Owari. That wall of Buddhist vow-power still stood.
From the direction of the northern mountain ranges of Mino, a curtain of pale golden light spread southeastward like a tide. Its speed was not fast, but it showed no sign of stopping.
Shinji stood upon the main road outside Kiyosu Castle. The violet veins within his crimson demon eyes swirled violently. He could feel it, the nature of that wall of Buddhist power. It did not attack. It did not harm. It did not purify. It merely existed.
Like a transparent wall, infinitely high, infinitely thick, spanning the space between heaven and earth. Humans could pass through it freely. Yōkai, could not take even a single step forward.
"Buddhist hōriki…" Kikyō stood at his side. Her longbow was slung across her back. Her black hair stirred faintly in the wind. Her cool, clear eyes gazed toward that golden light in the northeastern sky.
"No." She shook her head. "This is far more than a simple barrier. A barrier has boundaries. A caster. A cost to maintain. This...." She paused. "This is the mountain itself, shrouding the barrier."
Shinji did not refute her. Because he had also seen it. The source of that wall of Buddhist power came from an abnormally colossal mountain in northern Mino.
Mount Hakurei.
Under the amplification of the Illusion-Breaking talent of the Black Agate Pearl, he could faintly glimpse the outline of that mountain, far surpassing the mass of any surrounding peak.
Like a giant prostrate upon the earth. No. Not like a giant. It was a giant. That mountain itself was a corpse. The physical body of a high monk who had entered eternal meditation centuries ago, Saint Hakurei.
After death, he had fused with the earth. Absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Petrified. Expanded. Grew. And finally became a colossal mountain stretching for several kilometers. A living buddha of the flesh.
Shinji could not possibly have forgotten this existence, one he had sensed long before. Saint Hakurei of the original Inuyasha. A high monk who had saved countless common people during an age of famine. On the verge of death, he had willingly been buried alive underground.
He chanted sutras for forty-nine days and transformed into a sokushinbutsu, a buddha in his very body. But because of that single thread of unwillingness, of resentment, that surfaced at the very final moment before death, because he suddenly resented why he had to die, resented why those common people wished for his death, the gate to the Pure Land had shut forever.
His soul had never passed on. Trapped within the mountain for centuries. Grudges festering.
Shinji had originally thought this setting might be altered in a merged world. But the scene before his eyes told him, within Mount Hakurei, Saint Hakurei truly existed.
And now, someone had awakened the soul of Saint Hakurei, still wandering within the mountain. Yet perhaps due to the immense divergences brought by the merged world, this Mount Hakurei was even more aberrant than in the original story. It was moving.
"Who?" Kikyō asked. She was not asking what Mount Hakurei was, but who had awakened it. Clearly, she, too, had heard the legend of Saint Hakurei.
Shinji spoke only three words. "The Onmyōryō." And a single name. "Tsuchimikado Kokoro." That fifteen- or sixteen-year-old apprentice onmyōji, who had been gently, courteously deflected by Yoshimoto at the Imagawa capital.
She had seemed harmless. But now, it was clear that girl was anything but simple. Or rather, the existence behind her was anything but simple. In that fractured instant, Shinji could feel, the severing of his anchor was not solely due to the vast hōriki brought by that Buddhist incense and vow-power.
There was also a force of such deep, abyssal terror that it sealed off all within from all without. This was not the power of Tsuchimikado Kokoro. It was something far more horrifying, something that seemed to have seized possession of her body.
"It seems the true purpose of the Onmyōryō behind her, of her mission to the Tōkaidō, was never to rally the daimyō against the demons." Shinji's demon eyes narrowed.
He had felt something was wrong back in Suruga, when he had eavesdropped on Yoshimoto receiving Kokoro. The only daughter of the head of the Onmyōryō, dispatched to the Tōkaidō to deliver a trivial decree. Far too much for far too little.
Now, it was clear, that decree had indeed been nothing but a cover. The Onmyōryō's objective was Mino. Mount Hakurei. To awaken that flesh-buddha which had slumbered for centuries. No wonder, during this period after the Tsuchigumo had retreated, Kyōto had been so quiet. So they had been lying in wait here all along.
"What is their purpose?" Kikyō's voice was frigid.
"Most likely.... to block the path." Shinji gazed at that Buddhist wall of power, still expanding.
"To block my path. Perhaps even... to force us apart." Buddhist power suppressed all yōki. The barrier of Mount Hakurei was specifically targeted against inhuman entities.
As long as that wall remained, he could not return to Musashi. He could not return to Kaede's Village. His Hyakki Yakō, the great kappa of Suruga, the kamaitachi of Sagami, the Yuki-onna of Musashi, the nearly hundred demons scattered across three provinces, all of them would be cut off by this wall.Trapped on its other side. Isolated. Without aid.
