Given how urgent things were—with the world at risk of ending any minute—there was no time for dithering or a tighter plan. They had to move now.
Since the monster—Shiranui—had already filled the surface, and attacking would only make more flesh grow, carving a physical path down to the subterranean ley pool to seize the Grail would be slow and pointless.
Li Pan made the call: take the shortcut, use its backdoor—use a key.
A-Qi opened a door with a silver key. On the other side was the underground cell block of Chiyoda Prison—maximum security. The place was absurdly sturdy: after two nukes and relentless bombardment it still hadn't collapsed. No wonder Kotaro never broke out…
They filed in. Li Pan and Yamazaki Ayato led with a monomolecular fire axe and a high-energy power saw. Ashiya Shigui held the middle. A-Qi covered the rear with the shredder and a portable battery pack.
Li and Yamazaki hacked through steel doors. Feeling the tide of earth-qi below, Li took point and guided them deeper.
The outer flesh had grown outward under surface fire; belowground it was thinner—veiny capillaries, slick membranous films creeping along prison walls like some obscene wallpaper of lichen. The deeper they went the thicker and more alive it became, as if the entire prison had become part of Monster.Shiranui's body. The nearer the goal, the tighter the space. It was like walking across a soft mattress, footing sinking unevenly, juices seeping everywhere; slip, and knobby growths would bud into grasping hands.
Li tried chopping. Wounds sealed fast, with larger buds swelling to choke the corridor. With the Grail as amplifier, damage only bred more meat.
But when he poured "monkey sword-qi" into the axe edge, the cuts didn't heal. For raw lethality that sword-qi really did rank near the top—devils, gods, monsters, none of it mattered.
So he muscled through—infusing the blade, hauling teammates free when the wall tried to swallow them. As the tunnel narrowed, Li alone hacked point while the others squeezed along behind, forcing toward the throat.
"We're blocked—the meat wall's too thick! It's packed solid inside!"
End of passage. The ley pool should be just beyond. Li chopped twice, rammed the haft— the wall convulsed. This was probably the main stalk of that "flower." Hacking through would take too long, and the passage behind was already sprouting shut.
"Key! Now—open!"
Yamazaki jammed a silver key straight into the meat wall. They slipped through single file, just ahead of the onrushing flesh.
Li steadied himself—and blinked. Verdant mountains. Cedar giants. His hazmat suit and axe were gone; he was in a suit and tie.
Wrong. Not his body. Not reality. The interstice.
A gap between worlds. An extradimensional pocket, a cave-heaven, a non-real stratum—Monster.Shiranui's own space, woven from the Grail, bound spirits, and the ley line.
It was clearly built from Shiranui Kiriko's memories and ninja illusion craft—cheap set dressing next to his brother's cave-dwelling: where the latter rebuilt every grain of sand, this was pasted-in stock textures.
Such illusions couldn't hold Li. He closed his eyes, intoned the Supreme Severing-Evil Heart Sutra, condensed his spirit, turned into a thumb-long teal ray, slipped the snare, and flashed into the forested hills.
He soon found the others. Shiranui still had a sliver of self and hadn't harmed his team: A-Qi wandered the hills with the shredder, Ashiya was already chanting and forming seals to summon shikigami, and Yamazaki snored in the grass.
There were others too—rival corporate operatives who'd tried to infiltrate. Some were unconscious like Yamazaki; those with stronger minds were waking, but none could break the dream.
And this wasn't the real world. Their super-bodies and comms "didn't work." They drifted through the woods, investigating—then became prey, picked off by the dream's guardian demons.
Yes: the dream was a vast hunting ground. Besides people there were grotesqueries: the fused sealed spirits that Kōga had kept—and that the monster had absorbed.
The great tengu was most obvious, now in classic crow-winged form, shrieking across the sky, dropping into the trees to pulp prey with a single punch and snack on heart and liver.
Other demons: a back-to-back four-woman conjoined abomination, eight arms, scuttling and spinning like a top to tear and eat; a gigantic cocoon-grub with many smiling women's faces singing to lure men close, then hugging them and stabbing brain-sucking proboscises in; and "people" wearing kunoichi skins—hollow eye sockets, empty inside—who acted like sack-ghosts, bagging victims and kneading them to paste.
Even in a dream, human minds couldn't withstand that terror. The hunters devoured the operatives; their inner "qi" dispersed. Dead—truly dead.
Watching them feed, Li could sense these things weren't human at all—no feelings, no minds—true monsters.
Shiranui clearly couldn't control that many spirits; she'd let them roam the outer reaches to kill intruders.
A few demons sensed Li's peeping but, busy eating, and unable to grasp that flitting teal mote, ignored him.
No time to waste. Li streaked deeper and found a hidden village.
Kōga no Sato—the ninja hamlet. So this world was stitched from Shiranui's home.
A teal flicker; Li took human form and entered.
Empty streets. In the manor at the center, twenty bodies lay under white shrouds.
"Kiriko? Are you inside?"
He felt a frightening aura within and called out.
Clack—clack—footsteps. A woman emerged in a red kimono—bare thighs, wooden clogs, a courtesan's paint, seven or eight parts the look of Kōga Asaji. She leaned in the doorway, lazy voice:
"She isn't here."
Li squinted at her, then at the covered cadavers.
"You're the nine-tailed fox, aren't you?"
She didn't deny it. Sliding down the frame to sit on the floor, she crossed her legs, tilted a flirtatious eye at him.
