Page 69
The claim that the mother who died in a car accident many years ago attacked the car out of resentment was not true. In fact, I had expected this when I received the call from Captain Long. This was obvious.
If it was really because of this resentment, why did they wait for five years? After all, when the soul returns to Gaia after completing its life journey, it will wash away all the resentment and resentment. Human emotions are superficial after all, and the love, hate, and hatred of the moment are too fragile compared to the planet itself.
Even if there is an obsession, unless one is like the Black Bag Monk who has been worshipped for thousands of years and has become a demon god, how can the soul of an ordinary person withstand the erosion of time after losing the body as a carrier?
No matter how much obsession there was, it was exhausted.
Therefore, Ling had doubts from the beginning about what Nan Xizi said about seeing the vengeful spirit of Ryoko's mother. Now it seems that there is indeed another hidden story. However, even though she prayed to Gaia and received a response, she still couldn't see anything for a while.
Ling also handed the Kagura bell back to Kuze Hanane, and Kuze took it with an eager look on his face.
"Oshima Miko, can you teach me your Kagura dance?"
Tsugeki thought he had misheard, or that his family (the shrine)'s Kuze had lost his mind. Ask that little girl for advice? What was she dancing to? Could she have figured it out by herself?
Is that Kagura dance? Except for a few non-standard moves at the beginning, the rest is clearly Tai Chi plus radio gymnastics! Even if you are unprofessional, you can't be like this. Which shrine taught this?
It's hard for the TAC team to find such a "shrine maiden". Maybe other shrines don't dare to take on this business?
He is a grown man, but he has been exposed to the world every day at the shrine, so even if he has never learned it before, he can dance better than this.
Tsugeki suspected that Kuze was being sarcastic, but she wasn't a girl with that kind of personality, and there was no sarcasm in her words. So was she serious?
Of course, Kuze was serious.
More serious than serious. She stared at Lingye with her scarlet eyes, as if it was a rare treasure.
"What was that just now? That light."
Tsuge wanted to answer her that it was the light of fireflies. But it seemed that Kuze was not so incapable of distinguishing the light of fireflies. So what was she talking about? He was there the whole time, and apart from the miko jumping around energetically and some fireflies around her, there shouldn't be anything strange.
But what Kuze saw was a completely different scene. Lights filled the mountains and fields, and a girl danced in the sea of light. Ripples appeared wherever he stepped, and those ripples spread out layer by layer, stirring up the entire world as far as he could see. Where he raised his hand, with the Kagura bell as the center, the sound turned into light particles visible to the naked eye.
The light was very gentle and did not dispel the darkness, which was very different from the records in the classics that Amaterasu shines in all directions when the sun rises. But it dispelled the deep and ominous things in the darkness.
Jiu Shi didn't understand what it was, he only knew clearly that for many years, whether he was forced to practice or pursued voluntarily, the aimless nothingness turned into a clear image in front of him for the first time. He had never told himself so clearly that those things really existed.
She didn't do this to defraud the pilgrims. She could use what she had cultivated over the years to bless and pray, to do what only she could do. For the first time, someone could tell her so clearly that the time she had spent by the empty pond in the back mountain for more than a decade was indeed meaningful.
"Kuseimiya, what did you see?"
"Light, I saw a lot of light."
"That's right. But I don't know how to dance the Kagura dance. I only saw Granny Miyamizu dance once, and I didn't learn it at all. I should be the one asking you for instruction."
"But--"
"Besides," Ling interrupted Kuze before she could say anything, "you should leave now. Something dangerous will happen later."
"Something dangerous?"
It was not only Hisayoshi who realized it later, but also Beidou, Nan and others, who realized that Ryoko, who was sitting in a wheelchair in full view of everyone, had disappeared at some point.
"That's it!" Nan Xizi said in surprise, "It was like this before, that 'ghost' would suddenly appear and suddenly disappear!"
"Where on earth did they go..." Beidou glanced at the time on his watch, his expression suddenly tense, "Oh no, it's time for the transport convoy to arrive! Nan!"
Without Beidou's reminder, Nan Xizi also pulled out the TAC gun, and the two ran towards the road. The only possible place for Ryoko to appear after she disappeared was to attack the convoy!
As Beidou expected, the front car of the transport convoy drove out of the tunnel and came to the S-shaped hairpin bend of Firefly Plain, where many accidents occurred. The croaking of frogs and insects in the ears while driving in the mountains disappeared after exiting the tunnel, as if the two sides of the tunnel were connected to different worlds.
“It’s so quiet”
"Captain, look ahead!"
At 2 a.m., a figure in white stood in the middle of the road. It was creepy at first glance, as if a scene from a Hyakumonogatari story had appeared before our eyes.
But of course there is no coward who can join the TAC team. Even Noriko came to her senses after the initial shock.
