Chapter 234: The Hellish Master Hakushin
Mount Hakurei, western slope.
The moment Takeda Shingen's straw sandal struck the first stone step, a crushing weight of Vow Power slammed down upon her shoulders.
It was a suffocating pressure, more than ten times denser than the tepid spiritual energy lingering at the foot of the mountain. It felt as though the entire peak had physically uprooted itself to press directly against her spine. Deep within her flesh, the divine Buddha Power of Fudo Myo-o flared to life, struggling to answer the challenge, but the sheer density of Mount Hakurei's barrier ruthlessly snuffed it out. A faint golden luminescence flickered across her skin for a fraction of a second before dying completely.
Shingen paused, her foot planted firmly on the stone.
"My Lord..."
Yamagata Masakage stepped up behind her. The retainer's white-knuckled grip locked onto the hilt of her sword. A layer of fine gravel dust coated Masakage's vermilion light armor, and the usual heroic confidence on her delicate features had melted away, replaced by a tight, rigid jaw and darting eyes.
Further down the path, two other Hime-mushas stumbled along. One rubbed the back of her head, swaying dizzily as she tried to find her balance, while the other leaned heavily on a short spear that had been bent into a sharp V-shape. The sacred artifacts housed within all three retainers were suppressed to absolute dormancy. Not a single speck of golden light could pierce their skin.
"Fudo Myo-o's power cannot be used," Masakage confirmed, her voice dropping to a tense whisper.
"I know."
Shingen did not bother to look back. Her sharp gaze remained locked on the endless flight of stone steps stretching up into the mist.
Lining both sides of the path, a dense legion of stone Buddha statues stood vigil. Furious Vajras with snarling faces, serene Arhats with joined palms, and seated Tathagatas staring down from above. The carved eyes of every single statue glowed with an eerie, pale golden light. That light bled from their stone pupils, weaving together in the air to form a visible, suffocating curtain of energy that blanketed the entire staircase. The higher the steps went, the thicker and more impenetrable the curtain became.
She could feel the hostility in the air. This mountain was actively targeting her. It was zeroing in on the lingering aura of Fudo Myo-o buried deep within her soul.
Divine Buddha suppressing divine Buddha.
Master Hakushin was a Buddha, and Fudo Myo-o was a Buddha. Yet, the chasm in their accumulated power was vast. Master Hakushin had saturated this soil with his essence for hundreds of years. Takeda Shingen had walked this earth for less than twenty.
"Since I can't compare... then I won't compare. I simply won't use it!"
With a sharp, decisive motion, Shingen drew the iron fan from her waist and tossed it lightly in her palm, testing its weight. The surface of the fan was pitch black, engraved with the four golden characters of Fūrinkazan. It was no sacred artifact. It held no supernatural grace. It was nothing more than a folding fan forged with solid iron ribs—heavy, brutally sturdy, and exceptionally effective for smashing skulls.
"My Lord, you mean..."
"Exactly what I said."
Shingen grabbed the cuffs of her kimono and rolled them up twice, exposing the taut, corded muscle of her forearms.
"Fudo Myo-o's power is suppressed, so I will cast it aside." She flashed a sharp, feral grin. "But I, Takeda Shingen, am still standing."
She took the next step.
The suppression of the Buddha Power violently intensified. An invisible, heavy hand clamped down on the crown of her head, attempting to force her face-first into the stone steps. Shingen's knees buckled slightly under the sudden force.
But she did not kneel. She did not retreat a single inch.
Slamming the tip of her iron fan against the stone surface, she propped her body upright.
Second step. Third step.
Every movement required the exertion of a life-or-death struggle against the very earth itself. Sweat beaded on her forehead, rolling down the bridge of her nose, tracing the corner of her mouth, and splattering onto the stone beneath her feet.
Yet, she kept walking. She relied on nothing but pure, mortal flesh and unyielding human will.
At the tenth step, the mountain reacted. The stone statues flanking the path shuddered to life. Three furious Vajras simultaneously raised their heavy stone arms, the grinding of rock echoing through the mist as spheres of condensed golden light formed between their palms.
