Author notes: Here is the second chapter, I am now back up to date.
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Following the sound from the barrel of the lock, the front entrance of Thomas’ Private Investigator Office for the Supernatural and Mundane swung open with an audible creak.
Several lights inside had been left on but the two hunters still seemed almost like ghosts as they entered. No sounds were emitted from their body, neither footsteps nor breathing, as the concealment charms they had applied to themselves blocked all traces of their presence.
They could still speak to one another, and should they bump into or knock something over, the noise it created would not be omitted.
Scott and Sean crept through the home in complete silence, using hand signals to communicate with one another. They both had their guns drawn and ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
Both of the hunters felt the hair on their necks crawl at just how eerily silent the house was. This area was always quiet late at night, but the inside of this building seemed to deposit a particular depressing weight on their minds.
There were three bedrooms at the back of a corridor, the first of which was the master bedroom, Thomas’ room.
Inside was overly messy with an unmade bed and clothes strewn everywhere. He also stored a lot of memorabilia and items others would call junk on shelves and bookcases.
Even though nobody was home, the ceiling fan above the bed had been left on and was quietly hummed and would squeak at regular intervals.
With the door open, this was the only sound that broke the silence, but despite the introduction of some form of noise, neither of the two hunters felt any less uneasy.
The second door revealed a room that was particularly minimalist. There was a bookshelf with various books relating to studies at school, including some more advanced text books that a normal student wouldn’t be studying, while others were martial arts manuals.
They weren’t manuals that teach spiritual arts and can help empower a person, but mortal martial arts that are generally used in competitions rather than real life.
At first glance, this room didn’t appear to be a girl’s room, the only indication that it was were the pink curtains in front of the window.
Senna’s room was a polarizing opposite to Thomas’ and it made the two wonder how two people of such differences lived together harmoniously.
Confident that the house had been checked and there were no unexpected surprises waiting for them, Scott led the way to the final door which was locked as expected and whispered, “This has to be it.”
Sean placed the metal briefcase on the ground before opening it and taking out the heaven grade seal destruction talisman and holding it between two fingers. Despite only appearing to be paper, the talisman was hot in his hand and even the corners of the paper began to glow red.
Placing his hand on the door revealed the magic seal placed on the room.
Luminescent blue formations in varying patterns and shapes appeared just above the surface of the door, overlap one another as they turned and interacted like cogs in a machine.
Sean flinched and quickly pulled his hand away from the door, but the formation didn’t have any offensive capabilities. It merely verified that he was not one of the authorized people to access the room before reinforcing itself and the room.
“Idiot, don’t just casually touch things. Who knows what is in this magic formation,” Scott cursed before taking a closer look at the magic lines and arcane formulae within it. “In saying that, this thing is extremely high level.”
“It’s just a door. It’s not like I am touching strange items in some ancient tomb… Stand back.”
Once Scott had created some distance from the door just in case something went wrong, he cycled air through his lungs as he stabilized his breathing and inner force.
Right at the moment his concentration had reached its peak, he flicked his wrist and the seal destruction talisman shot the air and landed on the door.
The blue magic array formations seized the moment the talisman landed on it. Sparks jumped from the seal as the power in the talisman attacked the magic array.
Scott and Sean covered their ears and winced in pain as an ear splitting screech was emitted from the door before there was a loud cracking sound, as if a porcelain bowl had been dropped.
If that bowl was dropped in front of a megaphone on maximum volume.
Both the hunters stood still after all the noise, as if waiting to see if anyone woke up. They suspected at least several houses nearby would have heard the ruckus, but at least Thomas and Senna would be a suburb away investigating the Laurence Academy of the Gifted in relation to the missing boy and would not be alerted.
Scott felt goosebumps all over his skin as soon as the seal broke. It was like a thick sludge had washed over him and stuck to his skin. Sean didn’t have Scott’s borderline supernatural sixth sense, but he too felt more uncomfortable at the same moment and even an old shoulder injury began aching once again after several years of it no longer causing him pain.
“We are done here, let’s go,” Scott said in a serious tone as he wanted to leave immediately.
“Hold on, we have already come so far. Don’t turn back now.”
Sean had set his mind on entering the room and pushed the door open with the audible squeak of old hinges before walking in without hesitation.
“Fuck!” Scott cursed at his partner before rushing in after him, pulling out a pair some curse dispelling incense sticks and lighting them.
Both men were surprised at the size of the room. They had an understanding on the size left in the apartment as this room was in the corner, but the inside of it was far too large to physically fit into that space.
The shelves were mostly empty, but each and every item inside was cursed. There were approximately twenty items
“Is this guy completely crazy? Not a single one of these cursed objects has been properly sealed away.”
Scott held the curse dispelling incense in between his knuckles and waved it from side to side. The incense was emitting a light green smoke as it worked, but that would slowly vanish as it was engulfed by the palpable curse energy that had been bottled up in the room.
“Just give me one second, I need to grab my gladius,” Sean had seen what he was looking for mounted on the wall below a long samurai’s katana and went straight for it like a man possessed.
Sean had thought he was going to his weapon, but he somehow found himself picking up a Russian nesting doll that had the twisted face of a tortured elderly woman on it howling in pain.
“…Eh?”
“Fuck, how many times do I have to tell you to be more careful!”
