Mount Hakurei. The western face.
The moment Takeda Shingen set foot upon the first stone step, the majestic vow-power crashed down upon her. It was more than ten times denser than the tepid vow-power at the mountain's base.
As though someone had placed an entire mountain upon her shoulders. The divine-buddha power of Fudō Myōō struggled within her body, trying to respond, but it was ruthlessly pinned down by the barrier of Mount Hakurei.
A golden light flickered once upon the surface of her skin. Then it was extinguished. Vanished. Shingen halted for a single step.
"My lord...." Yamagata Masakage followed behind her. Her hand rested on her sword hilt. Her vermillion light armor was coated in stone dust and powder. The bold, brash expression on her delicate features had mostly been reined in. What replaced it was genuine, palpable tension.
The other two warrior maidens followed further behind. One was still massaging the back of her head, walking in a daze. The other was using her short spear, bent into a V-shape, as a walking staff.
The divine-artifact power within all three of them had been suppressed to its absolute minimum. The golden light couldn't even seep through their skin. "The power of Fudō Myōō, we can't use it," Yamagata Masakage confirmed in a low voice.
"I know." Shingen didn't look back. She gazed at the stone steps before her. Along both sides of the steps, Buddha statues were arrayed in dense, innumerable rows. Wrathful Vajra. Arhat with palms pressed in reverence. Tathāgata seated in serene meditation.
The stone eyes of every single statue were glowing. Pale golden light seeped from their pupils and wove into a visible curtain of radiance that blanketed the stone steps above. The higher they went, the thicker that curtain became.
She could feel it. This mountain was targeting her. Targeting the lingering presence of Fudō Myōō upon her body. God-buddha against god-buddha. Saint Hakurei was a buddha. Fudō Myōō was also a buddha.
Yet buddhas were not all the same. Their accumulations were vastly different. Saint Hakurei had existed within this mountain for centuries. She, Takeda Shingen, had lived for less than twenty five years.
"Since I can't match it… then I won't match it. I simply won't use it!" Shingen decisively drew her iron fan from her waist and hefted it. The fan's face was pitch-black. Inscribed in gold were the characters Fūrinkazan.
The iron fan was no divine artifact. It contained not a trace of supernatural power. It was simply an iron-ribbed folding fan. Heavy. Sturdy. Exceptionally useful for knocking people senseless.
"My lord, you mean—"
"Exactly what I said." Shingen rolled up the sleeves of her kosode twice, exposing the taut, powerful lines of her forearms. "The power of Fudō Myōō has been suppressed. Then I won't use it. But I, Takeda Shingen, am still standing." She took her first step.
The Buddhist suppression suddenly intensified. As though an invisible hand had pressed down upon the crown of her head, trying to grind her into the stone steps. Shingen's knees bent slightly. But she did not kneel. Did not retreat. The iron fan braced against the stone surface and held her body upright.
The second step. The third step. Every step was like wrestling against the entire mountain. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead, slid past the bridge of her nose, past the corner of her mouth, and dripped onto the stone steps. Yet she kept walking. By pure, mortal strength, unaided by any supernatural force. Body and will alone.
At the tenth step, the Buddha statues on either side of the stone path moved. Three wrathful Vajra raised their stone arms simultaneously. Globes of golden light coalesced between their stone palms.
But Shingen still didn't stop. The iron fan swept horizontally. The four golden characters of Fūrinkazan carved an arc through the air. The iron ribs crashed against the first sphere of light. It shattered. Pure collision. The Buddhist-attributed spheres could indeed suppress the supernatural, but iron was iron. The hardness of iron would not soften simply because its opponent was a buddha.
The second sphere, she sidestepped, letting it graze past the cuff of her kosode and detonate a crater into the stone steps behind her. The third sphere, she didn't evade. The iron fan met it head-on.
BOOM.
The shockwave shoved her backward, skidding two paces. The soles of her straw sandals shrieked against the stone. Yet her feet still did not leave the ground.
"You see?" Shingen's voice rang out from the lingering aftermath of the impact. The corner of her mouth split wide, baring white teeth. "The power of gods and buddhas has been suppressed. But the power of mortals.... will not be. This mountain's barrier only targets the supernatural. Faith. Yōki. Anything that isn't the raw power of humanity itself, all crushed. But on the other hand...." Her iron fan pointed toward the sky. "No matter how hard this mountain presses down, can it crush the person standing upon it?"
Yamagata Masakage froze for a single beat. Then she understood. She also abandoned her attempts to wield the divine-artifact power within her. She was not wholly reliant upon that power.
The strength of her body. The footwork beneath her. The sword techniques she had honed over countless years. None of these were related to gods or buddhas. "My lord… are you planning to punch your way up?"
