And this was after he had strengthened Miroku, Sango, and Kagome...
Kagome in particular was completely different from her counterpart in the original story, whose combat abilities consisted of nothing but Sacred Arrows at the same point in the story and even far into its later stages.
Had it been the group from the original timeline, whose overall strength was a notch lower, could they have dealt with the Flower Emperor?
"We were careless. We failed to notice anything wrong with the villagers and let those seemingly honest, simple folk lead us into the Flower Emperor's home turf, his sea of flowers. Every flower beneath our feet there was one of his clones, so he easily discovered the sorrow in our hearts."
Miroku sounded somewhat frustrated.
They had actually noticed a trace of evil aura on the villagers early on.
At first, they had simply assumed it came from the demon they had killed at the other end of the village entrance.
They had never expected that demon to be a decoy planted by the Flower Emperor, a trap designed to make outsiders believe the entire village should return to normal once they eliminated it.
And that was indeed what Inuyasha's group had thought.
After all, they had just killed the demon plaguing the village at its entrance. Why wouldn't the village return to normal?
As a result...
Everyone in the party had entered the village without a care and come into contact with the sea of flowers lining the road.
Not one of them had anticipated that the villagers had long since become the Flower Emperor's puppets.
And so, without exception, every last one of them had fallen for it.
It was easy to see from this that the Flower Demon who called himself the Flower Emperor was quite