And on this very same night, when the Hyakki YaKō shook the Kantō, thousands kilometers away, in the lands of the Kansai, a wholly different "Night Parade" was also unfolding.
Upon a stretch of scorched earth at the very heart of the border where the lands of Shikoku converged, a torrential rain poured down.
BOOM—!
A colossal yōkai, its mere form spanning several meters in length and breadth, so vast it defied comprehension, its entire body covered in warts and bone spurs, crashed to the ground with a thunderous roar.
Mud, water, and severed limbs exploded into the sky. An unprecedented, majestic yōki erupted skyward in its wake, nearly blanketing the span of two entire provinces, close to a thousand km, beneath a shroud of terrifying, otherworldly phenomena.
That yōki nearly condensed into tangible crystals, raining down from the heavens as a storm of crystallized phenomenon. This yōkai, without a doubt, was a daiyōkai. Only, its state was clearly aberrant. As though it had been contaminated by something.
"…What a tough hide. I nearly died out here." Nurarihyon, drenched in blood from head to toe, stood atop the daiyōkai's nasal bridge. He casually flicked his blade with a practiced flourish, then gazed, pained, at the nicks and gashes covering his sword.
He shook the tainted blood from his tachi and sheathed it with a reverse grip. The young Nurarihyon wore a haori that, from the looks of it, had also been reduced to tatters by the battle.
He truly looked utterly bedraggled. Only his golden hair still bristled wildly in the rain, as untamed as ever. He held a pipe between his lips, took a deep draw, and exhaled a ring of ash-white smoke. His posture was utterly slovenly and unrefined. Yet it carried a composure that even the torrential downpour could not extinguish.
Only, as his gaze fell, it held a trace, more or less, of regret. "A daiyōkai who slumbered for two hundred years, Gakusanjin, dragged into this affair by a conspiracy. Wiped out for no reason at all…"
It was at that very moment,
"Stop showing off, Nurarihyon!" A grumbling, exasperated voice rose from below.
A yōkai, wearing a bamboo hat and just as colossal in form, a full 40m tall, like a small hill, hauled its claws out of the mud. Countless yōkai, great and small, clustered beneath its form.
Its name was Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki. The young commander-in-chief of Shikoku's Eight Hundred and Eight Tanuki, the Eighty-Eight Demon Night Parade.
A great tanuki in its true form. It was connected by countless threads to the fallen Bakeneko clan of the eastern lands. It rubbed its aching shoulders and cursed.
"If it weren't for me and my tanuki army fighting tooth and nail down here, would that move of yours, that sudden epiphany you borrowed from Tōno, osore's Hyōi-no-Hatsu, 'Mirror of Still Water', have cut so smoothly?! And what the hell is wrong with that bunch lurking in Kyōto? Why are they even contaminating something that's been asleep for centuries?!"
"Who knows?" Nurarihyon grinned and stroked his chin.
"But, thanks to this monster, I've managed to sort through everything I learned before. I'm just a bit of accumulation short of that threshold now. And those unruly, rebellious yōkai who wouldn't fall in line before, they're all as obedient as kittens now."
To be able to shake a daiyōkai who had achieved Phenomenon, Nurarihyon was truly not far from the level of a daiyōkai himself.
"And what's more, I got my hands on a treasure that can perfectly conceal my yōki. Even a daiyōkai would have a hard time detecting it."
Nurarihyon was, by nature, a yōkai adept at concealment, like a flower reflected in a mirror, the moon reflected on the water. With that treasure, he truly gained wings to a tiger. It even allowed him to hide his presence before a true daiyōkai, only exposing himself at the instant of attack. Seizing the initiative!
Before his words had even faded, high above in the celestial dome, within the churning vortex of thunderclouds, a colossal, phantasmal silhouette faintly emerged.
It wore a deep black kariginu. Its form was spectral and immense, blotting out the very sky.
Nue. Yes. Just as in the Kantō, the will of Nue had also manifested in the Kansai. In the Kantō, he had awakened the soul of Saint Hakurei, who had slumbered for centuries.
