Demon Sword Maiden

Volume 13 - Takamagahara: Chapter 75 - The Combat Power of Yanagihada

“What!?” The various commanders of the black-armored army and the demon leaders from Yomi were all shocked.

“Who is this woman? How could she be so arrogant?”

“Hmph. Don’t be fooled by this cunning woman. Even if she says such things, there must either be tens of thousands of hidden troops behind her or some kind of trap!” A short man standing atop a massive, furry zombie boar spoke up. He wore black-gold armor. This man was none other than Minamoto no Tsukawa, who had once gained great notoriety in Heian-kyo. Although he had been defeated by Lily in the past, he had always harbored deep resentment. Later, he defected to serve the Cloistered Emperor who had fled to Iyo Island.

Tsukawa might not have respected Ashikaga Kiyoshi, but one of Kiyoshi’s female subordinates possessed terrifying strength. She had also bestowed upon him many unheard-of training methods and rare treasures. Though Tsukawa was brutal by nature, he had once been considered a young prodigy. He trained with extraordinary diligence. Fueled by his hatred toward Lily, he had even given up women for the past several years, abstaining from both lust and alcohol while burying himself in relentless training. His strength had risen dramatically. Everything he endured was for the sake of revenge.

However, he had later heard that Lily had been trapped in Yomi and turned into a slave of demons. While he mocked her misfortune, he had also planned to capture her sisters to vent his rage. At one point, he had even considered going to Yomi himself to hunt her down.

But the latest news had arrived. Lily had returned.

Tsukawa was naturally overjoyed. At last, he would be able to show Lily his true power. All those years of ascetic training, all the suffering he had endured, had been for the sake of the hatred, humiliation, and burning desire in his heart.

Seeing the astonishment and vigilance spreading through the black-armored army, Yanagihada shook her head slightly. “Hidden troops? Traps? While we Dark Celestial Maidens excel in such tactics, those are meant for dealing with true enemies. When facing mere insects, why would we waste such effort?”

Yanagihada possessed extraordinary composure. For the sake of her sisters, she had willingly stepped alone into the abyssal demon horde numbering in the millions. Among those abyssal fiends, even a minor commander could easily destroy the entire human world.

“What? No hidden troops?” Tsukawa scoffed. “Do you take me, Minamoto no Tsukawa, for a fool? Dark Celestial Maidens? Stop bragging. Just because you’re flying in the sky doesn’t make you a celestial maiden. By that logic, I’d be a god myself!” He sneered disdainfully at Yanagihada’s display. “My lords, you must never trust a woman. Lying is second nature to them, especially women dressed in black like her.”

“Hmph.” Tsukawa spoke coldly. “Even I, Minamoto no Tsukawa, a hero of unmatched brilliance, only dare claim to be the second greatest genius in the history of the Genji clan! But even the number one genius, the unparalleled hero of the Heian Dynasty, Minamoto no Yoshitsune himself, would die if he faced an army like ours alone! Even if you added Musashibo Benkei to his side, the two of them would still be crushed by our forces! And yet you, a single person, claim you can challenge an army of hundreds of thousands? Very well, you wretched woman in black. If you truly possess such power, dare you swear an oath before the war god of the Heian Dynasty, Bishamonten? If even a single word you’ve spoken is false, may divine punishment strike you down!”

“That’s right! Swear it! Swear before the war god! Do you dare?” the six-meter-tall red demon demanded as well.

“…Bishamonten, you say?” Yanagihada looked slightly helpless. “Very well. I swear that if a single word of what I just said is false, may the war god Bishamonten punish me severely.”

“What? Is this woman insane? She actually dared to swear it?” Tsukawa was startled.

“If that is the case… could it be that she truly has no hidden troops?” Yuzo said in surprise.

“Hmph!” The black-armored commander shouted harshly. “She’s just a madwoman. What is there to fear? Archers, loose your arrows! Kill her!”

