Chapter 143: The Great Yokai, Sesshomaru
West of Kyoto, within the territory of Tanba Province.
The mountains were fractured.
Entire peaks in the rolling range had been sheared clean through, their cross-sections as smooth as polished mirrors, as if slashed by some colossal blade. Steam still hissed from the wounds in the earth, and the rock at the edges of the cuts glowed a dark, angry red—the lingering heat of an instantaneous, scorching impact.
The valley floor had been gouged into a ravine at least twenty zhang wide and seemingly bottomless. The very soil on its banks was frozen in a surging, wave-like posture, petrified in the blast.
Spider silk was everywhere.
Grayish-white threads hung from cliffs, cocooned fallen giant trees, and carpeted the ground. Everything the silk touched had turned to stone, transforming the verdant landscape into a monochrome sculpture garden of death.
And in the very center of this ruin, Tsuchigumo squatted.
The stump of its upper-left arm was still weeping dark gray demonic blood—the wound dealt by the combined efforts of Hikaru and Kikyo back in Musashi Province. The cracks on its bone mask remained, a dim green light flickering from behind them, now charged with an unmatched excitement.
"Ha—hahahaha—"
A coarse, grating laugh squeezed out from behind the bone, shaking the rubble at its feet until it bounced.
"Thrilling! Damn satisfying!"
"What kind of blessed days are these? To meet two capable fighters in a row!"
Thirty paces away from it, a person stood.
Or rather, a demon.
His stature was slender, his white robes spotless, as if this scarred and broken battlefield had nothing to do with him. His silver-white hair cascaded to his waist, each strand gleaming with a cold light under the setting sun. Not a single grain of dust kicked up by the battle's shockwaves had dared to touch him.
A purple crescent moon was emblazoned on his handsome forehead, with two deep red stripes adorning each cheek. His golden, slitted pupils were half-closed, radiating an almost condescending indifference. Draped over his left shoulder was a magnificent, fluffy white fur, as soft and immaculate as a cloud.
A single sword hung at his waist. The scabbard was simple and ancient, its aura utterly restrained. It seemed less like a weapon and more like a scepter, possessing no discernible sharpness.
His name was Sesshomaru.
Of the Western Lands' dog demon clan, he was the son of the late Toga, the former number one Great Yokai of the Kansai region.
—The sequence of events had been simple.
After leaping away from Musashi Province, Tsuchigumo had headed west, its path of return aimed roughly toward Kyoto. Its mood was excellent. For the first time in four hundred years, someone had managed to sever one of its arms. Though it hurt, that long-lost, tangible sensation of bone being smashed made every cell in its body scream with excitement.
Forget about the shrine maiden. But that brat, Hikaru… he was a worthy opponent.
Worth waiting for. He would wait for the boy to grow stronger, until the day he could provide a truly satisfying fight.
But Tsuchigumo had not expected to run into another one on the journey home.
A massive wave of Yao Qi had rolled out from the western mountains—intense, pure, and utterly arrogant. It carried a scent completely different from that of ordinary demons. This was not the aura of a lesser demon born from the mixing of turbid qi and mortal resentment, but the unmistakable presence of a Great Yokai, a demon from birth.
Tsuchigumo's five arms had frozen simultaneously. The green light behind its bone mask flared.
It recognized this scent. Not the young, silver-haired demon before it, but the more ancient, foundational undertone that lingered within his Yao Qi.
'Toga's brat?'
And so, without so much as a greeting, it had lunged.
They fought for half an hour.
With their power fully unleashed, three mountain peaks were leveled, a new valley was plowed through the earth, and dozens of miles in every direction were turned to scorched, petrified wasteland. During the battle, Sesshomaru had revealed his true form as a Great Yokai—a colossal, silver-white canine. His size was no smaller than Tsuchigumo's, and his fangs and claws were coated in a highly corrosive, toxic Yao Qi. Every bite could grind mountain rock into powder.
But Tsuchigumo was no pushover.
Though it was missing an arm and far from its peak—with six arms reduced to five—its fighting style only grew wilder as the battle progressed. Spider silk blanketed the sky, and its petrification field covered a radius of over a hundred miles.
Eventually, Sesshomaru reverted from his giant hound form back to his human guise.
Tsuchigumo stopped as well.
It wasn't that a winner had been decided. It was that neither of them wished to settle the score in such a half-hearted state.
At this moment, Sesshomaru stood at the edge of a cliff, his long silver hair perfectly neat in the dying light of the sun. On his handsome face, his brow was only slightly furrowed, a clear sign of his annoyance.
"Boring."
