Chapter 175: A Dog's Gratitude
Totosai clung desperately to the back of the Three-Eyed Fire Ox as it bolted wildly toward the north.
The blue-white flames erupting from its four hooves left long, scorching trails, painting a brilliant arc across the ash-choked sky above the wasteland. The old blacksmith lay completely flat, his bald head pressed flush against the base of the ox's massive horns. His bulging, oversized eyes darted frantically over his shoulder. He had already retracted his Asura Transformation, and to his immense relief, the relentless Oni Samurai who had been hounding him was nowhere in sight.
"Lost him?" he rasped, his hoarse voice dripping with the sheer relief of surviving a natural disaster.
The Three-Eyed Fire Ox let out a low, rumbling moo in agreement.
Totosai exhaled a long, ragged breath. He panted heavily against the beast's coarse fur, the deep wrinkles on his face finally beginning to smooth out. "That was close, far too close. How are there so many unreasonable brats running around these days? This old man just wants to forge iron in peace. Why is it so difficult——"
The complaint died in his throat.
He saw what was waiting ahead.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's retinue. Forty ashigaru, six mounted samurai, eight burly bearers, and a single ornate palanquin sat in perfect formation. They completely sealed off his northern escape route—the only viable exit he had managed to find after flying in dizzying circles around the volcano for a full fifteen minutes, desperately trying to shake off his pursuer.
Totosai furrowed his brow, his large eyes narrowing. "A human army? What are they doing blocking the road here?"
A mortal force of this size was nothing to a veteran Yokai. They couldn't scratch him, let alone stop him. More, he was airborne. Totosai felt a surge of smug confidence. He would simply soar right over their heads.
However, in the very next second, that confidence shattered.
Down below, the wooden spears gripped by the ashigaru suddenly jerked.
But it wasn't the soldiers moving them. The weapons were moving entirely on their own.
Forty long spears violently wrenched themselves free from the soldiers' terrified grasps. In perfect, eerie synchronization, the shafts rotated a half-turn in the air. The iron leads plunged downward, burying themselves into the dirt in unison. Then, using the earth as a springboard, the wooden shafts bent and violently snapped back, launching all forty spears horizontally into the sky directly toward Totosai.
No human arm had thrown them. The weapons were flying under their own volition.
Coiled tightly around each wooden shaft was a faint, almost imperceptible dark-red mist. It was as thin as spider silk, yet this ghostly layer of energy was forcefully driving lifeless wood and cold iron.
It was Dread. Hikaru's Dread.
Over the past three days, the undead samurai had carefully infused his Yao Qi into every single spear. He had spoken to them in his deadpan, serious tone, gently coaxing out at least a point or two of favorability from the inanimate armaments. It wasn't nearly enough to mutate them into actual Yokai. It wasn't enough to grant them true consciousness.
But under the intense, stimulating surge of his Dread, it was just enough to make them move.
For a brief, fleeting instant, they obeyed him. He was repeating the exact same bizarre trick he had used to slaughter the Kamaitachi earlier. The so-called Dread—born from rumors, ghost stories, and fear—acted as a volatile fuel, a short-term driving force for the lifeless.
The forty spears wove together in the air, forming a deadly, bristling forest of iron and wood that completely blocked the Three-Eyed Fire Ox's forward path.
Totosai's jaw dropped. Reacting purely on centuries of instinct, he grabbed the ox's horns and yanked hard.
To the left.
He could have ordered the beast to crash straight through the wooden blockade, but the resulting delay would guarantee the monster behind them would catch up.
As the Fire Ox banked sharply, the chaos below escalated. The leather reins on the six warhorses snapped simultaneously. The braided ropes whipped through the air, twisting and striking like angry vipers as they coiled upward, aiming straight for the Fire Ox's flaming hooves.
The iron stirrups violently detached from the horses' bellies. The metal rings bounced twice against the rocky ground before launching themselves into the air like guided projectiles. The leather straps securing the saddles unbuckled themselves. Heavy riding saddles slid right off the horses' backs, rolling and spreading out across the sky in a desperate, coordinated attempt to trip the airborne beast.
Totosai hauled the horns in the opposite direction.
To the right.
But the environment itself refused to let him pass. The dead, grayish-white wooden stakes lining the mountain road began to violently uproot themselves. With no hands and no legs, the withered logs simply launched themselves from the cracked mud, hurtling horizontally toward the Fire Ox like a collapsing, mid-air fence.
One, two, five, ten.
The dead wood arranged itself into a massive, semi-circular wall, completely sealing off Totosai's right flank.
And it still wasn't over.
The smooth blue stones scattered along the roadside began to violently tremble. These were the very same stones Hikaru had crouched over, gently touched, whispered to, and fed his Yao Qi. Now, they rolled out of the mud, breaking the laws of gravity as they arranged themselves directly into the Fire Ox's flight path, forming a treacherous, floating obstacle course.
Caught completely off guard by the sheer absurdity of the assault, the Three-Eyed Fire Ox stumbled. Its vision was blocked, its balance thrown off, and its flaming hooves slipped against the floating debris.
Down below, the silk curtains of the palanquin violently shook.
Yoshimoto's elegant folding fan shot out from the gap in the fabric. It spun rapidly in the air, snapped open with a sharp clack, and flew upward to slap directly onto the Three-Eyed Fire Ox's wet nose.
