Chapter 140: Severing the Spider's Arm
The moment the Asura Transformation took shape, Tsuchigumo's fists smashed down again.
Of its six arms, the two thickest upper limbs clenched into granite-like fists, descending simultaneously from the left and right in a pincer-like strike.
But this time, Hikaru did not dodge.
The six-meter-tall body of bone, blood, thunder, and flesh raised its arms—and not just two. On the exoskeleton of the Asura Transformation, the power of the Bone Soul Transformation had already shattered the limits of a normal physique; white bone spikes erupted from the shoulders, elbows, and forearms, constructing two additional skeletal supports that functioned as a second pair of arms.
Four arms crossed in a desperate block.
A shockwave detonated at the point of contact. The ground beneath their feet collapsed inward, sinking a full two meters as a wave of gravel and soil blasted into the air.
Hikaru's colossal form was driven back five steps.
But only five steps.
There was none of the previous humiliation, of being sent tumbling through the dirt. These were five deliberate, gouging steps that carved deep furrows into the earth as he planted his feet and stood his ground.
He had received the blow. He had endured.
Behind Tsuchigumo's bone mask, a green, spectral light danced with fervor.
"He blocked it? He actually blocked it!"
The demon's tone shifted from stunned surprise to raw ecstasy. This was a close-quarters strike; while not its full power, it was a ferociously strong attack, not something any ordinary yokai could hope to withstand.
Hikaru offered no reply.
He simply moved.
The Corporeal Thunder was no longer a mere lattice of electric arcs crackling over his body—the lightning had seeped into his very marrow, infusing every inch of the Asura Transformation's skeletal frame.
When he took a step, the ground beneath his feet wasn't crushed; it was pierced through by lances of raw electricity.
His speed skyrocketed.
Though it couldn't match the pure celerity of Kidomaru's own transformation, the instantaneous burst of power from the thunder coursing through his entire demonic body was enough. The six-meter-tall Bone-Thunder Giant vanished from its spot.
It was an extreme velocity that blurred past the limits of the naked eye.
The next moment, it reappeared at Tsuchigumo's right side.
Muramasa slashed out.
Yes, even while enveloped in the Asura Transformation, the construct held its own version of Muramasa—a massive, projected blade. The essence of the Asura Transformation was amplification, a shift in both quality and quantity, but its form of expression was projection. It projected his strength, and it projected what he held. On that foundation, with a weapon that held such complete favorability towards him, the blade cooperated wholeheartedly, projecting its own spectral shadow.
It was like a weapon wielded by a god, a flash of pure inspiration.
Wrapped around the giant, projected blade were no longer the simple purple arcs that had clung to its surface before. The lightning, having undergone a qualitative change, now seeped out from within the steel itself. It merged with the bone blades extended by the Bone Soul Transformation, forming a translucent, serrated edge of thunder and bone that layered over the original projection of Muramasa.
The blade bit into the middle arm on Tsuchigumo's right side.
It cut deep.
The grayish-white skin tore open under the composite thunder-bone edge. The Yao Qi roiling beneath its flesh churned violently where the blade passed. That conceptual, automatic repair activated instantly—but the speed of its restoration was noticeably slower than before.
It was the lightning.
The lightning, after its qualitative change, now possessed a tangible substance; it was no longer just a simple burning force. The Yao Qi it carried now had the ability to interfere with phenomena. While it was a far cry from the absolute restraint of spiritual power or the suppression of divine and Buddhist might, it was enough to create a brief, flickering disturbance at the wound.
An instant. A momentary delay in its regeneration.
For Hikaru himself, perhaps nothing could be done in such a fleeting interval.
But for Kikyo behind him—it was more than enough.
The bowstring sang again.
At the same moment Hikaru cut into the demon's right side, Kikyo had already repositioned herself to Tsuchigumo's left rear. Her new location formed a perfect, straight line with Hikaru, aimed directly through the gash on Tsuchigumo's right arm.
The arrow passed through that gap.
Pale spiritual light flooded through the opening, pouring its purifying energy directly into the arm's interior.
Immediately, it detonated.
The purification of her spiritual power spread from the inside out, peeling away the layers of Yao Qi that composed the limb one by one. Simultaneously, the lightning eroded it from the outside in, blocking the pathways of repair.
An attack from both within and without.
Tsuchigumo's middle right arm—the section below the elbow joint—began to disintegrate. It wasn't severed cleanly; rather, once the Yao Qi was purged, it lost the ability to maintain its form, crumbling away piece by piece like a sand sculpture washed away by a relentless tide.
Though it was already regenerating, swinging that arm again would be impossible in the short term.
"Good enough! Good enough!" Tsuchigumo's voice boomed from behind its mask as the remaining five of its six arms exerted their power in unison.
The top two clenched into fists and smashed together, creating a fan-shaped shockwave above its head that pressed down like a hammer. The bottom two plunged into the earth, tearing up a massive swathe of land—a thirty-meter radius of rock and soil—and heaving it toward Hikaru. The palm of the only remaining intact middle arm on its left opened, spewing forth a dense torrent of spider silk that began to weave a rapidly rotating curtain around its body.
The existence of the silk curtain made it impossible for Kikyo to shoot through from the outside. Her Sacred Arrow could certainly purify the demonic silk, but its power would be significantly weakened in the process of penetration.