He spoke, his voice low and flat, yet carrying an all-consuming arrogance. "You've found the wrong person. I have no interest in you."
"Ha? Your old man was much more interesting than you!" Tsuchigumo slapped its knee with its only remaining intact upper-right arm, its tone dripping with dissatisfaction. "That bastard Toga… back when he and I ran wild in the Kansai region, we fought for three days and three nights until neither of us could stand! I broke two of his fangs and seven of his claws, and he shattered no less than eighteen of my arms! You, on the other hand… you're clearly no weaker than he was in his youth, yet you give me this look after only half an hour."
"That was his business." Sesshomaru's golden, slitted pupils swept over Tsuchigumo, his gaze as cold as a winter night.
Toga—the greatest Great Yokai of the Western Lands and the lord of the dog demon clan. He had perished over a hundred years ago over a human woman, leaving behind two famous swords and two sons.
Sesshomaru was the eldest.
He had inherited the vast majority of his father's demonic power and bloodline. Upon reaching adulthood, he was already a Great Yokai in his own right, yet he had not inherited the strongest of the family heirlooms—Tessaiga.
It was a legendary sword that, with a single swing, could annihilate a hundred demons.
Yet Toga had left it to his second son, a half-demon, rather than to his eldest, a natural-born Great Yokai.
This was a knot in Sesshomaru's heart that remained unresolved to this day, though he would never deign to mention it to anyone.
"Do not speak of things that have nothing to do with me." Sesshomaru turned, preparing to leave.
For once, Tsuchigumo didn't fly into a rage. Instead, its tone shifted, becoming tinged with a reminiscent interest. "Today, in Musashi Province, I ran into an interesting brat."
Sesshomaru did not stop walking.
"An Oni Samurai. Likely some small demon born from a dead man on a battlefield. After I hit him a few times, he suddenly grew stronger right there on the spot—even manifested a skeletal frame to trade blows with me."
Sesshomaru's pace did not falter.
"There was also a priestess with him, one whose spiritual power could rival Midoriko's from back in the day. The two of them worked together and managed to cut off one of my arms."
His pace still didn't stop.
"That brat also has the Shikon Jewel."
He paused, but only for the briefest of moments. Then he continued walking.
The Shikon Jewel. He knew of it—an artifact formed hundreds of years ago when the priestess Midoriko perished along with a horde of demons. It was said to grant any wish.
However, it had nothing to do with him. He had no interest in human relics, nor did he have any wishes that required external aid to achieve.
"Oh, right—" Tsuchigumo added from behind him, its tone as casual as if they were discussing the weather. "That brat has a rather interesting ability."
"He can anchor souls."
"It seems he can even drag back souls that have already dissipated… and make them speak."
"I just heard that little demon follower of yours mention you were looking for something like that, right?"
This time, Sesshomaru's footsteps truly stopped.
His long, silver-white hair swayed gently in the wind. He did not turn around.
But the pupils of his golden, vertical eyes constricted for a single, sharp instant.
Summoning the dead… making the deceased speak.
The silence stretched for several breaths.
Then, Sesshomaru resumed walking, his pace neither fast nor slow, just as it had been when he arrived.
Only his direction had shifted, just slightly.
Behind him, a small, imp-like figure scrambled out of a shattered crater and frantically chased after him.
"Lord Sesshomaru, wait for me!"
Standing in place, Tsuchigumo watched the direction Sesshomaru had gone and simply laughed, a low rumble that echoed through the ruins.
He hoped that kid could grow up a bit faster.
On the other side.
Kaede Village, Musashi Province.
Inside the main hall of the shrine, morning light seeped through the cracks of the paper sliding doors, casting thin bands of light across the wooden floor. The air carried the characteristic crispness of autumn and the fresh, earthy scent of fallen leaves.
Hikaru sat cross-legged in the center of the hall, his eyes closed.
The Crimson Oni Mask rested on the floor before his knees. His pale, long hair was scattered over his shoulders and back, his grey robes draped loosely around him.
It had been two days.
Since Tsuchigumo had left and Uesugi Kenshin had withdrawn her army, he had spent most of his time here. Aside from his daily routine of intimacy with Kikyo, he was here, eyes closed, sensing.
Digesting.
The changes brought by Materialization ran far deeper than he had imagined. It wasn't just the explosion of demonic power—though that was certainly obvious. He could clearly feel that the Yao Qi within his body was far denser than it had been two days ago.
More important was the change in 'quality'.
From the Six Transformations to the Nine Transformations, his Physical Transformation had crossed the threshold into Materialization.
Before, his Yao Qi was like water in a bottle. The bottle was his body; the water was his power. The size of the bottle determined how much water it could hold.