"What else?" Shingen strode upward in great, sweeping steps. The iron fan spun twice in her palm.
Another Buddha statue moved. The Arhat with palms pressed in reverence spread its stone hands wide. A golden curtain of light descended, blanketing the sky. Shingen lifted her foot and kicked it.
The stone abdomen cracked. A gap tore open in the golden curtain of light at the point of fracture. Shingen slipped through that gap and continued her ascent.
"…"
Yamagata Masakage glanced at the two equally stupefied warrior maidens behind her and sighed. "Keep up."
The one massaging the back of her head muttered under her breath with a bitter face, "Is our lord planning to put on a show for that yōkai? If words won't work, she'll use her fists…"
"Shut up and keep up," Yamagata Masakage glared back at her. Yet in her heart, she was thinking the exact same thing. Her lord was indeed putting on a performance.
Yet it was not entirely a performance. This was simply Takeda Shingen's nature. The more she fought, the more exhilarated she became. The more she was suppressed, the more she refused to submit.
But she had chosen this moment, within this mountain, to cast aside the divine power of Fudō Myōō and climb through sheer, mortal will.
Shinji was still within this mountain. She knew he was watching. She wanted that yōkai to see. Takeda Shingen was different from the previous Uesugi Kenshin. She did not rely solely upon gods and buddhas. Relying on herself alone, she could also shatter these Buddha statues. Smash her way through this mountain. One after another. Iron fan. Fists. Knees. Even her forehead.
Yamagata Masakage personally witnessed her lord headbutt the stone nose of a merciful Bodhisattva into shattering rubble. Fragments of stone clattered across the ground. And then, Takeda Shingen's chest lit up. An exceedingly faint, golden light seeped from the position of her heart.
Yet this light was utterly different from the divine-buddha power of Fudō Myōō from before. It carried none of the heavy solemnity of faith. No imprint of Sanskrit. Only, heat. Pure. Scalding. Irrational heat. That was the will of a mortal. Unlike the previous Uesugi Kenshin.
The reason thousands of Takeda soldiers were willing to follow her to their deaths, was not because she was the reincarnation of Fudō Myōō. It was because she was Takeda Shingen. Because she could advance. And lead them all to victory!
The spectral silhouette of the Golden Lion reappeared behind her. Far smaller than before. Far more shattered. But it had emerged once again. It was not the same Golden Lion as before. It was something newly condensed.
The binding of momentum and will. The reason Takeda Shingen was Takeda Shingen, the reason she possessed the Guardian Spirit of the Golden Lion, had never been because of the Golden Lion's protection. It was because she was Takeda Shingen.
The Buddhist suppression developed cracks. The stone eyes of the Buddha statues on either side of the steps began to flicker. Their light was no longer steady.
Shingen stood between one hundred and fifty paces up the mountainside. She gasped for breath. Sweat blurred her vision. The lacquered surface of her iron fan was utterly shattered. Only the iron ribs remained.
The golden characters had been worn down until only half of the character for Wind was left. Yet she still smiled. Her teeth were blindingly white. "Do you see it? THIS IS THE TAKEDA! This is… Takeda Harunobu!"
The eastern face.
Oda Nobuna's situation was, by comparison, far more miserable. The hellfire of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was practically a target within the interior of Mount Hakurei.
The Buddhist suppression of the Demon King's power was even more brutal than against yōki. Though the Celestial-Eye Peacock and the Leopard-Tail God had fled after being grievously wounded by Shinji's blood-fire and moon-bloom, the Buddha statues along the stone steps would not let her off so easily.
"Here they come again!" Nobuna bolted. Behind her, the stone arms of the Vajra statues swung down simultaneously. Their colossal stone palms slammed into the spot where she had just been standing.
The stone steps shattered into a spiderweb of fractures. "My lord, go left—no, go right—!" Toshiie screamed directions from behind while fending off attacks with the small dagger in her hand.
Katsuie raised her axe to cover the rear. The gray-iron light flashed once upon the axe-blade and was instantly extinguished. Utterly useless. The terrifying vow-power directly slammed the divine-artifact power back into submission.
She had no choice but to use the flat of her axe as a shield, blocking a barrage of stone fist shrapnel with brute force. Her entire body was hurled backward and smashed into the mountain wall.
"…That bastard… cuts through these Buddha statues like chopping melons and vegetables… HOW COME I HAVE TO GET CHASED AROUND?!" Nobuna cursed as she ran. Her golden hair was a tangled, chaotic mess. Her bare feet had been slashed bloody by the shattered stone.
The sash of her kosode had come loose on one side at some unknown point. The hem dragged along the ground and tripped her twice. Behind her, the Buddha statues pursued relentlessls. The presence of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was like a red cloth to a bull. Every Buddha statue within Mount Hakurei had turned toward her.
