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The dimly lit cavern’s walls were damp with water dripping down them and Lily found no one else other than them inside the cavern. The cavern seemed to have a passage that led to a darker region from where a sorrowful intent emanated.
The trio climbed onto land and since their bodies were drenched by water, their curvaceous lines were in full display because of their dresses sticking to their skin.
Although the married samurai woman wasn’t as tall, lean or bountiful as Lily, she still possessed an adult charm brimming with motherliness that didn’t lose to the youthful charm of a teenage girl.
The married samurai woman’s knees went weak the moment she climbed onto land, prompting her to sit on the ground.
Meanwhile, Lily checked their surroundings vigilantly.
“How come there’s just us three in this cavern? Where’s the samurai who came before us?” Lily’s voice echoed inside the cavern.
Lily’s hair was still adorned by water droplets that trickled down to the ground and a few strands of her hair were stuck to her cheeks, the water droplets from which slid down her chin and onto her breasts.
“Look, Lily. There’s a weird symbol etched there,” Shimizu pointed at the wall.
Lily looked at the wall, and just as Shimizu had said, it had an inexplicable ancient symbol etched on it. This prompted her to take out the emblem and turn it over to confirm that this symbol was the same one that was etched on the backside of this ‘Biwa Palace’ emblem, which she hadn’t cared about much until now.
“It’s possible that the emblems lead to different locations,” Lily surmised.
Shimizu nodded in agreement after checking Lily’s emblem.
“Oh no. If it’s really like this, Brother Tenba might not be able to find us even if he obtains an emblem somehow,” Lily continued, “But the world works in mysterious ways, so we might as well check out the place since we’re here.”
“Um…” The married samurai woman voiced out, “What am I supposed to do now, ladies?”
Lily rescued the woman as she couldn’t stand the sight of the dandy harassing her, so she had yet to think of what to do with her.
“You are?” Lily asked.
“I’m Mizue, the wife of Kokura’s lord, which is in Ise,” The woman’s purple kimono looked close to black now because of the water it had absorbed, some of which dripped down in the form of water droplets, and her generous hourglass figure bounded by her dress oozed with charm.
Lily cascaded her hair to one side and sent water droplets flying through the air as she squeezed out the water from her sleeves and the hem of her minidress’ skirt.
“Miss Mizue. Why are you out here risking the life you have instead of acting as the ideal wife if you’re a lord’s wife?”
Mizue sighed, “My husband was injured in battle with a monster and became a disabled person because of paralysis in his lower body. The area outside Kokura is overrun by monsters and we receive little land taxes each year, so our finances have become a lot more strained now. If things remain the same, we will become unable to even pay wages to our retainers and soldiers, leaving us with no way to protect Kokura. I overheard traveling samurai mention that there was a treasure in the ancient palace at the bottom of Lake Biwa and that it was about to open soon. As a child of a dojo master, I thought I might as well test my luck with this treasure hunt to make some money since I didn’t know of any other way to do it.”
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Lily gauged Mizue’s strength with a probe openly and discovered that she was a late-stage sword master, which placed her at the 3rd-stage Awakened level.
Mizue continued, “I know I’m weak, and to be honest, I’ve come across danger several times on my way from Ise to Lake Biwa, nearly losing my life in the process. I only realized the gap between me and the others when I finally reached here and even though I dislike Yajiro a lot, I had no other choice since I wouldn’t have had a chance at obtaining a share of the treasure unless he helped me. I am not someone who spreads my legs to anyone, but my strength is limited, and my husband as well as my people are waiting for me to return with the money that I make from selling the treasure off. I didn’t want to return home empty-handed either…”
“Luck also plays a role when determining strength sometimes,” stated Lily.
“I’m Lily and this is my sister, Shimizu.”
Mizue genuflected1 to the two of them like an obedient wife, “Miss Lily. I saw how you dealt with those kappas earlier and you’re truly amazing, much more than Yajiro. You’re my savior, so I don’t dare to ask you to share the treasure with me, but I hope you’ll allow me to follow you and take the items you don’t want so that I can sell them after returning home.”
“Do as you wish, but never let your guard down or wander away from us. You must act extra cautious since you know you’re weak, as being too greedy will lead you to doom. Anyhow, we won’t abandon you since we were the ones who brought you into this region.”
“Thank you. My husband has been constrained to the bed for the past few years because of his paralysis, so it’s been a really long time, but if you wish for it…”
“If I wish for it?”
“I-It’s nothing,” Mizue answered with flushed cheeks2, “Please allow me to thank you in place of my husband and my people.”
“There’s no need for that. Just act with the utmost caution,” Lily walked towards the cavern’s depths after leaving these words, so Shimizu and Mizue followed after her.
The trio walked through the dark and damp cavern for a good while before they caught sight of faint light from a stone lantern ahead of them.
There was a clearwater pond beside this stone lantern.
Lily approached the stone lantern and wondered how come there was an energy-infused candle still lit inside the lantern if the place had been sealed for thousands of years.
“This is a spirit candle,” Kagura communicated with Lily from the mirror.
“It’s a spirit candle?”
