In this moment the rising sun climbed once more into the sky, its light spilling slowly across the vast plains of Musashi Province, gathering even the far range of mountains into a single crystalline clarity.
This once.
There was no terror in Uesugi Kenshin's words, no dread of death—instead, an incomparable calm.
A calm so profound it chilled the blood, a calm that made even the five hundred household guards at her back feel a creeping horror.
Kōbe Hikaru and Kikyō stayed on guard through all of it. However inescapable, however hopeless her position appeared, she was still a being tied to gods and buddhas—an exalted so-called incarnation of the divine descended into the world.
No degree of readiness for battle could be called excessive.
To Uesugi Kenshin's answer, Kōbe Hikaru offered no reply. Yet the very act of not replying was, in its own way, a reply.
Whether she died or not meant nothing to him. He only knew that this exalted 'god' had to be made to pay the corresponding price.
Otherwise, anyone at all could coerce them, could trample them.
And the days to come would know no peace.
The next second.
But Uesugi Kenshin only concentrated her gaze, fixing her eyes upon Kōbe Hikaru.
She merely said:
"This time, you have won, mortal-world Demon God.
"But my heaven-sent destiny is not yet finished.
"The next me will do better still.
"And she too will come to seek you out—she will, just as I did, look upon you, and make you into my vessel."
A droning hum surged up without warning.
Golden light flared, and there before them, unmistakable, were eight weapons.
A tachi, a sickle-hook… clearly the manifestation of the Eight Flower Heavenly Implements of Bishamonten's myth—the manifest majesty of the god who was both patron of wealth and the divine general guarding the gate of heaven.
The divine might revealed in that instant was, beyond any doubt, the very wellspring of all divine artifact power.
The sheer mass of it set the surrounding air shuddering across every surface, and drove Kōbe Hikaru and Kikyō to brace themselves…
This was purely energy let loose, yet even so it was near equal to a yōkai of the Eight Mutations, even the Nine Mutations—and it lay beyond the restraint of spiritual power.
But only for one second.
As Uesugi Kenshin's words fell silent, the implements split apart and their majesty dissolved.
From within her own body kindled a light like the fires of karmic retribution.
That posture, natural as breathing, together with her words—
made Kōbe Hikaru's expression falter for the briefest moment.
This time.
The next.
These fragments, joined together, stirred a violent tremor through his mind.
All at once he remembered something.
In the memories from before his crossing over, in that work called Noragami: Stray God, there had been a certain premise—the changing of the guard among gods and buddhas.
In that story, gods and buddhas were not eternal. They too could change.
But the change of a god was not death, nor was it disappearance.
It was—a succession.
The old god dies; the new god is born.
Inheriting the former's name, duty, and faith—but character, features, memory, all reset.
Like the same river given a new bed.
The water is still that water, yet the way it flows is entirely different.
Uesugi Kenshin, incarnation of Bishamonten—she was not saying she was going to die.
She was saying she was going to 'change over.'
This generation's Uesugi Kenshin would perish.
But the faith in Bishamonten would not vanish. The people of Echigo would still pray, would still make their offerings.
That faith would gather anew, would give birth to a new vessel, would produce a new 'Uesugi Kenshin.'
A different individual.
A different character.
A different face.
But still the incarnation of Bishamonten.
Still bearing the power of divine artifacts.
Still able, all the same, to rule Echigo.
This trap I have no strength to prevent; I cannot walk out of it—but… I will let the next generation's incarnation of Bishamonten descend directly within the borders of Echigo Province, and undo the crisis before it can take shape.
So long as Uesugi Kenshin can appear inside the borders of Echigo Province.
Then the crisis of Echigo Province can be resolved in an instant.
The morale that comes from being the incarnation of Bishamonten would be enough, on its own, to drive back the Imagawa clan's raiders.
Regardless of whether that Uesugi Kenshin was her or not.
The Uesugi Kenshin within this moment remained as exalted as ever, as arrogant and self-assured as before.
And the golden light surging beyond her turned no longer outward, but inward—toward herself.
Shaped like the nirvana recorded in ancient Buddhist scriptures.
Or rather, not merely shaped like it—it was nirvana itself.
It was self-annihilation.
A collective gasp went up.
The five hundred household guards knelt in solemn unison, and the faith in their eyes—faith that had been unshakeable, cracked only slightly by their own dire circumstances—blazed hotter still.