"You the Dragon King?"
"…Say I'm what?"
She sniffed. "Human? Smells… foul."
She packed a pipe, lit it, drew, and said in Kansai lilt:
"For the Dragon King's sake, I won't fight you. If you're after Kiriko, no need to tangle with me.
"She took the Grail to touch the Root. If you want her, you'll have to go deeper—into the void."
"How?" Li asked. "If you can point the way, we pay. I just want the Grail. Company keeps its word."
She pouted, blew a ring, and tapped the shrouds with the pipe stem.
"I'm guarding these shards of souls. When it's done, she gives me the body."
A price—good. Li smiled.
"If you just want a body, that's the easiest thing in the world nowadays. With or without parts, hair or no hair—say the word.
"If you insist on this one, I can help—if you can truly control it. I'll promise this: once I have the Grail, I'll erase Shiranui and seal the other spirits, and help you claim the vessel. Deal?
"Or you can gamble on whether Kiriko—or the Kōga who sealed you for years—will keep their promises. I saw plenty of demons guarding this place. Maybe she promised them the same thing."
The fox cocked her head, intrigued.
"You'd really kill her? In Asaji's memories, you three looked… close."
"We're adults. Sometimes people are lonely. Mutual, physical, nothing more.
"And there's a limit. I've pulled her out more than three times. Now it's self-rescue time."
He pointed upward.
"See that?"
She glanced at the blank sky, almost scoffing at a feint—then focused, pupils flaring twin golden beams that swept the heavens.
"…What is that?"
Li wore a country-bumpkin grin. "An eleven-dimensional warship projected into 3D. If it's projecting here, this pocket's inside its firing solution.
"If I don't recover the Grail in time and stop Shiranui, they'll open fire and wipe every detectable space.
"Forget the body—your soul won't survive. I'm not bluffing. That's what's about to happen.
"Yes, I've got history with Kiriko. I still prefer living. I won't die on her hill.
"So whether or not you trust me, point the way. You've nothing to lose."
She thought, then smiled.
"Fine. Kiriko can't reach the Root; this was her limit. But you… perhaps. I'll send you to her."
She opened her mouth, extending a pink tongue.
"Enter here."
Li winced. "Now? Really?"
An eye-roll. "Breaking this dream layer fast—that's the quickest path.
"What, too small for you? I'll change heads."
Her face exploded into a truck-sized fox muzzle, fangs bared, throat a black vortex, a rank gale sucking him in.
Li sighed—should've taken the "small door." He murmured the heart sutra, became teal light, and dove down her gullet.
Light reversed. Film reeled past. Seconds that felt like a lifetime. A lurch—and a door.
A lone door in void; beyond it, nothing.
He swallowed, knocked, and pulled it open.
Inside: a Han-style tea room. Scrolls on either side:
"In that moment I held no mark of self, no mark of man, no mark of beings."
"All marks are non-marks; all beings are non-beings."
The Grail sat on the low table, filled with some liquid.
"Shiranui" in black-and-white Daoist robes, hair in a wooden pin like a priestess, sat there and gestured him in.
Li didn't move. This wasn't her—just her skin. Empty sockets, all black, nothing inside.
It spoke—in a man's voice Li had never heard and yet somehow knew:
"Sit."
He sat opposite, eyeing the Grail.
It spoke again:
"I want to fish that fish."
"…Fish?"
It pointed up. "That one."
The eleven-dimensional ship.
It nodded, amused.
"Humans are full of wants. Give them a chance and they can't hold it.
"Useless, yet unwilling. Thus: mortals.
"Well then—your turn."
Li's throat was dry. "M-my turn?"
"It" flipped a hand and produced the jade plaque from the Dragon King shrine.
"Make a wish—anything. Help me draw that big fish out from the far side of the worldskin."
Then, holding the plaque that even a nuke couldn't scratch, "it" casually snapped it in two.
Li gulped, lifted the Grail, and drank—
…Tch. No taste. Another cup of plain water?
"It" chuckled.
"Purity and non-action, hm? So you really learned something from 'over there.'
"Not bad. The Root is fair.
"The more rules you change, the higher the price.
"No desire, hold to your Dao—easy to say, hard to do.
"This ordeal—you pass."
Two fingers rubbed; the broken jade knit whole. "It" handed it back.
"Go sleep."
"Wait—you—"
Li's eyes flew open.
He was back in his body, seated in the Dragon King's shrine. Right hand: the Grail. Left: the jade plaque.
The plaque pulsed teal, like a heartbeat. Look closely: a hairline on the surface—natural vein, or the crack just mended.
He blinked hard, squeezed both artifacts—real. He crouched and crawled out of the smashed little temple.
Outside, rain.
Blood rain.
The giant floral mass gripping the spring and rock had collapsed into gore.
Huge clots coalesced into monsters like those he'd seen in the dream and fled, scattering for freedom.
More flesh sloughed away—tons of slurry slapping down the cave walls like a red mudslide.
He glanced down. The blown-out altars. And a thing by the spring.
That "thing" had to be Shiranui herself. Best he could name it: her "skin" had been borrowed. With the Grail gone, the flesh unraveled. She was a withered husk—like a drift of dead wood by a pond.
She still had a breath. Li hurried over.
"Kiriko—Kiriko! That… what was that thing?"
Her fading eyes found him.
"…Please… this time… let me die…"
Li stared at the Grail, then did nothing.
And the woman died.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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