The moment Asakura pushed open the door and stepped into the center of the shrine, the atmosphere in the air instantly became different.
Previously, whether it was the shrine outside or the tenshu on the inside, both carried a thick Shinto style.
Yet at the shrine's core, it became starkly different.
It was a heavy scent of sandalwood—not light stick incense, but a scent closer to what accumulates over years and decades of burning deep within a temple. If this space had truly been born when the 'miracle' descended, it indeed carried five hundred years of weight.
The space before them was extremely high.
So high that the roof beams were invisible at a glance, allowing one to see only the layered darkness above intertwined with lamplights. Unlike the lanterns outside, if one looked closely, the lights here were all lotus lamps—the kind where before transmigrating, Asakura could pay one or two hundred at Todai-ji to 'make a wish' for one.
The beams and pillars still retained the structure of a shrine, yet the overall atmosphere was closer to a main hall of a temple, carrying an even older, more oppressive religious feel.
The ground was paved with smooth wooden boards, polished to near reflectivity, mirroring the flickering candlelight around; those swaying reflections of light and shadow rendered the sense of space all the more ethereal.
And right in the center, there stood a colossal divine statue.
That was neither a Shinto Shintai nor a common Buddha statue seen in the mortal world.
It was an entity with an obvious Asura style: multi-armed, overlapping, and aggressively structured, yet "contained" in a bizarre posture.
The statue had its eyes closed, its facial features lowered.
That face was not ferocious; rather, it appeared peaceful. Yet this serenity was abnormally jarring—for an Asura, possessing benevolent features was an anomaly in itself.
The lines on the divine statue's face were carved (if it really was carved) extremely delicately, the lip line tightly closed, the eye sockets slightly sunken, yet without a furrow between the brows.
What caused even more discomfort was the proportion.
Its knees were almost level with a person's line of sight, its entire torso extending upward to occupy most of the space. Looking up, one could only see layered arms, torsos, and heads gradually fading into the shadows amid the lamplight. If someone with megalophobia were here, they would likely already be feeling mentally unsettled.
The candlelight of the lotus lamps flowed across its body.
Not illuminating it, but looking as if it were being absorbed—Asakura had once heard that there was a type of black called 'Vantablack' that was blacker than any other black, the kind that wouldn't reflect even a sliver of light. Right now, the statue gave off a strong flavor of so-called Vantablack.
After the light fell upon the statue's surface, it would dim slightly, as if part of it had been swallowed by that pitch-black material, giving the entire statue an 'absorptive' light texture.
All around the statue hung countless cloth banners.
Those cloth banners hung down from the roof beams in layers, slicing almost the entire space into countlessly many shattered blocks. The fabric was already worn and old, its color lingering between grayish-yellow and white, with some edges frayed and some places even already torn, yet they remained neatly suspended.
Asakura recalled that this kind of thing seemed to be called a banner.
When hung in Buddhist assemblies, they should be sutra banners or ritual streamers, used to carry sutra texts and prayers.
In fact, they were indeed filled with densely packed writing—slender, concentrated strokes arranged neatly, like some ancient sutra scroll transcribed word by word, hanging in mid-air. It was just that Asakura didn't recognize those characters, assuming they were likely Sanskrit or something similar—
Yet just as he thought so, Asakura suddenly realized something was off.
He looked closely at those characters on the sutra banners.
"Tsk..."
Hearing his reaction, Chika's gaze also lingered on one of the cloth banners for a moment.
And then she could no longer shift her gaze away.
Those were not characters.
Those 'strokes' were actually individual human figures.
Stretched long, flattened, bent, and pieced together to form shapes resembling characters.
Some were sideways, some were upside down, and some were even distorted together.
Every single 'character' had a face, and every single face was different.
Some had their mouths opened wide, as if shouting something, yet without a sound; some had their eyes shut tight, their brows knitted together as if enduring pain; still others had no expression left on their faces, completely blank, looking as though they had been hollowed out.
They were lined up row after row like that.
Neatly and orderly.
Looking as if they had been written into something, bound by some rule that permitted not even a hair's breadth of deviation.
