Chapter 214: Thunder from the Sky
Shibata Katsuie's cavalry unit shattered the fourth defensive line without breaking stride.
The Imagawa main camp was supposed to be an impenetrable fortress. Seven thousand men, three overlapping layers of sentries, and five staggered rows of anti-cavalry barricades—a careful marching formation laid down by the late Taigen Sessai for the March to the Capital.
But those defenses were designed to stop mortal flesh and blood.
They were never meant to halt the wrath of a Divine Artifact.
Every time Katsuie swung her blindingly bright greataxe, the air within a ten-foot radius violently warped. The distortion didn't stem from the oppressive dread of Yao Qi or the crackle of spiritual power. It was pure, unadulterated weight. Pushed to its absolute limit, the sheer mass of the weapon crushed the very oxygen in its path.
Against ordinary men, this alone made her an unstoppable force. Even though her physical body remained mortal—bound by the limits of stamina and the threat of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers—a single, explosive surprise charge was all she needed to decapitate the enemy's command.
Atop her massive black warhorse, Katsuie unleashed a horizontal sweep. The thick wooden stakes of the fifth horse-blocking barricade snapped the instant the axe blade brushed past them, exploding into a shower of lethal splinters. The dozens of armored cavalrymen thundering close behind her wielded no divine artifacts, but the sheer momentum of their charging steeds transformed them into iron hammers battering against a crumbling wall.
Thirty paces ahead lay Imagawa Yoshimoto's command tent.
The guards stationed before the flap were already unraveling. Forty ashigaru desperately scrambled to lock their bamboo spears into a defensive wall, while six mounted samurai yanked their reins, trying to level their lances. Their hands trembled violently. The fear of death gripped them, amplified by the instinctual, paralyzing terror mortals felt when faced with the overwhelming might of gods and Buddhas.
At that exact moment, the heavy fabric of the tent flap was thrust aside.
Imagawa Yoshimoto stepped into the sunlight.
No guards escorted her; she walked out entirely under her own power. The sixteen-year-old daimyo was slight of build, and the heavy, layered folds of her deep purple, gold-threaded junihitoe kimono looked absurdly out of place amidst the blood and dirt of a battlefield. Even wrapped in such magnificent silk, she looked painfully frail. The midday wind caught the hem of her robes as she stood before the command tent. In her hand, her knuckles were white around a folding fan painted with elegant pines and cranes.
Her complexion was ghastly. It wasn't the unnatural, sun-starved pallor of Kobe Hikaru; it was the bloodless white of absolute terror. Her lips quivered uncontrollably, and her knees knocked together beneath her heavy silk robes.
She was terrified. More terrified than any soldier bleeding in the mud.
Yet, she refused to take a single step backward.
She was the head of the Imagawa Clan, the sovereign of three provinces. She knew that if she turned her back now, her clan would turn to ash. At a time like this, she had to stand. She had to throw everything onto the pyre for one final, desperate gamble.
"Imagawa Clan—"
Her voice wavered, her teeth nearly clipping her tongue on the first syllable. But she forced her jaw steady for the second, and the third rang out clearer than the last.
"Soldiers of the Imagawa Clan!"
The shout tore through the midday air. It lacked the booming resonance of a seasoned general, carrying only the clear, soft pitch of a young girl. But cutting through the chaos of screaming horses and clashing steel, it reached the ears of every Imagawa soldier.
They knew that voice. It belonged to the sheltered daimyo who usually hid behind the bamboo blinds of her palanquin, the girl rumored to faint at the sight of an insect.
And now, she was standing in the open, directly in the path of a heavy cavalry charge.
"Your Lord is here!" Yoshimoto snapped her folding fan open and thrust it forward. The golden pines and cranes caught the sun, flashing like a beacon. "I am with you!"
The words were stiff. Naive. Yet they bled with a desperate, burning conviction.
It was enough. A spark in a powder keg. If a trembling girl could stare down death without blinking, her warriors could do the same. In this brutal era, a commander who anchored the frontline alongside their men became a living banner, pushing morale to its absolute peak.
This was the raw essence of human spirit forging an invisible shield. With the leader's will acting as the core and the soldiers' conviction burning as fuel, the collective aura of thousands converged. There was no magic here. No divine intervention. Just the terrifying, massive empowerment of human beings locking their sights onto a single, unyielding goal.
The trembling in the hands of the forty ashigaru ceased. They locked their spears forward, forming a bristling wall of bamboo and steel. The six mounted samurai steadied their mounts, their warhorses neighing fiercely as iron hooves tore into the earth. Further back, the scattered ashigaru in the second and third lines rallied at their lord's voice, surging forward to seal the flanking routes against the armored cavalry.
Shibata Katsuie narrowed her eyes.
She stared at the girl in the gaudy kimono, gripping a delicate fan like a weapon. A misplaced aristocrat waiting to be slaughtered. Yet, the girl didn't flinch or lose her composure in the face of certain death.
