Nayona's new life in the subterranean Intelligence and Interrogation Division was not merely a career change; it was a physical and spiritual descent into the clan's most concentrated rot. The obsidian walls of Maari's sector were always cold to the touch, and the constant, low-level hum of Cursed Energy suppressants and sealing talismans created a pervasive atmosphere of paranoia, exhaustion, and low-grade despair.
The sheer density of negative emotion was suffocating. He was granted a small, sparsely furnished office adjacent to the holding cells a tiny, airless space where the smell of stale fear was a perpetual resident, blending unpleasantly with the scent of ozone and strong antiseptic used to cleanse the stone floors. His task was highly analytical and morally compromising: to organize the intelligence archives, meticulously classifying the psychic vulnerabilities (tṛṣṇā the spiritual craving) of captured sorcerers before he was called upon to apply the devastating psychological pressure of the Lotus Seal.
He spent his days immersed in the dark secrets of the Zenin world: detailed reports on blackmail, strategic infiltration, double-crosses within allied clans, and the precise psychological breaking points of their enemies. He cataloged tṛṣṇā not as sins, but as tactical data points.
He learned to distinguish the language of political craving the desire for status, the fear of exposure, the attachment to family, the clinging to past glory and how the Zenin clan meticulously exploited each weakness like a master torturer finding the most sensitive nerve. His mind was being trained to become a tool of precise, calculated cruelty, focusing the light of truth only to inflict maximum spiritual pain. The work was exhausting, forcing him to constantly monitor his own neutral Cursed Energy to prevent the surrounding emotional corruption from seeping into his core.
Yet, despite the palpable darkness of his work and the sinister intent of his training, Nayona maintained his inner stillness with relentless discipline. He practiced the Vipassanā (insight meditation) technique even while reading files, observing the flow of his own neutral Cursed Energy and the corrosive information presented to him without attachment or judgment.
His spiritual core his dedication to the Bodhisattva path and the eightfold way remained remarkably intact, even as his function within the clan became undeniably sinister. He viewed his role as bearing witness to dukkha (suffering) in its most concentrated, bureaucratic form, confirming the necessity of his mission.
One day, while retrieving a sensitive file detailing a rival clan's financial secrets from the low-security archives corridor a poorly lit, rarely visited section of the tunnels Nayona witnessed a familiar, painful pattern of dukkha.
An attendant, a low-ranking teenage boy named Kenji, whose family was indebted to the Zenin and whose own Cursed Energy was negligible, was cornered by two minor sorcerers from the aggressive 'Ha' unit. Kenji was responsible for the grueling, thankless task of cleaning and maintenance in the lower levels. The sorcerers, bored by the monotony of clan life and hungry to exert their superiority and validate their own meager power, were using Kenji as target practice for their petty, non-lethal Cursed Techniques.
It was classic Zenin bullying, meticulously designed to inflict spiritual damage far greater than physical harm. The attacks were small, focused blasts of stinging, cold-fire Cursed Energy disguised as accidental contact, meticulously engineered to leave no visible mark but cause severe internal discomfort, psychic bruising, and deep humiliation.
The sorcerers, a stout youth named Akio and his lanky accomplice, laughed loudly as Kenji flinched, dropped his bucket of cleaning water, and scrambled on his hands and knees to clean the slick, oily residue left by the painful blasts. Kenji's face was etched with the passive, crushing suffering of one who knows they can never fight back the epitome of Zenin oppression against the weak, a perfect example of dukkha caused by the craving for power.
Nayona observed the scene from a shadow-dampened corner. He felt a profound, aching rush of Karuṇā (compassion) the active desire to alleviate the suffering of others a guiding tenet of the Bodhisattva path.
This was not a Cursed Spirit demanding a philosophical solution; this was raw, human cruelty, and it demanded a moral, not a martial, response. The suffering was immediate and manufactured entirely by the bullies' tṛṣṇā for dominance.
