The panic lasted less than ten breaths.
In that span, Kōbe Hikaru couldn't even find an opening to act.
A crisp command had already issued from the direction of the main tent at the camp's center.
"Whole army, hear my order—form ranks!"
The voice wasn't loud, but it carried a powerful penetrating force, like a basin of cold water poured down, cutting off the spreading chaos.
"Demonic fiends beguile the mind. You who serve under Bishamonten as warriors—why fear mere restless souls!"
"Archers forward, relight the bonfires!"
"Divine artifacts to your four posts, each guard your formation!"
The commands came one after another, brief and forceful.
The chaos in the camp visibly subsided.
The ashigaru were still trembling, but the instinct born of training drove them to grip their spear shafts and run to their positions.
The bonfires were relit, the firelight driving back a corner of the blood mist.
The archers formed a line, drew and nocked, arrowheads leveled toward the low hill to the south.
And more striking still—
on the camp's east side, a burst of golden light.
A blade-wielding maiden warrior strode forth, her naginata sweeping across, the golden arc cleaving a dozen skeletons that had rushed the camp's edge clean through at the waist.
The bones scattered and crumbled, the corpse-fire snuffed out.
On the west side, two weaker golden lights flared as well.
Two young maiden warriors stood shoulder to shoulder, one holding a bow, one a shield, golden radiance seeping from their weapons and forcing the approaching wraiths back several yards.
The presence to the north grew active too.
An armored maiden warrior held station along the ridgeline, tachi raised before her, golden light shielding her body; the skeletons scrambling up from the north shattered on their own the moment they touched the edge of that light.
Four directions, four powers of divine artifacts.
They sealed the camp tight.
Kōbe Hikaru stood on the low hill, taking it all in.
"Quick reactions."
From utter chaos to restored order—less than ten seconds, start to finish.
An army that could manage that under a surprise wraith assault—you couldn't find many like it in all the Kantō.
And those four divine artifacts—though the average divine-power concentration was less than Kakizaki Kageie's, the coverage the four formed together turned the whole camp into a fortress outright.
The wraith skeletons had almost no resistance before the power of divine artifacts; a touch and they crumbled.
His false Night Parade of a Hundred Demons—on the level of raw strength—had been easily suppressed.
Most of the wraiths even burst apart on their own before being touched. Their yōkai aura, struck by the human qi military might that had been set faintly into motion, scattered and collapsed with them.
The state of Kōbe Hikaru's externalized skeletons could withstand it even less.
By that logic, within the range of this military might, his ranged attacks would also seem hard-pressed to take effect.
No striking from outside—the shell of this military might was clearly harder than its interior!
But it didn't matter.
That wasn't what he wanted.
What he wanted was only chaos—the brief fracture in a battle formation and its momentum, born of the instant a formation that had never faced a wraith assault was caught off guard.
And, glimpsed amid the chaos, the true disposition of the enemy camp.
Kōbe Hikaru's gaze passed through the blood mist and firelight, landing before the main tent at the camp's center.
A single person stood there.
Those commands just now had come from her mouth.
It wasn't Uesugi Kenshin—that avatar of gods and buddhas should still be on her way back.
It was a young woman. Or rather, a girl.
A girl so petite and slender, so youthful in appearance, that by rights she should never have appeared on a battlefield at all.
She wore deep-blue light armor, a white jinbaori draped over the breastplate, a horned helmet on her head embroidered with an overlapping pattern of two characters — "昆" (Kon) and "愛" (love).
A length of deep-purple hair fell over her shoulders, spilling out from both sides of the helmet, a few loose strands pressed to her forehead through the gaps beneath it, stirring faintly in the night wind.
Her features were clean and comely—not stunning, but extremely capable—with a composure between her brows that went beyond her years.
She held no weapon.
What she gripped was a gunbai—an iron command fan, a single large character written across its face — "昆" (Kon).
And on her body—there was no power of a divine artifact.
Not a trace.
She was purely human.
Yet the three thousand men of the entire camp and the four divine artifacts all obeyed her command.
Even the divine-artifact-avatar maiden warriors beside her addressed her as—
"Lord Naoe! The east is cleared; no powerful demonic fiends found!"
"Lord Naoe! The west is the same; the wraiths can't withstand a single blow!"
Naoe Kanetsugu.
The chief commander under Uesugi Kenshin—not a divine-artifact avatar herself, yet commanding all the divine-artifact avatars.
