Chapter 212: The Daily Exorcism Routine of a God and a Shrine Maiden
In the meantime, the rhythm of life for the villagers of Kaede Village remained largely unchanged. The mornings were still measured by the rhythmic thud of hoes striking the earth, the heavy splash of wooden buckets in the communal well, and the lively bartering at the local market.
The only true difference lay at the heart of the village. Their local shrine had undergone a massive upgrade. The worn wooden pillars had been replaced, the courtyard expanded, and the daily influx of worshippers had swelled considerably. Every few days, traveling merchants from distant provinces would stop by, respectfully tossing a few copper coins into the polished offering box.
This prosperity was only natural. The formal application submitted by the Hojo Clan to the capital in Kyoto had long since been approved. Hikaru now held a legitimate, officially recognized position within the Shinto hierarchy.
For Kikyo and Hikaru, this period of relative peace allowed them to truly experience the life of traveling companions.
Kikyo's mastery over the Spirit Transformation Technique had grown remarkably proficient. Whenever she moved, her immense spiritual power would wrap tightly around her body, transforming her into a brilliant, ethereal streak of light. Her agility no longer merely approached Hikaru's baseline speed; it actively rivaled the explosive velocity of his Thunder Muscle.
Because she could keep up, she could finally step out of the village. She could even begin long journeys.
In the current Kanto region, particularly within provinces like Musashi, scattered Yokai settlements still caused localized chaos. Even with Hikaru's Night Parade of One Hundred Demons patrolling the borders, rogue entities frequently slipped through the cracks. This was especially true in the rugged mountainous terrain of western Sagami, where cross-border demons occasionally wreaked havoc. Although the Earth Barrier had blanketed the three provinces during that fateful night, its suppression had specifically targeted the blood-demons tied to Kibutsuji Muzan, leaving ordinary Yokai unaffected.
A year ago, Kikyo would have shouldered the burden of hunting these stragglers entirely alone.
Now, there were two of them. One undead Yokai and one shrine maiden, fighting side by side to cleanse the land.
Their efficiency was terrifying. They would depart at the crack of dawn and return before the afternoon sun began to dip.
Hikaru always took the vanguard, his muscles crackling with the violet arcs of Thunder Muscle as he carved a path through the dense mountain forests. His Crimson Demon Eyes continuously scanned the shifting shadows, while his Sharp Eye Transformation analyzed every microscopic anomaly in the environment.
Kikyo trailed exactly three steps behind him and slightly to the side. Clad in her pristine white robes and crimson hakama, she skimmed effortlessly over the treetops using the Spirit Transformation Technique, resembling a descending white rainbow.
When they encountered ordinary demons, Hikaru didn't even break his stride. A brutal thrust of a Bone Spike, a blinding flash of lightning, or a sweeping wave of blood-fire was enough to instantly reduce them to ash.
When they crossed paths with stronger, mutated Yokai bosses, the dynamic shifted smoothly. Hikaru would lock the creature down, trapping it for a mere fraction of a second. That was all the time Kikyo needed. She would draw her longbow, the string snapping with a sharp twang. The Sacred Arrow would whistle through the air, its tip condensing pure spiritual power into a blinding, fist-sized sphere of light that vaporized the target upon impact.
No words were ever exchanged during combat.
Their tacit understanding had been forged in the fires of countless life-or-death battles. Now, a single glance was enough. Most of the time, they didn't even need to look at each other. The subtle fluctuations of his dark Yao Qi and her radiant spiritual power served as perfect, unspoken signals.
The quiet moments between their exorcism duties were trivial, yet deeply warm.
On their way back from a successful hunt, Kikyo paused by a shallow mountain stream to wash her hands. She crouched gracefully by the water's edge, rolling up her white sleeves to reveal her fair forearms. As her wrists dipped into the freezing, crystal-clear water, her expression softened into deep focus.
Her pure spiritual power subconsciously bled into the stream. Rather than fleeing, the local fish and freshwater shrimp were drawn to the life-affirming energy, schooling around her submerged hands and playfully nibbling at her fingertips.
Hikaru leaned his back against a rough pine trunk nearby, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her.
"Even the fish like your spiritual power," he noted, his voice carrying its usual deadpan cadence.
"Spiritual power is inherently close to life," Kikyo replied softly. She shook the glistening droplets from her hands, stood up, and let her dark eyes rest on his face. "It's you, on the other hand. Even the fish swim around you."
She was right. The moment Hikaru stepped closer to the bank, the school of minnows that had been happily circling Kikyo's hands scattered in sheer panic. A Yokai's Yao Qi instinctively suppressed and terrified ordinary living creatures. Even though Hikaru kept his demonic aura heavily restrained, the primal instincts of small animals demanded they keep their distance.
"It will be fine once I am brought back to life," Hikaru said calmly.
Kikyo didn't offer a verbal response. She simply closed the distance between them, walking to his side and naturally slipping her slender fingers into the calloused grip of his palm.
