Chapter 98: The Army from Echigo
This was, of course, not the first time Hikaru had witnessed war.
Setting aside all he had seen and heard while wandering alone, he had observed the conflict between the Imagawa and Hojo clans from up close just over half a month ago—and had even participated in it. That time, the Band of Seven had slaughtered wantonly across the battlefield, their rampage churning up a tide of resentment.
And after Hikaru slew four of their members and swept the land clean of demons in a single night, the course of that war had shifted accordingly. On the Imagawa side, the Thunder Beast was slain and the disaster within the city was quelled, causing morale to soar. On the Hojo side, Gakimaru was executed, and the city's populace awoke from their nightmare, temporarily stabilizing the army's will to fight.
The two clans should have clashed even more fiercely.
Instead, the sudden departure of the demons made both sides pause and take stock. As the Yao Qi that had permeated the battlefield dissipated, the soldiers who had been driven to madness by resentment gradually regained their sanity. The generals, once blinded by the lust for slaughter, finally realized that if the war continued, the only ones to profit would be the demons lurking in the shadows—not them.
Thus, the Imagawa and Hojo clans reached a temporary ceasefire. It was not for the sake of peace, but merely a chance to breathe.
At the very least, the flames of war in the Kanto region were temporarily extinguished. For Hikaru and Kikyo, this was a welcome development. Without war, there would be no large-scale slaughter and the resentment it bred. Without resentment, the demons would lose their most vital source of nourishment.
Kidomaru's grand plan had been more than halfway disrupted.
This was also why, for the past half-month, Kaede Village had been able to enjoy a rare and precious tranquility.
But Hikaru had never deluded himself into thinking this quiet could last. Human war, in its essence, never needed demons to fuel it. As long as interests clashed, ambitions burned, and power was sought, the clang of steel would never truly cease. The ceasefire between the Imagawa and Hojo was only a fleeting reprieve.
And on this land, there were far more than just those two factions.
Even so, the speed at which the next war arrived still took Hikaru by surprise.
It was far too fast.
On a mountain path in the north of Musashi Province, a soldier was running for his life.
He wore the tattered armor of an ashigaru, his helmet long since lost. Matted, filthy hair was caked with a mixture of dirt and drying blood. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, twisted at an unnatural angle—it was broken, clearly severed by a sword.
Blood seeped from the stump, dripping from his fingertips onto the path beneath his feet and leaving a long, dark red trail in his wake.
But he didn't stop.
He didn't dare.
Behind him, the thunder of hooves grew closer and closer.
"Run… run…" His lips were cracked and peeling, his voice so hoarse he could barely string a sentence together.
He was a soldier from a Hojo Clan frontline outpost. This morning, everything had been normal. The ceasefire agreement with the Imagawa Clan was still in effect; though the front was tense, at least no weapons were being drawn.
Then, from the north—the direction opposite the Imagawa—an army had arrived.
There was no declaration of war, no ultimatum, not even the whisper of vanguard scouts. They had simply materialized on the horizon, a sudden, grim reality for the Hojo's northern defense line.
The flag they flew—
He recognized that character. The Dragon of Echigo. The God of War.
He hadn't had time to look any further, because the speed of their charge was terrifying. The outpost was crushed, the defense line was pierced, and hundreds of defending soldiers were utterly routed in less than a quarter of an hour.
He was one of the few who had escaped, but he knew he couldn't outrun them. Those cavalry were far, far too fast.
"Please… someone save me…"
He stumbled over a hillside, and the view before him suddenly opened up. A flat field stretched out below, with plumes of cooking smoke rising in the distance.
It was a village.
He used his last ounce of strength to rush toward it.
It was Kaede Village.
Under the torii gate at the village entrance, Kaede was squatting on the ground, drawing in the dirt with a twig. She was drawing Kikyo and the handsome big brother, Hikaru, standing side by side. Her artistic skills were questionable—her big brother was a tangled ball of yarn, and her sister was a crooked triangle—but Kaede was very satisfied with her work.
Just as she was about to add two eyes to the 'big brother,' she heard a sound.
Footsteps. Hurried and panicked. And the ragged sound of heavy panting.
She looked up.
A man covered in blood rushed down the mountain path, stumbled, and collapsed on the road at the village entrance.
"Help…" he rasped, lying on the ground, his voice so faint it was almost inaudible. "There… there is an army… coming from the north…"
Kaede was startled. She dropped her twig and turned to run.
"Big brother—!" she cried, rushing toward the shrine.
