Chapter 206: Flames

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The transparent disc, as beautiful as white light, quickly shrank and turned back into a mirror. The painting of Wakayama Prefecture came to life again.

Minamoto Kiyomoto put away the mirror with a wave of his sleeve.

“Where is he?!” the person wearing the white tiger mask asked, looking at the place where Minamoto Kiyomoto had disappeared.

“Is it the Shikotsu Golden Dragon?” Xuanwu asked with doubt.

“No!” Qinglong’s tone was calm, and his gaze searched everywhere. “The Shikotsu Golden Dragon’s ability is imprisonment. Our thoughts didn’t stop.”

“He can make yokai smaller. Could he have made himself smaller?” Among the people wearing various masks behind him, a person with a zebra crossing mask couldn’t help but guess.

“No matter what, be on guard!” Qinglong said in a deep voice. “With Minamoto Kiyomoto’s personality, it’s impossible for him to run away, let alone let us go!”

The group took a deep breath. Before they could completely calm down, they saw Minamoto Kiyomoto slowly descending from the sky.

“What spell was that just now? From the Laurel Crown? Or did you create it yourself?” Qinglong held a sickle in his left hand and a hammer in his right, a weapon called a kusarigama.

Minamoto Kiyomoto recovered from his deep thought and glanced at them.

“Kneel down and confess your guilt. I can give you one last chance,” he said faintly.

His eyes were cold, like the moonlight shining on the snow, and also like a ruthless god, watching them through these eyes.

“Since we came here, we already know our fate,” the white tiger mask was not afraid at all. Instead, he became excited, and a bloodthirsty and fierce aura came from him.

“You too?” Minamoto Kiyomoto looked at the Suzaku mask.

The Suzaku mask was silent.

“Kill!” the white tiger held a long stick and struck.

The long stick went from in front of him to behind him. When it passed over his head, the churning sea of clouds in the sky was torn like a paper towel.

Facing this stick that seemed to be fighting the sky, Minamoto Kiyomoto opened his right hand.

With a “slap,” the air between the two of them violently turbulent.

The shockwave rolled in all directions, and the rocks were shaken off.

The moment his right hand caught the long stick, Minamoto Kiyomoto’s left hand had already reached out and pinched the neck of the horrified white tiger.

“Crack.” The neck was broken.

He threw the white tiger’s body into the mountains with a flick of his hand. The master who could tear the clouds, his body fell to the ground, and the dust it stirred up was not even a meter high.

By this time, the others had come back to their senses, but the white tiger, one of the four strongest, was already dead!

Knowing that they would die, everyone was still cold all over.

“Don’t act rashly. His own strength is much stronger than we expected!” Xuanwu was not like Xuanwu. Instead, he was like an eagle facing a strong enemy, his hair standing on end.

The group did not dare to rush forward and took their positions.

With a cry, the huge Suzaku was summoned again.

The heat wave rolled, and the four fields turned dark red for a moment. The trees on the mountain began to burn like candles.

In the intense heat, Qinglong gave Minamoto Kiyohiro a look.

Suzaku raised its neck and cried out. Its wings swept across, and purple flames surged in the sky like a huge wave.

The peaks of the nearby mountains quickly turned red and turned into red-hot lava.

The flame wave rushed towards Minamoto Kiyomoto, wanting to swallow him and rush into the abyss of death!
At the same time, Qinglong and Xuanwu, along with dozens of other people, once again launched a torrent of spells.

The sound of the howling wind, the sound of the tide-like fire wave, the sound of the waterfall-like torrent of spells, and the beautiful flute sound that controlled Suzaku.

In these sounds, Minamoto Kiyomoto put his left hand behind his back, and with his right hand, he flicked the Laurel Crown on his head.

“Ding—” Although it was a wooden instrument, after being flicked, the Laurel Crown made a metallic sound.

The flame wave turned around and rushed towards the torrent of spells.

“Boom!” The two collided.