Their hands intertwined. Together, they walked slowly along the winding path of the stream, heading home.
Days like this flowed by for nearly a month.
[Bankotsu: Favorability 44. First Talent 'Courageous Strength' unlocked (When wielding a sword, base strength is doubled.)]
[Black Pearl Agate: Favorability 31. First Talent 'Breaking Illusions' unlocked (When carrying the gem, see through reality and truth, piercing all illusions.)]
[Tahoto Shrine Maiden Prayer Beads: Favorability 36. First Talent 'Curse Resistance' unlocked (When carrying the prayer beads, nullify most non-conceptual curses.)]
Three powerful Demonic Tools, all steadily improving in his arsenal.
Beyond his equipment, the favorability of the Shikon Jewel had also climbed at a consistent pace during this peaceful month.
The more emotionally stable Kikyo became, the stronger the Naohi grew within the jewel. As the pure Naohi flourished, the corrupting influence of the Magatsuhi was violently suppressed, pushing the Shikon Jewel's overall state toward absolute purification.
Just how stable was Kikyo now?
One only needed to look at her face as she knelt before the shrine's main altar every night, chanting her sutras. Her features were so serene, so completely unburdened, that she looked almost ethereal in the candlelight. One could see it in the quiet, genuine joy that lit up her eyes whenever she shared a fleeting, intimate touch with Hikaru during the day.
The crushing, suffocating weight she had carried for years as the solitary guardian of the jewel had vanished.
She finally had a sense of belonging. She had roots. She had a partner to whom she could safely entrust her back.
[Shikon Jewel: Favorability 90.]
Ninety. It was agonizingly close to the absolute maximum value.
Hikaru stared at the floating text on his system panel, fully aware that the final ten points would not rise as easily as the first ninety. The closer an artifact got to its maximum favorability, the deeper and more deep the required 'recognition' became. This was especially true for a divine artifact as complex as the Shikon Jewel.
But he wasn't worried. It was only a matter of time. After all, Kikyo was right here by his side.
Later that night, Hikaru sat on the smooth wooden veranda at the front of the shrine. Kikyo sat beside him, her weight resting comfortably against his shoulder. There was no space between them as they both looked up at the vast, star-strewn canopy of the night sky.
Down in the courtyard, Momiji and Botan were lazily pushing brooms across the stone tiles, sweeping up fallen autumn leaves. Every few seconds, the two shikigami servants would peek up at the veranda, whispering excitedly about the man and woman above them... or rather, the demon and the woman. Or was it a god and a woman?
The terminology felt strange, but the visual harmony of the pair was obvious.
The servants' hushed, gossiping chatter drifted clearly up to the veranda. Hikaru and Kikyo heard every single word, sharing a silent, amused glance that required no commentary.
Down in the valley, the warm, flickering lights of Kaede Village dotted the darkness, illuminating the crisscrossing paths of the farmlands.
This was a rare, precious pocket of time where no large-scale wars ravaged the Kanto region. A fleeting era of peace.
However, peace in the Sengoku era always came with an expiration date.
Without warning, a sharp, jarring vibration of Fear pulsed from Hikaru's waist.
It was a priority message transmitted through the Hyakki network, using the Tanuki Spirit as a long-distance communication hub.
It was urgent. Hikaru's relaxed posture vanished. He frowned, reaching out to lift a wooden bowl filled with clear water from a nearby tray. He tapped the rim, sending tiny ripples across the surface. Using the water as a physical vessel, he channeled his Fear to manifest the visual projection from the sender.
The panicked face of Juzaburo, the Tanuki Grand Steward of the Twenty-Three Demons, materialized in the rippling water.
"My Lord! Urgent report from Suruga Province!" Juzaburo's voice trembled with a rare, naked panic. "The Imagawa Clan's Grand Steward, Taigen Sessai... is dead."
The transmission cut off. Dead.
Taigen Sessai. The true administrative mastermind of Suruga Province. The brilliant military strategist of the Imagawa Clan, feared throughout the land as the 'Black-Robed Prime Minister'. The enigmatic woman who always wore pristine white monk's robes.
The same woman who had waited patiently for him for three days in the Tenshukaku shrine, using her terrifying human intellect to calculate the exact timing needed to 'borrow his knife' to kill her enemies.
She had warned him back then. Her time was running out—she had predicted she had less than a year left to live. Now, her destiny had finally caught up with her.
Hikaru closed his eyes. The last words that brilliant woman had spoken to him echoed clearly in his mind. She didn't need him to fight her wars or govern her country. She only needed him to pull 'her'back from the brink during the most dangerous moment of her life.'She' being Imagawa Yoshimoto.
Hikaru didn't even need to guess what that dangerous moment would be. History had already written Imagawa Yoshimoto's destiny in blood.
The Battle of Okehazama. One of the most legendary, brutal upsets in the history of the Japanese Sengoku period, where a tiny, desperate force would shatter an overwhelming army.
