"It was sunny a moment ago," said Sakura worriedly. "How did it turn to night so quickly?"
Something more was at work than the brooding thunderclouds massing overhead. In the space of a few short minutes, the sky had darkened so completely that Sakura could've sworn it was the dead of night.
"We're approaching the Sealing Shrine," Katsuyu explained, angling her eye stalks to glance up at Sakura perched on her head. "Mōryō's dark power is disturbing the flow of nature energy in this area."
Time was not on their side.
Whoever had unsealed the demon's soul and sent those four strange people in white after Shion clearly feared her power, they still had a considerable head start. Sakura and Katsuyu had been separated from the rest of the team, but at this point, they couldn't afford to turn back and regroup.
"Could you spit out Shion, please, Lady Katsuyu?" said Sakura. "I'd like to have some insurance, just in case."
"You mean to copy her power, Sakura?" asked Katsuyu, to which Sakura nodded.
Katsuyu reared her head, her throat swelling, and out slid Shion's body, drenched from head to toe in slug slime. It was absolutely revolting, but Lady Katsuyu's slime had some minor firming, cleansing, and rejuvenating effects on the skin, so Sakura hoped Shion wouldn't hold plunging her into a coma against her will and stuffing her inside a giant slug against her.
She was doing her esthetician a favour, really.
Sakura reached under Shion's slimy white crop top and began a Munamori-style massage. As her hands worked, a warm sensation spread across her own chest, just as the System issued her a notification.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host for achieving a 118 cm bustline (32O cup size). Please keep striving for an ever-greater bust!]
A low groan escaped Sakura's lips as her bust surged outwards almost imperceptibly. She had finally climbed back up the size she had previously reached three years ago, so from now on, she would start receiving System rewards again.
(The System uses cup sizes as thresholds, meaning Sakura is penalised if her weight fluctuates dramatically— potentially losing breast volume, if she loses weight; or moving sideways in the size charts to a 'smaller,' sister bra size, if she gains weight and her band size increases faster than her bust measurement.)
"Do you remember which hand signs the shrine maiden of your era used to seal Mōryō, Lady Katsuyu?" asked Sakura. "I don't feel any different, so…"
Sakura's voice trailed off. Her eyes shimmered like amethyst kaleidoscopes, and images began flashing through her mind:
In her vision, she was in a dark place, dancing and twirling and jumping from foothold to foothold. Rocks and dust crumbled from the walls and ceiling, as tendrils of darkness contorted wildly all around her, slamming and flailing in every conceivable direction and angle.
And then… blood spurted from her mouth as a tentacle pierced through her chest. She was dead.
"I'm afraid the shrine maidens of the Land of Demons use a different system from that of Shikkotsu Forest's," Katsuyu said regretfully. "Our Kuji-In, our nine hand seals, are not the same."
Katsuyu had taught Sakura the names of the hand seals while they were travelling earlier in the day:
Rin, the seal of the thunderbolt.
Pyō, the seal of the great thunderbolt.
Tō, the seal of the outer lion.
Sha, the seal of the inner lion.
Kai, the seal of the outer bonds.
Jin, the seal of the inner bonds.
Retsu, the seal of the wisdom fist.
Zai, the seal of the ring of the Sun, Moon, and Earth.
Zen, the seal of the hidden form."
Unfortunately, slugs didn't have hands, so Katsuyu was unable to demonstrate the hand seals effectively to Sakura. She didn't use many Sage Arts, these days.
"The Onmyōdō spells of Lady Miroku focus more on fortune-telling and sealing, while mine deal in healing," Katsuyu explained. "I'm afraid you'll have to ask Miss Shion if you wish to learn her techniques."
Seeing there was no other choice, Sakura hefted Shion's slimy body onto her shoulders and leapt back onto Katsuyu's head, before rousing the girl and hypnotising her once more with her Sharingan Genjutsu.
"Quickly, use the Sealing Jutsu!" Sakura cried out, pointing at a rather large boulder. "The Mōryō is about to break free!"
Sakura wove her own death vision into her illusion, making Shion believe the climax of her story had finally come. Though Shion was briefly confused about how she'd reached the Sealing Shrine without noticing, she quickly began the ceremony. Sakura felt a little guilty for forcing her to reveal her Hiden Jutsu, but better safe than sorry, right?
"Hatsu, Jin, Kai!" Shion chanted, weaving hand signs Sakura had never seen before. "Min, Shin, Gan, Reppyo, Shōzen, Mika, Dan, Raku, Shō!"
Sakura watched with quiet curiosity as Shion lifted a foot off the ground, bathed in a soft pink aura. The density of the surrounding nature energy was rising— subtly, but enough to lend the air a faintly oppressive weight.
Having come into contact with nature energy a few times, and having visited Shikkotsu Forest more than once, Sakura was attuned to this third type of energy— though she wasn't as adept at sensing it as she was her own spiritual and physical energies.
"Fu, Sai, Dan, Gik, Ragu, Bagi!" Shion concluded.
Sakura's tomoe spun rapidly as she committed the hand signs to memory. Whether she'd be able to reproduce the technique, if it came to it, remained to be seen. The sealing spell wasn't technically Fūinjutsu, as it used pure nature energy as its medium— something her Sharingan could not perceive directly, unlike chakra, or, presumably, Senjutsu chakra.
…
The energy-charged air diffused with a soft sigh, and Shion ceased glowing, before settling quietly atop Katsuyu's head. Though Sakura had given Shion a target, nothing had come of the Shrine Seal. Perhaps the Sealing Shrine was necessary for it to work— or perhaps the target simply needed to be alive instead of being an inanimate boulder.
Sakura simply had no way of knowing without asking.
"Hang on, I never told you Shion's mum's name was Miroku," said Sakura suddenly. "Were you involved in the last Mōryō incident ten years ago, Lady Katsuyu? I thought Lady Tsunade was still roaming the world, back then."
Katsuyu tilted her eye stalks and looked at Sakura questioningly.
"The Miroku I'm referring to is the one I knew from a thousand years ago," she said gently. "I daresay I was rather shocked to learn that woman ended up having descendants, really. She wasn't very approachable when I knew her."
Silence fell over the forest as Katsuyu continued oozing forwards relentlessly. In the distance, the roar of thunder echoed— the thunderstorm seemed to be moving away, but it was still getting darker.
"Shion's mother," Katsuyu said hesitantly. "I suppose she must have passed away?"
"I heard from one of the shrine maiden's attendants that she sacrificed herself to seal the Mōryō, last time," Sakura explained. "That's why Shion's here with us, instead of her."
Katsuyu hummed thoughtfully.
"Have you deduced something, Lady Katsuyu?" Sakura asked curiously.
Before the descent of the Ōtsutsuki and the advent of chakra, the shinobi world had its own means of attaining supernatural power— as Hagoromo and his brother Hamura discovered a thousand years ago, when they encountered Gamamaru, the already middle-aged Toad Sage of Mount Myōboku, who had come to the Land of Ancestors to witness their mother's God Tree draining the planet dry.
But the Sage Arts of the Land of Demons were quite unlike those of the Sage Regions.
"No, I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what to think, myself," Katsuyu said at last. "The circumstances surrounding Miroku's appearance in the Land of Demons more than a thousand years ago have always been shrouded in uncertainty, especially since that country lies so far from my home…"
"…But I've always found it curious that Miroku happened to appear— as if out of nowhere— at the exact same time as the Mōryō," Katsuyu went on. "She was powerful in the Sage Arts beyond measure, using strange techniques that didn't seem to belong to any known system at the time. She was almost like nature energy made flesh."