Chapter 235: Kikyo Protecting Her Husband
Facing Hikaru's arrival, Hakushin did not react. The gaunt, mummified figure sat motionless at the far end of the wooden corridor, his withered fingers slowly turning a string of prayer beads.
But the hundreds of small wooden Buddha statues lining both sides of the hall suddenly opened their eyes.
A heavy, golden light spilled outward, coating every inch of the floorboards and walls in a suffocating holy aura.
Hikaru did not move.
He simply waited.
His heightened senses had already caught the anomaly. There was more than one person breathing in this space.
A second later, a figure stepped out from the deep shadows cast by the pillars to Hakushin's rear right.
She wore a traditional haori embroidered with a pentagram pattern.
Deep chestnut hair cascaded down her back.
However, her eyes had fundamentally changed. They were no longer their original amber hue. Instead, they burned a brilliant gold, with a distinct hexagram slowly rotating within each pupil.
The young girl who had introduced herself as Tsuchimikado Koketsu back at the Imagawa Mansion in Suruga Province stepped fully into the light, taking her place beside the mummified monk.
She carried an entirely different presence now. The nervous, stage-frightened apprentice Onmyoji from Suruga was completely gone. In truth, she was an entirely different entity altogether.
"Kishin Mitama no Mikoto." She called out his divine title, her voice carrying an ancient, echoing resonance. "I wanted to say this back when we were in Suruga. The Fear clinging to your body is incredibly interesting."
Hikaru ignored the pleasantry.
His Crimson Demon Eyes locked onto the fifteen-year-old girl, the purple tomoe patterns within his pupils spinning in a slow, measured rhythm.
Koketsu did not mind the cold reception. She continued speaking, thoroughly entertained by the situation. "I did not fully introduce myself when I stood before Imagawa Yoshimoto. Back then, I claimed to be Tsuchimikado Koketsu, a mere apprentice Onmyoji and the daughter of the current family head."
She paused, a smirk tugging at her lips.
"But in truth, Tsuchimikado is my actual surname."
Tsuchimikado. The name exclusively inherited by the successive heads of the family, the direct descendants of the legendary Abe no Seimei.
Tsuchimikado Koketsu, or rather, Tsuchimikado Kokoro, was not just the sheltered daughter of the current generation.
She was the designated next head of the family. She was Tsuchimikado Kokoro herself.
"Tsuchimikado Kokoro." She casually adjusted the pentagram-patterned haori resting on her shoulders. "That is my full name."
"And so?" Hikaru finally spoke, his tone flat and unimpressed. "You have finished introducing the name of the meat suit you are currently occupying. Is it not time you introduced your actual self?"
The girl paused, slightly taken aback by the blunt interruption.
Then, the young Onmyoji threw her head back and laughed. It was a bright, happy sound, yet laced with a bone-chilling coldness.
"It seems you recognized me." She smiled, her golden eyes narrowing. "As expected of the anomaly that gives Mother so much trouble. No matter the era, whether human or demon, there will always be troublesome existences like you."
"I am quite pleased."
"As for my true existence, since you have already spoken so boldly, you must have figured it out."
Of course Hikaru recognized it.
This was the exact power that, when combined with Hakushin's holy barrier and spiritual resolve, had successfully blocked the tracking abilities of his Spirit-Tracking Archer form.
The rotating hexagrams in the girl's eyes were the final piece of evidence Hikaru needed to confirm her identity.
Abe no Seimei. Or rather, Nue.
The historical existence of Abe no Seimei was common knowledge.
However, the existence of Nue was a secret known only to Hikaru due to his past life's memories. It was a concept ripped straight from the lore of the Nura Clan. Nue was the ultimate offspring conceived within the womb of Hagoromo Gitsune, the supreme Great Yokai who ruled over Kyoto.
Nue was the true mastermind, the entity that had once dominated both the light and dark sides of Onmyodo during the Heian period, reigning as the absolute master of all spirits and monsters.
And according to history, he would eventually be reborn through Hagoromo Gitsune, clawing his way back from hell to descend upon the human realm and conquer the world once more.
Yet here he was.
The entity controlling Kokoro clapped her hands together.
The crisp sound echoed sharply down the wooden corridor.
The ground violently ruptured.
It was not the holy Barrier of Mount Hakurei shifting, but something massive and foul surging up from beneath the earth directly under the girl's feet.
Onmyodo.