A chill surfaced in Kikyō's eyes as well. It had to be said, this move was vicious. No direct confrontation. No deployment of troops. No force of arms. Using only a single mountain. A single wall of Buddhist power. And Shinji and his entire faction would be severed in two.
And Buddhist power did not harm humans. Humans could pass freely. This meant the Imagawa army, the Hōjō messengers, even Kikyō herself, were, in theory, completely unaffected. Only yōkai were affected. Only him. And those under his command.
"Let's go." Shinji hefted Banryū onto his shoulder and turned northeast. "To Mount Hakurei. We must deal with this wall first. Otherwise...." He never finished. The ground shuddered again. It was the soundwave emitted by that mountain, Mount Hakurei.
Even across hundreds of kilometers, that violent tremor pierced through the earth and reached the main road outside Kiyosu Castle. The soil cracked. Loose stones leaped into the air.
Several Imagawa ashigaru slipped and fell to the ground. And then, the light drew near. From the northeastern sky, a pillar of pale golden light shot upward, piercing straight through the heavens.
The range of that light pillar expanded with even greater speed. From a single pillar to a vast expanse. From an expanse to a wall, engulfing the entire field of vision.
"That mountain.... is still expanding!" Kikyō's reiryoku surged. The ground beneath her feet was stabilized by a shield of spiritual power.
Shinji's demon eyes saw even more. Under the Illusion-Breaking amplification of the Black Pearl, he saw the advance speed of that Buddhist wall of power abruptly multiply tenfold.
From Mino westward, toward Owari! That wall was no longer merely blocking the path. It was about to swallow half a province, to swallow Mino and Owari, to swallow the very region where Shinji stood.
"No—" Shinji's pupils contracted violently. "It's not just blocking the path. It's devouring."
When the leading edge of the Buddhist wall touched the ramparts of Kiyosu Castle, the stone walls remained utterly motionless. The ashigaru atop the walls were completely oblivious. But from the direction of Imagawa Yoshimoto's main command tent, a voice rang out. It was Yoshimoto. "What… what is this—!"
Shinji whipped his head around. Within the Imagawa main camp, that pale golden light had already seeped into the encampment. Human soldiers moved through it without the slightest sensation, patrolling as they patrolled, drinking as they drank.
Yet Imagawa Yoshimoto, who was within the inner great tent, her body began to turn transparent within the light. As though being "drawn out" by some force. As though being transferred. Yoshimoto's twelve-layered kimono billowed within the golden light.
The hems of deep purple and gold thread spread outward like seaweed in water. She reached out to grab a tent pole beside her. Her fingers passed straight through the pillar. " Nakai Shinji—!" Her voice was thick with terror, the most primal fear of the unknown.
She seemed to want to call out Shinji's name. But there was no time. In the next instant, her entire form vanished into the golden light. Not even her folding fan remained.
At the very same moment, beneath Kiyosu Castle, Oda Nobuna was also vanishing.
"Again—?!" Her body likewise turned transparent. The golden light swallowed her whole. Then it swallowed Shibata Katsuie. Then Maeda Toshiie.
The other humans, including the soldiers, continued as normal, seeing nothing at all. Only those who carried the Mandate of Heaven upon them, and the possessors of Guardian Spirits, were plucked away by that Buddhist light. Like fruit being harvested.
Mount Hakurei was devouring the Mandate of Heaven. That mountain of the flesh-buddha, the centuries-old grudge of Saint Hakurei, was swallowing every existence in this era who carried the Mandate of Heaven.
Daimyō. Generals. Divine-artifact reincarnations. Anyone upon whom a certain density of human virtue and fortune had converged, was being dragged inside.
What did it... or rather, what did Saint Hakurei, along with the entity behind Tsuchimikado Kokoro, seek to accomplish? For a moment, Shinji could no longer see through it.
Amidst this, the leading edge of the golden light had already reached his feet. The pale golden radiance seeped up from the soil and touched the soles of his boots. No rejection. No suppression.
The light merely swept over his feet and continued spreading forward, just as it treated those ordinary humans without the Mandate of Heaven, without Guardian Spirits.
This was wrong. The Buddhist wall of power should have suppressed all yōki. He was a yōkai. A demon warrior. Ninth Transformation of Essence. His entire body was saturated with yōki. By all logic, he should have been blocked outside.
Yet the light neither accepted him, nor rejected him. As though it saw nothing at all, it passed straight through his body.
Shinji looked down at his own hand. The Shura Heart pulsed once within his chest. Four viscera resonated as one. Heart-Fire. Kidney-Water. Lung-Metal. Liver-Wood. A Five Elements cycle, missing only the Spleen-Earth to be complete.
