This, in truth, had been Kōbe Hikaru's plan from the very start, the idea in his mind all along.
He knew the premises of Noragami: Stray God, though he had not known that even the incarnation of a god or buddha could undergo nirvana and be replaced through the cycle of succession—before the so-called mandate of heaven was spent.
But when it came to dealing with beings tied to gods and buddhas, he understood full well that ordinary means could never achieve any real effect.
Birth, aging, sickness, death—these are what prove fatal to mortals.
For those bound up with gods and buddhas, not necessarily so.
Gods and buddhas draw their momentum from faith.
And faith is built upon the sacred.
To contend against them, one must shatter the sacred shell itself and deliver the ultimate humiliation!
Yet in the end Uesugi Kenshin still managed to attain 'nirvana.'
She was, after all, an incarnation of a god or buddha, a being tied to myth—so this so-called self-annihilation and nirvana, once begun, was not so easily interrupted.
As Kōbe Hikaru understood it, the succession rite of gods and buddhas could be interrupted only by the master of the Eastern Isles' myriad gods, the one who commanded the heavenly realm, the sovereign of Takamagahara, the chief deity of Shinto, Amaterasu—only by such supreme authority.
And, evidently, by the incarnation of a god or buddha as well.
But Kōbe Hikaru had already accomplished his purpose.
From the beginning he had never imagined he could utterly bar Uesugi Kenshin's return and thereby wipe the Uesugi clan of Echigo Province from existence.
What he had in mind was only to stall as long as possible, and to inflict losses heavy enough upon the Uesugi clan.
So it was that, before five hundred of the followers most devoted to Bishamonten, he broke the unbreakable golden body of Bishamonten's descended incarnation, and made a god kneel before him.
More than that, within Uesugi Kenshin's very soul, within that already-unfolding self-annihilating nirvana, he had left behind a thread that belonged to him.
From this point on—
In the land of Echigo, even should Bishamonten descend into the world once more, that faith would be impure, never again to stand lofty and supreme. And from this point on—
The other party, from the very depths of her being, must never, would never dare, entertain the thought of turning against him.
Otherwise, under the command of the soul-hunting archer whose loosed arrow never missed—she would have to kneel once again.
With that, the golden light scattered, and this 'generation' of Uesugi Kenshin dissipated amid disgrace.
And so.
Five hundred household guards lifted their gazes in bewilderment, and in their eyes was written only emptiness.
All their spirit and momentum had vanished like smoke, gone forever with the kneeling of their god.
Kōbe Hikaru did not press them.
There was no need.
What he wanted more was for them to return and spread the news—that a god had knelt.
That was enough.
He watched the five hundred household guards depart northward amid their scattered ranks, the dust rising in drifting sheets, and the army of the Hōjō clan withdrew as well by tacit consent. Kōbe Hikaru turned his eyes and found Kikyō's gaze already resting on him.
An indescribable look—and something more, faintly… strange?
As if to say: so this is the sort of thing you like?
Kōbe Hikaru kept his face blank, his corpse-stiff expression once again scoring full marks.
But it was precisely in that moment.
The very instant he turned around—
The sky changed.
A second before, the eastern horizon had still glowed pale as a fish's belly, sunlight climbing slowly along the ridgeline. The next second.
The light was gone.
As though someone had taken an enormous curtain and begun dragging it from the western vault of heaven, inch by inch swallowing the sunlight that had only just risen.
It was a grey-white miasma, so thick it nearly congealed into substance, surging in from the western skyline like an invisible wall, spreading eastward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The sky for a hundred li in every direction was shrouded.
The heavens above the whole of Musashi Province transformed in an instant.
The morning glow faded; turbid clouds bore down overhead.
The daylight was no more.
Kōbe Hikaru's hand settled once more on the hilt of Muramasa.
He felt it.
Yōkai aura.
A yōkai aura vast beyond words.
Not the murk that a yōkai past the seventh of the Seven Mutations of Qualitative Transformation could spread across a region, nor the oppressive presence of a Kibōmaru pressing down over several li around.
This was, in truth, a yōkai aura that had altered the very face of the heavens.
A yōkai aura so colossal it drove one to despair, reversing the very currents of the air above all of Musashi Province.
As Kōbe Hikaru understood it, in this world only one tier of yōkai could accomplish such a thing.
Gasification.
A great yōkai that had completed the twelve-mutation and entered the domain of the thirteenth.
Kikyō's face changed.
Grave, solemn.
Standing all this while before the torii, she took up her bow, spiritual power welling of its own accord in her palm, white radiance seeping out between her fingers.
Behind her, within the Shrine, Momiji and Botan were already too frightened to keep their footing.
