Land of Crimson Cherry Blossoms: Night of Death!

The dream... shattered!

First came a short scream from the west of the village, like a chicken having its throat squeezed shut.

Then came a second, a third... women shrieked, children cried out, men roared in distorted voices, wooden doors burst apart, roof tiles came crashing down... every sound tangled together, tearing the night to pieces.

Grandpa Taro had only just reached the door latch when the entire door exploded into splinters with a boom!

Wood chips flew as a mass of thick, writhing shadow poured inside and wrapped around his lower leg in the blink of an eye.

Cold. Bone-chilling cold.

"A... a demon..."

A rattling sound came from the old man's throat.

He looked down, his clouded eyes reflecting the little mouths opening and closing silently along the edge of the darkness.

The shadow rose past his waist, swallowed his chest, and finally covered his wide-open eyes.

Only a faint sucking sound remained in the room.

A moment later, the shadow withdrew, leaving an empty set of clothes and several puddles of thick, dark liquid on the floor.

Kita snatched up a hoe and charged outside.

Vague shapes moved in the street.

Formless shadows darted through the firelight, lunging at people as they fled.

A young man swung a woodcutter's knife at a shadow slithering toward him along the ground. The blade passed through it as though cutting through thick fog.

The next second, the shadow swelled, swallowing the young man like a giant black maw.

After a brief sound of bones cracking, the shadow shrank back, leaving only a mangled pool of flesh and blood on the ground.

"Demons... they're man-eating demons!"

Kita's throat went dry. He saw his wife stumbling out, carrying their little son and pulling their eldest daughter along.

"Dear! Run! Head for the mountain behind the village!"

Kita had just started toward them when the ground beneath him suddenly jolted!

"Boom!"

A jagged, menacing stone wall more than twice a man's height burst from the earth, cutting off their path.

Its surface gleamed with the cold sheen of iron and stone.

"This road's closed!"

A voice rumbled like muffled thunder.

Beside the stone wall stood a tower of a man with blue-gray skin and a gleaming bald head—Yannu.

He grinned, baring a mouthful of yellow teeth.

"Heh, the whole family's here."

He strode forward, the ground trembling slightly, and casually punched the earthen courtyard wall.

"Bang!"

"Mom!"

The eldest daughter screamed in fright.

Yannu was pleased by the scream. His small eyes fixed on the mother and children huddled together, and he reached out with one enormous hand.

His palm was as broad and thick as a palm-leaf fan, his nails coarse, black, and hooked.

Just then—

"I'll fight you!"

Kita's eyes turned red, and he swung the hoe down with all his might!

"Clang!"

An ear-splitting clash of metal rang out!

The hoe blade struck Yannu's arm, sending sparks flying.

The skin between Kita's thumb and forefinger split, and the hoe flew from his hands.

Yannu looked down at his arm, then up at Kita, who was clutching his wrist, his face full of despair. He chuckled in a muffled voice:

"Trying to tickle me? Didn't you eat?"

Before he had finished speaking, he casually swept his other hand aside.

"Pfft!"

Kita flew sideways and slammed into the courtyard wall, the sharp crack of breaking bones clearly audible.

He slid down to the foot of the wall, bloody foam pouring from his mouth. His eyes stared in the direction of his wife and children, and soon lost their light.

"Dear—!"

Yannu's huge hand was already upon her.

The woman closed her eyes and held her little son tightly against her.

Several threads glowing with a pale, moon-white halo drifted silently out of the shadows and wound around the woman's ankles and wrists, and the child's neck.

The woman's body went rigid, and her eyes flew wide open.

An icy emptiness spread through her body from the places where the threads bound her.

Her strength drained away as though a sluice gate had opened, and the child in her arms suddenly grew lighter... no, he was shriveling!

She struggled to lower her head, watching in horror as the rosy color rapidly drained from her son's little face. It turned grayish-white and shriveled, his eye sockets sank, and at last he looked like a rag doll with its stuffing sucked out.

Her vision began to blur, and her skin tightened and wrinkled.

"My baby... my..."

Her lips trembled, unable to form a complete sentence, and her arms fell limply to her sides, holding the child's tiny, withered corpse.

Before the last of her consciousness faded, she dimly glimpsed a woman beneath the eaves not far away, dressed in a moon-white kimono, her face lovely but her eyes vacant—Yuelian. She gently brushed back her sleeve, withdrawing the threads that had taken on a faint red tinge.

Yannu spat in dissatisfaction.

"No fun."

He raised a foot and stomped on the two corpses rapidly dehydrating and shriveling on the ground. They squelched beneath his foot and turned to ash.

Flames sprang up all over the village.

The fire was an eerie color, its edges glowing a ghostly purplish-black, and it grew with every gust of wind.

Jinhua strolled through the sea of fire, several purplish-black fire lotuses floating beside him. Wherever he passed, even the flagstones cracked and melted from the heat.

He was in no hurry to kill anyone himself. He seemed more inclined to admire his "masterpiece," listening to the wails from the sea of fire, a look of near intoxication appearing on his pale face.

"Burn... burn it all away... these filthy, noisy..."

The cloying scent of flowers had long since been replaced by the stench of blood and burning.