And in the Kansai, he had also awakened a mountain daiyōkai who had slept for two hundred years. Gakusanjin.
Though he was relatively weak among daiyōkai, and utterly unskilled in combat, he was, in the end, a daiyōkai.
Nue had sought, through this, to simultaneously throw both regions into chaos. To stir up resentment. Only, the results on both sides had clearly exceeded his expectations.
"Not only has an anomaly arisen in the Kantō… even in the Kansai, a fascinating new star of this era has been born." His voice churned soundlessly amidst the clouds like rolling thunder.
"You wish to become the Lord of the Chimimōryō… Heh. Then grow to your heart's content. Grow until you become the most bountiful feast, worthy of bearing my return…" Accompanied by a bone-chilling, hair-raising sigh, the thunderclouds slowly dispersed.
That oppressive, suffocating malevolence receded along with them. Nurarihyon lifted his head. His narrow eyes stared at the sky until that nauseating chill had completely vanished. Then he let out a cold huff.
"Pretending to be gods and ghosts." He bit down on his pipe. The corner of his mouth split into a roguish, devil-may-care grin once more. "But come to think of it… I saw it just now. The sky over the Kantō, seemed to have split open, didn't it? I wonder what level that Nakai Shinji over there has reached by now."
He leaped down from the daiyōkai's corpse. "Oi, Gyōbu-Danuki! Go find some paper and a brush! I suddenly feel like writing a letter to the Kantō, and making a wager with him!"
As for why Nurarihyon, who should have been wandering the Kantō, had come to the Kansai, the reason was also very simple. Or rather, no reason was needed.
Nurarihyon was, by nature, a yōkai who wandered everywhere. Only by roaming the realm could he gather subordinates of sufficient strength.
"What do you all think?" Nurarihyon turned his head and looked behind him. Amidst the drifting black miasma, between the intertwining yōki and osore, the silhouettes of dozens of yōkai were clearly visible. Some strong. Some weak. Yet they had already solidified into a single, unified whole.
This was the Nura-gumi. The Hyakki Yakō.
Thus, rumors spread like wildfire across the lands of the Kansai. And after this night, a new ghost story was born upon the great earth of the Kantō.
The fishermen of Shimizu Port in Suruga were the first to tell it. "That night, the sky split open." The old fisherman crouched upon a bollard at the dock. The bamboo pipe at the corner of his mouth flared and dimmed. His clouded eyes gazed into the distance.
"From the direction of Mino, a single gash cleaved the entire sky in two. Moonlight leaked through from within. Brighter than the fullest moon." The young fishermen huddled around him shrank their necks.
"And then?"
"And then...." The old fisherman tapped out the ash from his pipe. "That demon, walked out from beneath the sundered heavens."
"Which demon?"
"Are you stupid? Who else could it be? The Demon God Who Cleaves Thunder! The one who once forced the Dragon of Echigo to her knees in Musashi! And now he carries three demon blades on his back!" The old fisherman lowered his voice.
"I heard from the cargo runners over in Suruga, that white blade on his back is as tall as a man. A black one on his left hip. A red one on his right. Three demon blades. Three different lights. Wherever he walks, the sky above him splits open."
"Some people also call him the Lord of Demon Blades." Another voice picked up the thread. It was a porter unloading goods at the dock.
"My cousin was chopping wood in the mountains northwest of Sagami. He said he saw it with his own eyes. Late one night, a whole swarm of yōkai, flying through the sky. And that one, was at the very front!"
"A whole swarm?"
"At least several hundred! Big ones, small ones, tall ones, short ones. All of them. They came from the west and headed east. That night, not a single person dared to step outside."
This was a ghost story. And ghost stories spread fast. From Suruga to Sagami. From Sagami to Musashi. From Musashi to Kōzuke. From Kōzuke to Echigo.
In less than three days, across the tea stalls, wine shops, crossroads, and docks of the five provinces of the Kantō, everywhere, the same story was being told.
The Demon Who Split the Sky. The Lord of Demon Blades. The Ma-Rākṣasa. The King of the Hyakki Yakō, Nakai Shinji.
