The following days saw Shinji's life settle back into its familiar rhythm, cultivation, nurturing his artifacts, and the quiet moments shared with Kikyō.
The Affection of Yura's comb and the venomous dragon's scale continued to climb steadily. Tsubaki's prayer beads had only just begun to stir.
There was also the black pearl taken from Inuyasha, the Shikon no Tama, the sacred tree, and more.
But such tranquility, in this chaotic era, could never last long.
As always.
Several days later.
Night once more.
Having just finished their quiet time together, Shinji sat cross-legged in the center of the main hall. Before him was not the demon blade Muramasa, but a bamboo basin filled with clear water.
The night wind slipped through the gaps in the paper doors, carrying the biting chill unique to late autumn.
Kikyō sat across from him in her white uwagi and crimson hakama. Momiji and Botan had already gone to sleep.
Naoe Kanetsugu was also asleep, she was no longer tied to the pillar, but confined to a room in the side hall, its door plastered with sealing talismans handwritten by Kikyō herself. She couldn't escape.
The two of them were still here. Though they hadn't crossed that final line, only occasionally exchanging glances, occasionally holding hands, occasionally the brush of skin against skin, for both of them, it seemed to be enough.
For now… enough for now.
Until Shinji fully "returned from death to life," they would stop at this threshold. Save the best experience for the moment of perfection.
It was a quiet night.
And then, it wasn't.
In the water basin before Shinji, with no wind at all, the surface suddenly broke into violent ripples. Layer upon layer of waves churned fiercely, as though the water had begun to boil, yet not a single drop spilled over the edge.
It was osore. The collective force-field connecting the Twenty-Three Demons across three provinces, linked through their yōki, had suddenly erupted in violent tremors. As if someone was desperately pounding a warning bell.
"My lord! General!"
The image in the water shattered and reformed. The tanuki's voice exploded from the depths, sharp and frantic, carrying undisguised panic.
Kikyō paused, her movements stilling. Shinji raised his eyes slightly, nodded toward her, then placed his hand upon the water's surface. He closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into it.
What followed felt both impossibly long and fleetingly brief. Within the darkness behind his closed eyes, twenty-three crooked, misshapen faces emerged. Without a doubt, his subordinates. The members of his Hyakki Yagyō.
But they were different from usual. Most of those faces bore injuries. The tanuki's round face now had a claw mark stretching from its forehead to its chin, its fur singed black, its tiny bean-eyes shot through with blood.
The kappa's shell was cracked, covered in layer upon layer of mended fractures. The one-eyed novice monk's single eye was so swollen it was barely a slit. The other lesser yōkai went without saying, some missing limbs, some with half their bodies frozen into blocks of ice, some with chunks of their ears cleaved off by an unknown force.
Even the half-demon little fox was utterly listless. Uninjured, but seemingly drained to the brink, her yōki nearly exhausted. Without the supplemental osore flowing in from outside, she would have long since collapsed into unconsciousness.
Twenty-three demons. Seventeen wounded. The six who remained unscathed seemed to be so not because they'd escaped harm but simply because they'd run fast enough.
"What happened."
Shinji's voice rang out in the darkness. His expression was solemn, and to the ears of the Twenty-Three, his words carried not only authority but reassurance.
"Mutsu! It's yōkai from Mutsu!" The tanuki's voice was thick with the verge of tears. "They came from the northeast! A huge swarm! They hit the demon shrines in Sagami first, tore the roof right off the one-eyed monk's shrine, then charged straight for Suruga! The kappa's shrine was smashed too!"
"How many?"
"I don't know! At least forty or fifty! Big ones and small ones, all of them!" Shinji's brow shifted.
Forty or fifty yōkai. If they were all low-level, it wouldn't be a major problem. After absorbing osore during this period, the strongest of the Twenty-Three, the tanuki, had already grown from the First and a Half Transformation to the Third.
The others had also reached around the Second Transformation. Though not strong by any stretch, with the support of osore, they could more than handle lesser yōkai of similar or even slightly greater scale. Together, they could deal with most threats.
And yet so many of them had been wounded.
"There are high-ranking yōkai among them." Shinji made the judgment at once.
"There are!" The tanuki nodded furiously, so hard that its wounds split open again, making it wince and bare its teeth in pain. "The ones leading them… Master, I sensed it. At least three auras that were especially strong. Far, far stronger than me. I didn't even dare get close…"
Three high-ranking yōkai. By Shinji's classification, they should be at the Essence Transformation level, the Seventh Transformation or above.
"Did they say anything?"
"They did! They did!" The tanuki racked its memory desperately. "There was one in the group that looked like a weasel, really fast. It said—it said this land is the territory of their Tōno, and that no foreign trash is allowed to build shrines here. It told us to get out."
Tōno.
The Tōno region of Mutsu Province. In this land, in this era, among the countless yōkai legends spread far and wide, Tōno was one of the largest yōkai strongholds in the entire northeast.
Kappa, Kamaitachi, Yuki-onna, Zashiki-warashi, Tengu. All manner of demons had lived and multiplied for centuries in those lands, shrouded by deep mountains and dense fog. That place had its own order. Its own rules.
When Shinji had first expanded the Twenty-Three's influence across the Kantō, he had deliberately avoided reaching north into the northeastern territories. He had known of Tōno's existence, of course, and had intentionally steered clear. But now, the yōkai of Tōno had come attacking on their own.
Had they seen the constant upheaval this region had suffered recently and thought there was an opening to exploit?
That would make sense. After all, the yōkai, great and small, that had once infested this area had essentially been purged clean by him and Kikyō.
Setting himself aside, the yōki across the Kantō had indeed thinned considerably. It must have looked, from the outside, as though the region had grown considerably "weaker."
Still,
"What of the Hōjō and the Imagawa? Did they not help you?"
While humans couldn't directly intervene in battles between yōkai, they could still provide "support." Through offerings.
"They are helping! Several villages in Sagami held rituals through the night, and the Imagawa added offerings at the shrines in Suruga. The osore is definitely increasing, but…" The tanuki's voice trailed off, growing small. "It's not enough. Not nearly enough."
Osore could heal lesser yōkai's wounds and accelerate their growth. But against high-ranking yōkai who had achieved Essence Transformation at the Seventh Transformation or above, lesser yōkai of the Second or Third Transformation, no matter how much osore they absorbed, could at most survive one extra hit. The gap in quality could not be bridged by quantity.
At least, not for ordinary yōkai.
Shinji opened his eyes. The ripples on the water's surface stilled. The twenty-three faces in the darkness dispersed all at once. Silence returned to the main hall.
But the silence felt wrong.
Kikyō watched Shinji. She didn't ask what had happened, from the moment he'd closed his eyes, she had sensed the abnormal fluctuations within the force-field inside him.
Her dark eyes reflected the bright, clear light of the candle flame, fixed steadily on him. Waiting for him to speak.
Shinji lifted his head and met those eyes.
"Something's happened in Sagami and Suruga," he said. "Yōkai from Tōno in Mutsu Province have swept south. They've attacked the Twenty-Three's territory."
"At least three high-ranking yōkai leading them. Forty or fifty underlings backing them up."
"I may need to go there myself."
Kikyō's fingers glided lightly over her bowstring, producing the faintest hum. She didn't answer right away.
The candle flame flickered between them. The shadows cast upon the paper doors wavered.