Shinji stepped out of the cave. What met his eyes was still the endless, stretching mass of Mount Hakurei. The dense white mist coiled around the mountainside.
In the next second— "WAIT!" Nobuna's voice chased after him from behind. The rapid patter of her bare feet slapping against the shattered stone was sharp and urgent. Shinji didn't stop. Banryū was still propped on his shoulder. His pace was neither fast nor slow.
Nobuna caught up. Her golden hair flew wildly. The blood from her nose had been wiped away, but the traces remained. Her kosode had gained two more fresh tears. "You could at least ask if I'm alright!" she demanded.
"Are you alright?"
"…No."
"Then that's settled."
Nobuna nearly choked to death on those words. She drew a deep breath. The flames in her eyes were pressed down, again and again.
"You're looking for Imagawa Yoshimoto, right?"
Shinji's footsteps finally slowed, just a fraction. He turned his head and glanced at the young head of the Oda clan beside him. Nobuna had her arms folded. Her head was tilted. Her expression was one of absolute, utter displeasure.
She even clicked her tongue. "That woman must have stumbled into some absurd luck. A coward like her, and you care this much." It was impossible to tell whether those words were jealousy or fury. But she still continued. "I know where she is."
"Speak."
"We were together at the start." Nobuna's words came in a rapid rush, brimming with pent-up frustration. "After we were pulled into this damned mountain, me, Katsuie, Toshiie, and that woman Imagawa Yoshimoto, all four of us landed in the same spot at the foot of the mountain. Then those two things suddenly went berserk. The Celestial-Eye Peacock and the Leopard-Tail God. They only chased me. Not her. And then we got separated."
Shinji's demon eyes stirred.
Separated.
That meant Imagawa Yoshimoto's current situation was also very likely dire. After all, she, too, had a Guardian Spirit. If that White Elephant went berserk, it was not something she could face alone.
"Where did she end up alone?"
"Midway up the mountain." Nobuna pointed upward. "We were chased downward. She ran straight in the opposite direction, upward. That woman, she has no sense of loyalty!"
Shinji, hearing this, cast her a sidelong glance. You two are enemies. If not for me, Yoshimoto would have been killed by you at Okehazama. What loyalty does she owe you?
He asked no further questions. Instead, he lifted his head and gazed upward. Rescue Imagawa Yoshimoto. Prevent his carefully laid plans from going to waste. And, stop Saint Hakurei. Stop Tsuchimikado Kokoro and the Kyōto faction behind her. He intended to accomplish all of it. Perfectly.
Mount Hakurei's bulk stretched from beneath his feet all the way to the highest reaches at the edge of his sight. Buddha statues lined the stone steps in dense, innumerable rows.
The higher they went, the larger the statues became. The higher they went, the denser they clustered. The white mist was thicker than below. The suppression of vow-power was even more intense. This was different from the original story. But in this world, many places were like this.
Shinji held his breath and focused his mind. Then he took a single step. He set foot upon the first stone step leading toward the mountain's midsection.
The instant his sole touched the stone, the pressure came. It was utterly different from before. Before, at the base and outer perimeter of the mountain, that vow-power had merely restricted the external release of yōki, like an intangible net.
Now, that net seemed to have suddenly transformed into a weight of pure substance. It pressed down upon him from every direction simultaneously, trying to grind every trace of impure energy within his body into dust. This was purification. A far more thorough purification.
His yōki was crushed back into the deepest recesses of his marrow. The arcs of the Lightning-Sinewed Body vanished from the surface of his flesh. The temperature of the Blood-Fire Transformation dropped to its absolute minimum.
Even the cycle of his four viscera began to stall. Heart-Fire was compressed to a faint ember. Kidney-Water congealed. Lung-Metal ground to a halt. Liver-Wood ceased to unfurl.
As expected. To this, Shinji finally felt a sense of release. Even relief. Because he knew, this was the true barrier of Mount Hakurei, as described in the original story. The vast, condensed hōriki left behind by a high monk of a lifetime of pure ascetic cultivation.
Everything before had merely been the periphery. The edge. This, was the true threshold. The core. In the original story, this was a barrier capable of suppressing even the yōki of a daiyōkai like Sesshōmaru.
