Chapter 106: A Demon to End a War
In truth, Imagawa Yoshimoto had not originally intended to seek out Hikaru in such a hurry. She did, however, desperately want him.
It was not the sort of desire a woman holds for a man—though she had to admit, the ghost-god's face was certainly not unpleasant. But she, Imagawa Yoshimoto, was the lord of a province, not some lovesick maiden. Even if she were still a chaste girl, such matters would hold no interest for her.
At least, not for now.
What she coveted was the power that existence represented.
In the chaotic era of the Warring States, heroes vied for supremacy. The three great houses of the Tokaido—the Imagawa of Suruga, the Takeda of Kai, and the Uesugi of Echigo—used the two provinces of Musashi and Sagami, controlled by the Hojo clan, as a buffer. They restrained one another in a delicate balance, each secretly coveting the grand chessboard of the world.
Imagawa Yoshimoto had never lacked for ambition. What she lacked was a card powerful enough to overturn the entire game.
Takeda Shingen, that woman from Kai, claimed to be the incarnation of Fudo Myo-o, and her clan's military might had surged as a result. She didn't just make empty boasts; rumor had it that beings of unknown origin truly fought by her side. They were not ordinary samurai, nor were they common mages, but a group of warrior women wielding even stranger powers, known as Sacred Treasures.
The reports sent back by Imagawa's spies were sparse, mentioning only that strangely armored individuals would occasionally appear within the Takeda army. These warriors could single-handedly shatter enemy lines, each one a match for a hundred men. The spies noted that the aura surrounding these figures felt neither human nor demonic.
Even more bizarrely, Takeda Shingen seemed to have no qualms about revealing these assets, even deliberately pushing them to the forefront. Imagawa Yoshimoto herself had suffered a subtle but stinging loss during the last round of border skirmishes with the Takeda.
It wasn't a defeat in a direct confrontation—the Imagawa clan's military strength was in no way inferior to the Takeda's. Even if her opponent had soldiers who could match a hundred, the Imagawa clan held dominion over the three provinces of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa. While she couldn't claim absolute control over the entire territory, she remained the strongest in Kanto, bearing the title of the Tokaido's Number One Archer. She commanded thousands of troops who could crush any opponent by sheer numbers alone.
No, the losses came from a series of inexplicable night raids. Outposts were silently wiped out. Scouts vanished without a trace. Frontline generals were knocked unconscious in the dead of night, right in their own tents. The enemy came and went like ghosts, their methods utterly unlike conventional military operations.
Imagawa Yoshimoto didn't know the true nature of those things. She only knew that Takeda Shingen commanded 'monsters' that operated beyond the known rules of warfare.
And then there was Uesugi Kenshin. That one was an even greater enigma.
Claiming to be the avatar of Bishamonten, she waged campaigns across the land under the righteous banner of exorcising demons. It was said that wherever the great banner bearing the character 'Bi' flew, even demons would retreat in terror.
Imagawa Yoshimoto didn't believe in the reincarnation of gods or buddhas, but she believed in power. It was an obvious fact that Uesugi Kenshin's army could destroy mountain temples and slay demons. It was also a fact that Takeda Shingen had monsters in her ranks.
So, what did she, Imagawa Yoshimoto, possess?
She once had her master, Taigen Sessai, but his health had been failing as of late. Other than him, she had only a shrine dedicated to the ghost-god, Hikaru, and a famed sword, Raikiri, which had been renamed half a month ago because of him. All she truly had was the legend she had so carefully cultivated—the tale, spread by the common folk of her city, of the Lightning-Slaying Oni's descent.
But she did not have the man himself.
The demon who had slain the Raiju in a single night and split the sky over Suruga with lightning had come and gone, leaving behind only a headless beast and a sword thrust into the ruins.
It felt like a dream. And what remained was the stark reality of her own waning strength.
Imagawa Yoshimoto did not like dreaming; she preferred to forge dreams into reality.
So, she raised an army.
Gathering two thousand of her finest elites, she marched east from Suruga, crossing directly into the Hojo clan's sphere of influence. This was not for the sake of conquest. War was merely the means.
