Kill Kill Kill

The old man at the front didn’t waste any time talking.

He raised a hand and flung several paper figures from his sleeve.

Once they left his hand, the paper figures spun in midair. Their flat surfaces bulged, ink lines crawled outward, and less than two seconds later, they landed on the ground.

Two creatures with huge wings and red long-nosed masks stood on either side, each holding a hooked saber.

Their appearance was about as obvious as it could get.

Japan’s famous yokai—the tengu.

There were also a few more bizarre-looking things nearby: ox heads on crab-like bodies, with limbs sticking out in every direction and shells covering their backs.

It was obvious. These paper figures were Poké Balls, and these yokai were Pokémon.

Zhafu took one look and offered an entirely objective assessment.

“Definitely high in protein.”

Koji Takeda stood behind him, his throat bobbing.

He understood the joke, but he didn’t dare laugh.

The people from the Onmyo Bureau certainly weren’t laughing either.

The old man raised a hand, pointed at Zhafu, and shouted, “Tatakai!”

Zhafu paused.

The pronunciation was too perfect—so perfect that it made him wonder whether the Onmyo Bureau held anime appreciation classes on the side. Then again, this was Japan’s own native language.

Now that was getting fired up!

The two tengu spread their wings, raised their sabers, and charged at Zhafu.

They weren’t slow. Their feet had barely touched the ground before their blades were already in range.

Watching this, Koji Takeda had one thought first.

If Zhafu was killed, would that count as the end of the matter?

Still, the onmyoji from the Onmyo Bureau were quite formidable.

Shikigami weren’t ordinary spells. Their users didn’t have to throw themselves into the fight.

As long as they kept their distance, they could simply let a swarm of shikigami wear their enemy to death.

If it had been him, even after drawing his sword, he would have had to cut down one or two of them before looking for a chance to break out.

But Zhafu didn’t move.

He formed a hand seal with one hand.

All around him, white bones began to appear, one after another.

Zhafu formed the seal with one hand.

No incantations. No formation. He didn’t even bother with any unnecessary movement.

The bones shot forward.

The first pierced through a tengu’s wing. The second pinned its shoulder. The third skimmed past its mask and impaled the ox-headed, crab-bodied yokai behind it, pinning the creature to the ground.

The two tengu hadn’t even reached Zhafu before their wings were ruined. Their bodies lost balance and crashed to the ground, rolling twice.

Zhafu looked at them without rushing to finish them off.

He was observing.

These shikigami weren’t weak, but they clearly weren’t the actual yokai. Paper figures could only carry so much power, and they were nowhere near as strong as the real things.

They might be enough to kill ordinary people, but that was about it.

He hadn’t come here to play Pokémon battles with the Onmyo Bureau.

Still, Japan’s power system seemed to have far more depth than Korea’s.

At that moment, a gust of wind suddenly swept across Zhafu’s body.

Clang!

A metallic impact came from Zhafu’s face, and a flash of golden light flickered across it.

Koji Takeda’s brow furrowed.

He had seen it.

It wasn’t wind.

Something had slipped along the ground, bypassing the bones and making straight for Zhafu’s neck.

At that angle, an ordinary person’s head would already have been severed.

Yet Zhafu merely raised a hand and clenched his five fingers.

A yokai appeared in his palm.

The creature had long, thin arms that ended in sickle-shaped blades. Its body was so emaciated it looked barely human, and even after Zhafu caught it, it continued to struggle.

Zhafu lowered his head and examined it.

“A kamaitachi?”

The yokai opened its mouth and let out a shrill scream.

Zhafu shook it a couple of times.

“Word Spirit No. 59, is it? Hard to understand how the Word Spirit of an A-rank hybrid ended up this pathetic.”

Koji Takeda didn’t understand what “Word Spirit No. 59” meant.

Still gripping the kamaitachi by the neck, he asked, “When are you going to activate Blood Surge and turn into a Vampire Scythe?”

The kamaitachi struggled twice.

With a pop, it turned back into a paper figure.

The paper landed in Zhafu’s palm, its edges charred black.

Zhafu tossed it onto the ground.

