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CHAPTER 53 – THE LONE CASTLE UNDER THE DEMONIC FORMATION
“Lily, I also think our attack on the castle was a bit too easy, but demons have never been able to hold onto their strongholds. This is similar to when we captured Port Ayabe. After all, most of these abandoned castles are guarded by vagrants, and it makes sense for our elite army to overcome them. They should know how difficult it was for us to get here, so if the demons were capable of blocking us head-on, we wouldn’t have been able to reach the castle at all, right?” Ashikaga Makoto said.
“Hm…” Lily nodded, but she was still a little doubtful in her heart.
“Of course, Lily, it was all thanks to your incredible skills that we were able to discover Kameyama Castle. I would have liked to reward you, but the army is short on financial resources. Besides, I heard that you had a strange encounter outside Kameyama Castle, so you must have gained a lot, and you probably don’t care about the army’s reward, right? However, when my army returns, I’m sure you will be promoted to a higher rank. So far, it seems that you are the one who will get the most merit for this battle.”
“Mother Makoto, Lily doesn’t care about merit. I just want to help you and also find Sister Uesugi as soon as possible.”
“Lily, regarding Uesugi Rei’s betrayal, I don’t want to believe it, either, but we have to believe in the facts. You better…prepare your heart as necessary.” Makoto advised.
“Mother Makoto, Lily has her own considerations at this time.” Even if Lily had to bet her life, she would never believe that Uesugi Rei would betray them, but there was no need to argue with Makoto. After all, she didn’t completely understand the situation herself.
“Hm, Lily, your mind is no longer comparable to that of an ordinary woman. I trust you. You didn’t rest well yesterday, right? And then we attacked the castle… You should get some rest.”
“Hm…” Lily wanted to say something else, but she felt that Makoto didn’t have the heart to listen, so she withdrew quietly.
Back in her room, Lily lay down and thought, In the past few days, Ashikaga Makoto has told me to rest whenever she sees me, but every time, I don’t get any good rest…
This time…
Lily sank into dreamland and dreamed about her original world. She and her senior sister were at the same table because of cram school. Although this was an unlikely event in reality, it seemed to be the case in her dream. Her senior sister seemed to be wearing a thin purple tulle skirt, and the two’s legs under the table accidentally touched together. Their hearts were filled with tension and sweet feelings…
Boom—!
A terrifying explosion woke Lily from her sweet dream. She usually kept her spiritual energy on high alert while sleeping, but this time, she dreamed of her original world and dropped her vigilance.
Lily jerked up and sensed howls and hazy fires everywhere outside.
“Enemy attack! Enemy attack!” From time to time, a samurai ran across the corridor and shouted.
What’s going on?
Lily grabbed Yasutsuna and opened the window, only to see that, outside, the entire Kameyama Castle was ablaze in a sea of fire under the night, and the air was clouded with all kinds of poisonous mists.
Poisons of this concentration and potency couldn’t hurt Lily, but it was difficult to say the same for the army in the castle.
Tens of thousands of troops had already set up initial defenses around the castle. How did the castle suddenly burst into flames, and where did the enemy come from?
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This definitely wasn’t caused by a simple siege.
It suddenly dawned on Lily that, perhaps, this Kameyama Castle itself was a trap!
“Mother Makoto!”
Lily rushed out of her room and went to the hall where the chief commander was.
In the hall, several army commanders were looking out the window in panic, but she did not find Makoto.
Lily then rushed to the chief commander’s room at the back of the hall.
“Mother Makoto!”
Lily pushed open the door and saw that Makoto was just getting up, a look of panic on her face. She was wearing a pair of black leggings and a short white blouse.
“Lily?! What’s going on? What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, we’ve probably been tricked!”
Makoto grabbed her katana and rushed out of the room with Lily.
Suddenly, the ceiling of the corridor caved in, and a fierce purple demon with long arms and luridly sharp claws fell down in a crouching position, looking at the two of them with its glowing green eyes.
The demon howled and pounced towards the two with great speed.
“A peak Permanence Stage archdemon!” Lily was startled.
She took a step in front of Makoto and unsheathed Yasutsuna in her hand.
Boom! Her slash directly cut apart the entire ceiling and destroyed half of the roof. Needless to say, the peak Permanence Stage demon was killed by Lily’s crimson sword light, which continued to fly into the night sky.
Lily escorted Makoto to the hall. At this time, Minamoto no Yoshitada and Taira no Iemori also rushed into the hall.
Yoshitada held his bloody sword and was killing a few demons, their corpses littering the area. Iemori looked around the castle tower with a solemn expression.
“What’s going on?” Makoto yelled.
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“We just woke up as well!”
“Report!” A blood-covered ninja appeared, “Chief commander, the entire Kameyama Castle suddenly exploded into flames, and various demonic formations and poisonous mists suddenly appeared. Our army suffered heavy losses!”
“Report!” A samurai stumbled in, “A-a large number of demons suddenly appeared in the castle!”
“Where are the troops defending the castle?!” Makoto questioned angrily.
“There aren’t any movements in the outer castle. I don’t know where these demons came from. It seemed like they suddenly appeared all over the city at the same time!” The samurai shouted.
“There must be a mechanism or a tunnel!” Iemori said gravely.
“What should we do, Chief Commander?” Yoshitada looked at Makoto.
Makoto looked outside at Kameyama Castle, which was enveloped in a sea of flames and poisonous mist. She didn’t know how many losses the army had suffered.
Soon, an unusual firmness flashed through her eyes, “The army must evacuate the castle as soon as possible!”
“Evacuate to where?”
