“Boss, is my fried rice ready yet?”
“And bring me another big bowl of noodles!”
“This…
this is way too delicious!”
Inside a restaurant in Tokyo, enthusiastic praise from the customers came one after another.
The overwhelmingly positive reviews already had Xia Chuan looking forward to the food.
What made him even more interested, however, was the fact that the two people running the kitchen were a pair of red-haired father and son whom he remembered very clearly.
“Hey, kid.
What would you like?”
A man with a beard on his chin and long, loose red hair walked over.
Seeing that Xia Chuan seemed hesitant, he smiled and began recommending the dishes.
“How about the seafood fried rice?
I’m not just bragging, but my boy’s Yukihira-style seafood fried rice has already surpassed mine.
It’s received plenty of praise from everyone around here.”
Although he claimed he wasn’t bragging, the pride he felt for his son was obvious from his expression.
“Then I’ll have the seafood fried rice.”
After placing his order based on the recommendation, Xia Chuan sat down and waited patiently.
His eyes, however, remained fixed on the protagonist of Food Wars!, Soma Yukihira.
He was still the young chef who had yet to enroll in Totsuki Academy.
Less than ten minutes later, a generously portioned plate of seafood fried rice was placed in front of him.
The aroma immediately filled his nose.
The fried rice practically glowed with a golden sheen.
Unable to hide his anticipation, Xia Chuan picked up his spoon and took a bite.
An explosion of rich flavors immediately spread across his tongue.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t some kind of food critic, so he couldn’t give the dish an especially precise evaluation.
There was only one thought that kept echoing through his mind.
Delicious!
As expected of Soma Yukihira.
He might not yet have reached the level of the legendary chef he would eventually become, but this plate of fried rice alone was enough to leave Xia Chuan deeply impressed and wanting more.
“Boss, I’ve transferred the payment.”
“Thank you for your patronage.
Come again.”
After enjoying his meal, Xia Chuan paid the bill.
He even managed to become somewhat acquainted with Soma and his father before finally turning around and leaving.
Once he stepped outside the restaurant, Xia Chuan let out a quiet sigh.
It’s already been…
two months.
He was a transmigrator.
Originally, he had been an ordinary college student with fairly good looks.
Then, after staying up late working on his thesis, he had gone to sleep and somehow awakened in this world.
Not only had his body become several years younger, but he had inexplicably gone from being a university student to a first-year high school student in Japan.
Apart from a detached house and one million yen to his name, he had practically no other assets.
And this world was different from the one he had known in his previous life.
Japan, in particular, was completely different.
At first, when Xia Chuan discovered that many of the famous entertainment works from his previous world didn’t exist here, he had thought he could use his knowledge from his former life to make a fortune.
Unfortunately, he had gotten stuck before even reaching the starting line.
He had neither the artistic skills needed to draw manga nor the writing ability necessary to become a successful novelist.
Later, after seeing familiar anime characters at school and hearing names such as Shuchiin Academy, Sobu High School, and Totsuki Academy, Xia Chuan finally realized the truth.
He had transmigrated into a world where characters from numerous anime series existed together.
At first, he thought he could live out his own ordinary high-school青春 romance.
After all, with so many outstanding characters around him, he wasn’t some monk who had completely abandoned worldly desires.
Naturally, beautiful girls were going to catch his attention.
But!
A few days after starting school, he learned that the neighboring class had a black-haired girl named Miko Yotsuya.
That was when his understanding of this supposedly ordinary crossover world completely changed.
This crossover world wasn’t limited to everyday life.
Only then did Xia Chuan realize why, shortly after arriving in this world, he had frequently seen news reports about gas explosions in various places, urban legends, and mysterious disappearances involving multiple people.
And then something even stranger happened.
It was as if he had been chosen by fate.
A strange energy appeared inside his body, accompanied by a pair of eyes that could awaken and develop tomoe.
Not long afterward, just like that girl who could see things ordinary people couldn’t, Xia Chuan also gained the ability to see supernatural entities.
Just like now.
As he walked along the street, he hadn’t even gone far from the food district when the crowd around him suddenly began leaving the area.
It was as if they had sensed some inexplicable chill.
Before long, the street corner was completely deserted.
Only Xia Chuan remained.
“I’ve lured enough of them here.”
Once there was no one else around, Xia Chuan stopped walking.
He closed his eyes.
Then opened them again.
His originally black eyes had disappeared.
