Rowan looked up and saw that battles had erupted throughout Aoi Spiral Castle.
Cú Chulainn faced Abe no Orochi. Heroic Spirit EMIYA fought Abe no Yoshihira. Heracles battled Abe no Ariyuki and Gokadoin Yasunaga. Medea confronted Gokadoin Yuiyui.
Elsewhere, Medusa faced the tenth head, Gokadoin Arihiro.
Nero fought the seventh head, Gokadoin Tenkai.
King Hassan faced the eighth head, Gokadoin Yasuzane, and the ninth head, Gokadoin Hiruko.
Even Nurarihyon had been matched against the eleventh head, Gokadoin Nagachika.
Kubinashi, Gyūki, Yuki-onna, Karasu Tengu, and the other yokai under Nurarihyon also joined the battle, clashing fiercely with the surrounding shikigami.
As for the injured Gojo Satoru, he was ambushed by Kenjaku, the deputy leader of the Star Religious Group.
Kenjaku was still wearing Suguru Geto's face, which dealt Gojo a tremendous psychological blow.
However, because Abe no Seimei had severely injured Gojo, he could not even exert half of his full strength and was steadily driven back by Kenjaku.
With no other choice, Rowan sent Number One to assist Gojo in fighting Kenjaku.
Thus, wherever one looked, explosions and thunderous impacts filled the air.
The once orderly Spiral Castle had been transformed into ruins. Shouts of killing rose and fell without end.
Only Rowan and Abe no Seimei had no opponents around them.
Seeing this, Rowan went numb.
Wait, what do you people mean by this?
Why is no one dealing with Abe no Seimei?
Are you seriously planning to leave this thousand-year-old monster to me?
Come on, I'm just a passerby. I'm not good at fighting at all.
As Abe no Seimei's gaze slowly fell upon him, Rowan immediately felt somewhat nervous.
"Outsider from another world, no matter where you came from, you cannot stop the thousand-year ambition of our people."
"This farce has gone on long enough."
The moment Abe no Seimei finished speaking, tremendous power surged from his body.
Like a landslide and a tsunami, it climbed upward layer by layer.
When the power he had accumulated over a thousand years reached its critical point, it finally erupted.
Then the sky went dark.
It was as though someone had taken a curtain soaked in thick black ink and draped it over the entirety of Aoi Spiral Castle and the sky for hundreds of kilometres around it.
Abe no Seimei finally displayed his unprecedentedly terrifying power.
A sensation of death instantly pressed down upon everyone.
It felt as though the slightest movement would cause that power to sweep them away completely.
Nurarihyon forced his opponent back with one move. Sensing the dense yokai energy overhead, he could not help trembling.
"Abe no Seimei…"
He could feel the malice and terror contained within that power.
It was simply too horrifying.
Nurarihyon had always possessed great confidence in his own strength.
But at that moment, faced with Abe no Seimei fighting at full power—
his confidence vanished.
Heracles raised his head. Upon seeing that tremendous power, he slowly tightened his grip on his axe-sword.
Nero's face was filled with eagerness, ready to unleash a beam at any moment.
Medea smiled softly and turned her gaze towards Rowan.
Master, how will you deal with this attack?
Under the pressure of that power, Rowan no longer dared to be careless.
Without hesitation, he activated the power of the God of Death.
A towering phantom of the God of Death emerged behind Rowan.
The instant it appeared, freezing air from the underworld swept throughout Spiral Castle, accompanied by spiritual pressure powerful enough to crush every soul.
Time seemed to freeze.
Even Abe no Seimei was frozen.
But it was not over.
Rowan slowly raised his right hand.
In an instant, eerie green light surged madly from his palm like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
It transformed into a boundless shockwave that swallowed the entirety of Aoi Spiral Castle.
The first wave struck the Gokadoin family's enormous shikigami army.
Thousands upon thousands of yokai and evil spirits formed from fear stiffened the instant they came into contact with the torrent of souls.
Immediately afterward, their bodies began trembling violently.
Oily green foam seeped from within them, while their bodies peeled apart like ashes in a hurricane.
The shikigami did not even have time to cry out.
They merely disintegrated in silence.
From their heads to their limbs, from their blades to their fangs, and from their fangs to their tails, every thread of cursed energy composing their bodies was extracted from within by the eerie green torrent.
It resembled a thousand yellowed ancient paintings being consumed by flames at the same time.
When the final specks of cursed energy drifted from their empty shells, all that remained were soulless puppet bodies kneeling on the ground.
Those shells then turned to dust in the wind.
After that, Rowan controlled the God of Death and unleashed another power.
The power of the Soul-Soul Fruit swept across the entire battlefield as well.
Gokadoin Yuiyui lay limply on her back like a puppet whose strings had been cut. A strand of saliva slipped from the corner of her mouth and ran down the exquisite collar of her Gothic Lolita dress as she muttered incoherently.
"I… don't deserve to be an onmyoji… The dolls I make are so ugly… I'm nothing…"
The seventh head, Gokadoin Hiruko, released a broken wail amid the silence.
"The strongest? What strongest?! I still got beaten like a dog! Please stop hitting me! I have no talent!!"
The knees of the third head, Abe no Orochi, slammed heavily into the ground, while her hands fell powerlessly at her sides.
The eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh heads…
Every head of the Gokadoin family who remained standing collapsed one after another.
In an instant, their souls were hollowed out, their will to fight stripped away, and their minds swallowed completely by the deepest despair in the human world.
Finally, it was Abe no Seimei's turn.
Abe no Seimei stood in place, his pure-white hunting robes whipping violently beneath the impact of the torrent of souls.
Countless pentagram formations covered the space around him.
At that moment, to resist Rowan's attack, he released all the cursed energy he had accumulated over a thousand years and erected layer after layer of jujutsu barriers.
The torrent of souls crashed against his barriers, splashing upward in enormous black waves like mountains.
Abe no Seimei's feet were planted deeply into the ground. His face was as pale as paper, yet he remained standing.
"I have surpassed humans and yokai, surpassed life and death. This small amount of power is nowhere near enough to—"
Suddenly,
his words stopped.
Because the phantom of the God of Death moved.
The God of Death raised its head and looked towards Abe no Seimei.
Then it slowly extended both arms and reached for him.
Before the God of Death, Abe no Seimei's barriers seemed not to exist.
Its arms casually passed through those supposedly impregnable layers of protection and seized Abe no Seimei.
"This… is impossible…"
Abe no Seimei stared down in disbelief at his soul being torn apart.
For the first time, his eternally calm expression twisted in horror.
His soul began to separate from his body.
A blue spirit was forcibly dragged out of him.
It was the true soul of Abe no Seimei, the thousand-year-old great onmyoji.
Within the enormous hand of the God of Death, it struggled, twisted, and screamed desperately, but no matter what it did, it could not break free.
Rowan felt his power pouring out of him like a flood.
Dragging Abe no Seimei's soul from his body was no easy task.
Fortunately, he had the support of the Golden Gate.
Whenever Rowan's power began to run short, the Golden Gate absorbed magical energy from other worlds and poured it into his body.
Controlling the God of Death, Rowan steadily pulled Abe no Seimei's soul completely free.
Then—
the God of Death swallowed Abe no Seimei's soul in one bite.