The sky over Musashi Province had gone dim and murky, the storm shrieking like a beast.
The rising sun had climbed only a short while ago, yet day and night seemed to have flipped over once again.
Within the roaring din, that colossal figure—seeming to stand at the very center of the world—slowly straightened its body.
The ground kept fracturing beneath its feet, the cracks spreading outward from the point of impact for more than a hundred paces before they finally stopped.
Its six arms spread wide, as though they could blot out half the sky.
That face, sheathed in white bone, was turning slowly, ghost-green light spilling from the seams of its eyes, sweeping across every living thing present.
But sudden as this creature's arrival was, the choice made by Kōbe Hikaru and Kikyō was swift and clean.
They had only just finished dealing with Uesugi.
Now there was nothing to do but meet the danger head-on, and deny the incoming foe its prize.
The instant Kōbe Hikaru stepped out of the barrier, that yōkai aura slammed into him like a solid wall.
It was nothing like Kibōmaru's targeted suppression of speed, nor like the twisted, human-demon regeneration woven through the oni of the Tahōtō.
It was pure, overwhelming mass.
Gasification.
In the evolutionary system of yōkai, Corporeal Transformation peaked at the Six Mutations; beyond it lay Qualitative Transformation, and the endpoint of Qualitative Transformation was Gasification—the thirteenth mutation, reached only after the twelfth was complete.
But just as, before facing the Kamaitachi in the flesh, Kōbe Hikaru had not fully grasped the true nature of Qualitative Transformation, nor known that the path of elemental change even existed—
so-called Gasification had existed until now only in his theoretical conjecture.
It didn't even have a proper theory behind it.
It was merely his own supposition.
An extrapolation drawn forward from form, then from mass, combined with the great store of knowledge he carried as a transmigrator—a further, deeper act of imagination.
Only now did Kōbe Hikaru feel the meaning of this stratum in his own flesh.
Theory had become reality.
What was called Gasification could indeed be called Gasification, but more accurately it should be called—transformation into the intangible.
Or rather, Phenomenalization.
Just as wind is not any specific object, and rain is not any specific existence.
The yōkai aura of a Gasified great yōkai was no longer confined to the interior of its body, no longer confined even to the region near its surface—it diffused outward, melting into the heaven and earth around it, becoming a second law within this region, independent of the laws of nature.
For tens, even hundreds of li in every direction, the air grew heavier, the ground grew softer, and gravity itself seemed to swell.
This was not caused by the sheer quantity of its yōkai aura.
It was that its yōkai aura had itself become a phenomenon.
Within its domain, the rules of heaven and earth were decided by the fact of its very existence.
This was the true gulf between a Gasified great yōkai and a Qualitatively-Transformed yōkai.
Corporeal Transformation was reshaping. Qualitative Transformation was altering a variable.
But what was called Gasification—that was changing the very sky.
And so Kibōmaru, at twelve mutations, one step short of Gasification, could already unfold a domain, could crush every existence of his tier in raw speed.
That domain was nothing less than yōkai aura condensed to an infinitely close approximation of Gasification.
As for the Tsuchigumo before him now—
a great yōkai of at least a full thirteen mutations. Clearly, it had already entered the stage of Gasification four hundred years ago.
Though its long slumber and grievous wounds meant its condition was surely short of its peak, it was nonetheless a being that had genuinely set foot into Phenomenalization.
Before an existence like this—
that favourability of the earth Kōbe Hikaru had used against Kibōmaru, that faint pillar of support, was utterly gone.
He could rely only on himself, only on his own body.
Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body at full output, purple arcs of lightning bursting across his whole frame.
Yet he did not charge the Tsuchigumo.
He cut diagonally to the left instead, sweeping around to the flank of its enormous bulk.
At the same moment.
A bowstring sang.
Kikyō's Sacred Arrow left the string.
White spiritual power gathered at the arrowtip into a ball of light the size of a fist—not the composite arrow of sealing and purification she had used against the oni before.
It was a pure Sacred Arrow.
Break the evil—break!
A single careless loosing, and it was already the maximum output of an ordinary shrine maiden.
The ultimate killing stroke against yōkai.
The arrow trailed a dazzling white wake through the air, striking straight for the seam of the left eye in that white bone face of the Tsuchigumo.
It hit.
White light detonated.
Spiritual power burst across the bone face, its purifying force invading the yōkai aura layer like blazing sun piercing haze.
A vast crack split the surface of the bone face, running clear across the whole countenance.
The Tsuchigumo's head tilted.
It hurt.
Though it was only a single crack spread across the bone face—and that bone seemed peculiar, able to blunt even the purification of spiritual power to a degree—
still, the Tsuchigumo halted its motion.
The green light behind the bone face turned toward Kikyō.
And then it laughed.
A wild, exhilarated laugh!
"Good. Excellent.
"To be able to wound me—truly, this is magnificent, shrine maiden! Spiritual power of this degree is scarcely inferior to Midoriko's in those days."
Midoriko.
The source of the Shikon Jewel, and in a sense its creator.
Kikyō's gaze was frigid as she stood at the edge of the barrier, the hem of her white robe and red hakama whipping and streaming in the wind.
Her jet-black hair was blown streaming back, yet her face stayed cool and lovely, unmoved.
She did not answer.
But a second arrow was already nocked to the string.
The Tsuchigumo did not give her the chance for a second shot. What it loved was battle—not taking blows.
Its two upper arms lifted from its knees, ten fingers interlacing, then parting—and between its palms, ash-white threads appeared out of nothing.
This was spider silk.
More than that, it was the product of yōkai aura made manifest—the Tsuchigumo's signature technique.
