Love Is the Greatest Curse

"Faithless man!"

"Men are all liars. All of you deserve to die. You too. Die!"

Inside the room, the woman's venomous voice became the only sound.

Black hair twisted through every corner. Pairs of delicate hands appeared and vanished in the air.

Ren sat cross-legged on the sofa, perfectly at ease in the hellish scene.

The screams, the black hair, the blood-slick hands, none of it seemed able to affect him.

He sat there like the master of this haunted domain.

If the curse was the source of all this horror, then Ren now looked like the one who ruled over curses.

His eyes slowly opened, revealing that pale-moon color.

Looking at everything around him, excitement flashed through them.

"Faithless man! Give me your life!"

As Ren opened his eyes, a woman's figure slowly appeared in midair.

Her body was soaked. Blood clung to her from head to toe. Long black hair covered her face.

Countless hands clawed around her, and the black hair circled like snakes.

Through the layers of hair, hate-filled eyes locked on Ren as if he were the man who had betrayed her.

The hatred was almost tangible, dripping from her eyes.

"What a powerful curse. So this is what's inside the jade."

Ren turned the jade over in his hand.

The carved head on its surface had become blurred after the curse appeared.

"Faithless man. Faithless."

"You're an ancient special grade. Surely you know more than one line."

Ren spread his hands helplessly.

If a cursed spirit kept repeating one phrase in front of an ordinary sorcerer, that sorcerer might already have wet himself.

A cursed spirit capable of speaking clearly and consistently ranked near the top even among special grades.

This was a human-shaped ancient special grade with obvious intelligence.

But Ren was clearly not ordinary.

After listening to the woman's wails repeat in his ear, impatience appeared on his face.

The hair and hands that kept trying to attack him were blocked by Heaven's blue light.

That blue light, however, was far dimmer than before.

It was fading.

The curse sensed that the force stopping it was about to disappear.

The black-haired cursed spirit became excited. She screamed and waved both hands.

"They all deserve to die. Faithless men all deserve to die. Die!"

All the black hair in the room thrashed wildly, gathering into a giant wave above Ren.

Then it crashed down.

"An antique really is different," Ren said, still unhurried in the face of danger. "Heaven's stored cursed energy is completely drained."

"Faithless man! Die!"

With the cursed spirit's miserable scream, the wave fell.

Endless black hair swallowed Ren and the entire room, stirring everything into chaos.

After a long while, the black tide calmed.

The cursed spirit seemed to quiet as well, murmuring her obsession.

"Faithless... faithless man..."

The grief in her voice could not be hidden.

It was as if killing Ren, that "faithless man," had not brought her any joy.

"Love really is the greatest curse in this world."

A voice sounded by the cursed spirit's ear.

"Faithless!"

The cursed spirit became violent again.

The black tide churned, ready to rise once more.

Then a darkness deeper than darkness itself unfolded.

It was an endless night that represented the end of all things.

It also represented every unknown shadow.

The instant that night appeared, the raging cursed spirit stopped moving.

Everything around her froze.

The tide no longer rolled.

The pale hands no longer emerged.

The cursed spirit floated in the air, blank and still.

Endless night climbed over her body.

Ren looked at the now-quiet cursed spirit and brought two fingers together.

A profound aura slowly spread from him.

The root of that endless night came from his joined fingers.

"Spirit..."

Ren spoke softly.

His hand sign changed.

The darkness that had climbed onto the cursed spirit instantly covered her entire body, invading her from within.

"Dominion."

Ren's hands came together.

The black night erupted.

Countless dark chains surfaced across the cursed spirit's body, inscribed with mysterious runes, then sank away again.

The cursed spirit began pulling everything back.

The black hair receded like a tide.

After a while, Ren settled back onto the sofa.

Before him, the cursed spirit that had looked invincible moments earlier stood obediently, like a pet.

"Without the cursed object, that almost went badly."

Ren toyed again with the jade in his hand. It was the cursed object tied to this resentful bride.

Spirit Dominion could control cursed spirits and make them into puppets, suppressing their consciousness and forcing them to obey the user.

In theory, the newly unlocked Spirit Dominion should not have been enough to control this ancient special grade.

But the spirit had been sealed for too long. Its consciousness had not fully awakened.

On top of that, its root cursed object was in Ren's hand.

By directly controlling the object and striking the spirit's already blurred will, Ren suppressed it at once.

The process looked simple, but it had been dangerous.

Even Ren would have had difficulty defeating such an ancient curse directly.

After Heaven's stored cursed energy was exhausted, the odds would have dropped further.

Fortunately, the third Supreme Art he had just awakened had delivered.

It had truly reduced the ancient curse to a puppet.

But commanding cursed spirits was not Spirit Dominion's strongest function.

Its true ability was extracting a subdued spirit's cursed technique and making it Ren's own.

In other words, every successful use of Spirit Dominion could grant Ren a powerful cursed technique.

"Don't disappoint me."

Ren looked at the long-haired cursed spirit and slowly raised his left hand.

A black vortex appeared in his palm.

Endless suction erupted.

The cursed spirit turned into a stream of black energy and was swallowed without resistance.

Black aura wrapped around Ren.

His eyes gradually lost focus.

Countless scenes flashed through them.

Waiting for a lover's return.

The pain of betrayal.

The sorrow of being condemned by the world.

The helpless curse of being pinned to the ground.

The resentment of being abandoned by an era.

Everything faded rapidly before Ren's eyes.

After a long while, the black energy receded.

Ren's gaze trembled slightly.

In that instant, he had experienced the entire chain of cause and effect that formed the curse.

The resentment of countless abandoned women from an age of war.

The anger and grief of women burned away by war.

"So love really is the greatest curse in this world."

Ren's voice drifted.

For a moment, his eyes seemed to touch some memory he did not want to recall.

Then he pressed every emotion down.

Snap.

Ren snapped his fingers.

Space around him shifted.

Strong hands appeared from nowhere, carrying terrifying force as if they could tear through anything.

"Repeating an attack from any direction, as many times as needed. Not bad for a special grade."

Ren nodded, satisfied.

The ability itself was not absurd on its own.

But paired with Ren's body, which was already like a steel beast, it could produce terrifying results.

"And now I have to clean the room again."

Ren looked at the destroyed room with a headache.

Then his brows tightened.

Something felt wrong inside his body.

Black aura surfaced across him.

He opened his palm in the air, and strands of black energy gathered there, pulling against his body as if something were hiding inside him.

A stream of black energy was dragged out.

"This is..."

Ren stared at his palm in surprise.

A miniature monster only a dozen centimeters long lay in his hand.

Eight heads.

Eight tails.

Rotten flesh.

Blood-red snake eyes.

Iron and stone covering its body.

It was Yamata no Orochi, the curse he had devoured.

Unexpectedly, it had not been completely digested. Instead, it had lost consciousness and turned into its most basic essence, hiding within Ren's body.

Spirit Dominion had found it.

Incomplete curse detected. Spirit Dominion cannot be used on this target.

This portion of Yamata no Orochi was incomplete. Otherwise, Ren would never have absorbed it so easily.

He had known that from the beginning.

At first, he thought devouring it would be enough. Since Six Vaults Devourer had reached completion, there was no need to go looking for the other pieces.

But now things were different.

If he could use Spirit Dominion on Yamata no Orochi, what kind of surprise would that ancient curse, born with Japan itself, bring him?

Ren felt a flicker of anticipation.

"Interesting. Where are the other two cursed objects?"

He rubbed his chin unconsciously.

"Never mind. No rush. Before finding Orochi, I should raise Spirit Dominion's mastery first."

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