Chapter 128: Night Parade of One Hundred Demons
The main camp of the Uesugi Army was pitched in a pass between two mountains.
The terrain had been chosen with masterful precision—backed by a steep mountain ridge to the north, fronted by a gentle slope to the south, and flanked by natural trenches carved by streams on the east and west. This left only a single, defensible entrance to the south, a gap barely twenty zhang across.
Within the camp of three thousand men, tents stood in neat, disciplined rows, and campfires dotted the night like a constellation of fallen stars. Fluttering high before the central command tent, the great 'Bi' banner—its blue characters stark against a white field—looked exceptionally solemn under the cold moonlight.
But what truly made Hikaru stop in his tracks was not the sight of tents and banners.
It was the Qi.
He stood on a low hill half a li south of the camp, a thin, crimson mist spreading from beneath his feet, extending the range of his perception to its absolute limit.
And then he felt it.
Human Qi.
It was the pure, steaming presence of humanity, a force field generated by three thousand living souls gathered as one. This energy was nothing like the murky, heavy miasma of Yao Qi, nor was it the clear, bright essence of spiritual power. It was something in between, an impure but potent power radiated by living mortals.
The breath of three thousand men. The heartbeats of three thousand men. The rush of blood through three thousand bodies and the thud of their footsteps on the earth. All of it merged into an invisible, thrumming torrent.
On its own, this torrent was not aggressive. But when it was unified, guided, and shaped by a singular purpose, it transformed into something else entirely.
Military Momentum.
Human Qi condensed into Force, and Force transmuted into Faith.
In this era, 'Dread'was the power yokai drew from human fear.'Faith', conversely, was the power condensed from human reverence for a specific ideal or an abstract existence. They were two sides of the same coin, both manifestations of the heart's power. The only difference was that Faith was more unified, purer, and far, far heavier.
It was this weight that allowed divine artifacts to 'suppress' all other supernatural existences. And while the collective belief of an army couldn't match the focused power of a divine artifact, it still possessed a potent suppressive effect.
The truth was starkly clear. The Uesugi Army was fundamentally different from the forces of the Imagawa or the Hojo. Imagawa's soldiers gathered out of duty to their lord's command; Hojo's soldiers fought out of loyalty to their family name. Both were classic armies of this feudal age, and they naturally possessed Human Qi, a collective Force, and the so-called Military Momentum.
But the soldiers of Uesugi… they existed because of a faith that ran bone-deep.
They believed in Bishamonten. They believed their lord was the God of War incarnate, and they believed that by following her, they would be invincible. This was no mere slogan shouted on the battlefield; it was a conviction they revered from the very marrow of their bones.
The faith of three thousand men coalesced, forming an invisible force field that enveloped the entire camp like a shell. As Hikaru's Yao Qi approached the edge of this shell, it was instinctively repelled and diluted. He could clearly feel his blood mist's expansion slow to a crawl as it neared a three-hundred-pace radius of the camp.
There was no barrier. No trace of any jutsu or technique.
It was simply the pure, collective will of humanity.
And as he watched, something stirred at the eastern edge of the camp.
Three small yokai emerged from the bushes. They were low-level trash, having undergone only two or three transformations, drawn like moths to the spiritual 'heat' generated by the three thousand souls. They possessed no reason or cognition; base yokai instinct drove them to seek out crowds, where the resentment of mortals should have been their richest food source.
But tonight, they were catastrophically wrong.
These were not three thousand ordinary people. These were three thousand souls unified by an unshakable faith.
The first small yokai rushed headlong into the three-hundred-pace perimeter. The moment its body touched that invisible force field, it was as if an unseen hand had seized it. Yao Qi began to peel away from its body, flaking off like dried mud from a stone, crumbling piece by piece.
It let out a sharp, piercing screech and tried desperately to retreat.
It was too late. The Force of Faith was not a barrier; it had no clear boundary. It was gradual, pervasive, and omnipresent. Once you stepped inside, it was like wading into waist-deep mire—the more you struggled, the deeper you sank.
