Tokyo: Proving one's position from behind the scenes

A week later.

The torii gates at Hoshimiya Inari Shrine have been repainted.

The vermilion lacquer gleamed warmly in the summer sun, a stark contrast to its faded appearance a week ago—it was as if the shrine had been completely transformed. The pebbles along the approach had all been replaced; the new, light gray stones produced a fine, even sound when stepped on. The stone fox statues lining the approach had been repaired: the one missing an ear had been replaced with a new stone carving, the one with its head tilted had its base straightened, the red cloth around its neck had been replaced, and the bells had been polished to a gleaming shine.

The approach to the shrine extends outwards on both sides. The old apartment buildings that used to be right next to the shrine have been demolished, and a thin layer of sand has been laid on the ground, waiting to be planted with trees next spring.

The demolition and acquisition didn't cost any money at all; the worshippers had already arranged everything. They even tried to squeeze people into the shrine, but Hoshimiya Ei stopped them.

Nagayama Akira stood at the entrance of the newly built community office on the side of the main hall, holding a cup of tea in his hand.

The shrine office was more than twice the size of the original one, with newly installed wooden walls, double-glazed windows, and a roof covered with bluish-gray tiles. The building was renovated with the help of someone from the Metropolitan Police Department. Nagayama Akira and Hoshimiya Ei didn't ask how much it cost, and the bill was never sent to the shrine.

The sound of coins clinking could be heard coming from inside the office.

Akira Nagayama turned his head and looked through the half-open window. Akira Hoshimiya knelt in front of the new offering box and poured the money out onto a spread-out dark blue cloth. The coins were piled up into a small mountain, the banknotes were tied together with rubber bands, and there were a few golden amulets and a pearl necklace of unknown origin scattered around.

She was counting money, humming a song as she did so.

It was an old song that Akira Nagayama had never heard before. The melody was very slow, like an enka from some era. She hummed it a little off-key, with a few notes drifting off to who-knows-where, but she hummed it happily, her body swaying slightly with the melody, the hem of her red hakama gently rubbing against the tatami mat.

Akira Nagayama held his teacup and looked at it for a while before looking away.

The spiritual atmosphere is moving.

For the past week, the spiritual atmosphere around the shrine has been slowly and steadily changing. The number of worshippers has been increasing, from a few per day initially to hundreds per day now. These people come with reverence, with wishes, and with fear, kneeling before the offering box, bowing their heads, clasping their hands, and closing their eyes. Their wishes, reverence, fear, and hope—those indescribable things—emanate from them, blending into the air beneath the torii gate, into the pebbles of the approach path, and into the copper roof of the main hall.

In addition to the changes in spiritual atmosphere caused by Akira Nagayama and Akira Hoshimiya's daily training, the changes in spiritual atmosphere centered on Hoshimiya Inari Shrine and that arid land have become increasingly apparent.

【Onikin】is the metal used in rituals. A hundred people are insignificant, a thousand can create a powerful force, and ten thousand can move heaven and earth. The current number of worshippers is far from reaching the level of "moving heaven and earth," but after a week of accumulation, the spiritual atmosphere centered around the shrine is no longer the stagnant water it was a week ago. It's as if someone has inserted an extremely thin tube into that stagnant pool and begun to slowly and continuously inject living water into it. The water is still the same pool, but there is now an extremely fine flow within it.

That's not enough. Far from enough.

Nagayama Akira took a sip of tea, placed the teacup on the windowsill, and the faint image of three copper coins flashed across his fingertips.

He was calculating the next monk.

Wood Virtue is present. With the [Well Wood] destiny chart of Hoshiguma Ei combined with the "Flourishing Grass and Trees Technique," her progress has been stable over the past week. The spiritual atmosphere of this world is deathly still, and her cultivation speed is far slower than that of cultivators in her previous life. However, the [Well Wood] technique excels in its stability, remaining unhurried and building a solid foundation. Coupled with the spiritual disturbances brought by the shrine rituals, a faint layer of azure magical power has already formed in her dantian.