The unique Onmyodo passed down through Abe no Seimei's direct bloodline was entirely different from the standard talisman barriers and exorcism techniques used by the modern Onmyo Bureau.
His art was pure manipulation.
The concept of Shikigami involved using a caster's willpower to bind and command spirits or lesser demons.
Abe no Seimei had pushed this fundamental concept to an absolute, horrifying extreme.
He did not just bind Shikigami.
He manufactured demons to serve as his Shikigami.
It was an act of grotesque creation, not mere subjugation. He used the mutilated corpses of defeated Yokai as raw materials, stitching and fusing their flesh together. He used Onmyodo as the thread, blood as the anchor, and his own tyrannical will as the iron shackles to force them into battle.
The inheritors of the Tsuchimikado bloodline possessed this exact talent.
Nue, having hijacked the body of his own descendant, could naturally use it to its fullest potential.
The wooden floorboards of the corridor flipped up violently, sending jagged splinters and crushed gravel shooting into the air.
Monstrosities crawled out from the gaping craters.
They were the stitched-together husks of dead Yokai.
The first was a twenty-foot-tall green-faced Oni. Its massive fangs were exposed, its rotting flesh wrapped tightly in glowing golden talisman chains. Two glowing pentagram beads had been violently shoved into its hollow eye sockets.
Next came a colossal centipede, easily over a hundred feet long. Its black carapace shimmered with a toxic purple light. Hundreds of bladed legs scraped against the stone foundation with a sickening hiss, its mandibles firmly sealed shut by a glowing pentagram talisman.
Then a cyclops dragged itself upward. Its single remaining eye was covered by a blinding talisman. Its thirty-foot-tall frame hunched over, forcefully squeezing into the narrow corridor and cracking the stone walls under the sheer pressure of its broad shoulders.
A fourth followed. Then a fifth.
Seven in total.
Based on Hikaru's internal power scaling, every single one of these abominations sat firmly at the Materialization-tier. They were extremely high-level Yokai, all surpassing the Ninth Transformation.
After being killed, sealed, and heavily modified by generations of Tsuchimikado Onmyodo, they had been perfectly preserved as biological puppet weapons.
These were the ultimate trump cards Kokoro had originally brought with her. She had not created them herself. They were the accumulated inheritance of Abe no Seimei's lineage, a strategic reserve passed down through centuries.
She had merely brought them out to use.
Now, they were being masterfully deployed by their original creator.
The seven Yokai puppets instantly formed a tactical formation within the ruined corridor. Golden runes and pentagram light rapidly wove together into an inescapable net, sealing off every possible exit.
At the exact same moment, Hakushin made his move.
The mummified monk slowly raised his right hand.
The wooden prayer beads spun furiously between his skeletal fingers.
Deep, resonant Sanskrit chanting echoed from the very core of the mountain. It was no longer the vague, ambient background noise from before. It was a true, focused chant.
Every single word was distinct. Every syllable carried the crushing, suffocating weight of centuries of accumulated spiritual resolve.
Even though he had merged his holy aura with demonic corruption, Hakushin was still a supreme high monk who had saved tens of thousands of lives. His strongest weapon remained his unbreakable willpower.
The massive Barrier of Mount Hakurei suddenly violently contracted.
The holy Buddha Power covering the entire mountain rapidly converged onto the summit from all directions. The immense suppressive force that had previously been spread across the four cardinal directions was violently yanked back, layering itself entirely within a hundred paces of the temple grounds.
The air grew impossibly thick.
Gravity seemed to multiply.
Hikaru felt his Yokai Energy being violently compressed until it was nearly solid. Even with the constant, surging support of his Fear, the pressure was overwhelming.
This was a coordinated, lethal two-on-one assault.
Hikaru narrowed his Crimson Demon Eyes against the crushing weight.
Fear continued to boil within his chest, but the full-strength return of the holy barrier was rapidly shrinking his domain. The physical space he had just carved out for his demonic energy was being violently reclaimed, inch by agonizing inch.
His hands calmly dropped to his waist, his thumbs pressing against the hilts of Onikiri and Yomikiri. Behind his back, the massive blade of Banryu began to hum and vibrate with bloodthirsty anticipation.
Hakushin's mummified face remained perfectly calm.
Kokoro's lips curled into a supremely confident smile.
Then, the sky suddenly brightened.
A blinding light violently pierced through the thick fog and the suffocating spiritual pressure.