In their place was a pair of blood-red eyes, with three tomoe revolving around each pupil.
At the same time, the previously empty street suddenly filled with ominous black energy in Xia Chuan’s vision.
Hideous evil spirits and twisted monsters surrounded him at a distance.
They stared at the negative energy deliberately released from Xia Chuan’s body like starving beasts staring at a feast.
They were practically drooling with greed.
Anyone else who saw such a horrifying scene would probably either faint on the spot or become so terrified that their legs would give out.
Xia Chuan had been no different at first.
But after discovering how to kill these things—and realizing that the ominous energy they released after death could in turn strengthen his eyes—he had gradually forced himself to confront his fear.
His Sharingan had originally awakened with two tomoe.
After a month of fighting and absorbing negative energy, they had evolved into the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
By now, Xia Chuan could face these ghosts with complete composure.
In fact, he had begun deliberately releasing the cursed aura of his Sharingan to attract them.
“One…
two…
three…
Only five?”
Xia Chuan clicked his tongue after counting them.
Energy rapidly flowed toward his hands.
Bang!
The air exploded with a sharp boom.
Xia Chuan vanished from where he stood.
In the blink of an eye, he appeared directly in front of a grinning evil spirit and threw a brutally powerful punch before it could react.
The evil spirit let out a shriek.
Boom!
Its body was blasted apart.
The black, ominous energy scattered from its remains immediately transformed into negative energy and flowed back toward Xia Chuan’s eyes.
Perhaps because they had witnessed their “companion” being killed, or perhaps because they realized that the human standing before them could actually see them, the remaining evil spirits began emitting strange noises.
They opened their grotesque mouths and charged toward Xia Chuan.
Xia Chuan’s eyes flashed.
He charged straight toward them.
His Sharingan easily tracked their movements.
He dodged one attack after another and immediately counterattacked.
Every strike was lethal.
In less than a minute, the attacking evil spirits had all been reduced to scattered ash.
Just as before, the negative energy they left behind seemed to stimulate and strengthen his eyes.
Feeling the changes in his ocular power, Xia Chuan had a rough estimate of his current progress.
It seemed that reaching the Mangekyo Sharingan would still take some time.
There was an enormous gulf between the Three-Tomoe Sharingan and the Mangekyo Sharingan.
But Xia Chuan wasn’t in any hurry.
Although the ghosts he had just encountered looked vicious and terrifying, they were ultimately nothing more than soft targets.
Based on his experiences over the past two months, Xia Chuan had roughly divided the supernatural entities he had encountered into several categories.
The ones he had just dealt with belonged to the ordinary category.
They were essentially the same type of evil spirits that Miko Yotsuya frequently encountered in the original story.
As long as they couldn’t be seen, they were generally harmless.
There was another category consisting of weaker evil spirits that remained mostly harmless even when they were visible.
These were the most common.
At first, Xia Chuan had used them to train himself to overcome his fear.
However, once the negative energy released by these weak spirits became almost useless for strengthening his eyes, he stopped paying much attention to these lowest-level supernatural entities.
And then there was the final category.
These were the supernatural phenomena that had actually made the news—the special areas and haunted locations where people had died.
Places feared by the public.
The curses nurtured in such locations were undoubtedly far more extraordinary.
They would also inevitably provide much more energy for his Sharingan.
Even though Xia Chuan knew this, he hadn’t recklessly ventured into such places.
After all, this wasn’t the Naruto world.
The energy inside his body wasn’t chakra either.
He couldn’t use it to perform ninjutsu.
His current martial abilities had largely been obtained through the Sharingan’s ability to copy various combat and martial-arts techniques.
As for attacks that could actually harm evil spirits, the only method he had discovered was to concentrate his energy into his fists and use physical attacks to damage them.
And that was only dealing with physical combat.
Who knew what kind of supernatural abilities the more powerful ghosts might possess?
After realizing that he hadn’t arrived in an ordinary crossover world, Xia Chuan understood one thing clearly.
Unless he was completely confident in a situation, he would never recklessly underestimate the danger and put himself at risk.
After dealing with the ghosts he had lured out with the cursed aura of his Sharingan, Xia Chuan’s eyes gradually returned to their ordinary black color.
Apart from using the energy within his body to sense his surroundings over a certain range, his vision had also returned to that of the normal world.
Come to think of it…
Even if his plan of making money by reproducing famous works from his previous life wasn’t going particularly well, perhaps he could still make a fortune through this so-called “spirit extermination” business.