Menōmaru's true body had completely merged with the sky. The "Phenomenon" produced by his overflowing demonic energy now covered a radius of 3000 km. Golden scale-powder drifted down like snow, falling upon the roof tiles of the tenshukaku, upon the rooftops of the castle town, and upon every upturned face. The instant the powder touched skin, it did not burn. Instead, it injected a thin layer of fog into one's perception, the infiltration of the illusion. Vision began to warp. Colors began to shift.
The first to notice the change was Yura's comb, still locked in combat atop the castle wall. As her hair-net coiled around Ruri's wrist, the position of Ruri reflected in her ink-black slit-pupils suddenly shifted. Only by a matter of inches, but enough to make her precisely calculated attack miss entirely.
"What?!"
Yura's black hair swept through empty air. Ruri seized the gap and withdrew her twin blades. A flicker of surprise passed through her purple eyes, it seemed even she hadn't expected to break free so easily. Then she quickly realized, it was her lord… Menōmaru's daiyōkai body had arrived.
Though the interference of the illusion affected friend and foe alike, moth demons possessed a far higher resistance to the scale-powder than other demons. Within the range of Menōmaru's Phenomenon, his subordinates naturally held the advantage.
On the eastern side of the castle, the kamaitachi's strikes also began to show minute deviations. Silver-white arcs slashed toward the moth demons' positions, yet only severed a wing rather than the body. No matter how fast, if the vision was disturbed, the blade would veer.
The great kappa's water jets likewise struck empty air. The offensive of the Eastern Hyakki Yakō, a thousand demons strong, stalled across the board in that same instant.
And beneath Menōmaru's wings, which covered several provinces, more moth demons surged forth from the fog of scale-powder, far exceeding the number seen at Kurokawa Castle before.
A hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.
The entire moth legion that Menōmaru had cultivated across the northeastern provinces, the ones unsealed alongside him, all existed within this illusion. Every one of them was larger and more colossal than the previous moth demons. Their demonic energy was more potent. By classification, they were of the Sixth Transformation. Their wings formed a living ceiling beneath the golden dome, pressing down layer upon layer.
Atop the tenshukaku, Shinji withdrew his gaze from the side window. His crimson demon eyes swept over the pair of wings that blotted out the sky above, then over the battlefield below, thrown into chaos by the scale-powder.
To confront a daiyōkai's Phenomenon covering three provinces with his own strength alone, a frontal breakthrough was not impossible. After unfurling the Shura Form, though his demonic energy density still fell slightly short of a true daiyōkai's, it was enough to clear a certain radius of airspace.
But that would be a bitter battle. And he had never intended to fight a bitter battle.
Because what he had said to Menōmaru had never been empty words. He, too, had been waiting.
And now....
"About time."
He murmured.
His right hand rose. Five fingers spread. His palm faced the southern sky. Demonic energy surged from his palm, transforming into a signal. The surging energy spread outward along the Five Viscera circuits within his body. It pierced through the scale-powder, through the canopy of the illusion, and transmitted simultaneously toward two directions, hundreds of kms away.
One direction was Suruga.
The top of the tenshukaku of Sunpu Castle, the Imagawa capital. Raikiri, the demi-divine artifact enshrined at the highest point, trembled.
Hum—
The samurai guards thought it was an earthquake when they heard that hum. Then they saw the tachi, the one Yoshimoto had ordered enshrined upon a gilded sword rack, its blade surging with the aura of Thunder-Wood.
Violet-white arcs of electricity burst from the hilt, shattering the rack.
"Wh-what—"
Before the words could finish, Raikiri sprang from the rack, hovered in midair, turned half a circle, and pointed its tip northeast.
Divine Aura Emission.
Though Shinji had been able to remotely summon Raikiri before, the range had, in truth, been limited. It could not exceed a single province.
But now, things were different.
This Talent, unlocked at Affection thirty-three, allowed the wielder to guide faith-power for remote release and command while holding the blade. And conversely, the commanded blade could also fly toward its wielder on its own.