"Want to attack?"
"Wait a minute! Stop the car first and be on guard!" Captain Long ordered.
The convoy stopped about a hundred meters away from the woman in white. Captain Long ordered the escort vehicles to prepare for the attack. He, holding a TAC gun, got off the Black Panther with Yamanaka and Noriko. They approached the woman in white and finally saw her clearly under the street lights at a distance of thirty or forty meters.
It’s exactly the same as what Nan Xizi said.
It was indeed a person wearing a ghost mask, wearing a white kimono with a lotus pattern, and judging from her figure, she should be a woman. Although it is still unclear what she wants to do or what means she has, the mere appearance of such an image on a desolate road in the middle of the night is enough to cause frequent accidents here.
"You said that it wasn't a vengeful spirit, but a trick of the Yabo people?"
Beidou and Nan Xizi were running towards the scene. The courtyard of Ryoko's house was only a few hundred meters away from the accident site. If it was flat ground, it would take less than a minute to run at full speed. However, the grass was overgrown here, and the road was not clear at night. Even so, three or four minutes was enough to get there.
Ling followed too.
"Well, didn't Ace notice the dimensional vibration just now?"
Because she had felt it up close from Nadeshiko, and even borrowed it to pass by, Ling was also very clear about the feeling just now. It was exactly the same as when Nadeshiko activated the ring to trigger the portal.
Kuze wanted to follow, but after running two steps, he found himself far behind. Tsurugi didn't want to go. Since he was sure there was something strange, did he have to go there himself? Come on, he just knew how to recite a few verses, and it was fine to send pilgrims away, but could he really exorcise evil spirits?
And even if chanting can exorcise evil spirits, chanting is too much trouble. I don't even want to do my homework every day, and I have to work overtime for free? It's so tiring.
However, no matter how unwilling he was, he had to follow Jiuze as he watched him chase forward. The Lord of God had warned him that if he was lazy and Jiuze got bumped by mistake, the Lord of God would break his bones.
but--
"It's understandable that the TAC team members can run fast in cross-country, but what's wrong with that little girl? She runs faster than a rabbit!"
"That's the Oshima Miko, you can't be rude!"
"Okay, okay." Zhe Mu raised his hands to show surrender.
And Oshima Reiya, whom he had been criticizing, now easily caught up with Beidou and Minami Yuko.
It was unclear whether Ace had noticed the so-called "dimensional shock", but Beidou and Nan certainly could not. They were human bodies, after all, not Ace himself, and although they could communicate to a certain extent, they could not be called "one mind and one body".
Beidou and Nan knew that Ace was also trying to avoid this. Otherwise, would they, who were given a second life by Ace, still be themselves, or just a shell of Ace?
They only communicated to a limited extent, and the flash of the ring was the only clear signal from Ace. This meant that Ace judged that the TAC team could no longer handle it and needed to take action himself. At that time, Beidou and Nan Xizi would also leave everything to Ace. That was their tacit understanding.
"The dimensional shock you mentioned is the dimensional technology of the Yabo people?"
"Correct."
So Ryoko's sudden disappearance and reappearance were not caused by the so-called "ghost", but the effect of the dimensional technology equipment, just like the ring in Nadeshiko's hand.
As for the equipment itself—
"It's that ghost's mask!"
Nan Xizi and Beidou both realized this and said in unison.
Perhaps the previous vengeful spirits inspired the Yabo people to disguise the conspiracy to stop the transportation of V7 as vengeful spirits. But in fact, the Yabo people are only familiar with biotechnology and dimensional technology. What do they know about vengeful spirits?
It was just a piece of equipment that could move in different dimensions, which made people feel mysterious, and hypnotized Ryoko, and then played tricks! Or it was to divert the investigation of the TAC team and mislead Ryoko's mother who died five years ago. During the day, the TAC team did shift the focus of the investigation to the car accident five years ago, and even asked for help from many shrines including Izumo Taisha to exorcise the evil spirits, but no one dared to take it, so they finally asked Lingya.
But that didn't really matter. The series of car accidents a few days ago had nothing to do with Ryoko's mother, or even Ryoko herself.
"So the one who attacked the passing vehicles wasn't actually Ryoko!"
Realizing this, Beidou and Nan had already reached the top of the hill, and below was the bend where the accident occurred.
Chapter 89: Plague of Insects
Sure enough, the Ryoko who disappeared earlier was now standing in the middle of the road in a white dress and a ghost mask. She was holding a weapon that was either a mallet or a knife, and was confronting Captain Long and Yamanaka who were holding TAC guns. The two sides were on the verge of a conflict at any time.
