Chapter 899: If Nothing Unexpected Happens
Gu Mo surveyed his surroundings.
He didn’t seem to have left this stretch of land; in front of him was still that same village, the abandoned settlement on Suzuka Sando.
Only it hadn’t yet decayed as horribly as in later ages, swallowed and buried under trees and climbing vines, sunk into deep greenery until its shattered ruins were almost completely fused with the mountain forest’s background color... because the point in time was different now. He was no longer in the time-space of later generations, but had crossed back into the past, into history itself.
Right now a full moon hung high, its pure silver radiance spilling down.
It should have been the hour when night was deepest and all was silent, with ten thousand sounds stilled—yet blazing firelight shone over the surrounding mountains and woods, staining half the sky red.
The village as it existed now was engulfed in a sea of fire. Many houses had already collapsed, or were burning in raging flames. Mountain winds gusted through, carrying thick, acrid stench of blood and the smell of human tissue charred to ash, as if this were a brutal purgatory in the human world.
Outside the village, and on the roads within, torn-apart corpses could be seen everywhere.
And of course, countless bodies burnt black.
"..."
"..."
Deathly stillness, silence, no more clamor.
Wood burned in the flames, crackling and snapping—this was the only movement left. Aside from that, the village no longer held screams or weeping; it carried instead a kind of unnaturally quiet air, the whole settlement transformed into a dwelling of death and silence. There were no living people left.
It was precisely the time-point of Ootakemaru’s village massacre.
More accurately, the moment after Ootakemaru’s village massacre...
Gu Mo casually withdrew his gaze and quickly walked deeper into the village.
......
And right then, within the village, two slender figures suddenly appeared, both dressed in the garb of Witches.
They lightly furrowed their brows, standing back to back in tacit understanding as each assessed the surroundings, seeming a bit surprised by the situation, yet not particularly flustered.
The surprise came from not expecting to be hit by this out of nowhere; the lack of panic came from having ample confidence. In fact, if not for considerations of certain conditions, if they hadn’t let this phenomenon unfold on purpose, they actually wouldn’t have been forcibly dragged here at all—they would have had a chance to interrupt that forced time-travel process.
The two of them had mainly been following the guidance of the Chuye Sword, traversing the desolate village to the far side beyond it. When they saw a ruined shrine ahead, the Guardian Spirit within the sword suddenly manifested its mysterious form. It was a Guardian Spirit in the shape of a Dragon, which flew straight into the sky, circling and dancing.
The next instant, the Scroll within the shrine abruptly burst into brilliant light.
It was a radiance like that of a Spirit Stone, dazzling as a golden full moon, sacred and pure.
The light surged forth in a vast torrent, drowning everything, and of course swallowing their bodies as well... and when the wave of light receded like a tide, they found that the scenery around them had changed dramatically.
"We’ve been brought back to... this point in time?"
Kikyo lowered her long lashes and let out a soft sigh. The moment she saw the brutal scene before her, she already understood what had happened. After all, she had experienced something similar before; as a Witch, she was by no means inexperienced in such matters.
What’s more, the Reaction Technique engraved on her body had also given its feedback.
It was the terminal of an extremely grand Technique, or rather a part of a gigantic ritual. As the terminal’s mysterious nexus, it had been solidly anchored to the Witch’s body.
Like a divine system, she bore the terminal of this system and high-level access rights... and the system’s name, of course, was the "True Spirit Positioning Map." It was a world-class Technique someone had been envisioning since long ago: to command the Power of the Guardian Spirit, steal the elite essence of heaven and earth, and illicitly wield the luck of Ghost Gods.
After thorough preparation in this world, this Technique had basically already reached the verge of completion.
It was called "the verge of completion" because unless it brought all Guardian Spirits under its command, it would always remain in a stage of infinitely approaching completion, never fully finished. The ultimate blueprint as conceived, the basic theory of constructing the Technique, was founded on the cornerstone of gathering all Guardian Spirits under heaven.
So it had always been stuck at the final stage, as if the download progress bar were frozen at that last one percent, never moving again.
But that didn’t mean the "True Spirit Positioning Map" couldn’t be used. In fact, it had been put into operation long ago, serving as an important cornerstone for laying a grand hegemonic foundation, and the Power it displayed surpassed imagination. After all, Guardian Spirits came in countless varieties, each bearing abilities of their own peculiar divinity.
The more ordinary ones could sense Life, detect vital essence...
The more powerful ones could rapidly regenerate, influence fortune...
The truly vicious ones could grant immortality, eternal youth...
And when all of these were gathered together, the ultimate Technique of commanding all Power of the Guardian Spirit, as long as it received sufficient Magic Power supply, could let the Guardian Spirit’s Power radiate onto multiple targets. In other words, blessings and favor that would originally only apply to a single host could, in theory, be shared among countless people.
Even if the Effect would be somewhat weakened, it was still a tremendously useful super Aura—by normal game standards, the sort that was blatantly overtuned.
