An absolute powerhouse, and the loneliness born from it.
A station in a dream, heading south all the way.
I'm sorry, Taisai Seikun-sama. I couldn't make you use your full strength. I couldn't make you feel as satisfied as I did.
There was not even a moment to mourn Xu Fu's death. The next person to arrive on the battlefield was...
Just kidding. Of course none of that was going to happen. She was Xu Fu, not Gojo 2.0.
"Because your domain was too dangerous, I unconsciously adjusted my output... Did I overdo it?"
This was not what Taisai Seikun wanted to see.
In order to keep the battle from ending too quickly, he had been deliberately restraining his output throughout his fight with Xu Fu. Only just now, when Xu Fu's domain had threatened him with death and defeat, had he unconsciously used that move for the sole purpose of destroying Malevolent Shrine and the shrine behind Xu Fu as quickly as possible, allowing him to escape the domain.
The result was obvious. The torrent of light formed by the gathered Extinction Malefic Stars had not only broken through the domain's outer shell and destroyed the shrine with overwhelming force, but swept Xu Fu into it as well.
The protective golden light of the Golden Light Mantra could withstand even armor-piercing rounds, but there was no way it could block the aurora pillar formed by gathered Extinction Malefic Stars.
Xu Fu's body had been annihilated in the light, leaving only a single head that Taisai Seikun had fished out of the churning nebula.
He suddenly felt a little regretful. If Xu Fu was dead, wouldn't he be unable to continue enjoying the battle?
Heal her... Could he still heal her when only the head was left? Or should he abandon the flesh and preserve only her soul? Was there still a chance to salvage this?
As Taisai Seikun was thinking, a beam of golden light suddenly knocked his hand away, wrapped around Xu Fu's head, and flew off a short distance.
Within the golden light, Xu Fu's annihilated body recovered in the blink of an eye. She even made herself clothes from spiritual energy and put them on. Once her feet touched the ground, she faced Taisai Seikun and flashed him a playful smile.
"Heh~! Did you think you'd won just now?"
Taisai Seikun stared blankly at Xu Fu.
With the entire body except the head annihilated, almost no living creature could have survived such grievous injuries.
Taisai Seikun could say with absolute certainty that what had just happened was not an illusion. Xu Fu had truly suffered a wound that would have been fatal to a human. Yet at this moment, she was acting as if nothing had happened, still lively and energetic. The wounds on her body had vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.
"You... did you truly complete a body of immortality?"
Taisai Seikun recalled the reason Xu Fu had sailed east all those years ago. Back then, Qin Shi Huang had appointed Xu Fu to travel to an immortal mountain inhabited by divine beings in search of an elixir that could grant immortality. He had also ordered Xu Fu to take several thousand boys and girls with her, along with three years' worth of grain, clothing, medicine, and farming tools.
However, according to later records, Xu Fu never returned from that eastward voyage. People concluded that Xu Fu had deceived Qin Shi Huang—that in truth, she had never seen any immortal mountain or divine beings, much less found any immortal herb of longevity. Instead, she had brought three thousand boys and girls across the sea and settled on the island nation of Japan.
Even Taisai Seikun had thought so. But now, it seemed possible that Xu Fu had never given up researching the Elixir of Immortality—and that she might even have succeeded.
Xu Fu scoffed at Taisai Seikun's words.
She remembered Lady Yu. It was for the sake of dispelling Lady Yu's loneliness that she had researched both the body of immortality and methods to break immortality and indestructibility.
"Yours truly, Xu Fu, has seen a genuine immortal and indestructible body. What everyone regards as a blessing and dreams of obtaining is, in my eyes, the most vicious curse in this world... My work is still far from that kind of unreasonable constitution. At most, it just makes me a little hard to kill."
Xu Fu had no intention of discussing this in detail. Her memories with Lady Yu were her treasure, something she could never share with anyone else.
"How interesting." Taisai Seikun smiled. "But with that sort of ability, can you still truly be considered human?"
"Yours truly, Xu Fu, is naturally a human through and through. And the cutest girl in the whole world, too~! Whatever the truth may be, at least that's what I've always firmly believed."
Xu Fu answered without the slightest hesitation, without a trace of uncertainty or wavering in her voice.
"I see..."
In truth, Taisai Seikun did not care at all whether Xu Fu still counted as human.
Since Xu Fu's constitution was also unusual and she would not be killed easily, that meant he could take things more seriously from here on out. There was no need to keep holding himself back.
So long as he understood that, it was enough. Everything else was trivial.
The radiance of blooming stars outshone even the blazing sun in the sky.
