The next day. Afternoon.
On the open plain thirty kilometers north of Kaede's Village, three hundred Uesugi elite troops had already finished forming ranks.
Somehow word had spread, probably the work of Tanuki, and people from the surrounding villages, even traveling merchants from as far as central Musashi, had come.
Several hundred commoners and traders crowded the distant hills, craning their necks to look down. The villagers of Kaede's Village watched from closer by. Momiji and Botan stood beside the torii, one clutching talisman paper, the other holding her staff, both looking as tense as if they themselves were about to take the field.
Kaede sat perched on Naoe Kanetsugu's shoulders, her twin tails whipping in the wind as she shouted excitedly, "Big Brother, do your best!" Naoe Kanetsugu carried the little girl expressionlessly, having already given up any internal struggle.
Kikyō sat on the ridge of the shrine roof. Her longbow rested across her knees, black hair falling over her shoulders. From that height she could overlook the entire plain. She said nothing; she merely watched. She held absolute confidence in her beloved, yet that did not prevent her from intervening if the need arose, or if Shinji wished it. She and Shinji had long since become one. In every sense of the word.
In the center of the plain. The three-hundred-man formation was peculiar.
Uesugi Kenshin's original Kuruma-kakari no Jin, the Wheel Formation. A rotational formation centered on circular movement: the front rank attacked, then immediately peeled off to both flanks and withdrew to the rear to rest, while the rear rank instantly filled the gap and continued the assault.
The entire array moved like a constantly turning wheel, fresh troops always at the front, never allowing fatigue to set in. Three hundred men divided into six groups of fifty, arranged in a radial pattern with Kenshin's position as the hub.
The four female generals each held one cardinal direction, To the east, the tallest naginata-wielder stood steady as a mountain, grip firm on her shaft. To the west, a pair worked in perfect concert, one with bow, one with shield.
To the north, a short, solidly built tachi-user planted her short legs into the earth like nails. Each of the young female generals radiated the faint golden light of divine-implement fragments, weak individually, yet when gathered they formed faith power converted from human martial momentum sufficient to suppress most low-rank yokai.
Kenshin stood at the eye of the formation. Her silver armor was radiant; the long blue battle skirt of her war robe hung motionless. Her deep indigo hair shone with a warm luster under the afternoon sun; the white cloth band still bound tightly across her forehead, loose strands falling on either side.
She had not drawn her blade, yet the very posture of her hand resting on the hilt was already a declaration. Her gaze pierced the rotating gaps of the Wheel Formation and locked dead upon the gray figure fifty paces away. Her heartbeat quickened once more. She recited a sutra passage fiercely in her mind. Still useless.
Opposite. Shinji stood alone fifty paces away.
The three-hundred-man Wheel Formation began to turn slowly, the entire array revolving at an even pace like a millstone, somehow producing a low, deep rumble that carried continuous pressure.
That was "momentum." The condensed martial spirit of three hundred men. Momentum became faith, four divine-implement anchors wove the power of faith into an invisible net, pressing inward from all four directions toward the center.
The air grew heavy. Villagers watching from afar felt their chests tighten; several of the elderly began to gasp for breath. Fortunately Momiji and Botan reacted at once, reinforcing the barrier and isolating the pressure.
Yet Momiji's own talisman paper ignited on its own. Botan simply crouched down. This was the collective power of a properly organized army, gathering momentum through men, crushing matter through momentum. Ten men could cut down a ghost, a hundred could slay a monster, a thousand could purge yokai.
Though the Uesugi force numbered only three hundred, every one of them was a fully armored elite capable of facing ten ordinary soldiers. Combined with four divine-implement fragments, they already equaled a conventional army of several thousand in formation; the gathered aura could even threaten or, under favorable compatibility, force back, ordinary eighth- or ninth-rank high-level yokai leaders.
The formation turned. Immediately afterward came the Wheel Formation's first wave of impact! Fifty ashigaru in the front rank raised their spears and roared in unison.
