"Ugh—"
Dottore woke up in a haze, struggling to adjust to the dim light inside the room. With no memory of what had just happened, he could only rely on the faint glow of the furnace to survey his surroundings.
The room was in absolute chaos, stained with blood everywhere, and a piece of an **ofuda** was jammed straight into his stomach. By the flickering firelight, he noticed the bloody scratch marks covering his face and the firm, heavy lump clutched in his palm. It seemed Niwa's heart was finally in his hands.
He poked at the furnace. Inside were remnants that looked like crushed bone fragments, and scattered around the base were scraps of clothing, including the bright red fabric worn by the Grand Shrine Priestess.
Clutching his throbbing head and confirming that the main door hadn't been tampered with, Dottore's lips curled into a smirk. He felt he had roughly pieced together what happened.
Who would have thought that Shrine Priestess had a few tricks up her sleeve? She had actually mounted a desperate counterattack before dying—one so fierce it had given Dottore temporary amnesia. But what a pity; her admirable courage had now been reduced to ashes right alongside Niwa's corpse.
With that thought, Dottore casually tended to his wounds, slipped the "heart" into a small box, and then meticulously cleaned up the messy scene, leaving not even a speck of blood behind.
Feeling the heavy weight of the box in his hands, Dottore couldn't help but let out a mocking sneer.
"Ah, you ill-fated little puppet! Soon, you'll finally have a real heart. I just hope you never find out whose it actually was."
He roughly calculated the time. If he wasn't mistaken, that puppet should be returning any moment now. As for reinforcements—ha! Setting aside the heavy obstruction from the double agents outside, even if someone managed to get in, how could that puppet of the Raiden Shogun ever lift a finger to help him?
This time, Dottore's calculations had completely backfired. How could he possibly have known that the Raiden Shogun's position had been taken by someone else?
Meanwhile, not far away, Kunikuzushi stared with burning eyes at the Mikage Furnace, which was still continuously leaking Tatasgami pollution. He clutched his collar tightly, his face tense as if enduring something agonizing.
That smoke-like resentment of the Tatasgami—any mortal who touched it would first grow increasingly irritable, after which their inner evil desires would be amplified infinitely. Translucent crystals would condense within their bloodstream, piercing their body full of holes before they finally bled to death in agony.
"Oh? Kabukimono, why did you come back alone? By the way, have you seen Niwa?"
Dottore strolled over, feigning a chance encounter.
"Lord Niwa? I haven't seen him at all. Did something happen to him?"
Seeing that his target had swallowed the bait, a sliver of cunning flashed in Dottore's eyes. Possessed by the spirit of a master actor, he let out a heavy sigh:
"I found a way to repair the furnace, but I couldn't find Niwa anywhere to discuss it. When I finally went to his house, I found it completely ransacked, with all his valuables stripped clean. The worst-case scenario I can think of is that he fled out of guilt."
Dead men tell no tales, so Dottore felt completely at ease brazenly spouting nonsense. Little did he know, the script had already changed.
"However, while checking his room, I found something. If I'm not mistaken, he prepared this specifically as a gift for you, only he never got the chance to give it to you."
With that, the box containing the heart was handed over to Kunikuzushi. Dottore waited for the puppet to open it, but Kunikuzushi didn't even lift the lid. He simply set the box aside and continued to fix his unblinking gaze on the distant, polluting Mikage Furnace.
"Aren't you going to open it first?"
"No. By comparison, repairing the furnace and stopping the pollution is far more important. Do you need my help with the next steps?"
Dottore froze, a sudden thought crossing his mind: *Has this puppet read the script in advance?*
"Indeed. You are an indispensable part of the furnace repair operation. Niwa mentioned you before—you possess a puppet's body and are immune to the Tatasgami miasma. The leakage is caused by a cooling system failure that drove the core temperature too high. You just need to withstand the Tatasgami pollution and force open the jammed internal drain valve."
Kunikuzushi gave no response. Dottore said nothing further, simply watching him in silence. He had already factored this possibility into his plans and was just about to resort to moral blackmail to force the puppet's compliance when, suddenly, the pollution from the Mikage Furnace stopped entirely.
Inside the furnace, Fu blew on her smoking hands to cool them down. Who would have thought the handles would be this scorching hot? Thank goodness she possessed the body of a God, rendering her immune to high temperatures and Tatasgami miasma. If it had been Kunikuzushi, he would probably have had to repeat the script of burning off all ten of his fingertips.