They lowered their heads, as though casting off entirely the crisis of the moment.
Casting off all questions of life and death.
So then…
"For gods and buddhas to meddle in the mortal world—truly this is a world without reason," Kōbe Hikaru murmured with feeling. Then, abruptly, he stepped forward and asked:
"But you're not the deity's true body, only an incarnation… and even so you can change over?"
Uesugi Kenshin looked at him, and in those eyes that should have been on the verge of guttering out, a faint light stirred once more.
"Fitting indeed, that a being able to suppress this body with sheer will… should even know of this."
She smiled, and in that smile there seemed to be, at last, a genuine warmth—one that belonged to a 'person.' "Yes. I can change over.
"I am the incarnation of Bishamonten, descended to take up heaven's mandate. So long as that mandate endures, then Uesugi Kenshin will endure as well."
What was heaven's mandate?
Was it… 'history'?
Kōbe Hikaru did not know, but some instinct told him that even if it was not, it was near enough.
The name Uesugi Kenshin did indeed occupy a bold and vivid line in the later history of the Eastern Isles—one of the few who at one point came closest to the very summit of power there.
Dragon and Tiger.
Uesugi and Takeda.
Viewed through the lens of history, she truly should not die here.
And reasoned out from the angle of a deity descending into the world, her birth had surely carried some mission—and that mission, whatever else, would never be to die at the hands of this crossed-over demon that was himself.
She would not truly die.
Small wonder she could still be so arrogant, so self-assured.
Even if the her after the succession would no longer be her.
Her tone carried only a subtle thread of regret.
Not regret that she herself was about to perish—regret that she could not witness with her own eyes the moment she had envisioned.
"What a pity," she said softly. "A being able to speak with me as an equal… you truly are qualified to become my divine artifact, my blessed vessel—even, my guidepost."
As the words fell away.
Uesugi Kenshin's body grew ever brighter.
Not the golden light of divine artifact power let loose.
A soft, white light seeping out from within.
Like the wick of a lamp slowly burning down to nothing.
This too was the self-dissolution of a deity's incarnation—
gathering up all the experience this generation had accumulated, all its confusions, all its unanswered questions, sealing them into a bundle and passing them on to the next generation.
And then, dispersing.
The faith of Echigo's countless people, amassed over decades, was being drawn out of her body, converging into a pillar of white light visible to the naked eye, surging up toward the heavens.
The pillar drove straight into the clouds.
The sky for miles around was lit, as if the noonday sun had suddenly appeared upon the dome of an early-morning sky.
Nirvana.
True nirvana.
Uesugi Kenshin's body turned transparent within the white light.
Her silver-white hair scattered into threads of light, and the hem of her white monastic robe evaporated like morning mist.
Her face still remained.
Upon that exquisite, valiant face, the smile had not yet faded.
Her lips parted, and she spoke her final few words—
"Next time, I will surely—"
But in that very instant.
In the single moment before her body was about to dissolve completely into white light—
Kōbe Hikaru moved.
His motion was so fast that even Kikyō could not react in time.
The Spirit-Chasing Bowman's Mutation.
Soul Summoning.
Soul-Seizing—the Power That Never Misses.
Dark green phosphorescence burst forth from the palm of his right hand, spreading up his arm to his fingertips, condensing into a thread of light almost too fine for the eye to see.
The light was not aimed at Uesugi Kenshin's dissolving body.
It pointed toward—her soul.
Faced with Uesugi Kenshin's sudden self-annihilation and nirvana, faced with this cicada-shedding-its-shell trick of hers, Kōbe Hikaru watched through the whole of it. He was not content to sit idle, nor unable to stop it—he was only watching, only searching.
Since it was self-annihilation, nirvana, and succession all at once.
Naturally it had to involve the soul.
And where the soul was concerned, Kōbe Hikaru was no longer in the blind, groping state of before.
He could sense it.
He could seize it.
In that instant, he saw it clearly.
The essence of this so-called nirvana was the soul leaving its old shell, entering the flood of faith, being scoured and remade, and then born anew as a new vessel.
In the moment the soul left the body, it belonged neither to the old shell nor to the new.
It hung suspended between the two.
Like a fish leaping between two ponds.
And he found it.