Scott charged over waving the curse dispelling incense through the air and knocked the nesting doll out his partner’s hand.
The cursed nesting doll bounced off the floor and popped open. Inside not just once, but three smaller nesting dolls rolled out, these ones with the faces of a man and two women in their fifties. They too were screaming with their mouths stretched open so far the corners of their mouths had torn all the way to the edge of their face.
The man had blood pouring out of his orifices whilst one of the women was tied up and thrown into a large wildfire. Each had their own scenario painted on the doll in vivid and exotic colors, but all of them were of people who died in excruciating pain.
What was uncanny was how all three of the nesting dolls stood upright and just happened to be facing the two hunters.
*Hehe… Hehehehee*
The faint giggle of a young girl echoes through the room with seemingly no origin, causing the duo to become even more nervous.
Scott twisted the Burning Yang Bracelet on his wrist and activated it, causing fiery yang flames to burst out in front of him and smother the Russian nesting dolls. They screeched and screamed in pain before falling over, but the hunter knew such a cursed object was only temporarily disabled.
He knew from experience that this spiritual artifact usually only held about five charges worth of this kind of attack before it needed to be recharged.
“We need to go, now!”
“I know!”
Sean hurriedly grabbed his gladius that Thomas had stolen and tucked it into his belt before hurriedly moving to the exit of the room with fast steps.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to grab one of the guns or other bladed weapons in the room, but touching unknown cursed objects was far too dangerous.
They made it out of the room without further incident, but the hairs on the back of Scott’s neck were still standing straight up, telling him they weren’t out of danger just yet.
At the corner of the main corridor, he saw a beautiful poupee doll with long golden locks of hair sitting on the ground against the wall. It was only a foot tall, but the strange doll almost seemed to be looking at them.
He was so focused on leaving the house that he didn’t realize it wasn’t there when they investigated the rest of the property beforehand.
For someone with a supernatural sixth sense of danger and as cautious as he was, it was clear something was impairing his senses.
“See, nothing to worry abo-” Sean began to say before he tripped and fell face first onto the floor with a dull thump.
Scott spun around with his curse dispelling incense, now only half remaining.
What he saw was long golden locks of hair stretching out across the floor of the corridor and wrapping themselves around Sean’s ankle. They had carved through his pants leg and dug deep into his skin, causing blood to flow all down his foot.
At the origin of this hair was the child like porcelain poupee doll, whose face had turned and was still facing them with a large painted smile on its face.
“Fuck! Fuck!” Sean cursed as he held his cursed gladius and cut at the hairs with bloodshot eyes.
The gladius successfully cut through the strands of hair, but they just wriggled as if alive before reconnecting themselves just as fast as they were cut. The strands of hair also begun crawling up Sean’s leg like a creeping vine.
“What is this damned doll?” Scott was genuinely afraid as it had completely evaded his senses.
He swung his hand through the air and sent out another burst of yang flames from his bracelet.
Charlotte, the doll’s, hair immediately curled under the flames and retracted while the sob of a young girl in pain echoed through the house.
“Hurry,” Scott said as he helped Sean up and supported him to be able to walk properly.
Sean’s eyes were still bloodshot and his sanity seemed to be teetering on the edge, but he managed to hold onto his state of mind and hobbled alongside his partner.
“Was the corridor always this long?” He squeezed out through gritted teeth.
“…Damn it.”
Scott and Sean burst out of the entrance in a miserable state.
Sean had a limp and bloody leg whilst Scott had several burns on his skin. They both had several bloody patches on the rest of them as well. What was more frightening, was that Sean’s defensive artifact had broken, meaning he would have died if he wasn’t wearing it.
“Never again!” Scott weakly shouted in indignation. “If something seems too suspicious, don’t touch it!”
He was pissed off, and rightly so. They both nearly lost their lives just to reclaim one of their weapons. The cost was massively disproportionate to the danger.
As the two hunters got to their car and drove off in a hurry, another person revealed themself.
Anthony Reeves appeared on the rooftop of the shop on the adjacent side of the alley beside Thomas’ home.
He watched the two hunters leave with cold and indifferent eyes, but did not pursue them. Instead, he pulled out a series of small flags of intricate design and make. He jumped atop his flying sword and flew up into the air before throwing down these flags with Thomas’ store at the center, or eye of the formation.
These flags stuck directly into concrete and brick unhindered and without noise.
In a similarly fluid motion, he cast down several low grade spirit stones and two strange spiritual herbs.
“Activate!”
Captain Reeves called out in a deep voice and sent a thick stream of spiritual qi straight down into the heart of the formation he just laid out. The formation briefly flickered to life before turning completely invisible.
Unless one had equivalent knowledge in daoist formations compared to himself, they wouldn’t even know that there was a formation here, let alone be able to find the flags and dismantle it.
“Does that idiot not know the dangers of bottling in all that curse energy and letting it fester and mutate? Or does he simply not care?”
Captain Reeves voice vanished into the night as he silently flew away on his sword.
He had already laid out a sound isolation formation when the two hunters had broken into the apartment. They didn’t realize it, but there was not a single sound that broke apart the eerily silent night.
If one were able to visibly see curse energy from the cursed objects now pouring out of the property like a burst dam, they would see that energy now forming a spiral and being purified before being ejected into the night sky before dissipating.
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