Shingen did not stop.
She planted her foot and swung the iron fan in a brutal horizontal arc. The golden characters of Fūrinkazan blurred through the air. The heavy iron ribs collided dead-center with the first light sphere.
A deafening crack rang out, and the sphere shattered into a shower of golden sparks.
It was a collision of pure, unadulterated physical violence. The light spheres imbued with Buddha Power were designed to perfectly suppress supernatural forces, but iron was still iron. The sheer physical density of the metal would not magically soften just because the opponent claimed to be a Buddha.
Shingen twisted her torso, narrowly dodging the second light sphere. It whistled past her rolled-up cuff and slammed into the stone steps behind her, exploding into a crater of flying shrapnel.
The third sphere came straight for her chest. She did not bother to dodge.
She raised the iron fan like a shield and took the blast head-on. The resulting shockwave sent her skidding backward, the soles of her straw sandals shrieking against the stone surface as she ground to a halt two steps down.
Her feet, however, never left the ground.
"Do you see it?" Shingen's voice cut through the settling dust. Her lips curled upward, revealing a blindingly white smile. "The power of gods and Buddhas is suppressed, but the power of mortals is entirely ignored."
She spat a glob of dust from her mouth and laughed. "The barrier of this mountain only targets the supernatural. Whether it is the weight of faith or the stench of Yao Qi, it crushes it all. But as long as it is not supernatural..."
She pointed the tip of her iron fan directly at the sky. "No matter how much this mountain presses down, can it crush the person standing upon it?"
Masakage froze. The realization hit her like a physical blow. Slowly, she let go of the desperate mental grip she had maintained on her dormant divine artifact. She did not need it. The raw strength of her muscles, the precise footwork drilled into her over countless battles, the swordsmanship she had honed for years—none of these things belonged to the gods.
"My Lord... are you planning to punch your way up to the summit?"
"What else would I do?" Shingen barked a laugh, spinning the heavy iron fan twice in her grip before striding upward.
Ahead of her, another Buddha statue groaned into motion. An Arhat with joined palms slowly opened its stone hands, unleashing a massive, sweeping curtain of golden light that threatened to swallow the entire path.
Shingen didn't even slow down. She launched herself forward, raised her leg, and delivered a devastating front kick directly into the statue's stone belly.
A spiderweb of cracks exploded across the rock. The golden curtain of light instantly fractured at the point of impact, creating a jagged gap. Shingen slipped through the opening without breaking her stride and continued her ascent.
Masakage stared in stunned silence, then turned to look at the two Hime-mushas behind her, who were equally slack-jawed. She let out a long, exhausted sigh.
"Follow her."
The Hime-musha rubbing her head groaned, her face twisting into a bitter grimace. "Could it be that My Lord wants to show off for that Great Yokai? If she can't win him over with words, she's going to use her fists..."
"Shut your mouth and keep moving," Masakage snapped, glaring at the girl. Yet, deep down, she knew it was the truth. Her Lord was absolutely putting on a show.
But it was not entirely an act. This was simply who Takeda Shingen was. The harder the battle, the more her blood boiled. The heavier the suppression, the more violently she rebelled.
To choose this specific method, at this specific time, on this specific mountain—abandoning the divine grace of Fudo Myo-o to conquer the peak with nothing but mortal grit—was a message. Kobe Hikaru was somewhere on this mountain. Shingen knew he was watching.
She wanted that Great Yokai to understand that Takeda Shingen was fundamentally different from the previous generation's Uesugi Kenshin. She did not exist solely as a vessel for gods and Buddhas. She was perfectly capable of shattering these statues and punching a hole through this mountain with her own two bare hands.
The destruction continued. One after another, statues crumbled. She used her iron fan, her fists, her knees, and even her forehead. Masakage watched in absolute disbelief as her Lord shattered the stone nose of a lowered-brow Bodhisattva with a brutal headbutt. Chunks of gravel clattered uselessly to the ground.
Then, something shifted.
