"Kuro, do you want to stay here tonight?" Looking at Yoshitomo who was kneeling in front of him, Fumiaki had a blank expression on his face, and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking at the moment. There was only a hint of surprise in his eyes.
"Yes!" Yoshitomo said loudly, "My brother said he wanted to stay here for a night so that he could talk to me for a while."
"...Didn't he just say that he would only stay here for a while?" Wen Xian asked back.
Yoshitomo opened his mouth and was about to say something when Wenxian spoke again:
"It doesn't matter whether he stays here for an hour or until tomorrow." Wen Xian waved his hand, "Go tell him that I will only keep him until tomorrow morning at most. After tomorrow morning, he must leave."
…
…
Wenxian watched Yoshitomo leave.
After Yoshitomo left, Fumiaki slowly stood up from the tatami and walked straight to a room deep in the mansion.
This is a room with an ordinary-looking door.
But behind this seemingly unremarkable door, there is actually a small Buddhist temple.
In the very center of the Buddhist hall, there is a small Buddha statue that is only one person tall.
The Buddha statue has his hands clasped together, eyes half closed, and looks forward, as if looking down upon everything.
Anyone who has a deep understanding of Buddhism will be able to immediately recognize the true face of this Buddha statue - it is the most supreme and noble Buddha in Tantric Buddhism: Vairocana.
However, after entering this small Buddhist temple, Wen Xian did not even look at the Vairocana statue. He just walked straight to the front of the statue and to a knife rack placed in front of the statue.
There is only one katana on this knife rack.
A katana with a very sharp blade, and a scabbard and handle that are both black and purple.
Wen Xian took the knife from the knife holder with both hands, and then slowly pulled the blade out of the sheath.
Clank clang.
As the blade was pulled out of the sheath inch by inch, Wen Xian's eyes were illuminated by the light reflected from the blade.
The light reflected by the knife actually carried a few strange purple lights... making Wen Xian's pupils covered with a circle of purple light.
…
…
Yamada Asaemon's residence, Haramamiya's room——
"How is it?" Mamiya asked Yoshitomo who had just returned.
Yoshitomo nodded, "It went well. Father agreed to keep you until tomorrow morning."
"That's good... Then Yoshitomo, please bring lunch and dinner over."
"Brother, won't you come and have dinner with us?"
"If I eat with you guys, the atmosphere will be awkward, right?" Mamiya smiled. "Given my current relationship with my father... Mr. Yamada Asaemon, if I eat with him, I'm afraid everyone will find the food in front of them hard to swallow."
"So it's better for me to eat alone."
After saying that, Mamiya stood up.
"Okay, Yoshitomo, let's go to your room."
"I stayed here under the pretext of 'talking to you more', so it's better for me to stay in your room. It won't arouse suspicion, and staying in your room will also make our actions tonight more convenient."
"Yes!" Yoshitomo nodded his head very vigorously, "Let's get that girl out of this hell tonight..."
…
…
About half an hour ago -
Yamada Asaemon's residence, Haramamiya's room——
"A girl who can regenerate organs?" Mamiya's eyes widened in shock as if they were about to fall out of their sockets. "...Yoshitomo, please explain to me, what is going on?"
"Everything... must start from more than a month ago..." Yoshitomo lowered his head and said slowly, "One day more than a month ago, I was ordered by my father to go to the execution ground to execute the death row prisoner, and my father went with me to check my current skills..."
When the younger generation first took over the execution work at the execution ground, the older generation supervised and instructed them on the side - this was one of the unwritten rules of the Yamada Asaemon family.
"After successfully executing the prisoner on death row that day, I returned home with my father."
"But on the way home, my father and I suddenly heard strange noises coming from the alley next to us."
"When I entered the alley, I saw two thugs bullying a little girl."
Mamiya listened attentively and nodded from time to time in response.
Edo, with a population of one million, naturally had no common people, and it was a very common scene to see thugs causing trouble everywhere.
"The two thugs wanted to insult the little girl. When my father and I arrived, one of them had already taken out a knife and cut the girl's clothes."
"When you see something like this with your own eyes, there is no reason to turn a blind eye to it."
"I chased away those two thugs all by myself."
"Things have been going on normally so far..."
"But what happened next was completely abnormal..."
"When the two thugs were cutting the girl's clothes with a knife, the knife accidentally cut her forearm because the girl struggled desperately."
