Chapter 230: Carrying Three Blades, Slashing Through Half the Mountain's Buddhas
Hikaru stepped out of the cavern's damp shadows. Before him stretched the jagged, endless peaks of Mount Hakurei, its slopes swallowed by a thick, winding white mist that clung to the rock like a shroud.
"Wait!" Nobuna's sharp voice chased him from the darkness. The frantic patter of the girl's bare feet slapped against the loose rubble.
Hikaru did not break his stride. The massive weight of Banryu rested casually across his right shoulder, his pace measured and unhurried.
Nobuna finally caught up, her golden hair whipping wildly in the mountain draft. Smudges of dried blood from a recent nosebleed still stained her upper lip despite her hasty attempts to wipe it away, and her silk kimono sported two fresh, jagged tears along the hem.
"You could at least ask if I'm okay!" she snapped, planting her feet.
Hikaru blinked slowly. "Are you okay?"
"...No."
"Then that settles it."
Nobuna's breath hitched, nearly choking on her own indignation. She sucked in a sharp breath, her chest heaving as she forced down the fiery glare burning in her golden slit-pupils.
"You're looking for Imagawa Yoshimoto, aren't you."
Hikaru's steady footsteps finally hitched, slowing by a fraction. He tilted his head, his deadpan gaze sliding over the young head of the Oda Clan.
Nobuna crossed her arms tightly over her chest, tilting her chin away with an expression of supreme annoyance. She clicked her tongue. "I don't know what kind of dumb luck that woman has. She's a complete coward, yet she somehow managed to make a monster like you care this much."
Whether the bitter edge in her voice stemmed from wounded pride or sheer irritation remained ambiguous. Regardless, she huffed. "I know where she is."
"Speak."
"We were together at the start," Nobuna rattled off, her tone laced with deep vexation. "After getting sucked into this cursed mountain, the four of us—myself, Katsuie, Toshiie, and that Imagawa Yoshimoto—all landed in the exact same spot near the base."
"Then those two guardian spirits suddenly went completely berserk. Tengen Kujaku and Hyobishin. But they only locked onto me. They completely ignored her."
"And in the chaos, we got separated."
Hikaru's ghostly eyes flared with a brief, cold light. Separation meant Yoshimoto's situation was critical. She possessed a guardian spirit of her own. If that massive white elephant went feral under the mountain's influence, she lacked the martial strength to subdue it alone.
"Where did you lose her?"
Nobuna pointed a slender finger up the mist-shrouded steps. "Halfway up."
"We were being hunted, so we fled downward toward the base. But she turned and ran directly in the opposite direction, straight up the peak! That woman has absolutely zero loyalty!"
Hearing this, Hikaru cast a sideways glance at the complaining daimyo. He kept his thoughts to himself. They were enemies, after all. If I hadn't intervened at Okehazama, Yoshimoto would have been a severed head on Nobuna's trophy rack. Why would she owe the Oda any loyalty?
He dropped the subject, shifting his gaze upward toward the obscured summit.
He needed to extract Yoshimoto, ensuring his long-term investments didn't go to waste. Beyond that, he had to crush Master Hakushin's barrier and intercept Tsuchimikado Koketsu along with the Kyoto faction pulling her strings. He required a flawless execution across all fronts.
The colossal slope of Mount Hakurei stretched from the tip of his boots up into the blinding white heavens. Ancient Buddhist statues lined both sides of the weathered stone steps, their numbers growing denser and their forms larger the higher the path climbed.
The fog here hung heavier than at the base, carrying a suffocating, sacred weight. The holy suppression radiating from the mountain's core pressed against his skin. This world deviated slightly from the original lore, but the lethal nature of this holy ground remained absolute.
Hikaru steadied his breathing, centering his focus. He lifted his foot and planted it onto the first stone stair leading toward the mountainside.
The instant his sole ground against the stone, the true pressure crashed down.
It felt entirely different from the foothills. Down below, the holy aura merely restricted the outward projection of his Yoki, acting like an invisible, clinging net. Now, that net solidified into a physical, crushing weight. It slammed into him from all directions simultaneously, a violent holy force attempting to obliterate every ounce of Impure Qi within his undead veins.
This was purification. Absolute, merciless cleansing.
His Yoki was violently shoved back, retreating deep into the marrow of his demonic bones. The crackling electrical arcs of his Thunder Muscle flickered and died across his skin. The boiling heat of his Blood-Fire Transformation plummeted, turning his flesh ice-cold.
Even the elemental circulation within his four internal organs ground to an agonizing halt. His heart fire choked and dimmed; his kidney water froze into sludge; his lung metal locked up; his liver wood withered, ceasing all growth.
Just as expected. Strangely, feeling his body shut down brought Hikaru a grim sense of relief. It confirmed his knowledge. This was the authentic, unadulterated Barrier of Mount Hakurei—a colossal matrix forged from the accumulated magical power of countless ascetic high monks who had sacrificed their lives to the Buddha.
