Yasui: “Trust my foot, more like trust that I’ll get chopped into a mango…”
Suddenly, Yasui fell silent, his eyebrows perking up slightly.
He abruptly felt a faint ache in his shoulders.
It wasn’t the dull ache of lactic acid buildup after a workout; it was a bizarre sensation.
If he had to make a comparison, it felt as though someone had pressed a piece of minus-twenty-degree ice straight against his shoulder blades, the cold seep-seeping into the very marrow of his bones.
A wave of drowsiness hit him like a tide, making his eyelids heavy.
His eyes curved into a smile as he pressed his fingers against his shoulder.
“Ah…
I see…”
There were no ghosts.
Though this feudal old estate felt dreary, he had lived here for over a decade in his past life and had never seen a real ghost.
That left only one possibility—
“A Cursed Spirit is here…”
He couldn’t see it.
His Cursed Energy stat was at 0, making him a complete and utter “monkey”—if not worse than one.
As a transmigrator, Yasui lacked even a speck of Cursed Energy, meaning he didn’t possess the baseline requirement to see Cursed Spirits.
However, his hundredfold five senses granted him a different level of “sight.” His sixth sense was telling him.
A sixth sense is a fascinating thing.
He felt something off.
“How much Cursed Energy do I need to see Cursed Spirits?” Yasui asked.
[6 points.]
The system replied.
“Got it, clear.”
Yasui nodded, his expression completely calm.
He walked over to the desk and used his teeth to tear off the gauze wrapped around his left palm.
The wound hadn’t scabbed over yet, oozing transparent liquid, the dark red slice crawling across his pale palm.
He picked up the blood-stained fruit knife from the floor, wiped it on his pant leg, its blade flashing with a cold glint under the afternoon sun.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, he sliced a fresh line of blood along the old wound.
“Hss—”
In that instant, Yasui’s vision exploded with countless snowy white static dots.
An agonizing pain surged up his arm like high-voltage electricity, burning along the ulnar nerve all the way to his cervical spine before detonating a mushroom cloud in his cerebral cortex.
The excruciating agony felt as if it were sawing through his metacarpal bones bit by bit.
The hundredfold pain multiplier amplified every single nerve signal to a hellish level; he could clearly feel the progressive tearing of skin, fat, and muscle, layer by layer.
His heart rate instantly spiked to 180 beats per minute, his blood pressure rocketed, his vision went dark, and a roaring noise filled his eardrums.
Yet in the very next second, a cold, mechanical force expanded from deep within his heart, forcefully dragging his pulse back down to a normal range and yanking his consciousness back from the brink of shock.
[Never Die from Pain]—Passively triggered.
[Points +7]
Yasui leaned heavily against the edge of the desk, gasping greedily for air as cold sweat dripped from his chin onto the floorboards.
His face was as pale as paper, deep teeth marks bitten into his lips, and an unsuppressible, trembling whimper leaked from his throat.
The pain brought two more tears to his eyes.
“Ha…
Haah…”
Ten seconds later, he recovered.
He raised his hand, stared at the fresh red mark on his palm, and suddenly poked his index finger hard right into the wound.
“Ugh…”
[Points +2]
He poked it again.
[Points +1]
A third time.
[Points +0.3]
“Diminishing returns mechanism?” Yasui’s voice trembled from the pain, yet he broke into a low chuckle.
“Repeated damage to the same wound causes points to decay exponentially…
Interesting.
Meaning if I want to farm points efficiently, I have to create new wound surfaces.”
He raised his head, looking at the system panel.
Current Points: 18.5
“Raise Cursed Energy to 9 points,” he said.
[Received.
Consuming 18 points, Cursed Energy: 0 → 9.
Remaining Points: 0.5.]
A warm, unfamiliar surge of energy abruptly rose from his abdomen, akin to taking a gulp of strong liquor.
The hot current spread along his blood vessels through his four limbs and entire body, eventually pooling behind his eyes.