On the left was a colorful rainbow wave, and on the right was a dark red and purple fire wave. They collided, forming a rainbow barrier and a firework barrier, respectively, and exploded and rolled crazily.

“What’s going on?”

“Minamoto Kiyohiro!”

Qinglong and the others shouted. Even if they were not hit by the fire sea tide, just the shockwave from afar made them unable to breathe, and their hair and sleeves began to burn.

At this time, the rainbow wave and the fire sea tide finally exploded.

The huge sound made everyone deaf in the first moment. Only Minamoto Kiyomoto heard the complete explosion.

A tornado formed in the fire wave between the heavens and the earth, wrapped in a rainbow and a fire wave.

The sky was dyed, like a piece of red-hot iron.

Except for Qinglong, Xuanwu, and Suzaku, everyone was hit by the shockwave and somersaulted in the air, spitting blood.

“Minamoto Kiyohiro, what are you doing!” Xuanwu’s chest was stuffy, and he roared.

Minamoto Kiyohiro, who was wearing the Suzaku mask, looked at Minamoto Kiyomoto, who was unharmed in the aftermath of the fire wave.

“You… what did you do?” he asked in horror.

“The way to control Suzaku is not just one. The power of Suzaku is not just this,” Minamoto Kiyomoto flicked the Laurel Crown again with his finger.

Along with the metallic sound, Suzaku let out a long cry, and flames seeped out from between its feathers, as if it were self-immolating.

In the blink of an eye, Suzaku lost its physical body. Every feather was a scarlet flame.

Its size also became larger. From the initial one hundred meters, it became five hundred meters, one thousand meters, and finally stopped at three thousand meters.

A complete scarlet monster.

“So that’s how it is,” Minamoto Kiyohiro took off his mask. His face was pale and empty.

“What’s going on?” Looking at the giant bird that was like a rolling red cloud, even the fearless Qinglong was terrified.

Minamoto Kiyohiro laughed miserably and said, “Suzaku is from China. The Laurel Crown is China’s supreme divine artifact. What Suzaku flute, hahaha!”

He laughed like a madman and suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

The blood left his protective divine power and evaporated into a red mist in the air.

Qinglong no longer paid attention to him, knowing that the side effects of him forcibly mastering Suzaku had come early.

Minamoto Kiyomoto, who was standing in mid-air, coldly ordered Suzaku, “Kill them.”

With a long, clear and melodious cry, the crowd was stunned for a moment before they realized that this was Suzaku’s real cry.

After a second or two, burning meteors began to fall from the sky.

Kuwayama, who was wearing a tanuki mask, remembered that at the Noryo Festival, Minamoto Kiyohiro had failed to summon Suzaku, and Suzaku had once swung a meteor.

Now, every meteor in the sky was ten times larger than that time.

Before it landed, he was already roasted red, and his skin was stinging.

When it got closer, through the outer layer of flames, he discovered the truth of these meteors. It was a feather.

The next second he knew this truth, he was burned to charcoal.

When the meteor shower ended, a huge lava pit appeared in the center of the mountains. The pit was soon filled with a pool of orange-red lava.

The distant mountains were also burned, becoming a fire blanket.

The lakes and streams in the mountains were evaporated, and clusters of snow-white steam rose high like trees.

After one blow, the scarlet monster also lost its power and quickly shrank. It couldn’t even maintain a hundred meters and became a Suzaku with a wingspan of about four meters.

Minamoto Kiyomoto looked at the Suzaku flute that was slowly dissolving in the fire and landed on Suzaku.

Suzaku’s power was exhausted, but it was able to break the seal. It was in a very good mood and chirped happily, flying towards Tokyo with its wings.

Minamoto Kiyomoto went directly to the National Diet Building.

Without waiting for anyone to announce, he walked directly into the Ogosho’s office.

The Ogosho was reviewing documents. When he saw him, he waved his hand at the secretary who was pretending to stop him.

The secretary breathed a sigh of relief, left the office, and closed the door.

“I thought you would wait for me to find trouble with the Taiko first,” Minamoto Kiyomoto said.