Within three breaths, the small yokai's body had completely disintegrated. Not a single scrap remained. It hadn't even made enough noise to alert the sentries; the Force of Faith had swallowed its dying shriek like cotton absorbing water.
The second yokai took a hesitant step back, but that single step was still within the field's influence. Its outer shell began to petrify, its body growing rigid and stiff. In the next instant, it shattered into a thousand pieces.
Silently.
The last yokai had the fastest reaction. It turned to flee, but it had managed less than ten paces before it vanished into the night, dissipating like a wisp of smoke caught in the wind.
The three minor demons hadn't managed to make a single sound. From their approach to their utter annihilation, barely ten breaths had passed.
The soldiers in the camp noticed nothing.
They didn't need to. The Momentum of Faith did everything for them, acting as an invisible wall that automatically crushed any supernatural thing that dared to draw near. This was clearly not an exception; it was the norm. It was normal for the presence of people to attract demons. And it was even more normal for Military Momentum to obliterate them.
Hikaru witnessed it all. He understood with chilling clarity that any demon below the level of Six Transformations didn't even have the right to exist before this field.
He extended his perception a little further. On the mountain path about half a mile north of the camp, another demon was taking a detour. This was a demon leader, above the Seventh Transformation. It was the size of a calf, its body covered in coarse, grey leather armor, its hooves stamping deep imprints into the earth. Its original path would have taken it near the camp.
But after sensing that Momentum of Faith, it had stopped.
It stood motionless for a long time. Then, it silently turned and began a wide, arduous detour to the west. It would rather walk for an extra half-day than get anywhere near that sanctified ground. As a high-level demon, it possessed more than just instinct; it had intelligence. It knew that to continue straight was to walk into its own grave.
Even high-level demons refused to collide with the combined force of military momentum and faith.
"So this is true 'Faith'," Hikaru whispered beneath his ghost mask. It was the polar opposite of 'Dread', yet its effect achieved the same end through a different path.
, as the blood mist scattered slightly, his perception explored deeper. Beneath that dense, thrumming presence of humanity, he captured something heavier, more concentrated than ordinary faith. Several auras, scattered throughout the camp, felt entirely different from those of the common soldiers.
They were golden, pure, and lofty.
They shared the same source as the power he had sensed from Kakizaki Kageie and Yamagata Masakage, yet each possessed its own distinct signature.
As expected, there wasn't just one. There were several.
'One, two, three…'
Hikaru silently counted the sources of that divine power. Four Princess Warriors, each wielding the power of a Divine Artifact, were stationed at the four corners of the camp. East, south, west, and north—each guarded a flank, acting like four great nails anchoring the entire encampment to the earth, propping up a domain as impregnable as a fortress.
The intensity of these four auras varied. The strongest was in the east; the concentration of Divine Artifact power there surpassed even Kakizaki Kageie's and was far more potent than the other three. The weakest was in the west, possessing roughly two-thirds of Kageie's strength. The other two were in the middle, slightly inferior to Kageie but formidable still.
The sensation was vague, but judging purely by the sense of threat they posed to him, his assessment was unlikely to be wrong.
"Four Divine Artifact wielders, and the Momentum of Faith from three thousand men."
Hikaru made his judgment. A frontal assault was absolutely out of the question. Even though his combat power now far exceeded what it was three months ago, forcing his way into a major encampment bolstered by human faith and guarded by four Divine Artifacts was a fool's errand with no guarantee of success.
But fortunately, he never intended to charge in blindly.
Hikaru glanced back. On the slope of the low hill behind him, over two hundred undead skeletons stood in silent, motionless ranks. A blood mist shrouded them, and phosphorus fire flickered in their hollow eye sockets as they awaited his command.
But if he just sent them in like this, they wouldn't last a few seconds. The fate of the small yokai was proof enough. Pure undead fragments were even weaker than those demons of the second or third transformation; sending them into that field of faith and military momentum was no different from suicide.
So, Hikaru did one thing.
He crouched down, pressing his palm against the nearest skeleton.
[Bone Soul Transformation].
