Chapter 124 Sukuna's Born Realm
The powerful cursed energy that just occurred at the scene made Geto Xiayu raise his hand to slightly block the dust and sand raised by the impact wave.
However, as a curse spirit operator, his perception of curse spirits is naturally more acute than that of others.
Therefore, although there was a distance between them and his vision was disturbed by the impact wave dust and sand, Xia Yujie was still able to keenly sense the huge malice lingering around the real person.
Xia Yujie's heart tightened, and the scene that happened next made him hold his breath!
The twisted cursed spirit tried its best to burst out its power, and used the woven bag with its own strange effect to grab Jiang Lai who was nearby. However, Jiang Lai only had time to throw the large fragments on the ground to the liquid fox!
The twisting force of the accumulated cursed energy vortex became thicker and thicker, constantly colliding within the cursed spirit's body, seemingly about to reach its limit and experience the final explosion.
The sixth sense sounded the danger alarm to the maximum, but Xia Yujie went against the sixth sense's evacuation instinct.
He rushed forward with a hurricane of cursed power, grabbed Jiang Lai's wrist, and at the same time let the cursed spirit wrap around them at an extremely fast speed!
When the vortex force accumulated to the end and exploded with violent vibrations, Xia Youjie held Jiang Lai tightly and tried his best to stabilize his cursed spirit under the pressure of the cursed power.
The explosion hit his eardrums, and for a moment, Kagome was deafened and could not hear anything. Being in the cursed spirit, his vision was pitch black, as if he was immersed in a swamp.
In this brief moment of incomparable silence, Kagome seemed to be floating away from the present moment. With his vision and hearing blocked, he could only sense the shackles tightly grasped in his hands.
Even though the black-haired young man is a cursed spirit at this moment, Geto Xia can still feel the warmth from the touch of his skin.
This kind of tightness and warmth seemed to have happened to me once before, a long, long time ago.
At this moment, he seemed to have traveled through a thousand years of time - in the long, long past, when he was also in a pitch-black darkness with almost no perception, it seemed as if someone grabbed him tightly and firmly pulled him away from the silence of death.
A small hole was opened in the complicated memory of a thousand years ago, and the sealed memories gushed out. Xia Yujie closed his eyes, his heart trembling.
In the Heian-kyō era, he thought that he would have the chance to thank him in person in the future. However, a hundred years was too short, and those in that era never saw the black-haired young man again.
The woodland incorporated into the back mountain of Gojo Family is already very lush, with young seedlings sprouting in the fertile earth and rotten wood rotting in the thick soil. The seasons change with the replacement of the old with the new.
However, the thousand years of reincarnation drowned out the memories of the past, and he, who started his life in the modern era, was unable to remember those regrets and gratitudes.
After falling into trouble in this era, he was once again pulled out of the swamp by a black-haired young man - the other party reversed time and gave him a chance to start over.
He was pulled out of the mud by the black-haired young man twice, and this time, he finally grabbed the other person.
The complicated memories surging in his mind were finally sorted out and calmed down. Xia Yujie first exhaled deeply before loosening his grip on the other person's hand.
He couldn't see his own expression, but he thought that maybe he showed an expression that was enough to convey his inner feelings.
Because the black-haired young man in front of him was staring at him, and after hearing what he said in a very soft voice, he also smiled gently.
"——This time, you held me back."
Jiang Lai did not express unnecessary thanks, because he knew that what the other party needed at the moment was not words of thanks.
With a strong sense of responsibility, responsibility and self-esteem, Geto Xia Yu is always used to silently accumulating pressure in his heart until the accumulated amount exceeds his ability to bear.
And this kind of bond is an outlet for pressure to be released.
Xia Yujie raised his narrow fox eyes and looked at Jiang Lai. Recalling the past thousand years, he seemed to have a lot to say, but didn't know where to start.
Perhaps meeting again now, thousands of years later, is more than the words that drifted away in those years. After all, the past is in the past, and there is no need to show the emotions of the long wait.
Looking at those warm brown eyes, Xia Yujie finally let out a breath, without saying anything more, but slowly raised a smile and said slowly: "... a thousand years, long time no see."
"..." Jiang Lai blinked, his face showing some confusion and guilt, his eyes were sincere, "Sorry, what are you talking about?"
After hearing this, Geto Xia's expression froze for a second, and the smile on his face suddenly froze!
The next moment, Jiang Lai added the second half of the sentence: "Long time no see, Jie - it was just a little prank." He smiled between his eyebrows, "I remember it all."
It took a few seconds for Geto to recover from his frozen expression: "...Please don't joke like that, especially at this moment. It's too much of a test of your mentality, Lai."
"Because Wu asked me to play a little prank on you." Jiang Lai coughed and laughed, "Let's show it near the end."