No matter how far.
Violet-white lightning wreathed the blade. In the next instant, Raikiri shattered the window and vanished into the horizon, leaving behind a room full of broken glass and stunned samurai.
The other direction was Musashi.
Kaede's Village. The main shrine hall.
Upon the offering table, the Cat-Demon's Claw and the Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale lay side by side. The two max-Affection demon artifacts, under months of dual infusion of faith and osore, had already developed a faint golden luster upon their surfaces.
They had been waiting for a catalyst. A spark that would fuse the dead water and the living poison into a forged blade.
Now, the spark had arrived.
The tremor transmitted from hundreds of kms away traveled through the earth, through the air, through the offering table, and reached the cores of the two demon artifacts.
The tremor was very special. It seemed… to carry the demonic energy of Tessaiga.
Or rather, it carried Will.
Tessaiga, the relic of the Inu no Taishō, capable of devouring external demonic energy and converting it into the wielder's power had, during the battle in the underworld, been imprinted with its new master's mark. It had become Shinji's own Will.
And now Tessaiga, borrowing the demonic energy of Menōmaru it had devoured at this very moment, transmitted it over, transforming it into the final catalyst needed to forge the blade.
What the dead water and living poison had been missing, was precisely the fusion of illusion and reality, the harmony of "Phenomenon"!
The Cat-Demon's Claw moved first.
Dark blue death-energy surged from its surface. The soul fluctuations at the claw's tip intensified abruptly.
The Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale followed immediately after. Dark green water-light churned. The venom upon the scale's surface began to boil.
The two forces collided above the offering table.
Death-energy. Living poison.
One Yin. One Yang.
They should have repelled each other, but the manifestation of illusion and reality, carried by the Will originating from Shinji through Tessaiga, acted like an invisible hand, kneading the edges of the two forces together.
The cold of dead water and the corrosiveness of living poison produced a violent reaction at the contact surface. Dark blue and dark green intertwined and churned, forming a rolling mass of luminescence in midair.
The sliding door of the main hall was pushed open from outside.
Momiji rushed in, talismans clutched in her hand, her expression tense. She had thought a demon had snuck in while the front lines were at war.
Then, she saw the mass of light floating above the offering table.
Botan poked her head out from behind her, took one look, and ducked back.
"Sister Momiji! That—that thing is moving—"
"I CAN SEE THAT!"
Kaede ran over from the torii gate, her twin-tails bouncing.
"SO PRETTY!"
The seven- or eight-year-old girl only thought it was beautiful.
The dark blue and dark green luminescence rotated, compressed, its shape changing. From disorder, it gradually narrowed and elongated.
It became a slender outline.
It became… a blade.
The death-energy of the Cat-Demon's Claw condensed into the spine of the blade. The living poison of the Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale became the cutting edge.
Death and life, beneath Tessaiga's guidance, found their equilibrium.
As they said, two sides of a single coin. The twin births of water.
The luminescence, after one final violent churn, abruptly solidified.
A dark blue blade. A dark green cutting edge. The hilt wrapped with the gray-white fur of the Cat-Demon and the ink-black scales of the Venomous Dragon.
The blade sang.
Exceedingly deep and low, like the sound of water from the very bottom of a deep pool.
A long blade floated above the offering table.
Suijin-kiri.
The Water God Cutter.
Melting itself. Forging itself. Casting itself.
On its own.
Momiji stepped back. The talismans slipped from her fingers.
Kaede tilted her head back. Her two eyes reflected the dark blue blade-light. Her mouth formed a perfect circle.
Botan was already crouched behind the threshold.
And then, Suijin-kiri moved.
The blade flipped half a turn in the air, its tip pointing northeast, the same direction as Raikiri, hundreds of kms away.
Dark blue light wrapped around the blade.
Whoosh!