As expected, it was just a weak shikigami.

The actual yokai weren’t here. The onmyoji had merely borrowed their names and borrowed their power.

They used paper to create bodies, invoked power through names, then controlled it with spells.

The process was fairly complete.

The weakness was obvious too.

They were pitifully weak.

Most importantly, if the Pokémon trainer died, the Pokémon were useless.

Zhafu lifted his eyes.

The old man was preparing to take out more paper figures. His left hand had already slipped into his sleeve, while his right hand formed a spell seal and his mouth moved rapidly as he chanted.

He had hidden himself behind the shikigami, planning to keep using them to overwhelm Zhafu.

The onmyoji of the Onmyo Bureau had probably grown accustomed to fighting this way.

They sent their shikigami ahead to die while standing somewhere safe and issuing orders.

Zhafu didn’t like that style of fighting.

At this rate, it would take until the year of the monkey to finish them.

A white bone shot out from behind.

Pfft.

The old man’s movements stopped.

A white bone pierced out through the back of his head, carrying a trace of blood, and nailed him to the doorframe.

He never even turned around before he died.

Zhafu withdrew his hand.

“I told you. In a Pokémon battle, you take out the trainer first.”

Koji Takeda’s eyelid twitched.

There was nothing wrong with that logic.

But the Onmyo Bureau didn’t fight that way.

They emphasized shikigami against shikigami, spell against spell, formation against formation.

Even when fighting to the death, they would first break the technique before injuring the person.

But this guy had no sense of honor!

He had bypassed the shikigami from the start and killed the spellcaster.

This wasn’t a battle of onmyodo.

It was street fighting.

And he was very good at street fighting.

After the old man fell, the entrance to the courtyard fell silent for a moment.

Then the remaining onmyoji all sprang into action.

They stopped holding back and flung handful after handful of paper figures into the air.

“Seal him!”

“Kill him!”

“Hold him down!”

The paper figures spread out and took shape as they hit the ground.

Tengu, kappa, ox demons, blue-faced monks, and several other creatures Koji Takeda couldn’t name suddenly crowded the entrance.

Zhafu looked at the sea of paper figures and frowned.

“Aren’t Pokémon supposed to be thrown out one at a time? Since when can you throw out a whole swarm?”

A young onmyoji couldn’t help shouting, “What do you think shikigami are?”

Zhafu replied, “You were the ones throwing out paper scraps. How is it my fault if I misunderstood?”

The young onmyoji was about to say something else when the bones had already arrived.

The first bone pierced through his wrist. The second pinned his knee. The third went through his chest, driving his entire body half a step backward.

He lowered his head and looked at it.

He never got the chance to speak again.

The remaining onmyoji could no longer keep their composure.

Before coming here, they had considered the possibility that Zhafu was strong.

They had even considered that people might die.

But they had imagined surrounding him, wearing him down, and dragging this outsider into a condition the Onmyo Bureau could handle.

Only now did they understand.

Zhafu had never entered their rhythm.

When the shikigami appeared, he disabled the shikigami first.

When the people exposed themselves, he killed the people first.

Before the formation could even be activated, the bones had already arrived.

They had thought they were here to hunt him.

In the end, they had delivered themselves right to his door.

Koji Takeda stood off to the side with his back against the wall, unmoving.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to join the fight.

It was that joining would be useless.

Zhafu’s bones could emerge from any direction. Nowhere was safe—not the front, not the back, not the left, not the right.

Drawing his sword would be even more pointless. He couldn’t even detect when Zhafu was going to strike.

From Koji Takeda’s perspective, Zhafu wasn’t tense in the slightest.

In fact, it was obvious that he was enjoying himself.

Looking at the corpses on the ground, Koji Takeda was left with only one conclusion.

This man wasn’t merely strong.

He knew exactly how to kill.

There were no unnecessary movements, no passionate battle cries, and he didn’t wait for his opponents to finish announcing their techniques.

When the onmyoji of the Onmyo Bureau ran into him, it was like going into a muddy field fight wearing formal robes.

They kept their dignity.

They just lost their lives first.