A few days later, we once again set off for a new city. Before me, an undead army was marching toward the city’s walls—it seemed we had made it in time once more.
“So, did you think of a good way to defeat them?” Yuki asked, poking her head out slightly.
“More or less.” Giving a vague answer, I made a hand sign with one hand.
Summoning: Zhen. A single ayakashi emerged from the spatial distortion. At a glance, it appeared to be an ordinary bird. It was around the size of a large bird of prey, with dark purple feathers and a red beak. Its long neck and graceful silhouette made it resemble a peacock from India.
“Go,” I ordered, pointing at the army of undead.
“Po po!” The zhen replied with an odd chirp that sounded like the beating of a hand drum. Spreading its wings, the ayakashi took to the sky, still looking every bit like an ordinary bird. Soon, it was directly above the undead.
With faint groans, the advancing undead began collapsing one after another. Every last one froze in place, went stiff, then hit the ground, with no exception. They showed no signs of recovery.
The zhen didn’t appear to have done anything. It had merely flown over them. Nonetheless, they continued to fall as though being trampled by invisible feet. The next moment, the vision of a shikigami that had strayed too close to the zhen went dark. Looking at it from another viewpoint, I saw its hitogata decay, drained of power, and fall from the sky.
“Oh, zhen poison works on the dead?” Yuki said in surprise. “Your poisonous gas didn’t.”
“Poisons made from an ayakashi’s power work differently.”
Zhen were ayakashi that held deadly poison within their bodies. The targets of its poison weren’t limited to humans or animals—a zhen simply flying over a field caused crops to wither, one perching on a tree made its branches decay, and even stone cracked and crumbled beneath their touch. That all sounded more like a curse, but zhen were said to be a poisonous ayakashi because a potent toxin could be extracted from their feathers by soaking them in liquor. It was so deadly that there were legends that a Chinese emperor, fearing assassination, had ordered any mountain where zhen were sighted to be burned down.
They seemed to be able to control the strength of their poison to some degree. I suspected that even what I was witnessing now wasn’t its full strength.
“Looks like it’s over.” The final undead fell, and the zhen returned triumphantly, its mission complete.
“Po po! Po po!”
“Good work. Here.” I tossed it some breadcrumbs, and the zhen eagerly began eating. It looked more like a chicken than an ayakashi.
Zhen were said to eat venomous snakes, much like peacocks, but in truth, they would eat just about anything. Insects, fruits, rice, bread—they weren’t picky. They were unusual among ayakashi in that they weren’t fond of alcohol, perhaps because their poison would leach out, but that just made them even more similar to birds. When it finished eating, the satisfied zhen returned to the other plane.
After that, I send a crow shikigami out to observe the corpses.
“Good. It worked as planned.”
Despite the slight inflammation of the skin, there was nothing that would impede examination. Even the inflammation would likely subside a bit if the poison were removed. Zhen poison lingered in corpses, so I would have to burn the bodies later to prevent it from spreading. Just as I was planning out my next move—
“Hmm?” Through the crow’s vision, I saw a lone figure standing at the center of the collapsed undead.
The figure was wearing high-quality armor and held a sword. It was quite well-equipped relative to the other undead. I couldn’t see its face due to its helmet, but from the shape of its armor, it appeared to be a woman.
I frowned. There hadn’t been anything like it there before. Could there have been an undead capable of curing the poison with light magic? I had the crow shikigami descend to confirm the situation.
The armored knight was crouched low, picking something up from a corpse. As the crow descended, I was able to make out that it was a hatchet the undead had presumably been using as a weapon.
Suddenly, the knight lifted her gaze, staring straight up at the crow. Through the shikigami, her eyes met mine. A moment later, she hurled the hatchet at the crow. Just as the blade approached, its vision went dark.
The shikigami fell. Startled, I pulled my consciousness back to my own vision. The knight in the distance was looking at me. Not at the fallen shikigami—at me, the sorcerer who had been controlling it.
“This one seems like a problem,” I groaned, floating a hitogata in the air.