"Someone's dead! Someone's dead!"
One of the monks guarding the gate cried out.
Kimura stared wide-eyed in disbelief. It wasn't just the bamboo-hatted monk's ruthlessness, killing with a single blow. He had driven the monk's head into his abdomen with his staff. What monstrous strength!
Sensing trouble, Monk Kimura quietly retreated behind the crowd.
"All of you, get him! Beat that stray monk to death!"
At Kimura's command, the four or five gatekeepers charged with clubs in hand and vicious grins on their faces. With numbers on their side, how could anyone survive their barrage of blows?
The bamboo-hatted monk gave a seemingly effortless flick of his staff, snapping their wooden clubs and splitting the skin between their thumbs and forefingers. Blood streamed down their hands.
Then his staff swept through them with the force of wind and thunder, sending them flying. They landed gasping out more air than they could draw in, clearly beyond saving.
"You bald bastard!"
Kimura's expression changed drastically. He hurriedly retreated into the courtyard, encountering a group of monks who had heard the commotion and come to help. They, too, carried wooden clubs.
"Brother Kimura, what happened?"
"A monk! There's a monk!"
The reinforcements were baffled. One scratched his gleaming bald head. What monk? Weren't they all monks themselves?
"A monk is attacking us! We're under attack! Under attack!"
Kimura stamped his foot in desperation and roared. His piercing cries drew the attention of the other monks patrolling the courtyard, who rushed over to reinforce them.
Seeing fifty or sixty monks gathering around him, Kimura regained his courage. That freakishly strong bamboo-hatted monk was terrifying, but surely he didn't have three heads and six arms and the power to fight a hundred men alone?
He looked at the wooden clubs in their hands, a vicious gleam flashing through his eyes, and snarled:
"Throw away the clubs! Use swords! Hand them out! This enemy is no ordinary man. I'll cut him into a thousand pieces!"
Several monks hurried into the courtyard's storeroom and fetched bundle after bundle of samurai swords wrapped in straw rope, handing out the blades.
The savage pack of monks surged toward the main gate, swords in hand!
The rain gradually grew heavier.
Wearing his Tengai, which completely concealed his face, the bamboo-hatted monk approached at a leisurely stroll, carrying his bloodstained staff.
"Quick! Kill him!"
Kimura shouted furiously, his eyes bloodshot.
The Dharma Assembly had undoubtedly begun by now. His failure to bring Twinborn as sacrifices had already cost him dearly. If he let this bamboo-hatted monk break into the Dharma Assembly and interrupt the leader's sacrificial ritual, he would truly be finished!
One monk after another charged through the drizzle with swords in hand, their faces hideous as they shrieked and swung to kill.
These were no renunciants free of worldly desires. They were a pack of evil spirits!
Yet the bamboo-hatted monk advanced steadily, leaving footprints with every step. He charged straight at them and lashed out with his staff!
"Clang! Clang!"
The wooden staff did not break beneath their swords. Instead, it smashed through blade after blade and shattered the arms holding them. Then it thrust into chests, caving in holes as large as a face, swept men several meters away, or simply burst their bald heads!
The staff whirled furiously in the bamboo-hatted monk's hands. Even the slightest brush meant death or injury!
Within moments, dozens lay on the ground, and the remaining monks broke completely.
They had merely been won over by the leader's magic and money. They were no fanatical warriors prepared to die; holding out this long had already been quite an achievement.
Their morale shattered, the monks scattered in every direction. The bamboo-hatted monk dropped his staff, formed a ritual hand seal, and lifted his hat to reveal his mouth.
He opened his mouth and spat. Fireballs scattered into the air like flowers cast by a celestial maiden, turning the fleeing monks into human torches amid agonized screams!
The rain grew heavier still. Silver threads fell from the sky as though to wash away the world's sins. Blackened corpses lay strewn across the ground, burning like torches, sparks drifting from them. Even the rain could not extinguish their flames.
Dark clouds, rain, fire, and a white-robed monk beneath a bamboo hat-a monk lying on the ground watched the scene and breathed his last.
Sweeping away all evil... perhaps this was a true Buddha.
The commotion in the front courtyard had become impossible to conceal. The worshippers standing in the drizzle began whispering among themselves.
With a Buddhist halo above his head, the leader frowned and repeatedly glanced toward the front courtyard.
A pile of firewood had already been stacked in the central courtyard. Two identical little boys were tied back-to-back to a wooden stake. With innocent eyes, they looked at their parents standing beside them with torches, still asking when this game would end. They wanted to go home.
"What on earth is going on? What's all that noise?"
The fat, big-eared leader looked displeased. Lowering his head toward Brother Ida, he said, "Go to the front courtyard and see what that useless Kimura is up to."
"Yes, Leader!"
Brother Ida bowed his head and hurried off with short steps. The leader turned back, put on a hypocritically benevolent smile, and declared in a ringing voice:
"Devotees, only by sacrificing these ill-omened twins to the Twin-Body Buddha can we weaken the Evil Body and save this world before the age of dharma decline arrives!"
"Come, you two devotees. Purify these evil creatures with the sacred flames!"
