Kagura activated the stele and then arrived in front of the stone wall along with Lily.
“Master, I’m going to open this stone door now. Dijon as well as those demon ninjas and monsters are still keeping watch outside, so watch out for their attacks when it opens,” Kagura advised.
“I can feel it. My blade cries out whenever the souls of my foes are nearby,” Dressed in red, Lily gazed at the stone wall deeply as if her gaze could see through the wall and view the enemies outside.
Kagura palmed the wall and a series of ancient characters formed the shape of a human-sized door slowly, following which a resplendent light manifested within the door-shaped portal.
Lily’s long hair fluttered in the air because of that ancient force field.
It was dusk outside right now. A twilight dyed in crimson-gold.
Dijon stood on top of Matsuda’s headless corpse and had his twisted and demonic eyes fixed at the stone wall.
Beside him sat Genja, who was ruminating deeply. He too opened his golden vertical pupils and stood up with his giant body.
“There’s some movement! That door has reappeared!” Genja’s deep voice sounded like a silent scream.
“Hmph!” Dijon’s gaze turned vicious, “There was probably no food or water inside, so she couldn’t stay inside for long, and must’ve come out after thinking we had left! Charge inside as soon as the door opens, don’t allow her to escape into the door again!”
“Understood!” The demon ninjas affirmed and waited for the moment to arrive solemnly.
The stone door slowly manifested itself, and a girl in red with kimono sleeves touching the ground and fluttering long hair, wielding a long katana in hand, appeared past the door.
“Kagami Lily! You really dared to come out1. Die! Kill her!” Dijon’s voice reached the dozen or so claw-wielding demon ninjas as he barked at Lily.
However, Lily made a move first before they had even reacted.
“Whoosh!” Lily turned into a crimson shadow, her long kimono sleeves dancing in the air along with the wind as she flitted across the demon ninjas, warding them off as she made a beeline towards Dijon and arrived before him in an instant.
“What?! How’s she so fast?!” Dijon was also stunned and lifted his huge tachi to counter Lily’s slash in a rush!
As she had trained in the Tsukuyomi Swordstyle, Lily’s offensive power shot up significantly, with each of her movements carrying a desolateness that wasn’t present previously, and her surroundings also carried an abyssal fury akin to the desolate moon.
Lily’s sword slashes down with force.
“Clang!”
And produced a sonic boom visible to the naked eye in the form of a white circle!
The 3 meters tall giant Dijon wielding a 2 meters long sword was blown away by this one-handed strike from Lily.
His limbs flailed in the sky wretchedly and was almost about to drop into the Abyssal Rift past the 20 meters wide fault!
The sonic boom from the collision between their swords had also blown back the demon ninjas and monsters approaching Lily, the shockwave uprooting the withered grass and sending it flying along with the dead leaves.
Dijon spewed out a mouthful of black blood mid-air because of the internal injuries he had suffered from the shockwave. He looked at the girl who had attacked him just now with eyes widened in disbelief, finding it hard to believe that she was the same girl who he could play with his fingertips just a while ago.
Why?! Why did her strength leap once again after exiting the cave, and that too to such a terrifying degree!
Hatred filled him, but the thing he needed to be worried about currently wasn’t his grudge!
“What?!” Even Genja and the huge number of demon ninjas keeping watch outside had turned pale in fright! They never imagined a pompous transcendent like Dijon would suffer such severe injuries and get blown away by a single strike from the woman before them!
Dijon and Genja were both 7th-Stage Awakened, so their strength had already surpassed the late-stage sword saint level.
Although Lily was still a 5th-Stage Awakened, her actual strength was 18 times stronger than the average 5th-Stage Awakened. On top of that, her domain strengthened her while weakening her opponent, so her true strength had long surpassed the limits of the Awakened Stage!
Even though Dijon was about to fall into the abyss, Lily had no intention of allowing him to just fall to his death.
“Hojo Dijon, how will I appease the soul and spirit of Lord Matsuda unless I offer your soul to my cursed katana?!” “Sakura Blizzard.”
Lily’s gaze turned resolute, and in the next instant, endless showering sakura manifested within the surroundings, appearing just like pink snowflakes.
These sakura covered a range of about 100 meters and engulfed Dijon’s entire group, including him, in this violent sakura blizzard.
Lily floated in the sky by stepping on the sakura flakes and made for the falling Dijon through a wave of blossoms2.
“She’s striding through the air by generating a powerful wind formed from the sakura in her domain?” The giant demon ninja, Genja, who had gotten engulfed within the sakura blizzard too, was alarmed as well.
Lily stepped across the flowing sakura and arrived above the Abyssal Rift; her gaze filled with hatred yet as calm as the snow. The sparks of crimson flames of vengeance within her eyes also transformed into sakura that reflected within her pupils.
She then stabbed Crescent Moon towards Dijon’s heart!
“Don’t think you can do as you please, Mirror Girl!” A fiendish energy erupted from Genja’s body and the clothes on his back ripped apart into pieces, a huge eight-legged spider manifesting itself before spewing out a white spider thread from its back towards the stone wall. Genja then leaped forward suddenly and struck at Lily from behind with the bone blades that manifested within his hands!