A faint, pulsing golden light began to seep from the center of Shingen's chest. It was entirely different from the heavy, suffocating Buddha Power of Fudo Myo-o. There was no oppressive weight of faith, no chanting Sanskrit marks. There was only heat. Pure, scalding, entirely unreasonable heat.
It was the manifestation of mortal will. It was the exact reason why thousands of Takeda Clan troops were willing to charge into certain death behind her. They did not follow her because she was the reincarnation of a god. They followed her because she was Takeda Shingen. Because she would always move forward, carving a path to victory with her own flesh and blood.
Behind her, the phantom of the Vajra Lion flickered back into existence. It was significantly smaller than before, its form battered and dilapidated, but it stood tall. This was not the divine guardian spirit granted by the heavens; it was a newly forged entity, condensed entirely from the sheer momentum and unbreakable bond of her own will.
The suppression of the Buddha Power began to fracture around her. The glowing stone eyes of the statues lining the steps flickered erratically, their light stuttering as the barrier struggled to comprehend the anomaly.
One hundred and fifty steps up the mountainside, Shingen stood panting heavily. Sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes and blurring her vision. The black lacquer on her iron fan was completely gone, leaving only the dented iron frame. The golden characters had been ground away until only half of the character for 'Wind' remained visible.
Yet, she was still smiling. Her teeth gleamed in the dim light.
"Do you see? This is the Takeda Clan! This is Takeda Harunobu!"
To the east, Oda Nobuna was having a significantly worse time.
The karmic fire of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven acted like a massive, blazing beacon inside Mount Hakurei. The barrier's reaction to the Demon King's aura was violently aggressive, suppressing her far more severely than it did standard Yao Qi.
Even though the Heavenly Eye Peacock and Hyobi-shin had fled the area after being heavily wounded by Hikaru's Blood Fire Moon, the stone guardians of the mountain had absolutely no intention of letting Nobuna walk away.
"Here they come again!" Nobuna shrieked, spinning on her heel and sprinting up the path.
Behind her, the massive stone arms of three Vajra statues swung down in unison. The giant stone palms slammed into the exact spot she had occupied a second prior, obliterating the stone steps and sending a shockwave of jagged debris flying in all directions.
"My Lord, dodge left! No, right!" Toshiie screamed from behind, frantically waving her small knife and dagger as she tried to deflect the flying shrapnel.
Katsuie roared, raising her heavy axe to cover their retreat. A dull grey light flashed across the iron blade, attempting to manifest her power, but the terrifying weight of the mountain's vows instantly crushed it out of existence. Left with no other option, Katsuie turned the broad face of the axe outward like a makeshift shield. She took the fragmentation impact of a shattered stone fist head-on. The kinetic force lifted her entirely off her feet, sending her crashing violently into the mountain wall with a sickening thud.
"That bastard... he's up there slicing through these statues like he's chopping vegetables! Why am I the one getting chased around like a rat?!" Nobuna cursed, her lungs burning as she scrambled up the steps.
Her pristine golden hair was a tangled, dust-caked disaster. Her bare feet were scraped and bleeding from sprinting over jagged gravel. At some point during the chaos, the obi of her kimono had come completely undone on one side, causing the heavy fabric of her hem to drag along the ground. She had already tripped over it twice. And the statues were still in hot pursuit.
The dark, oppressive aura of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was like waving a blood-soaked rag in front of a starving wolf. Every single Buddha statue on the eastern slope of Mount Hakurei had turned its glowing eyes directly toward her.
To the south, a deep silence reigned.
Imagawa Yoshimoto sat gracefully upon the broad back of the Six-Tusked White Elephant. The massive spirit beast stepped silently upon the empty air, its four feet finding purchase on nothingness as it steadily climbed the sheer southern face of the mountain.
Whenever the oppressive wall of Buddha Power closed in, it touched the edge of the White Elephant's spirit body and simply parted, flowing around the beast like river water breaking against a smooth stone. There was no violent repulsion. There was no crushing suppression.
