“N-no, I don’t think so…”

“Good. That means you’re not completely stupid.”

Yu Nai’s arrogant attitude left Juxi somewhat puzzled as she walked away. However, once the medicinal powder had fully taken effect, Yu Nai and Yuanhui, who had been standing inside the cave the whole time, immediately found themselves unable to stay on their feet.

Juxi bundled up all the remaining flying talismans, looking as if he was preparing to set out.

“It doesn’t matter whether there’s a reward or a princess involved. I only hope that, once the commission is complete, you’ll fulfill a few obligations and honestly tell me some of the things I want to know.” Juxi looked at the bottle of wine Yuanhui had left unfinished last night. At the same time, he pinched a flame into existence between his fingers and melted those things away.

When you’re outside, the most important thing is erasing your own tracks. Yuanhui was being far too careless!

Juxi sat beneath the shade of a tree near the cave entrance, waiting with Yu Nai for Yuanhui to return from relieving himself. At the same time, he looked at Yu Nai with some displeasure, his hand running over the carvings on the armrest.

Under his gaze, Yu Nai gave Juxi an awkward smile and nodded.

“Mr. Juxi, what is it you want to know? If it’s something Hallilan knows, I should be able to tell you, right?”

“Just a few little questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“One shouldn’t accept payment without doing the work. Before the commission is complete, you’d better not tell me anything.”

“Is that so? But if I tell you a few things now, wouldn’t that make you feel a little better…? It’d save us both some unpleasantness.”

Yu Nai didn’t seem to be guarding against Juxi at all. There was just something about him… such a familiar presence…

Juxi gave her an inexplicably familiar feeling, as though she’d heard of him somewhere before. The two people, who had always spoken freely with each other, never paid attention to such details, leaving both Juxi and Yuanhui utterly perplexed.

As they passed along a narrow path flanked by steep cliffs, they saw quite a few spine-chilling scenes at the very top.

“W-what… what is this place for?!” Juxi asked, a chill rising in his heart.

From his tone, it sounded as if he was asking Yu Nai why wooden figures had been made on top of the cliffs. The figures weren’t particularly well-crafted. Most of them were crude and sloppily made, yet they were unexpectedly large. It looked as though something had been placed inside them.

“Huh?” It took Yu Nai a long while to react. “Oh, those are the deceased who departed this world a very, very long time ago. They were all great men and women in life. Among them were masters from every generation of exorcists. Whenever humanity fell into peril, each of them saved the remnants of mankind…”

“So, you want to become one of them?”

Whenever Juxi opened his mouth, he never seemed to say anything pleasant. But he was only making a small joke. Yu Nai, however, showed no reaction to his remark and took it seriously instead.

Yu Nai, who had been serious ever since a moment ago, suddenly opened her mouth and murmured, “Not at all. I don’t want that kind of terrifying disaster to happen again. I only hope this will be the last time…”

In the end, the topic only made things awkward for Yu Nai. Perhaps it was a story she didn’t want to tell?

“Uh, sorry… A-as for those wise men, were any of them famous?”

“Mm, there always have been. It’s just that some of their names have already been forgotten…”

“At some point…” Yu Nai said sorrowfully. “Although I don’t know their names, I do know that some of them were very famous. People often speak of them.”

Additional notes:

If I talked about how great these people were, Yu Nai would probably only find it boring. Anyway, it’s all my fault.

There was no way to cure a corpse fiend. The only solution was to completely destroy its physical body. Otherwise, there was no cure.

No one knew how these things had appeared in the world. It was as if they had suddenly begun to run rampant during a certain period. They were the product of an entire century. Their appearance brought about a brand-new civilization, but at the same time… they also brought destruction to human civilization.

That was what the girl named Yu Nai told me. It was an ancient myth!

…

There were only a few dozen miles left to the border of Hallilan. Scattered villages could often be seen along the road, but without exception, not a single resident remained in any of them.

The atmosphere here was simply too strange. More wooden figures had suddenly appeared on the cliffs in the distance. It seemed there were wise men here as well—or perhaps heroes.

“Do they all believe that the ancient spell of Xiyi can be broken?” Juxi was extremely interested in Xiyi’s spell, and he asked in the hope that Yu Nai might know something.

Yu Nai, however, narrowed her eyes with a troubled expression. From the look on her face, she seemed to be thinking about how to answer Juxi.

“Mm… Speaking of those old fogies, they always disagree with one another.” A faint smile slowly surfaced on Yu Nai’s face. “Well, never mind. No matter what the subject is, they always end up missing the point. But yes, there is such a saying. As I understand it, the method is very simple and doesn’t require any magic power. You only need to stay beside the stone coffin for one night—from dusk until the moment the sun rises at dawn.”

“That is simple,” Juxi said with a snort.

“Those are all boring questions. Let me ask one! I want to know… what does your princess look like?”