Their footsteps struck as one; golden faith power gathered at the spear tips under the anchoring of the female generals, coalescing into a wall of light that advanced forward.
At the same time the eastern naginata general struck. Her long-handled naginata carved a crescent arc of light, condensing faith power along the blade edge, One horizontal sweep, and the arc detached from the blade, flying out as a golden crescent moon.
The western pair's archer drew her bow to full, and a skyful of arrows followed at once, trailing faint golden light tails. The northern tachi-user gripped her blade with both hands and cleaved upward from the ground, the force plowing a crack through the earth straight toward the target.
Attacks from all four directions struck simultaneously. Light wall, crescent moon, arrows, earth-rending slash, four assaults arrived in the same instant.
Shinji did not draw his blades; he did not even touch the hilts. There was no need. The blades were enhancements, yet that did not mean he lacked combat power without drawing them.
His many bodies had transformed into the Five Elements; the blades merely allowed his elemental demonic power to project outward with greater lethality against equal-level foes. But what they carried was, at root, his own strength.
He also intended to use this opportunity to test the applications of his innate Five-Element demonic power… He did not necessarily need to; he had his own forces, and subordinates who could handle opponents weaker than himself… Yet he had to master these abilities!
And so, here. He raised his right hand. Fingers spread, palm facing forward. Blood Fire. Dark-red flames burst simultaneously from all five fingertips, transforming into five threads of fire so fine they were nearly invisible.
The fire threads spun and coiled in the air like five scarlet serpents, piercing straight into the front of the golden light wall. The light wall was burned through, five neat circular holes silently scorched into it. After passing through the holes the fire threads interwove into a net in midair, catching the golden crescent that followed hard upon the light wall.
The crescent tumbled endlessly within the fire net; its blade-light was instantly melted away by the temperature of the Blood Fire. Next came the skyful of arrows, Shinji pressed his left hand downward. Earth Element. The ground beneath his feet heaved with a roar. A stone wall six meter high rose out of nothing and stood before him.
Dozens of arrows wrapped in golden light buried themselves in the wall; the tips sank half an inch and could advance no farther. The surface of the stone wall did not even crack, thanks to the earth-dragon talent fused from Banryū, the ground beneath his feet obeyed his will.
While the stone wall still stood, he lightly stamped his right foot. The wall exploded, shattering into fist-sized pellets that shot forward in a fan. Earth Element Pellets.
The bamboo spears of the fifty front-rank ashigaru were smashed askew, snapped, or sent flying. The men themselves were unharmed, every stone pellet struck only the weapons, neither injuring nor killing. Yet in that same instant all fifty spears were completely ruined.
The front-rank ashigaru stood frozen in place, left holding only broken spear shafts or empty hands. The eastern naginata general reacted extremely quickly, her naginata swept out another arc of light, a close-range slash. Golden faith power condensed along the edge and shot straight toward the side of his neck.
Shinji tilted his head. The arc grazed past the tips of his hair, missing by a hair's breadth. Then his left hand opened; pale-white long hair exploded outward from the ends, Wood Element · Hair Transformation. Emerald green overlaid the strands.
The white hair then lengthened and surged at a speed visible to the naked eye, wrapping like vines around the shaft of the naginata. The female general yanked hard. It did not budge. Every strand of hair was as tough as the roots of a century-old tree; the resilience of the hair-net after the sixth transformation was already extraordinary.
She released her grip and abandoned the blade. But the hair did not pursue her, it merely coiled the naginata up and tossed it back. The western archer was still drawing her bowstring, the second volley of arrows poised on the string.
Shinji glanced at her and exhaled. That breath was purple. Oni's Breath. Turbid qi of Yomi surged from his mouth, transforming into an extremely cold purple mist that spread silently through the air.
The mist did not attack people. Yet wherever it passed, bowstrings abruptly tautened, the sharp drop in temperature made the strings brittle. The instant the archer released, the string snapped. Pa. The clear sound of breaking echoed across the open plain.
On the other side, the northern tachi-user's second slash had already fallen, the force carrying the earth-rending momentum once again plowed a crack through the ground, at an even more cunning angle.
