While I was chanting a curse, the system said I was Xiao Yan?

Chapter 169 The enemy is coming

The riverbank fell silent again. Nanami Kento sheathed his sword, glanced at Hiruzen's pale face, pale from excessive use of his magical energy, and then at the completely extinguished head in Haibara Yu's hand. He asked, "Can you still walk?"

Hiromi Hiroshi nodded, taking a breath: "...

"...He can walk, but his magical power hasn't recovered yet."

Haibara Yuya walked over: "This thing can still glow after its head is cut off, it's been a big help."

Nanami Kento's gaze had already crossed the riverbank and landed on the shadows in the distance. Various shapes of black shadows were rushing towards them, clearly because the previous battle had been too loud and had attracted a lot of cursed spirits.

He looked away: "Let's retreat first; it won't be safe here anytime soon."

Seeing that Haibara Yu and Hiroshi Higurashi had no objections, the three of them advanced along the narrow alley behind the riverbank into the densely built area for about twenty minutes. After passing through two rows of abandoned shops and a section of underground passage, they finally found a relatively intact two-story building on the back side of a half-collapsed commercial street.

The exterior walls have some cracks and a few windows are broken, but the main structure is still relatively stable and the view covers the movement of the three surrounding streets.

Nanami Kento was the last to enter the building. He turned around and pulled down the half-closed roller shutter door, leaving only a narrow crack for observing the outside. He leaned against the wall and confirmed that no new magical energy fluctuations were approaching before sheathing his sword.

As soon as Haibara Yu entered the room, he put down the round thing he was carrying. It was the head of the bald, humanoid cursed spirit. For some reason, it hadn't completely dissipated along with the body, but instead remained, especially the two whitish eyeballs, which still retained a very faint trace of cursed power.

Hiroki Hiroki leaned against the opposite wall, his breathing more even than before, but his complexion hadn't fully recovered: "Why didn't this thing dissipate? Could it be alive?"

Haibara Yu squatted down and tapped the outer shell of the head with his hand. The sound was dull and solid, like tapping on a thick piece of pottery: "It's been almost half an hour since it fell down. Most cursed spirits would have turned to ash long ago, but this one is still intact."

He examined it from all angles. Since he didn't possess any spells, he had come into considerable contact with cursed implements, leading him to a guess: "It seems to have transformed into some kind of... cursed object?"

Nanami Kento also squatted down, observed carefully for a moment, and then stood up straight: "You're right, its structure has changed. Cursed spirits usually don't leave a physical form after they die, unless the cursed power structure in their bodies undergoes some kind of solidification at the moment of death."

Nanami Kento thought for a moment: "If we bring it back to the high school, we might be able to make a magical artifact from it."

Haibara Yu's gaze fell on the short sword at his waist. He thought for a moment, then reached out and drew his cursed short sword from its sheath. He aimed the blade, covered in cursed power, at the not-yet-fully-closed crack on the top of the skull and gently inserted it.

When the blade had penetrated about two-thirds of the way in, the pale golden light in the head's eyes rekindled, and a small ripple shot out, punching a hole in the wall.

"It works!"

Haibara Yu's voice rose, a hint of surprise in his tone: "As long as you infuse the short sword with magical power, and then transmit it through the blade to this head, it can emit those laser waves, just like... using magical power to power it!"

Nanami Kento also tried it out, and sure enough, he could use it too: "However, it consumes a lot of spell power."

Nanami Kento released the short sword, and the head also quieted down, the light in its eye sockets extinguishing again: "It will be very helpful in scenarios where a large number of low-level cursed spirits need to be cleared out, but be careful of its power supply efficiency, as the cursed power will be consumed much faster than usual."

Haibara Yu seemed quite pleased, taking the head back into his hands: "Lucky me, got a decent cursed artifact!"

After a short rest, the three set off again, heading north along the inner side of the commercial street. Traces of human activity began to appear on both sides of the street: footprints, overturned vehicles, hastily discarded backpacks and daily necessities, and several dried, dark marks on the roadside, proving that people had passed through this area not long ago.