Many elderly men from the United States and island nations sought her out for magical healing, and she became increasingly skilled at using the "Divine Light of Herbs and Trees."

On the day of the Water Virtue Evil Land, Yoshida Sho, after dying as a Daoist demon, left behind a coral of the [Zhen Water] tidal flats. Because Hoshimiya Ei purified the evil land with the [Well Wood] divine light, water generates wood, and wood generates fire. The [Bei Fire] suppressed in Yoshida Sho's destiny ignited with the help of the wood energy and condensed into that piece of spark iron.

Water and Wood. Two of the Five Elements have already been activated. Not to mention the Yin and Yang principles, which involve bidirectional changes, the Five Elements changes, including Nagayama Akira's own transformation, still require two more people.

Next time, it will be the Fire element.

Akira Nagayama traced the final stroke with his fingertips in his palm, and the divination result appeared. His brow twitched slightly.

Spark iron. The fist-sized block of iron, with a dark red, flowing sheen on its surface, was currently in Nagayama Akira's storage bag, a new piece he had made. Since both metal and fire elements are beneficial for forging, he decided to practice by making a storage bag first.

Spark Iron is a spirit object of the [Beak Fire]. [Beak Fire] is a flickering fire, the kind that sways with the wind but cannot be extinguished no matter how hard you blow it. It is not a raging fire, nor the high temperature of forging iron, but a cluster of embers, a speck of red on an incense stick, or a navigation light that refuses to go out at the top of a fishing boat's mast during a storm.

Swaying, but not extinguished.

This kind of fire-elemental spirit was not uncommon in the cultivation world of my previous life, but its grade was not high. However, it was also the most troublesome kind of fire because it was almost impossible to extinguish completely. As long as there was even a tiny ember, it would reignite if it encountered suitable wind and fuel.

Akira Nagayama gently twirled his fingers in the air, and the details of the hexagram unfolded in his consciousness.

The fate of Spark Iron is connected to another person.

Spark Iron was formed from the remnants of Yoshida Sho's destiny. Yoshida Sho is dead, his soul has dissipated, and his body lies in the forensic department or in a freezer in Yokosuka. But the image of [Beak Fire] still lingers.

The divination indicates that there is a person whose destiny is compatible with Spark Iron. Both are associated with the "Beak Fire" element. This person's destiny also contains a flickering flame, easily extinguished by the wind, and is likely connected to Yoshida Sho by blood.

Akira Nagayama withdrew his fingers, picked up the tea that had gone cold from the windowsill, and took another sip. The astringent taste of the tea spread across his tongue.

His gaze swept across the newly built approach to the shrine outside the office window, across the vermilion torii gate at the end of the approach, and across the gray skyline of Adachi Ward beyond the torii gate. He put down his teacup, turned and walked into the shrine office.

Let's look for it later.

Hoshimiya Ei had finished counting the money. The coins were neatly stacked on a dark blue cloth, the banknotes were bundled into several bundles and placed beside them, and the pearl necklace was taken out separately and placed in a small wooden box. She was now leaning over the table, holding a pen, writing in the ledger. After finishing, she put down the pen, clasped her hands together, closed her eyes, and bowed to the ledger.

Akira Nagayama leaned against the door frame and looked at her.

"Ying".

"Um?"

"I'm asking for leave tomorrow; I need to take care of some things."

Hoshimiya Ei tilted her head.

"Sure, if Nagayama has any problems he can't solve, come to me. I am the shrine maiden of Inari."

Akira Nagayama watched her close the drawer, then turn and walk out of the office. The sunlight in the courtyard was already setting, casting a warm gray glow on the pebbles along the approach. The torii gate cast a long shadow, stretching all the way to the steps of the main hall.

Once all five elemental cultivators are gathered, the cycle of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water will begin. Only through this rotation of the five elements can stagnant water truly come alive. It would be even better if cultivators possessing both Yin and Yang virtues were also gathered.

