Before Shinji's arrival, Saint Hakurei showed no reaction. That gaunt, withered figure sat motionless at the far end of the corridor. The prayer beads turned slowly between his desiccated fingers.
But the hundreds of small Buddha statues lining both sides of the corridor, opened their eyes in perfect unison. Golden light flooded every inch of the floor and walls of the passage.
Shinji did not move. He was waiting. Because he sensed it, more than one person was here.
As expected, in the next second, from the shadows of the pillars behind and to the right of Saint Hakurei, another figure slowly emerged.
The pentagram-patterned haori. Deep chestnut hair. But those eyes had changed. They were no longer amber. They had become gold. Within them swirled a six-pointed star.
The girl who had once called herself Tsuchimikado Kokoro at Imagawa-kan in Suruga Province stepped out from the shadows and stood at Saint Hakurei's side. A figure utterly unrecognizable from the timid, nervous apprentice onmyōji she had presented herself as in Suruga. In truth, she was utterly unrecognizable.
"Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama." She spoke his divine title. "Even during that meeting in Suruga, I wanted to say it. The osore upon your person, is truly fascinating."
Shinji did not respond to her pleasantries. His crimson demon eyes were fixed upon this fifteen-year-old girl. The violet veins within his pupils swirled slowly.
Kokoro didn't seem to mind in the slightest. She continued, unprompted. "When I introduced myself before Imagawa Yoshimoto, I didn't give my full name. At the time, I said I was Tsuchimikado Kokoro. Apprentice onmyōji. Daughter of the house head." She paused. "But in truth, Onmyōin is my true surname."
Onmyōin. The surname used exclusively by the successive heads of the house among the descendants of Abe no Seimei.
Tsuchimikado Kokoro, or rather, Onmyōin Kokoro was, without question, far more than simply the daughter of the current head of the Tsuchimikado house. She was the next head. Onmyōin itself.
"Onmyōin Kokoro." She straightened the pentagram haori upon her shoulders. "That is my full name."
"And so?" Shinji finally spoke. "You've finished introducing the body you've possessed. Now, shouldn't you introduce yourself?"
At these words, the 'Tsuchimikado Kokoro' across from him blinked. Then, this young onmyōji suddenly laughed. "So you've seen through me after all." Her laughter was both delighted and cold.
"As expected of the one who has caused Mother so much vexation. In every era, whether human or demon, existences like you always seem to emerge. I am quite pleased. As for who I am, since you've spoken thus, I imagine you've already recognized me."
Of course he recognized her. The force that had severed the tracking of his Soul-Chasing BowArm Transformation, acting in tandem with Saint Hakurei's Buddhist hōriki.
The six-pointed star he now saw within her eyes. Both were more than sufficient for Shinji to make the identification. "Abe no Seimei. Or rather, Nue."
The existence of Abe no Seimei required no elaboration. The existence of Nue, that was information Shinji possessed as a transmigrator. It originated from Nurarihyon no Mago.
It was the child gestating within the womb of Hagoromo Gitsune, the ultimate daiyōkai coiled beneath Kyōto. The true, final arch-villain of that fantastical tale.
In the Heian era, he had ruled over both day and night, the Lord of the Chimimōryō. He would be born once more through the flesh of Hagoromo Gitsune, returning from the depths of hell to descend upon the mortal world and reign over it once again.
Thus, at this moment, 'Tsuchimikado Kokoro' clapped her hands together.
Clap.
The sound was crisp and sharp. It echoed through the corridor. The ground shattered. It was not the barrier of Mount Hakurei that stirred. It was something else, surging up from beneath the earth, from beneath Kokoro's feet.
Onmyōdō. The onmyōdō unique to the direct bloodline of Abe no Seimei. Different from the generic talismans, barriers, exorcisms, and demon-repelling arts of the Onmyōryō. This was control.
The concept of shikigami had a long history within onmyōdō. The principle was to command spirits or demons through the will of the caster and wield them as tools.
But Abe no Seimei had pushed this art to its absolute extreme. Not merely shikigami. He could manufacture demons as shikigami. Manufacture. Not subdue. Taking the bodies of defeated demons as raw material. Stitching and fusing them together. Using onmyōdō as the thread. Blood as the anchor. The will of the caster as the shackles. Driving them into battle.
