Chapter 264: , The New Cursed Grudge Smoke Ghost

Comedian Miyahara Toru never imagined that he would actually have a day to return to the mortal world.

Naturally, he had heard of the famous Uesugi Muneyuki. In his mind, Uesugi Muneyuki was a legendary Forensic Pathologist who must be a master of all branches of forensic science, knowledgeable about all fatal diseases and signs, familiar with all cutting-edge international technologies, and a powerhouse capable of going head-to-head with those United States forensic pathologists.

But when Uesugi Muneyuki actually found him, Miyahara Toru realized it was all bullshit.

This kid cheated!

Where was he relying on any technique? He was clearly relying on the case-solving ability he obtained by being able to communicate directly with the dead!

If you take the answer and work backward to the question, then of course no matter how you design it, it will feel reasonable!

Therefore, when Uesugi Muneyuki explained to Police Inspector Shiratori that he felt there were suspicious points because he did not find an emergency inhaler on Miyahara Toru, as an asthma patient could not possibly not carry this thing on them, the ugly face of Miyahara Toru's dead soul immediately turned into a mask of pain.

You don't know shit!

The comedian muttered to himself.

Miyahara Toru was ugly to begin with, and to play the fool, he had deliberately kept a bowl cut. His old face was wrinkled, and under a mask of pain, he was so ugly he was almost impossible to look at.

However, that is how comedians are; sometimes being too handsome is not an advantage but a disadvantage, because it makes the audience focus more on the face than on the jokes. In that case, it would be better to be an actor or an Idol. On the contrary, if a comedian is ugly enough—ugly with character, ugly with distinctiveness—it will instead leave a deep impression on the audience. At the same time, an ugly man acting silly and playing the fool on stage to tell jokes and pull pranks can be very funny.

It is hard to say how other places are, but in a repressive society like Japan, everyone likes this sort of thing.

When his grievance was redressed, and when this ugly man watched with his own eyes as his partner was suppressed and taken away by the Metropolitan Police Department, Miyahara finally let out a deep breath.

Resentful?

Still resentful!

Hateful?

Miyahara thought for a long time, but felt there was no great hatred left. He was already in his forties this year, and his health had never been good, so he never thought he would live to be a hundred. For an ugly man who had fallen on hard times and been eliminated by Japan's exam-oriented education system to go from a small Yoshimoto Kogyo theater all the way to becoming a top-tier comedian with an annual salary of thirty or forty million, and then die in a blaze of glory, and even be able to sweep the headlines across the country one more time after death—for this guy, it was already enough.

In a trance, Miyahara Toru felt his soul, satisfied with his wish, begin to move uncontrollably. He arrived before a deep and narrow tunnel; a door covered in inscriptions was tightly shut, but a glimmer of light could be faintly seen through the crack in the door.

What place is this?

Am I about to attain Buddhahood?

Miyahara Toru thought for a moment and decided to push open the door.

Unexpectedly, the other side was not some Paradise or place of rebirth, nor was it Hirasaka Yomi or the Eighteen Levels of Hell.

It was an Esoteric Buddhist Hall.

At the entrance were thirteen Thirteen-Step Blood Agate Staircases, each engraved with the Sanskrit of the Ragaraja Heart Mantra, and on both sides, Six-Sided Bronze Pillars each hung a Vajra Bell with nine rings. The dome of the portico presented a Three-Dimensional Mandala, with the crimson Ragaraja in the center, his three eyes wide with rage, his six arms holding a Vajra Bell, a Five-Pronged Vajra, and a Lotus Bow. The demons of greed suppressed beneath his feet were transformed into Lapis Lazuli Reliefs, forming a Yin-Yang Barrier with the gilded bronze sculpture of Kongō Yasha Myōō with nine heads and thirty-four arms on the door.

If Miyahara Toru had more research into Buddhism, he might have been able to hear the Tattvasamgraha Tantra being chanted in Sanskrit inside the hall.

It was a pity he was not very cultured.

Where have I come to?