He knew direct, visible interference was suicide. If he openly challenged the sorcerers, he would violate Ogi's decree about his role and expose the pacifistic weakness Maari had explicitly warned him about, leading to his own swift and potentially lethal re-assignment to a meat-grinder unit.
His mission required survival and subtlety. He needed a way to apply his spiritual principles without aggression or visible technique use, using the Zenin rules against themselves by attacking the root of the problem: the negative intent.
Nayona quietly extended a sliver of his neutral, grey Cursed Energy. Instead of performing the full Lotus Seal which required the complex mudra and the long cycle he focused only on the very first, subtle principle of his technique: Neutralization of Tṛṣṇā-Fueled Malice.
The Cursed Energy of the bullies was not only powered by their reserves, but actively charged by their craving for superiority and Kenji's visible fear. This malice was the technique's true component of harm.
He applied this sliver of energy to Kenji, enveloping the attendant in a barely-there, translucent sheath of neutrality. This was the Karuṇā Cloak (Compassion Shroud) an early, incomplete, and highly passive application of his domain's principles.
It was not a shield of raw defense or deflection, but a localized field of spiritual disillusionment that operated on the principle of disinterest, siphoning the malicious intent from any incoming Cursed Energy.
When the two bullies next targeted Kenji, the effect was subtle but immediate. The concentrated, stinging Cursed Energy they launched struck the boundary of the Karuṇā Cloak.
Instead of deflecting or exploding, the grey energy silently neutralized the intent embedded within the attack. The malice, the sadism, and the aggressive craving for a victim's pain the spiritual additives that gave the low-level technique its psychological bite were instantly dissolved into inert, harmless Cursed Energy.
The resulting blast was weak and clean, hitting Kenji like a harmless puff of slightly warm air, startling the attendant but causing no pain whatsoever.
The bullies paused, frowning and genuinely confused. Akio tried again, his features contorted in desperate frustration, focusing a surge of Cursed Energy into his palm. "Dammit, what was that? Did I mess up the output? It felt like static, like it just... went flat."
He fired another, stronger blast, consciously adding more negative intent, now driven by the tṛṣṇā of failing in front of his accomplice. Again, the malice-charged energy dissolved upon contact with the invisible shroud, hitting Kenji with the feeble force of a paper fan.
"Forget it, Akio," the second sorcerer grumbled, his confidence visibly shaken by his sudden technical failure. In the Zenin clan, technical sloppiness was a death sentence or, worse, a political vulnerability. "Your flow is broken. We need to find Naoya-sama; he'll tell us what's wrong with our technique's flow. If Ogi hears we can't even hit an attendant properly, we're finished."
They walked away, entirely convinced of their own incompetence and distracted by their renewed craving for Naoya's validation, failing entirely to perceive the subtle, grey intrusion. Nayona had weaponized their pride against them.
Kenji, bewildered and rubbing his arms where he expected to feel the customary burning pain, looked around the empty corridor. He didn't understand why the attacks had suddenly failed, but he felt an inexplicable sense of sudden, calm relief.
The constant, low-grade fear he usually carried seemed momentarily lifted, replaced by a strange lightness the spiritual relief provided by the Karuṇā Cloak.
Nayona retracted the Karuṇā Cloak just as subtly as he had deployed it, the flow of Cursed Energy barely registering as a ripple. He had taken no side in the conflict and caused no physical harm to the aggressors. He had only acted to alleviate the dukkha of the victim, disrupting the cycle of abuse with the silent, surgical force of detachment and compassion.
It was an act of pure karuṇā, accomplished entirely within the constraints of his deadly environment.
Walking out of the shadows, he casually stepped over the dropped bucket, his mind calm and utterly resolute. He had proven that his technique was not only a tool for the Zenin's dark intentions but also a spiritual instrument for quiet, localized acts of mercy.
His path to enlightenment would be charted through these small, invisible acts of compassion, performed in the very heart of the clan's spiritual hell, nurturing his moral core in the one place it was forbidden to grow. He knew his compassionate core was now a profound liability if discovered, but also his greatest hidden strength, the foundation of his eventual escape.