The long blade shot directly through the roof of the main hall. Broken tiles rained down. A trail of dark blue streaked across the sky of Musashi Province, racing toward Mutsu.
Momiji stared at the hole punched through the roof. Her mouth opened.
"…Lady Kikyō is going to be furious when she gets back."
Botan's voice came from behind the threshold.
Mutsu Province. Above Kurokawa Castle.
Two streaks of light appeared simultaneously from the southern horizon.
One violet-white—the trajectory of thunder.
One dark blue—the trajectory of water.
They pierced through Menōmaru's scale-powder dome as though through a sheet of paper. The powder was cleaved, seared, and frozen along the blades' paths, leaving behind two perfectly straight, powder-free channels.
Raikiri arrived first.
The violet-white tachi halted abruptly in midair, hovering above Shinji's right hand. He reached out and gripped it.
The familiar pulse of Wood and Thunder flowed through his palm, more vivid than the last time he had touched it.
The metamorphosis of the divine artifact was nearing completion.
Wood element—the Liver.
Suijin-kiri followed immediately after.
The dark blue long blade shot through the sky from the south, halting 100 cm to Shinji's left.
The twin fluctuations of death-energy and living poison rose and fell upon its surface like breathing.
He caught it with his left hand.
The sensation upon contact was ice and heat coexisting. The cold of dead water seeped in through the spine. The burn of living poison rose from the cutting edge.
Water element—the Kidneys.
Thus,
Onikiri. Fire of the Heart.
Yomi-giri. Metal of the Lungs.
Banryū. Earth of the Spleen.
Raikiri. Wood of the Liver.
Suijin-kiri. Water of the Kidneys.
Five blades, gathered.
Five Elements, complete.
Shinji stood at the highest point of the tenshukaku's roof ridge. The five blades were gripped in both hands, hung at his waist, and strapped across his back.
Demonic energy surged from his Five Viscera, flowing through the channels of the Three Souls and pouring into the five blades.
The five blades sang in resonance.
Five-colored light-patterns spread from their bodies, weaving and intersecting across the surface of his form.
The cycle activated.
Fire generates Earth.
Earth generates Metal.
Metal generates Water.
Water generates Wood.
Wood generates Fire.
Circulating. Without leakage. Self-sustaining. Endless and unceasing.
Utterly different from the makeshift, temporary version assembled in the underworld, when Tessaiga had absorbed the residual demonic energy of Tōga to barely scrape together a cycle.
This time, every link of the Five Elements was supported by a physical demon artifact.
The Shura Form erupted forth.
The skeletal frame extended from his spine.
30m.
45m.
60m.
Five projected arms encircled the colossal body, each gripping a single blade. Five-colored radiance interwove and flowed across the surface of the Bone Thunder giant.
High above, upon the dome of the sky, Menōmaru's compound eyes hung down, watching this scene.
It saw, beneath the illusory canopy woven of golden scale-powder, a five-armed Shura rising from the tenshukaku of Kurokawa Castle.
It also felt the demonic energy concentration produced by the cycle of those five blades, energy that was, from within, splitting apart the scale-powder illusion it had labored so hard to lay down.
"Ridiculous—"
The humming from the dome transformed into words.
"What do you hope to accomplish with five mere blades?"
The scale-powder canopy abruptly thickened. It pressed down from every direction. It sought to grind the Shura Form, along with Kurokawa Castle, into the earth below.
But.... it was at this very instant.
The five projected arms of the Shura Form rose simultaneously.
And then, five blades pointed toward the heavens.
The five-colored light converged from the cutting edges into a single strike.
Metal. Wood. Water. Fire. Earth.
A slash of unified Five Elements shot straight upward from the crown of the Shura Form toward the dome.
Kyokui: Setsuun.
Extreme Will: Cloud-Severing.
The sword art of long-range annihilation.
Yet this time, it was not to slay a single demon. Not to slay a single enemy.
This time what it cut.... was the sky itself.
He would use five blades,
To shatter a layer of heaven!