He opened his eyes, his Crimson Demon Eyes glowing like hot coals in the dim light of the veranda lanterns. Taigen Sessai's prophecy had come to pass, and her final entrustment was now active. The time for slaughter was approaching.
Far away from the quiet mountains of Kanto, thousands of miles toward the center of the Japanese world, lay Kyoto.
Inside the heavily guarded walls of the Onmyo Bureau.
The dormitory courtyard should have been dead silent in the middle of the night, but tonight, the air was thick with suffocating tension. Inside the main observatory, a massive divination plate carved with a complex pentagram array suddenly began to rotate violently on its axis, spinning without a single hand touching it.
The Onmyoji on night duty staggered backward in sheer terror, his porcelain tea bowl slipping from his trembling fingers and shattering against the floorboards.
"The celestial phenomena... they've changed!"
Chaos erupted instantly. Frantic footsteps thundered down the wooden corridors. Paper shoji doors were slammed open one after another, and lanterns flared to life in rapid succession. The entire Onmyo Bureau was thrown into a state of absolute uproar.
The violent, unprompted movement of the grand divination plate meant only one thing: the fundamental trend of the world was shifting. Either an existence capable of tearing the landscape apart was rising, or an ancient, foundational order was collapsing.
But no matter how hard the scholars stared at the spinning bronze, no one could read the specific direction of the threat. The glowing light of the pentagram array stuttered and flickered wildly, actively jammed by an overwhelming, unseen force.
"Where is Lord Tsuchimikado, the Head of the Onmyo Bureau?! What do you mean he's not here?!"
"Then hurry! Run and fetch Lord Keikain, the Assistant Head! Move!"
But the true source of the terror wasn't in the stars above. It was deep beneath the panicked boots of the Onmyoji.
Deeper down. Buried far beneath the ancient streets of Kyoto.
Inside a sprawling, subterranean nest palace, the stagnant air suddenly plummeted to freezing temperatures. Hagoromo Gitsune, the great Yokai who had coiled her massive presence beneath the capital for centuries, slowly opened a single eye.
A slit-like, glowing golden vertical pupil pierced the absolute darkness.
She sensed it. Her awakening wasn't triggered by the pathetic scurrying of the Onmyo Bureau above ground—to her, their panic was no different from ants scrambling over a kicked anthill.
The fluctuation came from much further away. It was an incredibly faint pulse, echoing as if it were traveling through countless layers of heavy curtains.
The child gestating in her womb—'Nue'—had moved.
It seemed to have sensed her recent mounting distress and impatience. The residual, god-like will contained within the unborn entity had forcibly crossed the boundaries of life and death, extending its invisible tentacles out toward the human world to comfort her.
Hagoromo Gitsune's golden pupil constricted slightly. She didn't shift her body, nor did she bother to open her second eye.
She merely gave a gentle, lazy sweep of her massive, shadowy tails. The movement sent centuries of accumulated dust drifting slowly through the freezing air.
Deep within the cavernous expanse of the nest, hundreds of dormant demons felt the sudden spike in their master's aura. One by one, they raised their grotesque heads from the shadows. Blood-red eyes, sickly yellow pupils, eerie glowing greens, and bruised, dark purples—countless pairs of monstrous eyes snapped open, blinking in the suffocating darkness.
A silent, suppressed frenzy rippled through the underground army.
Hagoromo Gitsune ignored her legion. She simply let her single eye drift shut once more. However, the corners of her pale lips curled upward, forming an incredibly faint, dangerously ambiguous smile.
"...My sweet child, are you trying to help your mother all the way from the depths of hell?"
Hagoromo Gitsune had indeed been growing violently impatient lately. The endless wars in the Kanto region had inexplicably ceased, and there was even a disturbing trend toward total unification in the east.
Word had reached her that two massive demon factions had recently risen to power in the Kansai region. Among them was the elusive boundary demon, Kyoka Suigetsu. While these two factions constantly clashed with one another, their combined presence had effectively subjugated the originally chaotic local demon populations.
Because of this newfound order, the ambient amount of human resentment and fear had plummeted significantly. This forced her to consume far more human livers from the citizens of Kyoto to compensate for the lack of ambient negative energy. To make matters worse, her harvesting speed had slowed to a crawl ever since she lost a very specific, useful tool.
That tool had been the special little demon serving under Kidomaru. Hagoromo Gitsune had always known exactly what kind of treacherous creature that spy was, she simply hadn't cared enough to kill it until it stopped being useful.
However, compared to the miraculous fluctuation she just felt from her womb, those minor setbacks were entirely meaningless.
Her smile widened into an expression of pure, twisted bliss. She was so overjoyed by her child's movement that she completely forgot to swallow the bloody chunk of human liver still resting against her lips.
Her whispered words vanished into the empty, cavernous underground, leaving no echo.
High above, the lanterns of the Onmyo Bureau continued to flicker in blind panic.
And far below, the eyes of a thousand demons burned brightly in the dark, waiting for the slaughter to begin.
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