While Taigen Sessai's accumulated Vow Power was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the massive reserves of Master Hakushin, it was not inferior in its purity. In fact, it was arguably purer, entirely devoid of malice or earthly attachment. Because of this, the mountain simply let it pass.
Yoshimoto remained perfectly still on the elephant's back. The layered, vibrant hem of her Junihitoe kimono draped elegantly over the beast's sides, and the gentle mountain wind tugged at her long, loose hair. She did not speak. Her bright, observant eyes scanned the path ahead.
The White Elephant stepped through a narrow fissure in the mountain wall, and the scenery abruptly transformed.
A stunning expanse unfolded before her. Pure white, brilliant gold, and soft light-purple petals bloomed out of thin air. They sprouted from the jagged stone walls, from the dry cracks in the earth, and even materialized directly from the empty sky. A vast, endless sea of petals stretched to the very edge of her vision, swaying gently in a breeze that did not exist.
Yoshimoto's breath hitched in her throat. It was hauntingly beautiful.
But as she lowered her gaze to the petals drifting just beneath the elephant's feet, her expression tightened. The serene wonder vanished from her eyes, replaced by a chilling solemnity.
Nestled perfectly within the center of every single petal sat a Buddha. They were minuscule, no larger than a human fingernail, sitting cross-legged with their tiny, carved stone faces all pointing in the exact same direction—straight toward the summit.
Thousands upon thousands of them. An endless ocean of tiny, watching gods.
The White Elephant did not break its stride. It stepped directly onto the sea of flowers. The petals shattered into glowing dust beneath its heavy feet, only to instantly bloom again in its wake. They were surrounded on all sides, above and below. It was a beautiful, suffocating cage.
Despite the vastly different circumstances on each side of the mountain, Kobe Hikaru could clearly sense the shift in the atmosphere. The barrier of Mount Hakurei was indeed a shared network. That majestic, overwhelming power of vows was not infinite, and right now, it was being violently dragged in four separate directions. By the time the barrier's attention reached him, less than a quarter of its original weight remained.
Hikaru had begun his ascent from the northern slope, the back of the mountain. He walked through the crushing pressure as if wading through a shallow tide, his eyes fixed on the peak.
At that exact moment, miles outside the boundaries of Mount Hakurei, Kikyo stood alone on the desolate wilderness three miles east of Kiyosu Castle.
The wind whipped across the plains, snapping the hem of her white robe and red hakama. She held her long Japanese bow vertically in her right hand, the bowstring pulled taut by the breeze. Her long black hair cascaded down to her waist, rising and falling in rhythmic waves.
Directly in front of her stood the massive, golden wall of light. It was a barrier that only she could truly see, a phenomenon only detectable by those with the highest caliber of spiritual perception. It stretched from the cracked earth straight up into the heavens, cutting across the entire landscape and dividing the lands of Mino and Owari.
She had stood in this exact spot for two full days. She had not slept. She had barely moved.
For forty-eight hours, pure spiritual power had flowed continuously from her palms, seeping into the surface of the golden wall. Strand by strand, she had probed its depths, touching its currents, analyzing its foundation.
Slowly, the complex architecture of the Buddha Power had revealed itself to her senses. It was not a solid wall. It was woven from thousands of overlapping layers of Vow Power, constructed much like a silkworm cocoon. It had warp and weft, anchor points and microscopic gaps. It was a fabric of energy woven into a temporary reality—a Reality Marble. But the scale of this construct was terrifying, far exceeding anything Kidomaru had ever manifested. It held a reservoir of energy that rivaled the greatest of Yokai, and every single layer was reinforced with ironclad resilience.
Yet, deep between those overlapping layers, Kikyo had found something else. A faint, rhythmic fluctuation. A slow, steady expansion and contraction.
It was a heartbeat. The heartbeat of Master Hakushin.
Even though the living Buddha had perished centuries ago, the soul trapped within the mummified flesh was still fully functional. His Vow Power rose and fell in time with that phantom breath, ebbing and flowing like the tide.
Kikyo had pinpointed the exact rhythm of that ebb and flow. She had originally calculated that it would take her three days to find the opening.