The "愛" character for a banner belonged to the Uesugi clan. In the records of later ages, Naoe Kanetsugu, as the one who actually handled military affairs, was in the era after Kenshin hailed as the foremost retainer under heaven.
No extraordinary power, no protection of gods and buddhas.
She relied on ability and loyalty alone.
And it was just such a person who, in less time than it takes to drink a cup of tea, steadied three thousand men caught in a wraith night raid.
"The core of this army isn't those four divine artifacts."
Kōbe Hikaru made his judgment. "It's her."
The wraith assault had already achieved its purpose—to create chaos, to probe the defenses, to confirm the location of the enemy's command core.
For the rest, they were no longer needed.
Kōbe Hikaru withdrew the blood mist, and withdrew the externalized skeletons.
Deprived of the yōkai power that drove them, the surviving wraiths toppled one after another, reverting to a pile of mindless dry bones.
The corpse-fire went out, the red mist dispersed.
Only he remained on the low hill.
But the fear those soldiers carried wouldn't fade so quickly.
The fracture in the formation and its momentum wouldn't mend so quickly either.
Especially since—he still hadn't left.
That fiend on the heights, that Asura-like crimson-faced Demon, king of the hundred demons.
Then, Kōbe Hikaru moved.
If ranged wouldn't work, then close combat.
If from outside wouldn't work, then… he would strike straight for the central headquarters.
With the purest burst of the [Transformation of the Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body], he unleashed the purest charge.
Purple electric arcs burst beneath his feet, the soil of the low hill shattered under his stamp, and his whole body turned into a streak of purple light, shooting toward the passage mouth at the camp's front.
The archers' arrows loosed the very moment he broke free.
Over a hundred arrows formed a black wall in the night sky.
But those arrows all flew wide.
The lingering shock of that wraith night parade still surged through their veins—heartbeats erratic, breathing unsteady—and their aim naturally drifted off the mark.
This was the aftereffect of dread.
Fear doesn't recede the instant the threat vanishes; it lingers in the body like a toxin, clouding judgment, dulling reactions.
And what Kōbe Hikaru wielded now—was not only the fear those wraiths had created.
There was also something from farther away.
Suruga.
Imagawa territory.
Those twenty-three lesser yōkai settled throughout Suruga, officially enshrined by the Imagawa clan.
The dread gathered from them—through the core of that collective force-field—flowed into Kōbe Hikaru's body.
Faint, yes.
But in this moment, at the instant of his deliberate release, that dread stacked atop the fear born of the wraith parade, forming an invisible field.
Human qi can coalesce into faith.
Dread can likewise coalesce into oppression.
The two clashed head-on.
The momentum of three thousand men—already torn open a little—widened accordingly.
This too was something an ordinary yōkai could never do.
Because an ordinary yōkai—high-tier or low—facing the faith-momentum coalesced from three thousand men, had only one instinctive response: to get away.
Like that Seven Mutations shan-xiao before, which would rather take a half-day detour than draw near.
It was an instinct carved into the blood.
Yōkai aura and faith-momentum are naturally repellent; the stronger the yōkai, the keener its sensitivity to that repulsion.
So although the camp of three thousand had no barrier, it had never needed to guard against a yōkai's intrusion—because no yōkai would be foolish enough to charge in.
The Uesugi army had never met such a situation.
Never had a yōkai, before the faith-momentum of three thousand men, not only failed to flee but instead charged in of its own will, and even moved to strike the men.
They didn't know how to respond.
The defensive line faced outward, the formation faced outward, all their training premised on the enemy coming from outside.
And when the enemy was already inside—
the formation became a mere ornament.
It wasn't that the soldiers weren't strong, nor that the army wasn't elite.
It was that they had never once imagined needing to guard against a yōkai charging in.
Because it was impossible.
But it had happened.
Naoe Kanetsugu's expression turned grave.
She could feel it.
The invisible barrier over the camp, coalesced from the faith of three thousand men's human qi military might, was trembling violently in the direction that purple lightning was charging from.
"Stop him!"
She swung the gunbai.
The blade maiden warrior on the east moved first, golden light wrapping her blade as she cut across Kōbe Hikaru's path from the flank.
The blade's light arrived.
But the "man" was no longer there.
