Time bomb

Alex could hear the conversation between Kanghui and the woman clearly while he bore the agony of being hit by one of the thirteen guardians' soul piercing light. He could see nothing but the darkness of his inner soul realm and the rotating stone guardians now towering over his cross-legged body.

To him, the entire situation seemed too surreal as his thoughts drifted to the many Chinese xianxia fantasy comics read and drama series watched to improve his mandarin when he was alive.

Why couldn't he be like the main characters since like most main characters in those series always held a strange luck of meeting powerful strange beings?

After all, didn't they all sit on a platform, meditate and increase their energy named "qi" in the human made series, before bursting out fully overpowered enough to wipe a clan with one finger?

Fuck his life, Alex cussed.

Another flame rose from his body to block the hit, to no avail. The straight line of greenish light drilled through and stabbed Alex as he yelped in pain. A cooling blue energy wave rose from him only to meet with resistance from the circulating reddish flames around him.

The woman, whose name he knew now as Jinwu, mentioned about simulating the soul shearing process while he was eavesdropping on their conversation.

To Alex, the simulation made him feel like a pincushion getting stabbed constantly by the beams originating from the thirteen guardians.

Patience, Alex told himself.

"Why isn't this flame working?" An illusion of Chongli manifested.

"Soul shearing simulation," Alex answered, as Chongli dodged another bright hit in time, only to yelp when it hit Alex.

"Fuck this shit, I am not suffering for you," Chongli jumped around him in pain as he glared at the stone guardians.

"Not for you to say that," a deep voice chided as Alex felt a strange searing heat enter.

A swirling pillar of flames emerged out of the darkness, illuminating his soul realm while the stone guardians slowed their rotation to a full shop. Alex tightened his hands into fists. Enough was enough.

Any more inheritance nonsense from Chongli will increase his determination to quit and go straight for reincarnation. Alex isn't interested in power or wealth.

Everything he worked hard to create meaning of his pitiful existence as a human vanished because of that accursed accident at the dig site.

At first, the hidden dimension appeared more exciting - the idea of interacting with beings that existed long before Earth's human civilisation appealed to his curiosity about ancient civilisations, a precursor of his archaeological training.

Gradually, over a matter of days, the appeal waned and whittled away to an epiphany that he was way in over his head. Better to know less than more. Ignorance was indeed bliss.

Before him in the soul realm, the swirling pillar of transformed into a large skull of fiercely flickering reddish flames above him, larger than the tallest guardian as Alex waited cross-legged with his fingers tapping on his knee.

"Just kill me, please," Alex muttered.

Blackish purplish wisps of flames emanated from its sockets, forming a pair of creepy pupils trailing Alex's move.

A flaming skeletal hand appeared out of nowhere to clasp its chin.

"HMMMMM…" the skull muttered.

The heatwaves radiated out of its mouth, pushing Alex and the energy wave of Chongli back with such effortless gale- strength force that both slammed against the enormous feet of a stone guardian.

The flames formed a smirk on the skull's face in response as it slowly shrunk into a flaming human sized figure who looked around at the gigantic stone guardians with curiosity.

"Cool shit," it said, then its burning head turned to look at Alex, who was slowly getting up.

"Yes, if you are here to destroy me," Alex spread out his arms wide open. "Just do it now."

The flaming figure guffawed madly and gave him a quick nod as a greeting. "Kagutsuchi of Takamagahara. Also known as Homusubi. And to Xitian, a Zhurong, whatever nonsense they call it there."

"You are the chief Kami of the Atago shrine."

Atago shrines often held fire rituals for Kagutsuchi for fire protection. Alex heard historical stories of how the households in ancient Hei-an, the old capital of Japan would often get a piece of paper with the words 'hi no yo jin' inscribed on them by the lead Atago shrine on Mount Atago to ward off fire disasters.

The Hei-an population in history feared and revered Kagutsuchi so much for the flowers of Hei-an, a hint on how fires which bloomed across the ancient city razing homes and palaces to the ground.

Yet, Kagutsuchi didn't give off an aura of foreboding like Yasomagatsuhi.

The flames withdrew, revealing his face and clothing.

A pixie like face with sharp features appeared, with red and golden streaks running through short spiky black hair and large delicately slanted eyes lined with dark smudged eyeliner resembling dark circles.

Kagutsuchi looked like a cross between a cos player and a rock star with the classic Karuta breast plate worn over his robes and the pants he wore with the leather boots.