Though Sesshōmaru was absurdly young for a daiyōkai and certainly not among the strongest, and he had been suppressed while in his humanoid form with his yōki drawn inward, he was still, ultimately, the humanoid form of a daiyōkai. No matter what, he would not be inferior to an ordinary Twelfth Transformation yōkai.
At that moment, a pat-pat sound came from further behind Shinji. Amidst the shifting mist, a red-haired woman emerged. Three tall female silhouettes followed behind her.
"Takeda Shingen?" Oda Nobuna blinked. Takeda Shingen glanced at this 'little runt' and said nothing. Her deep crimson hair was startlingly vivid within the white mist. She, too, seemed to have sensed the anomaly.
She took a few steps forward, imitating Shinji. Her brow furrowed faintly. "This mountain's hōriki… has grown stronger." Yamagata Masakage followed behind, her expression normal.
Humans could not feel the suppression targeted at yōkai. But she could feel the air growing "cleaner." A cleanliness so absolute that even the power of divine artifacts was suppressed externally.
Nobuna also paused upon the stone steps. Her eyes narrowed. She, too, could sense it. The hellfire within her body had gone dormant. Her sensation was even more unique. The power of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was pressed down to an impossible depth, as though a colossal hand had clamped down upon a lid and held it shut.
Takeda Shingen's Fudō Myōō was, at least, still a god-buddha. But the Demon King, was the antithesis of the Buddha. Nearly indistinguishable from a yōkai.
Though he was the Enemy of the Buddha, demon countered buddha, and buddha countered demon. Mutual generation and mutual restraint. It only depended on whose magnitude was greater. In truth, in the legends of Māra, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, most tales ended with him being utterly crushed by the Buddha.
Amidst all this, everyone's gaze fell upon that gray silhouette at the very front. They had no idea what he was about to do. To shoulder such immense pressure… was he going to storm the mountain?
Shinji's actions did not disappoint them. He stood at the very center of the stone steps. The white mist churned beneath his feet. Buddhist power cascaded down from above. His yōki was suppressed to its absolute limit.
And then, he did something that, in the eyes of everyone present, bordered on madness. In this place, where yōki and impure energy were suppressed to an unprecedented degree, he unfurled his yōki.
He unfurled… the Ninth. The Shura Form.
Four viscera resonated as one. Heart-Fire was forcibly ignited. Kidney-Water was forcibly set into motion. Lung-Metal was forcibly driven to operate. Liver-Wood was forcibly unfurled.
The leakage at the missing gap was utterly ignored. Yōki erupted violently outward from the crevices of his bones, from his blood vessels, from his skin, brutally forcing its way out against the crushing weight of the Buddhist power.
Bone spurs erupted from the earth. Thunder blazed. The six-meter-tall Bone Thunder Shura, beneath the grinding pressure of the Buddhist force, took form, inch by agonizing inch. The feedback of that pressure was so clear it could be heard.
The skeletal frame groaned and shrieked beneath the Buddhist power. The thunder crackled and shuddered within the suppression. The entire Shura Form seemed to be locked in a contest of raw strength against the barrier of Mount Hakurei. It was being crushed. But it was also holding. Holding up the heavens. Holding steady the earth.
It succeeded. It withstood it. With its nature, approaching that which was neither dead nor alive, neither human nor demon, it withstood the vow-power's suppression of yōkai. And with a body of the Ninth Transformation, it manifested a surging, majestic yōki density that approached the Twelfth Transformation.
The sight made Takeda Shingen's eyes fly wide. Her gaze blazed with radiance. Oda Nobuna's eyes also froze. She, too, recognized this form. The form that had annihilated her in a single instant the very first time they had clashed.
That terrifying, razor-sharp edge still made her heart quail with lingering fear even now. Yet this was not the end.
In the next second, Onikiri. Yomi-giri. Banryū. Three weapons. Three demon artifacts. Simultaneously projected onto three arms of the Shura Form. The right arm gripped Onikiri, dark crimson blood-fire. The left arm gripped Yomi-giri, violet mist of demonic aura.
