Chapter 214: War

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The spring breeze caressed his face, like a mother’s hand stroking him. The waves rolled up fine waves like milk.

The sky was azure, and the white clouds were like small boats, leisurely drifting.

Minamoto Kiyomoto saw a seagull skim across the sea and land on a cement pillar on the riverbank. The neighbor’s cat walked past with lazy steps, scaring the seagull away, but the cat didn’t even glance at them.

He saw the white sandy beach, slowly merging with the waves.

He was unconsciously lost in thought.

Soon, the sun set, and the sea surface sparkled. Mount Hoshigajo became an oil painting.

‘It’s getting dark. I have to go back quickly,’ he thought, but he didn’t move.

His heart was filled with a faint joy and tranquility, like a long time ago, when his mother asked him to buy olive soy sauce. He rode his bicycle down the slope, and in front of him was the azure coast.

The sea breeze messed up his hair and blew up his shirt. The T-shirt clung to his chest. He wanted to ride into the sea and gallop on the sea surface.

He came back to his senses and saw the thin and long sandy beach under his feet, connected to Shodoshima Island.

He heard the sound of the waves. In the setting sun, they continuously swallowed this thin and long sandy beach.

He saw Miko, no, it was Tamahime, on the other side of the thin and long sandy beach.

The setting sun shone on her side face, reminding him of the days when he went home from school with Miko. On the way back to Hakusan Shrine, the setting sun was also like this, shining on her side face.

The evening wind blew her hair. He wanted to press his face against it.

“Master Kiyo, the sun has shone on the east, and it’s also shining on the west. The polar nights in the Antarctic and the Arctic are only six months long. Why do people always stare in one direction?”

He turned his head and saw the bright and beautiful Himegami Izayoi looking at him with a smile under the cherry blossoms.

He laughed and was about to speak.

“Kiyomoto!”

His heart trembled. He turned his head and saw Tamahime on Shodoshima Island, shouting at him desperately.

She was on Shodoshima Island. Where was I?

“Kiyomoto! Kiyomoto!”

Minamoto Kiyomoto opened his eyes. The snowflakes filled the sky and covered the earth. He was lying in Tamahime’s arms.

“Kiyomoto!” Tamahime’s eyes were full of tears, and she hugged him tightly.

Minamoto Kiyomoto raised his head weakly and saw that in the blizzard, the frost was spreading from the bottom of the Coral Demon Moth to the coral horns.

He struggled to turn over and slipped from Tamahime’s arms.

He stretched out his right arm forward.

He climbed over Mount Hakuba and saw Manjaku lying in the snow, with the “North Star” stuck in his chest.

He stretched out his left arm again.

He saw the frozen Lake Ashi, and the roaring Hakone Fire Dragon had become an ice sculpture.

He crawled, crawling towards the capacity of the Coral Demon Moth.

Lake Shikotsu, the frozen Rose Castle.

Why was the Coral Demon Moth so far away, like a mountain on the horizon?

“Kiyomoto, don’t give up!” he heard Tamahime’s voice.

I’m sorry, I have no strength left. I don’t even have the strength to say this.

The wind grew stronger and stronger, and suddenly it rolled the snowflakes into the sky.

Tamahime raised her head and looked at the sky in a daze, feeling the cold air gradually disappearing.

She lowered her head and shouted in surprise, “Kiyomoto!”

Minamoto Kiyomoto felt a splitting pain. “Ah—” he wailed in a low voice and continued to crawl, crawling towards the Coral Demon Moth.

At the same time, in his real body, his eyelids trembled and he slowly opened his eyes.

It was as if he was in a dark river, on a small boat. Rikka was using a diamond-shaped ice crystal to absorb the cold air from his body.

He wanted to speak, but the skin on his face was numb and cold.

After a while, his teeth chattered, and he finally managed to squeeze out a weak voice from his throat.

“Why?” he asked.

“I know why you don’t like me,” Rikka’s mouth exhaled white mist, and her lips were purple. “You and they can die for each other.”

Minamoto Kiyomoto stared at her blankly. He was not surprised, but his brain could not think.

“This time, I won’t give up,” a wisp of white mist, like a ghost, flashed past in the dark river. Rikka’s white hair hung on Minamoto Kiyomoto’s face.

Minamoto Kiyomoto turned his eyes and looked at the ice crystal floating on his forehead. It was already covered with cracks.

His whole body trembled, and his consciousness began to blur again.

“It’s so cold,” he murmured.

Rikka stretched out her hand and wrapped Minamoto Kiyomoto in her arms.

“How about this?” she asked, her voice trembling.

Minamoto Kiyomoto struggled to open his eyes that were about to close and said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Rikka hugged him tightly and pressed her face against his.