It came from the outside of Mount Hakurei. From beyond the absolute wall of Buddha Power that supposedly separated heaven and earth. It struck with zero warning.
It was a beam of pure, absolute white light.
The first beam violently punctured the outer wall of the barrier, detonating in the sky directly above the temple summit.
The concentrated spiritual power instantly shattered into thousands of razor-thin threads, pouring down upon the temple like a torrential rainstorm.
The glowing rain slammed into the temple roof, violently washing away the accumulated Buddha Power on the tiles and leaving deep, smoking cracks in the wood.
A second beam of light followed.
Fired from outside the barrier wall, it cleanly pierced through the entire defensive structure. The absolute wall of Buddha Power, supported by Hakushin's centuries of spiritual resolve and widely claimed to be capable of isolating all demonic entities, was effortlessly shot through by a single arrow.
The arrow's trajectory left a blinding white arc burning in the sky. It plummeted straight through the newly formed breach, slamming violently into the stone courtyard directly in front of the temple's main gates.
The arrow fletching vibrated furiously, sending massive shockwaves of pure spiritual power rippling outward in all directions.
A third arrow struck.
Then a fourth.
Then a fifth.
A relentless barrage of arrows poured through the breach in the barrier. Each projectile slammed into the holy domain, violently tearing apart the contracted suppressive force piece by piece.
The wall of Buddha Power did not completely shatter, but a massive, gaping hole had been violently torn open.
Far outside that gap, standing on the jagged ridge of a neighboring mountain peak opposite the fog-shrouded Mount Hakurei, stood a lone figure.
She wore pristine white robes and a vibrant red hakama.
A massive Japanese longbow was held half-raised in her grip, the bowstring still vibrating violently from the release.
Her long black hair whipped wildly in the mountain winds.
There was absolutely no unnecessary emotion on her cold, pristine face. No anxiety. No nervousness. Only her usual, absolute calmness.
Nue, currently piloting Kokoro's body, froze in genuine shock.
He clearly had not anticipated this variable.
He had personally verified the structural integrity of the Buddha Power wall. It was a supreme barrier condensed from centuries of pure spiritual resolve. Even the most elite grandmasters of the current Kyoto Onmyo Bureau would need at least half a month of continuous bombardment to even scratch it.
Yet Kikyo had completely breached it in exactly two days.
Nue suddenly realized he had severely underestimated the sheer, terrifying weight behind the title of the world's strongest shrine maiden.
'Is this the true weight of this era's strongest priestess? As expected, she is not much inferior to Midoriko.'
He naturally knew of Kikyo's legendary existence.
Back inside the ruined corridor.
Hikaru slowly released his grip on Onikiri's hilt.
His Crimson Demon Eyes reflected the blinding white rain of spiritual power cascading from the sky. Deep within his pupils, a faint, genuine smile took shape.
Kikyo had finally arrived.
He had known from the very beginning that she would never just stand outside and watch him fight alone.
Kikyo's sixth arrow plummeted from the sky, slamming directly into the wooden lintel above the corridor's main entrance.
Explosive spiritual power erupted from the embedded arrowhead. Blinding white light rapidly spread down the doorframes, instantly sealing the entire entrance behind a razor-thin, impenetrable wall of holy energy.
It was a barrier designed to seal demons and destroy evil. But its target was not Hikaru, the actual demon in the room.
Its target was Nue.
The seven massive Yokai puppets instantly fell into a state of violent confusion as the spiritual rain washed over them. The glowing pentagram beads in their eye sockets flickered erratically, and the golden binding chains began to hiss and melt, emitting thick plumes of black smoke.
The massive gap torn into the Buddha Power wall continued to expand. Kikyo's terrifying spiritual power poured relentlessly into the summit, each precise wisp landing directly on the Yokai puppets like a master sniper hitting targets from miles away.
She was systematically dismantling them.
Firing across the vast distance of an entire mountain range, using her arrows as surgical scalpels, she was violently severing the Onmyodo control lines connecting the Tsuchimikado magic to the undead puppets.
Nue watched the destruction with a thoughtful expression.
"Master Hakushin." He turned his head to look at the mummified monk, his voice perfectly calm. "The priestess outside is actively dismantling my Shikigami. I need to step outside and handle her personally."
If he allowed that woman to completely sever his control lines, his prized Yokai puppets would turn into useless, rotting meat.