Shinji lifted his right foot. And stamped down. Earth Element · Immovable. That which could render himself unmoving could naturally also make others… difficult to move!
Within a hundred-pace radius centered on him, the earth suddenly sank! Only by a 3mm. Yet the pressure wave generated by that 3mm subsidence crushed the earth-rending force head-on.
A crack split the tachi-user's blade from edge to spine under the vibration. It was the recoil of being ground back by the weight of the earth itself. Throughout all of this, from beginning to end, Shinji had never drawn a blade, never used any weapon. Only his two hands, two feet, hair, breath. And the earth beneath his feet.
Transformations of the Five Elements, fire, earth, metal, wood, water alone had not appeared. Four attributes had been displayed in turn within fewer than ten breaths, each destroying only weapons without harming a single person. Half of the fifty front-rank men dropped to their knees, not because they had been struck down, but because their legs had gone soft.
The four female generals each stared at the ruined or seized weapons in their hands, growing more silent one after another. "He… didn't even draw his blades." Some ashigaru's voice rang especially harsh on the quiet battlefield. The rotation of the Wheel Formation had completely stalled. The three-hundred-man array froze in place like a mechanism whose gears had been pulled out.
The villagers on the distant hills fell collectively speechless. Momiji's talisman paper slipped to the ground without her noticing. Botan had gone from crouching to simply sitting. Naoe Kanetsugu's hands trembled faintly, as a commander, she understood better than anyone what the previous exchange had meant.
The ability to destroy only weapons without killing or even injuring, yet still rob the opponent of all resistance. If he had wanted to kill… It would probably take only a single move. One slash… total annihilation!
Kenshin stood at the eye of the formation, her purple pupils fixed intently on that gray figure who had not even touched a hilt. Her heartbeat skipped another beat.
She rapidly recited a sutra passage in her mind to suppress it. Still useless. So strong. No, not that… it was… Handsome! Wrong again! It was battle intent… yes, battle intent! She cut off the chaotic thoughts racing through her mind and spoke: "Continue the second round. Gather the momentum."
The remaining two hundred men did not hesitate. The Uesugi army was precisely this kind of force, even without relying solely on faith as before, they still possessed absolute trust and reliance.
If the lord said continue, then continue. Even if the entire front rank had knelt, the rear ranks would still step over their comrades' shadows and press forward. The Wheel Formation began to turn once more.
This time faster, the speed of rotation doubled. The four remaining female generals no longer attacked dispersedly; instead they poured the power of the divine implements directly into the rotating core of the formation.
Golden light surged from all four directions toward the eye of the array. Toward Kenshin. Kenshin's white war armor and blue-based battle robe began to glow. The martial momentum of the three hundred men, including those already kneeling on the ground, was drawn out of their bodies, gathered along the rotating trajectory of the Wheel Formation, and wound around her.
Like threads, layer upon layer wrapping her. This was no simple addition of power. This was, Army-Momentum Binding. The momentum of an entire army transformed into the strength of a single person. Three hundred lives, three hundred measures of faith, three hundred living human hearts, all pressed upon her shoulders.
The girl's long hair stirred without wind; golden light-dust seeped between the strands. The color of her eyes deepened from purple into pure gold, in that instant her face overlapped with the previous generation's Kenshin.
An extremely brief overlap, lasting less than a single breath. Like an illusion. Yet Shinji saw it. At the same time. Bishamonten's aura fully unfolded in this moment, comparable to the previous generation's, yet the flavor had changed.
The previous generation's army-momentum binding had been like iron shackles, like a Brahma bell, like an unalterable mandate of heaven. The new generation's was a great flood, equally unstoppable, yet far more flexible.
Living faith: three hundred people willingly placing their hearts into a single pair of hands. Not because of Bishamonten. But because of the person named Uesugi Kenshin.
A low, deep bell-tone even seemed to faintly resonate through the air. This, too, was the spontaneous resonance produced when faith condensed to its extreme, as though the Brahma bell of Bishamonten itself were ringing.
