With Lady Ashikaga’s help, most of the remaining lords weren’t too difficult to convince. Thanks to Lord Noguchi and Jin Hu’s efforts, the generals already had their doubts, and Kaede’s message—bolstered by Kasuga as a witness and Ashikaga’s support—was enough to confirm those doubts.

The onmyouji were more difficult to deal with. While Hayakawa’s vassals generally had their own interests in mind, the priests were zealously loyal to the shogun. A few were amenable to the argument that Hayakawa Takeo had failed in his role as the leader of the clan, and they were willing to follow Kaede as the rightful heir. The rest she had no choice but to capture until the war was over.

Kaede was pleased with the progress they’d made. All of the most important leaders in her father’s faction had been converted, and it was only a matter of time before their influence changed the shape of the conflict into a unified front.

It was just as well things had gone so smoothly, since Yagi was completely exhausted from all the travel. The priestess was doubled over on a small cot in the spare tent that the local lord had provided them. Eui knelt next to her, circulating Wood essence to sooth Yagi’s strained meridians.

“Sorry about that. I knew it would be hard on you, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Yagi groaned incomprehensibly. For someone who’d been begrudgingly roped in to help, she’d really committed herself.

Lord Kasuga scoffed at her suffering.

“For what she did, she deserves this and worse. That spell of yours wasn’t exactly easy on us, either.”

Ashikaga rolled her eyes.

“Speak for yourself, you wuss. If you’re a real martial artist, you can take that much. I have to say, that’s a pretty convenient spell. If you moved your armies around like that, we wouldn’t even be able to fight back.”

Eui frowned, wiping a bit of sweat from Yagi’s brow with a damp cloth.

“Goryeo’s doctrine focuses on defense, and there aren’t many mages capable of casting the spell. The version I use is a bit easier, but it was only recently developed and isn’t widely known. It also gets a lot harder to cast the more people you include in its area.”

And that wasn’t even mentioning the cost of preparing it. Yoshika had plenty of talismans, but she had the resources of a small country at her disposal and their trip had still put a serious dent in her supply. Xiantian level talismans were prohibitively expensive.

“Still. Seems like the sort of thing that would be worth figuring out. Imagine being able to fly entire armies across the continent as swift as the wind. You’d be unstoppable.”

“Logistics is just one part of war, and we’re not interested in taking over the world through conquest.”

Ashikaga raised an eyebrow.

“Not ‘through conquest’? That’s an interesting distinction.”

“Don’t read too much into it.”

“Oh, I’m reading. You girls are absolutely fascinating, and I really want to know what sort of mad schemes your combined minds have planned.”

Eui opened her mouth to retort, but paused as she felt an uncomfortable shift within her soul. It was subtle, like a lifted weight that she hadn’t known was there. A part of her that she hadn’t been able to sense until it became conspicuously absent.

She furrowed her brows, and looked down at her hands. Focusing inward, she didn’t sense anything amiss within her soul realm, and when she expanded her domain across the camp nothing had changed there either.

Ashikaga noticed the sudden distress and cocked her head.

“Something wrong?”

Eui frowned.

“I don’t know. I just felt something disappear, but I don’t know what it was. It’s almost like the beacon I gave to Rika, but I never made another one.”

“Hmm? I won’t pretend to understand how someone as powerful as you senses these things, but is there some sort of spell or technique that you’ve been passively maintaining?”

“A few of them, but they’re all either internal or focused on Jiaguo city. If it was any of those, I’d know.”

Ashikaga scratched her chin, then shrugged.

“I’m out of ideas, then.”

Yagi rolled over and groaned.

“K-kami. When you lose a bond with one...it feels like that.”

Eui shook her head.

“Heian is just fine, and I don’t have any other—”

She froze. That wasn’t true. While she didn’t have any other spirits bound to her like that, there was something similar. When Yang Qiu had given up her core, it had effectively bound her to Yoshika, and though the core had since been returned, it was possible that the bond had remained.

Yoshika closed her eyes in meditation, trying to focus on the missing parts. It was hard to tell what they were just from their absence, but with a working hypothesis she could narrow down the possibilities. It wasn’t just one bond, but dozens—maybe even hundreds. They blended together in dense groups within her soul and Yoshika soon realized why she hadn’t noticed them until they were missing.