Further ahead, passing through the vermilion floor, the two main deity statues in the center were designed to rotate dynamically. The throne of Ragaraja rose, and behind it, a cinnabar screen was painted with an Eight-Petal Red Lotus Garbhadhatu Mandala. The Lapis Lazuli Relief statue of Kongō Yasha Myōō rotated with the lunar orbit. On the circular altar, every dead soul transcended by Uesugi Muneyuki would leave a trace of their own figure in this hall, signifying rebirth and attainment of Buddhahood.

With the appearance of Miyahara Toru, hundreds of tiny Buddha seats immediately turned around, all gazes fixed on this comedian, which made Miyahara shudder, but driven by some instinct, he still slowly walked to the center of the hall.

The master of the hall was not there, but beneath the seat of Ragaraja, a woman wearing the standard uniform of a Fuji TV female anchor, with long hair, was looking at him with a smile.

"Ah???" When Miyahara Toru saw that face, the comedian was so scared his legs went weak, and he collapsed to the ground.

"Hironaka Mariko?! You're not dead?! You're still alive?"

"Wait, those rumors about Fuji TV, those curses, and those supernatural things that happened are real?!"

If there could be a description for being scared out of one's wits, it was the situation Miyahara Toru was encountering now.

Hironaka Mariko seemed to have heard Miyahara's words. She rose from in front of Ragaraja, but this female anchor did not walk normally; instead, she folded her body backward with her chest facing up, crawling on the ground like a spider using her hands and feet, and as she crawled, she stretched her head out from inside her neck by more than a meter.

"Ahhhhh! Don't kill me, don't kill me! Spare me! We once performed together, didn't we? Spare me!"

Miyahara was completely scared out of his wits, and at this moment, Hironaka Mariko laughed wildly: "Hahahaha~ what do you mean I'm still alive? I didn't die? Think again, Miyahara, it was you who died! You really died, otherwise how could you see me?"

"Oh, right! Unless I died... yes, I'm already dead."

For humans, the most terrifying thing is terror itself; once it is discovered that the other party can communicate, this sense of terror will be greatly diminished.

"Is this the reason why you can still appear in the Odaiba Building?" Miyahara Toru was still shaken, but he felt much better than before.

"Hehehe, there are too few Yakshas under the Wisdom King's seat, you saw it too, right, Miyahara?" Hironaka Mariko said with a strange laugh: "It was my suggestion to let Uesugi spare your life and not let you attain Buddhahood."

"Why?" Miyahara Toru indicated he could not understand, and his eyes suddenly lit up: "Do you want to find a companion? Are you lonely?"

Miyahara Toru had a wife and two children, but this guy knew his wife didn't really love him and had married him purely because of his high income, but his wife treated him reasonably well and managed the household okay, so he didn't have too many complaints; after all, he was truly very ugly.

"Heh." Hironaka Mariko thought to herself that even if she went to Los Angeles to find a gorilla, she wouldn't find you.

And how would ghosts even mate?

"I suggested letting you stay because you have a few characteristics: first, you are a perfect victim, you have no fault in this matter; second, you still have a deep attachment to the mortal world; third, your nature is very kind, which is rare for people who come out of Yoshimoto Kogyo. Among your duo, the one related to the dark side of the entertainment industry should be Miyahara, right?" Hironaka Mariko said with interest.

"Hey, yes, so I have always been grateful to him." Miyahara said with a bit of shame.

"So, are you willing to join us and become a ghost under the seat of The Vajra?" Hironaka Mariko nodded and asked: "I am not a combat-type Cursed Grudge, I need your help."

"Become... a ghost under the Wisdom King's seat?" Just as Hironaka Mariko said, Miyahara Toru still had a deep attachment to this world.

"I... I really can't let go of my two children, I am willing!"

The dead soul passed through the Seven-Fold Corridor behind the main hall, the walls inlaid with seven hundred and twenty colorful thangkas, depicting the eighty-four thousand types of rebirth for all living beings.