, he possessed a genuine curiosity to see exactly how much power the strongest priestess of the current era could actually wield in a direct confrontation.
Hakushin did not offer a verbal response.
The frantic spinning of his prayer beads did not slow down.
However, the sheer concentration of spiritual resolve guarding the far end of the corridor suddenly thickened.
It was a silent acquiescence.
Nue immediately spun on his heel.
The pentagram-patterned haori flared out in a sharp arc as he turned. The deep chestnut hair slid off Kokoro's shoulders as he calmly walked toward the sealed corridor entrance.
The seven Yokai puppets instantly regained their mobility, heavily stomping behind him. The pentagram beads inside the Blue-Faced Oni's skull stabilized, and the Giant Centipede's hundred bladed legs scraped against the stone, emitting a horrific screech.
Reaching the sealed entrance, Nue paused.
He glanced over his shoulder, his large amber eyes locking onto the grey, demonic figure standing at the opposite end of the ruined hall.
"Now... it is a one-on-one battle. Good luck, Lord Kobe Hikaru."
He stepped forward.
His physical body effortlessly passed straight through the razor-thin wall of spiritual power. Kikyo's holy barrier was entirely ineffective against human flesh. Spiritual power only repelled the extraordinary and the demonic. The Onmyodo control lines had been targeted, but the physical practitioner remained completely unaffected.
Given Nue's terrifying mastery over his craft, he could easily re-establish control over the seven Yokai puppets even under heavy suppression.
The massive monsters followed closely behind, violently squeezing their grotesque bodies through the thin barrier one by one. The exact second they crossed the threshold, they instantly reconnected with Kokoro's Onmyodo network.
The heavy footsteps gradually faded into the distance, leaving the ruined corridor in absolute silence.
Only the low, droning sound of Sanskrit chanting remained.
Along with two solitary existences.
One demon. One Buddha.
One god. One devil.
Hikaru stood perfectly still in the center of the corridor.
Hakushin remained seated at the far end.
Exactly one hundred paces still separated them.
The golden light radiating from the hundreds of small wooden Buddha statues flared with blinding intensity the moment Kokoro left the area. Hakushin had instantly reclaimed all the Power of Will he had previously allocated to suppress the Yokai puppets, violently layering all of it directly onto this single corridor.
The crushing suppressive force multiplied exponentially.
The Yokai Energy boiling inside Hikaru's body was violently shoved back down. Even the massive enhancement provided by his Fear began to severely lag. The terrifying power of urban legends constantly flowing in from the Five Provinces was like a raging river suddenly blocked by an impenetrable dam of pure willpower.
But Hikaru did not take a single step back. Instead, he raised his foot and stepped forward.
Hakushin finally opened his eyes.
They were two deeply sunken, withered sockets containing cloudy, dead-white pupils. Yet, they radiated a terrifying light.
Buddha's Light.
A pure, bone-chilling radiance condensed from hundreds of years of absolute ascetic cultivation.
The exact millisecond that light touched Hikaru's body, the wooden corridor completely vanished.
It did not physically disappear. The stone foundations, the wooden statues, and the roof tiles remained exactly where they were.
But the reality Hikaru perceived was violently overwritten.
He was no longer standing on smooth wooden floorboards. He was standing on parched, deeply cracked earth.
Endless fields of fissured dirt stretched from his boots all the way to the distant horizon. Withered, yellowed rice stalks lay rotting in the dust. The village wells were completely dry, and the nearby riverbeds were exposed and baked white by the sun.
Famine.
The air was suffocatingly thick with the stench of baked dirt mixed with rotting flesh. Thin plumes of smoke rose in the distance, but there was absolutely no scent of cooking food.
Emaciated children crouched on the dirt ridges, desperately gnawing on stripped tree bark. Elderly men and women slumped against the crumbling stone walls, completely motionless. It was impossible to tell if they were merely sleeping or already dead.
An illusion.
Hikaru narrowed his eyes, instantly deducing the nature of the attack. This was a memory fragment violently projected directly into his mind by Hakushin's Power of Will. It was a hyper-realistic phantom of the legendary famine from centuries ago, a disaster that had supposedly ravaged the land for decades.
Hikaru did not stop walking.
He took another step forward.
With his second step, the illusion violently shifted.
A young man wearing plain monk's robes stood at the entrance of a ruined village. He was so severely malnourished that his ribs clearly pushed against his skin. Yet, he held a small wooden bowl of watery porridge in both hands, gently offering it to a weeping woman kneeling in the dirt.