"ULTRA-HIGH SPLIT-CONDENSED STATE—BARRED SPIRAL GALAXY!"
"[EXTINCTION MALEFIC STAR]!"
It was as if they had been plunged into the mysterious vastness of the universe.
The light of countless stars gathered together.
Just moments ago, this strike from Taisai Seikun had shattered the shrine of Malevolent Shrine and pierced through the barrier shell of Malevolent Shrine. And now, he once again released this beautiful, magnificent, and dangerous technique.
Facing that shining torrent of light once more, Xu Fu parted her red lips. A towering figure suddenly appeared before her, blocking the attack.
The explosion of light was silent, as if even the medium that carried sound had been annihilated by that brilliant aurora.
No matter how hard the material, it would be annihilated beneath the torrent of light until not even dust remained.
As the light that stung the eyes gradually dispersed, Taisai Seikun was just about to observe Xu Fu's condition when a tall, burly figure broke through his barred spiral galaxy.
The smile on Taisai Seikun's face vanished instantly, replaced by astonishment.
A towering, powerfully built figure endured the bombardment of countless Extinction Malefic Stars and arrived before Taisai Seikun covered in wounds.
The gatekeeper to the title of strongest, the strongest shikigami with the power to adapt to all phenomena—Mahoraga had appeared at this moment.
It shattered the earth with one step, then brought down a fist the size of a sandbag.
Before the fist could land, Taisai Seikun slapped both hands against Mahoraga's hand and leapt over it. Mahoraga's blow smashed heavily into the ground, and with a dull boom, its punch cracked the earth.
With no foothold in midair, Taisai Seikun twisted his waist violently, narrowly avoiding the Sword of Extermination that Mahoraga swung at him. Then he struck Mahoraga's head with a vicious whip kick, forcing Mahoraga seven steps back before it steadied itself.
After landing, Taisai Seikun looked in shock at Mahoraga, whose body was rapidly recovering at a visible speed.
"What on earth is that thing?"
He had not seen wrong just now, had he? This white monster could actually resist his Extinction Malefic Stars? And it had even charged straight through his barred spiral galaxy to reach him?
Taisai Seikun was filled with questions, but obviously, Mahoraga would neither explain itself nor give him time to think.
The enemy was right in front of it. For Mahoraga, there was only one thing it needed to do—kill the enemy before it.
Mahoraga leapt up and smashed a fist reinforced with spiritual energy down toward Taisai Seikun. Taisai Seikun avoided the heavy punch with nimble steps, then evaded Mahoraga's right leg, which swept at him like a heavy axe, with a backflip.
"[EXTINCTION MALEFIC STAR]!"
Before his feet had even touched the ground, Taisai Seikun condensed brilliant particles of light once again and fired them at Mahoraga's burly body from different directions.
The speeding light particles did indeed strike Mahoraga, but...
"The power is wrong?"
Taisai Seikun was stunned by the scene before him.
Extinction Malefic Star reduced those it struck to pieces or annihilated them outright. Yet when it landed on Mahoraga, it only punched a small hole into it and did not even pierce through its body. After his Extinction Malefic Stars entered the monster's body, their power was weakened at an astonishing rate, until they simply vanished for no apparent reason.
That instant of distraction gave Mahoraga the chance to grab Taisai Seikun's clothes.
Power surged through its arms. Mahoraga hurled Taisai Seikun hard into the ground, not only creating a huge crater, but sending Taisai Seikun bouncing back up like a ball. Immediately after, Mahoraga kicked him away with an airborne volley.
Taisai Seikun flew backward at high speed and struck an upward slope ahead, which bounced him into the sky. In the blink of an eye, Mahoraga caught up to him. Its burly figure blocked the sun, casting a massive shadow.
Mahoraga clasped its hands together and raised them above its head, its waist drawn like a longbow filled with power. Just as the heavy blow was about to fall, a strange force suddenly bound its body. Taisai Seikun had cast Binding Curse on it—the immobilizing art.
While Mahoraga's body was frozen in place and unable to move, Taisai Seikun placed both palms against Mahoraga's stomach.
"[METEOR SHOWER]!"
Seventeen Extinction Malefic Stars stretched out long tails like a meteor shower cutting across the sky, or like laser beams with terrifying piercing power. In an instant, they bored through Mahoraga's body, and the impact they carried sent Mahoraga flying.
At that moment, Mahoraga abruptly broke free from Taisai Seikun's Binding Curse. Ignoring its abdomen, now as ragged as torn cloth, it extended both huge hands, seized Taisai Seikun, and smashed a headbutt brutally into his forehead.
