Chapter 123: The Cursed Spirit (Memoir III)

The three of us stayed inside the elevator for over half an hour. None of us dared to step out, and we had no idea what was going on. The monsters seemed to fear the elevator itself, but what exactly was it about the elevator that terrified them? We couldn’t figure it out and could only urge Jiang Luyu to continue his story.

(The story continues)

The Japanese had hired numerous ninjas from their homeland to come to China to hunt down the mutated “Maluda,” designating it in their files under the codename “Cursed Spirit.” From then on, the files on the Cursed Spirit were guarded by a lone surviving veteran, who kept watch over the secret throughout the century. It was only one day that this veteran shared the story with Jiang Luyu.

From that day forward, the Japanese lived in constant fear because this mutated Maluda only killed Japanese soldiers. It wasn’t until over three hundred Japanese soldiers had perished that they finally discovered the creature’s hiding place.

Conventional weapons proved useless against the Cursed Spirit. By the time the ninjas dispatched from Japan arrived, nearly a thousand Japanese soldiers had already died. Yet Japan publicly claimed these soldiers succumbed to illness, completely sealing off the truth about the Cursed Spirit.

At that time, Japan’s elite ninjas were far more numerous than the mere ten of today. There were nearly a hundred elite ninjas then, including three who were on the verge of reaching the “Infinite Ninja” rank. The current ten elite ninjas wouldn’t even register as a threat in the eyes of those earlier warriors.

“Do you know how those elite ninjas met their end?” Jiang Luyu suddenly inserted the question mid-story.

“Didn’t they all get killed by the Cursed Spirit? Isn’t that obvious?” Wang Yong answered gleefully, pleased with his guess.

“You idiot. If they had all been killed by the Cursed Spirit, do you think I would have had the strength to reach the seventeenth floor?” Jiang Luyu shot Wang Yong a disdainful glance before continuing.

After the Cursed Spirit was subdued by those elite ninjas, it was taken to a laboratory for modification. Its consciousness and will were controlled and made subject to the ninjas’ command.

To keep this secret under wraps, the invading Japanese military covertly slaughtered these elite ninjas. This mutual betrayal stemmed from the ninjas’ excessive trust in their own Yamato clan.

But just as they had killed their elite ninjas and succeeded in their experiments, before they could deploy the Cursed Spirit on the battlefield, Japan suddenly announced its surrender. In their fury, the Japanese soldiers collectively committed ritual suicide by disembowelment. The Cursed Spirit was entrusted to a Japanese businessman to be transported back to Japan by the commanding officer.

“That’s where the story should have ended, but unexpectedly, that businessman didn’t hand over the Cursed Spirit to the government upon arriving in Japan. Instead, he used it in his own commercial ventures, which grew larger and larger until he brought it back to China to develop the Qinghua Group. And even more terrifyingly, the Cursed Spirit had mutated and evolved during that time,” Jiang Luyu said, his eyes fixed on the two green beams of light opposite us. Through the night-vision goggles, the creature looked like a mass of flesh—its grotesque face, muscular limbs, and steel-blade-like fingernails clearly visible.

“So how did you get past it?” I asked.

Driven by curiosity, Wang Yong voiced what I was thinking as well. I truly wanted to know how Jiang Luyu managed to get in when his story sounded so incredible.

“That’s simple — I used ninjutsu to fly over it. But you guys, not so sure. You have to understand, it was modified by the Japanese, so only Japanese tools and techniques can safely get past it,” Jiang Luyu clicked his tongue and shrugged helplessly.

“Holy hell, that’s so advanced! Can you just speak Japanese to it?” Wang Yong leaned forward eagerly and asked.

Honestly, that posed a problem for me. My Japanese was poor, and I knew no ninjutsu. Looks like I wasn’t going anywhere. Even though I was confident I could defeat the creature, I certainly didn’t want to slap my hands against that pile of flesh.

Jiang Luyu seemed to read my thoughts and patted me on the shoulder. “Dong, whether you want to or not, you have to go. If we enter the seventeenth floor without you, with just me and Wang Yong’s strength, we’ll definitely get caught.”

Reluctantly, I braced myself and took the first step with Jiang Luyu. Once we left the elevator, there was no turning back. The moment we stepped out, the elevator began to ascend, rising higher and higher until it gradually disappeared.

“Clack, clack, clack.”

Our footsteps echoed sharply along the five-meter-wide, four-meter-high corridor. The sound of our shoes striking the marble floor reverberated in my ears like a death knell.

The two-hundred-meter walk was over in moments. Soon, we were less than ten meters from the Cursed Spirit. Now I could clearly see the true form of the creature.

Damn, it looked like an octopus, its entire body blocking the elevator entrance, sealing the door completely.

“Kon'nichiwa!” Jiang Luyu greeted the Cursed Spirit in perfect Japanese. The creature sluggishly shifted its massive body away from the elevator door and used one claw to grab Jiang Luyu inside.

That was way too easy! Just a simple Japanese greeting tamed this monstrous behemoth. Next up was Wang Yong.

“Kon’nichiwa, kutsu ni issho wa, otsukaresama desu,” Wang Yong said smoothly.

To everyone’s surprise, he passed through without issue, leaving me standing there dumbfounded. I didn’t speak Japanese, and I couldn’t use ninjutsu. In desperation, I recalled a phrase we used to joke about in high school and decided to try it.

“Potato nali di wa, suburban di wa, yi wa yi ma dai?”

The moment I spoke, I saw Jiang Luyu and the others inside the elevator exchange nervous glances. Jiang Luyu gave me a “thumbs up” but clutched his chest and pointed urgently behind me.

“Damn it!”

“Boom!”

Before I could even turn my head, a chilling gust swept over me, followed by a sharp pain. I didn’t even have time to scream; I cursed once and was slammed underground, not even exposing my head. If this had happened to an ordinary person, they’d be crushed to bits, buried three meters deep in the marble floor.

“You’re done for!” I roared from underground. Instantly, the corridor filled with flying debris and dust, as if time itself had frozen.

“Boom!”

The floor beneath me exploded outward. Stones smashed against the walls like bullets, leaving holes, and many shards embedded into the Cursed Spirit’s flesh.

Facing this octopus-like eight-armed beast, I felt utterly heroic—like a movie protagonist. I hovered twenty centimeters above the ground, silver hair flowing, my pale face marked with a string of purple talismans. My red eyes burned with fury, locked onto the mutated Maluda, sparks almost flying.

This eight-armed Cursed Spirit no longer possessed any human intellect. It didn’t care about my aura or presence. It believed that because I was smaller, I was weaker. Its eight tentacles, each three to four meters long and tipped with half-meter steel claws, swung toward me—and I met them head-on.

“Thud, thud, thud, thud.”

Each of my punches carried the weight of a thousand pounds, yet the creature remained unfazed—as if nothing had happened. It reminded me of Chinese Tai Chi, using force to neutralize force. The brown, fleshy growths on the Cursed Spirit acted like natural armor, making ordinary strength powerless to harm its core.

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