But on the night of the second day, the Vow Power within the wall violently destabilized. A massive fluctuation ripped through the network, as if something inside the mountain had suddenly stirred, forcing the barrier to scatter its focus in four different directions.
The crushing pressure against her palms instantly plummeted.
Kikyo's keen senses tracked the diversion of energy. East, west, south, and north. Four distinct paths were drawing the mountain's wrath simultaneously.
She understood instantly. It was him. Hikaru had deliberately orchestrated a four-sided siege from within the mountain's borders.
The moment the Vow Power diverted, the microscopic gaps in the barrier's weave tore wide open.
Kikyo's spiritual power had been fully charged for hours, waiting for this exact fraction of a second. She closed her eyes, took a slow breath, and snapped them open.
She pressed her hands flat against the golden light. A blinding surge of spiritual energy erupted from between her fingers. Brilliant white threads of light shot forward, violently digging into the Vow Power like the roots of an ancient tree, gripping the edges of the widened gap and tearing it apart.
The massive light wall did not shatter. But directly in front of her, a jagged, three-foot-wide fissure ripped open in the golden fabric.
It was a narrow tear, barely wide enough for a single person to slip through. And it was already shrinking. The Vow Power was frantically surging back to repair the wound.
Kikyo did not hesitate.
She activated the Spirit Transformation Technique. A brilliant aura enveloped her entire body, shifting her physical flesh into a translucent, ethereal spiritual form. She stepped forward and fell smoothly into the fissure.
The golden wall snapped shut behind her, sealing perfectly. The interior of Mount Hakurei could no longer reject her presence.
Beneath the fabric of her robes, the Shikon Jewel vibrated once against her chest, a low, thrumming pulse of recognition, before falling completely silent.
On the northern face of Mount Hakurei, Kobe Hikaru continued his ascent.
Thick white fog blanketed the surroundings, making the jagged, continuous mountain ranges look even more vast and imposing. Amidst the swirling mist, Hikaru walked upward, step by measured step, looking for all the world like an ordinary mortal traveler.
He had not drawn a weapon. Blood had not been spilled, bones had not shifted, thunder had not cracked the sky, and the monstrous Asura form remained dormant. Banryu rested quietly in its sheath across his back. Onikiri and Yomikiri were tucked securely at his waist. His long, pale hair hung loosely over the shoulders of his gray robe, and his Crimson Demon Eyes stared straight ahead into the mist.
He, too, was gathering his strength.
But with every single step his foot took, the stone steps beneath him violently trembled.
It was not caused by his physical weight. It was caused by Fear.
It was the pure, unadulterated Fear of the Lord of all monsters, the King of the Hundred Tales. It was a dark, suffocating energy flowing in from Totomi, from Mikawa, from Suruga, and pouring in even heavier from Sagami and Musashi. The ghost stories, the urban legends, the whispered terrors accumulated day after day by hundreds of monsters across five entire provinces were, at this very moment, converging upon his body along invisible, conceptual threads.
The physical amplification it provided was staggering.
Fear was not a standard energy source. It was nourishment. It was a catalyst. It did not directly increase the volume of his demonic power, but it acted as a multiplier, allowing every single aspect of his monstrous existence—his speed, his raw physical strength, the lethal concentration of his Yao Qi, and the sheer, crushing weight of his presence—to violently expand to a level that defied all logic.
The essence of this Fear was rooted in stories. It was born from the campfire tales, the forbidden taboos, and the dark allusions passed down through generations of trembling humans.
It was the story of the demon-faced entity to whom the Hyakki bowed under the pale moonlight. It was the legend of the water demon of Shimizu Port, a creature that single-handedly crippled twelve hundred armed men. It was the myth of the heavenly thunder at Okehazama that descended to slaughter an army. Every time one of these stories was whispered in the dark, the Fear grew denser.
And for every ounce of that Fear that flowed into Hikaru's body, the vibration shaking the stone steps beneath his feet grew one layer heavier.
The Buddha's Vow Power existed to suppress Yao Qi. But Fear contained no Yao Qi.