Now, it was different.
The water had begun to seep out of the bottle.
It was recasting, overflowing, permeating.
Yao Qi was slowly diffusing outward from the pores of his skin, the crevices of his bones, and the walls of his blood vessels, beginning to thoroughly fuse with his very being. This was another sign of Materialization—his Yao Qi was no longer completely confined to specific parts of his body.
Although compared to Tsuchigumo's 'Phenomenon-level' Gaseous Transformation, this seepage of Yao Qi was laughably tiny, the direction was correct.
After all, the so-called process of Materialization was the continuous alteration of one's own essence. Once he reached the Twelve Transformations and the process was complete, he would achieve a perfect qualitative shift. He would no longer be a mere Oni.
The essence of an Oni Samurai was a dead person, a spirit reanimating a corpse that had absorbed Yao Qi. For Hikaru, the demonization of an Oni Samurai was the process of 'coming to life,' step by step.
However, it wouldn't be as a human.
But as… a 'Demon.'Hikaru felt that was the best way to describe his ideal state. Returning from death, being both dead and alive. When he reached that step, what drove his body would no longer be a'post-death obsession,' but a brand-new life bestowed by the Yao Qi itself.
From Oni to Demon.
From death to life.
This was one of his major goals. It was also the path the favorability system had pointed him toward—every fusion, every transformation, was pulling him bit by bit from the state of a dead thing back into the world of the living.
Nine Transformations now. Three more to go.
When he reached the Twelve Transformations… he would truly come to life.
At that time, he would be able to glimpse the world of a true Great Yokai.
At that time, he would be able to go a step further with Kikyo, rather than having to stop at the very end as they did every night.
Hikaru opened his eyes. In the dim morning light, the purple patterns in his Crimson Demon Eyes were faintly visible. After the Asura Transformation had dissipated, those patterns hadn't completely faded. They had settled into the deep layers of his irises, only surfacing when his demonic power was circulating.
He looked down at his palms.
The bone extensions at his fingertips had retracted into his body, but he knew that as long as he wished it, he could make them grow out again at any time—and they would be faster, harder, and longer than they were two days ago.
The soul-snaring power of his Spirit-Tracking Archer Transformation had likewise evolved after Materialization. As he'd noted before, 'Certain Hit' had previously required him to first lock onto a target's soul, a process involving perception and concentration. Now, that process had been shortened to a nearly negligible degree. As long as a target entered his range of demonic perception, the location of their soul would automatically surface in his consciousness.
Like an instinct.
And Thunder Muscle went without saying. The lightning, after Materialization, had seeped into his very bone marrow. His current base speed was already close to the level he had previously reached only when erupting with his full power.
If he were to erupt with his full power now—
He estimated his instantaneous speed could now barely match Kidomaru's. The duration wasn't long enough yet, of course. It was a moment, not an eternity. But for a body of Nine Transformations to be able to chase an old demon close to the Twelve Transformations could only be called powerful.
'Nine Transformations.'
He silently repeated the number in his heart. It was still a vast distance from Tsuchigumo's level. Although Hikaru wasn't sure exactly what stage Tsuchigumo was at—thirteen transformations, or fourteen, fifteen, or even higher—he knew with absolute certainty that the spider demon's strength was beyond his current reach.
But at least, it was no longer a gap like an ant looking up at the sky.
He could see it now, however faintly.
Just then, a voice came from the side.
A low, raspy voice rang out, sounding as if it had been suppressed for a long, long time.
Hikaru turned his head.
Naoe Kanetsugu was still tied to the pillar.
Counting from before the battle until now, it had been a full seven days. Uesugi Kenshin had withdrawn with her army. Momiji and Botan had brought her food and water, and had even loosened her ropes slightly—but they had never untied her.
No one had untied her, because no one had given the order to do so.
Hikaru seemed to be ignoring her on purpose. Kikyo didn't care. Momiji and Botan didn't dare take the initiative. Little Kaede had visited her a few times and even fed her half a piece of fruit.
Naoe Kanetsugu's deep blue light armor was now a wrinkled mess, her white jinbaori was covered in dust, and her dark brown high ponytail had completely come undone, with stray hairs stuck to her face and neck.
She looked terrible.
Not physically—though being tied up for so many days was certainly uncomfortable, Momiji and Botan had looked after her well enough to ensure she didn't starve or die of thirst.
It was her spirit that was broken.
Naoe Kanetsugu looked at Hikaru, her gaze inexplicably helpless. It wasn't hatred. Nor was it humiliation.
"Kill me," she said.
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