Amidst a thunderous roar, a third arm snaked outward, extending from the right shoulder. It gripped Banryū, now amplified by projection. The colossal pale greatsword hummed and resonated within the blazing lightning.
The Shura Form was, in its very essence, the external projection of yōki coalesced from his Seventh and Eighth Transformations into the Ninth. It could freely alter its shape. Thus, three blades were drawn simultaneously. And thus, three forces intersected, layered, and resonated within the body of the Shura Form.
The density of yōki in that single instant skyrocketed to an even more inconceivable level, truly reaching a degree comparable to the Twelfth Transformation.
That was the limit of quality. Beyond it lay the threshold of Phenomenon. The barrier wall manifested by the vow-power, was thus held back. Met head-on and forced to a standstill. It did not break. The barrier of Mount Hakurei was born of the hōriki accumulated by a flesh-buddha over centuries. It was not so easily shattered. But it also did not press down any further.
A stalemate. And then the Buddha statues reacted. The dense, innumerable statues lining both sides of the stone steps, the wrathful Vajra, the merciful Bodhisattva with lowered brows, the Arhat with palms pressed in reverence, the Tathāgata seated in serene meditation, all of their carved stone eyes opened simultaneously.
Golden light shot forth from those stone eyes. A deep, dense, resonant chanting of Sanskrit erupted from the mountain's very core, like thousands of monks reciting sutras in unison.
The stone arms of the Buddhas rose. Their stone palms pressed together. Globes of golden light coalesced between those palms, some as large as cartwheels, some no bigger than fists. Then, in perfect unison, they were hurled toward Shinji. The sky was filled with golden light. As dense as rain.
Takeda Shingen, standing below the stone steps, saw this scene. Her iron fan rose instinctively. Her deep crimson eyes reflected that golden tempest. Reflected the six-meter Bone Thunder colossus, surrounded by countless spheres of light.
"This bastard… he's actually doing it!" Her voice was very soft. It seemed to carry a suppressed, electric thrill. Oda Nobuna stood beside Shingen. Her golden slit-pupils were stretched impossibly wide. Her mouth hung open. She had forgotten to close it.
And then, Shinji's Shura moved once more. The right arm, Onikiri, swept horizontally. The dark crimson blade-light slashed across a thirty-degree fan directly ahead. The blood-fire ignited every golden sphere of light within that arc simultaneously.
The surfaces of the spheres cracked beneath the blood-fire. The Buddhist power within was seared and eroded. They shattered with a series of sharp cracks. Even the Buddha statues that had released those spheres were caught within the blade-light. Their stone arms were severed. Stone tumbled to the ground.
The left arm, Yomi-giri, slashed upward. A ghostly violet arc carved from the lower left all the way to the upper right. The Demon's Breath froze the moisture in the air, forming a barrier like a wall of mist. The spheres of light pursuing from behind crashed into it. They were halted. Then shattered.
The Buddha statues behind that wall of ice were engulfed by the residual shockwave of the demonic aura. The light in their stone eyes was extinguished.
Banryū cleaved vertically downward. The pale greatsword split the air from above his head straight down to the ground. The stone steps, beneath that blade's edge, ruptured into a chasm that stretched from beneath his feet to dozens of paces beyond.
The Buddha statues on either side of that fissure were toppled by the seismic wave. Then, like a chain of dominoes, they collapsed in a cascading chain reaction. Three blades. Three directions. Directly ahead. To the left. Directly above. One hundred and eighty degrees of defense.
Simultaneously, one hundred and eighty degrees of attack. The spheres of light were swept clean. Half the Buddha statues upon the stone steps were shattered into rubble.
The Shura Form continued its ascent, treading upon the broken stone. With every step it took, the stone steps beneath its feet shuddered. With every step it lifted, another expanse of shattered Buddha statues was left in its wake.
The Bone Thunder colossus advanced through the interlaced radiance. Dark crimson blood-fire seeped from the gaps in its frame, tracing lines of red through the white mist. He was like a walking Shura. Trampling shattered Buddhas beneath his feet.
Treading upon the resonant Sanskrit chanting. Against the current of the barrier. Ascending toward the mountain peak. He passed the midway point. The Buddhas of the mountainside, as though bowing their heads in submission, toppled, every last one.