"Interesting," Katsuie barked, her voice booming over the din as she hoisted her greataxe higher.
The axe light crashed down like a falling moon.
The bamboo spear formation shattered instantly. Wood splintered into deadly shrapnel, and the concussive shockwave violently threw the front row of men into the dirt.
But the second row stepped over the bleeding bodies to fill the gap.
The axe fell again. The line shattered again. And again, men threw themselves into the breach. Like ocean waves hurling themselves against a jagged reef, they broke and surged, screaming as their spears splintered and their bones snapped. Guided only by a girl's folding fan, seven thousand men used their flesh and blood to drag Katsuie's charge to a grinding halt.
But it only bought a moment.
The ashigaru line finally collapsed entirely. The six mounted samurai charged, only to be obliterated in a single, deafening collision against Katsuie's armored vanguard.
The space before the command tent was suddenly, terrifyingly empty.
Katsuie's black warhorse trampled over the broken bamboo and ruined bodies. Her gray iron axe rose high above her head, casting a shadow over Imagawa Yoshimoto.
Thirty paces. Twenty. Ten.
Yoshimoto's legs finally gave out. She dropped to her knees, the heavy silk of her junihitoe pooling in the dirt. But she refused to close her eyes. She kept them wide open, her teeth grinding together as violent tremors wracked her frame. She didn't understand the power of gods, but she glared up at the descending axe light with pure, unadulterated defiance.
And then, the heavens tore open.
It wasn't the pounding of war drums, nor the blast of a conch shell. It was thunder.
From a cloudless, midday sky, a blinding bolt of lightning violently struck the earth directly between Shibata Katsuie and Imagawa Yoshimoto.
The ground detonated. Soil and rock sprayed outward in a concussive shockwave that obliterated the remaining debris in front of the tent. Katsuie's black horse shrieked in terror, rearing up so violently she had to wrench the reins to avoid being thrown into the mud.
As the dust settled and the ozone stench of lightning faded, a silhouette remained.
Something had fallen from the sky.
It was a sword. A weapon so grotesquely massive it mocked the very concept of human use. The blade was nearly as tall as a man and two fingers thick. Its pale, blunt edge wasn't forged to slice flesh; it was forged to pulverize bone. It was the physical crystallization of pure violence.
The greatsword had plunged vertically, its tip buried three feet deep into the scorched earth, the impact crater swept clean of gravel and withered grass.
A giant war sword. A newly born Demonic Tool.
Forged in the blood of a hundred-man slaughter and baptized by the Thousand Demon Slayer, its ordinary iron had gorged on Yao Qi and death energy until it carried the literal weight of a mountain.
A pale hand casually gripped the hilt.
The owner stepped out from the dissipating dust. Gray robes. Long, pale hair. Crimson Demon Eyes. Onikiri rested at his left hip, Yomikiri at his right. And in his right hand—Banryu.
He lifted the towering slab of iron with one hand, as effortlessly as a man picking up a fallen branch.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, his 'Courageous Strength' talent flared to life, doubling his physical power. Simultaneously, the inherent, crushing mass of Banryu multiplied as dark Yao Qi flooded its steel.
What was the true essence of the power of gods and Buddhas?
Weight. The suffocating weight of condensed faith that crushed all extraordinary things. Katsuie's greataxe obliterated everything in its path simply because its divine mass crushed the air itself.
But Banryu was heavier.
Before its horrific evolution into a Demonic Tool, it took three grown men just to lift it. Now, saturated with an ocean of resentment, demonic power, and dread—and wielded with the monstrous multiplier of Courageous Strength—it was no longer just one mountain.
It was ten.
If the power of gods suppressed the world with the weight of faith, Banryu would use the absolute, physical mass of condensed Yao Qi to crush that faith into dust.
Weight overcoming weight. Mountain shattering mountain.
Kobe Hikaru stood like an impenetrable wall between Imagawa Yoshimoto and Shibata Katsuie.
A grotesque demon mask materialized over his face. The crimson light bleeding through the mask's slits intertwined with the dark purple Yao Qi oozing from Banryu's pale blade. He didn't spare a single glance back at Yoshimoto. His Crimson Demon Eyes locked entirely onto Katsuie.
Beneath the half-demon mask, the corner of his mouth twitched in a dry, deadpan smirk.
He didn't utter a single word, yet the sheer, suffocating pressure radiating from him plunged the battlefield into terror.
Yoshimoto knelt in the dirt, staring up at the broad, gray-robed back that had materialized out of thin air. Pale hair drifted in the lingering static of the thunder strike, his shoulders completely eclipsing her view of the enemy. And that giant sword—a pale, heavy slab of ruin looking like a shattered fortress wall ripped from the earth—rested in his single hand as if it weighed nothing at all.
Her hands were still trembling, but the frantic hammering in her chest suddenly quieted.
She knew that back. She remembered the quiet prophecy Taigen Sessai had left her before his death.
At the most dangerous moment, someone will give you a hand.
She knew exactly who the old monk had meant. And now, he was here.
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