The instant Kōbe Hikaru brushed the edge of the golden light, his form veered right, [Spectral Step] activating, an afterimage left in place while his true body flickered into the gaps between the tents.
Inside the camp.
Dense tents, narrow lanes.
For a maiden warrior swinging a blade in broad sweeps, this was the worst possible battlefield.
But for Kōbe Hikaru, this was the best possible battlefield.
Bone spikes drilled out from his elbows and knees, hacking left and parrying right in the cramped lanes; the Muramasa spun in his hand, its light flashing in unbroken succession.
Not to kill.
To save time—and having no time to deliberately kill—
he merely used the back of the blade and the flat of the bone spikes to send the blocking ashigaru flying, shove them aside, sweep them down.
He only wounded and maimed; the wails he left in his wake would bring the enemy camp even more chaos.
Thunder leapt across the surface of his body; any samurai who tried to close in went numb all over the instant they touched the arcs, unable to hold their weapons.
He truly didn't set out to kill.
But he was more terrifying than killing.
Because he moved through the camp of three thousand as through empty land, prying the fracture in their momentum wider and wider!
The two maiden warriors from the west chased after him.
One's golden arrow pierced through two tents, nailing into the spot where he'd just stood.
The other's golden shield became a wall of light, trying to block his path.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't slow.
[Bone Soul Transformation].
White bone spikes grew from the front of his fist, forming a sharp cone.
He drove a punch into the wall of light.
Bang!
The wall of light shattered.
Physical impact plus the shock of thunder—the double blow made that not-so-thick wall of light collapse instantly from within.
The shield-bearing maiden warrior recoiled in shock.
But Kōbe Hikaru paid her no mind.
His target, from start to finish, was only one.
Naoe Kanetsugu.
That woman with no power of a divine artifact, yet the soul of the entire army.
Before the main tent.
Naoe Kanetsugu stood in place, holding the gunbai.
She didn't run.
Because with a great battle at hand, a commander cannot run.
If she ran, these three thousand would truly scatter.
"North formation! Intercept!"
She gave her final command.
The maiden warrior on the northern ridge answered the call, her tachi trailing a golden tail of flame as it fell from above.
Kōbe Hikaru raised the Muramasa, parrying backhand.
Clang!
The clash of gold and iron rang out over the camp.
The searing of divine-artifact power came again from the blade, scorching his palm.
But his face stayed blank, wholly indifferent.
He merely thrust his left hand out from his waist.
And then—
a thunderous roar.
That warrior fell back.
Blasted back in a single instant by that palm, sent flying, spraying crimson blood!
Gravely wounded in a heartbeat.
The [Spirit-Chasing Archer] mutation—when it strikes, it never misses; and when it hits, it always wounds.
With Six Mutations upon him, the Kōbe Hikaru of now could truly break through a thousand troops; ordinary Seven Mutations or even Eight Mutations yōkai might not be his match.
And so the great army surged, yet its center gaped open.
Right then.
A hand.
Five fingers spread, clamping onto Naoe Kanetsugu's shoulder.
Naoe Kanetsugu's body went rigid.
She lowered her head, staring at that pale hand, purple arcs leaping across it, clamped fast onto her pauldron.
Then she raised her head, meeting the crimson eyes beneath the crimson oni mask.
"Don't move."
Kōbe Hikaru's voice came from beneath the oni mask.
Neither light nor heavy.
"Move and I shock you."
The corner of Naoe Kanetsugu's mouth twitched.
But she truly—did not move.
Because the arcs skittering across that hand had already begun to numb her shoulder.
The maiden warriors, wounded on all four sides, had all gathered around the main tent, their golden light turning the area bright as day.
But though they could still fight, not one of them dared move.
Because their commander—was clamped in a yōkai's hand.
Kōbe Hikaru, holding Naoe Kanetsugu, slowly backed up two steps.
His back to the wooden pillar of the main tent, he faced the divine artifacts and the hundreds of samurai closing in on every side.
"Everyone, back off."
His tone was casual, so casual it hardly sounded like a man taking a hostage.
But taking a hostage was exactly what he was doing.
"I have something to say to your lord, Uesugi Kenshin."
"Until she arrives—no one comes near."
Take a hostage, suppress the three armies, and then turn the threat into leverage, coercing Uesugi Kenshin in turn.
This was the very purpose of his coming here.
He didn't believe Uesugi Kenshin could ignore the life and death of her own chief commander!
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