The lower trails were merely the outer fringes. Only now was he stepping into the true killing zone. In the original lore, this barrier possessed enough holy density to suppress even the terrifying Yoki of a Great Yokai like Sesshomaru. Granted, Sesshomaru had been exceptionally young by Great Yokai standards back then, and he had been suppressed while restricting his own power in a human vessel. But a Great Yokai was still a Great Yokai. Even weakened, Sesshomaru's baseline eclipsed any standard Twelfth Transformation demon.
A new set of footsteps crunched against the gravel behind him. Out of the shifting white mist stepped a red-haired woman, flanked by three tall, imposing female figures.
"Takeda Shingen?" Nobuna blinked, her guard instantly rising.
Shingen merely cast a brief, silent glance at the 'little one'. Her deep crimson hair stood out starkly against the oppressive white fog. Sensing the heavy shift in the atmosphere, she mimicked Hikaru, taking two cautious steps forward onto the stairs. Her brow furrowed.
"The magical power of this mountain just spiked."
Masakage followed closely behind, her expression placid. Pure humans could not feel the lethal, burning suppression directed at demons, but they could distinctly sense the air turning unnaturally 'clean'. It was a sterile, absolute purity that choked out even the divine energy of their artifacts.
Nobuna froze on the steps, her golden eyes narrowing into sharp slits. She felt it too. The dark karmic fire lying dormant within her soul convulsed. The sensation felt deeply unnatural—the innate power of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was being shoved down into the darkest corners of her being, as if a massive, invisible hand had clamped a heavy iron lid over her core.
Shingen's Fudo Myo-o was, at its root, a recognized Buddhist deity. But a Demon King stood in direct, violent opposition to the Buddha, functionally indistinguishable from a supreme Yokai. Demons slaughtered Buddhas, and Buddhas eradicated demons. They were locked in an eternal cycle of mutual destruction, the victor decided solely by raw magnitude. In the ancient sutras, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, Hajun, had been utterly crushed by the Buddha's light.
Amidst the crushing holy pressure, every pair of eyes locked onto the grey-clad figure standing at the vanguard. What was this undead monster planning? Bearing the brunt of a barrier designed to melt demons into ash... did he actually intend to storm the summit by force?
Hikaru did not disappoint their morbid curiosity. He planted his feet squarely in the center of the stone steps, the white fog churning violently around his ankles. The holy power cascaded down from the peak like a waterfall, crushing his Yoki down to its absolute nadir.
Then, he committed an act of sheer, suicidal insanity. In the very epicenter of a domain built to obliterate Impure Qi, he ripped off his own internal limiters. He unleashed his Yoki. He triggered the Ninth Transformation: Asura.
His four internal organs shuddered violently. He forcefully ignited his choked heart fire. He violently churned his frozen kidney water. He ground his locked lung metal into motion, and viciously stretched his withered liver wood. He ignored the agonizing tearing of his own flesh.
Black-red Yoki erupted from the micro-fractures in his bones, tearing through his blood vessels and bursting from his pores. He forcefully vomited his demonic aura outward, directly clashing against the crushing weight of the Buddha's purification.
Massive bone spikes tore through his skin, erupting upward as crimson lightning violently arched across the mist. Inch by agonizing inch, a six-meter-tall Bone-Thunder Giant manifested, forcing its way into existence under the grinding pressure of the holy barrier.
The physical toll echoed loud enough for the women below to hear. The giant's skeletal armor shrieked and groaned under the holy weight. The crimson lightning sputtered and hissed, fighting a losing battle against the pure white light. The entire Asura form looked like a man trying to hold up a collapsing sky.
It was being crushed. But it held its ground. Trembling, groaning, the demonic giant locked its massive joints and refused to bow. It succeeded.
using his unique existence—straddling the razor's edge between life and death, human and demon—he endured the lethal vows of the ascetic monks. Through the vessel of the Ninth Transformation, he projected an ocean of Yoki so dense and violent it scraped the very boundaries of a Twelfth Transformation demon.
Shingen stared up at the monstrous silhouette, her crimson eyes widening as a fierce, battle-hungry glow ignited within her pupils.
Nobuna stood frozen, her golden eyes slightly glazed. She recognized this towering nightmare. It was the exact form that had effortlessly slaughtered her during their first encounter. The sheer, suffocating terror of that memory sent a cold spike of lingering dread through her chest.
But Hikaru was not finished.
The next second, three distinct weapons—three supreme Demonic Tools—were simultaneously projected into the massive, clawed hands of the Asura.
The right arm gripped Onikiri, the blade instantly igniting with dark red blood-fire. The left arm seized Yomikiri, its steel bleeding a thick, purple mist of ghostly energy. Amidst a sickening crunch of bone and tearing flesh, a third massive arm violently sprouted from the giant's right shoulder. Its clawed fingers wrapped around the enlarged, projected hilt of Banryu. The pale, colossal halberd-sword hummed viciously, vibrating with trapped thunder.