White bone spikes extended from his fingers, but they didn't form weapons. Instead, they wove themselves into a thin, delicate membrane that enveloped the skeleton's ribcage, covering the ancient remains like a protective shell over a fragile object.
This was a shield. Not to block swords and spears, but to isolate their pure Yao Qi from the direct erosion of the Momentum of Faith—even if only for a moment. Skeletons were materialized physical entities, not pure condensations of Yao Qi. The Momentum of Faith crushed 'supernatural' structures; its effect on physical matter would be much weaker.
Not ineffective. Just slower.
And a little slower was all he needed.
One by one, Hikaru wrapped the two hundred-plus skeletons. His movements were fast, but each application consumed a sliver of his demonic power. By the time he was finished, his breathing was slightly heavier.
"Disperse," Hikaru's voice wasn't loud, but every skeleton received the command.
"Enter from all four sides."
"Do not charge their formation. Do not attack."
"Just… walk in."
The undead made no sound. They simply began to move.
Staggering and swaying, they spread out from the four sides of the low hill, slowly, inexorably approaching the perimeter of the Uesugi camp.
From the edge of the stream in the east.
From the rustling bushes in the west.
From the mouth of the pass in the south.
From the dark ridge line in the north.
Two hundred skeletons, from all directions, surged silently toward the camp.
In the Uesugi camp, at a sentry post in the south, a young ashigaru was dozing off, his head resting against the rough wood of the fence. The first half of the night shift was almost over; in another quarter-hour, he could change shifts and go back to his tent to sleep.
His eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
A hand suddenly rested on the wooden fence beside his head.
It was a grayish-white bone hand, devoid of all flesh, with missing joints and a few strands of decayed tendon hanging from the phalanges.
The ashigaru's eyes snapped open. He found himself staring into a face with only half its skin left, its hollow eye socket burning with a dark green phosphorus fire that was fixed directly on him.
He froze for a heartbeat. Then his eyes bulged.
Although the existence of demons was a known fact in this era, undead visible to the naked eye were exceedingly rare, and one would almost never encounter them while protected within a military formation.
Faced with this sudden, impossible sight… a blood-curdling scream tore through the silence of the night.
Then came a second scream, and a third. From the east, west, and north, terrified shouts erupted almost simultaneously.
"Ghost! There's a ghost!"
"The dead—the dead are crawling out of the ground!"
"It's an evil spirit!"
The camp instantly erupted into a boiling pot of chaos. Campfires were kicked over by panicked soldiers, tents were pulled down by stumbling, terrified horses, and the frantic clash of weapons mixed with the raw screams of men.
Soldiers scrambled out of their tents, fumbling for their weapons, only to freeze in horror at the scene unfolding at the camp's perimeter.
Under the moonlight, a red mist spread from all directions, seeping up from the ground like blood. Within that mist, countless tattered figures were slowly, silently advancing.
They didn't make a single sound. No roars, no howls—even the dry clatter of bone on bone was swallowed by the encroaching blood mist.
There was only silence. A dead, suffocating silence.
And it was this very silence that was more hair-raising than any monstrous roar.
The skeletons moved slowly, their gait awkward, like a legion of infants who had just learned to walk. But their numbers—amplified and distorted by the blood mist—far exceeded reality. The shadows of the two hundred skeletons were dragged out, enlarged, and twisted into monstrous shapes.
In the eyes of the terrified soldiers, it wasn't two hundred. It was two thousand.
Maybe even more.
The dead covered the mountains and the fields, crawling from the earth itself to walk toward their camp.
"The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons…" someone spat out the words, their voice trembling.
Then, panic spread like a plague.
And at the center of this burgeoning terror, at the top of the low hill directly facing the southern side of the camp, a figure emerged from within the blood mist.
He wore grey robes, his hair the color of ash, his face hidden behind a Crimson Oni Mask. Purple arcs of lightning writhed silently around his body, illuminating the blood-red eyes of the mask.
He just stood there.
Two hundred undead spread out behind him, beside him, and beneath his feet.
Moonlight poured down from above, casting his shadow long and dark toward the camp.
That shadow—
It swallowed half the camp whole.
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