As the cloth banners swayed gently, those 'characters' also distorted slightly along with them.
For a split second, it would even make one feel—
That the characters were moving.
Of course, they weren't being blown by the wind—Asakura even felt that air circulation did not exist within this space—rather, they were slowly changing positions on their own.
"What is this..." Chika felt her mouth extremely dry. She tried swallowing her saliva to no avail, able to ask only in a dry voice.
"Probably some kind of sutra?" Asakura wasn't quite sure.
"It's prayer," Miko said in a low voice. "Only during the moments of greatest agony do people pray most sincerely, most yearningly, and most obsessively."
Chika looked toward the young girl, somewhat at a loss for what to do.
The scent of sandalwood in the air grew ever thicker.
The smell was no longer pure, but subtly carried an almost imperceptible strangeness—as if what was burning was not merely wood, but something else. That feeling was extremely light, yet it made people slow their breathing uncontrollably, even subconsciously wanting to hold their breath.
Light flowed between the cloth banners.
Every weak draft of air caused those cloth strips to sway gently, and with that swaying, those human-shaped characters distorted along with it, as if crawling slowly. From certain angles, it would even give one the illusion that 'they are watching me'.
Well, in fact, it was not an illusion.
The faces of those human-shaped characters were indeed shifting their gazes bit by bit, attempting to align their sight toward Asakura and the others below.
"A-Asakura-kun..." Chika instinctively leaned closer to Asakura.
"Don't worry."
Asakura shook his head gently, a divine spark that seemed to peer through the future flaring up in his left eye. He stated with conviction: "To deal with a guy like this, a single instant is enough."
Within his future sight, the Asura statue in front of him offered no resistance worth mentioning before turning to ashes beneath the flames of [Candle]. Afterwards, the shrine collapsed, and wrapping Chika and Miko in [Scale], he easily returned to reality.
Everything seemed to have restored to normal.
"If you merely burn down this divine statue, I fear it won't restore the situation," at this moment, Miko... or rather, 'Miko', suddenly spoke up.
"Miko-chan? Why did your tone suddenly become so weird?" Chika looked at 'Miko' in confusion: "Did you eat something wrong?"
'Miko' rolled her eyes.
"The reversal of death and life has already begun operating..." she continued speaking to Asakura.
"Hey, why are you ignoring me?" Chika pressed on persistently.
"And it will not cease due to the destruction of the divine statue and the shrine, because..." 'Miko' attempted to continue ignoring her while speaking to Asakura.
"Acknowledge me already! A Chika like me will die if I'm too lonely, you know!"
"Shut up already!" 'Miko' couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Finally willing to show yourself?" At this point, holding back a laugh, Asakura looked at 'Miko' as if suddenly snapping out of a dream: "What on earth are you?"
"I am the initial shrine maiden, as well as the founder of this shrine."
'Miko' replied, looking at Asakura: "You don't seem surprised?"
"Well, because Miko isn't that knowledgeable, after all... whether it's regarding shrines or parts involving the supernatural. Even if she said she 'asked the shrine maidens', I don't think shrine maidens of this era would specifically learn about the historical past of their own shrine." Asakura answered: "Not to mention, as far as I know, most of the shrine maidens at this shrine are just students working summer jobs."
"...R-Right! Chika here noticed it long ago too!" Chika blinked her eyes before immediately putting on an impressive front as she spoke.
Both Asakura and 'Miko' tacitly ignored her.
"So then, what's the reason why you said even if the divine statue, or even the entire shrine, were burned down, nothing could be restored?" Asakura asked 'Miko'.
"The statue is merely a vessel for containing the flow, and even this shrine is but a shell for containment; all are merely parts of the Ritual of Ryūri—"
Asakura: "Speak like a normal human."
"The divine statue is the control valve, and the shrine is the container," 'Miko' pouted her lips, explaining in an unpretentious manner: "In essence, both are merely part of the entire 'Ritual of Ryūri', and they lean primarily toward the portion that contains and accumulates power. But now, as everything reaches its final stage, even if this portion is discarded, it won't affect the operation of the Ritual of Ryūri."
