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Lily made a tentative attempt to manipulate her vast spirit sea according to the breakthrough method described on the stele.

Her spirit sea was completely unmovable!

It was a thousand times larger than a regular expert’s spirit sea. This was the Lunar Blossom, the great secret technique created by the great god Tsukuyomi, but at the same time it had become a difficult trial to pass.

If a regular adept was destined to practice the Lunar Blossom, though their spirit sea would be vast, it would not reach such an exaggerated size, and Lily just happened to have a twelve moon phase permanence spirit which raised the difficulty again…

No matter how talented she was, facing a difficulty increase of a thousand times, there was no way she would be able to breakthrough in a single night. Without countless practice attempts, it would be impossible, but she had no time…

Lily couldn’t help but worry.

It looks like using the normal breakthrough method would take a long period of time.

But what about the secret method?

First of all, she had to refine the purity of the energy within her ten thousand mile long spirit sea to the extreme.

In normal cases, once someone had reached the peak-stage permanence realm, their spirit sea could no longer be purified before breaking through to the throne realm, but if a secret method was used then it was possible.

“Endless Spirit Circulation, Everlasting Ceremony”

The name of the secret method. The name was excessively long so she simply referred to it as the Endless Spirit Method¹. She gave the technique a try, it wasn’t too hard and didn’t take her too long to grasp it.

Lily drew out some anima from the Sakura Parasol. For her first attempt, she made an attempt with a hundred spirit jade anima. Through the Endless Spirit Method she managed to integrate the spirit energy of the hundred anima into her previously saturated spirit sea.

Only… the purity of the energy within her spirit sea did not change.

Perhaps the amount of energy was too low? Or maybe she couldn’t sense any change?

But that was a hundred spirit jade anima! It was a huge amount of wealth on the market, how could it be low? And she knew just how sensitive her body was, how could she not feel anything?

But it was as if… it was no use!

Lily proceeded to absorb three thousand awakened anima into her spirit sea, but these anima also accomplished nothing!

She gritted her teeth and pulled out fifty permanence realmed anima!

……

Nothing!

“What!??”

Did she make a mistake somewhere? Did she miss something when learning the secret technique?

It wasn’t as if this was her first time practicing the Lunar Blossom.

She rapidly looked back at the stele and reviewed the technique. There were no mistakes, and a technique created by Tsukuyomi would definitely have no problems!

Then where was the problem? Fifty permanence realmed² anima had not done a thing.

Wait, her spirit power had already reached the peak of permanence, if she wanted to improve did she have to use an anima that surpassed the permanence realm?

Throne realm anima?

She didn’t have many of those! Right now she only had five throne realmed anima.

These anima couldn’t be wasted. Throne realmed arch-demons, just how rare were those entities. Even if Lily had the ability to kill arch-demons of that realm, where would she go to find them?

Carefully, Lily activated the secret method and absorbed a throne realmed anima.

“Nnmnn—”

Deep within Lily’s vast spirit sea, a spot of light appeared, as if looking at a bright pearl within the sea.

“It worked!”

She wasn’t sure how effective a throne realmed anima was, but at least there was some effect.

That purity of the spirit power at that dot of light had reached a new level! But unfortunately, that spot of light was too small. Lily’s joy turned into another wave of disappointment…

Breakthrough with this secret method would make her throne palace stronger and her future accomplishments greater…

But all that required her first breaking through to the throne realm, and to do that she had to purify her ten thousand mile wide spirit sea! The amount of throne realm animas required for that would be an impossible number!

Lily wasn’t sure how many throne arch-demons there were in the world, but in that war against Shuten, all the forces in the crusade and all of Shuten’s subordinates, she had not seen more than ten throne realmed experts…

If she included all those experts with the few anima she had on hand, then it wouldn’t reach a tenth of what she needed…

The first method of breakthrough required a very long period of time to practice and train, it was unbelievably difficult.

But the second method… that was simply impossible! There was no need to even consider the second method… She would slowly walk the first path step by step…

She would need to go to Yomi Hirazaka and see what sort of power resided there. Train at the edge of life and death and perhaps a brand new road would open. Afterall, Lord Yoshitsune had delved into Yomi Hirazaka and returned as humanity’s leading expert.

There really wasn’t any need for Shinsenen to warn her of the danger of the Path of Yomi, of course Lily knew it was dangerous to the extreme! The dangers a female adept would encounter on the Path of Yomi would be beyond imagination!

But this was also a chance.

“I can only go, I must go and… I will definitely return!”

Lily’s heart, which was often soft and girly, was inexplicably steadfast.