"Wait, Captain, Yamanaka, don't shoot! Please wait a moment!" Hokuto Seiji shouted on the hillside. He didn't have time to find a way down, and directly slid down the grass slope with an angle of more than 70 degrees. At a height of more than ten meters, the moment he touched the ground, he rolled his body to relieve some of the impact force.
Even so, his feet and calf bones, which had borne most of the pressure, felt numb and sore.
Fortunately, he was still able to move. He stood up and walked a few steps. His posture was a little strange. He probably strained a muscle, but his bones were probably not injured.
Lingye and Nan Xizi looked at each other, and the two of them honestly chose the detour downhill road. It was more than ten meters, that's four floors, equivalent to the height of jumping from the fifth floor.
Beidou is brave and reckless.
Beidou's appearance was like a signal, and the "ghost" in white moved. She used a strange and weird posture, with her upper body stiff and holding the weapon high, and pounced on him in small steps.
Rather than an attack, it is more like an exaggerated performance in a Nuo opera. In a horror movie, it may have some symbolic meaning, just like Sadako crawling out of the TV and Chu Renmei singing an opera, but when the reality happens in front of you, it feels out of place.
After putting aside my fear of 'ghosts', I just felt it was pretty silly.
Of course, it was only Captain Long who thought so. Shan Zhong was still very nervous. After all, he really knew that the spirit of a person existed after death. Since the good spirit of his fiancée could say goodbye to him, it was not difficult to understand why the evil spirit that held a grudge against humans would attack humans.
Seeing the "ghost" attacking, Shanzhong subconsciously wanted to shoot, but Captain Long lifted his elbow up, and his finger touched the trigger, which turned into a shot into the air.
"Don't use your weapons yet!" Captain Long growled. This was because of Beidou's previous reminder. Although he didn't know why Beidou stopped them from shooting, he believed in his team members as much as he believed in himself.
Ignoring the weapon in the ghost's hand, Ryugoro retracted his TAC gun and chose to rush forward. He easily grabbed the opponent's wrist holding the weapon, using the force to break his arm, and the strange weapon fell to the ground with a crisp metallic sound.
As the captain of the TAC team, Ryugoro is not as often on the front line as Beidou and Yamanaka, which makes people subconsciously ignore his skills. However, whether it is shooting or fighting, he is not inferior to anyone. Among them, Captain Ryu is particularly good at judo.
After grabbing the goblin's wrist, he pulled up the collar of his kimono, then turned around and threw it. With just a few simple movements, the 'goblin' was thrown to the ground without any resistance.
The dull sound of the concrete floor shaking made Beidou gasp. It looked painful.
Captain Long's cutting back, he had experienced it several times in the team training on weekdays, even he found it difficult to resist. He didn't know if Ryoko could bear it, but he had to go to the hospital for a checkup.
Fortunately, Ryugoro chose to knock the opponent to the ground on his back. If he had landed on his head, he might have been able to eat the meal directly.
This was already a sign of mercy from Goro, as he did not use his best judo move, the 'Heaven and Earth Return'. Otherwise, even if the person landed on his back, dozens of his ribs would have been broken.
Captain Long was a little surprised when the attack succeeded. He was just testing the enemy, but he didn't expect the enemy to be more vulnerable than he imagined. Not to mention the Yabo people or monsters, even ordinary people who have been trained in fighting skills would not be so weak.
Was she really the culprit who attacked those passing vehicles? What right did she have to attack those vehicles, even leaving only bones behind? Was she just scaring people with this mask?
It doesn't make sense at all.
As he was thinking this, Captain Long suddenly discovered that the 'ghost' lying on the ground suddenly disappeared. She reappeared dozens of meters away, but she was hunched over and had not yet recovered from the pain.
And in that direction were Yoshimura and Konno who had just arrived.
"Konno, don't let her get away. The key is the mask! Take off the mask!"
Konno was holding a bazooka in his hand, and after hearing what Beidou said, he didn't know whether to raise it to aim or put it down. Yoshimura, on the other hand, came to his senses, stepped forward and grabbed the mask with his hand.
But the next second, his hand retracted.
"Hiss, it hurts!" Yoshimura's hand was bitten, and he slapped it reflexively, killing the insect on the back of his hand, but was surprised to find that it was actually a firefly. Taking this opportunity, the white-clothed "ghost" rushed past him.
Yoshimura was too busy trying to stop it, as the bite on his hand was bleeding. The bite was not simple, it was like a piranha.
"Captain, this firefly can bite!"
"Nonsense, how can fireflies bite people?" Yamanaka retorted subconsciously, "Do you always sleep during class at school?"
Fireflies are crawling carnivorous insects in their larval stage, especially fond of snails and slugs, and even occasionally prey on small frogs. They are extremely ferocious. But after becoming adults, they have the ability to fly and glow, and their diet has changed to plant leaves and juices. This is all common sense.