While there were many severed connections, they were only a tiny fraction among thousands of similar bonds. Each one took up a tiny portion of Yoshika’s power as her domain naturally expressed itself over her subjects. Every single person she cared for, or cared for her. The people of Jiaguo, the innocent victims of Yu Meiren’s demons, her friends in Goryeo, the townsfolk she’d met during her journeys in Qin—almost everyone she’d ever met, with a single conspicuous gap.

The demons. Not those still imprisoned back in Jiaguo, or Beishang—specifically Yang Qiu and the soldiers under her command.

“Oh no!”

Ashikaga blinked.

“You figured it out?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what it means, but it can’t be good. Something has cut off my connection to the demons in Jiaguo’s army.”

“Connections?”

Yoshika nodded, pacing back and forth as she fretted about the discovery.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“I have connections to everyone I know. You, Yagi here, even my father and—ugh, Yu Meiren. It’s part of who I am—what I am. I don’t know what it means for them to be cut off, but it can’t be good. I—I have to go check on them.”

“What—now?! We’re miles away. If something is happening at Kasuga, then even with that fancy spell of yours, you won’t make it in time to change anything.”

“I can move a lot faster than that by myself. I’ll be there in minutes.”

Lady Ashikaga’s eyes widened.

“Holy—okay, wait. You need to slow down, princess. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that a technique like that can’t possibly be easy. What are you going to do if you end up exhausting yourself only to rush headlong into a trap?”

Yoshika bit her lip. It almost certainly was a trap. The timing, the fact that the demons were being singled out—all of it had Yu Meiren’s fingerprints. Lightspeed Transferral would get her there quickly, but Ashikaga was right, it would exhaust her.

The plan to unite Yamato was well under way. Yu Meiren was acting out of desperation. All Yoshika had to do was wait for her movement to make its way through the nation, and Yu Meiren would lose all of her influence. She could fight a weakened Yu Meiren while at full strength, or exhaust herself just for a confrontation while Meiren was still at her strongest.

And all she had to do was sacrifice Yang Qiu, Minami Yuuko, Long Ruiling, and all of the innocent people of Kasuga.

Yoshika took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair.

“Lady Ashikaga, thank you for helping me clear my head. You’re right, charging in now would be a mistake.”

Ashikaga sighed in relief.

“Well, I’m happy to be of—”

“I’m still going.”

“Wait, what?”

Yoshika shook her head.

“Even if it’s a trap, I can’t abandon them there. I know that’s what Yu Meiren wants, but she’s played perfectly into my weaknesses.”

“So you’re just going to rush in and let yourself get killed?”

“Not quite. I have a few hidden tricks this time that she doesn’t know about. It’s a little soon to deploy them, but I have faith in my people. First, though, I need to show them that their faith in me isn’t unfounded.”

She stepped out of the tent, floating gently into the air. Ashikaga followed her, a worried look on her face.

“Good luck, princess. Don’t go dying right after I switched sides for you, yeah?”

Yoshika smiled.

“If I die again, you’ll be at the back of a long line of people waiting to give me a well-deserved slap.”

“Wait, again? What does that—?”

Power surged through Yoshika, transforming her into a weightless beam of pure light that shot across the sky. It was the furthest she’d ever traveled with Lightspeed Traversal, and she could feel it sapping her strength with every second, but she persisted. Every moment counted, and she couldn’t afford to slow down.

It only took her a few minutes to arrive, but those were some of the longest minutes of her life. She arrived, out of breath and sweaty from the exertion, to a scene of pandemonium. Demons ran wild through the camp, chasing after their own allies with crazed fervor.

How had everything gone wrong so quickly?

She spread her domain through the camp, but there was no sign of Yu Meiren yet. Either she’d already done what she came to do, or she was waiting for the right moment to strike.

On closer inspection, the scene was less chaotic than Yoshika thought. Only the soldiers were engaged, while the refugees hid in tents under heavy guard. There was relatively little violence or bloodshed, with the human soldiers focusing on fleeing to guide the demons away from the civilians.

Yang Qiu was alone in a tent, buried up to her neck in magically reinforced mud while Long Ruiling shouted at her from outside.