The inheritors of the Onmyōin lineage carried this gift. And Nue, who had seized control of his descendant's body, could naturally wield it as well.
One after another, the stone slabs of the corridor were thrown upward. Fragments of rock erupted from the gaps. What crawled out from beneath the earth, were yōkai.
To be precise, the stitched-together husks of yōkai. A blue-faced demon, 6 meter tall. Tusked fangs bared. Its entire body was wrapped in golden chains of spell-characters. Its eye sockets were hollow, embedded with two glowing pentagram talisman-beads.
A colossal centipede. Over 30 meter in length. Its carapace was pitch-black, gleaming with a violet sheen. Its hundred legs churned, scraping the stone with a harsh, grating screech. Its head was sealed by a pentagram talisman plastered over its mouth.
A one-eyed giant. Its sole remaining eye was also covered by a talisman. Its 10 meter tall body hunched its back within the corridor. The stone walls cracked beneath the pressure of its shoulders.
A fourth. A fifth. Seven in total. By Shinji's classification, these were unmistakably Essence-level demons. High-ranking yōkai of the Ninth Transformation and above. Sealed and remodeled by the onmyōdō passed down through the Onmyōin lineage, preserved as puppet weapons.
These were the trump cards 'Kokoro' had originally brought with her. Not created by her own hand. This was the accumulated fruit of successive inheritors of Abe no Seimei's bloodline. A stockpile handed down from generation to generation. She was merely bringing them out for use. Now, unleashed by her ancestor.
Seven puppet yōkai arrayed themselves in formation within the corridor. Golden spell-characters and pentagram light wove into a net, sealing the entire passage airtight.
At the same moment, Saint Hakurei also moved. That gaunt, withered silhouette slowly raised its right hand. The prayer beads accelerated between its fingers. Sanskrit chanting erupted from the mountain's very core. No longer the vague, ambient background noise from before.
This was true sutra recitation. Every syllable was sharp and distinct. Every sound carried the weight of centuries of vow-power. Though he was now half-demon, half-buddha, he had, in life, been a high monk who had saved tens of thousands of souls. His greatest strength, was still his vow-power.
The barrier of Mount Hakurei abruptly contracted. The Buddhist power of the entire mountain converged from all directions toward the summit. The suppressive force that had been dispersed across the four cardinal directions, was now fully recalled.
It layered and compressed within a radius of a hundred paces around the temple. The air grew viscous. Heavy. Yōki was crushed nearly to the point of solidification. Even beneath the amplification of osore, it seemed utterly futile. This was unmistakably a two-against-one scenario.
Shinji's crimson demon eyes narrowed faintly beneath the suppression. Osore still churned within his body. But the return of the barrier at full strength had once again compressed the space around him.
The room his yōki had carved open through osore moments ago was being reclaimed, inch by inch. His hands closed around the hilts of Onikiri and Yomi-giri. Banryū, planted behind him, also hummed and trembled.
Saint Hakurei's face was serene and desiccated. 'Onmyōin Kokoro''s lips curved in a smile, brimming with confidence.
And then, the sky suddenly blazed with light. Radiance pierced through the boundless mist. Through the vow-power. From outside Mount Hakurei. From beyond that Buddhist barrier that stretched across heaven and earth.
Abruptly, it shot inward. It was pure white light. The first beam pierced through the barrier wall and detonated across the sky-canopy above the mountain peak.
White reiryoku transformed into countless fine threads, cascading down like rain. The rain of reiryoku fell upon the roof ridges of the temple. The Buddhist power upon the tiles was scoured into fractured fissures by the relentless deluge.
The second beam of light. From outside the barrier wall, it pierced through the entire barricade. That Buddhist wall, supported by Saint Hakurei's centuries of vow-power, proclaimed to be capable of sealing away all yōkai. It was pierced through by a single arrow.
The arrow's trajectory left a blazing white arc across the sky, plummeting from the breach in the barrier straight toward the mountain peak. It embedded itself into the stone ground directly before the temple's main gate. The arrow's fletchings quivered.
