It was a full-moon outside and a Chizuki in elegant robes was flying low across the ocean’s surface. Due to how fast she was flying, the water parted in her wake. As she flew , she saw that she was nearing the eastern shores that would place her directly west from the capital city of Heiankyo.
Finally landing on the beach, her knees buckled slightly. Thinking of the reason why, her face become flushed.
[It’s your fault master. You were too…intense.]
Although Uehara drained her blood, that wasn’t a problem for Chizuki since her regeneration rate had improved immensely as an adaptation due to her blood being periodically drained. What she has never told anyone however, was the immense pleasure she feels from when her blood gets drained.
It never effected her as much before since Uehara always moved away when she started shaking (from pleasure), but this time, he was too absorbed in drinking her blood to the point that her knees weakened.
When Uehara was done feeding, she hastily bid her farewells and retreated. She knew Uehara could smell pheromones and although she was good at keeping them under-control, she didn’t have the confidence at that moment in time to hide her THEN current state from him. Luckily for her, Uehara’s senses are rendered useless for a minute or so after feeding.
Looking back at the direction of Aokigahara, she giggled.
“I’ll try to come back as soon as possible, master~”
Aokigahara Island
Uehara had just come back from from Nara city after going there to fetch his scroll parchment. Sakura had stayed there, saying she’ll rendezvous with Chizuki at the capital. This left him alone with Shikibu on the island. Although he hadn’t seen her ever since he kissed her on the forehead, he could tell through his senses that she was at the bison bear territory absorbing nature energy.
Uehara looked at the direction where Shikibu was at and decided.
“I’ll make my scroll there.”
With a glass scroll casing nearly the length of his body on his hands, he vanished in a swirl of darkness.
…
Ever since that ‘incident’, Shikibu had spent the last few days away from Uehara’s territory. The last thing she currently wanted was to spend time at a place that was filled with his scent. The spot that Uehara had bullied her at was filled with the scent of bison-bears so she didn’t need to relocate from there.
Everyday, she’d been playing her zither while absorbing nature energy inside her. Due to that, she could now afford to maintain her younger appearance.
In actual fact, her previous older appearance wasn’t due to the age of her body but rather the age of her soul. As a yokai, the aging process of their bodies depend on how much lifespan their souls have left.
Since Shikibu had less than a century of lifespan left, her appearance became that of a middle-aged woman. Although she could pass for a woman in her late-thirties, it wasn’t an appearance she was happy about as it constantly reminded her of how close she was getting to the end of her life. With merely a few years left, she would age rapidly each passing year until on the last year of her life, she would be no different from an old hag.
Luckily, Uehara let her reside on his island. Just this alone made her very grateful. Dragons are very territorial and even though Uehara was a hybrid, his status didn’t erase that trait. It could be seen just by how he only allowed Chizuki and Sakura to enter his island, even then when they only reached a prerequisite level of strength.
But she couldn’t help but recall that moment when his lips made contact with her forehead. Even though she knew he had absolutely no other intentions besides testing out a theory, she couldn’t help but feel ashamed of how her feelings became.
They were very complicated as of currently. She knew very well of his strength and his immense potential. His level of maturity made it very hard for her to believe he was still a hybrid surin barely past their infancy stage. Along with the stories she heard from Sakura of how he trained her in order to keep a promise, she ended up having a high amount of respect for Uehara.
But that single moment alone, made her mind go awry like a teenage girl. Never in her life had she ever intimately interacted with the opposite gender. There were times where she would tease men but that was always within her control. So even though it was a simple kiss to the forehead, it held much more meaning for her who has never even done the same thing to other men.
It also affected her more since she was a female yokai. Her base instincts are to find a strong mate to bind herself to so that they protect and provide for her while she raises their kids. It didn’t help in the slightest that Uehara was ticking off her requirement checkboxes.
But it also made her incredibly angry how nonchalant he was about the entire thing.
[That damn brat!]
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A note on her zither went off-tune, ruining the gentle melody she was playing.
[I hate this!]
At that moment, a dark swirl appeared a few metres away and Uehara manifested from it. He still had the same black overcoat on his body and his hair was spiky and reached his knees. His facial expression was as dull as always and his stance was rigid. Carrying the glass-case towards the shade of a tree, he threw a glance towards Shikibu before sitting down and opening it.
Taking out the scroll parchment, he unfurled it as he created a stone platform from earth. The parchment itself was big and if rolled up, would have a radius of thirty-centimetres. Placing the scroll down, three shadow clones formed next to him. With the scroll parchment as the center, the four of them were each on the four sides of the parchment.
The first clone on Uehara’s left put its hands on the scroll and began to channel nature chakra into the scroll in order to temper it, increasing the quality of the parchment.
(AN: In case you may not remember, nature chakra is different from nature energy. Nature energy is neutral energy that exists on the planet while nature chakra is the energy that all demons use. Nature energy is golden in colour while nature chakra is a deep royal/coral-blue.)
