"Tch."
Kashimo shook his hand, his brow creasing slightly.
But the whistle of something cutting through the air already came from behind him.
He did not turn around. Pushing off the ground, he darted diagonally backward. The Samurai Shikigami's blade brushed past his clothes, cleaving empty air with a faint whistle.
Before he could steady himself, another dark shape leaped out from behind the Shikigami.
Kashimo's pupils contracted slightly.
It was Yingliang. The Shikigami had swung her up and hurled her at him like a cannonball, the blade in her hand gleaming darkly beneath the moonlight.
That blade.
Its body was pitch-black, its edge tinged with an eerie dark red.
Kashimo's mind went blank for an instant.
The Soul-Devouring Blade?
Was that thing real?
His body reacted faster than his mind. Twisting at the waist, he forcibly changed his angle in midair and narrowly evaded the strike. The blade skimmed his cheek, shearing off a few strands of pale blue hair.
Yingliang's strike missed. As she landed, she immediately retreated two steps, putting distance between them.
Beneath the moonlight, the two faced each other from ten paces apart.
Yingliang's breathing was slightly labored, but her sword hand did not tremble in the slightest. She stared at the blue-haired man in white opposite her, rapidly weighing her options.
This man...
His cursed energy output was monstrous.
His hand-to-hand combat was monstrous.
His defense let him take my sister's Broken Sky head-on and lose only a wrist.
If my sister doesn't snap out of it soon...
She glanced toward the nearby trees. Fenghua was bracing herself against a trunk, struggling to stand. Both hands pressed against her abdomen as cursed energy surged, her Reverse Cursed Technique repairing the damage from that punch.
A smile lingered at the corners of Fenghua's mouth, inexplicable.
But only she knew what lay beneath it.
Since childhood, she had practiced swing after swing under her mentor's guidance. Eighteen years. She had worn down more than a dozen blades, and her sweat could have soaked the training ground. Later, she had gone to compete against soldiers, stepping into the ring with her sword. Every opponent had been a man, each bigger and fiercer than the last.
And the result?
They had all gone down.
After that, she had never met another opponent who could make her swing her sword seriously.
So she had always found it rather boring.
Her younger sister, Yingliang, was different. Yingliang possessed the same power as her, but she was a Shikigami user and had no need to learn those close-combat techniques. When the sisters fought together, Yingliang stayed at a distance while Fenghua charged ahead. It worked out perfectly.
But things were different now.
Kashimo.
The man celebrated, exalted, and called the Strongest of the Modern Era.
At first, she had thought his reputation was hollow, too. These days, any nobody could be praised to the skies. She had seen plenty of them.
But that punch-
She lowered her head and glanced at her still-aching abdomen.
That punch had truly come close to killing her.
She stood.
No hesitation. No pause. She tightened her grip on the Zhanmadao once more, its blade gleaming coldly beneath the moonlight, reflecting the smile that had yet to fade from her lips.
Then she charged.
Kashimo watched her rush toward him without moving.
Only when the blade was about to reach him did he lift the Ruyi Staff that had remained planted against the ground.
One-handed.
A horizontal sweep.
Heavy with overwhelming force.
Clang-
The deafening crash of metal erupted into the night sky. Fenghua felt a tremendous force travel through her blade, jolting her entire arm numb. The web of her hand felt ready to split. The Zhanmadao nearly flew from her grip, trembling violently in her palm.
Before she could adjust her stance, a foot drove into her abdomen.
Thud.
Fenghua flew backward again, her back slamming hard into a large tree. Leaves showered down.
And Kashimo had already turned.
Yingliang's blade had almost reached the center of his back when it stopped.
Not because she wanted it to.
A whipping kick had already slammed into her abdomen.
Too fast to even see.
A dull impact rang out in the night wind. Like a crushed insect, Yingliang dropped straight from the air toward the ground. Before she could even adjust her posture, her back smashed into the dirt, leaving a shallow crater riddled with cracks.
The blade slipped from her hand.
Moonlight illuminated her face, pale and filled with disbelief.