The pressure of that yōkai aura, even through the barrier, made their breathing labored.
Botan dropped straight down onto the ground, the sacred sutra in her hands scattering everywhere; Momiji clutched at a pillar of the torii, her face ashen.
And Kōbe Hikaru's gaze turned straight upward, into the vault of heaven.
At the very heart of the churning turbid clouds.
A shadow was falling.
Plunging straight down from a tremendous height.
Like a meteor come hurtling from beyond the sky.
That grey-white miasma was torn open by the falling shadow, forming a vast whirlpool, and the center of the whirlpool was pitch black—not because it was dark, but because the thing itself devoured all the light around it.
Accompanying the fall was a wild fury.
A brutal, unreasoning fury, one that made every living thing between heaven and earth instinctively want to press itself flat to the ground and cower.
That was a great yōkai.
A true great yōkai!
The direction of its fall—Kaede Village.
A thunderous roar!
The shadow crashed down.
With a violence that tore a hole through the heavens, with a savagery that sent the miasma across a hundred li surging back on itself, the colossal thing plunged straight down from the center of the grey-white yōkai-aura whirlpool.
The ground split apart in answer.
The shockwave spread out in every direction from the point of impact; soil, gravel, and uprooted trees were swept into a ring-shaped storm-wall of wind and hurled hundreds of paces outward.
The barrier shuddered violently the instant the shockwave reached it, and only by pouring in the whole of her spiritual power did Kikyō barely steady that layer of light.
Momiji and Botan were knocked sprawling again; Kokaede, hearing the commotion, came running out from the back courtyard and rushed headlong into Kikyō's embrace, caught in the crook of one arm.
The dust and smoke cleared.
At the point of impact there now yawned a pit twenty zhang across, its bedrock floor cracked into a spiderweb of fissures, grey-white yōkai-aura vapor still rising from between the shards of stone.
At the center of the pit crouched a thing.
Seven and a half meters.
That was its height with its body curled up.
Its frame was vast and staggering.
It bore something of a human outline, yet its two thick legs were folded beneath it, the knee joints bent backward, more like the hind limbs of a spider, its broad feet driving five toes down into the rock strata of the ground.
It had six arms extending from either side of its torso.
The upper two were the thickest, resting on its knees, knuckles thick as the mouth of a bowl.
The middle two were somewhat slimmer, crossed and folded over its chest.
The lower two were the longest, hanging to the ground, fingertips sunk into the mud.
A white bone mask covered its entire face, its shape somewhere between human and spider—broad brow, cheekbones flared outward, jaw sharp and pointed, its surface smooth as porcelain, leaving only three narrow slits at the eyes and mouth.
Behind those slits were two clumps of ghostly green light.
And behind the bone armor, red hair spread wild and unruly.
Tsuchigumo.
A great yōkai.
A true great yōkai.
By the time Kōbe Hikaru reached the outskirts of Kaede Village, the crimson oni mask had settled over his face once more, violet arcs of lightning leaping about his body.
In an instant he recognized the thing.
It came from Kyoto.
An ancient great yōkai under Hagoromo-Gitsune's command—no, better to say, one that Hagoromo-Gitsune had summoned forth.
Four hundred years ago it had challenged the then-master of the demons and spirits, been wounded, and fallen into slumber, only now to wake.
In ages to come, it would be a terror so fearsome that even Nura Nurarihyon, who became master of the demons and spirits in the land of Edo, dared not meet its edge.
"The Shikon Jewel."
Three words squeezed out from the slits of the bone mask, coarse and thick, like the roar of a boulder tumbling from a mountaintop compressed into a human voice.
"I've come for the Shikon Jewel."
"Who has it? Hand it over."
Its voice was not loud, but the yōkai aura it poured forth set the ground trembling for several li around, and even the barrier's sacred light rippled visibly.
"Otherwise—I'll tear this whole place up, people and mountains and all."
Before the words had died away, it moved.
Those two lower arms swept out sideways.
A mere wave of its hands.
As careless as a man shooing away a fly.
But the wind-force wrapped up in that single sweep ground everything within dozens, even a hundred zhang, to powder—soil churning, gravel flying.
Kikyō had already handed Kokaede over to Momiji and Botan, sending them to carry her into the main hall.
The shrine maiden in white robe and red hakama took her place once more before the torii, longbow in hand, spiritual power gathering.
Her face was cool and solemn.
Kōbe Hikaru came down at her side, and for a single instant their gazes met in the dim, miasma-choked light.
No words were needed.
No superfluous exchange of any kind.
A single instant of meeting eyes was enough for the two of them to fall into perfect, wordless coordination.
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