Without a doubt, the belligerent Great Yokai had already devised an effective counter to Kikyo's arrows.
"Adapting quickly," Hikaru whispered from within the Bone-Thunder Giant.
But he, too, was adapting.
The Soul-Tracking Archer Form, after its own qualitative change, had endowed him with new methods.
He did not rush forward again.
The left hand of the Asura Transformation lifted, five fingers spread wide. In the center of its palm, a dark green phosphorescence overflowed from between the digits.
Soul-Seeking Palm: Inevitable Strike.
It locked onto the soul; once launched, it could not miss.
He didn't need to penetrate the spider silk.
He needed to penetrate something far more fundamental.
Demonic power condensed at his fingertip, coalescing into a dark green speck of light that shot out. The speck did not fly toward Tsuchigumo's physical body. It passed through the rotating silk curtain without resistance—the silk did not react because this was not an attack on the physical level, but a force aimed directly at the soul.
The speck of light struck the inner side of the elbow joint of Tsuchigumo's middle left arm. It was a critical joint, a weak point in its very 'phenomenon'.
The moment the light burrowed in, Tsuchigumo's left arm stiffened for an instant.
Only an instant. The power of the soul-seeking strike could not truly harm the soul of a Great Yokai—the gap in their levels was simply too vast.
But that momentary stiffness was enough to create a gap in the rotation of the silk curtain.
The bowstring rang.
Kikyo was waiting for exactly this moment. She didn't know what Hikaru was planning, but she knew, with absolute certainty, that he would create an opportunity.
The arrow pierced through the gap. The white spiritual power went straight for the location marked by the green speck of light.
At that same instant, the Asura Transformation's huge Muramasa slashed in from the right, its thunder-bone blade biting into the other side.
An attack from both within and without, for the second time.
But this time, their target was not a middle arm.
It was one of the two thickest limbs at the top—the upper left arm.
After Kikyo's spiritual power poured in from the joint, it spread upward along the veins of Yao Qi, invading the shoulder of the left arm.
Purification began.
Tsuchigumo felt it.
"—You brat!"
Five of its six arms contracted simultaneously, closing inward as it attempted to squeeze out the spiritual power that had invaded its body.
Yao Qi surged.
The ground within a radius of hundreds of meters turned to stone in an instant. A grayish-white petrification spread outward from under its feet, its speed now several degrees faster than before, finally overwhelming even the ultimate speed of Kidomaru's transformation.
This was its full power.
At least, the full power of its current state.
A grayish-white 'frost' began to creep across the surface of the Asura Transformation's skeleton—the petrification was spreading. The ground beneath Hikaru's feet was also hardening into solid rock.
But he did not retreat. Instead, he took another step forward.
"Kikyo!"
He only called out her name.
Kikyo raised her bow. Her spiritual power, honed after seven days of seclusion, condensed on the tip of her arrow. The white ball of light expanded to an unmatched size—a spiritual sphere a meter in diameter, so transparent one could almost see the spiraling pathways of power rotating within.
This was her maximum output.
She fired.
At the same time, Hikaru gathered all the lightning of the Asura Transformation onto the blade of Muramasa. The purple light intensified, dyeing the projected blade into a dazzling pillar of pure thunder.
The moment he slashed down, the spiritual arrow struck the exact same location.
Tsuchigumo's upper left arm.
Two forces detonated simultaneously at the same point.
The very atmosphere roared and exploded.
Dust and debris stirred on all sides.
Blood—a dark, viscous gray belonging only to a Great Yokai—splattered across the shattered ground. The demonic blood landed on the petrified earth with a sizzling hiss, like a branding iron plunged onto an icy surface.
Amidst the churning dust and smoke, a huge arm fell from mid-air.
It smashed onto the ground, blasting out a crater more than three meters deep. The grayish-white severed limb twitched twice at the bottom of the pit, its knuckles opening and closing spasmodically. Then, the Yao Qi began to dissipate from the cross-section of the wound. The massive arm started to disintegrate and weather, turning into gray dust that scattered on the wind—returning directly to the grander, more natural 'phenomenon' of the world.
Of Tsuchigumo's six arms, one was broken.
And unlike the previous disintegration and recovery, this was a true, grievous injury. It had been severed as if torn out by the roots, an injury that would be difficult to recover from in a short time.
On the exoskeleton of Hikaru's Asura Transformation, the 'frost' of petrification had already covered more than half of its frame. The structure of his right auxiliary arm shattered and fell away, and the skeleton of his left leg was riddled with spider-web cracks.
He retreated.
The body of the Asura Transformation withdrew from Tsuchigumo's attack range, its footsteps dragging on the petrified ground, leaving two scorched tracks burned by residual lightning.
He retreated until he stood before Kikyo.
He stopped.
The Bone-Thunder body of the Asura Transformation had purple arcs flickering in its cracks, like a lamp about to burn out.
But the crimson pupils beneath the ghost mask were still shining.
He looked up.
He looked at the behemoth before him, the creature that had lost an arm but was still standing at the bottom of the pit, laughing up at the sky.
Tsuchigumo was truly laughing.
Laughing that, in this era, there was actually someone who could truly injure it.
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