The residual shockwave of reiryoku radiated outward in every direction. The third. The fourth. The fifth. A continuous stream of arrows poured in through the breach in the barrier. Every arrow struck the barrier, tearing apart the converging suppressive force, piece by piece. The Buddhist wall did not fully shatter. But a rift large enough was torn open.
Beyond that rift, upon the mountain peak opposite Mount Hakurei's main summit, where the white mist churned, a figure in white and crimson stood there. Her longbow was half-raised. The bowstring still trembled. Her black hair flew wildly in the wind. Upon her cold, clear features, there was no extraneous expression. No urgency. No tension. Only the same calm as always.
Nue, who controlled the body of Tsuchimikado Kokoro, paused briefly. It seemed she had not anticipated this step. The strength of the Buddhist wall, she had confirmed it herself. A barrier condensed from centuries of vow-power. Even the most elite onmyōji of the Kyōto Onmyōryō in this generation would need at least half a month to break it.
And Kikyō, had taken only two days. Nue realized she had, to some degree, underestimated the weight of the title Strongest Miko of the Age.
"…So this is the caliber of the strongest miko of this era? As expected. Hardly any less than Midoriko now." She, of course, knew of Kikyō's existence.
Within the corridor. Shinji's hand released the hilt of Onikiri. His crimson demon eyes reflected the white rain of reiryoku light descending from the heavens. Deep within his pupils, a trace of a smile. Kikyō. She had finally come. He had known all along. She would not simply wait outside. Would not simply watch.
Kikyō's sixth arrow embedded itself into the lintel above the corridor's entrance. Reiryoku erupted from the arrow's shaft. White light spread along the doorframe to either side, sealing the entire entrance into a thin membrane of reiryoku.
A seal to contain demons and destroy evil. Yet what it sealed was not Shinji, a true, authentic demon. It was Nue. Those seven puppet yōkai, beneath the relentless scouring of the reiryoku rain, fell into brief, chaotic disarray. The light of the pentagram talisman-beads flickered erratically. The golden chains hissed and smoked.
The rift torn in the Buddhist wall was still widening. Kikyō's reiryoku poured ceaselessly through that breach into the mountain peak. Every strand seemed to land with pinpoint precision upon the puppet yōkai. She was dismantling. From across the distance of a mountain peak, using arrows as blades, severing the control threads of the Onmyōin onmyōdō that bound the puppets.
Nue's expression grew pensive. Then, "Venerable Saint." She turned her head toward that gaunt, withered figure. Her voice was calm.
"That miko outside will dismantle my shikigami. I need to go out and deal with her." If she allowed that woman to keep severing her threads, these demon puppets would go out of control. And besides, she was also very curious to see just how far that so-called strongest miko of the age could truly go.
Saint Hakurei gave no response. The speed of the turning prayer beads did not change. But the density of the vow-power at the far end of the corridor abruptly thickened. Tacit consent.
Nue then turned. Her pentagram haori whipped an arc as she spun. Her deep chestnut hair slid from her shoulder as she walked toward the corridor's entrance.
The seven puppet yōkai regained their coordination in that same instant and followed behind her. The pentagram talisman-beads within the blue-faced demon's hollow eye sockets stabilized once more. The hundred legs of the colossal centipede scraped against the stone with a piercing screech.
Reaching the entrance, she paused for a single step. Her large amber eyes glanced back over her shoulder and fell upon that gray figure at the other end of the corridor. "Now… it's one on one. Good luck, Lord Nakai Shinji." She spoke. Her words fell. Her figure passed through the membrane of reiryoku.
Kikyō's seal was ineffective against humans. Reiryoku only obstructed the supernatural. The control threads of the onmyōdō were severed, but the caster herself was unaffected. With Nue's ability, even under these conditions, she could still maintain control over those seven demon puppets. They followed close behind her, squeezing through the membrane one after another.
The instant they passed through, they reconnected to Kokoro's onmyōdō. Footsteps faded into the distance. Silence returned to the corridor.
Only the Sanskrit chanting remained. And two existences. One demon. One buddha. One god. One ma. Shinji stood in the middle section of the corridor. Saint Hakurei sat at its far end. Still a hundred paces between them. The golden light of the hundreds of small Buddha statues lining both sides blazed even brighter after Kokoro's departure.