The Ogosho put down his pen, stood up, and walked around the heavy desk.

“You’re much more dangerous than the Taiko,” he sighed, sat down on the sofa, and pointed to the opposite side, gesturing for Minamoto Kiyomoto to sit down as well.

“The person who was unexpected should be me. I thought I could definitely kill you,” the Ogosho said while pouring tea for the two of them. “I never thought that the Lord of Kyoto would give you the Yata no Kagami in advance.”

“From your point of view, giving the divine artifact to someone is indeed something you would never think of,” Minamoto Kiyomoto sneered.

After pouring the tea, the Ogosho leaned back, put his right leg on his left, and clasped his hands on his right leg. He looked at Minamoto Kiyomoto with his calm eyes.

“Sometimes I really envy you. You don’t have to pay anything to get everything,” he said. “And an ordinary person like me, even if I pay everything, I can’t get what I want.”

“Everything? Didn’t you still retain your greed for power and strength? That’s your everything.”

The Ogosho laughed, “It seems you know a lot. It was indeed right to assassinate you.”

‘Use me to mock him!’ Tamahime couldn’t stand the Ogosho’s face anymore and gave Minamoto Kiyomoto an idea through her thoughts.

Feeling the plan that Tamahime had transmitted, Minamoto Kiyomoto hesitated for a moment.

“Tamahime told me,” he said.

“Tamahime?”

“When I merged with the Coral Demon Moth, I saw her. She’s still alive… she’s still alive now, here,” Minamoto Kiyomoto pointed his index finger at his temple.

The Ogosho was silent.

Minamoto Kiyomoto continued:

“She only has her capacity left, but she still looks like she did when she was young, very similar to Miko. I mistook her at first glance.”

“They are very similar,” the Ogosho agreed before drinking, “but I can easily distinguish them. Tamahime’s chest is a little smaller.”

The Ogosho’s drinking action paused.

“She likes to wear hot pants, revealing her fair and round legs, and play skateboarding on the beach in Shikoku,” Minamoto Kiyomoto stared at him.

“Is that so? I’ve never heard that she could skateboard before,” the Ogosho drank the tea.

“I taught her,” Minamoto Kiyomoto seemed to be reminiscing about the teaching scene at that time. “But she’s very lazy. She likes to lie on the bed in my old dormitory, like a child throwing a tantrum, making the sheets wrinkled and kicking the quilt to the ground.”

The Ogosho put down his teacup and laughed.

“Kiyomoto-kun,” he said, “twenty years ago, I exchanged my family, friendship, pity, and fear for my love for her. When the demon-hunting ship returned to Tokyo Bay, I exchanged my love for her for my obsession with power and strength.”

“Twenty years ago, you got the position of Ogosho. What about now?”

“Power,” the Ogosho said. “The ‘heart flow’ of the Sanzen-in, to wash the capacity in exchange for stronger power. And now, my capacity is purer. I finally understand what it feels like to have my power grow stronger day by day.”

Minamoto Kiyomoto looked at the desk that symbolized power and strength.

He was not looking at the desk, but at the photo frame on the desk.

The Ogosho followed his gaze and said with a smile, “This kind of thing can make me appear close to the people and get more help.”

“Actually, I can understand your actions,” Minamoto Kiyomoto said faintly.

“Oh?”

“For my mother, for Miko, Koyako, and the others, I can pay everything. Then it’s not strange for you to pay everything for power and status.”

“Practitioners, especially powerful practitioners, are more or less strange in some places,” the Ogosho said. “But, I’m still very happy that you can understand me.”

“But this doesn’t hinder the relationship between us?”

“Of course,” the Ogosho nodded. “If you’re alive, I can’t be at ease.”

“I can’t let you live either,” Minamoto Kiyomoto stood up. “Although I really want to respect Miko’s thoughts, I, this person, hold a grudge.”

The two of them ended their conversation.

Minamoto Kiyomoto left this office where he could not hear any outside sounds, and the Ogosho willingly stayed in this prison of power and status.