------------

Yokosuka. U.S. Naval Base.

The biological laboratory is located on the third basement level.

The white light from the fluorescent lamps poured down from the ceiling, illuminating the entire laboratory without a single shadow. The walls were light gray, the floor was light gray, and the workbenches were stainless steel; all colors were swallowed up by the white light, leaving only gray and white.

The coral was placed in a transparent, sealed box.

The coral stood in the seawater, its gray-blue branches gleaming with a cold, eerie light under the fluorescent lights. Light flowed within it, blue and white, rising extremely slowly from the base to the tips of the branches, and then falling back down to the base, like an extremely long breath.

Three people in white coats were standing around the sealed box.

At the front was a white man in his fifties, with graying hair, thick-rimmed black glasses. He was an authority in both marine biology and biochemistry, having flown in from the American mainland. Before he arrived, he thought it was a routine military consulting mission: examine some unknown coral species, write a report, collect a consulting fee, and then fly back. Until he saw the surveillance footage.

He's standing in front of the sealed box for almost an hour now.

The two people next to him were military researchers. One was a white woman in her thirties with a PhD in molecular biology. The other was a Japanese-American man in his forties, a biochemist, "representing" the island nation. All three of them stared at the coral in the sealed box, and no one spoke.

The door opened.

Commissioner Smith walked in. He was wearing a military green short-sleeved shirt today, with the silver eagle insignia pinned to the collar. The shirt was tucked into his trousers, and a badge holder hung from his belt. He held a cup of coffee in his right hand, the paper cup bearing the base canteen's logo.

"Alright, our dear Dr. Ryan, how's the progress?" He placed the coffee on the edge of the lab bench.

"Commissioner Smith, it's best not to eat in the lab."

The old professor took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with the hem of his shirt, and put them back on.

"This is not coral."

Commissioner Smith took a sip of coffee.

"Please continue."

"Its main component is calcium carbonate, which is consistent with coral. But its crystal structure does not belong to any known coral species, nor to any known mineral. Its growth method is not that of coral polyps secreting calcareous skeletons, but rather—" The old professor paused, as if searching for a precise word, "it crystallizes directly from some kind of nutrient, like a plant. We detected an energy flow inside it, not electrical energy, not thermal energy, not any known form of energy. This energy circulates in the crystal structure along a fixed path, the shape of which resembles a closed loop."

"A loop," Commissioner Smith repeated the word.

"Yes. The starting and ending points of the loop are in the same location." The old professor pointed to a slightly swollen nodule at the base of the coral in the sealed box. "Here. Energy starts here, rises along the branches to the tip, then turns back from the tip, returning to the root along another path. Each cycle takes about three hours. During the cycle, the coral absorbs trace amounts of sodium, magnesium, and potassium ions from the surrounding environment and releases equally small amounts of energy. It's undergoing some kind of metabolism that we can't understand."

Commissioner Smith put down his coffee cup.

"Where is the boy's body?"

The female researcher took over. Her voice was low and her speech was rapid, as if she were reading a report she had read countless times and still found unbelievable.

"Yoshida Sho, 17 years old, male. We conducted a full autopsy and sample analysis on him. Although his body appeared to have been soaked in seawater, his muscle density was still more than twice that of a normal person, and the hardness of his bones was close to that of a steel plate of the same thickness. His skin surface had a large amount of scaly keratin residue, with a composition similar to fish scales. His lungs were filled with a mucous substance, with a composition more than 90% similar to seawater. His heart was 1.5 times the size of a normal person, and the ventricular wall thickness was increased."

She turned to a page of the report.

"The most incredible thing is his nervous system. According to our predictions, his neuronal conduction speed is more than five times that of a normal person, and the number of neural synapses has increased several times. This means that his reaction speed, muscle explosiveness, and sensory acuity are far beyond those of a normal person. We also discovered several completely new neural conduction pathways in his body, which do not exist in normal humans and have never been recorded in any known medical literature."