Asakura remained silent for a moment, then asked in a deep voice:
"Why did people five hundred years ago know about a control valve?"
"Is now really the time to ask that?! Even though Chika doesn't quite understand what's going on, right now is definitely super urgent, isn't it!" Chika blurted out loudly.
"Because I possess parts of the memories of other souls that fell into the shrine," 'Miko' answered after glancing at Chika with a look that said 'you're the last person who has the right to say that'.
"Why has Miko-chan been ignoring me completely since earlier! Chika feels so hurt!" Chika fell to her knees in an OTZ pose.
Yet neither Asakura nor 'Miko' paid any mind to her antics.
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"So, what is the deal with this Ritual of Ryūri you mentioned? What is the truth from five hundred years ago?" Asakura asked. Remembering her overly archaic, head-spinning way of speaking earlier, he added: "Please explain it clearly in three sentences."
'Miko' fell silent.
It seemed that making her keep it short was indeed quite a torture.
Just as Asakura thought she would answer 'Too short, cannot explain, Mogami River', she opened her mouth after all.
"Five hundred years ago a certain noble came to the shrine saying they had obtained a piece of the divine Shintai that descended from the sky in legend and had already confirmed it possessed a certain special power so they wished our shrine could obtain the ability of eternal life and immortality for them."
"What a freaking run-on sentence..." Asakura deadpanned.
"It feels like something is about to begin... again," Chika mumbled.
"Even though at that time our shrine did not possess the ability to make people immortal after all before that my elders had never taught me real supernatural power even when seeing the Shintai for the first time I thought it was all just that noble's delusion but in reality it was not so that piece of Shintai indeed possessed the power to trigger miracles even if it was just a small piece it could reverse life and death to a certain extent reviving dead small animals like rabbits but this power to trigger miracles was not strong after all that noble's influence was not top-tier either only obtaining a small fragment of that Shintai that descended from the sky and wanting to be able to grant someone immortality required more Shintai or required a powerful force to drive the miracle brought by the Shintai."
"Alright, I get it. Just speak normally from here on out. I'm afraid you'll run out of breath and end up suffocating Miko for no reason," Asakura scratched his head.
Luckily he was only listening to her speak—which was a bit hard on the ears, but at least had cadence and was understandable. He didn't even dare imagine how miserable it would be if someone reading a novel encountered a block of densely packed text without any line breaks or punctuation.
"That noble was an important patron of our shrine—in fact, as local nobility, he had total power over our shrine's life and death. We couldn't defy him, so even though we knew that so-called 'immortality' was not a righteous path, we could only obey his orders."
"Fortunately, although the shrine possessed no supernatural powers in the past, some mystical rituals passed down among us since ancient times could unexpectedly trigger the power of miracles within the Shintai fragment. In order to achieve that noble's concept of 'immortality', we had to perform a grand and drawn-out ritual. That was the original 'Ritual of Ryūri'."
"The original plan was to collect enough life force through the Ritual of Ryūri, continuously raising the stakes until reaching a critical threshold, then use it to activate the Shintai fragment to achieve the 'miracle of life force', granting that noble a long, near-immortal lifespan. But the ritual failed."
"We severely underestimated the miracles that the Shintai piece could trigger, and severely overestimated ourselves. The Ritual of Ryūri failed, and the fragment of the Shintai created a bizarre space between life and death. As the performer of the ritual who offered the Kagura dance to the Shintai, I plummeted into this chasm between life and death."
"The Ritual of Ryūri continued to gather life, but due to the influence of this space, the gathering of life was corrupted into collecting deceased spirits every year during the Obon Festival. Unable to attain enlightenment, they wandered within the chasm between life and death, suffering endlessly. To house these souls, I built this shrine piece by piece and purified their grudges bit by bit. I thought everything would stop at that, but I never expected that the second half of the Ritual of Ryūri—which I assumed would never activate—underwent a change three years ago. It wanted to grant eternal life to that noble who had been designated as the ritual's target."
"However, that noble had died long ago, so the ritual was corrupted once again, beginning to reverse death and life, turning everything upside down."
"This is the secret of the Obon Festival, the truth behind the Ritual of Ryūri."