"Satoru?" Hearing his friend's name, Xia Yujie raised his eyebrows slightly, with a look of silence and annoyance. "That guy Satoru... is he bored recently? Why did he play a prank on me again?"
Jiang Lai said, "Maybe it's because I haven't heard from you in such a long time. Wu said he sent you spam from an unknown number, and you didn't read them."
"Recently, the regulatory agency has implanted a cursed force monitor in my electronic devices, which I cannot remove on my own initiative. Moreover, this monitor will be triggered even if I use other devices outside - so I asked Wu not to contact them for the time being."
Xia Yujie paused for a moment, as if he remembered something, and put one hand on his temple with a headache, "...and I won't even open the spam email that Wu sent me just by looking at the title!"
"What did he send you?" Jiang Lai asked curiously.
Xia Yujie paused for a moment, his expression changing several times, and then he twitched his mouth, coughed and said: "...Men's health advertisement."
Jiang Lai was startled at first, then he laughed a little nervously: "Oh - indeed, based on my recent understanding of human beings, people like you, Jie, who are under great pressure every day and often stay up late at night, should pay attention to this problem."
Summer Oil: "...Rai!"
"Just a joke." Jiang Lai blinked lightly.
Xia Yujie put his hands together, and his hair shook a little: "Next time we meet, I will definitely fight with Wu's guy. It just so happens that I am an undercover agent now, so it is a legitimate reason to fight him."
Jiang Lai: "You may not be able to find him recently."
"Hmm?" Xia Yujie raised his eyebrows.
Jiang Lai: "Wu has gone abroad. He will probably be away for a while."
Xia Yujie was stunned at first, then suddenly realized: "Satoru must have already planned it out! The emperor is far away and the sky is high. And when he comes back, I will have forgotten about this matter."
"It's okay, I'll remember it for you." Jiang Lai patted Xia Youjie's shoulder generously, "Friends should cheat each other, and the traditional ceremony cannot be let down!"
Jiang Lai started to laugh, and the atmosphere around him became relaxed.
Next to them, the Liquid Fox jumped up and interrupted their conversation, its body twisting and changing, revealing the fragments wrapped in its tail in front of the two people.
Because Liquid Fox is a derivative of Jiang Lai, it also has some [existence] characteristics that allow it to directly touch the fragments in a short period of time - such characteristics have naturally not been revealed to the Regulatory Commission.
"Thank you for your hard work, Nightmare Fox." Jiang Lai took the fragment that was protected by the Liquid Fox with his hand, then turned and walked towards the place where the vortex of cursed power had just burst out.
The land was directly torn apart by the curse, and dust and grass were everywhere.
Where the real person had been standing, there was a small fragment that caused the explosion just now, and in addition, there was a fist-sized ball of blue-gray unidentified substance.
Jiang Lai sensed the cursed energy floating in the air, paused, and used a space technique to push the blue-gray mass on the ground through the air.
The blue-grey mass only retained the power of the curse, but it seemed to have no consciousness. It was like a special-grade cursed object, but compared to a special-grade cursed object, it still had some characteristics of a cursed spirit.
Xia Youjie walked over in two or three steps and stared at the blue-gray unidentified substance on the ground for a few seconds.
Jiang Lai tilted his head and asked with concern: "How is it? Can you still absorb it now?"
"Of course I can." Xia Yujie looked a little depressed. He paused for a moment, showing some confusion. "Come to think of it, I'm already used to swallowing cursed spirit balls and have adapted to it, but I don't know why, when I saw this ball on the ground, I still felt a little..."
Xia Yujie's words were relatively tactful, and he didn't use any direct words. But his expression already revealed his inner thoughts.
Jiang Lai patted Xia Youjie on the shoulder and said with deep emotion: "You have worked so hard."
The young man with the ball-shaped hair took a deep breath, and finally stepped forward with the attitude of putting the result first and not caring about the process.
Xia Yujie used a magic spell to absorb the special-grade cursed spirit that was severely damaged and only left with a blue-gray group shape, then staggered to a tree not far away, supported the tree's trunk and began his daily routine.
Jiang Lai, who stayed where he was, scanned the ground with his eyes and quickly caught sight of a small piece of light green debris lying quietly on the ground. He bent down, picked it up, and wiped off the slight amount of dirt on it.
The light green fragment lay very quietly in Jiang Lai's palm, without any sharp edge. The familiar power lingered around him, causing Jiang Lai to fall into a brief complex emotion.
What broke Jiang Lai's immersion was the liquid fox. The liquid fox, swaying like a jelly, ran over with a woven bag in its mouth.
——That was the open woven bag that was blown away by the shock wave. Under the impact of the cursed energy just now, the woven bag was burned and rubbed, and the fine threads swayed in the wind.
But, it probably still works.