A massive line of starving people queued behind her.
The line stretched from the village gates all the way to the distant base of the mountain.
The young monk wore a warm, genuine smile. It was a smile of pure, untainted compassion.
Master Hakushin.
This was Hakushin in his absolute prime.
Hikaru calmly walked right past the young monk. His dark robes brushed against the edge of the phantom, but the memory did not waver.
The third step.
The monk had aged drastically.
Forty. Fifty. Sixty. His face physically withered and wrinkled with every passing second. His spine bent under an invisible weight, and his hands shook violently as he held the ladle.
But he was still distributing porridge.
Only now, the line was infinitely longer.
It was no longer just one single village.
Starving refugees from three villages, five villages, dozens of villages swarmed the area like a desperate tide.
The famine had never ended.
The monk's massive iron pot finally scraped empty. Without hesitation, he poured his own meager, untouched bowl of rations into the boiling water to keep feeding the masses.
The fourth step.
The old monk finally collapsed. He fell gravely ill.
Lying on a filthy straw mat, he was completely surrounded by a massive crowd of people. The very people he had sacrificed his life to save.
They stared down at his dying body. Their filthy faces were twisted with genuine heartache and reluctance to see him go.
But hidden beneath the grief, there was a sickening, obvious expectation.
The fifth step.
The voices flooded Hikaru's mind.
They buzzed and murmured relentlessly, sounding like a massive swarm of locusts or a suffocating ocean tide.
'Master... is what you said true? If you successfully become a Buddha... will you be able to protect our lands forever?''A Sokushinbutsu can protect a land for a thousand miles...''If only the Master is willing to make the sacrifice...'
Hikaru's pace did not quicken. It did not slow down.
His Crimson Demon Eyes coldly swept over the surrounding phantom faces. He saw their tears. He heard their desperate pleas. He felt their overwhelming piety.
But above all else, he felt their sickening, selfish desire.
The sixth step.
A deep, narrow vertical pit, just barely large enough to hold a single seated human, had been dug into the hard earth.
The young monk—no, the dying old monk—calmly walked into the grave under his own power.
No one forced him. No one pushed him.
He sat down at the bottom of the dark hole, crossed his frail legs into a lotus position, and firmly pressed his palms together in prayer.
The villagers immediately began shoveling dirt over him.
One shovel. Two shovels. Three shovels.
The dirt rained down until the absolute darkness closed in. Until the only sound left was the muffled, rhythmic chanting of sutras echoing from the surface.
The people above ground were praying for his success.
The relentless sound of "Amitabha" seeped through the packed soil directly above his head, repeating over and over, sounding exactly like water slowly dripping onto a wooden coffin lid.
The old monk chanted back from the darkness.
He chanted continuously for seven days. Then fourteen days. Then twenty-one days.
His voice grew weaker and weaker, his throat bleeding from dehydration.
By the forty-ninth day, only his cracked lips were moving. No sound could possibly escape his ruined throat.
The final moment arrived.
The chanting on the surface finally stopped. The great famine had finally passed.
Heavy rain fell from the sky. Green grass and healthy trees burst from the dead earth. The villagers dispersed, returning to their homes to farm their newly fertile lands and eat their fill.
The Sokushinbutsu ritual was a complete success.
But absolutely no one knew the truth of what happened at the very end. Down in the suffocating darkness, the old monk's eyes suddenly snapped wide open.
They were cloudy, filled with absolute, primal terror, and burning with a horrific unwillingness to die.
Then, Hakushin's voice violently erupted from every single direction within the illusion.
He was not speaking to Hikaru. He was screaming at himself.
Yet, he projected it with enough force to ensure the entire world would hear his agony.
"Did I... do the right thing?"
The voice was ancient and cracked, carrying a horrific tremor accumulated over centuries of isolation.
"I saved so many people... so why did I have to die?!"
The illusion violently destabilized.
The phantom ground cracked open. The sky twisted into a sickening vortex. The projected memories of the famine, the porridge, the burial—everything violently shattered into thousands of jagged shards of light, spinning and dancing wildly throughout the corridor.
"Why... did I have to die?!"
The final scream.
An apocalyptic wave of Power of Will crashed down alongside those words. It was ten times heavier than all the previous suppressive forces combined.