At this time, she could no longer tell whether she was warming Minamoto Kiyomoto or trying to get warmth from him.

It was so cold.

“Crack!” The ice crystal cracked, and the absorbed cold air turned into rolling white mist, which flowed down like a miniature waterfall, wrapping and embracing the two of them.

In this instant, Minamoto Kiyomoto, Rikka, Tamahime, and the Coral Demon Moth lost consciousness.

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After dawn, the world changed.

The Ise Miko was the Lord of Kyoto herself. Before everyone could recover from this news, another piece of news completely stunned them.

“The Taiko and the Ogosho joined forces and knocked the Lord of Kyoto’s fiancé, the Honshu Shinto Lord—Minamoto Kiyomoto—into the body of ‘Akan’.”

The Ogosho and the Taiko insisted that on that night, the two of them had invited the Honshu Shinto Lord to discuss the matter of the ‘Hakone Fire Dragon Team’. The Honshu Shinto Lord had suddenly gone mad and turned into a Coral Demon Moth.

No matter how they called, they could not wake Minamoto Kiyomoto. In order not to affect the nearby Sapporo city, they had no choice but to knock Minamoto Kiyomoto into the snowfield.

The Lord of Kyoto did not respond. She directly used the Yata no Kagami to show the scene of that night in the sky above the entire Japan.

The practitioners in Hokkaido didn’t care, but in Kanto, countless practitioners were in an uproar.

Although Minamoto Kiyomoto had only been in office for a month, his various measures were deeply supported, especially by the low-level practitioners.

Minamoto Kiyomoto subdued the yokai, protected their safety, and gave them the right to participate in internal affairs. Immediately after, he developed the demon body spell, so that they were no longer useless.

Seeing that their days were about to get better, they were rubbing their fists and looking forward to squeezing into the ‘Hakone Fire Dragon Team’. As a result, Minamoto Kiyomoto, who was seen as a savior, died?
He was killed by the Taiko and the Ogosho because of their own selfish desires?
The Honshu Shinto Lord was dead?

In a daze, the war began.

The Lord of Kyoto summoned all the practitioners in Kansai and declared war on Kanto and Hokkaido.

“Avenge the Honshu Shinto Lord!” Many practitioners roared, packed their luggage, and rushed to Kansai.

The Suitengu Miko did not make a sound. Before the Ogosho’s people arrived, she had already disappeared from Tokyo with the sealing stone slab.

In Shikoku, the Lord of Kyoto gathered sixty thousand practitioners and swore to avenge Minamoto Kiyomoto.

Sixty thousand practitioners entered Honshu, crossed Nagoya, and rushed into Kanto in three routes.

The upper route went along the north coast, with Ashiya Doman as the commander, and under him were mainly noble practitioners such as Minamoto Nagatoku.

The lower route went along the south coast, with Manjaku Shojin and the Izumo Miko as the commanders. They attacked eastward along the route of Aichi Prefecture, Shizuoka Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Tokyo.

The middle route went through Gunma Prefecture, with the Shikoku Shinto Lord as the commander.

Long before the army swore an oath in Shikoku, the Kyushu Shinto Lord had already brought three Kasen and two hundred practitioners with a cultivation level of more than twenty-five times to sneak into Kanto.

The Kanto commander appointed by the Ogosho—the Nezu Kasen—was directly blocked and killed on his way from the lower route to the middle route.

Of the fifty people who were with him, only six escaped.

Before the war even began, a Kasen had died in battle. This made everyone’s mood heavy. They knew that what was ahead was a meat grinder that was even more terrifying than subjugation.

After learning of the death of the Nezu Kasen, the Ogosho released the Shibamata Teishakuten, who had been imprisoned for massacring civilians during the subjugation.

The Shibamata Teishakuten was cruel and his cultivation was far above that of an ordinary Kasen. In the first battle with Kansai, he chose the city as the battlefield.

In the battle with the Shikoku Shinto Lord, he even used a high-rise building full of civilians as a weapon.

A battle between Kasen-level practitioners would take at least a thousand rounds to decide the winner, but as long as one was a little careless, one would fall into an irreversible predicament.

For the civilians in this entire building, in the first battle, the Shikoku Shinto Lord was injured. If it weren’t for the support of the ‘Wind Cave Yokai’ of the Suitengu Miko behind him, he would have probably died in battle.

After this battle, the Kansai middle route lost five hundred people, and the number of ordinary people reached tens of thousands. They could only retreat to Mount Utsugi and adopt the strategy of retreating when the enemy advanced and advancing when the enemy retreated.

And Kansai’s upper route on the north coast and lower route on the south coast were like breaking through bamboo, attacking cities and seizing land.