The threads shot out at an absurd speed, like countless streaks of ash-white lightning, radiating in every direction from its palms.
Every thread carried the properties of Gasified yōkai aura—the ground it touched instantly hardened and grew brittle, as if rotted away in an instant.
The moisture in the air was sliced apart by the threads, condensing into tiny ice crystals that scattered down.
This was a further manifestation of Phenomenalization.
—To make everything hard, brittle, drained of life.
Anything bound by its threads would become part of this phenomenon that was the Tsuchigumo.
Turned to stone. Turned to a dead thing.
From the flank, Kōbe Hikaru saw the threads sweeping toward Kikyō. He drove Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body to its limit, his form becoming a purple afterimage, hurling himself into the space between the threads and Kikyō.
Muramasa left its sheath.
Thunder sheathed the blade.
A single downward cut—
Clang!
A dull, muffled sound rang out, like stone striking stone.
The thread was severed.
But at once the yōkai aura at the cut end crept up the blade toward his hand, and a layer of ash-white frost spread across Muramasa's steel.
The Tsuchigumo's yōkai aura was trying to turn his weapon into part of itself.
In the same instant Kōbe Hikaru's thunder struck back, purple arcs spreading outward along the blade, forcibly beating back that ash-white corrosion.
"To be able to cut my silk—well done, little brat—"
A thread of interest entered the Tsuchigumo's tone. "But you can only cut one strand, can't you?"
The words were not yet finished.
Dozens of threads shot out at once.
This time it was no radiating scatter, but weaving.
The threads crisscrossed and coiled in the air, swiftly braiding a vast net between the Tsuchigumo and Kaede Village.
The net's face covered a span of a thousand paces, the ash-white threads gleaming with a deathly luster in the sunlight.
Anything the net covered—people, trees, the land itself—would be petrified.
The whole of Kaede Village, together with the broad Tōno plain around it, lay within the net's reach.
Kōbe Hikaru stamped the ground and drew back. He knew he alone could not cut through it all—yet he was not the least bit shaken. Because—
three shots rang from the string in succession.
Three Sacred Arrows left the string almost in the same instant, three white wakes crossing in the air to form a fan.
Spiritual power detonated upon the web.
White light collided with the ash-white threads.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three blasts in a row.
The web was burned through in three great gaping holes, the ash-white yōkai aura at the broken edges collapsing within the white light like ice and snow meeting boiling oil.
This was purification.
Thorough, stripping and dissolving the very yōkai aura that composed the web from its root.
Spiritual power was the natural bane of yōkai aura—even yōkai aura of the Gasification stratum had no choice but to give ground before spiritual power of Kikyō's caliber.
All six of the Tsuchigumo's arms halted for a beat.
The green light behind the bone face flickered, locking onto that figure in white robe and red hakama.
"A Sacred Arrow of this degree…"
For the first time, something other than excitement entered its tone.
It was regard.
More than that—it was earnest.
"This density of spiritual power, this depth of breaking the evil—you are not merely near Midoriko's level.
"Though looking closely, in scale you still fall a little short—yet your spiritual power is purer even than Midoriko's, and its purifying effect is stronger, and more concentrated!"
It cocked its head, the bone face giving a grinding creak:
"Interesting."
"Utterly interesting."
Of its six arms, the middle two unclasped from its chest and joined the ranks weaving the net.
New threads shot out faster, from four hands, four directions at once.
No longer a woven net.
A downpour like a raging storm.
Hundreds, thousands of threads shot out from six directions at once, turning the entire battlefield—a span of more than ten li—wholly into an ash-white hell of spider webs.
Kikyō did not retreat.
Instead her step carried her forward.
She stepped out of the barrier.
Fully out of the barrier.
The shrine maiden in white robe and red hakama stood upon the earth, longbow held level, and the spiritual power on her bowstring no longer gathered arrow by arrow—
it released continuously.
White radiance seeped out from her body, spreading along the bow, coursing along the string, forming around her a field of spiritual power with a radius of three zhang.
Within that field.
Every ash-white thread was soundlessly dissolved the instant it touched.
Like ice meeting fire.
Like darkness meeting light.
No need to loose an arrow, no need to purify with intent—her very existence was the greatest purification of yōkai aura.
Kōbe Hikaru saw this scene.
He saw Kikyō standing there.
Her white robe glowed with a pale luster in the light of the spiritual power, her jet-black hair lifted by its currents, unfurling behind her like a black banner.
The hems of her red hakama clung tight to her long legs, and the white sash at her waist seemed a ribbon of glowing silk within the radiance.
Her face was cool as ever.
But in those pitch-black eyes there seemed to be a fire burning.
It was the fire of protection.
She was guarding the village behind her, guarding the children and shrine maidens trembling in the Shrine, guarding that oni samurai who had only just stepped over the threshold of qualitative change and had not yet found his footing.
In this moment, Kikyō did not look like a shrine maiden.
She looked more like a… warrior.
The one final line of human defense on this land able to stand face-to-face against a Gasified great yōkai.
"Good."
The Tsuchigumo straightened its body.
Its twelve-meter ash-white frame unfurled completely, all six arms spread wide.
The ghost-green light behind the bone face was brighter than it had ever been. "Then let me get serious!"
Its yōkai aura surged again.
The ground for several li around, even a dozen li out, began to petrify as one, the ash-white spreading from beneath its feet in every direction at tremendous speed.
And all six of its arms began to spin silk.
Hundreds of threads shot out from six directions at once, turning the entire battlefield wholly into an ash-white hell of spider webs.
But within the bounds of that white field of spiritual power—
not a single strand could pass.
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