Three months later.
Mount Penglai.
A vast, dimly lit wetland.
Li Xia returned to the island.
Previously, he had placed Kikyo's clone back beneath a spirit tree, sealing her inside a liquid cultivation pod.
Like the early Moryomaru, this clone had no [Four Souls], only the [corporeal soul] that allowed the body to move.
She had originally been a puppet made by the Four War Gods using some of Kikyo's blood, which they had seized over fifty years ago. Their aim had been to help the four brothers retrieve their respective powers, which Kanade, Mount Penglai's guardian miko, had taken and sealed away.
Kikyo had happened to encounter them back then.
Because she had fallen in love, she had triggered the vicious curse Black Miko Tsubaki had placed on her, causing her miko spiritual power to plummet.
By the time she had wandered onto Mount Penglai and faced the Four War Gods, her reactions had already grown somewhat sluggish.
Otherwise, Gangluo, the weakest of them, would never have succeeded so easily.
Thinking about it now, he actually had to thank the Four War Gods.
If those four had not seized Kikyo's blood and used it as a template to produce an excellent clone-if not for that, resurrecting Kikyo in the truest sense would have been extraordinarily difficult.
Perhaps only a true Great God of the Celestial Realm could have done it?
Or perhaps even those immortals and gods could not?
"Are you two ready?"
Li Xia looked at Kagome.
Through Kagome, he also saw a ghostly figure behind her.
It was Kikyo's soul, which had grown stronger with Kagome's help.
This soul was actually Kikyo's longing, during her lifetime, for the lives ordinary women other than miko led. It was another lingering obsession, one born not of hatred, but of