……

The flight time was shorter than she had expected by several hours. Perhaps it was because Lily’s strength had improved and as a side effect, so had her summons.

In front of her, was a vast wilderness surrounded by mountains.

This wilderness was ruined, no grass would grow, the land was dry and scattered dead trees and ruins littered the landscape. In the distance, a ruined, deserted rectangular ancient city could be seen under the light clouds and night mist.

“That should be the ancient Nara capital.”

Lily simply looked at the city from a distance, from here she could sense the endless resentment billowing from the city, it was dense enough that it could be seen with the naked eye.

And the desolate wilderness around the Nara Capital was the notorious Sinless Domain.

In the Sinless Domain, there were many ancient experts and who knows how many manslaughter dojos. In an ancient city older than Heian-kyo, how many old monsters would be within?

Lily had no doubt that within Nara-kyo, there would be many existences far stronger than herself, she dared not fly into Nara-kyo like this.

She had her mount descend into the wilderness before dispelling the summon. Putting on a bamboo hat and a white veil³, she departed towards Nara-kyo.

Though she was traveling by foot, her speed was fast as she sprinted through the wilderness.

The location of the Rashomon was marked on the ancient map of Nara-kyo. It was not very difficult to find, the Rashomon was in the center of Nara-kyo, directly across the square facing the imperial palace.

Not far ahead of her, she could see multiple ancient ruins, and red flickers of flame. The skies were dyed red, a mixture of fog and resentment.

Lily slowed down and proceeded at a brisk yet more careful pace.

Dirt-faced, raggedly dressed vagrants lined both sides of the dirt road. Some sat on the side of the road while others leaned against the broken walls.

The vagrants all turned their malevolent gazes towards Lily.

Despite wearing a veil, her figure exuded seductive beauty from every angle. Her tall stature for a woman only added to her allure, making it unsurprising that she caught the attention of passersby.

Lily ignored the gazes and continued forward.

As she passed, two vagrants got up and followed behind her.

She didn’t take those two seriously, but from the front four vagrants in tattered black clothes walked towards her and blocked her path.

“Woman, you’re wearing such a fancy kimono, you’re not from around here.” A tall thin vagrant spoke up.

“I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry, please step aside.”

The vagrant looked at each other, their eyes lit up with a menacing light.

“Woman, do you know where you are?”

Lily nodded.

“Since you know, you should understand your situation. How about you accompany me to the ruins and have some fun, or I’ll just kill you.” This threat was quite different from what she was used to hearing, this man spoke as if this was natural. He spoke as if it was a normal thing to assault a woman whenever he met one, it was as if he was sick if he didn’t go and assault.

At this time, the two vagrants also spread out and surrounded her from the back.

A burly vagrant in blue shouted, “This woman, we discovered her first!”
“Hm? You want to take her from us?” The slender vagrant sneered.
“Let’s see who’s blade is faster!”
“Yea!”
Both sides drew their blades.
“Die!”
“Die!”

In this place, the moment two disagreed, it would become a life and death battle.

Lily simply stood in the middle.

Very quickly, three vagrants had fallen while the remaining three continued to slash and hack. The side that only had one remaining vagrant turned to flee while the other two chased!

He managed to flee ten meters before being killed.

Of the six vagrants, only two were left, one of which was the slender vagrant. They immediately knelt down and rummaged through the clothes of the dead, grabbing treasures and weapons.

Lily continued to watch, though she was used to battles many times more intense and powerful than this, the craziness of these vagrants shocked her. For these people it was natural to kill whoever they saw and use their sword to solve all their problems.

Even the evil Shuten Doji did not act like this.

Being powerful was one thing, but life was just as important as power.

Despite facing opponents strong enough to threaten their lives, these weak vagrants didn’t hesitate to casually get into a fight to the death. It was really something…

“So this is the Sinless Domain… an absurd place where killing is everything.”

Lily didn’t want to kill such weaklings, but before she could act, from the ruins and darkened valley came ten odd vagrants with weapons out, howling and hacking at the two vagrants. They immediately ran with the horde chasing.

“……”

Lily had a feeling that language was of little use here, the only method of communication the people of the Sinless Domain understood was killing⁴.

1. Robinxen: I wish authors would do this more often.
2. Robinxen: Yes I know realmed isn’t a real word.
3. Yuki: Wouldn’t she benefit from some disguise training? Like maybe a skin mask or cosmetics, and then bind up her chest and act like a man….
4. Robinxen: So it’s sinless because the concept of sin was irrelevant?