Chapter 154: Unlucky Inuyasha, Conditions for Resurrection
A short while later. Outside the borders of Kaede Village, the autumn wind swept across the crest of a gentle slope, rustling the dry grass at the bend in the dirt road.
Sesshomaru sat upon a jagged, protruding rock. His pristine white pelt—a cascade of ethereal fur—was draped over the rough stone surface to serve as a cushion. His posture was immaculate, so utterly composed that a passerby might mistakenly assume the Great Yokai had merely stopped to admire the fading autumn scenery.
Squatting off to the side, Jaken clutched the Staff of Two Heads horizontally across his knobby knees. The impish demon's sharp, monkey-like face was pulled taut with anxiety. His bulging eyes darted toward Hikaru every few seconds, brimming with undisguised vigilance.
Leaning against a neighboring boulder, Hikaru remained silent. His Oni armor had already dissipated into the ether, though his mask remained firmly in place. Beneath it, his expression was a complicated knot. It wasn't shock. It wasn't even surprise. It was a deeply subtle, almost surreal sense of absurdity after hearing the sheer cause and effect of the situation.
According to Sesshomaru's sparse account—heavily padded by Jaken's frantic, intermittent additions—Hikaru finally understood. Inuyasha's death was not some devastating tragedy. There was no epic, world-ending duel with a legendary Great Yokai. There was no heroic, tear-jerking sacrifice to protect a loved one. It couldn't even be loosely described as glorious.
The half-demon had died over two months ago, trampled in the mud of a chaotic, disorganized melee.
Two months ago. Hikaru mentally calculated the timeline. Right around the time I fought Kidomaru. It perfectly coincided with the arrival of those four high-level Kyoto demons in the Kanto region.
Inuyasha. A half-demon born to a human woman and Toga, the former supreme Great Dog Demon of the Western Lands. Blessed with silver hair, dog ears, and a notoriously hot-tempered, impulsive streak. He inherited his father's demonic blood, yet his impure status meant he was violently ostracized by both humans and yokai alike.
In the original story, Inuyasha should have still been chasing the Shikon Jewel at this point. But the timeline of this world had violently fractured. The catalyst was the Jewel itself.
Originally, the Shikon Jewel was guarded by Kikyo, eventually shattering and scattering across the land to kickstart the half-demon's epic journey. In this twisted reality, however, the Exorcist village chief had entrusted the Shikon Jewel to Hikaru nearly four months ago. Hikaru had then brought it to Kaede Village, handing it directly to Kikyo for safekeeping.
And Inuyasha? Before Hikaru even arrived in this era, the half-demon had been hunting for the Jewel. Despised for his half-blood status, he yearned for the artifact's legendary power to grant wishes, hoping to become either a full-fledged demon or a complete human. That motivation remained unchanged.
The execution, however, was drastically different. On that fateful night, Kikyo had pierced the Kamaitachi with her sacred arrow. The resulting explosion of spiritual energy had broadcasted the Shikon Jewel's location far more violently than the original timeline's slow, gradual lure. Catching the scent, Inuyasha sprinted from the Western Lands to Kanto at breakneck speed.
Coincidentally, his reckless sprint led him straight into the bloody, grinding frontline between the Imagawa Clan and the Hojo Clan. Thousands of human soldiers were slaughtering each other in the mud. Inuyasha, arrogant and impatient, charged right into the meat grinder.
While his strength was formidable, he hadn't yet acquired the legendary Tessaiga. Worse, he was completely blind to the fact that humans weren't the only ones on that battlefield. The demonic vanguard from Kyoto—the advance force commanded by one of Hagoromo Gitsune's Materialization-level generals—had also descended upon the area.
Those Kyoto demons coveted the Shikon Jewel. Inuyasha crashed into their ranks, loudly demanding the very same artifact. The outcome was brutally predictable.
