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That night, several senior officials from the Fujiwara clan hurried over to the Imperial Chancellor’s rear hall.

“So, the report stating that Kagami Lily is at the Izumo Mountain’s Goddess Statue should be correct.” Arima asked.

“It’s just that even if she’s there, we can’t do anything. Attacking means we’d make enemies of the royal family and cloistered emperor. Also, that mountain is extremely mysterious, those who hold killing intent in their hearts can’t climb up.” Fujiwara no Yoshio explained.

The Imperial Chancellor gritted his teeth and growled, “Looks like this Kagami Lily is too arrogant. She didn’t return to report to Ayaka and stayed on Izumo Mountain to practice. She really thinks nothing of the crime of murdering my son! Hateful!”

Arima reminded, “That Kagami Lily received a twelve day observation token. She’ll have to depart the mountain after twelve days, we should ambush her at the mountain foot!”

The gray samurai spoke up, “My lords, there are two different roads from the goddess statue. One leads towards the outside, and another towards Izumo Mountain’s inner region, which path will Kagami Lily take?”

“Kagami Lily is a woman of arrogance and condescendence. She worked hard to win the championship and that most precious Izumo invitation scroll. She will definitely not miss this opportunity and head towards the inner regions.” Arima concluded.

Everyone nodded in agreement. A regular person would immediately travel back to Heian-kyo in this situation, but Kagami Lily could not be judged by normal standards.

“My Lords,” Ibaraki Doji reminded from the corner of the room, “This time, allow my Mount Ooe forces to deploy. Please provide information and teleportation arrays and assist in allowing the experts of my Mount Ooe to pass the various checkpoints and enter Mount Izumo.”

The Fujiwaras nodded. Truthfully it was not impossible for them to find experts to deal with Kagami Lily, only it was extremely difficult.

……
……

It was already the second day since Lily had arrived at the goddess statue and she had discovered most of the benefits to comprehending this goddess statue. This goddess statue favored the world, alike the root of all things, the source of spirit energy.

Within every energy fluctuation of this statue, Lily could feel a few secrets of the origin of spirit energy. And comprehension of this statue would deepen her understanding and perception of spirit energy on the most basic level.

This would benefit her future practice in all paths, afterall, spirit energy was at the most basic foundation of all adepts. And the greatest benefit that she had discovered, was that the more her understanding of spirit energy grew, the faster her spirit energy absorption was and the less spirit energy consumed by her techniques!

She had tested this out many times in the past day.

Absorption of spirit energy was of little concern to her, but the decrease in necessary spirit energy for her techniques was a very critical benefit.

In fact it was due to the increased understanding of spirit energy that allowed her to circulate and manipulate her spirit energy more naturally and precisely, therefore allowing her to activate her techniques at the same level and power with less energy!

Usually Lily’s spirit reserves were so large that she could not use it all up, but now her spirit reservoir was far too large, and it was very expensive to recover even once. If she used her violet lunar energy, or suffered a serious attack, her spirit energy would be greatly consumed.

Comprehension of the goddess statue could not directly improve her power level, but it was very very useful practice! However, Lily felt that she was not very gifted at perceiving the origin of spirit energy, nor was it extraordinarily fast. She felt that perhaps her talent was just above average?

But she had much time to comprehend. Most people would climb up here for a single hour of comprehension, and even then they could benefit greatly.

She had twelve full days here, originally she had only come up here for a simple look before departing towards the main peak of the Izumo Mountains. Now she felt that she could not give up a single day of the twelve she had been granted, this would be extremely necessary for future instances where she would wield her violet lunar energy.

While comprehending the goddess statue, within her spirit palace, she was slowly merging her seductive intent into her lunar permanence spirit, slowly recovering her violet lunar energy.

……
……

At the northwest side of Heian-kyo’s outer regions, at the foot of the hills.

Hundreds of beautifully dressed female samurai, ninjas and onmyouji gathered here. They all wore variously colored kimonos, or sexy female armor. It was not an exaggeration to say that at least half of Heian-kyo’s beautiful female adepts gathered here.

A flag had been hung up with three cherry blossom petals facing inwards and surrounded by a circular pattern symbolizing an ancient mirror, the sign of the Tsunaga sisters.

Ijuin Reira, dressed in an exposed turquoise armor edged in gold, stood on a wooden platform in front of the hundreds of tsunaga sisters.

She drew her tachi and raised it high, “My tsunaga sisters, for the heavenly path the imperial court is preparing against one of the three great arch-demons, Shuten Doji! This is the result of our efforts! We may have limited strength, but we have finally sparked a crusade against the three great arch-demons!”