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Koyasan.

“Manjaku Shojin, who suggested that you go to Tokyo and report the matter of the ‘Bodhi Leaf Sutra’ to Lord Shinto?”

Manjaku Shojin looked at the Judiciary Bureau officer in front of him and said with some doubt, “It was a solution that the elders in the temple and I came up with when we were discussing.”

“Please ask the elders to come out.”

Manjaku Shojin ordered the doorman to summon the elders, and then asked the officer, “Excuse me, what happened?”

The officer hesitated for a moment and said, “Shojin, I’m only telling you because it’s you. Otherwise, if I talk about this kind of thing with a suspect, I’ll also be locked up in Taiso-ji Temple.”

“A suspect?”

“Lord Shinto was assassinated not long after he left here.”

“What?” Manjaku Shojin was shocked. “Did something happen to Lord Shinto?”

The officer carefully observed his expression and said, “Even the Yellow Springs can’t stop Lord Shinto. How could he be successfully assassinated?”

“Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo, that’s great. Otherwise, I would have become a sinner.”

The elders came, and the officer asked the same question again.

“Manjaku Shojin went to Tokyo to find Lord Shinto. Did someone suggest it to you, or did you think of it yourselves?”

The elders looked at each other. One of them stood up and said, “I suggested this method.”

“Did someone suggest it to you?”

“No,” the person shook his head.

“Take him away!” the officer waved his hand.

“Wait!” the person said quickly. “Shojin and Lord Shinto have a good relationship. What’s wrong with me suggesting this method?”

“Nothing’s wrong, but you must cooperate with our investigation.”

The officer took away not only this person, but all the elders, including Manjaku Shojin, and the abbots of the various temples in the mountains.

Uji, Kyoto, the Minamoto clan.

A group of people kicked open the door and rushed in.

“Insolent! What are you doing?” a Minamoto clan disciple shouted.

“By the order of the Honshu Shinto Lord, we are here to arrest all of Minamoto Kiyohiro’s direct relatives!”

A group of officers rushed into the various residences like a flood.

They had already memorized the appearance of Minamoto Kiyohiro’s direct relatives. Once they saw them, they would directly put on shackles and fetters.

“Remember!” the leading officer said loudly in the center of the courtyard. “Lord Shinto has ordered that no one is to be harmed. Take them back for interrogation first!”

“Yes!”

The majestic and quiet Minamoto clan residence became a scene of chaos.

“Insolent!” Minamoto Kiyohiro’s father—a clan elder—slapped away the officer who had surrounded him and scolded angrily, “The Minamoto clan is a noble of the imperial family. Only His Majesty can convict us. What is that Minamoto Kiyomoto!”

“You want His Majesty’s decree?” the leading officer sneered.

He took out another rolled-up document from his sleeve. A part of the Kansai map could be seen on the back of the document.

“His Majesty has ordered: all nobles, officials, and practitioners in Kansai are to cooperate with the Judiciary Bureau’s investigation. Anyone who dares to resist will be killed on the spot!”

“Take him away!” the officer shouted.

A group of officers rushed forward, even more impolitely than before, and held his hands like clamping a chicken’s wings, putting on his fetters.

“What happened?” Minamoto Kiyohiro’s father, unable to struggle, was full of confusion.

“What happened? Minamoto Kiyohiro assassinated the Honshu Shinto Lord!”

“Assassination? How is that possible? There must be a mistake! How could Kiyohiro do such a thing! Is it Minamoto Nagatoku? Did he frame us? I want to see His Majesty!”

Many places, many families, were broken into by a group of people from the Judiciary Bureau today.

Minamoto Kiyomoto’s order was to bring the people back and interrogate them with a shikigami that could distinguish lies.

But many people in the Judiciary Bureau were his fanatical followers, who regarded him as a god and a savior. Their god and savior had been assassinated, and their anger was even more intense than Suzaku’s.

The Lord of Kyoto’s decree was a bucket of hot oil, making this flame burn unscrupulously.