On the distant hills several elderly people knelt of their own accord, pressing their palms together and beginning to recite Buddhist prayers. Kikyō on the shrine roof sat up a little straighter and lifted her longbow from her knees.
She could feel the quality of that power, though in sheer quantity it still lagged far behind the centuries-condensed vow-power of the White-Hearted Sage of Mount Hakurei, in pure quality it was already very close.
This, too, was unmistakably… "Similar to the Lord of Goblins and Monsters, the method of actively shouldering the 'demonic aura' of the Hyakki Yakō behind him through awe?"
Momentum-binding akin to Oni-Binding! Through the rotational structure of the Wheel Formation, the faith and momentum of three hundred people had been perfectly compressed and poured entirely into a single body.
Shinji's eyes narrowed slightly; he finally grew a little more serious. In this state Uesugi Kenshin could truly be called extremely strong, an existence capable of matching the highest ranks of yokai… Possessing such a method…
Yet previously, when facing the previous generation's "Kenshin," if Shinji had not chosen to have the Imagawa clan counterattack her rear base at Kasugayama Castle, throwing her army's morale into chaos so that even concentrated faith could no longer maintain military discipline… …it would probably have been very difficult to force the previous Kenshin into nirvana and self-destruction, actively changing generations.
This was truly formidable. Even the full Eight-Petal Heaven manifestation of Bishamonten could already contend with ordinary ninth-rank yokai; now it had surpassed that limit by more than a single step. And in this moment Kenshin finally drew her blade!
The entire blade was golden, Sanskrit flowing along the edge. She took one step forward. Yet the very instant that step landed, just as she was about to advance further into a "spar" with Shinji, just as she was about to draw closer, to swing a blade that carried no killing intent, not even much battle intent, merely the wish to approach as near as possible....
From the southwestern horizon a plume of dust shot into the sky. The thunder of hoofbeats rolled like rolling drums. Several hundred riders in deep-crimson armor surged over the reverse slope of the hills.
The banners embroidered with four golden characters, Fūrinkazan. The Takeda Red Guard. At their head rode a woman on a chestnut warhorse, clad in a loose plain kimono with armor worn over it.
Deep-crimson hair cascaded like a waterfall, flying behind her with the horse's gait. Her features were upright and heroic; her figure tall and athletic, waist extremely slender. The collar of her kimono had completely given way under the jolting of the ride, the dark armor cinched an exaggerated silhouette, the full curves that even the armor plates could not restrain swaying heavily with every stride of the horse.
In her left hand she held an iron-ribbed war fan. Takeda Shingen. The Tiger of Kai. Self-proclaimed reincarnation of Fudō Myōō. The most warlike daimyō of the Sengoku era, bar none.
Her gaze crossed the Uesugi formation on the plain, crossed Kenshin's golden-radiance-wreathed figure, and locked directly onto Shinji standing at the very front. Her deep-crimson eyes shone with frightening intensity. "This generation's Uesugi Kenshin... and you, Nakai Shinji!"
"When I received that letter from the Hōjō fox I thought it was fake—"
Shingen reined her horse to a stop at the edge of the plain. Several hundred Red Guard fanned out behind her in a sector formation. Yamagata Masakage's vermilion light armor stood at the very front of the ranks; a bandage was still wrapped around her shoulder from the wound Shinji had left on Mount Hakurei last time.
Shingen's voice carried across half the open field, full of vigor. "But it was real? You're actually fighting.... and you didn't call me?"
Kenshin's dark eyes tilted toward Shingen's direction. Shingen swung down from her horse, planted her iron fan against the ground, and strode step by step toward the center of the plain. Dragon's gait, tiger's stride, each step like a leopard pacing and measuring its territory.
"Perfect timing... " She looked at Shinji and licked her lips.
"I also want to try whether, giving everything I have, I can fight this guy thoroughly and satisfyingly!" For a commander of three armies, only the collective counted as full strength. The Takeda Shingen of Mount Hakurei back then had clearly not been that.