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

The mission objective is a luxurious mansion located on a hilltop in the suburbs of Kyoto.

Now that I see it with my own eyes, what is called a luxury mansion is actually more like an old building that has been abandoned by the times. In less than a year without any maintenance, it has already become somewhat dilapidated.

The mansion was surrounded by yellow caution tape, which was bent crooked by the wind and had even come loose in some places, lying lazily on the ground.

Ange stood outside the cordon, her gaze sweeping from the outer wall of the mansion to the roof, and then from the roof to the waist-high weeds in the yard, her brows furrowing slightly.

"It seems... there's no trace of a curse outside."

As she hesitated, Naoya had already crossed the police line and strode towards the main gate of the mansion without any hesitation: "They're more likely inside. Let's hurry in and deal with it!"

Angehime's eyelids twitched again as she watched him stride confidently and unguardedly.

"Wait a minute!" She jogged after him. "You're just going to walk right in? Don't you need to observe first? Don't you need to do any preparation?"

Naoya stopped and glanced back at her, his eyes behind his sunglasses giving off a "what nonsense are you talking about" look.

"Observe? Prepare?"

He repeated the two words, a slight smile curving his lips: "Do we need these things to deal with an event of this magnitude?"

Anka opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end she just sighed and followed him into the courtyard.

The two walked through the waist-high weeds and stepped onto the steps in front of the mansion's main gate. The wooden steps were somewhat rotten, and they made a slight creaking sound when stepped on, as if something was groaning under their feet.

Naoya reached out and pushed open the door.

The door was unlocked.

The sound of the door hinges turning echoed through the empty mansion, carrying an inexplicable eeriness. Countless garbage bags were visible behind the door.

Sunlight streamed in through the doorway, casting a triangular patch of light on the hall floor. But the edges of the patch were quickly swallowed by darkness, as if something had opened its mouth deep in the corridor.

Angehime stood at the door and glanced inside.

A faint, indescribable smell wafted out from inside.

There was the stench of rotting garbage and mold, and something more abstract, like a long-forgotten scent, mixed with dust, time, and something indescribable that instinctively made one uneasy.

Angehime swallowed a mouthful of water. The dim lighting inside gave her the feeling of having wandered into a haunted house, and the chilly atmosphere gave her goosebumps.

Naoya had already stepped inside, his footsteps echoing in the corridor, steady and unhurried, as if he were walking in his own hallway.

Angehime took a deep breath and followed.

The two stood in the hall and could see a staircase leading to the second floor on the left and right, and an entrance to an inward passage on the first floor. The interior of the mansion was much larger than it appeared from the outside, with rooms connected to rooms and corridors connected to corridors.

"Did you feel it?" Naoya suddenly asked.

Anka-hime nodded: "The aura of the curse... is very faint, but very pervasive, as if the entire mansion is soaked in the curse."

Naoya scoffed, "This level probably isn't even level two. What a waste of time. I'm leaving now, you go up."

The geisha was startled: "Huh? Am I alone?"

Then, in a flash, Zenji Naoya's figure had vanished from the spot.

Clearly, Zenin Naoya didn't care about her at all, and after explaining the arrangements, he immediately started to take action.

Anka-hime muttered, "I'm clearly the senior," then picked up a flashlight and, feeling uneasy, slowly made her way up to the second floor.

Upstairs were individual rooms. After nervously checking the last room, she opened the door only to find Zenin Naoya standing outside, which almost made her scream.

Before the anime girl could even make a move, Zenin Naoya spoke first: "What are you doing on the first floor? Didn't I tell you to go to the second floor?"

"Could it be that you're too scared to go?"

Upon hearing this, Anka-hime instinctively became angry: "I'm not scared!"

Then he realized something was wrong: "What? First floor? This is the second floor!"

Then the two looked to the left and right sides of the corridor and found that, without their knowledge, both sides had turned into corridors leading to darkness.

They exchanged a glance and immediately realized something was wrong, so they started moving together in the same direction.

Beige walls, dark wooden floors, several closed doors—the layout was normal, the scale was normal, even the distribution of dust was normal.

But after walking for five minutes, they still hadn't reached the end of the corridor; the distance they had covered was far beyond the diameter of the house.

Moreover, the floor pattern remained unchanged, the stains on the wall were exactly the same, and even the white mark left by the key on the third door on the left was in exactly the same position. Ange stopped, stared at the white mark for three seconds, and then began to quickly deduce in her mind.

Angehime's heart pounded faster and faster, her palms were sweaty, and fear gripped her heart like vines. She resisted the urge to turn back, her voice trembling slightly: "Have we...have we been going in the same place all along?"

Naoya's expression also darkened; he too was beginning to notice the problem.

"Do you know where the cursed spirit is?" Naoya looked around, but his center of gravity had already subtly lowered, a posture that suggested he could launch an attack at any moment.

"have no idea."

Ankagi understood Zenin Naoya's meaning. He wanted to kill the cursed spirit directly to break this cycle of space, but in this situation, it was obviously impossible to find the location of the cursed spirit's main body. So she forced herself to calm down and analyze carefully. After some thought, she actually discovered something.

"I know what's going on in this corridor now."

Anka-hime looked up, gazing at the direction the corridor stretched out: "Have you ever played with a jigsaw puzzle?"

"...What do you mean?"

"I initially thought this was the domain of the cursed spirit, but the strength of this cursed spirit is clearly not at the special level, so it must have modularized the space with the help of the barrier."

She spoke slowly, organizing her thoughts as she explained: "The same corridors, the same layout, are constantly being pieced together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. We think we are moving forward, but in reality, every time we reach the end of a section, we are seamlessly cut into the next identical space. The entrance is blocked, and the exit is replaced, so no matter how long we walk, we are just cycling in the same place."

She paused for a moment: "That's how those missing people get trapped inside."

Naoya remained silent for two seconds.

"Then how do we break this?"

"It should be speed."

Angehime said, "The spell spirit needs time to piece together space, even if it's a short time. If the movement speed is faster than the splicing speed, the domain will not be able to keep up and will eventually collapse."

She raised a finger: "We can..."

"Okay, I understand."

Naoya clapped his hands, as if he had just finished listening to a boring briefing.

"Then let me break it!"

"Wait a minute..."

Before she could finish speaking, Naoya had already moved.

The next second he was already at the other end of the corridor, so fast that there wasn't even time for his afterimage to form. Only a shallow friction mark on the floor proved that he had indeed passed through here.

Angehime stood there, looking at the empty corridor, and slowly closed her eyes.

...He didn't even let me finish speaking.

About three or four seconds later, Naoya walked up behind her, meaning he had run a full lap and returned to the starting point, with nothing changed.

"..."

Naoya stopped and, unusually, fell silent for a moment.

Anka-hime raised her hand and covered her forehead: "Like this..."

She tried to keep her tone calm: "It's no use."