Outside, Dottore's expression began to panic. The script he had so painstakingly arranged had suddenly collapsed on him. But being an old fox, he quickly recovered his composure.
"Oh, who would have thought the Mikage Furnace fixed itself? Quite a miracle, wouldn't you say? Just like you. Now, can you finally open that box and take a look?"
With a malicious grin, Dottore watched as Kunikuzushi slowly popped open the box—only for a rotted apple to roll out. Dottore was dumbfounded. He had checked it multiple times earlier; it was definitely a heart!
"Dottore! How dare you lay a hand on the person I cherish most!"
Furious, Kunikuzushi hurled the apple straight at Dottore's face as countless bolts of purple lightning erupted across his body.
"You! Isn't your power supposed to be sealed?!"
"I did it!"
The scene shifted. The "Raiden Shogun" slowly emerged from the shadows, her footsteps slow and heavy. With every single step she took, the oppressive aura radiating from her grew stronger by a fraction, making even the heavens and earth shift colors.
"The Grand Shrine Priestess of Narukami Shrine—did you murder her?"
"Lady Shogun, a deity shouldn't casually make baseless accusations..."
Dottore dropped heavily to one knee, looking utterly aggrieved as he continued to lie through his teeth.
"Then how did this end up in your room?"
A blood-stained ribbon was tossed onto the ground. Dottore was struck dumb; he distinctly remembered sweeping the entire room from top to bottom.
Under the crushing pressure, Dottore felt as though a massive mountain was pressing down on his back, making every breath an agonizing struggle. Yet Kunikuzushi stood right beside him completely unaffected, as if the terrifying coercion was directed entirely at Dottore alone.
"Unlawfully entering another nation's territory, sabotaging the Mikage Furnace, and assassinating local officials—your crimes are capital!"
Dottore's face drained of all color in an instant. Right now, his status was that of an illegal intruder who had destroyed critical infrastructure and murdered a local official. No matter how slick his tongue might usually be, he couldn't escape the fate of execution by a single sword stroke.
Before launching this operation, he had specifically gathered intelligence from Fatui operatives embedded in Inazuma, learning that the Raiden Shogun had always been rigid in thought, practically a shut-in, functioning as little more than a puppet ruler.
Yet right now, the "Raiden Shogun" was standing right before him, and his own life was about to end. Waves of regret washed over him, though a certain item in his pocket still offered a sliver of confidence.
"I admit it, I killed that Shrine Priestess! But what about you? A mighty god who treats human lives like grass for the sake of your so-called Eternity, even letting your own Shrine Priestess walk to her death just to trap me..."
Before Dottore could finish, his voice abruptly cut off. The "Raiden Shogun" in front of him suddenly transformed into a five-foot-tall little shrine maiden, who waved at him with a beaming smile.
"Hiya, it's me~ Let me show you something neat~"
With that, Fu reached behind her back—her seemingly infinite inventory—and pulled out a modern piece of technology: a smartphone. She shoved the video playback of the incident right into Dottore's face. Dottore's expression shifted through a kaleidoscope of colors before he whipped out a sharp dagger and lunged at the phone, desperate to destroy this bizarre machine.
*Clang!*
It was like striking an indestructible artifact; the hardened blade shattered instantly, and along with it, the last shreds of Dottore's fighting spirit broke into pieces.
Under Dottore's panicked, frantic gaze, Fu gracefully pinched an ofuda between her fingers, closed her eyes, and began chanting.
"Musou Ten—ah, wrong one, let's try again."
Fu powered up on the spot for ages, but failed to conjure up a single Yin-Yang Orb. The Doctor let out a mocking sneer of disdain, but his face turned green again almost immediately.
Like a streak of lightning, Fu zoomed back, carrying a boulder the size of a small car. She was even meticulously trimming it into the shape of a Yin-Yang Orb with her Engulfing Lightning.
"Taste my Musou Tensei!"
With that, she hurled the pirated version of Musou Tensei straight at him. The Doctor panicked completely, hammering the emergency waypoint button in his pocket like a machine gun. But right on cue, it seemed to malfunction. Dottore could only watch in despair as a massive millstone weighing at least a dozen tons hurtled toward his face.
*BOOM————*
In a fraction of a second, Dottore's figure vanished beneath the shattered rubble. The Doctor didn't have his segments anymore—dead meant truly dead.
"Oh yeah! Time to send Dottore to be reunited with his family~"
*(Reimu shaking her ofuda for three solid minutes)*
Kunikuzushi was left completely shell-shocked:
*Someone help! My mom has lost her mind...*