He looked young, like Arahabaki and Yato. His complexion was pale and flawless, like a white jade.

Too anime like, Alex thought.

"Ah well!" Kagutsuchi gazed around with his arms akimbo, radiating a certain unhinged darkness in his wide-opened eyes, then leaned towards Alex, flashing his pearly white teeth, "So you know the story of my birth?"

"Like bursting out of Izanami —"

"HAHAaaahAaaA," Kagutsuchi covered his face with his slender fingers and cackled like a lunatic who escaped from an asylum.

Then he halted and said with seriousness, "it is a prank gone wrong."

"Prank?" Alex tilted his head in confusion.

Kagutsuchi started chortling again. "HeEHEEeeeheee you should never ever write stupid shit about yourself if ever asked to."

"Huh?"

"I wrote that part about burning Izanami's vagina during childbirth," he stopped abruptly from his laughter and shrugged.

Oh dear heavens, this one is mad. Alex cringed at the thought. Why did Jinwu and Kanghui stick him with an unhinged primeval being?

"This one has gone off his bat," Chongli whispered to him.

Kagutsuchi swung around with his arms wide open, twirling around. "Fun, ain't it? Then gods bursting out of a sword to decapitate me! Woot!"

"I can see that," Alex replied to Chongli as discreetly as he could.

Kagutsuchi continued laughing to himself and talking to himself. "It's funny to scare humans. Besides, I can tell you that the humans under our sphere are pretty kinky in their imagination."

Then he slid up to Alex, staring at him. "Name me one kinky imaginative shit you read in Japan."

Alex bit his lip at Kagutsuchi's strange request.

"COME ON!"

"T-t-tentacle hentai?"

Kagutsuchi paused and rubbed his chin, deep in thought, like it was a serious thought, and looked up.

"No, those are not imagination. You know humans… interesting species, but pretty odd in their mating habits. If there is a big enough octopus, they'll fuck it. Just not nice on the human male's parts when you know… octopus has a beak and a drill like tongue."

Alex crunched up his face and squeezed his legs together at Kagutsuchi's descriptions.

"KAGUTSUCHI!" Yasomagatsuhi's voice hollered from the above them which made Kagutsuchi shrink back.

Alex could hear a low snarl from Kagutsuchi's throat. His eyes gleamed with a malevolent red aura of defiance.

"YOU PROMISE ME FIRE!" Kagutsuchi shouted back. "FIRE LIKE THE FLOWERS OF HEI-AN."

Alex recognized the term used for the raging fires of Hei-an, the old capital city of Japan. Great, they stuck him with an unstable pyromaniac, ready to burn anything up, including himself.

"THERE IS ONE THERE IN FRONT OF YOU."

Chongli's illusion pointed to himself. "Me?"

Kagutsuchi glanced at the illusionary Chongli and smirked. "SEALED. What good is a fucking seal on fire?"

"Wait, your seal is fading… that's why YOU…," Kagutsuchi lunged forward Alex with his fingernail pointing in his chest. "Bear a curse."

"Curse?" Alex retreated a few steps back until he could feel the feet of a stone guardian.

Kagutsuchi snickered and babbled to himself while fumbling in his sleeve. "It's been several millennia for those old fogeys out there to remember."

"Wait, aren't you one—" Alex trailed off as Kagatsuchi stared and gnashed his teeth at him.

He pulled out a strange metallic ball like device and bade Alex to sit down opposite from him. "We need to start with the basics."

Kagatsuchi pressed on the ball and a strange light emitted upwards, projecting a holographic human body in front of a now obedient, seated Alex but only with a bright spherical core and strange flows of multi-coloured light running through where the veins are. Chongli's illusion vanished.

Alex spotted the troublesome reddish aura circulating chaotically around the hologram, but Kagutsuchi paid no notice.

With his fingers, Kagutsuchi pulled out a vein-like bluish energy wave from the holographic image. "Water element. Useless."

Letting go of the wave, his fingers pulled out a whitish energy strand. "Air or wind element. Useless."

Again, he let go of the whitish strand and pointed to the reddish aura. "Fire. Dark fire."

A formation opened above the reddish aura which circulated around on the holographic image. Alex could feel the heat of where the aura was circulating on himself.

"I don't want to be here," Kagutsuchi sprung to his feet suddenly when the reddish aura turn purplish black.

"WHY NOT?" Yasomagatsuhi called out.

Kagutsuchi yelled back. "I AM MAD BUT I AM NOT SUICIDAL. HE IS A TIME BOMB."