Saint Hakurei had fully reclaimed the portion of vow-power that had been allocated to the puppet yōkai. He layered it all upon this corridor. The suppressive force skyrocketed once more.
The yōki within Shinji's body was crushed to an even deeper depth. Even the amplification of osore began to stutter and stall. The power of ghost stories converging from five provinces, beneath the compression of vow-power, was like a river whose entrance had been blocked. It could no longer surge in.
Yet he did not retreat. Instead, he advanced. He took a step forward.
Saint Hakurei, at last, opened his eyes. Two sunken, withered eyes deep within their sockets. The pupils were clouded and white. Yet there was light. Buddha-light. Light condensed from centuries of cultivation. Pure to the point of piercing.
The instant that light fell upon Shinji, the corridor vanished. It did not truly vanish. The stone walls, the Buddha statues, the tiles, all still remained. But the scene Shinji beheld had changed. Beneath his feet was no longer stone steps.
It was parched, cracked earth. Fissured fields stretched from beneath his feet to the very horizon. Withered, yellow rice stubble lay toppled in every direction. The wells had no water. The riverbeds had run dry. Famine. The air was thick with the mingled scent of soil and decay.
In the distance, there was cooking smoke, but no scent of food. Children crouched on the ridges between fields, gnawing on tree bark. Old men leaned against the foot of walls, utterly still. Impossible to tell whether they were asleep or dead.
An illusion. Shinji's eyes narrowed. In an instant, he understood the source of this scene. It was the fragments of memory projected by Saint Hakurei's vow-power. The lingering afterimage of that famine, said to have lasted for decades, centuries ago. Yet Shinji's steps did not halt. He continued forward.
As his second step fell, the scene shifted again. A young man in monastic robes stood at the entrance of a village. So thin his ribs were starkly visible. Yet his hands held a bowl of gruel, offered to a woman kneeling on the ground.
Behind her, a long line stretched from the village entrance all the way to the foot of the mountain. On the young monk's face was a smile. Sincere. Pure. And filled with compassion. Saint Hakurei. Saint Hakurei in his youth. Shinji walked past that figure. His robes brushed the edge of the apparition. The apparition did not waver.
The third step. The monk had aged. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. His face withered into gauntness within the span of a single stride. His spine bowed. His hands trembled. But he was still distributing gruel. Only the line had grown longer.
Only it was no longer just a single village. Three villages. Five villages. Ten, twenty, dozens of villages. People surged in from everywhere. The famine had not ended. The monk's pot of gruel had run dry. He poured what was in his own bowl back into the pot and continued to cook.
The fourth step. He collapsed. He was gravely ill. Lying upon a straw mat. Surrounded by a circle of people. People he had saved. They looked at him. Their faces held heartache. Reluctance to let him go. But also.... expectation.
The fifth step. Voices flooded in. A buzzing, murmuring drone. Like a swarm of bees. Like the tide.
"Venerable Saint… is it true? If you can become a buddha… you can protect us forever?"
"A flesh-buddha bodhisattva can shelter a land of a thousands kilometers…"
"If only the venerable saint would be willing…"
Shinji's footsteps neither quickened nor slowed. His crimson demon eyes swept calmly across those faces. There were tears. Pleading. Devotion. And even more... desire.
The sixth step. A pit. A pit had been dug into the earth, just large enough to hold a single person. The young monk, no. He was already an old monk now. Walked into it on his own. No one pushed him.
He sat down. Crossed his legs. Pressed his palms together. Soil was shoveled over him from all sides. One shovel. Two shovels. Three shovels.
Until the darkness closed in. Until the sound of sutra chanting rose from above the earth. The people outside were chanting sutras. Chanting for him. Chanting for his death.
The sound of Amida Butsu seeped down through the soil above his head, over and over, like water dripping onto a coffin lid. He chanted as well, beneath the earth.
For seven days. Fourteen days. Twenty-one days. His voice grew fainter and fainter. By the forty-ninth day, only the old monk's lips still moved. His throat could no longer produce sound. The final moment. The sound of sutra chanting above the earth, ceased.