The southern face.
Imagawa Yoshimoto rode upon the back of the white elephant. The Six-Tusked White Elephant trod upon the void with its four feet, silently ascending the southern cliff face.
The Buddhist wall of power, upon touching the edges of the white elephant's spirit-body, parted as naturally as water flowing around a reef. No rejection. No suppression. Though the vow-power of Taigen Sessai could never match the sheer magnitude of Saint Hakurei's vast reserves, in purity, it was not the slightest bit inferior. It was even purer. It would not be countered.
Yoshimoto sat upon the elephant's back. The layered hems of her twelve-layered kimono were spread across the broad span of the white elephant's back. Her loosened long hair drifted faintly in the mountain breeze. She made no sound. Her bright, luminous eyes gazed straight ahead.
The white elephant passed through a fissure in the cliff wall. The scene before her eyes shifted abruptly. Flowers. A vast, boundless sea of flowers. Petals of pure white, gold, and pale violet bloomed from the stone walls, from the crevices in the ground, from the very air itself.
The ocean of blossoms stretched to the limits of her sight, swaying gently in a nonexistent wind. Yoshimoto's breath caught faintly in her throat. So beautiful.
Then she looked down at the petals beneath her feet. Her expression sharpened, a flash of piercing clarity. Because within every single petal, sat a Buddha. Tiny. No larger than a fingernail. Seated in perfect cross-legged meditation at the very center of each petal.
Every carved face was turned toward the same direction. Toward the summit. Thousands upon thousands of flowers. Thousands upon thousands of Buddhas. The white elephant's stride did not falter. It trod across that sea of blossoms. Petals shattered beneath its feet, and bloomed once more in its wake. Surrounding it on all sides. As though a prison.
Yet though their situations differed, Shinji could still feel it. The barrier of this mountain was, indeed, being divided. That majestic, yet ultimately finite, vow-power was being diverted toward four directions.
What finally fell upon him, was barely a quarter of its full might. Shinji, too, began to ascend the mountain upon its northern face. Here, he climbed the mountain as one traverses the sea. And then, he summits the peak!
At the same moment. Outside Mount Hakurei.
In the open wilderness twelve km east of Kiyosu Castle, Kikyō stood alone. Her white uwagi and crimson hakama stirred faintly in the wind. Her longbow was held upright in her right hand. The bowstring was drawn taut. Her black hair cascaded down to her waist, the ends lifted and dropped by the breeze.
Before her still stood that golden wall of light. Visible only to her. Perceptible only to those whose senses were honed to the keenest edge. It stretched from the earth to the heavenly dome. From south to north. Spanning the lands of both Mino and Owari.
She had been standing here for two days. Two days without sleep. Reiryoku poured continuously from her palms, seeping thread by thread into the surface of that light-wall. Probing. Touching. Analyzing. The structure of the Buddhist wall gradually sharpened into clarity within her perception.
It was woven from layer upon layer of vow-power, like a silkworm's cocoon. Warp and weft. Nodes and gaps. Like a fabric woven for a fleeting moment. A so-called "innate bounded field." Yet far, far larger than Kidōmaru's. Possessing a magnitude no less than any daiyōkai.
Each layer was immensely resilient. Yet between layer and layer, there existed faint fluctuations, like breathing. That was the heartbeat of Saint Hakurei. Though the flesh-buddha of centuries was dead, the soul within still operated. The vow-power rose and fell like breath. It had crests and troughs.
Kikyō had found those crests and troughs within two days. She had originally estimated it would take three. But on the night of the second day, the vow-power within the light-wall experienced a large-scale fluctuation. As though something within the mountain's interior was churning, dispersing the power of the barrier in four directions. The pressure plummeted.
Kikyō also sensed the directions of those fluctuations. East. West. South. North. Four paths, bearing the weight simultaneously. She understood immediately. It was him. He had created a four-pronged diversion inside. The gap in the barrier widened in the instant the vow-power split.
Kikyō's reiryoku had long since been fully charged. She had only been waiting for this moment. She closed her eyes. Opened them again. Her palms pressed together. Reiryoku erupted from between her fingers. White threads of light surged forth from the surface of the light-wall in every direction.
They burrowed into the vow-power like roots, tearing it apart along the gaps. The light-wall did not shatter. But directly before her, within a span of three shaku, a fissure appeared. The fissure was not large. Just enough for a single person to pass. And it was continuously contracting. The vow-power was repairing itself.
Kikyō did not hesitate. The Spiritualization Technique activated. Reiryoku enveloped her entire body, transforming her into a semi-transparent spiritual form. Her entire being slipped through that fissure.
The fissure sealed shut behind her. The interior of Mount Hakurei could no longer refuse her. The Shikon no Tama shuddered once against her chest. Then fell still.