"I wanted to take the girl to see a doctor for treatment."
"But when I tried to help the girl, she resisted desperately, saying 'don't touch her'."
"At first I thought the girl was just frightened and hasn't recovered yet."
"However... when I just helped the girl up, I saw that her wounds were healing at a speed visible to the naked eye."
"In just a few blinks of an eye, the girl's injuries were completely healed."
"At that time, my father and I were both shocked..."
"I have never seen such a scene in my life... It has overturned my understanding of everything in the world."
"When I didn't know what to do... my father was the first to come to his senses... and took action..."
"The father knocked the girl unconscious and took her home..."
"Sometimes... I really feel that my father is a very scary person..."
"Witnessing such a horrifying scene, while I was still dumbfounded and at a loss, my father had quickly recovered and immediately thought - this girl is very useful..."
“After the father forcibly brought the girl home, he started the test.”
"He wanted to test the girl - since the wound could heal so quickly, could the damaged organs be restored..."
"So... the father locked the girl in the basement and started testing..."
"The test results... made my father smile..."
"This girl's organs can regenerate on their own..."
"then……"
Before Yoshitomo could finish his words, Mamiya, who already had a gloomy face, finished the rest of his words for him:
"So the father imprisoned the girl and kept taking her gallbladder to make human gall pills."
"...Yes..." Yoshitomo closed his eyes with a look of pain on his face. "The girl is very young. Although is a little malnourished, her gallbladder is still of high quality and suitable for making medicine..."
"Yoshitomo." Mamiya asked in a deep voice, "Besides you and your father, who else knows about the existence of this girl?"
"Except for my father and I, no one else knew that there was such a magical girl imprisoned in the basement below our mansion." Yoshitomo replied, "My father did not tell anyone about the existence of this girl, nor did he report it to the shogunate. My father probably wanted to monopolize this girl so that she could help him produce high-quality human gall pills continuously."
"…Yoshitomo. Were you involved in this inhumane pharmaceutical production?" Mamiya asked.
"No!" Yoshitomo opened his eyes suddenly and denied it flatly, "I never participated in it."
"When my father first started using this inhumane method to make medicine, I felt that it was too inhumane and kept persuading him not to do such cruel things and to let the poor girl go free."
"But my father said - 'Countless people will be saved by the high-quality human bile pills. Why not do something that can benefit the public?'"
“…Ha.” Mamiya sneered, “That sounds like something he would say…”
"My father could have mercilessly used this girl as a tool for making medicine, but I... couldn't do that..." Yoshitomo continued softly, "In order to alleviate the guilt in my heart as much as possible, I have been chatting with the girl and comforting her as much as I can..."
"Although she has an extremely magical body, judging from her words and actions, she is an extremely ordinary girl no matter how you look at it."
"She said her name was Azhu, she was from Osaka, and she was the daughter of an ordinary craftsman."
"She cried and begged me to let her go and go home..."
"I really couldn't stand this torture on my conscience...so not long ago, I secretly let the girl go while my father was not at home."
"However... just after I let the girl go, my father came back. After discovering that the girl had escaped, he took me to chase her. I thought that in Edo, which was so big, my father probably wouldn't be able to find the girl. But I don't know if it was God's love for my father or what, but in the end, my father really did find the girl..."
"When I saw that my father had actually found the girl, I... wanted to stop my father and buy the girl some time to escape..."
"But I..."
An obvious look of guilt quickly appeared on Yoshitomo's face.
"I didn't have the courage to stop my father... In the end, I could only watch helplessly as my father caught the girl again..."
"…It's not your fault." Mamiya said softly, "You have tried your best to do everything you can."
Hearing Mamiya's words of comfort, Yoshitomo's expression improved a little.
"After my father caught the girl again, I started thinking of new ways to help her escape."
"The girl is unfamiliar with Edo. If she is left alone to escape, she won't be able to get far."
"So if you want that girl to escape from here, the best way is to let a reliable person take her away."
At this moment, Yoshitomo raised his gaze and looked at Mamiya.
"...I see." Mamiya said softly, "What you just said, 'I am the best person to take the child away from here', is this what you meant..."
Yoshitomo nodded gently:
"It was only until you mentioned the human gall pills just now that I realized that the best person to take the girl away is right in front of me."
"He has a trustworthy character and the ability to get people out of Edo."
"Brother, you arrived just in time."
Yoshitomo's expression slowly turned serious.