The traps set by Kanto based on the intelligence of the spies lurking in Kansai became Kanto’s traps instead.

The Ogosho knew that the list of spies had been completely exposed. The Lord of Kyoto had not dealt with them immediately, precisely for this moment.

He just didn’t know if Minamoto Kiyomoto had used the Yata no Kagami to find all the traitors when he was alive, or if he had used some spell from the Laurel Crown.

The middle route could not advance or retreat, and there was a trend of being surrounded by the upper and lower routes. The Shibamata Teishakuten was furious and ordered the two armies to retreat one step further and be executed directly.

The practitioners of the two routes had no choice but to also choose the city as the battlefield.

For a time, the harm caused by practitioners to civilians was even greater than that of yokai. At least eight cities had been reduced to ruins, with countless casualties.

And Hokkaido, which should have been Kanto’s reinforcements, was reluctant to send practitioners. The reason they used was actually to find the Senmo Miko.

The Divine Medium who had joined Kansai did not appear on the battlefield. When all the practitioners had become soldiers, she was still subjugating yokai everywhere.

But the Ogosho and the Taiko knew that this was just preparation for the final battle. She was increasing her divine power.

When the cherry blossoms bloomed and the “Konohanasakuya-hime” walked in Japan, the Ogosho proposed a truce to the Lord of Kyoto. He could not let the Taiko sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight, or even take advantage of the situation.

The Lord of Kyoto agreed to a truce, on the condition that the Shibamata Teishakuten, the Zao Fox, and the Maya must be handed over.

These three were all commanders and generals who advocated choosing the city as the battlefield during the war.

The Ogosho flatly refused.

Just as the Lord of Kyoto was about to order the army to continue eastward, the Divine Medium found her and persuaded her to a temporary truce.

After some discussion, the Lord of Kyoto agreed to a temporary truce, but did not disband the army and still stationed troops on the front line.

At this time, the war was no longer just about avenging the Honshu Shinto Lord. The hatred between Kansai and Kanto, which had lasted for thousands of years, had been rekindled in the battle.

The practitioners on both sides had gone mad, wanting to completely defeat the other side and unify Honshu.

Because of the truce, divine power was not allowed on the front line. The two sides fought with divine artifacts like hooligans, with casualties from time to time.

The truce lasted for three months. By May, the temperature had gradually entered summer, and Himegami Izayoi’s belly had also slightly bulged.

Just as May was about to end and the rainy season of June was about to begin, the Ogosho ambushed Kamibayashi Miko, who was subjugating yokai in Mie Prefecture.

The light of the magatama was actually dodged by Kamibayashi Miko.

In just half a year, Kamibayashi Miko could only not see yokai when her eyes were closed. She had been on the verge of death several times, and her Divine Medium’s spell had improved by leaps and bounds.

Even if she was still no match for the three divine artifacts, she was no longer as helpless as she was in Hokkaido.

After this incident, the war between Kansai and Kanto began again.

Not long after the war began, Hokkaido suddenly bypassed the entire Honshu, landed on Kyushu Island, and echoed the Kanto army, forming an encirclement of Kansai.

Even if Himegami Izayoi had thought of this possibility in advance and had arranged six Kasen between Kyushu and Shikoku, she still could not stop Hokkaido’s attack.

Two of the six Kasen died in battle. The remaining four Kasen, and Amatsumara, who had been on Kyushu Island, escaped back to Honshu with the embryo of the ‘Xianshi no Utsuwa’.

The Lord of Kyoto quickly responded and let the Divine Medium lead people to fight Hokkaido on the Aohama coast between Honshu and Kyushu Island.

The great battle lasted from night until dawn, and from dawn until dark.

The people of Hokkaido had lived in the ice and snow for generations, and had developed strong bodies. Their strong bodies had also developed a casual personality in their daily lives, and a personality like a mad tiger and a fierce beast in battle.

The roar of the army, like thunder, roamed between the heavens and the earth, and could even be faintly heard in Shikoku.

In this battle, the Taiko never appeared, and the Divine Medium never made a move.

After sunset, Hokkaido was finally beaten back to Kyushu Island because of its small number of people.

The corpses on the Aohama coast were piled up like small mountains. The sea was full of blood. As far as the eye could see, the Pacific Ocean was all red.

In the red, there were also floating pale corpses.

And on the shore, it was another picture of hell. The miserable cries and wails of the wounded were sleepless all night.

Hokkaido’s ten thousand people who had launched a surprise attack on Kyushu Island had lost five thousand.

And on the Kansai side, nearly ten thousand of the twenty thousand people had died.