The Crystal Rainbow Bridge at the end was glowing, with the Five Wisdom Tathagatas Seed Syllables engraved on the bridge, and the guardrails on both sides were intertwined with Ragaraja arrow patterns and Yaksha tooth carvings.

"Jingle~ jingle~"

Hironaka Mariko shook the Soul-Guiding Bell, and the red lotus fire of Ragaraja and the lightning patterns of The Vajra intertwined on the mist screen to form the Akasagarbha Dharma Seal of the Mahavairocana Tantra, guiding Miyahara Toru into the Vairochana Buddha Moonlight Gate at the end of the crystal bridge.

Thus, a new Cursed Grudge was born.

Ghost under the seat of Kongō Yasha Myōō—Smoke Ghost (Suffocator).

……………………

By the afternoon, the area around the Odaiba Building was already filled with police cars, and the news that Uesugi Muneyuki had solved a comedian murder case on the spot while recording a program at Fuji TV had also reached the Metropolitan Police Department.

When Superintendent General Watanabe Eiji heard this news from Police Inspector Megure, he was speechless: "What is Fuji TV doing? Why do people die every year? Is there something wrong with the Odaiba Building? Should we have Akasaka Station set up a Koban inside the building?"

"The news currently coming back from the front is that it has nothing to do with Fuji TV; it seems to be caused by private conflicts between the Yoshimoto Kogyo comedian duo, the Umbrella Duo." Police Inspector Megure said on the phone: "Actually, under normal circumstances, it would have been judged as death from an asthma attack, but Uesugi-kun, who was present, disagreed and decided to conduct an on-site forensic examination, and it turned out to be a real murder case."

"Oh, fortunately it's true, otherwise I would have thought yesterday was repeating itself." Watanabe Eiji was a bit speechless: "Fuji TV always manages to come up with new tricks for our headquarters... Uesugi-kun too, why does he always run into these things?"

"Let's put that aside for now. According to the investigation by Forensic Examiner Uesugi at the scene and what Police Inspector Shiratori learned afterward, this case seems to involve the account books of the Kudo-kai. It is reported that Miyano Hiroyuki of the After the Rain Duo, who is the perpetrator of this case, had long been taking private jobs from the Kudo-kai and assisting with money laundering; the Public Security Police have already investigated them."

"Oh? It involves Public Security as well?"

Watanabe Eiji frowned slightly.

Although he was the Superintendent General, he belonged to the Criminal Division, and the Public Security Police were not under his jurisdiction. Originally, he had already suppressed the Public Security Division by relying on the Chiba Case, but the appearance of Chief Cabinet Secretary Onoda had caused the balance of power to shift once again.

Moreover, he could not afford to ignore the arrangements of Chief Cabinet Secretary Onoda, because the other party's older brother was the Chief Cabinet Secretary. Many of Onoda's actions might not represent his own intentions but those of his brother, and whether he could continue to climb higher depended to a large extent on whether the Chief Cabinet Secretary was willing to speak on his behalf.

As the Yokohama Case progressed, the matter had become involved very deeply, so deep that even at his level of Superintendent General, it was becoming a bit insufficient.

"Yes, it involves Public Security. Director General, do you remember the matter that Forensic Examiner Uesugi mentioned afterward?" Superintendent Megure became very serious when bringing up this question: "There must be someone behind the Kudo-kai giving orders."

"I know about this..." Watanabe Eiji did not say anything more, because another call was coming in.

Sure enough, it was Chief Cabinet Secretary Onoda Kimiaki from the National Police Agency.

"I am aware of the matter regarding Fuji TV, Director General Watanabe." Chief Cabinet Secretary Onoda's consistently calm tone came through: "The Criminal side has done very well, and the Special Mission Unit has handled it very well. Just tell Forensic Examiner Uesugi that he can stop here."

"We in Public Security will take over the subsequent matters. Your prospective son-in-law only needs to be responsible for enjoying the flowers and applause, and prepare for his engagement with peace of mind. We in Public Security have much more to consider, hehe~"

(End of this chapter)