Her goal was singular: to lure that ghost-god out.
Though she was personally leading the charge, the Imagawa were, in a sense, fighting a war on two fronts. Even as they engaged the Hojo, friction and conflict had already erupted with the Takeda clan. If not for the repeated setbacks she had suffered on the Takeda front, she would never have turned her attention here.
Jentaigahara.
This was the fourth day of the standoff. The autumn wind swept across the withered yellow grass, drifting over the open ground that separated the two armies.
On the northern hills, the Hojo clan's battle lines were as orderly as hammered iron. Fifteen hundred men were arrayed on the high ground, their spears a dense forest, their armor glinting in the pale light. Unlike the Imagawa, who were fighting on two fronts, this force constituted the majority of the Hojo clan's elite.
Hojo Ujiyasu stood on the high platform of her main camp. Her pitch-black hair whipped back in the wind, and she wore light armor over a deep purple kosode. Her exquisite face was so grim it looked as if it might drip water.
She hated fighting more than anything. To be precise, she hated being forced into battles like this. If it were a siege, she could smile contentedly while watching the enemy freeze in the cold wind below her castle walls. If it were an ambush, she could wait patiently for half a month just for the perfect moment to strike.
But to be dragged into a standoff in an open field?
Disgusting. Utterly disgusting.
"My lord, the Imagawa formation is changing," a retainer at her side reported, pointing south.
Hojo Ujiyasu followed his gaze. Three li to the south, the Imagawa lines were slowly advancing. This was no longer the tentative probing of the past few days. This was a formal, full-scale advance. Infantry phalanxes marched in three ranks, cavalry deployed on the flanks, and a sea of banners waved like a restless tide.
Behind the great banner embroidered with the Imagawa family crest, a luxurious palanquin carried by four strong men moved steadily forward.
Imagawa Yoshimoto. That woman had come to the front line in person.
A corner of Hojo Ujiyasu's lip twitched in disdain. "Has she gone mad?"
Regardless of what Yoshimoto was planning, Ujiyasu would never show weakness on her own territory.
Her voice rose, cutting through the autumn wind. "All troops—counter-attack!"
The war drums thundered. The dull, heavy sound seemed to surge from deep within the earth, tightening the chests of all who heard it. The Hojo lines began their descent. Spearmen advanced in front, archers followed behind, and cavalry circled to the flanks as the two armies slowly closed the distance on the autumn plain.
Three li.
Soon, they were within range. The command was issued from both sides almost simultaneously.
"Fire!"
Arrows arced into the sky, crossing in mid-air like two great flocks of birds flying in opposite directions. Cries of pain erupted from the front lines of both armies. Ashigaru in the foremost ranks crumpled to the ground, and those behind them stepped over the corpses to continue their relentless advance.
The spear formations collided with a sound as dense and chaotic as a torrential rainstorm.
Blood splattered, staining the withered yellow grass a ghastly red. This was a direct collision between two provinces, devoid of clever tactics or roundabout maneuvers—only the raw, brutal slaughter of iron and blood.
Hojo Ujiyasu stood on her high platform, watching the battlefield with an expressionless face, her lips pressed into a thin, hard line.
This battle should never have happened. For the sake of some inexplicable 'ghost-god,' she had been dragged into a meaningless war of attrition. And Imagawa Yoshimoto was doing the same. Two women, two lords of great provinces, bleeding each other dry on this desolate plain for the sake of a demon.
But just as the slaughter at the front reached its frenzied peak—
Fog began to rise.
Hojo Ujiyasu was the first to notice something was wrong. The fog did not drift in from the mountains, nor was it water vapor rising from the ground. It seemed to materialize from thin air, right at the center of the battlefield—the very line of contact where the two armies clashed.
It was a red fog, faint and almost colorless at first, but Ujiyasu could smell it.
The unmistakable scent of blood.
"What is this..." the retainer by her side began to ask.
He never finished his sentence.
CRACK!
Thunder crashed down from a cloudless sky.