Kashimo released the Ruyi Staff, letting it fall to the ground.
His hand swept through the air, deftly catching the Soul-Devouring Blade that had slipped from Yingliang's grasp. The moment he took hold of it, a cold, sinister surge of cursed energy shot up from his palm. He raised an eyebrow and ignored it.
He turned.
The Samurai Shikigami was staggering to its feet.
Kashimo raised the blade and brought it down.
The muscles in his arm suddenly bulged, veins standing out. The force of that swing could almost have split the air. Wherever the blade passed, the Shikigami's body parted like tofu, scattering piece by piece beneath the moonlight as fragments of cursed energy.
Like chopping vegetables.
That was all it amounted to.
Kashimo drew back the blade and stood still, resting the pitch-black sword across his shoulder. Moonlight fell across his face, revealing the trace of a smile.
"I've been looking for this thing all this time."
He tilted his head toward Yingliang, who still lay on the ground, unable to get up. His tone was light.
"Thanks a lot."
Yingliang's face grew paler. She said nothing.
Kashimo did not mind. With the blade over his shoulder, he leisurely took two steps forward and looked down at the girl, who was still gasping for breath.
"Your Shikigami's dead," he said, as casually as if discussing the pleasant weather. "So your Cursed Technique's useless now, right?"
He already knew the answer.
She was not a Shikigami user on the level of Ten Shadows. For ordinary Shikigami users, once their Shikigami died, it stayed dead, and their Cursed Technique became useless along with it.
He had asked purely because he felt like playing around.
With the Soul-Devouring Blade resting on his shoulder, Kashimo tilted his head and glanced at them.
Yingliang lay on the ground, unable to rise, while Fenghua leaned on her sword, barely managing to stand upright. Moonlight illuminated her bloodstained face and the lingering smile at her lips. It was not a bitter smile, but something stranger.
"Whatever trump cards you have left, go ahead and use them."
Kashimo lifted his chin.
Leaning on her sword, Fenghua slowly straightened. Her gaze settled on the blue-haired man in white, on the arcs of electricity still dancing around him, on his nonchalant face.
With nothing but hand-to-hand combat and cursed energy-enhanced attacks, he had beaten the two of them this badly.
This man-
Suddenly, she smiled.
He's so captivating.
The thought startled even her when it surfaced. But a moment later, she stopped wondering why. She raised both hands and began forming a hand sign.
She had stopped thinking altogether.
She no longer cared what would happen if she dragged her sister into her domain, or whether she would still be standing after using this move. At that moment, only one thought remained in her mind.
She wanted to show that man everything she had, everything she wanted to express.
"Domain Expansion-"
Cursed energy began surging wildly, and the boundaries of space started to warp. The beginnings of a domain slowly took shape behind her, like a scroll about to unfurl.
Opposite her.
Kashimo raised his hands as well.
He formed a hand sign.
He chanted the incantation.
This was the Edo period, after all. The New Shadow Style's Simple Domain had yet to be fully developed. He had no defensive option beyond Falling Blossom Emotion and could only use Hollow Wicker Basket.
The outline of the domain swelled beneath the moonlight. The air began to tremble, the ground began to crack, and the pressure left Yingliang, still prone on the ground, barely able to breathe.
Just as the domain's shell was about to seal completely.
Crack.
A faint sound.
Like ice breaking.
Kashimo's pupils contracted slightly.
The nearly formed shell of the domain before him shattered. The boundaries condensed from cursed energy seemed to have been pierced by something from outside, peeling away piece by piece and dissipating into the night wind.
It was not his Hollow Wicker Basket.
It was hers.
Fenghua's Domain Expansion had been interrupted.
But Kashimo did not move.
He had felt it.
That fluctuation of cursed energy. That familiar presence that should never have appeared again.
Beneath the moonlight, a figure slowly emerged from the shadows among the trees.
White hair stirred gently in the night wind.
Azure eyes stared straight at him.
Kashimo's grip on the Soul-Devouring Blade tightened slightly.
A ghost who should have been dead.
It seemed they had returned to the battlefield.
Before you continue