Takeda Shingen was not angered. To be sent flying by a single slap, any other daimyō would likely have erupted in fury. But she merely tilted her neck to the side. Then she straightened her grip on the iron fan, its lacquered surface now cracked.
"Interesting." She even smiled. Baring her white teeth. The light in her eyes blazed even brighter than before. "Truly as strong as the rumors said—no. Far stronger than the rumors said. As expected of the one who defeated Uesugi Kenshin and forced her into succession."
As a god-buddha incarnation herself, she also remembered the fact of Uesugi's succession, a fact that ordinary mortals could not retain.
Shingen brushed the stone dust from her kosode and rose from the foot of the Buddha statue. Her tall, powerful frame cast a long shadow beneath the stone Buddha. The loose collar swayed once more as she stood, the heavy, full curve nearly slipping free from the lapels. She casually tugged at the collar. Not pulling it up, but dragging it aside, so the fabric wouldn't pinch uncomfortably.
Yamagata Masakage also scrambled up from the ground. Her blade was still in her grip, but the golden blade-light had dimmed by more than half. "My lord—"
"I'm fine." Shingen rolled her numbed right shoulder. The iron fan spun twice in her hand. She had just opened her mouth. "Again—"
But halfway through the word, Shinji suddenly halted. And then, his figure retreated! Gray robes flickered through the gaps between the Buddha statues. White hair swept past the turn of the stone steps. His silhouette vanished. Extreme speed. A desperate dash. Withdrawing at full velocity.
Takeda Shingen's posture froze mid-motion. She was still locked in the stance of preparing to charge, left foot forward, right foot back, iron fan raised high. Like a painting someone had pressed pause on.
"…Huh?"
She blinked. Yamagata Masakage also blinked. The two warrior maidens who still hadn't managed to rise from the ground wore expressions of utter bewilderment. He fought, and then ran? No.... this didn't even count as a fight.
He just… ran? Shingen's deep crimson eyes blinked twice. The curve at the corner of her mouth shifted from excitement to confusion. And from confusion, to displeasure. She was just about to open her mouth and say something
ROAR.
The air above the platform detonated. It was not merely sound. It seemed more like the shockwave condensed from some vast, immense power itself. A beast's roar, the roar of a lion, erupted from some invisible position behind her.
The shockwave sent every chunk of shattered stone on the platform flying. Even the forty meter tall Buddha statues swayed upon their bases. Yamagata Masakage was blasted back three steps, only stabilizing herself by driving the tip of her blade into the ground.
Shingen, too, was blown half a step backward. She whipped her head around. There was nothing behind her. Shattered stone. Buddha statues. The ash-white petrified ground. But the source of that impact, she could feel it, was directly behind her. Impossibly close. So close it felt as though it had erupted from her very own body.
"What is this—?!" Shingen's voice had changed. There was movement, but she could see nothing. Humans could not see Guardian Spirits. Even the very person who possessed a Guardian Spirit could not see the spectral silhouette behind them, unless they possessed a special means of perception. But Shinji saw it.
At this moment, he was already standing upon another set of stone steps a hundred paces away. His crimson demon eyes reflected the entirety of the scene on the platform.
The Illusion-Breaking talent of the Black Agate Pearl was operating at full force. He saw the Guardian Spirit behind Takeda Shingen. The Golden Lion. Its entire body was gold. Its mane exploded backward like a sheet of flame. Its four paws tread upon the void. Within its jaws was clasped a radiant golden pearl.
The steed of Fudō Myōō. In esoteric Buddhism, the Golden Lion was the sacred beast ridden by Fudō Myōō, symbolizing fearlessness and the subjugation of demons.
Takeda Shingen proclaimed herself the reincarnation of Fudō Myōō. Her Guardian Spirit corresponded perfectly with this claim. But at this moment, something was wrong with that Golden Lion.
It was rampaging. Its golden spirit-body had swollen to over three times the size Shinji had just seen. Its mane stood on end, every strand bristling. Its four paws clawed wildly at the void. Like a caged beast, confined for far too long, suddenly catching the scent of prey.
Its eyes, illusory, semi-transparent, golden, were also gazing upward. Toward the peak of Mount Hakurei. Toward the "head" of this colossal mountain, the mountain that was, in its very essence, the flesh of a living buddha.
The Golden Lion was roaring. Struggling. Trying to tear itself free from Shingen's body. As though being pulled. Dragged. Summoned, by something. Mount Hakurei was drawing it in.