More were ordinary people. The islanders on Kyushu Island were used as human shields by Hokkaido. A single spell would explode a large area of blood and flesh.

Sometimes there were also bones and organs that were blown onto the faces of the fighting practitioners.

By September, the population of Japan had sharply decreased, the land was full of potholes, schools had long since closed, and trains and Shinkansen had also stopped.

This month, the battle of the three divine artifacts, which would decide the winner, happened again.

The Taiko and the Ogosho, calculating that Himegami Izayoi was giving birth, launched a surprise attack on Naoshima, where she was secretly living in seclusion.

Only after they arrived did they find out that Himegami Izayoi had already let the Suitengu Miko induce labor.

Caught off guard, the Ogosho fell into the joint attack of the Lord of Kyoto and the Divine Medium.

If it weren’t for the Taiko worrying that the Ogosho would die in battle and he would be isolated and helpless, and actively rescued him, the Ogosho would have almost died on Naoshima.

After this battle, Kansai’s eastern front advanced. The Kyushu Shinto Lord, who had been lurking in Kanto, suddenly appeared in the sky above Tokyo and destroyed the Tokyo Tower with a spell.

Immediately after, the Lord of Kyoto announced the child’s name—’Kamiyo’—and established her as the crown prince.

It was said that Kamiyo could see shikigami as soon as she was born. Without training, her body actively absorbed divine power.

She could speak two months after she was born. Her first sentence was, “Where is father?”

The morale of the Kansai army was even higher. They believed that Kamiyo was a person of destiny, and Kansai was destined to rule Japan.

In Kanto and Hokkaido, the news about Kamiyo was seen as a rumor deliberately spread by the Lord of Kyoto.

As for the truth, no one knew. No one had ever seen Kamiyo herself, let alone knew where she was.

The war once again fell into a stalemate.

Kansai attacked Hokkaido;
Hokkaido suddenly landed somewhere in Kansai.

On the main battlefield, Kanto and Kansai were in a back-and-forth battle between Gifu and Nagano prefectures, with both sides suffering losses and no winner.

And a part of the practitioners from Hokkaido firmly occupied Kyushu Island and confronted the Kansai practitioners stationed in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Honshu.

In April of the second year after the war began, because of the irrigation of a large number of corpses, the face of “Konohanasakuya-hime” became clearer.

The three parties held a meeting at the former practitioner academy, Mount Mihara, and announced a truce.

Hokkaido returned Kyushu Island and joined the Kanto army, stationed in Nagano Prefecture, and confronted the Kansai army in Gifu Prefecture.

This was a year when both sides were wary of each other and licked their wounds.

Universities reopened, and the collapsed mountain roads and cut-off rivers were repaired one by one.

For ordinary people, this was an unprecedented natural disaster, with both the ravages of disease and natural disasters such as earthquakes, mountain torrents, and typhoons.

For the third time since Minamoto Kiyomoto’s disappearance, the cherry blossoms bloomed. Himegami Izayoi and Kamibayashi Miko stood in the Imperial Garden, drinking wine in silence.

Their appearances had not changed at all. Only their eyes were still looking at the ice field of that night.

Little Butterfly flew carefree among the flowers;
Shirako, who had lost Hakusan Shrine, struggled to survive. Her body shrank from thirteen or fourteen years old to seven or eight years old.

Noi was not there. She had changed masters. At first it was Kamibayashi Miko, then it was Kamiyo, and now she was by Kamiyo’s side.

“Itomi Sayaka sent a message that the Xianshi no Utsuwa is almost complete,” Himegami Izayoi held her wine glass and said to Kamibayashi Miko.

Kamibayashi Miko nodded faintly. She looked at the cherry blossoms like pink clouds, and there was no joy in her heart of about to avenge Minamoto Kiyomoto.

She had already decided that after defeating the Taiko and the Ogosho and unifying Japan for Himegami Izayoi, she would go to Yomijima Island.

Her current strength was unprecedentedly powerful. Even if her dead self could not come out of Yomijima Island like Minamoto Kiyomoto, it was very likely that she had gained reason.

If so, her dead self should be able to understand her feelings and let her enter the Yellow Springs.

If she had no reason, then she would perish together with her dead self and not cause trouble for the world.

The two of them were silent, thinking about their own thoughts.

Little Butterfly, who was playing among the flowers, suddenly stopped and listened to something with her ear cocked.

She flew back and said to Kamibayashi Miko:
“Lady Miko, Lady Miko, just now Ayako said that Kamiyo said that father is still alive and is coming back soon.”

“What did you say?!”

Kamibayashi Miko and Himegami Izayoi stood up at the same time. In their cold and beautiful eyes, cherry blossoms flew past.