Commissioner Smith tapped his fingers lightly twice on the edge of the lab bench.

"In other words, after the mutation, that boy became something several times stronger than a normal human."

The female researcher looked up and added, "His body structure was also redesigned. It was like a purposeful reorganization; the scales were for defense, the muscles for offense, the lungs were modified to adapt to humid environments, and the nervous system was completely upgraded to support high-speed combat. This isn't something that natural selection could produce; some force modified his body according to a specific template."

The lab was silent for a few seconds.

"That island girl."

"Hira Hoshimiya, eighteen years old, a shrine maiden at Hoshimiya Inari Shrine," the researcher began, his voice steady. "According to the surveillance footage provided by the Metropolitan Police Department, when she dispersed that gray, misty entity, a visible bluish-green light emanated from her palm. The light lasted for about forty seconds. Under the light, the mist dispersed from a solid state to a gaseous state and eventually dissipated. We have analyzed the footage frame by frame and found no trace of post-processing. That light was real."

He walked to another monitor and brought up a chart.

"This week, she has cured many critically ill patients. As soon as they are exposed to that light, their health improves immediately, quickly and effectively."

Commissioner Smith looked at the rapidly rising curve on the chart.

"The girl said her power came from 'Inari,' a traditional deity of an island nation."

The old professor took off his glasses.

"From a scientific point of view, I don't believe this really comes from any deity. A more likely explanation is that the girl, like the boy named Yoshida Sho, came into contact with something that can modify the human body. However, Yoshida Sho's mutation was out of control and violent, while Hoshimiya Akira's mutation was controllable and gentle. Both mutations point to the same source."

Commissioner Smith crushed the empty coffee cup and threw it into the trash can.

"Go on."

"We need a sample from that girl. Blood, tissue, DNA, anything will do. If we can get the sample, we might be able to find the mechanism of the mutation, or even replicate it."

"no."

Commissioner Smith’s voice was calm, but his tone left no room for negotiation.

The old professor opened his mouth, as if to say something. Commissioner Smith stopped him from speaking.

"First, that girl is now considered an important collaborator by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Her shrine has received a large number of worshippers from both the political and business circles of Japan over the past three months. Taking action against her means offending both the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the upper echelons of Japanese society. Unless you, Professor, can guarantee that this will lead to the immediate development of an elixir of immortality, the Capitol and the White House will not allow us to act without permission. Second, she is backed by a being who calls himself 'Inari God.' Whether that being is a real god or something else, it can grant an eighteen-year-old girl the ability to dispel that mist, and we have no way to deal with that mist. Before figuring out its true nature, taking action against that girl rashly carries uncontrollable risks."

He walked to the sealed box and looked down at the coral that was slowly breathing under the fluorescent light.

"Third, and most importantly."

His gaze lingered for a few seconds on the blue-white light flowing inside the coral.

"A demon from a thousand years ago, with twenty fingers, resurrected through the medium of Umibozu. What if this story is true?"

No one answered.

"After the girl exorcised the evil spirit, she retrieved a withered human finger from the scene. That finger is now kept in her shrine. I went to see it. Through the wooden box, through the white cloth, a meter away. I can still remember that eerie feeling."

He turned around.

"Don't make a move on that girl until you've figured out the whole truth. Our mission is research, not action. The story of idiots has been played out too many times in Hollywood."

The old professor was silent for a few seconds, then nodded.

"So, what's the direction of your research?"

Commissioner Smith walked to the laboratory door and opened it. The white light from the corridor shone on his face, and his expression remained as calm as when he entered.

"Continue analyzing the coral and corpse samples. Look for patterns, mechanisms, and weaknesses. Ideally, figure out how they acquired their supernatural powers. Also, our allies in the island nation regularly share intelligence; once we have more samples, we should be able to do some research."

He walked out of the laboratory, and the door closed behind him.