Shinji understood. That flesh-buddha, the centuries-old grudge of Saint Hakurei, was not devouring the daimyō themselves. The daimyō were merely vessels. What it truly wanted, was the Guardian Spirits. The spirit-bodies condensed from the Mandate of Heaven.
Imagawa Yoshimoto had been pulled in, because of the Six-Tusked White Elephant. Oda Nobuna had been pulled in, because of the Celestial-Eye Peacock and the Leopard-Tail God. Takeda Shingen had been pulled in, because of the Golden Lion.
As for those warrior maidens, they were purely here because the divine artifacts they held as god-buddha incarnations were considered part of a unified whole and dragged in together. Otherwise, there was no explaining why only Yoshimoto had been taken from the Imagawa camp.
Shinji hypothesized: Saint Hakurei, in life, had sacrificed his very body to become a buddha, yet had never passed on to the Pure Land. Centuries of festering resentment had bred. His soul was trapped within the mountain. Unable to ascend to paradise. Unable to descend into the cycle of reincarnation.
He needed more of the Mandate of Heaven to feed upon. To fill that void of unwillingness. To allow himself… to undergo transformation.
Saint Hakurei, do you wish… to become a demon? Shinji's eyes narrowed into slits. He did not know what the existence behind Tsuchimikado Kokoro had promised that once-compassionate, once-merciful high monk, to make him willing to walk the road of transformation into a demon.
But one thing was certain: once it devoured those Guardian Spirits, Saint Hakurei would indeed become stronger. As for what the existence controlling "Tsuchimikado Kokoro" sought to gain from all this, that was another question entirely.
Shinji withdrew his gaze. The violet veins within his demon eyes slowly settled. What needed to be done was now crystal clear. If the Guardian Spirits were drained away by Mount Hakurei, the daimyō would lose the blessing of their Mandate.
They would fall to mere ordinary mortals. And that lost Mandate, flowing into the body of Saint Hakurei, a flesh-buddha saturated with centuries of accumulated grudge, combined with the Mandate of the mightiest daimyō of the age, that would no longer be a mountain.
It would become a true, living buddha. A buddha wreathed in resentment. An existence more dangerous than any yōkai. Or perhaps, it should be called… A Demon Buddha. A Celestial Demon. The demon that stood in opposition to the Buddha himself. A Māra.
At this single thought, in this single instant, Shinji moved. If Saint Hakurei truly came alive, and reached an accord with Tsuchimikado Kokoro, with the Kyōto faction behind her, then it was all too easy to imagine: he and Kikyō, and everyone and everything connected to them, would not meet a good end.
Would not even meet a peaceful end. When the time came to sever, one must sever. When the time came to strike, one must strike. Shinji had nothing left to hesitate over. Nothing left to deliberate.
Onikiri and Yomi-giri left their sheaths simultaneously. Though the Shura Form was not deployed, crimson demonic energy surged forth and coalesced into demonic armor. Pale bone spurs extended outward. Thunder wove through the gaps.
In an instant, they formed a triple-layered carapace. Three layers of reinforcement. At this moment, the white mist of Mount Hakurei coiled and twisted. The Buddha statues hidden within loomed on all sides.
Though they were Buddhas, the aura that pervaded this place was dark and ghostly. Upon these very steps, surrounded by Buddhas that seemed like demons, the figure wreathed in bone and thunder stood poised.
The Golden Lion finally tore itself completely free from Takeda Shingen. The instant that golden spirit-body erupted from behind Shingen's back, she stumbled forward a full step, as though something had been wrenched directly from her spine.
She dropped to one knee. The iron fan braced against the stone surface to hold her up. Her deep crimson hair spilled down, veiling half her face. "My lord!" Yamagata Masakage lunged forward to support her. The moment her hand touched Shingen's shoulder, she felt her trembling.
The Guardian Spirit had been torn from its host. The condensed essence of the Mandate of Heaven ripped away from the one who bore it. That sensation was likely akin to having a vital bone plucked directly from one's chest. A supreme bone!
The Golden Lion, invisible to ordinary human eyes, swelled to a height of fifteen meters. Its golden mane exploded outward like blazing flame. Its four paws gouged trails of light through the void.
