Volume 8 - Higanbana: Chapter 7 – Turmoil
Volume 8 - Higanbana: Chapter 7 – Turmoil
When the high platform was destroyed, the swirl of partially-formed black blood spanning hundreds of meters lost control and began to disperse.
Lily swung her cursed blade and rushed towards another high platform, followed by countless anima which flew towards her sword.
The sacrificial hound was not a shikigami, but a very terrifying spell that gathered its power through the sacrifice of lives and souls! During the formation process, the huge nine-tailed fox was already designated as its target. The hound was extremely powerful, and it had the ability to kill a weaker Big Dipper Stage existence. Once it was formed, it would become uncontrollable and only focus on attacking the target relentlessly.
Because of this, although the hound was powerful, it couldn’t be used to fight against Lily. Besides, nobody would sacrifice tens of thousands of lives to deal with a small female samurai.
Although the demon soldiers could be said to be dead by human standards, they were, in a sense, just another form of life.
The destruction of a high platform finally drew Kato Keiren’s attention to Lily.
“Who is that??!” Kato turned pale with shock. He didn’t have the time to care about Lily’s intrusion at that time because she was just a small female samurai in his eyes. However, not only did she destroy a high platform, she even killed hundreds of dharma masters and onmyojis. This, in turn, caused the partially-formed hound that was condensed from the sacrifice of tens of thousands of demon soldiers to disintegrate. This was equivalent to letting tens of thousands of elite black-armored demon soldiers to die for nothing!
How could Kato tolerate this?!
“This is the power of a peak level Throned Monarch!” Lily’s explosive strength made Kato realize that this woman was not a simple character. However, in the face of hundreds of thousands of troops and countless experts, what did it count? Before, it was just his mistake for ignoring her and allowing her to take advantage of the situation.
“Kill her! Sasaki Marioka! Amano Tokage! Kill this woman!” Kato ordered.
From the army, a black-armored commander over three meters tall and a fat, pale middle-aged samurai over four meters tall wearing an old, loose kimono and a black hat emerged!
Both of them were Minamoto no Yoritomo’s old subordinates who fought for the dynasty back then! It’s just that, for a long time, they had disappeared into the long river of history, only to reappear in battle today under Minamoto no Yoritomo’s command!
It seemed that these people had been training in the art of the demon samurai in some secret place and weren’t actually training the black-armored army with Minamoto no Yoritomo.
It was rather inconvenient to mobilize a large army to deal with a lone adept like Lily. She was mixed in with the chaotic army and it was difficult for ordinary soldiers to deal with her, so it was best to send two experts to eliminate her directly!
The black-armored commander, Sasaki Marioka, rushed past the army and raised his long jintachi to strike at Lily!
Meanwhile, Amano Tokage flew through the air on a huge calligraphy brush and swept past the army, flanking Lily from the other side.
Lily spotted them immediately, but at this moment, sacrificial hounds were gradually taking shape on the high platforms in the distance.
“I don’t have enough time!” Lily promptly ignored the two peak level Throned Monarchs and rushed towards the next high platform!
“Damn woman! Stop!” The black-armored commander, Sasaki Marioka, yelled as strong waves of golden aura covered his body and boosted his speed to catch up with Lily. Amano Tokage also jumped off the huge brush and carried it instead before accelerating to close the distance. After all, when compared to the running or jumping speed of peak level Throned Monarchs on the ground, the speed of these flying treasures was actually inferior.
However, the speed of the red-clothed girl who was only a few dozen meters ahead suddenly soared, leaving the two men unable to catch up!
Lily’s body was light, and even among people of the same strength, she was faster. She had also absorbed the anima of Ueotsune Tane, a Big Dipper Stage powerhouse, along with tens of thousands of black-armored soldiers’ anima, increasing her strength by a lot!
Even without applying her purple lunar force, her strength far surpassed the power of a peak level Throned Monarch!
However, Lily’s actual realm was still a bit short of reaching the peak level of the Permanence Stage!
As Lily’s strength increased, so did her spiritual energy reserves. Therefore, it was necessary to convert this additional spiritual energy into peak Permanence Stage spiritual power, which required more energy, that is, anima.
In some extreme cases, if a Permanence Stage adept’s spiritual energy reserves grew faster than their speed of spiritual energy strengthening, then they would never be able to improve their realm. Of course, this was just a worst-case scenario. No matter how large the reserves of the spiritual palace and spiritual sea were, there was a limit. At least, Lily had never heard of such a situation.
“Dammit! This, how is this woman so fast?! She’s also very strong! Where did she come from?” Sasaki roared.
Amano, who was carrying the huge calligraphy brush on his back, suddenly thought of something, “Red dress
1 and long hair; blade maiden. This, is this woman the Kagami Lily that both Lord Shogun and His Majesty the Cloistered Emperor mentioned??!”
“It’s her? Hmph. His Majesty the Cloistered Emperor was afraid that she would run away, but she actually sent herself to our door!”
“Chase!”
However, Lily had already distanced herself from them by a great deal. She jumped and prepared to destroy the high platform as soon as possible since there were pursuers behind her.
Lily’s crimson spiritual energy blossomed and she descended from the sky like a red meteor!
Boom!!!
With an extremely heavy blow, the entire high platform was cut into pieces!
Most of the hundreds of dharma masters and onmyojis were killed or seriously injured in the aftermath of this terrifying slash.
The Blood Wish · Sacrificial Hound Technique was also naturally destroyed.
Lily was reluctant to let go of those anima, so she spent some extra time to absorb them using the soul-controlling art.
