I loaded the geek game

The figure that had suddenly appeared stood silently in front of the torii gate, which had turned eerily black.

The newcomer was dressed in a magnificent hunting robe, its plain white base adorned with flowing dark gold patterns. A foul wind wafted from behind the black torii gate, causing his robes to billow and swirl as if alive in the wind.

Kamiya River was only a few feet away from this ominous figure, yet he felt as if there was an endless abyss between them. The other person's face was shrouded in an inescapable mist, indistinct and unclear, with only a pair of empty black eyes piercing through the fog.

Those eyes held no hostility, no mockery, not even a complete consciousness, only a frozen, unfathomable chaos.

"Michimitsu Ashiya?"

"what……"

The hoarse response was like struggling to rise from the bottom of an abyss.

Daoman slowly raised his hand, and the deathly aura of the Yellow Springs flowed naturally from his fingertips, causing even the space around him to decay. However, his movements were sluggish, as if he were sleepwalking, like a puppet controlled by invisible threads.

"...It's been so long...!"

Each syllable uttered by Ashiya Doman sounded as if it had been crushed and then pieced back together.

Tired, dry, hoarse, confused.

His empty eyes swept across the temple, finally landing on Kamiyagawa, but his gaze seemed to penetrate him, looking at some distant, painful memory.

"...Taka...Amaga...Hara..."

The black torii gate throbbed violently with his whispers, its dark red veins bulging like blood vessels. Phantom-white skeletons continued to pierce through the void, and the entire Takamagahara Shrine groaned under this blasphemous power.

Kamiya's eyes sharpened.

Ashiya Dōman was not fully conscious. However, spirits who fall into the underworld and absorb its power are rarely conscious, so Kamiya was not surprised by this. What truly shocked Kamiya was the speed and ease with which Ashiya Dōman's control over the power of the underworld could mutate and disintegrate Takamagahara!
As the current ruler of this place, how could Kamiya River allow the other party to continue to run rampant?

boom--! ! !
Five-colored lightning suddenly burst forth!

Indigo, bright white, crimson, brilliant gold, and jet black.

Five bolts of lightning intertwined and tore through space, their dazzling light transforming into a colossal tree that stretched from heaven to earth. Branches formed of lightning stretched wildly, each fork tearing through the darkness, each "leaf" a leaping spark of electricity. This thunderous tree was rooted in the void, its trunk flowing with the ancient power of the Thunder God, instantly evaporating and purifying the pervasive deathly aura.

Kamiya River stood in the center of the lightning, his robes fluttering in the surging energy. He reached out and grasped, and the Futsu-no-Mitama, wrapped in five-colored lightning, condensed in his palm. Wherever the blade pointed, even the space itself trembled slightly.

The next second, the lightning that exploded around Kamiyagawa collided violently with the death aura of the underworld that Ashiya Dōman unconsciously emitted!
Without words or announcements, the battle erupted amidst the roar of thunder and the wailing of death!

Ashiya Dōman's figure, seemingly controlled by invisible threads, appeared to be teetering precariously under the bright light of the lightning.

He raised his face, shrouded in mist, and behind him, in the center of the pulsating black torii gate, a massive, bottomless vortex of darkness suddenly formed! A foul-smelling gale howled from it, and an even thicker aura of death from the underworld surged forth, coalescing before him into a wall of despair built from countless agonizing wails and distorted faces.

boom--!
Futsu no Mitama neither dodged nor evaded, but instead unleashed a thunderous divine might that seemed to split the heavens and earth, slashing fiercely at the barrier of vengeful spirits!

A blinding light instantly engulfed everything; the lightning serpent and the vengeful spirit annihilated each other, emitting a chilling tearing sound. A massive shockwave spread in a ring, ripping up the thick stone slabs of the hall layer by layer, only to grind them into the finest dust in the next instant!
Kamiya's gaze was sharp as a blade, and he could clearly feel the heavy, stagnant sensation emanating from the edge of the blade.