His head was struck heavily and deformed slightly, blood running down Taisai Seikun's face. His expression instantly turned ferocious.
"You bastard! Well done!"
One light particle after another flew in from the distance. Under Taisai Seikun's control, they shattered both of Mahoraga's wrists. Then, with a slight exertion of force, Taisai Seikun broke free from Mahoraga's grip.
Seven Extinction Malefic Stars were forcibly combined by Taisai Seikun, gathering into a giant sphere of light. Taisai Seikun grasped that sphere in his hand and struck Mahoraga in front of him with his palm.
There was no time to dodge—or perhaps it should be said that Mahoraga had never actively dodged at all. As a result, the sphere of light in Taisai Seikun's hand smashed Mahoraga's head apart with overwhelming force.
Click.
Taisai Seikun looked toward the source of the strange sound and saw a golden wheel.
"This is..."
"PHASE."
"PARAMITA."
"PILLAR OF LIGHT..."
From the ground came a chant Taisai Seikun found unfamiliar.
He looked down in surprise and saw that Xu Fu had already pointed a finger at him, red light shining at its tip.
"[CURSED TECHNIQUE REVERSAL: RED]!"
His body was destroyed beneath a terrifying repulsive force. However, with the help of the Seer Flesh, even after he was destroyed and shattered many times over, he could still be repaired back to perfect condition.
Because his eyes were always crushed again the instant they were restored, Taisai Seikun saw nothing except the red that filled the entire space. He did not even know how far he had been sent flying. When his eyes finally recovered completely, he found himself lying inside a house, with a pile of broken wooden planks beneath him and a ceiling with three layers of holes above his head.
Judging by the look of it, he had fallen from the sky, smashed through the ceiling, and dropped into this house.
After stealing a rare moment of leisure from the busy battle, Taisai Seikun began recalling what had just happened.
The sensation when Extinction Malefic Star struck that white monster, and that immobilizing art it had broken free of too quickly...
"..."
BOOM!
Mahoraga's massive figure burst through the wall and immediately spotted Taisai Seikun, who seemed to be lying on the floor in a daze.
A section of the house's wall was tightly gripped in Mahoraga's hand, then flung like a dart at Taisai Seikun, who was still lying on the ground. At that moment, Taisai Seikun abruptly kicked the spinning wall back.
Mahoraga threw a punch, smashing the wall Taisai Seikun had kicked back at it.
It took one step forward, and that strange force once again bound its limbs.
Taisai Seikun ran toward it as if treading on the wind. When he arrived before Mahoraga, Mahoraga once again broke free from the restraint of Binding Curse and raised a hand to grab him, only for Taisai Seikun to bend at the waist and evade it.
"I see. So that's how it is..."
Taisai Seikun's feet slid across the ground, pulling away from Mahoraga as if he were skating. The corner of his mouth drew into a smile of sudden understanding, as though he had discovered something.
Mahoraga tried to take another step forward to close in on Taisai Seikun, only to stumble and drop to one knee. It turned its head and only then discovered that its left lower leg had at some point been annihilated by an Extinction Malefic Star.
The instant its head turned back, Taisai Seikun's elbow strike, reinforced with spiritual energy, landed solidly on Mahoraga's face. Then, as if struck head-on by a high-speed train, Mahoraga was sent flying out of the dilapidated house at incredible speed.
Through the hole Mahoraga had made, Taisai Seikun walked outside and said with great interest, "That thing's ability is probably adaptation to all phenomena. Am I right?"
"Bingo~! Congratulations, you got it right~! Though yours truly, Xu Fu, doesn't know what kind of prize to give you."
Xu Fu slowly walked over. Mahoraga, which had just been sent flying by Taisai Seikun, had already run back and now stood loyally behind Xu Fu.
"A prize? I don't need anything like that. Answering humanity's wishes is a god's duty. I have always been the one to grant rewards to humans."
One Extinction Malefic Star after another lit up around him. Taisai Seikun spoke with wild, arrogant confidence. "Therefore, pour out everything you have to satisfy me! As long as you satisfy me, I will grant your wishes! I will answer your prayers!"
"Satisfy you? No, no, no. That's not my goal. I didn't come here to satisfy you... I came here to pick you up."
Golden light wrapped around her fist. Xu Fu settled into an opening stance, and behind her, Mahoraga bent low like a lion with its prey in sight.
"Yayoi-chan and the others are already expecting great things from me. Since I've got this rare chance, I might as well make myself look cool."