The mountain-high Rashomon rose from the ground, standing over Tokyo like a black tombstone.
The enormous, hideous demon head on the gate of Hell was clearly visible even through the barrier of the Four Red Yang Formation.
The camera operators aboard the helicopters and the two million viewers in Amami Katori's livestream witnessed this incredible sight as it happened, and an uproar erupted.
"That gate looks so sinister. It sends chills through my whole body!"
"That blue-faced, fanged demon, grinding its teeth and sucking blood-it looks practically alive..."
Then Susanoo's Kamui Shuriken struck Rashomon with lightning speed. The gate, more than ten meters thick, bulged backward and shattered.
But destroying the gate instead violated a forbidden law, opening a passage between Hell and the human world.
Through the gradually opening doors, they caught a glimpse of the vast world behind Rashomon, dark, fathomless, and steeped in death.
Countless wronged souls and vicious ghosts wandered over the rotting, lifeless earth, their wails filling that dark, hopeless place.
Deathly energy laden with curses, pain, fear, resentment, and other negative emotions poured from Rashomon, almost tangible. Even through a screen, it inspired a shudder from the depths of the heart, as though one's soul would be sucked inside.
"Aaaaah! My brain-my soul is trembling!"
"Does that gate lead to Hell?"
"You mean the Ghost Gate?"
"Rashomon! I've got it! That gate must be Rashomon!"
Originally called Rashomon, the gate was traditionally said to have been a city gate of Kyoto's outer fortifications. Abandoned and left unrepaired amid the wars of the Heian Period, it became a place outside which the city's unidentified corpses were often dumped. Over time, it came to be regarded as the boundary between life and death.
In Japanese folklore, Rashomon bore depictions of Hell's horrors and served as the