The golden pearl within its jaws blazed with blinding radiance. Throughout this, its eyes remained locked dead upon the peak of Mount Hakurei. That direction radiated an ever-thickening pull, like a magnet drawing iron filings. It could sense it. Something there was summoning it. The gravitational force born of centuries of festering grudge, specifically targeted at spirit-bodies condensed from the Mandate of Heaven.
The Golden Lion let out a savage roar. Its four paws shattered the void beneath them as it surged toward the mountain peak. Then it crashed into a person. It crashed into Shinji, who, beneath his triple-layered reinforcement, had drawn his blades.
Onikiri in his left hand. Yomi-giri in his right. The dark crimson edge and the ghostly violet blade-light blazed simultaneously. Two utterly distinct lights intersected before him. Kyokui. Extreme Will. The Will he had forged through his thousands of kilometers journey across the Kantō.
Through the swordsmanship of seventeen dojos. Through the emptiness of Uesugi Nobutsuna's realm. The instant his Sword Will condensed, Onikiri's blade-soul churned along the cutting edge. Dark crimson blood-fire seeped from the fissures in the blade. Yomi-giri's radiance resonated in the same breath.
The Demon's Breath gathered the impure energy of the earth and transformed it into the frigid, spectral demonic aura of Yomi, which spread across the blade in faint traces of mist. Two forces compressed. Spiraled. Fused into one. The union of Yin and Yang.
Onikiri and Yomi-giri slashed outward in a crossed strike. The fifteen meter tall spirit-body of the Golden Lion met that crossed arc of light head-on.
Crack.
The sound of shattering glass. A colossal fissure was torn through the golden spirit-body from its chest. The edges of the fissure blazed with dark crimson blood-fire. They were frozen by ghostly violet demonic aura. Two diametrically opposed forces simultaneously eroded the structure of the spirit-body, preventing it from repairing itself.
The Undying Slash suppressed all forms of restorative regeneration. As long as the target's magnitude was insufficient, it was well within its scope! The Golden Lion let out a piercing, agonized shriek.
The sound waves rattled the Buddha statues surrounding the platform, causing them to hum. It still seemed to struggle, trying to push forward.
But Shinji had already stepped in. Onikiri swept horizontally. It severed its left forepaw. The golden paw detached from the spirit-body and shattered into motes of light in the air, dissipating.
Yomi-giri followed immediately after, slashing upward from below across its belly. The arcing blade-light tore a second gash through the spirit-body. Two slashes. Barely a single instant between them. A full third of the Golden Lion's spirit-body was obliterated on the spot.
Its mane, once a blazing, billowing flame, was now sparse, thin golden threads. The golden pearl within its jaws had also developed a crack. That was the core of its Mandate. If it shattered, it would be truly gone.
It seemed, at last, to be afraid. Guardian Spirits had no thought. No consciousness. Only instinct. Being drawn toward Mount Hakurei was instinct. Fleeing after being grievously wounded, was also instinct.
The Golden Lion abandoned its direct charge toward the mountain peak. Instead, it turned upward, toward the sky. Its ruined spirit-body dragged shattered motes of golden light behind it. Like a bird with broken wings, it hurtled crookedly toward the heavens.
Shinji lifted his head and watched it fly into the distance. He couldn't pursue. Within the interior of Mount Hakurei, Buddhist power suppressed the external release of yōki. His Lightning-Sinewed Body could only operate upon his physical form. He could not detach from the ground and fly.
Though the Shura Form could be unfurled, the six-meter Bone Thunder colossus, standing upon the earth, could not reach something in the sky even if it leaped. But he didn't need to pursue.
Those two slashes. The spiral of Blood-Fire and Demon Breath. Yang and Yin. What they had left upon that Golden Lion was not merely grievous wounds. They had left his yōki. His blood-fire and demonic aura. That was not just preventing the Guardian Spirit from recovering. It was preventing it from fusing.
As long as that blood-fire still burned, the Golden Lion would find it nearly impossible to fully integrate into anything. Even if forcibly fused, there would be cracks. This was the reason he had drawn his blades and unleashed his Extreme Will.
This was enough. He wanted, even more, to see whether he could make Saint Hakurei come to him. After all, without dealing with him first, that blood and fire would be exceedingly difficult to erase.
At least, Saint Hakurei, who had not yet truly become a buddha, could not accomplish such a thing. A buddha was an enlightened one, a nirvanic existence transcending the cycle of life and death.
A so-called flesh-buddha, to put it plainly, was no true buddha. It was merely a bodhisattva of the flesh. No matter how close, it was still one line short.
