Deep within the spirit domain lay another chamber.
This room was circular. Walls, floor, and ceiling were all made from a seamless white jade, every surface veiled in black curses and golden formulae.
At the center, white-jade chains rose from the floor, dozens in number, binding Hidan to a stone dais. His chakra wasn't sealed; his head and arms could still move.
"Damn you! You heretics!"
Hidan's shouts echoed off the walls as he prepared his rite. He pricked his finger with a short needle hidden beneath a nail, then drew a pattern on the stone with his blood.
"Come! Taste pain! Jashin will devour your souls!"
He seized a black spear and drove it toward his own heart—the method he always used, harming himself to pass equal pain and death onto the cursed target.
The spearpoint stopped against an unseen barrier just before touching his skin. No matter how hard he pushed, it wouldn't go in.
"What?"
He tried other spots on his body; every result was the same. He couldn't injure himself at all.
The rite could not proceed.
"Bastards! What did you do to me? Let me finish the rite! Let Jashin judge you!"
He strained against the chains, howling for his god.
The door slid open.
Shinju walked in wearing a white research coat, expression calm and unreadable. Ignoring the curses, he circled the dais, studying the field that blocked Hidan's self-harm and the blood diagram etched on the floor.
"Self-inflicted pain converted through blood as a medium, transmitted to the cursed target. This 'Jashin' feeds on that energy to sustain itself."
Hidan fell silent, startled that this boy understood the rite—and its principle.
Shinju stopped before him, gaze falling to the Jashin amulet at Hidan's throat.
"An energy contract. You likely don't even realize it: your 'immortality' isn't yours. That 'Jashin' supplies it. You offer sacrifices and pain as payment; it returns life force to keep you from dying during the rite. A two-way exchange."
Hidan's mind stalled.
What he called doctrine had just been reduced to a dissectible "exchange protocol." That shift in understanding scared him more than any wound—mystery laid bare to principles.
"Who are you?"
Shinju didn't answer. He reached out—Hidan snapped at his hand, to no effect—and set his palm on Hidan's brow.
"Quiet. I'll take a look at your god myself."
He closed his eyes.
Focusing his spirit at the point of contact, he followed the thread linking Hidan's soul to his object of faith, tracing it in reverse—much like how Naruto in Sennin Mode (Sage Mode) once back-traced along a chakra rod to find Nagato's true body.
Hidan's body jerked, then went limp.
Shinju's consciousness stepped into a non-material space filled with endless wailing, curses, and countless shattered soul-fragments.
At its center hung a specter woven from faces of pain and broken limbs, formless and starved for souls.
This was the "Jashin" Hidan worshiped.
Shinju's will took the shape of a golden human figure—a body of life-energy that shone with its own light and warmth.
Its appearance hushed the surrounding fragments. The specter sensed the intruder—neither believer nor invited guest.
All its mouths opened, shaping a pull to swallow the golden figure; devoural was its instinct.
The pull touched the golden body and did nothing.
The energy level was simply too far apart.
"Interesting."
Shinju's consciousness spoke.
"So this 'evil god' is just an energy conglomerate that feeds on pain and slaughter."
He raised a golden hand—vast as the specter itself, rivers of life-energy coursing across its palm.
The specter tried to retreat and found the entire space sealed.
The hand closed.
A shriek split the void. The faces that composed it began to unravel the instant they touched that golden palm.
"Your believer belongs to me now," Shinju said—stating a fact.
He didn't destroy the thing. Its level was too low to be of research value—and he had another purpose.
Life-energy surged from his palm as he parsed the "contract" between the specter and Hidan: its structure, channels of flow, and ownership of permissions—every layer laid open to him.
"Override contract permissions. Modify."
With his own life-energy, Shinju forced an overwrite.
He cut Jashin's role as the energy supplier and rerouted the source—to himself.
Hidan's "immortality" remained, but from now on every prayer and offering would no longer connect to that chaotic specter. It would connect to Shinju.
The specter screamed in terror under absolute spiritual pressure. It felt a vital "energy interface" torn from its body; struggle was useless.
"Any objections?" Shinju asked mildly.
The specter trembled, then severed every link to the hijacked contract on its own and fled to the deepest dark.
Shinju's golden form dissolved, withdrawing from the space.
Back in the pure-white chamber, Shinju opened his eyes and lifted his hand from Hidan's brow.
Bound to the dais, Hidan shuddered and woke.
The frenzy and rage were gone, replaced by bewilderment. His link to "Jashin-sama" now flickered like a dying ember—almost gone.
In their place, a vaster, warmer, unquestionable divinity poured from the boy before him, filling his soul.
It was the feeling of the sun.
Hidan stared at Shinju. Bewilderment turned, in a heartbeat, into devotion and awe a hundred times deeper than what he'd shown his former god.
He tried to kneel; the jade chains sank silently back into the floor at Shinju's thought.
Freed, Hidan rolled off the dais and prostrated himself in the most humble, reverent posture he knew, forehead pressed to the ice-cold floor.
His voice trembled.
"M-my… God…"
(End of Chapter)
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