“A spirit candle is a candle that can ignite or extinguish based on the changes in the surroundings and can continue burning for years through the spirit power and magic imbued in it. It’s not that common in Kanto, but it’s a lavish candle used for illumination in the homes of Heian-kyo’s high-ranked nobles,” Kagura explained.
“Oh. I never knew such a marvelous item was used for illumination. It seems like life in Heian-kyo is really remarkable,” Lily sighed.
“Look, Lily. There’s something etched there,” Shimizu pointed at the boulder beside the pond.
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The following words were etched on it—Please take a bath here, young women.
“Just say to take a bath. Is there a need to specify young women?” It made Lily wonder whether the master of Biwa Palace was some kind of pervert.
They had climbed out of the water in the beginning, so there was no real need to take a bath again. The trio just moved forward after ignoring the instruction and arrived at an open space.
An abandoned shrine existed to one side of this open space, and it had been built underneath the low-roofed cavern.
A few cracks opened up on the ground and samurai donned in time-worn armors and helmets crawled out from it. However, they emitted no spirit energy, which took Lily aback. Although they felt dangerous, the fact that they didn’t emit any spirit energy made her wonder how they were moving.
These samurai didn’t seem to possess any self-consciousness and simply rushed towards Lily and the others with their rusted long sword after crawling out of the ground.
Lily and Shimizu assumed a battle-ready stance immediately.
The movements of the samurai were stiff yet swift as one of them slashed at Lily with power.
“Clang!” Lily received the samurai’s attack intentionally to gauge the opponent’s strength yet even she felt a little overpowered by the weight behind the strike. She concluded that the samurai’s strength was at the early-stage Spirit Jade level in terms of raw strength.
If even Lily was overpowered, it was obvious that the weaker samurai who couldn’t gauge these armored samurai’s strength would lose their lives in the first exchange of blows.
Lily noticed that these armored samurai had no faces and had black mist oozing out of their emaciated grey-skinned hands. Lily struck the opponent’s blade with her own by using both her hands and made it slide down against their blade.
“Spurt!” Lily’s blade slashed through the samurai’s body and left a deep blade wound on it, following which a lot of black mist escaped out from the samurai’s wound as they collapsed to the ground.
Shimizu evaded the samurai’s attacks in the meantime and executed swift blade draws to kill each one of them with a single draw.
Although these samurai possessed strength close to the early-stage Spirit Jade level, they lacked esoteric arts and topnotch sword arts, so Lily was still able to kill them with ease.
The samurai were swallowed by the ground once they fell to the ground and were replaced by a new batch of samurai who crawled out from it.
Meanwhile, Mizue was hidden in the passage that connected to the open space and didn’t dare to come out.
Lily examined the samurai as she battled them but failed to discover anything. As they didn’t leave any anima behind after dying, it wasn’t feasible for blade maidens like her and Shimizu to recover their spirit power in the middle of the battle. Lily possessed a lot of anima, but Shimizu’s parasol, which served as the anima container now, didn’t have a high capacity like Lily’s Sakura Parasol.
Lily and Shimizu killed more than a dozen Spirit Jade level samurai, but it was no easy feat to accomplish this, and it was also quite dangerous. However, this space continued to spawn samurai endlessly without showing any other change.
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This caused Lily to wonder if this battle was meaningless.
“Let’s retreat for a moment, Sister Shimizu!”
Lily and Shimizu returned to the long passage, but the samurai didn’t pursue them and just remained behind in the open space without moving.
The battle had made Lily sweat out a lot, but she still expressed her puzzlement while taking rough breaths, “It seems like they will only attack us if we enter that region.”
“Just what are those samurai? How come there’s no end to them?” Shimizu’s breaths had also quickened.
“Is there any meaning in battling those samurai? I saw no other passage out of that region,” Lily stated puzzledly.
“But we walked to this region straight from the pond we came out of and never saw any other passages,” stated Shimizu.
Lily and Shimizu locked eyes with each other, “Could it be…”
The trio returned to the clearwater pond.
“Could it be that there’s really some kind of mechanism in place here?” Lily questioned while looking at the clearwater pond.
Shimizu also expressed her opinion, “Maybe there is. If not, the unreasonable instruction on the boulder wouldn’t really make sense.”
“Perhaps only women who are teleported to this cavern?” Mizue asked.
Lily began to rejoice that her brother Tenba hadn’t made it in time or else they would’ve found themselves in a pretty embarrassing situation.
“In any case, let’s try it once,” suggested Lily.
“You can rest assured, Master. The water has no elements or mechanisms that are harmful to you,” Kagura assured her from the mirror.
Lily was left speechless by this as the last time Kagura had suggested that something was harmless to her, she had actually ended up consuming the aphrodisiac in it.
Lily’s body was still oversensitive even now and simply couldn’t stand skin contact.
However, there was no other choice but to try it right now as they were trapped in the cavern.
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“Um… How about I try it first? I’m pretty much useless to the two of you in this treasure hunt, so please allow me to try it first,” Mizue suggested all of a sudden.
“That’s…” Lily didn’t seem that willing.
But Shimizu prevented Lily from saying anything, “Let her try it first.”
Mizue nodded with a slightly hesitant expression since she felt a bit shy about undressing first in front of such young, pretty and powerful ladies despite being a woman.
Mizue turned around and took her kimono off slowly, revealing her charming and naked back3.