Yuanhui sprang up from his chair, drool hanging in a long strand from his handsome face.

“As for what the princess looks like… heh heh heh!” Yu Nai suddenly shouted, “Our princess is the ugliest, most hideous woman I’ve ever seen!!! Her Highness the princess, that cursed bastard, is as tall as an ear of corn, fat as a wine barrel, with a mouth split from her left ear to her right, a whole mouthful of black teeth, blood-red eyes, and a tangled mess of hair! Both her hands dangle all the way to the ground, and her claws are like a wildcat’s! I’m honestly amazed we haven’t sent her portrait to an enemy nation already!”

Her words were vicious enough to leave Yuanhui completely stunned. Even Juxi was startled by Yu Nai’s sudden change in attitude.

Juxi didn’t seem particularly interested in the joke. “Heh. The way you describe your princess makes it sound like you’re wishing her dead. I guess you’re considering marrying her off to someone whose intelligence doesn’t quite meet the standard.”

“Hey, hey, you two, calm down. This isn’t the time to argue about that.” Yuanhui frowned and glanced toward the village entrance.

The faint smile had vanished completely from Juxi’s face. There wasn’t a single mutant here, let alone a corpse—but that didn’t mean this was the best possible situation.

“This is bad. There are still bloodstains on the ground that haven’t dried. As for the surroundings…”

Juxi adopted an extremely professional and meticulous air as he wiped a finger across the debris beside him. His expression turned grave in an instant.

These things weren’t the same as the dust and ash on the ground. They were…

“A very vivid description, and quite realistic… This is what I wanted to know, isn’t it?” Juxi said flatly. “Human flesh really does look like this, but I don’t know whether that matters.”

“It matters,” Yu Nai said gravely.

If that really was human flesh, then it meant those creatures had definitely gone near the castle not long ago.

“The red moon… Do they only attack humans during the red moon?”

Juxi started asking even more strange questions, leaving Yuanhui increasingly confused. But what Juxi said wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Those creatures had contracted a pathogen similar to mad cow disease, and that was the reason corpse fiends existed. Once the night of the blood moon arrived, those monsters would reveal their most primitive nature.

Of course, compared to evil spirits, these creatures were far more terrifying. They were never afraid of daylight!

“Yes,” Yu Nai replied. “At night, everyone outside the palace will die. Also, those creatures only attack the castle during a blood moon, but they don’t do so during every blood moon.”

“Mm… They’ve never attacked during the day? Not even once?”

“No. Not during the day.”

“Do they eat people every time?”

Juxi spat forcefully onto the straw, as if trying to lure those monsters out.

“Come on, we’re about to eat. Could you not be so disgusting?” Yu Nai said, utterly baffled by Juxi’s behavior.

“Don’t worry about it. Better to be careful, Yuanhui.” Juxi urged him on.

“No one was attacked, but… there weren’t any survivors either?” Yuanhui looked out the window, apparently failing to notice any human figures moving around outside.

Yu Nai couldn’t understand it. Their actions were somewhat strange.

“Hurry up and scatter the corpse powder around one of the houses,” Juxi continued. “Those creatures never intended to let a single person who came here escape!!!”

“There’s someone out there!!!”

As he spoke, Yuanhui sped up the rate at which he scattered the medicine.

“Looks like the attack from the direction of the castle has been called off. That’s not a good sign!”

Yu Nai shook her head with some concern, then let out a sigh.

The next morning, Juxi brought Yuanhui and Yu Nai to a room upstairs in the local guard station, searching the place while they were there.

Talking didn’t help much at this point. Yu Nai had never known anything about these monsters, so she was terrified and tongue-tied, barely saying a word the entire way.

On the second floor, they finally found a “person.” By then, however, the person’s body was covered in wounds, as if revealing a great many past events—the mutants had a huge, blood-filled mouth, and their teeth were indeed extremely sharp, especially their upper canines. There were eight of them in total, four on each side.

Their claws were clearly sharper than those of ordinary evil spirits, though not as keen as a corpse fiend’s.

That was probably why this creature’s remains had fortunately been left more or less intact…

Once the investigation was complete, Juxi nodded at Yu Nai and Yuanhui, signaling for Yu Nai to keep watch by the door first.

Then Yuanhui pushed the guard’s remains outside. At a time like this, all they could do was leave the body lying on the ground.

“Sit down. Don’t stand up.” Juxi waved for Yu Nai to sit as he spoke. “Have you gotten all your anger out? Listen to me. We can’t charge in and fight those creatures like a bunch of reckless brutes.”

“Yes, and how are you any different from those goddamn charlatans?”

“You… what’s that supposed to mean?”

“The red moon. There’s less than a week left until the red moon.”

“Mm. And before then? Are you planning to wipe out every mutant within Hallilan?!”

“Uh…”

Juxi’s words left Yu Nai speechless. After all, this place had a population of hundreds of thousands, and…