With the scroll parchment now glowing whitish in colour due to the nature chakra being funneled into it, it would be much tougher than normal parchment. It could then handle heavy transfers of chakra when the scroll is used as a spatial gateway that will allow contracted entities to pass.
The second clone directly opposite of Uehara began focusing the chakra in its body before it began weaving hand-signs.
[Dog-Ox-Horse-Pig: Wood Creation]-(Water-Earth-Light-Fusion: Wood Creation)
Slapping its hands together, pristine polished wood sprouted from the ground. Focusing its mind, it began shaping the wood into wooden dowels that would help give the scroll parchment structure as well as other required necessities.
The third clone on Uehara’s gathered both its hands together and began weaving the hand-signs needed to create the special ink that would be used to inscribe the wooden dowels with surin script that would further increase the toughness of the scroll.
As the last person, Uehara focused his chakra and instead of absorbing nature energy, he began using the internal nature energy he was born with. Dark lines covered his whole body like tattoos while small horns grew from his head. Tiny dragon wings, no longer than twenty-centimetres protruded out his back while canines formed in his mouth.
Luckily, he had already taken off his shirt and overcoat or else they may have been torn. Despite him channeling his own inherent nature energy, there wasn’t an explosion or burst of aura. In fact, his transition into his sage mode was very peaceful.
The black lines that lined his entire body were actually, if you looked really closely, surin script for “restrict” written over and over again. Since he is using his own nature energy, it is extremely vital that he doesn’t deplete it or he will be forced to spend months or even years sleeping to recover it. The worst result would be death where he would then have to reform after decades.
The surin script all over his body were protective measures that automatically activate after a surin uses their own nature energy to enter sage mode. Even though Uehara is a hybrid, this racial trait still also applies to him.
Adopting the snake hand-sign, he began channeling his chakra. The reason for the snake hand-sign is because Uehara was born with the dark attribute. Since his chakra is more biased towards darkness, it is easier for him to manipulate his chakra using the snake hand-sign, which is for darkness.
Although he has complete control over his body and its inner-workings, it helps him focus more if he weaves the hand-sign and he would rather not take chances at this moment.
Directing his nature energy to his hands, he laid them down on the parchment. A wave of golden nature energy spread through the parchment, mixing with the nature chakra his clone released to form a yellow energy blanket that coated the entire parchment.
Although nature chakra was lower in quality than nature energy, it still had one advantage over it. Nature chakra was still, chakra while nature energy was a neutral energy. By using nature chakra, Uehara would be able to ensure that no ki will work on his scroll. This will make it so that even if he’s in a region where there’s lots of ki in the vicinity, he can still use his scroll to summon his contracted entities without the ki interfering with the summoning procedure.
Shikibu was watching everything in silence. She knew that speaking would probably disrupt Uehara’s concentration. But she couldn’t help but widen her eyes at the masterful manipulation of chakra and nature energy.
She knew about nature chakra and nature energy but combining the two of them was something only demons with exquisite control over chakra could accomplish.
She had already long stopped playing on her zither and was watching Uehara from the rock she was sitting on.
An expression of astonishment was on her face.
[What is chakra called?! It feels even more potent than nature energy!]
At the moment, Uehara was also surprised by the results. He thought that mixing the two energies would cause an explosion like that time he almost killed himself trying to merge water and fire chakra. The only reason he even tried this was because his father had told him to do so when creating his summoning scroll.
This is also where the scroll parchment came into play. The plants it was made from were from regions that had high amounts of nature energy. Even if Uehara had the knowledge of how to make a scroll parchment, it could never compare to the one he found at Michinaga’s shop, Radiant Scholar. Since it was made from plants that were nurtured with nature energy, the parchment was able to absorb Uehara’s nature energy and nature chakra with relative ease.
Satisfied with the parchment’s rise in quality, Uehara and the first clone removed their hands from the parchment. He then motioned his third clone to use its created ink to start writing in surin script on the parchment. The script contained the contract details that would bind the entities once they give their concession and sign with their blood.
While his clone was writing, Uehara opened his mouth and a stream of blood came out. Manipulating it, he made it line the edges of the scroll like a border. This would further bind the scroll to him, making it so that only he would be able to use it. Volkarin had told him that a person’s summons are theirs exclusively. Not even their own blood siblings or children are allowed to use their summons unless they’re given permission by the summon itself. It would be considered disrespectful to the summon if someone who had never earned their allegiance was able to summon them.
As time went by, the third clone was done writing and the basic format of the parchment was completed.
Sighing in relief, Uehara cancelled his sage mode. The black lines on his body vanished and his draconic features submerged themselves inside his skin. His canines shrunk and his eyes turned back to their dull black.
[The clones can handle the rest themselves now.]
With that, his head drooped as he passed out.