability are only those mirage-like scenes. The modern and the ancient can stand face to face, but when they reach out, they find nothing.

For a moment, the city seemed like a fortress full of illusions and traps. What you thought was a meadow was actually just a phantom from the past, and stepping on it might actually make you fall half to your death. What appeared to be a lush forest was actually a wide road, forcing everyone walking in the city to be extremely careful.

Ancient humans and monsters faced similar situations: towering reinforced concrete buildings, blocks that inexplicably moved on their own, people who resembled them but dressed indecently, and monsters that appeared exceptionally weak.

The two sides cannot hear each other's voices and can only guess each other's words through facial expressions and lip movements. However, this has become extremely difficult due to the development of language. This is precisely the advantage that modern society, which has gathered the power of the whole world in a certain sense, has.

Well, that only applies when dealing with ancient humans, since it's really too much to ask someone to read lips from monsters that don't even look like humans.

Xin Ke didn't come away empty-handed. This situation, where both parties could only see each other in real time but couldn't touch each other, was the final measure she took after she couldn't make the time portal disappear. It prevented the forces from modern society from rushing into the ancient world all at once, and also prevented the existence of the ancient world from silently entering the modern world.

This is also a kind of balance, but this balance has reached its most fragile moment.

The echoes of death are reappearing in this modern society, in a form no one could have imagined—like blue ghosts emerging from summer fireworks.

They travel across oceans, through forests, through the concrete jungles of cities… and not just to this city that has been turned into a military fortress, but also to its surrounding islands and other islands of Japan.

They have even appeared in other countries around the world, though for now they are still scattered.

When you're on an airplane and looking down from high above, especially at night, you can see those blue lights shimmering and converging into a sea of ​​light. But when you think that this beautiful sight is actually the soul of one dead human after another... it becomes a nightmare that can stop a child from crying at night.

Their final destination was this city, now shrouded in the illusions of the past. They wandered aimlessly, as if some mysterious voice was calling to them, drawing their consciousness in.

Even the calls of their living relatives and friends could not wake them. They did not harm anyone, nor could they be stopped by anything; they simply kept moving forward.

Such scenes of sanity are not only found in modern society, but also in mirage-like phenomena.

From electric shocks to flames to magnetic fields and other energy weapons that were thought to exist only in people's imaginations, all sorts of weapons that even Sull found eye-opening appeared in the city. These military technologies were definitely twenty or even thirty years ahead of civilian technologies.

"Ready for battle at any moment" is perhaps the only idiom that can describe the two sides. It is undeniable that some gentle methods were used at the beginning to try to communicate with the other side. However, after communicating with those aliens who usually hide in the city, the higher-ups of human society decided to try other kinds of dialogue after the first battle.

One side is a hegemon who has completely conquered the entire planet, while the other side is a monster who cannot comprehend the future hundreds of years from now and still regards humans as food. Only blood and power can calm both sides down again.

"As a sage of monsters, is it really alright for you to keep talking about humans instead of leading those monsters?"

"My existence is irrelevant; those monsters know better than anyone what they want."

"……Yeah?"

Silence returned, and Suer simply stared solemnly at the thin, veil-like mirage... until it shattered.

Chapter Sixty: The Final Battle

The inertia of a world is ultimately something that Shinko cannot stop. Even with Jibril's help, the barrier she set up eventually shattered.

The mirage-like portal to space and time continued to expand. The previous situation where both sides could only see each other but could not reach the other side was merely an effect exerted by Xin Ke. However, it has now returned to its original appearance and function.

When the humans and monsters, who were wary of each other, suddenly discovered that their outstretched hands or claws after their routine provocations could actually touch each other, war broke out in a way that no one had anticipated.

Looking out from the high mountains outside the city, this historic city appears to be setting off fireworks, with fire and electricity, and occasionally you can see wisps of black smoke spreading wildly in the shape of sharp claws. In addition, the insect monsters call out their kind that have not yet transformed into monsters. Even from this distance, it makes people's scalps tingle.

The people who guard this city, or rather, those who guard the front lines of this world, also have their own ways of fighting back: the clear light emitted when Onmyoji summon shikigami or unleash their spiritual power, the dense bursts of gunfire like popping beans, and flamethrowers that can spew out scorching flames.