“My lord, wait!” Yuzo watched Yanagihada standing alone in the distant sky, his expression tense. “This woman swore an oath to the war god without the slightest hesitation. And she relies upon such a bizarre floating castle. Perhaps she truly is some extraordinary master beyond the mortal world. We should proceed cautiously.”

“Rubbish! That giant city does look troublesome, but a single woman still thinks she can fight our army of hundreds of thousands? Once we capture her, we’ll see how many of our brothers she can handle alone! Fire the hypnosis arrows! Shoot her down!” The commander shouted angrily, his beard bristling.

This time, the wraith archers released arrows covered in talismans. The arrows were not aimed directly at Yanagihada. Instead, they exploded around her, instantly engulfing her in clouds of purple smoke.

“Tch. This kind of smoke… I can’t say it’s completely useless against me.” Yanagihada inhaled a large amount of the smoke. Her face flushed red, and her chest began to rise and fall more noticeably. Celestial Maidens naturally had weaker resistance to such drugs and fumes. This was one of their inherent weaknesses.

But what of it?

Even if the drug had some effect, the medicines of the human world were limited in potency. Their impact on Yanagihada’s combat power was minimal.

“Lyn-hime once told me to avoid slaughtering human soldiers whenever possible. Most of them are innocent and merely forced into this war. But from what I can see here, there are hardly any living humans among them. And even if there are, the way they stare at me with such vile, lustful eyes… they deserve death.”

A tremendous shockwave erupted, blasting away the massive cloud of purple mist. Yanagihada still stood perfectly fine in the air.

“What? This woman inhaled such a massive amount of poison smoke and can still remain airborne? What… what kind of power does she possess?”

“She must be using some kind of treasure. We can’t detect her true strength. But no matter how strong she is, she cannot possibly stand against an army of hundreds of thousands!”

Yanagihada transformed into a streak of black light and instantly swept across the vast army.

“Hm?” Tsukawa, the black-armored commanders, and the rest had not even managed to react. “Where did she go?” The generals looked around in confusion, searching in every direction.

“Ah!”

Within the dense formation of the hundreds of thousands-strong army, a massive “gash” had appeared, cutting straight through the ranks. It stretched several thousand meters long and nearly a hundred meters wide.

Tsukawa’s eyes bulged, bloodshot with disbelief, as his gaze swept across the entire breach carved through the formation. Inside that gap, countless black-armored corpse soldiers lay collapsed. Their armor had shattered, their heads severed from their bodies. Not a single one had survived.

Tsukawa and the black-armored generals stared along that road of death, their eyes following it forward in stunned silence. At the far end of the path stood Yanagihada, poised gracefully in the low sky. Her profile, framed by her neatly bound hair, looked cold and elegant.

“What… what just happened?” The black-armored generals could hardly believe what they had witnessed. “What on earth just happened?”

“Tsukawa, among us you’re the fastest. What exactly happened just now?” one of the generals demanded.

“……” Tsukawa stood there blankly. His talent was indeed considerable. Although he could not fully perceive what had occurred, he could clearly sense the immense danger radiating from the tall woman dressed in black.

“What? You didn’t see it clearly? Then I’ll do it again. This time, I’ll go slower so you can see. Watch carefully. Pay attention.”

Yanagihada transformed into a blurred shadow. Her twin blades swept out two streaks of black light as she spun through the air. The rotation itself was not fast, yet her flight speed was terrifyingly swift. The spiraling black blade-winds formed a deadly corridor of destruction.

Wherever she passed, the black-armored soldiers and demons had no time even to scream. Their bodies were torn apart instantly, shredded into pieces. Her blades were so fast that blood had no chance to spray out. The severed flesh was simply devoured and erased by the power of darkness.

This time, Tsukawa saw it.

Whoosh!

A fragrant breeze swept past. In the blink of an eye, Yanagihada had appeared beside Tsukawa, stepping lightly onto the head of the zombie boar beneath him.

Tsukawa tried to draw his sword. “You wretch!”