It struck the ground directly between the two armies. A violent explosion of purple lightning turned a ten-zhang radius into scorched earth. Soldiers caught in the blast were thrown through the air like dolls, and the front ranks of both the Imagawa and Hojo forces collapsed in an instant.
A second bolt of lightning struck. Then a third.
The purple electricity formed a shimmering, crackling wall, forcibly splitting the two armies apart.
"—What in the world!?"
Hojo Ujiyasu staggered back a step, her eyes wide.
She saw it. In the scorched earth where the lightning had fallen, stark white spikes erupted from the ground. One, two, ten, a hundred...
A dense forest of bone burst from the earth, forming an impassable barrier between the two armies. A forest of white bone. The spikes were scattered at various heights; the shortest were waist-high, while the tallest towered over a man's head, cutting the entire front line into a jagged, impossible wall. Any soldier who tried to cross was blocked by the bones and driven back by arcs of lightning.
The battle was forcibly halted. Not by a retreat order from either side, but by a sudden, external force that had slammed the pause button on the war itself.
A bloody mist began to thicken and spread through the bone forest. A deathly silence fell over the field. The sounds of slaughter and shouting vanished completely. The soldiers on both sides scrambled back, their faces masks of horror as they realized a vast, blood-colored mist now surrounded them, staining the very sky.
And in the center of the sundered battlefield... a path of bone and blood had been paved through the heart of the carnage.
A figure stepped out from the mist.
He wore simple grey robes, and his long hair was the color of pale moonlight. A crimson oni mask concealed his face, but from beneath it, his eyes glowed with an eerie red light. His left hand rested on the hilt of the blade at his waist, while his right hand hung at his side, his fingers entwined with dense, purple arcs of electricity.
He stood between the two armies.
He stood in the center of the bone forest and the thunder.
One man.
Blocking a battlefield of three thousand soldiers.
Ending a war with his presence alone.
Hojo Ujiyasu's breath caught in her throat. That figure, that long pale hair, those crimson eyes...
Without a doubt, it was the one she had seen in her dreams. On that night when Odawara Castle was shrouded in nightmares, deep within a fever dream she had dismissed as a hallucination, that very figure had appeared.
"It's him..." she murmured, her voice a ghost of a whisper. "It's that yokai."
Her hand unconsciously tightened on the armrest of her command chair, the wood groaning under the pressure.
To the south, within the Imagawa main camp, the curtains of the luxurious palanquin were thrown open.
Imagawa Yoshimoto stood up.
Her twelve-layered junihitoe kimono billowed around her, her dark brown hair fluttering in the wind. The golden butterfly ornament in her hair shimmered in the strange, blood-tinged light. A smile, so brilliant it was almost uncontrollable, bloomed across her charming and delicate face. Her hands were clasped at her chest, her slender fingers trembling slightly with unrestrained excitement.
"He's here," she breathed. Her voice was not loud, yet it was filled with an irrepressible joy. "He's finally here!"
The maidservant beside her was startled by her lady's reaction. "My Lady? That person ahead... is a yokai, isn't he?"
"That is no yokai," Imagawa Yoshimoto corrected, shaking her head. Her bright eyes were fixed intently on the grey-robed figure in the center of the battlefield. "He is a Kishin."
Her voice dropped, filled with a fierce, possessive pride. "He is my Imagawa clan's Kishin."
She lifted her skirts and stepped down from the palanquin.
"Prepare a horse."
"My Lady!? You intend to go personally—"
"Prepare a horse!" Imagawa Yoshimoto's voice rose, sharp and decisive, her charming face set with unshakeable determination. "I have been waiting for that man for nearly a month."
Her eyes narrowed, a dangerous glint within them. "Now that he's right there, do you think I will let him slip away again?"
The maidservant opened her mouth, then thought better of it, turning to lead a warhorse over.
Imagawa Yoshimoto stood at the very front of her formation, the wind whipping at her luxurious sleeves. She gazed at the lonely figure standing between the thunder and the bone forest. The wide, ecstatic smile at the corners of her mouth pulled back slightly, becoming softer.
And far more serious.
"Lord Kishin," she whispered to the wind, a promise and a vow. "This time, I've caught you. And I won't let you go."
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