The next day.
Morning sunlight streamed through the window lattice, casting several long, slanted patches of light across the tatami of the side chamber.
Kikyō sat before the mirror, combing her waist-length black hair with a wooden comb. Her movements were slow and meticulous. She was not wearing her signature white uwagi and crimson hakama. Instead, she wore only a plain, unadorned single-layer robe.
The collar was slightly open, revealing straight collarbones and a deep, winding curve. Her face remained cool and refined, but her lips were flushed, still carrying the lingering warmth of their recent intimacy.
Shinji sat at the low table behind her, tossing a thumb-sized black bead in his hand. The bead flipped through the air, its surface reflecting the morning light. Within it, faint gray-blue mist swirled. The Black Agate Pearl.
"That bead… has awakened." Kikyō looked at the reflection in the mirror, her gaze falling upon the bead. As the strongest miko of this age, her perception of spiritual energy was sharp to the extreme.
Last night, this bead had been nothing more than a dead object, carrying only a trace of yōki. This morning, it was radiating a strange, eerie fluctuation, as though connected to another space entirely.
"Mn. I've been talking to it for months now. It was about time it gave me a response." Shinji closed the Black Pearl in his palm. He looked at Kikyō. "This is the key to the cleft of the underworld. The tomb of the great Inu no Taishō, Tōga, lies there. And within it, there is a blade."
Kikyō stopped combing her hair. "Tessaiga?"
She naturally remembered that moonlit night when yet another daiyōkai, Sesshōmaru, had come to the outskirts of Kaede's Village.
"Correct. Tessaiga." Shinji nodded.
"You've seen my Shura Form. But to draw out its full power, I need five blades. I already have Onikiri, Yomi-giri, and Banryū. Even if I add Raikiri, which is still enshrined at the Imagawa capital, I'm still short one." Short one blade of the Water element. Yes.
Shinji's desire to open the Inu no Taishō's tomb was not solely for the sake of Tessaiga itself, a demon blade absolutely worthy of being called the pinnacle of all demon artifacts. There was also this reason. The Cat-Demon's Claw and the Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale, which he had been melting down all this time, were merely raw materials.
To truly forge them into Suijin-kiri, he needed a method that would allow them to fuse perfectly. Ideally, he needed a blade of sufficient standing as a reference. Tessaiga, the peerless demon blade forged from Tōga's own fang, was, without a doubt, the ideal target.
Kikyō turned around. The fabric of her single-layer robe clung to her waist with the motion, tracing a curve without a single wasted line. "Will it be dangerous?" she asked.
"For others, perhaps. For me, no." Shinji rose to his feet. The hem of his gray robe swept across the tatami. As a Māra, neither dead nor alive, the dangers of the underworld's cleft were, in truth, not great for him. And if worse came to worst, he could always use the Black Pearl to return in an instant.
Kikyō looked at him. Her dark pupils reflected his face. "How long?" she asked.
"If it goes quickly, half a day."
"And if it goes slowly?"
"Within three days."
Kikyō stared at him for three more seconds, then rose and walked to a cabinet in the corner of the side chamber. She pulled open a drawer and retrieved something. A single strand of red thread. She walked back, took Shinji's right hand, and wound the thread around his ring finger, tying a knot.
"Three days." Kikyō's voice held no fluctuation, yet it was filled with utter seriousness. "I will not go with you. I am a living person. Going would only burden you. But… if you exceed three days, I will use this thread as a lead and attempt to open that path myself. I will come find you, even if you are dead, I will bring your soul back."
She was not making a threat. With Kikyō's reiryoku, forcibly tearing open the gap between the underworld and the mortal realm was not impossible. It would simply exact a tremendous price.
Shinji looked down at the red thread on his ring finger. "Rest assured. Three days is enough."
As his words fell, he raised the Black Pearl in his hand with a smile. The gray-blue mist within the bead instantly began to seethe. The Talents unlocked after reaching fifty Affection were now fully activated.
The coordinates between the mortal realm and the underworld overlapped completely within Shinji's mind. And now, the other party would also proactively respond to his needs.
He tossed the Black Pearl forward. The bead hovered in midair, refusing to fall. The air around it began to twist visibly, as though a stone had been dropped into a still pond.
At the center of that distortion, a gray-blue rift tore open from nothingness. The rift rapidly expanded upward and downward, transforming into a gate of light over 3meter in height.
Within that gate, there was no scenery. Only an endless, boundless expanse and a churning sea of clouds, laced with an exceedingly dense death-energy and desolation. It was a realm the living could never set foot in. But Shinji could.
He hung his twin blades at his waist. Banryū was strapped across his back. Within the Māra Body of the Twelfth Transformation's Return to One, the Earth Soul pulsed with excitement. Like a fish returning to water. "I'll be back soon." He turned his head to Kikyō. "I leave the village to you."
"Come back soon." Kikyō looked at him. Her voice was calm. No superfluous instructions. Yet it was brimming with unwavering certainty.
Shinji smiled and stepped into the gate of light. After his gray-robed figure disappeared, the gray-blue vortex contracted rapidly. Finally, it collapsed into a single black point and dispersed into the air of the side chamber. The passage was open. He was now within the cleft of the underworld.
At the same moment. In this expanded world, somewhere immeasurably far, more than a thousand kilometers beyond. At the border wilderness of the Kansai region.
A fierce gale howled. Sand and stones flew. A gaunt, withered bull with three eyes galloped madly through the cracked sky. Where its hooves struck, waves of molten heat blossomed. Upon the bull's back, Tōtōsai clung desperately to its neck, both hands gripping its horns. That comical old face was drenched in sweat.