Ijuin Reira was a woman with delicate white skin and pink lips. Today, her dark ocean green hair was styled into two ring shaped braided pigtails on both sides of her head, making her look more mature and noble than usual.

The Ijuin Reira was not the same woman she had been before. Though her strength was average, she had an extraordinary identity and backing, in addition to her joining as a sword miko very early, and was one of the first sword mikos to participate in the defense of the heavenly path. After Shenzu had been arrested, she became the head of the Tsunaga Sisters!

The leader of Heian-kyo’s sword mikos, mirror girls and jade maidens.

Ijuin continued in a spirited voice, “In these times, our Tsunaga sisters must lead the way! The court’s troops are insufficient and preparations take time! By appointment of the Shogun, and announced by the cloistered emperor, we the Tsunaga sisters shall be the vanguard of this crusade!”

“As you are all aware of, the vanguard of the first wave into the labyrinths of Tanba will be the most dangerous position of all! But, the way of heavens is about to fall, if this continues our dynasty, our human world will crumble and the fate awaiting us ladies and female adepts will be even more tragic and painful! But today, not only do we cherish the righteousness of the world, we will gather all young ladies unfortunate enough to be born in these dark times and fight for our future——!”

“Hei! Hei! ——Oooh!” The Tsunaga Sisters all raised their weapons cheering under the Ijuin’s inflammatory speech!

They were all women in the spring of their youth and morale was high!

“Depart—destination, Tanba!”

Ijuin’s tachi pointed northwest!

Hundreds of Tsunaga Sisters formed an army and marched in a line into the murky misty mountains!

……
……

Far from the marching army, thousands of miles away deep in the territory of Tanba, deep in some unknown forest filled with mist and rain.

A silver haired maiden, stood atop the corpse of a huge middle-staged permanence archdemon, the rain dripped down her tattered and torn clothes before flowing down her long bare legs.

Uesugi Rei was covered in rain and sweat, her towering chest swayed up and down from her breathing, covered only in strips of torn cloth. Though she had just gone through heavy physical exertion, her blue-purple eyes still shone with a sharp luster.

“Hehehe, ehehehehe!” Uesugi Rei’s pink lips opened and she let out a wanton wild laughter¹.

“Enjoyable! What an enjoyable battle!! Only slaughter in such adversity is exciting…ahh…ha…” Uesugi Rei’s legs clamped down on her long ancient blade, her face crimson with an expression of intoxication over the pleasure of killing.

Though this expression was sexy and alluring, but the two men accompanying her could not appreciate her expression, instead they felt terror seeing Uesugi Rei’s smile within the white mist.

Her two companions were in a miserable condition. Not only did Toyama have a lame leg, he now only had one arm left, his other arm was wrapped up in bloody cloth and stuffed with some herbs. Under the constant rain and mist, the wound was worsening. His arm had been bitten off a week ago by an early-staged permanence demon leopard. In the end neither he nor Rei was able to prevent the leopard from running away with his arm.

Minamoto no Kenki had many wounds, but he was in better condition than Toyama, and not disabled.

As for Nakajou, despite his tremendous will to live, he was only a spirit jade expert. He had suffered horrific wounds and had only barely endured, he laid unconscious in the stretcher.

“Miss Uesugi, last time you laughed in the forest, you lured in that permanence staged leopard and I lost my arm. Why are you laughing?” Toyama stared at Uesugi resentfully. With such serious wounds, he could not feel anything no matter how sexy or alluring the woman. His only desire was to walk out of this accursed place alive, he would remain a monk for the rest of his life and never, ever go on an adventure with this crazy beauty again.

But he had no reason to grumble at Uesugi Rei, it was not because of her that they had stumbled into this maze.

“Sister Uesugi, you don’t have much spirit energy left and your cursed blade was blighted, so you’re unable to use soul devouring to replenish spirit energy. Are you not the least bit afraid?” Hatano had to ask.

“Life is short, akin a dream, how could a regular and boring life allow you to experience that stifling elation of gambling everything in a life and death battle?” Rei shuddered as she trailed a finger gently over her lips.

Although there was the little beauty Hatano by her side, she remained aloof, her heart only thought about that gentle, brave, charming, yet serious little sister Lily.

Seeing the gloomy eyes of her companions, she continued, “None of you have to worry, the map is in brother Kenki’s hands. All we have to do is follow the map, and we will definitely exit this forest.”

“Eh, this……” Kenki stuttered, “This map was looted from that wild samurai boss, we don’t know how real this map is, and the path has really been too dangerous!”

1. Silva: Uh oh, she’s been consumed