At that moment, the imposing samurai in black armor, Sasaki, who was previously lagging behind her, finally arrived!
“Kagami Lily! You traitor of the imperial court! B?i?t?c?h?! How dare you let my 20,000 brothers die in vain!” Sasaki’s jintachi swept up a gale of dark blade aura in which the phantom of a skeletal ancient warrior could be faintly seen wielding a sword and emitting strong killing intent!
This killing intent seemed to represent the spirit of a samurai from Eastern land!
Lily had grown up in Eastern land, so she could feel what was contained in this killing intent.
Although Lily respected the true spirit of an eastern samurai, it was now a lost spirit of a samurai from Eastern land that had been corrupted by darkness!
“It’s but a tool to be used by Minamoto no Yoritomo!”
Bzzt
Lily slashed out a scarlet and poignant sword light.
Boom—!!! The dark sword aura and the scarlet sword light collided, both seemingly representing colors from the underworld, but the scarlet light broke through the darkness in an instant!
“Ah!”
Sasaki’s strong and heavy body was shaken back violently! He was also slightly injured by the aftershock of the scarlet sword light.
Lily could have caught up and killed him in a few moves, but she couldn’t commit to the fight or she might get surrounded by more experts!
“Kagami Lily—!”
In the distance, Tarobo Tengu brought thousands of powerful lesser Tengu that formed a black mass and flew towards Lily from another direction!
Since Tarobo knew that Lily’s goal was the high platforms, he brought his army of tengu to stand between her and her targets!
“Not good!”
Lily noticed that several more high platforms in the distance had almost condensed their sacrificial hounds.
There was no time to think! Lily could only forcibly kill her way through the army of tengu!
At this time, although the nine-tailed fox was still in an unconscious, berserk state, it was not so easily misled. It no longer used powerful lunges and claw strikes to deal with those small turtle shell formations, but directly used its nine tails that were as big as mountains to sweep through dozens of turtle shell formations at once.
They were like collapsing mountains, and maybe even heavier than real mountains! Those small turtle shell formations weren’t able to resist the nine giant tails at all, resulting in countless casualties!
Tamamo-no-Mae opened her bloody maw and released scorching hot winds that could vaporize the earth. A large area of turtle shell formations was wiped out!
“Not good! If this continues, the turtle shell formations won’t last long!” Kato frowned, “Are those sacrificial hounds still not finished?”
Kato was a powerhouse at the Throned Saint level and would have liked to hunt down Lily himself, but he had to concentrate on commanding the whole army to deal with Tamamo-no-Mae and restrain her. In case she killed her way into the area where the sacrificial hounds were being cast on the high platforms, it would all be over. Compared to Lily, Tamamo-no-Mae posed a much, much greater threat!
Lily brandished her sword and killed the army of black tengu in front of her, causing feathers to fall from the sky like black snow.
The lesser Tengu flew down one by one to attack Lily, even though they were easily slain by her, they slowed down her speed.
On a high platform, a hundred-meter-long hound had taken shape!
“Dammit!” Lily sped up, trying to break through the blockade of lesser Tengus.
At this time, amidst the back feathers drifting all over the sky, Lily saw Uesugi Rei riding her black horse, Nioh, in the distance, and breaking into the defending army near a high platform.
With Nioh’s cooperation, Rei had greater combat power which she used to break through the hundreds of defending soldiers and leap onto the platform on horseback. With a roundabout charge, she killed hundreds of dharma masters and onmyojis. Although her performance was not as sharp as Lily’s, it was enough to destroy the sacrificial hound spell. Rei was not stupid and immediately began to absorb the thousands of anima.
“Sister Uesugi! Well done!” Lily was pleasantly surprised.
“Don’t mind that Throned General female warrior. Use your full power to finish off Kagami Lily first!” Kato ordered.
Rei’s speed of breaking through to the high platforms was too slow to affect the overall situation. Kato gave a decisive order as he knew that if he didn’t kill Lily who was attacking the main formation, it would be like cutting into the belly of a giant beast, which would cause the entire army to collapse! 𝙗𝙚𝙙𝒏𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡．𝙣𝒆𝙩
At this time, Momiji, Ibaraki Doji, Mamukuro, and others rushed out from the demons’ side of the formation and charged towards Lily.
“Kagami Lily! You killed my old friend, the Lord of Mount Hiei! I want you to pay with your life!” Tarobo Tengu was so eager for revenge that he didn’t care about Daitengu’s order to catch her alive. He immediately used his strongest move!
A huge phantom of a tengu appeared behind Tarobo. The phantom exuded an evil aura, but there was a ripple of faith mixed within.
Just like how blade maidens could draw power from resentment, tengu could gain strength from faith!
However, how this power that was derived from good faith, prayers, and wishes was used completely depended on the tengu itself.
Even power made of good intentions could be used for evil!
Tarobo’s three-pronged spear that emitted an ancient aura crawled with countless golden mysterious patterns, seeming to have gathered a lot of faith power. Yet, he did not intend to use this power to bless the common people, but to kill this beautiful maiden in front of him!
The huge tengu phantom and Tarobo thrust out the spear at the same time!
“What terrifying might!” This was Lily’s second time fighting against this type of power after her battle with Honda and his Buddhist Attendant’s Physique. This kind of power could be said to be the natural nemesis of blade maidens!
However, it wasn’t that it had an advantage over blade maidens, but the two mutually restrained each other! Each of them could do significant damage to each other!
References
Robinxen: They’re relying on her outfit aesthetic to identify her? Really?