Brother Ida hurried toward the corridor, only to see a deathly pale Kimura scrambling toward him, shrieking in terror:
"People are dead! So many people are dead! The Guardian Team has been wiped out!"
Hearing this, Brother Ida, who had intended to give Kimura a good mocking, turned grave. "That's dozens of men! They're all dead? How is that possible? Who's attacking us?"
Even the True Faith Society couldn't cover up that many deaths. It would shake the entire country!
It couldn't have been the Boryokudan. Under government pressure, even they had to watch their words and actions. A clash on this scale hadn't happened in years. Boryokudan members might secretly kill a few people in their feuds, but how could they openly attack the True Faith Society's headquarters?
The Boryokudan were in it for the money, not because they were born loving bloodshed. What would they gain from killing so many people? Besides, once the authorities investigated, whichever group was responsible would be uprooted completely.
"Could it be the Metropolitan Police Department? Have they started a massacre because the leader killed their undercover officer?"
But how much time had passed? Had the Metropolitan Police Department really avenged their colleague with such decisive speed? Was this still the department he knew, which did nothing but arrive late and apologize? Even if the True Faith Society had been in the wrong first, how could the police face nationwide condemnation after killing so many people? Even having the Superintendent General kneel in apology might not be enough.
"Yes-no, none of them! A demon! A monk! He... he hit them with a staff! The Evil Body! He's not human! He must be the Twin-Body Buddha's Evil Body!" Kimura babbled.
Kimura had fled quickly when things went wrong and hadn't seen the bamboo-hatted monk spit fireballs. Otherwise, he might have lost his mind completely by now.
"Idiot!"
Brother Ida grabbed Kimura and slapped him several times in succession!
"What nonsense! Even if he is the Twin-Body Buddha's Evil Body, don't forget that our leader is the reincarnation of the Good Body! Evil cannot triumph over righteousness. We still have the leader behind us!"
Whether it was the mention of the leader or the slaps, Kimura's eyes gradually cleared, and he stopped shouting.
Seeing this, Brother Ida nodded and asked, "You said it was a monk? Not the Metropolitan Police Department? Not the yakuza?"
"Yes, yes!"
"If it's only a monk with a wooden staff, what's there to fear? Even Mu Qing couldn't take more than a few bullets, could he?"
"You mean...?"
"The Guardian Team is gone, but there's still our Purification Team. We're the leader's most dependable last line of defense!" Brother Ida said, his expression fierce.
Meanwhile, the bamboo-hatted monk had reached the corridor from the front courtyard, leaving a line of wet footprints behind him. He only had to cross the long wooden corridor to reach the central courtyard.
Just then, seven or eight monks crowded in from the other end. Unlike the burly, brutish monks from before, these men had fairly regular features and fit physiques.
They all carried modified hunting shotguns, while the two at the front held handguns.
Brother Ida glared at the white-robed monk wearing a Tengai.
The Tengai resembled an upside-down straw basket, woven from rattan or bamboo strips, with only a few rows of larger square openings at the front. It was the characteristic attire of the Fuke Sect monks known as Komuso.
Could a temple in Chichibu District, Saitama Prefecture, have become so resentful of the True Faith Society stealing its worshippers that it had brazenly launched a religious war to exterminate them? But how was that possible?! Even the Warring States period hadn't had warrior monks this ferocious!
"You stinking monk! Stop! Don't move! Who are you? Why are you here?"
Brother Ida raised his handgun without bothering to aim carefully. There was nowhere to dodge in the corridor, not to mention the several shotguns trained on it.
Japan prohibited illegal civilian gun possession and ranked among the strictest countries in the world for firearms control. Even with the True Faith Society's financial resources, they had only obtained three handguns. Hunting shotguns had to make up the rest.
Even so, a gun was still a gun. Firearms far surpassed all bladed weapons, long or short, in both killing power and range!
Feeling the cold steel against his palm and looking at his companions, Kimura, who had nearly been scared out of his wits, found his courage returning.
A gun was a man's strength. If someone with a shoddy homemade gun could accomplish something that shook the world, why couldn't he, Kimura, become the leader's protective shield with a genuine handgun?
"Talk! Who sent you? What do you want?" Kimura threatened, putting on a fierce front to hide his fear.
"Haven't I been having a friendly discussion of Buddhist teachings with your True Faith Society all along? In a manner we both enjoy."
The bamboo-hatted monk removed his Tengai, revealing deep furrows in his brow and dark eyes beneath thick eyebrows.
"I've finished exchanging Buddhist teachings with the ordinary monks. Next is your leader. You should all come listen, too!" A red gleam flashed in the bamboo-hatted monk's left eye.
What a joke! As if we'd let someone as dangerous as you see the leader! We'll kill you right here!
Kimura was about to pull the trigger when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something shocking. The other monks silently lowered their guns, stepped aside in unison, and stood along both sides, leaving the passage clear.
"Are you betraying the leader?" Kimura was about to shout, only to discover that he was one of them.
As the bamboo-hatted monk passed Kimura, he cast him a disdainful glance, as though looking at an ant.
"You needn't come."
Kimura raised his gun and pressed it beneath his chin.
"Bang!"
The Evil Body...
It really was... the Evil Body...