Yasui blinked.
The world had changed.
In the corner of the room that had been completely empty just a moment ago, something was now crouching.
Within his field of vision, because Yasui had touched the Cursed Spirit, several red words were tagged onto the creature by the system.
[Grade 4~3 Cursed Spirit]
It was a Cursed Spirit.
Grade 4, or barely scraping the edge of Grade 3.
It resembled a clump of black sludge forcefully kneaded together, its surface floating with countless tiny, translucent bubbles.
Every time a bubble popped, it emitted a waft of nauseatingly sweet, decaying stench.
It lacked a fixed shape, but a massive, bloodshot single eye grew on its body, glaring dead at Yasui—or rather, staring at the lethal, poppy-like attraction his body possessed toward Cursed Spirits.
“So that’s what you look like,” Yasui tilted his head, his deep purple pupils shimmering with a hint of subtle glee in the dim room.
“So ugly.
Gross.”
“Why bother living?”
The Cursed Spirit was enraged by his gaze.
[Cursed Spirit’s aggressive desire toward you: 150%]—Physique effect active.
“Hss—”
The Cursed Spirit let out a sharp hiss.
The sound fell outside the range of human hearing, but Yasui’s hundredfold-enhanced hearing captured it with crystal clarity.
The noise was piercing, sounding like fingernails scraping against glass, or a infant crying while being strangled by the throat.
Muffled, raspy, and unpleasant.
It lunged forward abruptly, its black body stretching in midair into a twisted whip-like shadow, moving at extreme speed and dragging along a gust of foul-smelling wind.
Yasui stood his ground, unmoving.
His dynamic vision had been enhanced by his hundredfold senses to an inhuman degree.
In his eyes, the Cursed Spirit’s movement was slowed down by an unknowable multiplier—he could see the spray direction of every single drop of mucus on its body, and could even predict its landing spot 0.3 seconds in advance.
“Left side, slightly lower, haha…”
Yasui softly muttered these words.
Then, he clenched his right fist.
Coating it in a thin layer of Cursed Energy.
Strength: 15.
(Standard for a normal human is 5, meaning his explosive muscular force was three times that of an average person.)
Physical Resistance: 3.
(Meaning his bones and tendons were pitifully fragile, unable to withstand excessive recoil.)
Therefore, he couldn’t clash head-on; he had to strike with precision.
Clashing head-on wouldn’t matter much either—when it came to pain, once you felt enough of it, you got used to it.
Broken arms or legs were just tricky to put away and align.
The moment the Cursed Spirit pounced before his face, Yasui dodged sideways.
The motion was minimal, yet it perfectly evaded the frontal impact of the black sludge.
His right fist thrust out from a bizarre angle, precise and swift, plunging straight into the most vulnerable part of the Cursed Spirit’s body.
“Bang!”
A dull thud.
It wasn’t the collision of flesh against flesh, but rather the explosive sound of something being violently shattered.
The Cursed Spirit didn’t even have time to let out a second hiss before its entire body expanded rapidly, bursting into countless black ashes.
The ashes hovered in the air for a brief moment before dissolving into wisps of black smoke and scattering in the sunlight.
Nothing was left behind.
Yasui drew back his fist, a subtle sting radiating from his knuckles—his hand bones had also let out a strained, light crack due to the instantaneous explosive power.
[Points +2]
Yet he paid it no mind.
He stared at his hand and suddenly burst into laughter.
“Woohoo~”
“Fun~”
[Successfully made Cursed Spirit experience heavy burden, Points +0.2]
[Current Points: 2.7]
Yasui shook his hand, walked over to the window, and pushed open the old wooden window frame.
The April sunlight poured in without reservation, illuminating his face and turning the vermilion dot between his brows an even deeper red.
LanLi: I imagine the protagonist as the one from ‘How to live as the Vampire Lord’ with a red dot in the centre of his forehead.