Against ordinary fodder demons, Inuyasha would have triumphed. His baseline power hovered around what Hikaru classified as a Six Transformations demon—a high-ranking boss entity. He was perhaps a hair's breadth weaker than Yura of the Hair in her true Tsukumogami form, but his raw instincts allowed him to seize lethal openings., possessing Toga's elite bloodline, a near-death state would trigger his berserk transformation, rocketing his power to an eighth or ninth transformation level. If he wanted to flee from high-level demons, he easily could have.
But he was simultaneously swarmed by human ashigaru from both warring clans. On a Sengoku battlefield, neither human nor yokai showed mercy to a half-breed. Attacked from the front, flanked from the rear, he was hopelessly besieged.
And to seal his fate... that specific day happened to be the eve of the new moon.
As a half-demon, Inuyasha's demonic power waned in the days leading up to the new moon, ultimately stripping him of his strength and turning him into a vulnerable mortal human when the moon vanished. To make matters worse, illusion-casting demons like Gakimaru prowled the battlefield. Inuyasha was dragged into mind-bending illusions for an entire day, entirely robbed of the chance to trigger his berserk bloodline.
The timing was disastrous. The location was a death trap. The opponents were overwhelmingly mismatched.
He died just like that, bleeding out in the mud during a chaotic, senseless slaughter between demons and humans. His corpse was unceremoniously dumped into a river, drifting aimlessly until Sesshomaru recently fished it out.
This was the ultimate butterfly effect.
If Hikaru hadn't transmigrated, Kikyo would have handled the Kamaitachi, but perhaps not with such a massive, beacon-like explosion of spiritual power while exhausted. Kidomaru wouldn't have come. The four Kyoto demons wouldn't have marched. Inuyasha wouldn't have tracked the scent so aggressively. He wouldn't have blundered into the Imagawa-Hojo warzone.
He wouldn't have died.
It was a string of astronomically bad luck. As Toga's son, even as a despised half-demon, he carried the terrifying weight of the Western Lands' name. The Kingdom of Dog Demons in the Kansai region remained an absolute powerhouse. Truly ancient, powerful yokai would never dare touch Inuyasha, knowing the political nightmare it could unleash, even if the Western Lands didn't care for him. But Inuyasha had the misfortune of running into Kyoto demons—arrogant, geographically distant entities who were strong enough to kill him, but ignorant enough of the Western Lands' might to actually do it.
Hikaru remained silent for a long time.
He harbored no deep affection for Inuyasha. No goodwill, no malice. To him, the half-demon was merely a fictional protagonist from a manga he read in his past life. Hikaru had exploited his knowledge of the "original work" to survive, but he had long accepted that this brutal reality was not a comic book. He had practically forgotten about Inuyasha's existence.
But now, the reality set in. This was a living, breathing person who had fought, bled, and died.
And he had died because of Hikaru's mere presence.
Hikaru just felt... speechless. Knowing Inuyasha's reckless, brain-dead impulsivity didn't make the sheer absurdity of his death any less jarring.
However, Hikaru's pragmatic mind quickly rebooted, shifting to cold calculation.
Three months.
The maximum effective range of his Undead Affinity and Soul Summoning. A dissipated soul could theoretically be recalled within a three-month window. But it was only a possibility. The longer the delay, the more fragmented the soul became. Three months was the absolute ragged edge.
Inuyasha had been dead for two. He was still within the threshold.
"Summoning is not resurrection," Hikaru stated, his voice flat and precise beneath the mask, locking eyes with Sesshomaru. "What I can do is temporarily condense his dissipated soul fragments. I can force his consciousness to return, but only briefly. Half a day, at the absolute maximum."
"After that, the residual soul will shatter and dissipate permanently. And whether it even succeeds depends entirely on how much of his soul is actually left."
Sesshomaru didn't even look at him.
His chilling, golden slit-pupils remained fixed on the distant, rolling mountain ridges. His aristocratic features were carved from ice, unchanging from beginning to end.