And every time these stories were told, Shinji himself was standing amidst the night winds above Musashi Province. To be precise, he was standing within the skull of the Shura Form.
After the Twelfth Transformation's Return to One, the Shura Form could be released and retracted at any moment. And its size could even be freely adjusted.
At its smallest, it could cling close to his body. At its largest, it reached a height of 60 meter. At this moment, he had only unfurled the skeletal frame of his upper body. Yet it was already a full 30 meter in height. Far surpassing what had come before. Just enough for him to gaze down upon the earth from a slight vantage.
Beneath him was the marching column of his many yōkai. The great kappa walked at the very front. Its two-to-three-meter-tall jade-green scales gleamed with a deep blue, aquatic light beneath the moonlight.
The kamaitachi skimmed past the treetops. Its silver-white silhouette was swifter than the wind.
The Yuki-onna drifted at the rear of the column. Her ice-blue pupils swept behind them, confirming there was no tail.
The yōkai under his command had, by now, truly reached the scale of a full Hyakki Yakō. And not merely the yōkai he had originally subdued with his own hands. Under Shinji's deliberate orders, the slightly more powerful yōkai under him would also form their own minor factions. And osore, would, of its own accord, cause lesser yōkai to gather.
The total number now, was nearly a thousand. Nearly a thousand yōkai, divided into three columns, advancing eastward along the ridgeline of Musashi Province.
The tanuki spirit was curled up at Shinji's feet. Its body, which had undergone four or five transformations, was huddled into a ball of fur. Its tail was wrapped around a stack of intelligence strips.
"Master! The reports from every region have been compiled! Over in Suruga, there are at least several dozen new ghost stories circulating! Sagami too! Musashi has fewer, but they're there!" Its voice was kept very low. Yet it carried undisguised excitement.
Shinji closed his eyes. He felt it. Osore. From every corner of Musashi. Sagami. Suruga. Tōtōmi. Mikawa. Owari. Even Mino and Shinano. Along invisible veins, it converged upon him. It had multiplied by at least tenfold compared to before he had left Musashi.
The celestial phenomenon of the sundered sky. The vanishing of Mount Hakurei. The frequent manifestations of the Hyakki Yagyō. Every single event was spawning new ghost stories. And every ghost story, was accumulating the weight of his osore.
The sensation of this power surging into his body was different from before. After the Twelfth Transformation's Return to One, the Five Viscera and Three Souls had formed a complete vessel.
After becoming a ma-Rākṣasa, wholly yōkai, wholly human, osore was no longer merely a hormone or a catalyst. It began to precipitate within his body. Transforming into something far more stable. As though the osore of a hundred demons was coiling and entwining around his very form.
Oni-Matoi. The Demon's Mantle. And then he felt another transformation. At his waist, Onikiri trembled within its sheath. It was not the short, abrupt hum from before, warning its master to pay attention. It was a long, dense, sustained vibration. The temperature of the sheath was rising. The System panel flickered.
[Demon Blade · Onikiri: Affection 100 (Maintained). Awakening Progress: 91% → 94%.]
[The blade-soul within, beneath the infusion of osore, is accelerating its growth. Its form as a tsukumogami is approaching completion. It is about to enter the next phase, Phantasmal Form.]
Phantasmal Form. The final stage of an artifact becoming a yōkai. Like Yura's comb, to possess an independent humanoid form. This was the First Transformation belonging to a tsukumogami. And it was only an illusory form.
To reach the level of Yura's comb, at least five more transformations were required. From a phantasmal form that could be seen. To a phantasmal sound that could be heard. To a phantasmal voice that could speak. To being able to touch and be touched.
All of these, were "phantasms." To return from illusion to reality, to gradually construct a true, physical body, was the Essence Transformation of a tsukumogami. Even Yura's comb had not achieved that. But this, was already enough.
Upon Onikiri's blade, the dark crimson veins flashed once through the gap at the mouth of its sheath. As though something within was stirring. Shinji glanced down. From the sheath's opening, an exceedingly faint wisp of dark crimson mist drifted out.