As they rounded an intersection, the sound of orderly footsteps and the clanging of metal came from ahead. A guard team of about ten men was advancing along the main street, wearing dark bulletproof vests and carrying standard rifles. They were in close formation, clearly operating as a standard urban patrol team. When they saw three people emerge from a side alley, the guards at the front simultaneously raised their guns!

"Stop! Don't move!"

The leader was a middle-aged man around forty years old, with a clean-shaven beard and sharp, wary eyes: "Who are you people? What's that thing in the back? Is it an accomplice of those monsters?"

On Haibara Yu's back, the outline of a grayish-white head was mostly visible, looking like a giant head specimen of some kind of monster.

Several guards slightly raised their gun barrels, pointing them in Haibara Yu's direction. Haibara Yu stopped in his tracks, spreading his arms to indicate that he meant no harm: "We are survivors."

Nanami Kento stepped forward from the side, slowly reaching into his inner pocket to avoid triggering an excessive reaction. He pulled out the slightly crumpled student ID and held it up to the other person's eye level: "Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Higher Vocational School, Nanami Kento. These two next to me are also from the vocational school."

The middle-aged man took the student ID, glanced down at the stamped card, then looked up at Nanami Kento's face, compared them for a moment, and then returned the student ID, raising his hand to signal the team members next to him to put down their guns.

His expression relaxed slightly, but he wasn't completely off guard: "A specialist in sorcery? I've heard of you before from someone who called himself an assistant supervisor."

Nanami put her student ID back in her pocket: "Were you just talking about monsters? You can see cursed spirits now?"

The middle-aged man nodded: "Yes, it didn't work at first, but now we can see these things called curse spirits."

, 7

Nanami Kento frowned slightly. The fact that ordinary people could see the cursed spirits meant that the concentration of cursed power inside the barrier had risen to a level that was beyond the comprehension of non-magicians.

This is not a good sign. The closed barrier is allowing the originally disordered and dissipated curse power to accumulate. The higher the concentration, the more severe the erosion may be for ordinary people. In the short term, they may only be able to see curse spirits, but in the long term, more complex changes may occur.

"We need to continue towards the city center; there are still cursed spirits there that need to be dealt with."

Nanami asked, "That way you're going?"

Just as the middle-aged man was about to answer, a young member at the end of the line suddenly looked up and pointed in a certain direction in the sky: "What's that?!"

Everyone turned to the direction he was pointing at the same time.

In the sky, a figure with white wings was swooping down towards them. It was twice the size of a normal person, dressed in traditional clothing, with red skin. Its facial features were a mixture of bird and human characteristics, with a long nose. It was the legendary Tengu, one of the three cursed spirits that Nanami Kento and the other two had seen from afar!

Hanging beneath its paws was another figure, slender and tall, dressed in a white robe, with a face that resembled a dog with a long snout. Nanami Kento recognized it as Inugami, one of the three cursed spirits!

Nanami Kento's pupils contracted; they had clearly set their sights on the group, treating them as prey, and flew straight towards them!

The guards reacted quickly; almost the instant they saw the two figures, they raised their guns, and the middle-aged man in the lead immediately ordered, "Fire!"

Several rifles opened fire almost simultaneously, the gunfire exploding in the narrow street, the dense bullet trajectories weaving into a net of fire that covered the two descending cursed spirits.

The bullets struck the Tengu's chest, abdomen, and wings. Each hit caused the Tengu to let out a low growl, like a wild beast being provoked, but the bullets bounced off its body surface without even breaking the skin.

Tengu's body swayed slightly amidst the barrage of comments, then its dark yellow eyes narrowed, its gaze falling on the group of guards who were firing.

Tengu swung its right leg violently, sending the dog god hanging from its paw flying like a cannonball. The slender white figure drew an arc in the air and landed precisely in the center of the guards' group.

The moment the dog god landed, all four of its limbs touched the ground simultaneously, and then it sprang up at a speed beyond the limits of human reaction. Its sharp claws drew an arc in the air, directly slicing through the waists of the two nearest guards. The two men's bodies paused for a moment after the claw marks passed by, and then were neatly severed at the waist, their upper bodies sliding to one side.

