Takeda Shingen truly followed. Shinji walked ahead, Banryū propped on his shoulder. His white, flowing hair drifted faintly within the white mist thick with Buddhist power.
Shingen walked three paces behind him and to his left. Her iron fan was tucked at her waist. Her hands were clasped loosely behind her back. The loose collar of her kosode had still not been pulled back into place.
The fabric that had slipped from her left shoulder revealed a broad expanse of honey-hued skin. The full, heavy breasts swayed with the rhythm of her long, striding gait. It swayed very heavily.
Because her steps were wide and sweeping, a dragon's stride, a tiger's prowl. Her tall, powerful frame moved with the fluid extension of a leopard. With every step, that excessively full weight gave a corresponding jolt.
Shinji's gaze remained fixed ahead. His face held no expression whatsoever. His face had long since grown accustomed to maintaining a perfectly expressionless, coldly severe mask when he wasn't speaking.
In ordinary times, this was a disadvantage, it made him difficult to approach. At this moment, it was an advantage. Because his heart had, in truth, stirred.
The comb at his waist was trembling again. Though her manifested form had been smashed back by the Buddhist power, vibration required no external release of yōki.
The comb itself was hanging from his waist. Physical vibration was all it was. Yet she didn't dare speak directly. She could only express her emotions through this.
Thus, the System panel flickered.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Why does she keep swaying.]
[Sakasagami no Yura: It's very distracting.]
[Sakasagami no Yura: Shinji, watch the road, don't look to the side!]
Three messages in a row. Less than two seconds apart. One more followed.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Affection -0. (Unable to decrease. Already at max value.)]
So furious she wanted to drop Affection but couldn't. Max value of one hundred, locked dead. Yura was seething. She couldn't even threaten Shinji. Shinji was inwardly immensely amused.
Yamagata Masakage still followed behind Shingen. Her hand rested on her sword hilt, her eyes warily scanning the Buddha statues on all sides.
The other two warrior maidens were not seriously injured. One was massaging the back of her head as she caught up. The other had the short spear, now bent into a V-shape, propped on her shoulder. Iron tools were a scarce resource within this mountain. They were scarce outside, too. She couldn't bear to throw it away.
"Where are you going?" Shingen's voice came from behind.
"Looking for someone."
"Who?"
"Imagawa Yoshimoto."
"Tch." Shingen's tone carried undisguised displeasure. "Yoshimoto, Yoshimoto. Why are you so fixated on her?"
Because I've invested more in her. And I find her pleasing to the eye. Shinji thought. He didn't answer directly.
The Blood-Hair Web was still spread beneath his feet. The ends of his white hair branched outward, extending along the ground in every direction. Though the detection range of the hair-web was only a hundred paces, he was constantly moving, so that hundred-pace radius was constantly shifting.
The equivalent of a continuously scanning radar. So far, all it had picked up were Buddha statues. Stone steps. Broken stone. White mist. No people. Imagawa Yoshimoto and Oda Nobuna should be further within.
The internal structure of Mount Hakurei before his eyes was completely different from what he remembered.
In the original Inuyasha, Mount Hakurei was merely a seemingly ordinary mountain that existed in reality. But in this merged world, Mount Hakurei was more akin to an "innate bounded field" created by the flesh-buddha Saint Hakurei using his own body.
Similar to Kidōmaru's Rashōmon, only larger. More complete. More majestic. This was, of course, no ordinary mountain. There were no true mountain paths, only passageways lined by Buddha statues.
Every passage led deeper and higher into the mountain's interior. The further one walked, the denser the vow-power became. The heavier the air. And the more fiercely his external yōki was suppressed.
And then, the Blood-Hair Web finally captured the signal of a living being. It seemed, she was being hunted.
East of the mountain's interior. Within a narrow passage formed by the interlocking arms and torsos of colossal Buddha statues, Oda Nobuna was running. Running in utter disarray. Her black kosode had been torn in two places by the sharp edges of the stone walls.
Her bare feet, striking the icy stone surface, had been scraped raw and bloody. Her golden hair was scattered everywhere. A few strands clung to the corner of her mouth, but she had no leisure to brush them aside.
