Chapter 137: The Great Yokai Descending from the Sky
This had been Hikaru's plan from the very beginning.
He was familiar with the lore of worlds like Noragami, but even he hadn't known that divine avatars could undergo a form of nirvana and replacement before their fated time was up. Still, when confronting beings tied to gods and buddhas, he was certain of one thing: conventional methods were utterly useless.
Birth, aging, sickness, and death—these were fatal chains for mortals. For those connected to the divine, however, they were merely temporary states. Gods and buddhas drew their power from faith, and faith was forged from an aura of sanctity.
To defeat them, one had to do more than simply win a battle. One had to shatter that shell of sanctity, to inflict the ultimate, obvious humiliation.
Ultimately, Uesugi Kenshin had still succeeded in her 'nirvana'. She was, after all, a divine avatar, a being intertwined with mythology. Once the ritual of self-destruction and rebirth was initiated, it could not be so easily interrupted. In Hikaru's understanding, the only being capable of halting such a process was the Lord of the Eastern Gods, the ruler of the heavens, the master of Takamagahara, the supreme deity of Shinto herself—Amaterasu Omikami. The same principle naturally applied to her avatars.
But Hikaru's true objective had already been achieved.
From the start, he never believed he could completely prevent Uesugi Kenshin's return or subsequently annihilate the entire Uesugi clan of Echigo Province. What he wanted was to buy time and inflict devastating, irreparable losses.
And so, before the five hundred believers most loyal to Bishamonten, he had shattered the unbreakable golden form of their god's avatar and forced the 'deity' to kneel before him.
, as Uesugi Kenshin's soul began the process of nirvana, he had woven his own 'string' into its very fabric.
From that day forward, even if Bishamonten descended upon the lands of Echigo again, her faith would be forever tainted, her divinity no longer absolute and unquestionable.
From that day forward, his opponent would feel a deep, instinctual dread from the very bottom of her soul. She would never again dare to entertain the thought of making an enemy of him.
Otherwise, under the unerring command of his Spirit-Tracking Archer… she would be forced to her knees once more.
With that final, damning act, the golden light dissipated. This 'generation' of Uesugi Kenshin vanished in utter humiliation.
The five hundred personal guards stared blankly into the empty space where their goddess had been, their eyes hollow. All their momentum, their ferocious aura, had vanished like smoke the moment their deity knelt, ceasing to exist.
Hikaru did not make things difficult for them. There was no need.
He needed them to carry the tale of their kneeling god back to their lands… and spread it to the world.
For now, that was enough.
As he watched the five hundred guards retreat northward in a scattered, dust-kicking formation, and saw the Hojo clan's army tacitly withdraw, Hikaru glanced to the side. Kikyo was looking at him.
Her expression was unreadable, but there was a strange, almost quizzical light in her eyes. It was a look that seemed to ask, 'So, this is your thing?'
Hikaru's undead face remained a perfect, expressionless mask, scoring another point for its stoicism.
But in that very moment, as he turned back around—
The sky changed.
A second ago, the eastern horizon had been glowing with the pale white of a fish's belly as sunlight slowly crept over the ridgeline.
The next second, the light was gone.
It was as if someone had unfurled a colossal, shadowy curtain, pulling it from the western edge of the sky and swallowing the newborn sunlight inch by inch. A turbid, grayish-white qi, so dense it was almost solid, surged from the western horizon. It advanced like an invisible wall, spreading eastward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The heavens for a hundred miles around were shrouded in an instant. The celestial phenomena above the entirety of Musashi Province had been warped.
The morning light faded, and the oppressive, turbid clouds pressed down from above. The sun was gone.
Hikaru's hand fell back to the hilt of his Muramasa. He felt it.
A Yao Qi so vast it defied description.
This was not the miasma a demon beyond the Seventh Transformation could use to blanket an area, nor was it the oppressive force Kidomaru had exerted over a few miles. This was a true, world-altering Yao Qi that had reversed the very air currents above Musashi Province.
In Hikaru's understanding, only one level of demon in this world could achieve such a feat.
Gaseous Transformation. A Great Yokai that had completed the twelfth transformation and stepped into the world of the thirteenth.
Kikyo's expression turned grave. She gripped her bow, her spiritual power surging instinctively in her palms as pure white light seeped from between her fingers.
Behind her, at the shrine, Momiji and Botan were already so terrified they could barely stand. The sheer pressure of the Yao Qi, even when filtered through the barrier, made it difficult for them to breathe. Botan collapsed onto her bottom, the paper talismans in her hand scattering across the ground. Momiji clung to a pillar of the torii gate, her face a deathly pale.