Buddha Power could purify demonic energy, but it could not purify the unresolved terror, the dark imagination, and the lingering dread buried deep within the human heart. The Buddha could suppress monsters. But Kobe Hikaru, despite being a complete and utter monster, was using the very essence of human emotion.
He was fully a monster, yet wielding the power of humanity.
The Buddha statues lining the northern steps began to violently shake. Fine, jagged cracks spiderwebbed across their serene stone faces. The golden light seeping from their carved eyes began to violently flicker, flashing on and off as if the statues themselves were hyperventilating in panic.
Two massive Vajra statues with furious, bulging eyes raised their heavy stone arms, attempting to condense spheres of purifying light.
But before the light could even fully form, an invisible, crushing pressure slammed down upon them from above. The stone arms exploded into dust, and the golden light was instantly snuffed out, scattered into nothingness under the sheer, suffocating weight of the Fear.
And then, the atmosphere shattered.
The thick fog enveloping the mountain, and the Vow Power that had solidified into a near-physical substance, were violently torn open.
Hikaru walked out from the mist. The glow of his Crimson Demon Eyes had deepened significantly under the blessing of the Fear. The color had shifted from a bright scarlet to a dark, near-black crimson, with complex purple patterns and flowing orange light surging violently within his pupils.
His long pale hair fluttered behind him in the wind, but at the very ends, a deep blood-red hue had begun to manifest, creeping upward along the strands like black ink bleeding into clear water.
His presence was expanding to blot out the sky. He was a walking ghost story. A nightmare whispered by humans across five provinces, now physically measuring the sacred stone steps of Mount Hakurei with his own two feet.
From this vantage point, the summit was finally in sight.
As he approached, the white fog naturally dispersed, peeling back to reveal the silhouette of the ancient temple resting among the clouds.
Deep, resonant bell tolls suddenly rang out from all four directions simultaneously. The sound was heavy and dense, accompanied by the rhythmic, overlapping chant of Buddhist scriptures that washed over the peak like a crashing tide.
But the bells and the chants could not slow Hikaru's pace. They could not prevent his foot from stepping onto the final stone platform at the very peak of the mountain.
Fueled by the overwhelming weight of the Fear, his Yao Qi finally erupted, soaring straight into the heavens like a pillar of dark fire.
With a deafening bang, the heavy wooden main gates of the temple violently swung open.
Beyond the gates lay a deep, cavernous corridor. Hundreds of small Buddha statues lined the walls on both sides, their unblinking stone eyes all staring toward the entrance.
At the very end of that long corridor, half-swallowed by the surging clouds and mist, sat a solitary figure.
He was gaunt beyond belief. His spine was hunched forward into a severe, painful arc. His monk's robes were little more than tattered rags, and the sharp, skeletal outline of his ribs pressed clearly against the rotting fabric.
His right hand loosely clutched a string of wooden prayer beads, while his left hand rested limply on his bony knee. His face was a withered husk, the dry skin clinging desperately to the skull beneath. His eye sockets were deeply sunken, his eyelids sewn tightly shut by time.
Yet, a terrifying ocean of Vow Power surged continuously from his frail body, spreading out in all directions, connecting with the very bedrock of the mountain itself.
But intertwined with that holy light was something else. A thick, suffocating aura of Grudge energy poured from his flesh. It was darker, deeper, and infinitely heavier than the Vow Power, smelling of rotting wood and moldy scriptures, radiating a nauseating aura of total decay.
He was half Buddha, half demon.
He was a high monk who had willingly sacrificed his own life to become a living Buddha hundreds of years ago. And he was a vengeful spirit, trapped within the prison of his own mummified flesh hundreds of years later, utterly incapable of passing on.
Master Hakushin.
Kobe Hikaru stood silently at the entrance of the long corridor.
His dark, swirling Crimson Demon Eyes locked onto that gaunt, skeletal figure across a distance of exactly one hundred paces.
At this moment, at this exact time, upon the peak of the sacred mountain.
The Buddha finally met the demon.
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