Death was drawing ever closer.
Just closing his eyes, he could feel the life steadily draining from him.
It drained away even when he slept.
It drained away even when he was awake.
I... am about to die.
Listening to the eagle's cry outside the cave, Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara no Genshin thought this.
Yet what filled his mind was neither grief nor self-pity.
It was—
Why am I not dead yet?
If I'm going to die, can't I just die already?
I don't even have the strength to kill myself anymore, so why—why not just let me die quickly?
To think that, at the end of my life, I would be yearning for this sort of death.
His patience with waiting for fate was already wearing thin.
He seemed to have accepted a certain truth.
I—Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara no Genshin—will die here.
I will most certainly die here.
This body had reached the end of its lifespan. No sorcery or wicked art could prolong his life any longer.
In fact, his present state was no different from death already.
His decrepit body had long since become unable to move. If he forced himself to stand—no, could he even stand anymore?
Ha ha—
He was old.
Truly old.
Boredom.
Negligence.
Emptiness.
In the end, they were merely the numbness brought on by passing years.
Miyamoto Iori would probably laugh at him.
He would say something like this—My, Master. You were always so strict when teaching me the arts, so strict in guiding me, and yet now—
You don't look like you've attained that so-called "Realm of Emptiness" at all.
Though—it was indeed still there.
Once one reached the seat of emptiness, one no longer changed.
The realm he had finally reached after killing and killing again, over and over in an