Hikaru's gaze shot straight up into the sky, toward the very center of the churning, turbid clouds.
A shadow was falling.
Plummeting from a great height, like a meteorite streaking in from beyond the heavens.
The grayish-white miasma was torn asunder by that shadow, forming a massive vortex. The center of the vortex was pitch-black—not from a lack of light, but because the thing itself was devouring all light around it.
Accompanying its descent was a savage, untamed aura—a wild, unreasonable, and primeval presence that made every living creature instinctively want to prostrate itself and cower in fear.
That was a Great Yokai. A true Great Yokai.
And it was falling directly toward Kaede Village.
A thunderous boom ripped through the world.
The shadow smashed into the earth.
With the brutality to tear a hole in the firmament and the ferocity to make the turbid qi for a hundred miles recoil, the colossal beast plummeted from the center of the grayish-white vortex of Yao Qi.
The ground buckled in its wake.
A shockwave erupted from the point of impact, sweeping soil, gravel, and uprooted trees into a circular storm wall that blasted outward for hundreds of paces. The barrier around the village trembled violently as the wave hit. Only by pouring every ounce of her spiritual power into it did Kikyo manage to stabilize the shimmering dome of light.
Momiji and Botan were thrown to the ground again. Hearing the commotion, Kaede ran out from the backyard and crashed straight into Kikyo's arms, who caught her with one hand.
The dust began to settle.
A crater sixty feet in diameter had been gouged into the earth. The bedrock at the bottom of the pit was shattered in a spiderweb pattern, and wisps of grayish-white Yao Qi still smoked from between the rubble.
In the center of the pit, something was crouching.
Twenty-five feet. That was its height even when curled up. Its sheer size was staggering.
Though it possessed a humanoid silhouette, its two thick legs were coiled beneath it, with knee joints that bent backward like the hind legs of a spider. Its broad feet, each with five toes, were dug deep into the shattered rock. Six arms extended from the sides of its torso. The top two were the thickest, resting on its knees, with knuckles as wide as the mouth of a bowl. The middle two, slightly thinner, were crossed over its chest. The bottom two were the longest, hanging down to the ground, their fingers buried in the soil.
A white bone mask covered its entire face. Its design was a grotesque fusion of human and spider, with a broad forehead, flared cheekbones, and a sharp, pointed jaw. The surface was as smooth as porcelain, marked only by three narrow, horizontal slits for its eyes and mouth. Behind those slits, two orbs of eerie green light burned. From behind the bone armor, a wild, messy mane of red hair was visible.
Tsuchigumo. A Great Yokai.
By the time Hikaru arrived at the outskirts of Kaede Village, the Crimson Oni Mask was already covering his face again, and arcs of violet electricity danced across his body.
He recognized this creature in an instant.
From Kyoto. One of the ancient Great Yokai invited by Hagoromo Gitsune. Four hundred years ago, it had challenged the Lord of Pandemonium of that era, was wounded, and had fallen into a deep slumber, only to awaken now. In later generations, it would become a terrifying existence whose wrath even Nurarihyon, the future Lord of Pandemonium of the Edo region, would not dare to face directly.
"Shikon Jewel."
The two words were squeezed from the slits of the bone mask, coarse and deep, like the roar of a giant boulder grinding down a mountainside, compressed into a human voice.
"I have come to take the Shikon Jewel."
"Who has it? Hand it over."
Its voice was not loud, but the Yao Qi that poured from it caused the very ground for miles to tremble. Even the light of the barrier rippled visibly under the strain.
"Otherwise—I will raze this land, people and mountains alike."
Before the words had faded, it moved.
The bottom two arms swept out horizontally. It was just a wave, as casual as a person swatting a fly. But the sheer force of the air current ground everything within a hundred yards to powder. Soil surged and gravel flew like shrapnel.
Kikyo had already handed Kaede to Momiji and Botan, ordering them to take her into the main hall. The priestess, in her white robes and red hakama, stood once more before the torii gate, longbow in hand, spiritual power gathering into a brilliant arrow. Her expression was cold and solemn.
Hikaru landed beside her. Their gazes met for a fleeting moment in the dim, miasma-choked light.
No words were needed. No extra communication was required.
That momentary meeting of eyes was enough for them to understand each other, to cooperate in perfect, unspoken agreement.
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