"Brother... I sincerely hope that girl can escape ..."
"So - can you please take the child away from here?"
…
…
Late that night——
Yamada Asaemon's residence, Yoshitomo's room—
"Brother, it's about time." Yoshitomo, who was dressed neatly with the sleeves of his kimono tied up with cuffs, said sternly to Mamiya, who was standing in front of him and had also tied up his sleeves with a cuff.
"Well." Mamiya grabbed the sword placed at his side, "Let's go."
The plan drawn up by Mamiya and Yoshitomo was quite simple and crude - start the operation late at night, enter the basement, and bring the girl out.
It was for this purpose that during the day today, Mamiya asked Yoshitomo to go and tell Fumiaki that he wanted to stay the night here in order to chat with his brother for a while longer, and then stayed in Yoshitomo's room, waiting for the arrival of night.
The current time, converted into modern Earth time units, is approximately 11 o'clock in the evening.
At this time, everyone in the Yamada Asaemon household, from the head of the family, Fumiaki, to the ordinary servants, had fallen asleep.
Yoshitomo and Mamiya came out of the room one after the other and walked towards the basement at silent pace.
The Yamada Asaemon family often dealt with corpses, so people who didn't know much about the Yamada Asaemon family made up many urban legends about the Yamada Asaemon family.
For example: In order to train the younger generation's "patience" towards corpses, Yamada Asaemon would force the young members of the clan to eat in front of corpses from an early age.
For example: There were mountains of corpses piled up in Yamada Asaemon's house.
These urban legends are basically nonsense.
For example, the statement that "the Yamada Asaemon family would force the younger generation in the family to eat in front of corpses" is pure nonsense.
But “piling up mountains of corpses at home” is both right and wrong.
Yamada Asaemon would indeed bring back the bodies of those who had just been executed from the execution ground and place them at home, but he would not store as many bodies as a mountain.
Because these corpses are consumed very quickly, the "knife testing" business has always been extremely prosperous and there is no shortage of customers. A corpse that is pulled home in the morning might be dragged away for knife testing in the afternoon.
Because corpses are consumed quickly, there is no need to worry about them becoming smelly due to being stored for too long.
If there really was a corpse that started to stink, it would be cleaned up in time - Yamada Asaemon's people were not noseless perverts, and they would find it disgusting if a corpse started to stink.
The place where the bodies are stored is the basement.
There is a very spacious basement under the residence of the Yamada Asaemon family. The basement is cool, so the bodies are stored in the basement and are not easy to rot.
The basement beneath the mansion is also the pharmacy for refining human bile pills.
Yoshitomo: "We're here..."
Mamiya and Yoshitomo were now standing in a secluded corridor corner of the mansion.
There is nothing here, nothing at all.
In the corner of this empty corridor, Yoshitomo squatted down, took out an iron key, inserted the key into an inconspicuous hole at his feet, and after turning it a few times, the corridor under his feet made a slight "click" sound.
"Onii-sama, let's go." Yoshitomo said as he grabbed the key and pulled it upwards.
Squeak...
Just like a door being pulled open, the key still inserted in the hole was the door handle. Yoshitomo grasped the "door handle" and lifted it up, easily lifting a large piece of wood in the corridor under his feet.
Behind the wooden board was a staircase leading underground. Because the light was too dim, one could only see that the staircase led to inky darkness.
Mamiya took out the oil lamp he had prepared in advance and lit it.
"Let's go." Mamiya took the lead and walked down the stairs towards the basement.
Only two people have the key to the basement door - the head of the family, Fumiaki, and Yoshitomo, who has been confirmed to be the next head of the family.
Because the light was dim and the stairs were narrow, Mamiya and Yoshitomo walked very slowly.
As the two of them were walking slowly downwards, Yoshitomo, who was walking behind Mamiya, suddenly said:
"Thank you, Brother..."
"Thank me for what?"
"Thank you for helping me set that girl free..."
"There's nothing to thank you for." Mamiya said calmly, "I just don't want my father... Yamada Asaemon Fumiaki to continue doing such inhumane things."
"And the tragic experience of that girl made it hard for me to turn a blind eye to it."
Mamiya actually concealed a reason from Yoshitomo - the reason why he was willing to save the Osaka girl named Atake was because this girl might have clues related to "immortality" that their Karaoke House had been investigating for a long time.
