Chapter 53: Obstruction
Main family bloodline.
Sealed spiritual power and Spirit Insight.
A decaying soul.
The reincarnation of that man.
And Natsume, pushed to the front as a substitute.
Bound on the ground, Tsuchimikado Harutora went utterly still.
For a moment, even the pain from the talismans wrapped around his body seemed to disappear. The struggle left him. His mind had been slammed by too many revelations at once, each one more absurd than the last, until he could only stare blankly ahead.
Then the shock gave way to panic.
Harutora suddenly began thrashing again, so violently that the talismans dug into his skin. He did not care. His voice came out hoarse and furious.
"What the hell are you two talking about? How could Natsume be some shield the Tsuchimikado pushed forward? She's the real heir of the family! And what do you mean, a decaying soul?"
He glared at them as if he could tear the answer out of their faces.
"Stop spewing nonsense and slandering Natsume and the Tsuchimikado Clan!"
Suzuka looked down at him with open contempt.
"Heh. This idiot still doesn't get it." She tilted her head, her expression full of mockery. "Or maybe you do, and you're just too scared to face it."
She crouched slightly, her gaze cold.
"So what if you're the reincarnation of that man? Right now, you're just a sacrifice to open the altar. If we didn't need your spiritual power, the Tsuchimikado could have kept you blind for your entire life."
Harutora's face twisted.
He wanted to refute her, to reject everything she had said, but the words caught in his throat.
Because the truth was, he had already heard enough to begin connecting the pieces.
He had grown up hearing whispers within the Tsuchimikado Clan. Rumors about Tsuchimikado Yakou's reincarnation. Rumors that Natsume was special. Rumors that the future of the clan rested on her shoulders.
So why was that title being forced onto him now?
He was supposed to be ordinary.
A branch family boy with no spiritual power.
No Spirit Insight.
Nothing.
His breathing grew ragged.
Gin, who had finished regulating his breathing, opened his eyes and looked at him without pity or mockery.
Harutora had asked.
So he answered.
"It's simple," Gin said. "You are the reincarnation of Tsuchimikado Yakou that the outside world has been chasing after all this time. Natsume was only pushed to the front as a substitute and shield to draw attention away from you."
He paused for only a heartbeat before continuing.
"That is also why Suzuka had to bring you here. Among everyone in the Tsuchimikado Clan, you are the one most qualified to activate the altar beneath our feet."
Harutora froze.
Then he shook his head again and again, as if that alone could overturn reality.
"That's impossible."
His voice was weaker now.
Unsteady.
Broken.
Gin continued anyway, his tone as calm as ever.
"To protect you and hide you, Tsuchimikado Yasuzumi sealed away your spiritual power and your Spirit Insight from birth, then placed you in the branch family. Natsume was made to stand in your place."
"No!"
Harutora's denial was raw this time, almost desperate.
The person he knew himself to be and the person these two described were so different that he could not even make them coexist in the same mind.
He was Hirotaka and Chizuru's son.
He was not the child of the Tsuchimikado head.
He was not Tsuchimikado Yakou's reincarnation.
He was not some hidden core of the clan.
He was not.
He was not.
"Harutora is Father's real son?"
The shocked voice came from above.
Hokuto descended through the night sky, carrying Tsuchimikado Natsume and the Hirotaka couple. Natsume's body trembled faintly as she stared at the scene below, her face drained of color.
She was just as shaken as Harutora.
So shaken, in fact, that she did not even notice Hokuto's strange reaction the instant its eyes fell upon Gin.
"They got here fast enough," Suzuka muttered, clicking her tongue.
The traps and barriers she had arranged around the Sacred Mountain had barely bought any time at all.
"Mr. Gin," Natsume called out, her voice strained, "this isn't true, is it?"
For the first time, real panic could be heard in it.
Gin looked up at her.
Then he sighed.
"Natsume, I have no intention of lying to you." His gaze did not waver. "Harutora's identity is exactly what I said. And yes, you were pushed out as the substitute. As the shield."
"How... how could that be...?"
The blow landed heavily.
Natsume's vision blurred. Her body swayed, and she nearly slipped from Hokuto's back. If Tsuchimikado Chizuru had not reacted in time and caught her, she would have fallen straight to the altar below.
Chizuru's face was full of pain.
"I'm sorry, Natsume."
Those few words seemed to exhaust her.
"It was our selfishness that forced you to bear a burden that should never have been yours."
Beside her, Hirotaka remained silent, but the guilt in his face was no less than hers. In this matter, both husband and wife were accomplices.