“Brother Dijon!” At the same, his other arm emitted a spider thread that wound around Dijon’s waist and pulled him back by relying on the spider thread attached to the stone wall at the back, resulting in the two threads stretching wide.
Although it’s called a spider thread, it was in fact a spider thread made of thousands of spider threads twined around each other and was as thick and tough as a finger-dimensioned white rope.
As a samurai with an innate vicious nature, even though he had sustained injuries, Dijon’s hatred for Lily was much higher than pain. He wasn’t willing to admit that Lily had already become stronger than him, and a maddening urge to kill her overcame him.
As Genja was pulling him, Dijon had found the support to unleash an attack, so he activated all of his fiendish spirit power and gathered the purple energy in his trembling tachi, unleashing a murderous and momentous slash towards Lily while Genja pulled him with his all.
“Lord Genja! Nice support! Die now, Kagami Lily!” Dijon’s expression twisted in hatred, seeming just like an evil spirit, and his eyes widened like a vicious beast!
Genja also activated all of his fiendish energy and the two giant bone blades in his hands and the eight spider claws of the arachnid on his back unleashed an even more terrifying attack at Lily’s back.
“Die, Mirror Girl!”
Lily’s eyes remained bright as her hair fluttered within the wind. She was aware of everything that had transpired behind her as they were inside her domain.
She stepped on the sakura below her feet and slowed her sprint by a little and then slid forward amidst the sakura by extending one of her feet forward. At the same time, she lifted Crescent Moon up and a crimson light flowed through the soul runes engraved on the cursed katana.
The towering figures of Dijon and Genja attacked Lily at almost the same time from the front and back.
“You’re dead, Mirror Girl!” Genja screamed in a deep voice as the two blades and eight claws inched closer towards Lily’s slender back.
“Kagami Lily, the hatred between us ends today!” Dijon’s tachi slashed across Lily’s shoulder, intending to split her body into two.
However, faced with a pincer attack from two transcendent enemies, Lily actually closed her eyes and donned a tranquil expression on her face. The wind billowed around her, causing her pretty black hair to flutter as she calculated Dijon’s and Genja’s position relative to her own while wielding shimmering crimson grudge-steeped Crescent Moon.
And at the moment Dijon and Genja’s attacks were about to reach her, the stormy sounds caused by the Sakura Blizzard paused and the surroundings turned silent instantly.
Lily parted her pink lips and said, “Sakura-Clad Moon—Tranquil Enigma.”
“Spurt!”
A several meter wide desolate and enigmatic crimson moon manifested around Lily as she executed a nearly full-circle movement with her cursed katana, but this sakura-clad moon didn’t shoot out and just remained static in its manifested spot.
The crimson moon expanded in all directions and just happened to pass through Dijon and Genja’s waists when it manifested, bisecting these two transcendents into two halves!
The crimson moon then dissipated gradually just like the diminishing twilight after sunset.
Hojo Dijon’s eyes were full of denial and disbelief as he gazed at the girl standing on the wave of sakura, and his line of sight slanted gradually.
Although Dijon had been bisected at the waist, he had still managed to maintain his consciousness because of his powerful vitality, and muttered while blood gushed out from his mouth, “N-No… this is impossible… Kagami Lily, just what did you experience? It’s impossible for someone in this world to mature so quickly. Just who are you… and where have you come from… Even if I end up in Yomi, I’ll request the Lord of the Underworld to arrest you as well… and drag you down to the underworld with me…”
Lily just responded coldly to his words, “I believe you would do that, but unfortunately, you won’t have the chance to do it.”
Lily stepped across the sakura flakes deftly and arrived in front of Dijon’s falling torso. She then jumped forward and landed on his shoulders before whispering silently, “Lord Matsuda, your daughter has avenged you.”
Lily’s Crescent Moon stabbed into Dijon’s heart.
“NO! Kagami Lily, you demoness! You can’t do this! How dare you devour my soul?! You… Argh…”
Dijon’s pupils turned white and his body twitched powerlessly before turning silent3.
Lily had once vowed to never use the soul-seizing art on humans.
“But you have already fallen into the path of a demon and no better than a monster, so you aren’t human anymore,” Lily said softly. She then jumped up lithely and flipped across the twilight sky, landing on the edge of the fault with grace.
Lily’s Crescent Moon shimmered with a gluttonous crimson light as it devoured the soul of Dijon that ranked higher than a high-ranked great demon, and it experienced a remarkable enhancement in power!
As Lily traversed past the precipice, the demon ninjas retreated back in fear as if they had seen a fierce god, none daring to approach her.
Lily grabbed the spider thread glued to the stone wall and pulled Genja’s torso, which still had a breath of life left in it, up.
“Mirror Girl… don’t kill me… spare my life… You are a blade maiden, so why don’t you join us Hundred Demons…”
Lily ignored him and stabbed Crescent Moon into his heart before he could even finish speaking.
The desolate soul runes on the sword devoured yet another Dijon-ranked anima and turned even eerier as crimson light flowed through it.