Science and metaphysics go hand in hand, and when some ancient monsters revealed their enormous true forms, laughing wildly and preparing to carry out a massacre, they were brutally pierced through their bodies in a thunderous roar, and the huge hole was beyond the monsters' powerful self-healing ability to save them.

While it wasn't surprising that modern humans could withstand the attacks of these ancient demons, the brutal penetrating damage still left Suer somewhat stunned as he stared blankly in the direction from which it had come—above the sea.

It was a naval gun. In this era of aircraft carriers and missiles, modern humans have actually brought out battleships that were originally used for port defense. The unfortunate monsters were hit by 406mm armor-piercing shells, which also pulverized the monsters and buildings around them.

Of course, missiles were also indispensable. Although in order to prevent friendly fire and reduce the combat effectiveness of the defended city, the missiles could only hit some very obvious targets, but their power still made many monsters look at them with fear.

In less than an hour, the city had been transformed into a scene ravaged by a meat grinder. This was not merely a description of the casualty figures, but rather the overall appearance of the entire city. The corpses of the dead monsters were piled up in the streets and on rooftops, or even hung directly from the upper floors. The charred flesh emitted a foul odor, and the carbonized torsos were crushed into dry powder after being impacted.

The casualties were heavy, not only for the monsters, but also for the troops who had entered the city. Even though their casualty ratio was very high, the unexpected war with an unknown species still cost them a bloody price.

The viciousness and excessive vitality unleashed by the crazed monsters before their deaths, coupled with the various unpredictable demonic arts produced under the influence of their demonic power, would have likely caused the death toll to rise even higher if the army had not been accompanied by Onmyoji as a supplement.

But there are still too few Onmyoji.

But there are too many monsters.

The cannon fodder are almost all dead.

These first wave of monsters rushed to the front with the idea of ​​making a name for themselves. Those who survived would possess the fame and power that monsters value most. Meanwhile, the monsters who had gathered under the banner of the great monsters had not yet officially entered the fray—until now.

“The probing is over,” Suer said with a sigh.

He wanted to prevent all these unnecessary casualties, but human strength has its limits. In the end, all he could do was delay the arrival of this moment. The two sides, who had been preparing for so long, only made the war even more intense.

Jibril has already moved through the battlefield.

From the moment the war began, countless lives were lost and transformed into blue and white ghosts. Ghosts appeared among both humans and monsters, passing through the veil of time and space to the place that called them.

Saigyouji Cherry Blossoms.

“I didn’t expect you to stay here instead of running away with Saigyouji Yu,” Su Er said, glancing at Yakumo Yukari again.

“…Where could she possibly run off to?” Staring blankly at the distant battlefield, the battle between technology and metaphysics was a sight even Yukari Yakumo had never witnessed before. “Yu’s lifespan has long been tied to that secret technique and that cherry blossom tree. When that technique was first completed, I might have been able to resolve it, but after all these years… haha.”

"...My condolences," Su'er said, looking at the obviously somber female monster. She didn't know what to say and could only offer dry words of comfort. "Were all those ghosts eaten by that cherry blossom tree?"

"It's been eaten, or you could say it's returned to the earth's veins... The formation that the Saigyou Master set up has undergone changes that we can't describe, and it's even possible that all of this is caused by it... Do you want to destroy this formation directly?" Yakumo Yukari asked blankly.

Destroying the entire formation would mean the death of those two trees, which in turn would mean the death of Saigyouji Yu. She had come to Su Er to ask him to destroy the formation, so that Saigyouji Yu could at least escape her inevitable fate.

But even if the formation is ignored, as long as these ghosts from the past and present keep entering that cherry blossom tree, Saigyouji Yuu will still be doomed to die... It's as if the tree has taken away the girl's entire existence. When Yakumo Yukari touches her hand, even without direct sunlight, you can vaguely see the bones under Saigyouji Yuu's skin, and even what's under her palm.

Located at the most important node of the earth's veins, that cherry blossom tree was nourished by the entire earth's veins and another tree. It could be said that it absorbed everything to sustain itself. This evil existence was forcibly transformed by the Saigyouji monk into an existence that brought blessings to the region, which could be said to be going against the will of heaven.

To use the power of the formation to annihilate the intelligence that the cherry blossom tree could have developed long ago can be considered going against the heavens and even damaging one's merits. After all, growing in such a place, it should have transformed into a spirit or monster long ago, but it has been dragged on for so many years.