“My naval troops are camping at the Tanba River banks east of Kameyama Castle. Retreating there is our only way out!”
“Then let’s retreat to the eastern river bank!” Makoto concurred.
“Let’s each go and command our troops to evacuate Kameyama Castle! I’ll go to the naval camp first to meet you!” Iemori said before jumping out of the roof and diving into the vast battlefield alone.
“Lily, don’t be tied up here with us. You have the strongest individual battle power and the situation is too chaotic. You should enter the battlefield and act according to your own judgment!” Makoto said.
“But, Mother Makoto, you…”
Makoto held her katana, “Now, I have to rely on myself to break through!”
Yoshitada said, “I will break through with the chief commander; I can guarantee her safety!”
“Understood,” At the critical moment, Lily didn’t hesitate at all, “Mother Makoto, Lord Yoshitada, take care.”
Lily jumped down into the vast sea of fire.
On the other side of the castle tower, the gate had collapsed and flames were burning everywhere. The ground was covered with the bodies of soldiers and toxic mist still permeated the air.
In the distant streets and alleys, green demonic flames were still burning strongly. There seemed to be devastating demonic formations hidden everywhere.
Lily expanded her domain and found that demons and human samurai were fighting at every corner.
There were also a lot of human samurai constantly evacuating the castle.
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Lily found that many dilapidated houses and manors hid tunnels, which the demons had used to infiltrate and surprise attack the resting army, resulting in heavy casualties.
In many places, there were various special flammable oils, wines, demonic formations, and mechanisms that could release poisons.
These were not ordinary things. The temperature of the burning flames was extremely high, and those below the Spirit Jade who got burned would almost certainly die.
Corpses were scattered everywhere, and most of them weren’t killed by demons, but by demonic formations, various traps, flames, and poisonous mists.
Lily jumped onto a wall and opened the sakura parasol.
The entire Kameyama Castle was almost shrouded in crimson cherry blossoms.
Lily concentrated her mind and controlled the cherry blossom blades, killing multiple demons in a wide range. No matter whether they were blue demons, red demons, four-legged swamp lizard demons, huge centipede demons, countless small demons, or vagrants, they were all killed by Lily’s cherry blossom blades.
However, there were too many demons and she could only control 88 cherry blossom blades at the same time. Furthermore, she had to maintain a certain amount of lethality, otherwise it would be difficult to kill archdemons above the Spirit Jade stage.
But, even so, the speed at which Lily killed the demons was amazing!
Hundreds of demons fell almost every minute. However, demons still flooded into Kameyama Castle like a tidal wave. Even if Lily kept killing them, she could only kill a few thousand per hour.
Kill a few thousand; count a few thousand— it was never-ending!
Lily rotated the sakura parasol, causing cherry blossoms to dance in the sky. The crimson cherry blossom blades continued to torment the demons.
On the fiery battlefield, countless anima flew towards the girl in red holding a parasol and standing on the broken wall, forming a strange spectacle on the battlefield.
Suddenly, an oppressive force even stronger than Sakura Blizzard struck!
On the mountainside outside the castle, there was a terrifying ancient demon. It was the Rashomon spirit— Ibaraki Doji.
Countless vengeful spirits flew over, scattering Lily’s Sakura Blizzard and starting to chase and kill the imperial army.
Lily tried to fight back with her cherry blossom blades.
But unexpectedly, Ibaraki Doji suddenly threw his ghost hand and flew towards Lily from the mountainside.
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“Not good!”
Fortunately, the distance was quite far, so Lily fled into the streets in a flash, withdrew her domain, hid in the dark to restrain her aura, and raised the sakura parasol over her head again.
However, a flying vengeful spirit still found her.
“Sure enough, since I was already discovered by the enemy’s domain from the start, I won’t be able to hide even if I open the sakura parasol again! The sakura parasol is not omnipotent!” It’s because of this suspicion why Lily didn’t dare to risk using the sakura parasol to hide herself when she escaped last time. She didn’t dare to try it then, but this time, there was still a large number of imperial soldiers inside the castle, so it was easy to hide. Therefore, Lily dared to take the risk to try, but found that it was really ineffective.
“Kagami Lily, where are you going to run this time!” Ibaraki Doji stepped on the flying ghost hand and rushed into the castle at great speed.
“Not good!” Lily slashed at the vengeful spirit, but it was miraculously absorbed by Lily’s cursed blade.
“What?” Lily didn’t expect this to happen, but before she could think, Ibaraki came over so quickly that she didn’t have time to run.
At this moment, a golden light suddenly shot towards Ibaraki.
Boom! Ibaraki braced himself on the ghost hand to resist, but the earth-shattering explosion blew him backwards.
“Ibaraki Doji! Don’t act so wildly! Behold my Genji Demon Extermination Formation!” In the empty ruins of Kameyama Castle, four hundred of the most elite Genji warriors formed a wedge-shaped formation under the command of Minamoto no Hiromasa. At the core of the formation, Yoshitada personally held an unusually wide and long formation tachi. He was originally a late-stage Throned Sovereign, but when all the power of the formation converged on him, a single slash from his tachi was comparable to an attack from a late-stage Throned Monarch!
Even Ibaraki Doji couldn’t ignore it.
“What? The Grand Demon Extermination Formation created by Minamoto no Yoshitsune?! Tch!” Ibaraki was furious, “I didn’t expect the imperial army to hide this kind of trump card!”
If 2,000 people formed the Grand Demon Extermination Formation, even Shuten Doji would barely be able to resist.
But now, the army was in chaos, so Yoshitada could only gather these people.