At the same time, the Tengu's body hovered in the air for half a second, and dark red flames condensed in its mouth, forming a slowly rotating fireball. The fireball was then ejected from its mouth, landed on the ground, and exploded with a bang. The flames and shockwaves threw several guards nearby away. Some were blown apart, while others lost consciousness upon landing.

Almost instantly upon contact, the guards were killed or wounded, with more than half of them dead or wounded!

Nanami Kento's figure slashed in from the side, his short sword rising from below, precisely blocking the trajectory of Inugami's next claw strike.

The blade clashed with the claws, producing a sharp metallic scraping sound and sparks flying. The Inugami's attack was blocked in mid-air!

Nanami shoved the guard he had pulled away behind him, adding without turning around, "Back off! Your weapons are ineffective against them!"

The few surviving guards began to retreat, some still holding their guns and trying to continue firing, but many more guns became unsteady after witnessing their comrades being easily killed.

After its attack was blocked, Inugami quickly bounced back, its slender body leaving a silvery-white afterimage on the ground. Then it pounced again from the side, its claws moving faster and more densely than before, leaving three claw marks that fell almost simultaneously from different directions.

Nanami parried continuously with his short sword. The sound of the blade colliding with the claws was so dense that it sounded like a string of nails being smashed down. After each parry, his body was forced to move back a small step. After three consecutive parries, his back was pressed against a wall.

During the gap between the fourth parries, Inugami's claw grazed his shoulder, tearing through his high school uniform jacket and leaving a shallow white mark on his skin, from which blood quickly seeped out! Nanami gritted his teeth, ignoring the excruciating pain to regain his balance.

Hiromi Hiraka rushed up from the side, and the judge's hammer head slammed down on the spot where Inugami was about to land. Although it did not hit him directly, it forced Inugami to give up the continuous pursuit and pull back two steps.

"I can't hit that one in the air, but I'll help you block this one!"

Nanami Kento didn't show off. The moment Hiruzen Hiromi filled in, he adjusted his breathing rhythm and re-adopted a fighting stance. The two of them stood at an angle, limiting Inugami's attack range to a narrower area.

Inugami's speed remained fast, but when faced with continuous pressure from two directions, its attack rhythm began to show slight discontinuities. The two gradually developed a tacit understanding and began to tip the scales of victory in their favor.

Given enough time, they will be able to successfully exorcise this cursed spirit!

Above the street, Haibara Yu had already raised his head, which was connected to a short sword. The first beam of light shot out from the eye socket of the head, precisely grazing the side of the fireball spewed by the tengu, detonating the ball of fire that had just been shot out a short distance in the air. The shock wave of the explosion did not reach the ground, but the recoil caused the tengu's body to bounce upwards.

The second and third bursts followed immediately, but after losing the interference of the fireballs, the Tengu readjusted its posture and moved faster than Haibara Yu aimed, causing those beams to hit only air.

This is not good news for Haibara Yu. The energy consumed by the Tengu's flight to relocate is definitely less than the energy consumed by Haibara Yu's head attack. If this continues, Haibara Yu's magical energy will soon be exhausted!

Just as Haibara was about to lock on again, two of the remaining guards below raised their guns and pulled the triggers!

A series of bullets struck the Tengu's wings as it was adjusting its posture. Although they did not cause penetrating wounds, the impact of the bullets striking the wings disrupted its flight posture.

The tengu's body tilted slightly to the left for a moment, and the rhythm of its wings flapping was interrupted by half a beat!

Haibara Yu didn't miss this opportunity!

He channeled his magical power into the short sword, and the eye sockets of the head shone with an even brighter light. The beam of light shot towards the Tengu with a density and speed far exceeding the previous beam. Although the Tengu dodged most of it, it still successfully hit the left flank!

The beam of light covered most of the Tengu's left wing, causing the white wing to disintegrate and dissipate into grayish-white dust in mid-air.

The tengu let out a real howl, unlike the previous low roar, this one was sharp and violent, carrying a clear sense of pain!

Its body lost its balance, tilted to the right, and wobbled as it fell to the ground. In the half second before it hit the ground, its right wing was still flapping desperately in an attempt to rise again.

But it was no use. In the end, his body still fell from the air onto the street, creating a shallow crater, with rubble and dust flying everywhere!