"Recalling him is enough," the Great Yokai replied, his voice a smooth, dangerous baritone. "The rest—I will do."
Sesshomaru's left hand rested lightly upon the ancient, weathered scabbard at his waist.
Tenseiga.
One of the two legendary fangs left behind by Toga. The sword of heaven, capable of severing death itself. It could not harm the living, but a single swing could slaughter the pallbearers of the Underworld and drag the dead back from the abyss.
One swing, one life restored.
Sesshomaru offered no further explanation. He didn't need to. Looking at that scabbard, Hikaru understood the mechanics perfectly. He just needed to anchor Inuyasha's fractured soul to the mortal plane for a single instant. The moment the soul materialized, Tenseiga would sever the chains of death binding it. The soul would lock back into the vessel, demonic power would surge, and the physical flesh would mend.
Resurrection.
If so much time hadn't passed—if Inuyasha's soul hadn't completely drifted away from his rotting corpse—Sesshomaru wouldn't have needed Hikaru at all. He could have just swung the sword.
Hikaru's eyes lingered on the blade. He was deeply interested in Tenseiga. While it lacked the destructive, mountain-shattering power of Tessaiga, its restorative abilities were godlike., Hikaru remembered the hidden technique locked within it—a power of the Underworld Path stolen from a death-domain Great Yokai defeated by Toga.
But now was not the time to covet it. Sesshomaru might despise Tenseiga for its inability to kill, but he would never abandon his father's relic. The sword had chosen him, after all.
"Your ability only needs to go this far," Sesshomaru stated. It wasn't a question. It was a royal decree. "That is enough."
The conversation flatlined. Clean, crisp, devoid of a single wasted breath or hesitation.
Behind his mask, Hikaru's mind raced at lightning speed, processing a dozen variables a second. What could Inuyasha's resurrection actually bring him?
First, the chaotic half-demon would return to the board. Hikaru didn't care about that; with him manipulating the pieces, the original plot was already dead and buried. He had absolute confidence in his control over the region.
Second... the whereabouts of Tessaiga. The peerless demon sword forged by Totosai from Toga's own fang.
When Inuyasha was alive, the gateway to Tessaiga's tomb—the Black Pearl—was physically sealed within his right eye. It was a failsafe designed by Toga, ensuring no one could steal it. On the surface, resurrecting Inuyasha offered Hikaru zero tangible benefits.
But then, a spark of dark inspiration flared in Hikaru's mind. A ruthless, pragmatic thought took shape.
He would help Sesshomaru summon the soul. He would let Tenseiga complete the resurrection. He didn't even need to demand a trade. He just needed to ensure Inuyasha was resurrected in a state that was no longer the "half-demon Inuyasha."
If Inuyasha's physical state changed, wouldn't the Black Pearl hidden in his corpse's eye become an ownerless artifact?
This was a golden opportunity. A flawless excuse to get his hands on Tessaiga. Inuyasha had been hunting the Shikon Jewel to purify his bloodline, right? Whether he wanted to become a full demon or a full human, Hikaru could actually help that transition during the soul-binding process. Or rather, he could intentionally manipulate the summoning—his abilities weren't all-powerful, after all. Accidents happen.
Since this was a transaction, taking a little something off the top as a service fee was only natural, wasn't it?
It was absolutely worth the gamble. And brilliantly, this goal didn't conflict with Sesshomaru's immediate desires. The Great Yokai was obviously here to extract Tessaiga's location from his brother, but Hikaru knew the barrier spell on the sword would reject Sesshomaru anyway.
"When do we start?" Hikaru asked, his tone perfectly neutral.
Sesshomaru's golden slit-pupils finally shifted, landing squarely on the undead samurai. The gaze remained freezing and indifferent.
Yet, buried deep within those inhuman eyes, there seemed to be an extremely faint, almost imperceptible flicker of satisfaction.
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