Nearby, the round-rimmed glasses perched on Motoyasu's nose suddenly leaped off the young samurai's face. The glass lenses flipped through the air, acting as miniature mirrors that perfectly caught the orange-red glare of the distant volcano, refracting a blinding beam of light straight into Totosai's oversized eyes.
The old blacksmith cried out, temporarily blinded.
In that crucial moment of vulnerability, the woven straw raincoats worn by the ashigaru ripped themselves off the soldiers' backs. They unfurled in the sky like massive grass nets, dropping down to completely shroud the Fire Ox's head.
The raincoats weighed practically nothing. They couldn't physically stop a charging Fire Ox, let alone a Great Yokai of the Ninth Transformation.
But they didn't need to stop him.
They only needed to block his vision, sow absolute chaos, and buy a single second.
That was more than enough.
A deafening crack of thunder shattered the air. Purple lightning exploded from the south.
Hikaru's armored figure tore through the chaotic maelstrom of flying spears, dancing reins, withered wood, and floating stones. His Thunder Muscle was pushed to its absolute limit. In the split second the Fire Ox was blinded by the straw raincoats, he struck.
His right hand shot out, his armored fingers locking onto the back of Totosai's collar in a vice grip.
His left hand slammed down hard onto the Fire Ox's skull. Violent purple lightning poured from his palm, flooding the beast's nervous system with a massive, paralyzing shock.
The Fire Ox's three eyes rolled back into its head. The blue-white flames on its hooves instantly flickered out.
With a heavy, bone-rattling thud, the massive beast plummeted from the sky and crashed into the dirt.
Totosai was left dangling in the air, hoisted up by the back of his collar. The four-foot-tall old man kicked his short legs wildly, struggling against the iron grip.
"Let... let go of me—!" he sputtered.
Hikaru did not let go.
Beneath the terrifying visage of his mask, his Crimson Demon Eyes stared at the struggling blacksmith with absolute, deadpan calm.
"Can we talk now?"
Totosai stared back, his bulging eyeballs practically trembling. His deeply wrinkled face twisted into a complicated knot of terror, anger, and overwhelming shock. He slowly turned his head to look at the bizarre mess scattered behind them.
Spears embedded in the earth, leather reins twitching like dying snakes, withered wood piled into barricades, stones rolling to a halt, and a folding fan resting innocently beside a pair of glasses.
Every single one of them was a completely ordinary, mundane object.
None were forged Demonic Tools. None possessed self-awareness. None had the innate capacity to move on their own.
Yet, they had moved. At the exact same moment, swarming the exact same target, coordinating in their own bizarre ways.
Totosai had lived for centuries. He had followed the Western Lands' greatest Great Yokai, Toga, through countless bloody wars. He had forged the world's most legendary demon blades and witnessed inconceivable sorcery. But in all his long years, he had never seen a technique that could briefly breathe life into all things, weaponizing mundane trash to trap a demon.
He naturally understood the concept of Dread. But Dread alone was absolutely insufficient to animate dead matter like this.
"You brat..." Totosai's voice trembled violently. "What on earth are you? Where did a freak like you come from? No... even demons aren't as demonic as you!"
It was unclear if his shaking was caused by lingering fear or the residual electricity coursing through his collar. Purple current continued to crackle from Hikaru's armored hand, flowing steadily like water.
Hikaru opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak—
A tiny speck suddenly vaulted out from beneath Totosai's collar.
It was barely the size of a thumb. The creature had six spindly legs, a perfectly flat body draped in a plain miniature kimono, a bald head, and a long white beard.
A Yokai born from a flea.
It landed nimbly on Totosai's shoulder, lifting a head no larger than a pinprick. The tiny flea sniffed the air aggressively, leaning its entire body toward Hikaru.
"The scent of Young Master Inuyasha?!"
The voice was incredibly low and aged, yet both demons heard it perfectly clearly.
Totosai's struggling body froze instantly. His massive eyes snapped down toward the flea on his shoulder, then darted back to Hikaru. "Myoga—what did you just say?"
"It is true, Lord Totosai!" The flea demon, Myoga, hopped twice in extreme agitation, his six thin legs quivering uncontrollably. "On this person... there is the distinct scent of Young Master Inuyasha! Young Master Inuyasha is still alive! However, it is not his Yao Qi. It smells exactly like the scent the Young Master leaves behind after turning human during the new moon... though it is slightly different. And..."
Myoga leaned forward, taking another deep, exaggerated sniff.
"It also carries gratitude. A very thick, heavy sense of gratitude."
Totosai blinked, utterly bewildered. "Young Master Inuyasha... is grateful to this person?"
Myoga was a former retainer of the legendary Toga. Much like Totosai, he was a guardian figure left behind to watch over Inuyasha. Though the flea was notoriously cowardly—always the first to flee at the slightest hint of danger—few Yokai in the world possessed a sharper sense of smell or better judgment when it came to demonic auras.
Following Toga's death, Myoga had lost the primary object of his loyalty. Because Inuyasha was a constant wanderer, the flea often took refuge with the old blacksmith for safety.
And now, against all odds, he had caught the scent of his young master.
Radiating directly from this terrifying, deadpan Oni Samurai.
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