The northern cliff face within the interior of Mount Hakurei.
Shinji climbed the mountain. White mist shrouded all four directions. The unbroken mountain ranges stretched vast, empty, and impossibly remote.
Within this, Shinji advanced step by step, like a mortal man. Outside this, blood had not yet ignited. Bone had not yet stirred. Thunder had not yet unfurled. The Shura Form had not yet manifested. Banryū was planted across his back. Onikiri and Yomi-giri hung horizontally at his waist.
He was also, gathering strength. Yet with every step he took, the stone steps beneath his feet shuddered. It was not caused by his weight. That was… osore. The osore of the Lord of the Chimimōryō. The King of a Hundred Tales. It came from Tōtōmi. From Mikawa. From Suruga. From Sagami. From Musashi.
The ghost stories and terror gathered day by day, month by month, by over a hundred yōkai across five provinces, now, at this very moment, were converging upon him along invisible veins. The amplification it brought was unmistakable.
As he had said before, osore was not energy. It was nourishment. It was a hormone. It was a catalyst. It did not directly increase demonic power. Yet it could cause everything about a yōkai, speed, strength, yōki density, even presence itself, to surge far beyond its normal state in a short span of time.
The essence of osore was story. Ghost stories. The taboos and tales that circulated among the common folk. The demon-masked existence before whom a hundred demons knelt beneath the moonlight.
The water-demon of Shimizu Port, who, alone, had crippled twelve hundred soldiers. The heavenly thunder of Okehazama, which had descended from the sky.
Every time a story was told, the osore thickened by one measure. With every measure of osore that poured into Shinji, the tremors beneath his feet grew one layer heavier.
Buddhist vow-power suppressed yōki. But osore had no yōki. Buddhist power could purify yōki, but it could not purify the unresolved mysteries within the human heart. The Buddha could suppress yōkai. But Shinji was both a complete yōkai, and yet, gradually, becoming a man. Wholly demon. Wholly human.
The Buddha statues on either side of the stone steps began to tremble. Fine, dense cracks spidered across their carved faces. Golden light seeped from their stone eyes, flickering erratically, as though their breathing had fallen into chaos.
Two wrathful Vajra raised their stone arms. Globes of light coalesced. But an invisible, crushing weight fell upon the statues. Their stone arms shattered before the spheres of light could even take form. The golden radiance, beneath the pressure of osore, disintegrated into motes of dust.
And then, the mist shrouding the mountain ranges, the vow-power, congealed to the point of near tangibility, was torn open with a single rip.
Shinji's figure emerged from that fissure. The light of his crimson demon eyes, beneath the amplification of osore, had deepened by a full shade. From scarlet, to a dark, near-black crimson.
The violet veins within his pupils intertwined and churned with the orange luminescence. His white, flowing hair drifted behind him. Yet at the ends, a blood-red hue now crept upward, like ink bleeding into water.
His very presence was swelling. He was a walking ghost story. A tale told in trembling voices around campfires by the people of five provinces. Now, measuring the stone steps of Mount Hakurei with his own two feet.
Thus, the summit came into view. And so, the white mist dispersed. The silhouette of the temple emerged from the clouds within Shinji's field of vision. From all four directions, the tolling of bells rang out simultaneously. Deep. Dense. Unbroken. The chanting of Sanskrit surged like the tide.
Yet these sounds, sentence by sentence, could not halt Shinji's steps. Could not stop him from setting foot upon the highest platform of the mountain peak.
BOOM!
Beneath the amplification of osore, his yōki finally erupted skyward. The main gate of the temple burst open with a thunderous crash. The corridor was impossibly deep. Along both sides were arrayed hundreds of small Buddha statues. All facing the same direction.
At the far end of the corridor, amidst the churning clouds and mist, a gaunt, withered figure sat there. A hunched spine curved into a bowed arc. Monastic robes, tattered and threadbare. The outline of ribs was clearly visible beneath the fabric. A string of prayer beads clutched in the right hand. The left hand braced against the knee.
The face was parched and desiccated to the extreme. Skin clinging to bone. Eye sockets sunken deep. Both eyes tightly shut. Yet vow-power surged from his body, spreading in every direction, as though resonating with the entire mountain.
Resentment also surged from his body. Denser than the vow-power. Heavier. Deeper. Like moldering sutras, reeking with a nauseating stench of decay. Half-buddha. Half-demon.
A high monk who had sacrificed his very body to become a buddha centuries ago. Centuries later, a resentful spirit trapped within his own self, unable to pass on. Saint Hakurei.
Shinji stood at the entrance of the corridor. His crimson demon eyes met that gaunt, withered figure across a distance of a hundred paces. Gaze to gaze. In this moment. At this instant. The Buddha, at last, beheld the Demon.