Yanagihada’s blade-wind flickered. In an instant, the meridians in both of Tsukawa’s arms were severed. Although Tsukawa’s body had been modified through Takamagahara’s secret techniques and treasures, granting him strength that had already reached the Quintuple-soul Big Dipper, and though he possessed regenerative abilities, the dark power corroding his wounds prevented them from healing.

Celestial Maidens specialized in slaughter and destruction. How could they allow someone at the mere Big Dipper Stage to recover so easily?

Yanagihada looked at Tsukawa with faint disappointment. “I thought you might at least be a handsome youth. I didn’t expect you to be this ugly. How boring.”

Her high heel stomped down with crushing force. It was as if a colossal goddess in the heavens had stepped through the clouds. The zombie boar and Tsukawa were driven deep into the ground together, gravely injured and unable to rise.

Yanagihada had no interest whatsoever in someone with Tsukawa’s appearance. In the next instant, she had already rushed toward the onmyoji leader Yuzo.

Yuzo stood taller than Yanagihada and possessed strikingly handsome features. Even in Heian-kyo he had been quite popular among women.

Yanagihada’s blade tip rested lightly against Yuzo’s chest. He stood there completely stunned. As Yanagihada had flown from Tsukawa’s position toward him, everything along the path had been annihilated, corpses littering the ground without a single survivor.

“You’re quite handsome,” she said. “Unfortunately, I’m not fond of the domineering type. For the sake of your uncle, I’ll spare you once.”

Just moments earlier, Lily had transmitted a message to Yanagihada, telling her to spare the descendants of the Abe family.

With that, Yanagihada left behind a faint fragrance and surged toward the commander of the black-armored army. Along the way, a casual sweep of black light flashed out. The enormous head of the Sextuple-soul red demon, his face frozen in shock, flew into the air.

Thud…

Yuzo collapsed to the ground, sitting heavily.

“F-fire arrows! Shoot! Release your spells! Kill her! Stop her!” The black-armored commander finally snapped out of his shock.

“My lord, she’s fighting within our ranks. If we fire arrows now, we’ll hit our own troops!”

“To hell with that! Fire!”

Thousands upon thousands of arrows and spells were unleashed toward Yanagihada. She did not dodge. Divine power flowed around her body. As the arrows and spells approached, their trajectories began to bend and twist, turning aside and flying toward the surrounding black-armored soldiers and demons instead.

Yanagihada remained completely unharmed, while large numbers of the black-armored troops were killed by their own arrows and spells.

“This is truly… far too weak. Far too weak… It can’t even make me excited,” Yanagihada muttered as her speed surged once again.

She became like a black thread piercing through the army of hundreds of thousands, slicing from one end to the other in an instant, then slashing diagonally back again. She repeated this back-and-forth slaughter again and again. Cries of agony filled the battlefield. Her speed was far too great. No one had time to organize resistance. The army’s formation simply collapsed as soldiers fell one after another in utter chaos.

This was not a battle. It was a massacre. A one-sided massacre.

“S-spread out! Scatter the formations! Break formation immediately and activate your defensive arrays!” the black-armored commander shouted in panic.

But by now the entire army had fallen into total chaos. They could no longer disperse in any orderly fashion. Countless soldiers were trampled by their own comrades.

Looking across the battlefield, this army of hundreds of thousands that had marched all the way from Iyo Island, conquering everything in its path, was now being slaughtered effortlessly by a single woman in black who had descended from the floating castle.

In just a few minutes, tens of thousands were already dead or wounded.

“Enough!” A man’s voice rang out. It was not particularly loud, but it carried an extraordinary presence.

“Hmph.” A gust of black wind swept across the battlefield. Yanagihada halted her slaughter and landed lightly atop the shaft of a massive spear embedded in the ground.

“Stop this meaningless killing. Miss Lily wishes to see me, and I have already come.” Ashikaga Kiyoshi stood upon a gentle slope, his gaze deep and composed.

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