Shibata Katsuie ran behind her. Her silver armor was coated in stone dust. Her great axe was gripped in her hand. Her amber eyes constantly glanced backward.
Maeda Toshiie ran to Nobuna's right. Her round face was flushed crimson. Her short sword was clutched to her chest. She ran faster than anyone, not because her legs were particularly strong, but because she was the lightest and smallest. In the narrow passage, she met the least resistance.
"My lord! Those two things are getting closer again!" Toshiie's voice rang out, sharp and urgent. Nobuna glanced back over her shoulder. At the bend at the far end of the passage, a golden light was closing in. It was one of her "Guardian Spirits."
The Celestial-Eye Peacock. Unlike others, unlike even the incarnations of gods and buddhas, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, as the sovereign of the Realm of Desire, existed on a dimension apart from ordinary gods and buddhas. The divine-artifact incarnations that carried fragments of his faith-power could also faintly sense the presence of Guardian Spirits.
And Nobuna, as the true vessel of Māra's incarnation, could see with even greater, more terrible clarity. At this moment, within her vision, the three-eyed peacock chasing from behind blazed with blinding brilliance in the darkness. Its wings, unfurled, nearly filled the entire passage. The remnants of shattered dark crimson chains dripped from the tips of its wings.
Where they touched the stone floor, they seared blackened, smoking craters. And beyond the Celestial-Eye Peacock, on the upper side of the other stone wall, her other Guardian Spirit. The Leopard-Tail God. Its black form slid silently along the ceiling. Its serpentine tail lashed an arc behind it. Its four claws gouged into the crevices of the stone. Its speed was even greater than the peacock's.
Nobuna cursed. Not at the Guardian Spirits. At herself. Since she could see them, she, of course, knew exactly where those two things had come from.
The Celestial-Eye Peacock. Originating from an experience several years ago. The first time she had awakened the power of gods and buddhas, the hellfire of the Demon King. She had plundered it from a monk in a temple.
After that, the epithet "Enemy of the Buddha" had faintly clung to her, though it hadn't spread widely. Few knew of it even now.
And the Leopard-Tail God. She had torn it from her own blood brother when she seized power.
The nature of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. The more she killed, the stronger she became. The more she fought, the more ferocious she grew. She had thought it was a blessing. A source of power. A staircase leading to the realm. But now, the staircase had crumbled. Two steps had sprouted fangs, and turned around to bite her.
"Katsuie! Hold them off!"
"Yes!" Shibata Katsuie spun around. Her great axe was braced horizontally across the center of the passage.
The gray-iron divine-artifact power surged from the axe-blade. The light formed a semi-transparent wall, sealing the passage shut. The Celestial-Eye Peacock crashed into it.
BOOM.
The wall of light shattered. Katsuie was hurled back three steps by the shockwave. Her amber eyes went wide. "I can't hold it—!"
"I KNOW!" Nobuna, who had also turned around at some unknown moment alongside Shibata Katsuie, seized Katsuie by the back of her collar. Then, facing the direction from which the Celestial-Eye Peacock was charging, instead of retreating, she advanced.
"NOW! ACCELERATE! RUN!"
The Celestial-Eye Peacock, having collided with the wall of light, had indeed shattered it with ease. But it had also been halted for an instant. Nobuna, Katsuie, and Toshiie seized that gap.
They slipped directly beneath it and bolted past! The peacock let out a long, piercing shriek. The Leopard-Tail God's tail thundered. Its footsteps seemed to pound in relentless, endless pursuit. Accelerate. Accelerate. ACCELERATE. But the other end of the passage was a dead end. It hadn't been just moments ago.
But when they doubled back, a wall of stone that had suddenly materialized sealed off the path ahead. A forty meter Buddha statue, facing inward against the rock wall, as though deliberately blocking this escape route.
The instant Nobuna, Katsuie, and Toshiie crashed against the stone wall, the Celestial-Eye Peacock had already closed within ten paces. All three of its eyes were wide open. Golden light shot from its pupils, weaving into an impenetrable net of light within the passage.