Found—in the instant that fish broke the surface, the chance to reach out and seize it—
As it turned out, a deity's incarnation descended into the world was, in the end, not a true deity; having already reincarnated, it was naturally a person.
And a person's soul, however powerful, still had its ceiling.
And so, here and now.
The Spirit-Chasing Bowman's Mutation unfurled in full.
Dark green phosphorescence coiled around Uesugi Kenshin's soul.
No attack, only pure… anchoring.
With the soul-seizing power of the Transformation of the Spirit-Chasing Archer, he pinned that departing soul in place, holding it down fast.
And then—
he pressed it back.
Forced it back into that shell of a body that had not yet fully dissolved.
Snap.
Like cramming a wisp of smoke on the verge of drifting away back into its bottle.
The white light contracted violently.
That sky-piercing pillar collapsed inward all at once, as though yanked forcibly back to the ground.
The nirvana… was interrupted.
Even if only for the moment.
Even though, once the succession of a deity had begun, there was no truly halting it.
But at least in this instant, Kōbe Hikaru had done it.
Uesugi Kenshin's body solidified once more.
Her silver-white hair fell again about her shoulders, her white monastic robe settled again against her frame, and the smile upon that exquisite, valiant face—froze.
Her eyes opened.
In those eyes deep as an ancient well was an emotion that had never once appeared from her birth until now.
Bewilderment.
Utter, complete, uncontainable bewilderment.
Just now she had already begun to dissolve.
She had already felt the pull of the flood of faith, felt the liberation of the old shell breaking apart.
The next second she would have entered a new cycle, a new vessel, a new beginning—
in a wholly new form unconnected to this moment, crossing through every obstacle, returning to Echigo Province.
To carry on the heaven-sent destiny of the existence named Uesugi Kenshin.
But in that instant, a single hand had dragged her back by force.
Like a person already standing at the cliff's edge, arms spread and ready to take flight, hauled back by the collar.
"You—you—"
Her voice carried a rare tremor.
"What have you done?"
Kōbe Hikaru did not answer.
His right hand was still stretched before him, the dark green phosphorescence spreading from his fingertips to the place over Uesugi Kenshin's chest, like an invisible chain anchoring her soul within its old shell.
Then he spoke.
Only two words.
"Kneel down."
Uesugi Kenshin's face changed in an instant.
That face, which from birth had never shown fear, never shown humiliation, never shown any negative human emotion at all—
in this moment, it cracked.
Not the cracking of an outer shell breaking apart.
A crack far deeper than that—a crack in her 'divinity.'
Because, to her horror, she discovered that her own soul… no longer obeyed her.
Lock onto the target soul, and once loosed, it never missed.
Add to that the power of Soul Summoning.
With the two joined as one, its effect was no longer merely to strike true.
It was 'control.'
Brief, limited control, confined solely to the level of the soul.
To a being that stood above Kōbe Hikaru, or to a true deity, such control would not be worth mentioning.
But sadly, Kōbe Hikaru had already confirmed it—Uesugi Kenshin was not a true deity.
She was only an incarnation.
And in that instant just past, she had undergone an interrupted nirvana, a loosening of the connection between soul and body.
In this moment her soul was as fragile as a kite with its string cut.
And Kōbe Hikaru's soul-seizing power was that very string, tied back on.
And so.
Uesugi Kenshin's knees bent.
Drawn along by that dark green chain, her soul carried her body with it, helplessly—
she knelt.
Thud.
Both knees struck the ground.
The muffled sound rolled across the battlefield beneath the moonlight.
Her silver-white hair spilled onto the ground, like flowing moonlight shattered into the soil.
The hem of her white monastic robe fanned out, dusted with earth.
Those eyes, deep as an ancient well, snapped wide.
What they reflected was no longer the moonlight.
It was the mirrored image of a crimson oni mask.
The exalted incarnation of Bishamonten—who had never once bowed her head to any being—
had knelt to an oni warrior.
The five hundred household guards were all turned to stone.
Petrified in spirit, and more than that—shattered in faith.
They had seen an image that could not possibly exist.
Their god.
Had knelt.
Before a yōkai.
Had knelt.
Yes.
To truly defeat a god was never to destroy it in its flesh and shell, but to shatter its false idol—and make it… kneel.
Even if this was only temporary, it was still enough.
Enough to let the world take a look.
This god of yours—so this, in the end, is all it amounts to!
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