Yoshika landed next to the dragon fiend.

“What’s going on here?!”

Ruiling met her eyes, relief and desperation warring on her face.

“Yoshika! Oh, thank the depths. Yu Meiren showed up and did something to drive the demons insane. Miss Yang’s been helping us manage it without many casualties, but we can’t keep it up forever.”

Yoshika cast a doubtful glance at the tent.

“That’s helping?”

Yang Qiu’s hoarse voice responded from within the tent.

“Don’t come in here! We can—we can resist the impulses, but only a little. Redirect our hunger to harder targets. It’s not going to last forever, you have to kill us!”

Ruiling rolled her eyes.

“I already told you we’re not doing that! There has to be a way to capture them like we did you.”

“You only caught me because I let you. The others are weaker—hungrier. Kill us!”

“Now that Yoshika’s here we can make them surrender like she did at the academy!”

Yang Qiu growled.

“That was when they weren’t starving, stupid! Unless Yoshika can instantly reassert the blessing she cultivated in us over the last year, there’s no saving us.”

Yoshika narrowed her eyes.

“Wait, what blessing?”

“Your fucking domain made us docile! I was right all along—demons can’t actually change.”

She didn’t have time to process that. It was probably true that her domain had influence over the people under it, she just hadn’t learned how to use it directly the way Meiren did.

“No. You’re wrong—I may have helped pave the way, but you and the others walked that path of your own accord. You have changed, and the fact that you were able to save the innocents from harm in the midst of this crisis is proof.”

“And how long do you think that’s going to last, huh?!”

Yoshika floated into the air, her domain covering the entire camp as she took in the controlled chaos around her.

“Long enough.”

The soldiers had done a decent job of coordinating their efforts to herd the demons away from the civilians, but there wasn’t much planning behind it. A few groups ran the risk of running into each other and creating an unavoidable skirmish.

Yoshika manifested points of light to guide the retreating soldiers.

“This way!”

Her voice resounded through the minds of everyone in the camp, and the soldiers adjusted immediately. Yoshika carefully guided them through the camp, avoiding civilians and other groups as they made their way out of the populated portions of the camp and into the city ruins.

She needed to isolate them enough that each demon could be singled out and incapacitated without fear of others interfering. Next, she needed someone she could trust to safely engage the demons swiftly and efficiently.

“Melati!”

One of the wasp fiend’s miniature drones popped out from behind Ruiling’s wings and saluted.

“Hi Yoshi!”

“Your drones don’t have individual souls, do they?”

“Nope! We can grow them if we separate for too long, though.”

As curious as she was about that, Yoshika set it aside for the moment.

“I need you to capture and incapacitate the demons fleeing into the city. Hopefully the lack of soul makes the demons more prone to cooperate, but you might lose a few drones.”

“No problem! Melati has lots of Melati now! Yoshi is so much nicer about letting us grow the hive than the old village elders!”

A handful of her human-sized drones flew out to start capturing the frenzied demons. It was a slow process, but it was working. Aside from a few injured soldiers and Melati’s lost drones, there were no casualties among either the humans or the demons.

Yoshika sighed as the situation began to wind down. The crisis was averted, for the time being. Within her tent, Yang Qiu wept.

“Why are you doing all this for us? We’re not worth it. One day we’re going to end up dragging you down with us.”

“Yang Qiu, you promised that I wouldn’t regret giving you back your core. So far, you’ve kept that promise. If anything, today has only strengthened my conviction to rehabilitate you and your people.”

A shrill voice interjected from behind her.

“How boring. You’ve really got these toothless cowards whipped.”

Yoshika whirled around to strike at Yu Meiren with the kamikiri she’d taken from Ashikaga, but the demon was already a retreating cloud of purple mist. Meiren cackled.

“Ah well, at least I got my main objective. I don’t know how you survived Longyan’s dying blow, you little cockroach, but I’m not going to take any chances this time. No more games. I’ll take my time torturing your precious family later, but today I won’t rest until I’ve personally devoured your worthless fucking soul.”

For once, Yoshika was in agreement with Yu Meiren. She leveled her blade and gathered her remaining strength. Exhausted or not, her feud with Meiren was going to end—one way or another.