After all, the injuries healed extremely quickly, and even the internal organs could repair themselves. These were consistent with the characteristics of the "immortal body" that Mamiya and the others understood.
Therefore, whether for public or private reasons, Mamiya could not abandon the girl.
"By the way -" Mamiya turned his head and looked at Yoshitomo behind him, "You and Fumiaki are the only two people who know the existence of that girl and have the key to the basement. Didn't Fumiaki question you about anything after you released the girl last time?"
"No..." Yoshitomo shook his head, "After I released the girl last time... Father must have suspected that it was me who did it."
A complicated smile appeared on Yoshitomo's face.
"After all, no matter how you look at it, I am the most suspicious."
"But my father hasn't told me anything until now."
"He probably... wants to let me go..."
"...After successfully rescuing the girl this time, Wen Xian may not let you go again." Mamiya turned his gaze back to the front, "Are you ready?"
"Yes." Yoshitomo's eyes were firm. "I have already made up my mind. At most, I will be beaten by my father."
While they were talking, the two had already reached the bottom of the stairs.
The air in the basement was filled with the smell of blood.
Although this basement is designed with ventilation holes and corpses will be dealt with immediately once they start to stink, this place is still a place where corpses are piled up, so the smell is naturally not pleasant.
"Brother, this way." Yoshitomo walked in front of Mamiya and led the way.
As he followed Yi towards a corner of the basement, Mamiya used an oil lamp to light the candles hanging on the wall along the way.
The originally dim basement gradually became brighter as candles were lit up one after another.
Corpses were often piled up haphazardly, but so far none had been seen—perhaps they had all been used up, which was a common occurrence.
The basement was not spacious. After a while, Mamiya saw a girl tied with iron chains sitting in the corner of the basement in front of him.
One end of a thick iron chain was connected to the wall, and the other end was tied around the girl's neck.
The chain was quite long, so the girl had a wide range of movement, covering nearly half of the basement.
Within its range of activities, there are toilets, food, clean water, spare clothes and other items.
Mamiya saw the girl, and the girl naturally saw Mamiya and Yoshitomo.
Seeing Mamiya and Yoshitomo walking slowly towards her, fear appeared on the girl's face at a speed visible to the naked eye.
But after seeing that the person leading the group was Yoshitomo, the fear on the girl's face slowly disappeared and she became a little calmer.
"Atake, don't be afraid, it's me - Yoshitomo." Yoshitomo slightly quickened his pace, then knelt on one knee in front of the girl...Atake.
"Lord Yoshitomo..." The girl looked timidly at Mamiya who was standing behind Yoshitomo, "Who is this..."
At this moment, Mamiya thought to himself:
——It seems that what Yoshitomo told me before, that he often chatted with this girl, was not false.
Based on the scene at this moment, it is not difficult to see that this girl trusts Yoshitomo very much.
"Don't be afraid, this is my brother. He is here with me to rescue you."
"Nice to meet you." Mamiya bowed to Atake, "My name is Mamiya Kuro. Don't be afraid. As Yoshitomo said, I am here to rescue you."
Now Mamiya and Azhu are only a few feet away from each other, so Mamiya can see Azhu's appearance more clearly.
She was probably only about 15 years old. Her appearance was not good-looking, but it was not ugly either.
She was wearing clean clothes, and although she didn't look very well, her spirit was much better than Mamiya had imagined.
Mamiya originally thought that the girl's mental state must be very bad after being locked up in this dark basement for so long and having her stomach cut open frequently to take out her gallbladder.
Yoshitomo seemed to have seen through what Mamiya was thinking at the moment, and he explained:
"Every time my father took the gallbladder out, he would first give Ah Zhu a strong drug to relieve Ah Zhu's pain... Ah, sorry, Ah Zhu, I won't say anymore."
Yoshitomo's explanation came to an abrupt halt because when Atake in front of him heard the word "gall-taking" from him, his cheeks turned extremely pale and his body began to tremble.
"We'll talk about this later." Mamiya said, "First, give the child the chain..."
Snap, snap, snap, snap…
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps coming from behind Mamiya and Yoshitomo interrupted Mamiya's words.
The moment they heard the footsteps, both Mamiya and Yoshitomo's faces changed.
The footsteps came from the darkness behind the two people, where the candlelight could not reach.
As the footsteps sounded, a figure slowly emerged from the darkness.
The person who emerged from the darkness was a middle-aged man with a black and purple katana on his waist.