Within the night wind, it coalesced into a blurred silhouette. The shape of a young girl. Slender and graceful. Long hair cascading to her waist. Her features were still indistinct, yet a delicate outline was already discernible. Her form had already taken a rudimentary shape.
A Demon Blade Maiden. This, was Onikiri's form. Or perhaps, she should be called Oboro. Yet the awakening progress was at ninety-four percent. Still a single step short.
Complete awakening, was complete Phantasmal Form.
"Soon," Shinji murmured. Onikiri trembled once more within its sheath, as though in response.
At the same moment, behind him, Yura's comb, who had long since achieved the Sixth Transformation through form, sound, voice, touch, and sensation, mingling among the vanguard of the Hyakki Yakō, suddenly used her hair to levitate herself and pressed against his back.
The Yuki-onna below widened her eyes. Shinji chose to ignore it. He retracted the skeletal frame of the Shura Form and landed back upon the ground. The Hyakki Yakō continued eastward. Kikyō was still waiting for him to return.
....
Mino Province. The northern mountain region.
Upon the flat, open plain left behind after the disappearance of Mount Hakurei, the shattered stone and fine powder had not yet been fully swept away by the wind.
Onmyōin Kokoro crawled out from the edge of the ruins. The left shoulder of her pentagram haori was half-torn. Her deep chestnut hair was a disheveled mess. Her face was smeared with grime. Her large amber eyes were filled with exhaustion.
All seven puppets, completely wrecked. Her reserve of onmyōdō talismans, utterly depleted. This was far too terrible. What sins had she committed to deserve this? How was she supposed to explain this when she returned to Kyōto?
Kokoro crouched amidst the rubble. Her arms wrapped around her knees. Her forehead pressed against her knees. She remained like this, in utter stillness, for a very long time. Then she rose, dusted herself off, and began walking south. No matter what, she had to leave Mino first.
Yet, it was at this very moment. This very instant. From the tree line ahead, a figure emerged. A gaunt, lean man. Advanced in years. Triangular eyes, perpetually half-lidded.
A dark gray kosode beneath a dark green haori. An unremarkable short sword was tucked at his waist. Kokoro's footsteps halted. This man, bore ill intent.
"Little girl." The old man greeted her with a beaming smile. His tone seemed almost gentle. "You have truly brought an immense amount of trouble."
Kokoro's amber eyes narrowed. It was naturally impossible for her not to know who this man was. The Guardian Spirit suspended behind him, visible only through onmyōdō, the White Viper, was ironclad proof.
The Viper of Mino. Saitō Dōsan. Only, judging by the direction from which he had come… "You.... were also within Mount Hakurei?"
"Indeed." Saitō Dōsan sighed, as though lamenting. "Hiding within that flesh-bodhisattva's mountain, was not an easy task. But I succeeded."
The so-called Viper, was, by nature, exceedingly adept at concealment. In other words, this man had witnessed everything that had transpired within the mountain from beginning to end.
And yet now he appeared. His purpose, what was it? Kokoro's pupils contracted for a single instant. Then she heard footsteps behind her. She turned her head.
A young girl emerged from the thicket to the side. Thirteen or fourteen years old. Her deep blue hair was bound behind her head. Her features were delicate to the point of near-exquisiteness. A pair of narrow, elongated eyes held a calm utterly beyond her years. She wore a lightweight, deep blue robe and long skirt. A tachi was sheathed at her waist. The hilt was wrapped in old cloth strips.
Akechi Mitsuhide. The direct disciple of Saitō Dōsan. The future capable officer of Mino Province. Kokoro didn't have time to move. Mitsuhide's blade had already left its sheath.
The spine of the blade pressed against the back of her neck. That cold, piercing sensation, the Sword Will belonging to a human master swordsman. This girl, so young was already a master swordsman?!
"Forgive me." Dōsan's smile remained as gentle as ever. "That little girl of the Imagawa does not trust me. Nor does that Demon God. And on top of that, my foolish son is stirring restlessly, attempting to usurp my position. So now, I require a gift of meeting. And you, are perfectly suited."