The Asura was fundamentally a pure projection of his released Yoki, an amalgamation of his Seventh and Eighth Transformations. It possessed no fixed anatomy, allowing him to freely mold its shape. Thus, a three-armed, three-bladed demon god was born.
Blood-fire, ghostly mist, and crimson thunder. The three distinct powers converged, superimposing over one another and vibrating in violent harmony within the Asura's core. In that split second, the sheer density of his Yoki skyrocketed past all logical limits, shattering the ceiling and stepping firmly into the world of the Twelfth Transformation.
This was the absolute peak of qualitative demonic energy. A single step higher would cross into the world of natural disasters—a living phenomenon.
The invisible, crushing wall of the monks' holy vows slammed into this rising pillar of demonic malice. They collided head-on.
The barrier did not shatter. Mount Hakurei's absolute defense, forged from the mummified flesh of living Buddhas over centuries, was far too ancient to snap from raw force alone. However, it could no longer push Hikaru down. The holy light and the dark Yoki locked into a violent, grinding stalemate.
Then, the mountain defended itself. The densely packed Buddhist statues lining the stone steps—the wrathful Vajrapani, the weeping Bodhisattvas, the praying Arhats, and the serene Tathagatas—all simultaneously snapped their stone-carved eyes open.
Blinding golden light erupted from their blank stone pupils. Deep within the bedrock of the mountain, heavy Sanskrit chants began to rumble. The sound was low, dense, and suffocating, mimicking the voices of ten thousand unseen monks chanting in perfect, terrifying unison.
The statues moved. Stone ground against stone as hundreds of heavy arms raised into the mist. Their stone palms clapped together. Blinding orbs of concentrated holy light manifested between their hands—some as massive as wagon wheels, others as small and dense as iron fists. Without warning, the statues hurled the golden orbs down the steps, all aiming for the towering Asura.
A meteor shower of holy gold filled the sky, as dense and inescapable as a torrential downpour.
From her vantage point below, Shingen instinctively snapped her iron war fan open, raising it to shield her face from the blinding glare.
Her deep red eyes mirrored the descending golden rain, capturing the solitary silhouette of the six-meter-tall Bone-Thunder Giant about to be swallowed by the holy bombardment.
"This man..." Shingen breathed softly, a tremor of repressed, battle-crazed excitement bleeding into her voice. "He actually dares!"
Nobuna stood paralyzed beside her rival. Her golden slit-pupils were blown wide, her jaw hanging slack as she watched the apocalyptic display above.
Then, Hikaru's Asura moved.
The primary right arm swung Onikiri in a brutal horizontal arc. A crescent wave of dark red blood-fire exploded outward, sweeping across a massive thirty-degree cone. The demonic flames violently intercepted the golden orbs. The holy spheres cracked under the intense heat, their internal Buddha Power scorched and corrupted by the blood-fire before violently detonating into harmless sparks. The sweeping blade-light didn't stop, crashing into the statues lining the path.
Stone arms were cleanly severed. Chunks of blessed rock tumbled down the ancient stairs.
Simultaneously, the left arm whipped Yomikiri upward.
A dark purple arc slashed diagonally from the earth to the sky. The Demonic Breath instantly froze the heavy moisture in the mountain fog, erecting a massive, mist-like wall of cursed ice. The holy orbs slamming into the barrier from the flank were instantly halted, their momentum killed before they shattered into golden dust.
The statues standing behind the frozen wall were swallowed by the expanding shockwave of ghostly energy. The golden light bleeding from their stone eyes flickered and died, their holy connection severed.
Finally, Banryu fell.
The newly sprouted third arm brought the pale, colossal blade crashing straight down from the heavens. The heavy steel slammed into the center of the stone steps. The ancient rock violently ruptured under the sheer kinetic force, tearing a deep, jagged trench straight up the mountain path for dozens of paces. The shockwave of the impact ripped outward, uprooting the statues bordering the trench. They toppled backward, crashing into one another in a deafening, cascading chain reaction of crumbling stone.
Three strikes. Three directions. Front, flank, and directly overhead. A flawless, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree dome of absolute defense, paired instantly with a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree zone of total annihilation. The golden rain was wiped from the sky. Half the ancient statues guarding the lower steps were reduced to jagged rubble.
The Asura did not pause. It continued its brutal march upward, its massive bone-plated feet crushing the holy debris into powder. With every heavy step, the mountain trembled. With every foot lifted, another swath of ruined, headless Buddhas was left in its wake.
The demonic giant waded through the blinding crossfire of holy light and dark energy. Thick, dark red blood-fire bled from the gaps in its skeletal armor, leaving trailing ribbons of crimson across the pure white mist.
He was the literal incarnation of an Asura. Trampling over the shattered remains of the Buddhas, crushing the holy Sanskrit chants beneath his heels, he tore his way through the absolute barrier and marched relentlessly toward the summit.
He breached the mountainside. As his overwhelming demonic shadow fell over the higher slopes, the remaining stone Buddhas seemed to bow their heavy heads in forced submission, their ancient forms groaning before toppling over into the dust.
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