On top of that, later Gu Mo’s rank continued to rise, and he directly obtained inheritance rights to the Mechanical God Civilization’s legacy, entering a fused-god state and integrating Authorities including those of the Twelve Olympian Gods, the Titan Gods, and many lesser deities. At the same time, he had learned the method by which the Mechanical Gods used Nanomachines to manifest Authority phenomena and bestow blessings upon the people...
This was also another massive enhancement to the True Spirit Positioning Map—
The most straightforward Effect was that its intensity increased, efficiency increased, range increased, and at the same time this divine system became visualized, its operation simpler and more convenient... it was equivalent to distributing individual terminals into each user’s hands, installing a mysterious-side style portable APP for them.
Depending on the Level of account permissions, the blessings a user could receive, and the operations they could perform, were naturally different.
Like Kikyo and Ah Xiu, the two of them were of course authorized users with the highest permissions, who almost didn’t need to make any trade-offs, and had no COST Points restrictions; all Guardian Spirits, buff Auras and blessing Effects included within the True Spirit Positioning Map were permanent for them.
For example, the Power of the Guardian Spirit Anma Tengu was also constantly activated; just now, through the automatic operation of the Technique Terminal, it had already recorded the phenomena and fluctuations during the time-space traversal, was calling on more computation resources for analysis, and had already determined the exact temporal span of their travel.
Another illusory Guardian Spirit silhouette flew out—it was the mask-wearing, harpy-like Anma Tengu. But this was not the main body of the Guardian Spirit; it was a copied consciousness avatar coming online, using the system’s assistance to carry out corresponding tasks, capable of reproducing a considerable portion of the main body’s Authority.
Anma Tengu was precisely the one that controlled the Power of Space-Time; this copied Guardian Spirit phantom flew out, circled around Kikyo and Hidechika, and spoke the system’s analytical judgment intel.
—They had crossed eight hundred and eight years of history.
—From around AD 1610, they had traveled back to the time period of AD 802.
"Eight hundred years, huh... just as I thought..."
Kikyo nodded lightly, then turned her gaze toward the street over there, only to see that white-clad, black-haired figure also strolling over at a leisurely pace.
So he really followed...
Which meant he really knew about this matter; perhaps this operation was aimed at this from the very beginning...
But to be this mysterious—could it be something very important? It probably had to do with Hidechika... Glancing at the black-haired girl beside her, the Witch pondered so. This time, it was only the two of them setting out; that Fox Elf was still sulking and didn’t want to come.
And as far as this world was concerned, she herself was always an outsider, so the only one who could be connected to this matter was indeed this young lady of the Saito Family.
Speaking of which, earlier he had deliberately said that Suzuka Imperial Lady was a Ghost—so what was her relation to this Half-Demon? Apparently her other half of the bloodline really was Ghost... Rapidly sorting through the clues she knew, Kikyo vaguely guessed something, but still couldn’t be certain.
Hidechika, though also intelligent, was at the moment distracted by something else.
She frowned, looking at the Chuye Sword in her hand—the Demon-slaying Divine Weapon that had already been repaired; for some reason, it had now reverted to a damaged form again, only the size of a short dagger, and the golden essence light it emitted had dimmed quite a bit.
"It’s been corrected. After all, if in this era this sword were to exist here in perfect condition, then there’d be no reason to forge another one..."
Gu Mo walked over, watched this scene, and explained with a squinting smile: "But from beginning to end, it should be one and the same sword. If the past Chuye Shiwan was never forged, then how should the Chuye Shiwan of the future, the one in your hand, exist?"
So, after traveling back to this era, the directional Correction Power automatically activated.
The complete sword in Hidechika’s hand was directly suppressed and downgraded, falling back into an incomplete, damaged state, unable to exert its proper Effect...
But was this really useful? If nothing unexpected had happened, with Ah Xiu being weakened like this, things really might have unfolded just like the original storyline: she would lose the Demon-slaying Sword, be unable to defeat Ootakemaru, who possessed three companion Divine Weapons, and thus be forced to rely on Suzuka Imperial Lady’s help.
However, an accident had already happened now...
After Gu Mo’s series of enhancements, the resources poured into Ah Xiu were naturally regardless of cost—so how strong was Ah Xiu now, exactly?
Put it this way: once the Constant Dark Domain was opened, it could blanket the whole of Japan...
Warring States’ Number One Great Demon, in every sense of the word.
He slightly sized up the black-haired girl in front of him, and after a brief pause, the young man pondered: if Ah Xiu couldn’t hold back and just killed her dear brother-in-law outright, what then?
......
...
Meanwhile.
"No saving her..."
On the road beyond the village, off in the distance.
A beautiful woman dressed in skirt armor pressed her lips tightly together. She was crouching on the ground, hand reaching out to test the breath of a seemingly intact corpse. Though she already knew there was no chance, deep down she still clung to a sliver of luck and hope—but the miracle did not happen.
Letting out a long sigh, she stood up and looked somewhat blankly toward the end of the road. On that flawless, jade-like beautiful face was an expression of helplessness.
Between her delicate brows there was also a faint trace of struggle.
This woman was very beautiful, heroic and valiant, except that she likewise had a pair of exquisite Ghost Horns on her head, and her features bore a faint resemblance to Hidechika’s.