The Leopard-Tail God was even faster. It dropped from the ceiling. Its serpentine tail swept horizontally. The black spirit-body, wreathed in searing wind pressure, lashed past the top of Toshiie's head.
Toshiie screamed and threw herself flat on the ground. Her short sword flew from her grip. Katsuie spun and shielded Nobuna with her own body. Her great axe cleaved downward. The gray-iron divine-artifact power detonated an arc of light. The Leopard-Tail God's front claw collided with the arc, and bounced back. But it didn't stop.
The second claw followed immediately, slamming directly onto the face of the axe. Katsuie was smashed bodily into the stone wall. Her back embedded into the rock face by more than three sun. Blood spilled directly from the corner of her mouth.
"Katsuie!" Nobuna shouted. The Celestial-Eye Peacock's net of light had already contracted to mere inches before her face. No retreat. No escape. The golden light reflected upon her face.
The flames within her golden slit-pupils flickered unsteadily beneath that light. She could see the remnants of shattered dark crimson chains still clinging to the peacock's wings. The brands she had seared into it with her hellfire. The shackles she had once used to control it.
Now the shackles were broken. It was free. The corner of Nobuna's mouth twitched. Karma. Plundered things, must eventually be returned.
"RETURN MY ASS—!" She roared the curse aloud. She was the incarnation of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
She could not possibly submit. Things she had seized by her own strength, WHY SHOULD SHE RETURN THEM?! Oda Nobuna howled in fury.
That suppressed hellfire of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven detonated directly from within her body. The Demon King's hellfire was also suppressed by Mount Hakurei. Through her nature as the Enemy of the Buddha, she could still barely force its release.
But the attrition was colossal. The effect might be less than a tenth of its normal power. Yet at this moment, Oda Nobuna no longer cared. And this time, it was different from before. Before, at Shimizu Port against the great kappa, the hellfire had been released from her palm. Directed. Controlled. This time, there was no control.
The crimson lotus flames erupted simultaneously from every single pore of her entire body. No heat. No smoke. Yet it utterly distorted the air within a radius of several paces. The stone faces of the Buddha statues cracked beneath the blanket of hellfire.
The instant the Celestial-Eye Peacock's net of light touched the hellfire....
hiss, hiss, hiss.
The golden threads were burned to ash. The peacock's spirit-body itself also bore scorch marks. All three of its eyes squinted simultaneously. The Leopard-Tail God fared even worse. It was the closest. Just as it withdrew its claws from Katsuie and turned toward Nobuna, it plunged headlong into the eruption radius of the hellfire.
The surface of its black spirit-body was devoured by a layer of the crimson lotus flames. The tip of its serpentine tail was directly seared off. The hellfire held no temperature, yet it exerted a tangible, crushing pressure. Because what it targeted, was precisely spirit and soul.
Both Guardian Spirits recoiled simultaneously. But only for a few steps. Nobuna's hellfire began to wane after barely a few seconds. Her body couldn't keep up. The Demon King's power within her had, after all, been developed to only the smallest fraction.
This full-body, explosive release placed far too great a strain on her physical vessel. It wasn't that the hellfire was weak. It was that her body was weak. Blood trickled from the girl's left nostril, dripping onto the stone floor and vaporizing with a hiss beneath her own hellfire.
"Nn—" She dropped to one knee. Her right hand braced against the stone wall. The hellfire was still there, but thin now. Like a layer of foam, ready to burst at any moment. The three eyes of the Celestial-Eye Peacock reopened. The golden light began to coalesce once more.
The severed end of the Leopard-Tail God's serpentine tail had already begun to regenerate. Guardian Spirits had no physical form. As the manifested essence of great momentum, the Mandate of Heaven, and latent potential, they were inherently intangible existences.
Their speed of self-repair was terrifyingly fast. In the span of a few breaths, they would recover. Nobuna lifted her head and watched the two spirit-entities closing in. The light within her golden slit-pupils was extinguishing, flicker by flicker. Despair. And even more, exhaustion. Pure, physical exhaustion. She wanted to curse again. Her mouth opened. No sound came out.