"Thank you, Nightmare Fox." Jiang Lai showed a gentle smile on his face. He half squatted down, took the woven bag brought by the little fox, and used it to wrap the two fragments, one large and one small.
Despite his reluctance and confusion, Jiang Lai finally realized rationally that in order to achieve complete victory, he must let Geto Takeshi take the fragments back this time.
他握緊編織袋，剛想站起身，就感觸到褲腿處濕漉漉的觸感。
江萊低頭，看到液體狐貍正扒着他的褲腳，果凍般的爪子貼緊江萊腳踝處露出的肌膚，帶來幾縷冰涼。
那雙紅色的蚊香眼擡起，盯着江萊，半半卡卡說道：“棒。我很棒。”
江萊先是一愣，接着笑起：“嗯、魇狐超級棒，這次也幫了不少忙哦。”他毫不吝啬自己的誇獎。
液體狐貍瞪着那雙眼睛，和江萊二度對視。它并未松開把住江萊褲腿的爪子。
空氣安靜片刻。
似乎是見江萊沒有動作，液體狐貍尾巴拍打着地面，神色露出幾分不明顯的焦躁和委屈：“所以。獎勵。飯。餓。”
聽到後兩個詞，江萊恍然大悟，終于知曉液體狐貍這次為何上前邀功、還巴巴地把住自己不放——原來是想吃的。
如此執着，不知道是因為液體狐貍本身便是個小吃貨、還是因為餓了太久。
江萊軟下眉眼，他将魇狐抱起，再度置于懷中：“我身上沒帶別的物件，你便繼續吃幾口衣袖衣領吧。”
目前咒靈狀态，衣物這種東西可以随時調節，所以江萊幹脆就将其作為魇狐的口糧，讓對方随時吃。反正自己可以随時補。
在江萊懷中的液體狐貍毫不客氣，揪着江萊的袖口還是吧唧吧唧地吃起來。
江萊任由對方進食，抱着對方走向夏油傑。
幹嘔了一段時間的丸子頭青年，此刻看起來終于緩過神了。
“這種東西味道一如既往難吃。”夏油傑順口吐槽了一句，“什麽時候有人能發明出咒靈的美味吃法，我一定謝謝他。”
“能把擦過嘔吐物的抹布做得好吃，還是蠻難的吧。”江萊想了一下，友善提議道，“要不要買點薄荷糖或者奶糖之類的常備在身上？或許有助于緩解。”
“我會考慮的。”夏油傑深呼吸，徹底調整好剛才自己幹嘔的欲望，他活動了下手腕，試了試剛剛吸收的能力，“真人的無為轉變，感覺我用不太着。不過這次消滅對方，也算是個大收獲了。”
無為轉變……原著裏，真人曾經用這一招改造過許多人，不過除了殺人，這個還可以讓非術師大腦變為術師大腦。
“或許你可以暫時向監管會隐瞞這一點，免得他們額外要你做什麽。”江萊想了幾秒，說，“你把這兩枚碎片都帶回去，和監管會說，因為真人妄圖吸收小碎片的力量、被反噬了，你最後将其祓除，但因為碎片力量幹擾，沒能吸收。”
夏油傑思緒流轉，颔首：“好。我試着隐瞞一下。”
“當然、一切以你的安全為重。”江萊說，“若是監管會會因為這個對你有信任危機，那還是讓他們知曉為好。”
“監管會不會對我那麽刨根究底。”夏油傑笑了下，接着哼聲道，“這次捎回去碎片，便足以證明我的誠意了——此外，他們之前用了我的幾只特級咒靈，終究是欠我的、還沒補償呢。”
“監管會對合作咒靈不算特別在意，這件事過去便過去了。”夏油傑表示，“目前我的地位，即便是普通情境下，我對真人下手也不會被苛責多少。”
“對了——為何有兩枚碎片？”夏油傑話題一拐，目光落在江萊遞出去的編織袋上面。他問出剛才沒來及問的。
于是，江萊告知了對方自己之前的感知，以及在他們進入帳內後、自己去尋找小碎片的經歷，期間還提到了脹相。
“脹相那家夥，”夏油傑想了想，神色有些古怪道，“這只咒靈似乎特別在意虎杖悠仁——他說虎杖是他的弟弟。這是什麽無中生弟？”
緊接着，他的注意力又回到江萊身上：“你打算和他合作嗎？”
