Hearing footsteps, Shuichi raised his head.
Seeing the three people entering, he was stunned for a moment.
The appearance of these three people was very strange, especially Tsunade and Shu; their clothes did not look like people from this town at all.
“You are…”
Shuichi stood up in confusion, “My father’s friends when he was still alive?”
Shu did not answer his question, he stared toward the center of the mourning hall: “You are Shuichi, right? Can you let me see your father’s corpse?”
The atmosphere instantly froze.
Tsunade who followed behind twitched the corner of her mouth, almost unable to refrain from kicking Shu’s butt.
(Is this brat’s brain having problems?!)
(People’s family is in mourning, you as a stranger walk in, without the slightest pleasantries, directly ask to see another person’s father’s corpse. Isn’t this clearly asking for trouble!)
Sure enough.
Shuichi’s mother suddenly raised her head, her eyes burning red staring sharply at Shu: “What did you say?! Who on earth are you! Who gave you permission to be disrespectful to my late husband!”
Several relatives who were helping with the ceremony in the mourning hall also stopped their work, simultaneously turning their heads, glaring at the three people with unfriendly gazes, looking ready to chase them out at any moment if there was a single wrong word.
“Sorry, Ma’am, I know this request is very impolite.” Shu’s expression didn’t change.
“But please believe me, I didn’t come to look for trouble. We are investigators from the Supernatural Bureau, we specifically handle extraordinary events like this.”
Shu said with a deadpan face: “I think you all have also realized that your husband’s cause of death is very abnormal, right? Your husband didn’t die ordinarily, but perished due to a strange supernatural phenomenon.”
Tsunade standing behind Shu, hearing that brat talk nonsense with a straight face, the corner of her eyes twitched violently again.
(This brat’s skin thickness, really almost matches Jiraiya’s.) Tsunade cursed inwardly, but she also realized that in a situation like this, she must not blow the cover of the act.
“What extraordinary event? What supernatural phenomenon? What kind of nonsense are you talking about!”
Shuichi’s mother didn’t pay any attention at all, she pointed toward the door and shouted angrily, “My husband died of sudden illness! Our family doesn’t need scammers like you to investigate! We don’t welcome you here, get lost out of here immediately!”
Seeing that, several relatives immediately surrounded them, rolling up their sleeves, and preparing to push them out.
“Wait a minute! Mom, don’t get emotional yet!”
Just as the situation was about to spiral out of control, Shuichi who had been on the side all along finally spoke up.
He walked quickly to the front of his mother to block her, then turned to look at Shu: “Supernatural Bureau? Investigators? Just now you said… strange phenomenon? Do you know something? About… that spiral?”
Shu nodded slightly inwardly.
Sure enough, there was no mistake that he was the male protagonist in the original story.
Shuichi was the only sober person in the entire Kurozu Town who from the very beginning was very sensitive to feeling that something was wrong in the town.
If not for his childhood friend, Goshima Kirie, if he had fled from Kurozu Town from the very beginning, he definitely would have survived.
“Shuichi!” Shuichi’s mother looked at her son in disbelief, trembling with anger, “Have you lost your mind? Have you lost your senses from being too sad? To the point of believing the words of these scammers!”
“Mom, Dad’s condition when he passed away… You saw it yourself! It’s completely impossible to have been caused by an ordinary illness!” Shuichi retorted through clenched teeth.
Then, he turned toward Shu and took a deep breath: “You guys really want to see? I agree! But I must remind you, my father’s remains… are very terrifying, normal people who see them will definitely have nightmares.”
“No way! I will never allow you to touch my husband’s remains!” Shuichi’s mother completely lost her sanity and was about to charge forward to chase them out.
Shuichi wanted to persuade again, but his mother was already in a semi-hysterical state.
“Troublesome.”
Shu sighed, he directly activated the Sharingan.
A pair of pitch-black pupils instantly turned into a blazing red, with a single black tomoe spinning rapidly inside them.
Illusion: Sharingan!
Just as the gaze of Shu and Shuichi’s mother met in the air.
The anger in Shuichi’s mother’s eyes instantly vanished, replaced by confusion, and then she limp-fell onto the tatami beside her as if she had fallen asleep.
“I see, it seems Genjutsu can be used normally in another world.”
Shu deactivated the Sharingan and said thoughtfully.
Tsunade glanced at him briefly and said curtly: “That’s obvious, isn’t it? The essence of Genjutsu is actually disrupting the opponent’s chakra flow.”
“And chakra itself is fundamentally extracted from mental energy and physical energy at a 1 to 1 ratio. Even though this is another world, ordinary people here are different from us and cannot actively extract chakra, but we just need to disrupt their physical energy or mental energy and they will still fall under Genjutsu.”
Shu nodded in understanding.
Right at this moment, Tsunade suddenly leaned in.
“Hey, brat, come to think of it, judging from your age, aren’t you Shizune’s classmate at the ninja academy?”
Shu coughed twice: “Shizune? Uh… I was indeed in the same batch as her.”
Back then Shizune had long become Tsunade’s apprentice and could now stand on her own, while he himself was over twenty years old and still a Genin, truly embarrassing.
“Ahem, let’s forget about that first, Tsunade-sama.” Shu immediately changed the subject and pointed toward the center of the mourning hall: “Let’s take a look at this cursed person.”
Tsunade also knew that the top priority was the job, she cast aside the urge to tease and walked to the center of the mourning hall together with Shu.
Shu reached out and pulled away the white cloth covering it.
“Sss—”
As soon as the white cloth was lifted, even Tsunade who was used to seeing various kinds of severed limbs on the battlefield and possessed nerves of steel had her pupils narrow upon seeing what was inside the basin, unable to help drawing in a cold breath.
“This… what kind of weird thing is this?!”
It could no longer be called a corpse, even the human shape was hard to recognize.
Inside a large round wooden basin, the limbs and torso of Shuichi’s father were forcibly pulled by an incomprehensible force, then rolled round and round and entwined with each other like twisted rope.
The bones throughout his body had clearly been crushed inch by inch by that force, but strangely, his skin had no signs of bursting or bleeding at all.
The intact skin tightly wrapped around that twisted lump of flesh, until it finally formed a…
perfect spiral shape.
The thing that made one’s hair stand on end the most was his face.
That face had also been pulled until it underwent severe deformation, right at the center of that human body’s spiral.
Shuichi’s father’s eyes bulged out until they almost fell from their sockets, but in his pupils there was not a trace of suffering, instead leaving behind a sort of bizarre satisfaction.
(Strange, truly very strange!)
Even though Shu had prepared himself, the corners of his mouth still twitched.
(Truly living up to its reputation as a bizarre horror manga!)