But she didn't need to shout again.
Because Hikaru was already standing at the village entrance. Yao Qi gathered around him, thick with the chilling aura of the underworld. Clad in grey robes, his pale hair stark against the twilight, he wore a crimson oni mask. Blood-red armor and plates of bone materialized around him, transforming him into something akin to an Asura—a true demon of battle, cold and terrifying.
And yet, Kaede was no longer afraid in the slightest. Instead, a sense of deep reassurance washed over her, the same feeling she got when she saw her sister, Kikyo.
He walked past Kaede, approached the fallen soldier, and squatted down.
"The Hojo army?" he asked, his voice low and steady.
The soldier looked up. His pupils constricted at the sight of the crimson oni mask, and he instinctively tried to shrink away. But he no longer had the strength.
"It's… it's Echigo…" his voice came in broken gasps. "Flying the 'Bishamon' flag…"
"So many… thousands of them…"
"Heading south… all the way… nothing can stop them…"
Hikaru's eyes narrowed behind the mask. The 'Bishamon' flag. Just as he'd thought.
Although Musashi Province was under Hojo control, it was a crossroads of conflict. To the north lay Kozuke Province, controlled by the Uesugi of Echigo. To the south was Sagami, the Hojo heartland. To the west, it bordered Kai Province, domain of the Takeda, and Suruga, home of the Imagawa. It was a battlefield waiting to happen.
And the only power that could be coming from the north was Echigo. The Uesugi Clan.
The troops of Uesugi Kenshin, the daimyo who, in this era, claimed to be the reincarnation of Bishamonten.
But regardless of who they were, Hikaru would not sit by and watch them destroy the fleeting stability he had finally managed to find. He would not allow the flames of war they stirred to consume this rare pocket of peace.
Hikaru stood and looked toward the north. In the deepening twilight, a moving shadow was faintly visible on the horizon.
It was the silhouette of an army. Flags, armor, spears, cavalry. A force of a thousand men was advancing in this direction.
And their vanguard… had already arrived.
At that moment, the setting sun finally slipped behind the mountain ridge. The light between heaven and earth grew murky, neither bright nor dark, as if stirred by some unseen hand.
This was the Hour of the Demon. The most dangerous moment of the day.
According to ancient legends, the yang energy of the day would recede at this time, but the yin energy of the night had not yet fully descended. In the gap where the two intersected, the boundary between the human and demon worlds grew thin and blurred.
Under the final, dying rays of the sun, the soldier who had fled from the north had completely collapsed. The blood at his severed arm had long since coagulated, but other wounds still bled freely—a long gash on his ribs from a sword, a round puncture in his back where an arrow had pierced through and been pulled out. He lay on the muddy road at the village entrance, his breathing growing shallower and shallower.
Kaede squatted beside him, her small face etched with worry, reaching out a hand to help.
"Don't touch him," Hikaru's voice came from behind her.
Kaede turned to look at him. The grey-robed, pale-haired Oni Samurai stood under the torii gate, his crimson eyes still fixed not on the dying soldier, but on the northern horizon.
"Big brother?"
"Go back. Get all the villagers inside the barrier. No one is to come out."
Seeing the gravity in his expression, Kaede didn't ask any more questions. She stood, ran two steps, then paused and looked back at him.
"Big brother, you have to be careful."
With that, Kaede turned and ran back into the village, her small figure disappearing among the houses.
Hikaru looked down at the now-unconscious soldier. The man's ashigaru armor was in tatters, the neck guard broken. The scabbard at his waist was empty—whether the sword was lost in his flight or taken from him was impossible to know.
But Hikaru made no move to save him. It wasn't that he didn't want to, but that there was no longer a point. The man looked grievously injured, but that was no longer what mattered.
And this was certainly not the time.
Hikaru stood tall. His gaze swept past the village entrance, across the fields, and toward the northern mountain path where those troops were approaching. The last afterglow of the sunset washed over the rolling hills, dyeing the world a deep, bloody red.
And in that crimson light, he saw something more.
In this moment of twilight, what he saw was not just an army. Behind the cavalry, stretching back along the path they had taken, several wisps of black smoke rose from the distant valleys.
That was not cooking smoke. It was too thick, too black, and it carried a scent he knew all too well.
The residue left behind after Yao Qi is purged.
Hikaru's eyes narrowed. He recognized the locations of that smoke. They were not human villages; they were demon settlements.