Though that cycle was incomplete, it was doing one thing: making his yōki draw closer and closer to life. His very essence was changing. From a demon warrior, an undead yōkai risen from death, he was, step by step, transforming into an existence approaching the living. Neither dead nor alive. Both dead and alive.
And thus, naturally, both human and demon. Buddhist power suppressed the inhuman. But he, was no longer entirely inhuman. Four viscera nearly complete. Three Souls about to converge. He was walking the road from demon to ma. From death to life. The Buddhist wall of Mount Hakurei seemed to sense this as well.
It did not reject him. It chose, neither to actively bar him, nor to refuse him. "But if I take the initiative… it seems I can enter." Shinji grasped this truth in an instant. And, of course, he would enter. To drag Imagawa Yoshimoto out. And even Oda Nobuna. Especially the former, upon whom he had expended so much effort.
And beyond that, he could not allow Tsuchimikado Kokoro, or rather, the Kyōto faction behind her, to succeed in their schemes. Whatever they were plotting, he would have to meet each move as it came.
Kikyō nodded. "I as well—" She took a step forward and walked into the golden light. Then she stopped. Because the light pushed her back. Exceedingly gently, like a mother gently pushing aside a child's hand, it softly expelled Kikyō from the golden radiance.
Kikyō retreated half a step. The cuffs of her white uwagi and crimson hakama fluttered faintly. She looked down at her own hand. The faint glow of reiryoku shimmered upon its back. She looked again at that golden wall of light. The wall had condensed into a transparent, nearly invisible membrane before her.
She reached out and touched it. The instant her fingertips met the membrane, they were repelled. She tried again. Repelled again. Her reiryoku barrier was repelled. Her Spatial Transference was repelled. Her Spiritualization Technique was repelled.
The membrane did not harm. It did not reject humans. It did not reject reiryoku. It simply would not let Kikyō pass. Because Kikyō carried the Shikon no Tama.
And because Kikyō was far too powerful. So powerful that the Buddhist wall of Mount Hakurei could accept Shinji, a yōkai undergoing the metamorphosis from demon to life, yet refused Kikyō. Or rather, Saint Hakurei himself was refusing her.
Kikyō stood before the wall of light. Her expression was calm. Cold and clear, as always. But Shinji saw it, her hand, already resting upon the wooden longbow behind her. Unhappy. Uncomfortable. Displeased.
"You go in," Kikyō said. Though she was reluctant. Though she was unwilling. Kikyō had always placed the greater picture above all else. She knew Shinji's plan. She knew everything he did was for himself, and for her. For them. She would not let herself become an obstacle to his steps. "I will wait outside."
Shinji looked at her. He did not move immediately. "If it's a problem with the Shikon no Tama, we could leave it outside temporarily. Use a barrier—"
"No." Kikyō shook her head. Crisp. Decisive. "If the Shikon no Tama is separated from me for more than three days, the Magatsuhi will begin to stir. If I entrust it to someone else and that person is affected by the awakened Magatsuhi, the consequences would be unimaginable." Her words were irrefutable.
Shinji fell silent for a beat. "You, alone, outside—"
Kikyō cut him off. Her voice remained as calm as ever. "Have you forgotten how many years I guarded Kaede's Village alone?" She didn't look at him. Her gaze rested upon that golden wall of light, reflecting its pale golden image.
"Hurry. Yoshimoto and the others have been pulled inside. The situation within is unknown. If that Saint Hakurei's grudge spirals out of control, those people will die within that mountain."
Shinji looked at her profile. Her white uwagi and crimson hakama were stained with a layer of warm hue beneath the golden light. Her black hair cascaded over her shoulders. Her sash was cinched at the narrowest point of her waist, the slender silhouette tracing a vivid outline. Her lips were pressed into a thin line.
This miko, restrained to the very marrow of her bones, did not say, I'm worried. Did not say, Be careful. She only said, Hurry.
He reached out and clasped her hand. Their fingers intertwined. Kikyō finally turned her head. Those cool, clear eyes seemed especially translucent within the golden light. "I will come back." Shinji released her hand.
Then he turned, and stepped into the golden radiance. The pale golden light enveloped his figure. His gray robes blurred within the glow. His pale, flowing hair scattered wide. The light of his crimson demon eyes flashed once amidst the gold. And then, he vanished.
Kikyō stood before the wall of light. Alone. The sea breeze swept in from the east, whipping at her hems and the ends of her hair. She did not move. Her longbow was gripped in her hand. The bowstring was taut.
She faced that expanse of gold.
Wait?
That, of course, was impossible. "Within three days. Or faster." Kikyō murmured softly. "I should be able to break through the barrier of this mountain."