The magical energy of the entire Mount Hakurei violently converged onto a single, microscopic point in that exact millisecond. It converged directly above Hikaru's head.
It wanted to crush his spine. It wanted to force him to his knees.
It demanded an answer.
Hikaru stood dead center amidst the violently shattering illusions. For the first time, his steady footsteps faltered.
His knees trembled slightly under the apocalyptic pressure.
They were forced down by exactly one inch.
And then, they completely stopped.
His right hand clamped down onto the massive hilt of Banryu. The Earths Immovability skill instantly activated. His boots practically nailed themselves into the floorboards, forcibly turning the very foundation of the mountain into his personal anchor.
He slowly raised his head.
His Crimson Demon Eyes stared straight through the crushing pressure, locking directly onto Hakushin's sunken, cloudy white eyes.
He finally spoke.
"Right or wrong..."
"What's it to me?"
Utterly indifferent. Completely devoid of sympathy.
Hakushin's mummified figure violently froze.
The prayer beads stopped spinning.
"You lived for hundreds of years. You saved tens of thousands of people. You were buried alive in the dirt, chanting sutras for forty-nine days in absolute agony. You failed to achieve true Buddhahood, mutated into a mountain spirit, and have been trapped here for centuries, completely unable to leave."
Hikaru's voice cut through the heavy, crushing pressure of the Power of Will like a jagged blade. It was piercingly clear.
"How incredibly tragic."
"But tell me—what do your concepts of right and wrong have to do with me?"
The exact millisecond the words left his mouth.
The Asura Transformation activated.
There was absolutely no warning. No charging up. No martial arts starting stance.
His four internal organs violently vibrated in perfect unison.
The massive, six-meter-tall Bone-Thunder Giant Body violently exploded into existence, fully manifesting within the cramped corridor despite the crushing suppression of the Buddha Power.
Then came the spectral projections of his three blades.
Onikiri, Yomikiri, and Banryu physically manifested in the air.
And finally, the true arrival of his Fear.
The sheer concentration of Yokai Energy skyrocketed exponentially under the violent catalysis of his Fear. The outer armor of the Asura Transformation began to emit a blinding, terrifying glow.
Dark crimson, silver-white, and pale bone-white violently intertwined, flowing like liquid lightning between the massive joints of the Bone-Thunder Giant Body.
From a power level that already rivaled a Twelve-Transformation Demon, his aura continued to violently climb. It approached, and rapidly surpassed, the absolute maximum specifications of the Twelve Transformations.
He was approaching the Gaseous Transformation. He was approaching the world of a true, phenomenal existence.
He was approaching the domain of a Great Yokai.
Hakushin's withered, dead eyes finally widened in sheer shock.
For the first time in hundreds of years, he felt true terror.
He felt a completely alien power. It was entirely different from holy Buddha Power, and fundamentally different from standard Yokai Energy.
It was a living story.
It was a terrifying ghost story, whispered in trembling voices by thousands of terrified mortals in the dark, violently condensed into a walking, breathing nightmare.
It was the sheer, crushing weight of the human world's terror, carried entirely by a single demon.
Those accumulated Fears had been violently compressed into his body by Hakushin's Power of Will. But they had not been destroyed. They had simply accumulated, boiling under the pressure, waiting for the perfect moment to violently detonate like a massive mountain flood.
That moment was right now.
In that exact, frozen instant.
The massive right arm of the Asura Transformation violently raised Onikiri and Yomikiri.
High above them, the spectral projection of Banryu hung in the air, its Ultimate Intent rapidly condensing. The three legendary blades violently converged and overlapped, merging together like the absolute twilight separating day and night. Three blinding lights fused into one singular, apocalyptic strike.
The terrifying powers of crimson, purple, and yellow violently compressed, swirling and merging at the razor-thin edge of the blade. It filled to the absolute breaking point, and then, the blade fell.
The illusion completely shattered.
The starving refugees shattered. The boiling porridge shattered. The suffocating dirt pit shattered. The desperate chanting shattered. The projected memories of hundreds of years of absolute agony violently exploded into microscopic dust, shattering like cheap glass under the apocalyptic weight of the strike.
When the dust cleared, only one absolute truth remained echoing in the hall.
"Whether it is right or wrong, what does it have to do with me?"
Irrespective of right and wrong.
He only needed to take one step forward.
Image: "Kikyo", Location: "Images/1774887578-100464952-114642866.jpg"
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