In this world, not all demons were lone predators. Most were beasts, undead, or even skeletons that had mutated after absorbing the murky Yao Qi between heaven and earth, driven by obsession and resentment. They lacked clear self-awareness or reason and were usually incapable of communication.
But there were exceptions. Some special demons, during their mutation, had their minds 'evolve' first. They were not particularly powerful—weaker, even, than common lesser demons—but they were intelligent. And they understood the value of sticking together. Though rare, such low-level demons often gathered to form settlements, not unlike human villages.
During the day, these places hid deep in the mountain forests, suppressed by the world's purer energies and difficult to detect. Only during the Hour of the Demon, as yin energy spread, did they reveal themselves beneath the mundane scenery, like a thin film layered over the normal world being peeled back by the last rays of the sun.
Hikaru had encountered such places before. He had even been inside one.
It was shortly after he had first arrived in this world, when he was still wandering. He had once stumbled into a demon settlement where more than a dozen low-level demons lived. There were small imps selling tofu, spider spirits weaving cloth, and even a one-eyed Nyuudou who had set up a stall at a crossroads to tell fortunes. It was like a human market—a true ghost market.
They had been startled to see him. He had been just as startled to see them.
But in the end, they had coexisted peacefully.
Ultimately, Hikaru was not entirely on the side of humans. It was just that humans were generally capable of communication, while demons who could do the same were few and far between. Most were so severely affected by Yao Qi that any meeting could only end in a fight—and that was true whether you were human or demon.
In the end, what he was hostile toward was never a specific race, but rather the individuals within them. Killing people, slaying demons—it was all the same.
One, two, three. Within his field of vision, he could see three such locations. Within a twenty-mile radius, there were only three small demon settlements.
But at this moment, that army from Echigo was sweeping down from the north. And it seemed they were clearing away every existence that carried Yao Qi along their path.
Now… they were heading straight for Kaede Village.
The sound of hooves grew louder, a relentless drumbeat. The cavalry at the very front had already crested the final hillside, appearing at the edge of the fields.
They were closing in.
Their iron armor reflected the bloody light of the setting sun, and their banners unfurled in the wind. A large flag, white with blue characters.
The character "Bi" was now starkly clear.
Bishamonten.
Hikaru was certainly no stranger to that name. He was more familiar with its other moniker: one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism, the guardian deity of the North, the god who governed war and wealth.
And, as he recalled from the records of later generations, there was a person in this era who claimed to be the incarnation of Bishamonten. That person was the sovereign of Echigo, the master of these very troops.
The head of the Uesugi Clan. The woman known as the God of War… Uesugi Kenshin.
Beneath that banner, the cavalry formation spread out, flanking from both sides and methodically sealing off the exits to Kaede Village. It was clear they were not just passing through. Nor had they come here by mistake.
It was a siege. A purposeful one.
They… had sensed the Yao Qi here.
They had sensed the existence of Hikaru.
He stood at the village entrance, his grey robes fluttering in the evening breeze. The crimson demon mask was already fixed to his face, his long, pale hair whipping behind him. His left hand rested on the hilt of his Muramasa; his right hung by his side, where faint purple arcs of lightning occasionally crackled across his fingertips.
The cavalry came to a halt. Not out of hesitation, but because someone was blocking the road.
One person.
One monster.
Blocking the path of an army of thousands.
From the center of the formation, a single rider emerged.
It was a woman. She looked young, perhaps seventeen or eighteen. She wore a set of dark silver armor, thin yet exquisitely crafted, the curve of the breastplate perfectly conforming to her figure. A cascade of silver-grey hair draped over her pauldrons, fluttering in the wind. In her hand, she held a katana, its scabbard engraved with Sanskrit.
Her face was delicate, yet her features carried a sharp, piercing intensity. It was not the opulent authority of Imagawa Yoshimoto, nor the defiant pride of a Hojo.
It was pure sharpness. Like a drawn blade.
Her gaze fell upon Hikaru.
"Monster," she spoke. Her voice was clear and bright, neither high nor low, but it possessed an immense, penetrating power.
She raised the katana in her hand, its tip pointing directly at Hikaru.
"In the name of Bishamonten," she declared, her voice ringing across the field. "I will eliminate you."
Exorcism?
Hikaru did not speak. He simply stood there, watching this woman, watching the thousand fully armed soldiers behind her. On the armor of those soldiers, the same Sanskrit symbols were engraved. This was no ordinary army; it was a force operating under the banner of a holy crusade.
And their goal was never just the demon settlements along the way.
It also included him.
The monster of Kaede Village.
Hikaru.
"Interesting."
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