And then, two streaks of light flashed through her field of vision simultaneously. A dark crimson blaze, like fire. A ghostly violet gleam, like mist. From a fissure in the side wall of the passage, no. That fissure had only just appeared. It had been cleaved open from the outside by something.
Two arcs of blade-light pierced through the stone wall and slashed directly into the interior of the passage. The dark crimson blade-light struck the base of the Celestial-Eye Peacock's left wing. Onikiri. The searing burn of the Blood-Fire Transformation spread inward along the wound, into the depths of the spirit-body.
Dark crimson flames burrowed into the golden spiritual structure like creeping vines, biting down with relentless tenacity, preventing repair. The ghostly violet blade-light struck the Leopard-Tail God's right foreleg at nearly the same instant. Yomi-giri.
The Demon's Breath poured in from the wound. The blade's aura rapidly spread across the surface of the spirit-body, freezing the severed end, which had only just begun to regenerate, back into stillness. Two slashes. So perfectly timed it was as though calculated to the last hair. Because they were calculated.
The fissure in the stone wall widened. Chunks of shattered stone rained down. Gray robes. Crimson demon eyes. Shinji stepped out from the fissure. Onikiri and Yomi-giri were gripped in his hands. The lingering afterglow of dark crimson and ghostly violet still clung to their cutting edges.
His gaze swept past Oda Nobuna, who was still kneeling on the ground, and settled upon the two grievously wounded Guardian Spirits. A full third of the Celestial-Eye Peacock's left wing had been burned through by the blood-fire. Its spirit-body structure was beginning to collapse.
The entire right foreleg of the Leopard-Tail God had been frozen into an ice sculpture by the demonic aura. Its movements were sluggish and halting. Both Guardian Spirits let out piercing, agonized wails. They abandoned their attack and fled in disarray toward the depths of the passage.
The golden and black afterimages grew fainter and fainter within the white mist, until they vanished entirely.
Silence returned to the passage. All that remained were the cracks upon the stone faces of the Buddha statues. The shattered stone on the ground. And the lingering residual heat of the hellfire in the air.
Nobuna remained kneeling where she was. Blood still trickled from her nose. Her golden hair was scattered everywhere. She let out a long breath.
Had she been saved? She slowly turned her head. And saw Shinji, standing beside the fissure. She was just about to open her mouth and thank him. Then she saw that yōkai sheathe his blades. Two soft clicks. His movements were as casual as though he had just done some minor, incidental chore.
Those crimson demon eyes looked over at her. There was no tension in them. No concern. Instead, they carried… satisfaction.
"Your hellfire is quite useful." The words drifted back from up ahead. Light. Airy. "It gave me the chance to take down two birds with one stone. All that waiting wasn't wasted."
Nobuna's pupils contracted violently. This bastard… hadn't come to save her?
"YOU—!" Nobuna's voice came in fragments. Grinding through clenched teeth. But Shinji was already turning and walking back. His white, flowing hair drifted behind him. He didn't look back. He had, of course, not come specifically to save Oda Nobuna. It had merely been convenient.
He had been waiting far earlier than that. Waiting for her to force out her hellfire. Waiting for her to stall those two Guardian Spirits. Waiting for a breach to appear in the spirit-bodies' defenses. Then he had cleaved open a fissure from the adjacent stone wall and delivered two finishing slashes.
The blood-fire and demonic aura had already been planted deep within the spirit-bodies of those two Guardian Spirits, the exact same method he had used against the Golden Lion. That Oda Nobuna, from beginning to end, had been bait. Bait to exhaust the Guardian Spirits.
Nobuna stared at that demon's retreating back. She could only inhale and exhale. Struggling to remind herself not to get angry. No matter what, the other party had, in truth, saved her.
At the same time, Katsuie finally wrenched herself free from the stone wall. Her amber eyes looked from her lord to that gray silhouette receding into the distance. She opened her mouth. Said nothing.
Maeda Toshiie scrambled up from the ground and retrieved her short sword. She muttered under her breath. "My lord… I think he did that on purpose."
"Shut. Up." Nobuna's roar echoed through the passage. The Buddha statues watched all of this in cold, impassive silence. Their carved faces never stirred.