"Faster! Go faster! Mōmō, if you slow down, we'll both become roast meat today!" Tōtōsai bellowed. The three-eyed fire-bull let out a deep, muffled bellow and surged forward with renewed speed, flames trailing from all four hooves. Myōga had long since shrunk into the deepest crevice he could find!
Behind them, less than three hundred meters away in midair, a white figure rode the wind. Sesshōmaru. The direct bloodline of a daiyōkai. His white haori snapped fiercely in the gale.
The fur upon his right shoulder flowed and unfurled like a cloud. His face was breathtakingly beautiful and utterly aloof. The crescent moon upon his brow gleamed faintly in the sunlight. Those golden eyes were fixed upon the fleeing fire-bull ahead. Without the slightest trace of emotion.
"Tōtōsai." Sesshōmaru spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it pierced through the howling wind and fell clearly upon Tōtōsai's ears. "Stop."
"This old bones refuses to stop!" Tōtōsai shouted back over his shoulder. "Lord Sesshōmaru, even if you break every bone in this old body, I will never help you obtain Tessaiga! Your temperament is utterly unsuited to wield such a blade!"
Yes. Sesshōmaru's purpose in seeking out Tōtōsai this time, was still for Tessaiga. He had previously failed to claim the blade. But he refused to accept defeat. And so he had searched far and wide for Tōtōsai, the one who had forged Tessaiga. And he had found him.
Hearing Tōtōsai's response, Sesshōmaru offered no further words. He simply raised his right hand, index and middle fingers pressed together. Green demonic power condensed at his fingertips, transforming into a whip over 200 meter long, a whip capable of cleaving mountains.
The wrist of the young Western daiyōkai flicked. The whip of light lashed through the air with a blinding burst of green radiance, thundering toward the bull's path with the speed of lightning!
BOOM!
Where the bull's hooves were about to land, the earth below was cleanly split. The clouds above were directly severed. A chasm five hundred meters deep instantly stretched across the fire-bull's path. The edges of the chasm reeked of green venom, the rock dissolving with a sizzling hiss, emitting acrid white smoke.
The fire-bull let out a terrified bellow and screeched to a halt midair. Its four hooves plowed two long trails of flame. Tōtōsai was nearly thrown from the bull's back. "TOO DANGEROUS! SOMEONE'S GOING TO DIE!" The old man wailed, clutching his massive iron hammer.
Sesshōmaru's form slowly descended from the sky. The tips of his feet alighted upon a protruding rock. He maintained that same lofty composure. The fingertips of his right hand once again blazed with green light.
The Poison-Claw of the Dog-Demon, razor-sharp talons wreathed in terrifying venom. This time, he did not intend to sever the path ahead. He intended to directly dissolve the legs of that troublesome bull.
And it was at the very instant his fingertips were about to unleash that light—
Sesshōmaru's movement froze. Abruptly. It halted midway. He lifted his head, his golden eyes turning toward the east. That direction, was the Kantō. A thousand kilometers away.
But in that very instant just now, a sensation from the deepest depths of his bloodline had been stirred. The tomb. His father Tōga's tomb. That place hidden within the cleft of the underworld, the place he had once stepped into, had been opened once more. Someone had entered. Using that Black Pearl, the key.
Sesshōmaru's brow furrowed, almost imperceptibly. That Black Pearl had been tossed to a yōkai as worthless scrap over two months ago. Nakai Shinji. That demon warrior wearing the demon mask, the one who had made a bargain with him, promising a favor in exchange for summoning back Inuyasha's human soul.
Yet the Black Pearl required extraordinarily specific conditions to be activated. After being removed from Inuyasha's eye and used once, it had become a dead object. And now, that one called Shinji seemed to have defied all logic, forcibly reawakening the Black Pearl's ability as a key… Interesting.
The green venom at Sesshōmaru's fingertips dissipated soundlessly. He withdrew his hand into his sleeve and straightened. The killing intent that had been locked upon Tōtōsai vanished utterly in that instant.
"Lord Sesshōmaru!" A breathless cry came from behind. The little green yōkai Jaken, leaning on the Staff of Two Heads, scrambled and tumbled over the earthen slope on his two stubby legs, arriving at Sesshōmaru's feet.
"Lord Sesshōmaru! Why have you stopped? That old man is about to get away!" Jaken lifted his head and pointed ahead. During the few breaths Sesshōmaru had been distracted, Tōtōsai had already steered the fire-bull around the chasm and bolted several kilometers away. Only a blurred silhouette remained.
Sesshōmaru did not look in the direction Tōtōsai had fled. He stood with his back to Jaken, his white robes rippling in the wind. "No more pursuit," he said flatly.
"Eh? No more pursuit?" Jaken blinked, his bulging frog-eyes filled with bewilderment. "But—if we don't find Tōtōsai—"
"The direction has changed." Sesshōmaru turned around. His furred tail traced an elegant arc through the air. His gaze remained fixed upon the direction of the Kantō. Within those golden eyes, something rarely seen surfaced, rising above his usual cold indifference.
Interest. Tessaiga. Since someone had opened that door once more, he had no reason not to go and take a look. That demon warrior who could make discarded waste function again, was worth meeting once more.
And moreover, though the "transaction" between them still stood, when it came to that strongest demon blade left behind by his father, Tessaiga, Sesshōmaru would never, under any circumstances, give it up.
"Let's go. Find Hōsenki." Since he had already learned that the key to entering his father's tomb was the jewel crafted by that daiyōkai, Hōsenki, the old friend of Tōga in life, the only way to enter again now was through that one. Sesshōmaru did not linger. His figure soared into the sky, transforming into a streak of white light, flying toward the east.
"WAIT! WAIT FOR ME! LORD SESSHŌMARU!" Jaken hoisted the Staff of Two Heads and desperately churned his two little legs, chasing after that streak of light across the wasteland.