Shinji could sense it. In his current state, Saint Hakurei's hōriki was absolutely on par with, or even surpassed, that of an ordinary daiyōkai. Yet in its application, due to the flaw in his spiritual heart, it likely fell far short of what Kikyō could now achieve.
The quantity was simply vast, staggeringly vast, enough to blanket several provinces. But it was not pure enough. He would find it exceedingly difficult to easily erase Shinji's yōki.
The Golden Lion's afterimage shrank further and further. Finally, it vanished into the ash-white mist above Mount Hakurei. It had fled. Shinji sheathed his blades. Onikiri and Yomi-giri returned to their sheaths simultaneously. Two soft clicks rang out with startling clarity amidst the silent forest of Buddhas.
The armor, the bone, and the thunder upon his body retracted in the same instant. He turned around. Takeda Shingen was still kneeling on the platform. One hand braced against the ground. The other still gripped the iron fan.
Her deep crimson hair spilled across the stone surface, like a pool of spilled red. She was gasping. But her eyes, blazed with astonishing brightness. Her deep crimson pupils were locked dead onto Shinji. Within them was reflected the motion of him sheathing his blades. The afterimage of those two fading blade-lights.
"Two slashes." She spoke. Her voice was hoarse. But there was not a trace of dejection in her tone. "You drove off that thing that burst out of me, whatever it was, you only needed two slashes."
Yamagata Masakage gripped Shingen's shoulder, her expression taut with tension. But Shingen herself couldn't care less. The hollow exhaustion after the Guardian Spirit's separation was already fading. Her physical foundation was laid bare.
The vessel of Fudō Myōō's reincarnation would not collapse simply because the Guardian Spirit of her Mandate had been torn away. It was only that her strength had been momentarily drained.
"Kishin Nakai Shinji." Shingen rose from the ground and dusted off her knees. Then, she walked toward Shinji. Her pace was not fast. But she walked very straight.
"Those two slashes just now...." Her iron fan pointed at him. "Were the most beautiful strikes I have ever seen in my life. Including the previous Uesugi Kenshin. None of them compare to you. No wonder you forced her into succession." After speaking, she put away her iron fan and tucked it back at her waist.
She folded her arms across her chest, her arms forced to perch very high by the excessively full volume, and her deep crimson eyes stared straight at him. "Come with me."
The Tiger of Kai's method of winning someone over was ten thousand times more direct and brutal than Imagawa Yoshimoto's. "The Takeda clan needs you. Far more than the Imagawa do." She spoke with absolute, righteous conviction.
"That woman Yoshimoto is timid and fears death. She relies on others for all her battles. With Sessai dead, she relies entirely on posthumous stratagems. Once those stratagems run out, she'll likely be utterly lost. The Hōjō's vision is so narrow they can only see the Kantō. And as for the Uesugi you crushed, there's no need to even mention them. Only me..." She thumped her own chest. The heavy, pendulous weight of her large breasts swayed with the motion, leaving even Shinji momentarily dazzled. He inwardly marveled at her capacity for tolerance.
"Only the Takeda can give you a true battlefield. Kai. Shinano. Two provinces. Plus Mino, which is about to fall. Three provinces linked as one. From the Tōsandō, we can drive straight into the Kinai. Come with me. The road to the realm will lie beneath your feet."
Shinji looked at her. This woman, moments ago, she had been sent flying by a single slap from him. Then had her Guardian Spirit torn away, leaving her utterly drained, barely able to stand. And yet, she was still trying to win him over.
This truly is an incurable disease among Warring States daimyō. The moment they see something useful, they must possess it. Shinji grumbled inwardly.
His reply: "Not going."
Shingen blinked. "Why?"
"No reason." He pulled Banryū, which he had casually thrust into the ground moments ago, from the earth and hoisted it back onto his shoulder. He stepped past Shingen and continued ascending the mountain.
Shingen stood where she was. She watched his silhouette vanish around the bend of the stone steps. Her deep crimson eyes did not dim.
Instead a look of profound, savoring interest surfaced within them once more. "Interesting." She spoke that word for the second time. Then she clapped Yamagata Masakage on the shoulder. "Let's go. Keep up."
"My lord? He refused—"
"So what if he refused." Shingen strode toward the stone steps with great strides. The hem of her kosode dragged along the ground, coated in dust. "This road is wide enough. No one said I can't walk it."