“我覺得可以。這次和他有過短暫相處，不過目前不适合過于熱切的交流。”江萊點頭，“下次見面，我再進一步試探性地引導到這個話題。”
“好。”夏油傑點頭。
此次任務結束，夏油傑要返回監管會約好的返程地點、江萊要回神奈川縣川崎市套回原來的馬甲，準備期末測試與啓程高專。
二者便要就此分別。
夏油傑手中提着小巧編織袋，離開前又停駐片息，說：“——這樣的碎片，對你很重要，是嗎？”
江萊微微詫異對方突然說出的話語，卻還是回答：“嗯，是的。不過這次你還是要帶回去，為了最終的勝利、過程需要如此。”
“我明白。”夏油傑同樣理智地回複，他遲疑了下、說，“監管會收集這樣的碎片，似乎是為了其中的能量，用以支撐什麽……那些所謂的‘飼料’，似乎便是用以補充或修複碎片的。抱歉，我不太清楚細節。”
江萊怔了怔，心下思緒快速運轉。
他之前理解的“飼料”這個詞語的含義，是直接應用的某種力量。此刻聽見夏油傑口中提到的補充和修複，又有了新的想法。
也許“飼料”并非直接應用，而是間接應用。說起來，之前他有想過，監管會利用[降生]力量，孽累加該如何處理。
現在似乎也有幾分靈感了——或許正是因為把孽轉移或補充消除，所以才不會造成神格降格破損、能力無法使用的現象。
當然了，這些還只是自己的猜測。
江萊收回思緒，他颔首道：“好，我知道了。”
“我會留意更多線索的。”夏油傑離開前回頭補充道，“屆時，若是我能夠再次用設備傳遞信息，會告知你和悟。”
兩人就此告別。
離開前，液體狐貍顯得有些戀戀不舍，但終究還是從江萊懷中躍出，回到了夏油傑身邊。
江萊見此，便拾了一根小木條，沾染上自己的咒力後，投喂給液體狐貍，讓它在路上慢一點啃着吃，不過回去前一定要吃完。
液體狐貍歡天喜地，趴在夏油傑肩膀上，捧着小木條舔舔啃啃。
……有點像是狗狗磨牙棒啊。江萊目視夏油傑攜液體狐貍離開，腦海中無意識地想。木條對咒靈來說太脆弱了，下次有機會給個鐵棒試試。
——
千葉縣距離神奈川縣不算遠，江萊開着術式，在夜色下返回川崎市。
以防萬一，江萊在翻窗而進前，先呼喚了下弘樹。
确認安全無誤後，他才順着離開時的原路，開窗而進。
這一小段時間都是弘樹披着小綿羊皮在上學，盡管臨近期末學業繁忙，但弘樹看起來依然樂在其中。
江萊有些不确定自己觀察得對不對，于是問：“……你要是真的喜歡，可以一直到考完期末。你是真的喜歡上學和做卷子嗎？”
“我很享受這種學校的氛圍。”弘樹笑了下，又擺手道，“不過不必，你回來了，我便不再繼續停留看。正好，我回去搞一下周邊。”
“若是下次你需要，再随時叫我便可。”弘樹溫柔道，“我來當你的分身。”
“那便多謝了，弘樹。”江萊認認真真回複，“你不是分身，你是你。”
他切換回棕發少年的外表，弘樹也變回丘比樣态。不過，在弘樹返回柯學世界前，江萊找他看了下背包裏的兩面宿傩的手指。
——上次時間太緊，他還沒來得及細細檢查。這東西畢竟和真人接觸過，以防有監管會的什麽痕跡殘留，江萊再度用術式過了一遍。
确認安全後，他松了口氣，用電子精靈術式重新收進弘樹丘比背包。
時隔幾天，江萊再度躺到柔軟的大床上。
人類馬甲是需要休眠的，這幾天的謀劃思索消耗的氣力、讓困意一點點湧起。
因此，江萊把手機放到床頭，打算等第二天再看看是否有更新，此刻先舒舒服服睡一覺。
房間昏暗，月色溫柔，江萊呼吸逐漸平穩，陷入美好的睡眠。
……
滴滴答答的水聲在耳邊響起。
江萊睜開眼，周圍是一片漂浮着白骨的血海，遠處有牛骨堆積起的高山。
只一眼便可判斷出——這裏是兩面宿傩的生得領域。
為何自己會進到宿傩的生得領域？！
江萊愕然一秒，他低頭看向水面倒影，裏面是黑發棕眸青年——不是小綿羊馬甲，而是他現代篇裏的樣子。
思緒停滞一瞬，江萊迅速回想今日的細節。
……難不成是因為自己接觸了碎片，而後又接觸了兩面宿傩的手指，導致發生了什麽奇特的交互效用？
思維運轉被遠處襲來的咒力打斷，江萊本能地迅速閃避、而後撐起空間術式屏障！
随着他的動作，地面血水翻湧濺起，漂浮的牛骨被擊向另一側。
江萊擡起頭，望向遠處的那人。
一身白色和服的兩面宿傩翹腿坐在牛骨山頂，猩紅眼眸略微眯起，俯視着地面上的江萊，啧了一聲：
“看來是真的啊……所以你這家夥，為何會出現在這裏？”