197: Chapter 197 Blind Spot in the Mirror

"Ugh... kill you all..."

Isobe Atsushi's twisted, deformed body was hoisted up as if by invisible hands, his joints emitting a scalp-tingling, cracking sound. He actually used his one intact right hand to pick up the meat cleaver again.

This was the disgusting part about ju-on.

Even if the physical body died, the resentment would forcibly manipulate the shell into a killing machine.

"Ahhh—!" Mirai was so frightened she collapsed onto the floor, scrambling backward on her hands and feet.

Sadako stepped in front of Mirai, raising her right hand again, her gaze icy.

Since that last hit didn't crush his head, this time she would just grind this disgusting lump of flesh into dust.

Sadako clenched her fist hard!

One second, two seconds.

A breeze blew in from the open, broken window in the hallway, stirring up a few wood shavings on the floor.

Other than that, nothing happened.

Her Psychic Powers did not appear.

"...Huh?" Sadako froze, staring at her right hand.

The cold, viscous sense of resistance in the air had vanished; she couldn't even feel the frigid power that usually coursed through her body.

"Abilities are things you have to use often to master, otherwise they'll cut out on you at any time." Emma's words from the day played back in her mind like a ghost.

And of all times, it had to fail now!

Isobe Atsushi wouldn't wait for her to reboot her system; dragging his broken leg, he lunged forward like some sickening crawler, raising the meat cleaver.

The blade cast a chilling reflection in the dim hallway.

Since her Psychic Powers were gone, she had to rely on instinct.

Sadako reacted extremely quickly, grabbing Mirai from the floor and turning to run deep into the hallway.

The layout of the second floor was narrow and impossible to maneuver in, so she had no choice but to head straight for the only wooden door at the end of the hall that was still relatively intact.

The two stumbled into the room, and Sadako slammed the door shut, locking it tight, and braced her body against the door panel.

"Bang!"

Almost the moment the lock clicked, a heavy hacking sound exploded outside the door, causing the door panel to tremble violently.

"Open the door... trash... you all must die..."

Isobe Atsushi's slurred, crazed curses came through the wooden door, followed by even more violent hacking. The already old door couldn't hold for long, and the hinges began to emit a desperate groan.

Mirai huddled in the corner, so terrified she couldn't even manage a cry, biting down hard on her own arm.

Just at the critical moment when the wooden door was about to be completely smashed to pieces.

"Boom—!"

A gunshot, far louder than the ones before, erupted from downstairs.

Sadako felt the wooden floorboards beneath her feet give a violent jolt, and the shockwave of gunpowder gas, mixed with wood splinters, instantly pierced through the floor.

"Squelch."

Isobe Atsushi, who had been frantically hacking at the door, didn't even have time to scream. His right leg, which was supporting his body, had the part below the knee blasted into a bloody mist of minced meat by this violent bullet coming from below.

The flesh-and-blood marionette lost its center of gravity and collapsed in the hallway, only the remaining half of his leg still twitching.

Sadako panted heavily, lying on the floor and looking down through the large hole blasted in the floorboards beneath the door gap.

The living room on the first floor had been torn to pieces.

Emma stood on the ruins of the coffee table, holding the smoking "azure rose" high, her muzzle still pointed diagonally at the second-floor ceiling.

Several massive tentacles of black sludge were thrashing wildly around her, but with the aid of the boots of divine speed, Emma was like an elf teasing a clumsy dog, nimbly dodging every attack while commanding five Magic Radiant Swords to hack the resentment monster to pieces.

"Big Sister Sadako! You're too slow! Need some help?" Emma looked up through the hole she had blasted through the floor, her little face full of an innocent smile, and waved upward.

Sadako wiped the cold sweat from her face.

The hallway outside was finally quiet; that corpse with only half a leg left seemed to have completely lost the ability to move.

"It's okay now..." Sadako let out a long breath, moved away from the door panel, and turned to look at Mirai, who was huddled in the corner. "Get up, the thing outside has been dis..."

Sadako's voice stopped abruptly.

Her gaze pierced through the dark room and landed on the corner behind Mirai.

This was the center of the entire villa's most ominous magnetic field—the utility room.

Just less than two meters away from Mirai, the half-person-tall dressing mirror standing among a pile of cardboard boxes was emitting a frigid, deathly aura that could almost freeze the air.

In the mirror, the elderly grandmother, Isobe Haru, was clearly reflected, hanging from the rafters.

Her neck was constricted by a hemp rope, leaving a deep purple bloodstain; the corpse had originally been facing away from the room's doorway.

But in this second.

"Creak— creak—"

The rough hemp rope emitted a hair-raising, minute friction sound.

That lifeless corpse, in the mirror's reflection, was twisting its body around bit by bit in a bizarre manner that completely defied gravity and physical common sense.

That old face, purple from asphyxiation with bulging eyeballs, finally fixed into an exaggerated backward tilt.

Those muddy, whitened eyeballs, like a dead fish, looked past the terrified Mirai and stared straight into Sadako's eyes.

The corpse in the mirror suddenly parted its shriveled lips, revealing a smile that was bizarre to the extreme.

Just the moment Sadako stared fixedly at the mirror.

The image in the mirror suddenly distorted like a ripple in water, and the white-clad old woman hanging from the rafters vanished into thin air.

Sadako didn't even have time to make a dodging movement before an extremely cold aura pressed directly against her back.

A rough hemp rope, smelling of rot and sticky blood, looped around her neck without warning.

It tightened violently!

"Ugh!"

Sadako's hands instinctively clawed at her neck, her feet instantly lifting off the ground.

The white-clad old woman, who had originally been in the mirror, was now pressed against her back in an extremely twisted posture.

Two shriveled claws covered in black-brown liver spots grabbed both ends of the rope, hoisting her up by force.

A strong sensation of asphyxiation rushed straight to her head.

The rough fibers of the hemp rope embedded deeply into the flesh of Sadako's fair neck.

Her legs kicked weakly in mid-air, and her fingernails clawed bloody marks into her neck.

Without the boost of her Psychic Powers, her current physical strength was simply unable to break free from a monster condensed from pure ju-on.

Mirai huddled in the corner, watching Sadako struggling frantically in mid-air and the spiteful corpse behind her, making intermittent, broken sobs in her throat, too terrified to even have the strength to stand up and run.

"Die... all of you die..." The white-clad old woman's purple face pressed tightly against Sadako's ear, her mouth emitting a shrill, wheezing curse.

Lack of oxygen caused Sadako's vision to begin turning black in large patches.

Just at the moment she was about to lose consciousness, the white-clad old woman's withered, sharp fingernails, in the process of frantically tightening the hemp rope, inevitably brushed against Sadako's neck.

There, a seal with a special dark gold pattern was stuck.

"Rrrrip."

A faint sound of paper tearing rang out in the deathly silent room; the cross seal was completely torn, spiraling off Sadako's neck and drifting toward the dusty floor.

And it was in that thousandth of a second when the sticker left her body.

The entire gray, second-hand villa suddenly fell deathly silent for a moment.

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