The branches once covered in crimson cherry blossoms now bore tattered strips of cloth, or things twisting and curling in the firelight.

On a mountain ridge several miles away, Gyomei Himejima stopped.

He was traveling through the night, his enormous body like a moving boulder beneath the moonlight.

The heavy axe and chain in his hands clinked softly with each step, and the prayer beads swayed slightly against his chest.

His eyes were closed, his expression serene.

The wind swept against his face from the direction of Crimson Sakura Village.

Gyomei turned his head slightly that way.

He smelled it: a powerful stench of blood, sickeningly sweet.

Gyomei's brows slowly drew together.

The knuckles of the huge hands clasped before his chest whitened slightly from the force of his grip.

Demons... more than one!

Many... powerful demons... were slaughtering people!!

A doubt flashed through his mind, only to be replaced by a graver solemnity. The frequency of the screams, the intensity of the blood stench... This was no ordinary attack... it was a massacre!!

"Namu..."

The Buddhist invocation rolled in his throat, not yet spoken aloud.

The next moment, he was moving.

His expression, serene as an ancient well, vanished, replaced by an icy, razor-sharp killing intent.

His towering body pitched forward, and he drove off the ground, cracking the mountain rock beneath his feet. He broke into a run, heavy at first, then swift, racing like a heavy arrow loosed from a bow toward the night sky stained red with blood and fire.

The chain and axe blade sliced through the air with a mournful whine.

Rage ignited with a roar beneath his tightly closed eyes, within his towering body, like fire beneath the earth.

He ran faster and faster, unable to drive those sounds from his mind—those cries cut abruptly short, those flames of life violently snuffed out.

His fists, like pillars of stone, clenched so tightly that his nails nearly dug into his palms.

"Why... is it always like this..."

His low murmur was swallowed by the wind.

He thought of that temple, those children, those young lives lost amid betrayal and fear.

The same despair, a different place, the same bloody carnage.

"The Buddha teaches compassion... but how can such evil be saved?"

There was no answer.

Only the fire burning ever fiercer in his chest.

That fire was not scorching, but cold instead, freezing every part of him until it screamed without a sound.

The moment Gyomei took his first step into Crimson Sakura Village, his breath caught.

A wave of heat carrying ash and the stench of burning struck him in the face.

The blood stench hung so thick in the air that it would not disperse, clinging to his nose and throat and sinking heavily into his lungs.

In his "world" lay a burning hell, where screams were growing scarce and the lingering warmth of suffering filled the air.

Scorching demon flames flickered... countless corpses lay everywhere... the ground beneath his feet was wet and slippery, sticky with blood that had soaked into the earth and had yet to congeal.

The crackle of flames and the collapse of timber filled the background.

But he deliberately listened for quieter sounds:

Somewhere beneath broken roof tiles, a child's faint sobs grew weaker and faded away;

In a corner by a wall, an old person's ragged, bellows-like breathing fell silent;

And... a demon's satisfied sigh, the soft rustling of it licking something.

Silence!

A dead silence, more oppressive than any clamor, slowly descended with the hot wind!

All that had once been alive and warm, all that had once laughed and played, had been brutally erased. Only these glaring ruins remained, reeking of death.

Gyomei stood motionless amid the carnage, his body like a mountain.

He slowly raised his enormous hands, smeared with blood, mud, and ash, and pressed them together before his chest.

"Namu... Amida Butsu..."

This time, the invocation was low and slow, as though ground out from deep beneath the earth.

Every syllable was soaked in the blood and cries of this land, so heavy it made the heart ache.

Violent emotions surged beneath his closed eyelids!

Grief battered his chest like a rising tide, and rage raced through his veins like magma.

Those innocent faces, those lives extinguished before they even had time to see their fear clearly, became heavy stones, striking one after another against his already battered heart.

Compassion was the bone the Buddha had given him, but the wrathful glare of a vajra was the blood this world had forced from him.

He remembered the gentle yet resolute eyes of his lord, Kagaya Ubuyashiki, when he had rescued him from death row.

"Gyomei, your strength should not be used to hate people. It should be used to save them."

Save them?

How?

This scorched earth before him, these remains, these departed souls who had not even had time to cry out...

"I cannot save the dead..."

He murmured, his voice hoarse,

"Then I will cut down every last one who harmed them!!!"

The last surge of grief was suppressed, becoming a cold, hard resolve called "the destruction of evil."

That resolve was so pure, so heavy, that even the surrounding air seemed to congeal beneath its weight.

He jerked his head up and "looked" toward the place where the evil aura gathered most thickly and brazenly!

There, four powerful demonic auras, like sources of filth, had not gone away. Instead, they lingered nearby, still enjoying their cruelty.

"You..."

The word came out with a tremor like metal and stone striking together.

"Whoosh!"

The chain rang sharply, and the heavy axe was already in his hand. The icy touch of the metal became the only real thing he could hold on to at that moment.

He stepped forward, walking unwaveringly toward the gathering place of evil, across scorched earth and pools of blood, one step at a time.

The hem of his monk's robes brushed against the smoking ruins of broken walls.

A vajra with wrathful eyes was about to descend into hell.

This time, it was not to deliver souls, but to—purge evil.