"After this," Chizuru said softly, "we will tell you everything. We'll explain it all to you and Harutora. Including Yasuzumi's pain. Including the Tsuchimikado Clan's situation back then."
There was no point hiding it anymore.
Not after this.
In truth, the letter Yasuzumi had sent earlier, the one arranging for Harutora and Natsume to enter the Onmyo Academy together, had already been a sign. A preparation. A first step toward the day they would have to shoulder what had been decided for them from the start.
Harutora heard all of it.
And this time, he could no longer deny it.
If even Hirotaka and Chizuru had admitted it, then the impossible had already become reality.
He really was Tsuchimikado Yakou's reincarnation.
He really was Tsuchimikado Yasuzumi's biological son.
Compared to Harutora's collapse, Natsume recovered faster.
The shock was still there, the pain too, but she forcibly steadied herself. By the time she landed from Hokuto's back, the panic in her face had already been pressed down.
What mattered most right now was stopping the Taizan Fukun Ritual.
Only then did Hirotaka and Chizuru feel a trace of relief.
No matter what, they had not chosen wrong.
Natsume truly did possess the bearing of a Tsuchimikado successor.
Hirotaka formed a seal with one hand and barked out a command.
"Order!"
An invisible spiritual wave burst outward with his voice as its medium. It swept through the air in expanding rings, carrying a precise force that directly collided with the barrier Suzuka had set up around the altar.
The next instant, the barrier dissolved.
Not shattered.
Dissolved.
Like frost vanishing on a heated blade, it scattered into countless motes of light and disappeared before everyone's eyes.
Suzuka's expression darkened.
"So he can do that too."
She stared at Hirotaka with newfound caution.
"Using a spell with the opposite polarity to erase another spell through direct cancellation. I didn't think the Tsuchimikado still had someone like this guarding the place."
"Tsuchimikado Hirotaka," she said coldly. "The head's shikigami."
She had investigated the defenders of the Tsuchimikado Clan before coming here. Tsuchimikado Chizuru had already been on her list. Hirotaka had been on it too, but clearly not high enough.
That had been a miscalculation.
And one she was now paying for.
"Those little tricks of yours are already beneath me, girl." Hirotaka's voice was steady, but there was pressure in it. "Surrender. Both of you."
He looked from Suzuka to Gin.
"In the name of the Tsuchimikado Clan, I guarantee that no harm will come to you."
Suzuka gave a low snort.
Gin said nothing.
Instead, Chizuru stepped forward, her attention already fixed on the situation at the altar.
Meanwhile, behind the Tsuchimikado group, floating in the night sky, Hokuto had grown visibly more restless. Its enormous body shifted uneasily, and its eyes kept straying toward Gin, as though something buried deep in its instincts had begun to stir.
No one noticed.
Or rather, no one had the attention to spare.
Suzuka's gaze swept across the people in front of her.
"The former captain of the Onmyo Bureau's Exorcism Division, Tsuchimikado Chizuru," she said coolly. "A specialist in lightning type incantations. Also known as the Human Generator."
Chizuru's temple twitched at once.
"That nickname again..." she muttered darkly.
Out of all the names the Onmyo Bureau had stuck to her over the years, that was the one people kept remembering.
Natsume ignored the exchange and stepped forward instead.
"Mr. Gin." Her voice had regained its clarity. "Please stop. The Taizan Fukun Ritual is a forbidden art. It brings calamity. You know that."
Gin looked at her.
"Natsume, I told you before. Onmyodo is about exploration. It is about pursuing truth. It is not about shackling everything humans cannot control and calling it forbidden."
His tone remained even, but there was an iron firmness beneath it.
"The term forbidden spell is something humans invented out of fear. They see something beyond their grasp, then declare it untouchable. As for inauspiciousness..." He shook his head slightly. "That word is even more meaningless."
That was his answer.
Clear and final.
He had no intention of giving up.
He stepped forward, moving into the path of the Tsuchimikado group. At the same time, he gave Suzuka a small signal with his eyes.
"I'll hold them here."
His voice was quiet, but decisive.
"Continue the Taizan Fukun Ritual according to plan. When the crucial moment comes, I'll take over."
Suzuka nodded immediately.
"I know."
She stopped wasting time and drew out a talisman, releasing what it contained.
A corpse appeared gently upon the altar.
Her brother, Dairenji Rikish.
Suzuka knelt for a brief moment and carefully laid him in place, her usual arrogance fading into something softer.