The famine, too, had passed. Rain fell from the heavens. Grass and trees grew upon the earth. The people outside dispersed. They returned home. They tended their fields. They ate their meals. The flesh-buddha was complete.
But no one knew, at the very, very end, in the darkness,the old monk's eyes suddenly flew open. Clouded. Terrified. Unwilling. And then, the voice of Saint Hakurei rang out from every direction of the illusion simultaneously.
He was not speaking to Shinji. He was speaking to himself. Yet it was as though he wanted all the world to hear. "Did this old monk… do the right thing?" The voice was ancient. Cracked and parched. Carrying the tremor of centuries of accumulated weight.
"This old monk saved so many people… Why did he have to die?" The illusion convulsed. The earth fractured. The sky warped. Those images of famine. Images of distributing gruel. Images of being buried beneath the earth. All of them shattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, spinning and swirling through the corridor.
"Why… did this old monk have to die?" The final sentence. Vow-power cascaded down with those words. Ten times heavier than all the previous suppressions combined.
The entirety of Mount Hakurei's hōriki converged upon a single point in that instant. Converged upon the crown of Shinji's head. To grind him to dust. To force him to his knees. To make him answer.
Shinji stood amidst the shattering phantasms. His footsteps, at last, paused. His knees trembled faintly. But only sank a single inch. Then they stopped. The hilt of Banryū tightened within his palm. The Immovable Earth activated. Both feet were nailed to the ground.
The very earth became his anchor. He lifted his head. His crimson demon eyes stared directly into those clouded, withered, white pupils. He spoke. "Right or wrong… what does it have to do with me?" Words flat to the point of absolute stillness. Saint Hakurei's figure froze. The prayer beads ceased their turning.
"You lived for centuries. You saved countless people. You were buried beneath the earth and chanted sutras for forty-nine days. You failed to become a buddha. You turned into a mountain. You've been trapped here for centuries, unable to leave." Shinji's voice, beneath the crushing weight of the vow-power, was so clear it was piercing.
"Tragic. But...right or wrong, what does it have to do with me?" His words fell. The Shura Form erupted. No warning. No gathering of power. No opening stance. Four viscera resonated as one.
The six-meter-tall Bone Thunder Shura took form within the corridor, beneath the grinding pressure of Buddhist power. And then, the three blades were projected. Onikiri. Yomi-giri. Banryū. Manifested. And then, the arrival of osore.
The density of his yōki skyrocketed beneath the catalysis of osore. The surface of the Shura Form began to blaze with light. Dark crimson. Silver-white. Pale white. Three colors intertwined, flowing through the gaps in the joints of the Bone Thunder colossus.
From a level already matching a Twelfth Transformation yōkai, it surged continuously upward. Approaching. Surpassing the very scale of the Twelfth Transformation. Approaching vaporization. Approaching a phenomenon-class existence. Approaching, a great demon lord. A grand, walking cataclysm!
Saint Hakurei's withered eyes, at last, flew wide. In centuries, he felt it once again. That force. Entirely different from Buddhist power. Entirely different from yōki. It was story. The ghost stories told in trembling voices by millions in the darkness, condensed into a walking, living monogatari.
The weight belonging to the mortal realm, carried upon the back of a single yōkai. That osore had been crushed into his body by the vow-power. But it had not vanished. It had accumulated. Waited. Like a mountain torrent, poised to erupt. And that moment... was now.
Amidst this, the right arm of the Shura Form raised Onikiri and Yomi-giri. Beyond this, Banryū was suspended high. Extreme Will condensed. Three blades converged and layered, like the dim twilight between day and night. Three lights fused into one.
The forces of crimson, violet, and gold compressed, spiraled, and merged upon the cutting edge. Filled to overflowing. A single slash descended! The illusion shattered. The famine shattered. The gruel-soup shattered. The deep pit shattered. The sutra chanting shattered. The projection of centuries of memories exploded into dust like shattered glass beneath that single blade.
All that remained, all of it, was a single sentence. "Right or wrong.... what does it matter to me?" Unconcerned with right or wrong. He only needed to take one step forward.