"Just wait a little longer, Brother," she whispered. "Suzuka will bring you back."
Natsume saw the body and understood at once.
"So that's who she's trying to revive," she murmured. "Her brother..."
At her side, Hirotaka's expression grew complicated.
"So that is Dairenji Shidou's sin returned to claim its due," he said inwardly, unable to suppress a bitter sigh.
Suzuka ignored them all.
"Release!"
The talismans attached to Harutora activated one after another. At once, the tremendous spiritual power sealed inside him was forcibly drawn out and channeled toward the altar.
The process was crude.
Violent.
And agonizing.
"Ahhh!"
Harutora's scream tore through the night.
It was not only the extraction itself that hurt. The seals buried inside his body were being ripped open from the outside, one layer after another. The pain was enough to make his whole body convulse.
As more of his power poured into the altar, the ancient structure beneath them began to answer.
Lines of ancient patterns lit up across the altar's surface. The talismans Gin had placed earlier resonated with them one by one, until the entire structure seemed to awaken from a thousand year sleep.
A strange fluctuation spread from it in every direction, like ripples moving across the surface of a still lake.
The sealed altar of the Tsuchimikado Clan had truly reopened.
"Harutora!"
Chizuru's voice trembled. Seeing her son in such pain tore at her heart.
But Hirotaka's eyes remained on Gin.
"Mr. Gin," he said gravely, "if you insist on continuing with the Taizan Fukun Ritual, then I have no choice but to offend you."
Gin met his gaze.
"Same here."
He lifted one hand slightly.
"Let's not drag the altar into this. If we're going to fight, we'll do it somewhere else."
Before anyone could react, several talismans hidden around the area flashed into view. They had been placed there earlier, disguised among the preparations for opening the altar.
"Transfer."
The next moment, Hirotaka, Chizuru, and Natsume were all relocated at once.
By the time the world stopped tilting, the three of them were already standing in an open space several kilometers away from the altar. In the distance, through the darkness, only the edge of the altar's silhouette could still be seen.
Hirotaka took one look around and his expression sharpened.
"He can use Ancient Style transfer talismans at this level?"
Even with preparation and surprise on his side, moving three people simultaneously over that distance was no simple feat.
Not even many National class onmyoji could have done it so cleanly.
"He's even stronger than I thought," Hirotaka said quietly. "This won't be easy."
"Natsume. Seniors."
Gin stood opposite them, robes fluttering faintly in the night wind.
"I'll apologize for this afterward."
Then his eyes sharpened.
"But right now, we need to settle this fast. Suzuka alone cannot complete the Taizan Fukun Ritual."
"That is exactly our intention," Hirotaka replied.
Chizuru moved first.
Perhaps because she was worried for Harutora.
Perhaps because she was furious.
Or perhaps because there was simply no more reason to hold back.
She drew two talismans at once.
"Manifest. By order of the law!"
"Thunder!"
Golden lightning gathered in the air around her, rapidly taking form. In the blink of an eye, it became a partially materialized shikigami, a luminous figure resembling the upper half of a Kannon statue, with one head and two arms.
This was a specialized shikigami.
A spiritual double used to cast in tandem with the practitioner, amplifying the user's incantations and raising their destructive power to another level.
Chizuru placed a second talisman upon it.
The thunderlight intensified immediately.
The darkness around them was ripped open by gold. The air itself began to crackle with violence.
"This spell severs evil and cuts down calamity. By order of the law!"
"Demon Subduing Thunder Curse!"
With a roar, a torrent of golden lightning rushed toward Gin like a dragon descending from the heavens, violent enough to split the earth apart.
Chizuru's eyes narrowed.
And Gin did not move.
Not even a single step.
"Spirit Word: Defend."
A simple utterance.
Nothing flashy.
No grand ritual.
No violent spiritual eruption.
Just one quiet command.
Yet the instant it was spoken, an invisible defensive barrier took shape before him. Chizuru's Demon Subduing Thunder Curse crashed into it head on and stopped there, as though it had struck an unbreakable wall.
Then the golden lightning dispersed.
Scattered.
Vanished.
Without leaving so much as a scratch on Gin.
Chizuru's pupils contracted.
"How is that possible?"
Her voice was full of disbelief.
"That was only Spirit Word Technique..."
She had used [Thunder] to enhance the Demon Subduing Thunder Curse. That attack was not something an ordinary professional onmyoji could casually fend off. Even many National class onmyoji would never have handled it so effortlessly.
.....
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