The high wall, forged from endless suffering, twisted and deformed violently under the furious slashes of Futsu-no-Mitama. It seemed about to collapse at any moment, yet it was able to draw a continuous stream of death energy from the underworld from the vortex of the black torii gate, repairing and reinforcing itself at an astonishing speed. Its strange resilience far exceeded expectations.

As the two sides locked in a stalemate—

"Ho..."

Daoman let out a dry, unintelligible gasp from his throat, stiffly raised his hand, and suddenly grabbed forward!
Immediately afterwards, five pitch-black giant pillars, formed from the compression and condensation of extreme death energy, emerged like terrifying ghostly hands reaching out from the abyss of hell, carrying the malice to corrode all things. They brazenly bypassed the blockade of the outer lightning giant trees and hurtled towards Kamiya River from several extremely tricky and deadly angles!

Kamiyagawa's figure flashed like lightning, his Futsu-no-Mitama swirling in his hand, weaving an impenetrable net of lightning swords in front of him.

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The colossal pillar of death energy crashed violently against the lightning curtain, instantly exploding into an even thicker and more corrosive black mist that clung to it like a malignant tumor, frantically devouring and polluting the five-colored lightning.

But now, Kamiyagawa is more than just the Thunder God!

In a flash, he slashed downwards with his left hand, fingers pointing like a sword!
"Qiang——!"

A clear and melodious sword cry, seemingly from the beginning of time, capable of cleansing all the filth in the universe, suddenly resounded throughout the shattered Takamagahara!

A pure, flawless, and crystal-clear sword aura, seemingly formed from the first ray of primordial light at the beginning of creation, shot out from the void at Kamiya River's left waist!

The second divine sword wielded by Kamiyagawa, the Heavenly Ooha Haru, painstakingly reforged by the divine craftsman, is unsheathed here!
Unlike Futsu-no-Mitama, which contains a violent and destructive thunderous power, the cool radiance that flows naturally on the sword exudes a supreme aura of law that transcends the mortal realm, capable of severing time and space, separating the pure from the impure, and defining order!

The tail feathers of the heavens hummed and pierced the air, transforming into a stream of light that transcended the boundaries of time and space, ignoring spatial distance, the surging death energy, and even the layers of defense that Dao Man had instinctively constructed—

Swish!
The cool arc of light flashed and disappeared like a crescent moon.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment.

Ashiya Michiman stood frozen, his body suddenly trembling.

The next moment, a very thin but incredibly clear beam of light appeared between his mist-shrouded head and body.

The tail feathers of the sky spread, severing Ashiya Dōman's neck!

At the very moment his head separated from his body, Kamiya Kawakawa clearly saw a very brief flash of a completely different light in the depths of Doman's eyes, which were originally filled with emptiness and mist—it was like... a glimmer of clarity.

But this strange phenomenon lasted only a moment, like an illusion. The next moment, Daoman's head was completely separated from his neck, the cut was smooth as a mirror, there was no blood, only a thick death aura that surged and dissipated like black smoke from a burst dam.

Having delivered this earth-shattering blow, Tennohito Haru drew an elegant arc in the air. The clear, resonant sword cry still echoed as the gleaming sword light spun in the air, and the hilt landed precisely in Kamiyagawa's waiting left hand.

"Did you succeed?"

Kamiyagawa was an experienced fighter and knew that facing such a formidable enemy, a single blow would not be the end.

Finish off!

We won't stop until Ashiya Doman is reduced to ashes!
Almost at the same time that he got his hands on the Heavenly Tail Feather, his eyes flashed with a fierce light, lightning erupted around him again, and his right hand, Futsu no Mitama, was already gathering momentum, ready to take advantage of the situation and rush forward to completely annihilate the separated head and body with the force of thunder!

However, almost at the same moment, just as Kamiya was about to move—

Rustling...Russling...

A chilling, intensely dense, viscous rubbing sound emanated from the endless darkness behind the black torii gate. The sound grew louder as it approached, as if countless enormous entities, formed from filth and death, were slowly swimming and writhing in that dark abyss. The sound layered upon layer, carrying a suffocating sense of oppression, as if it were not a simple noise, but the whisper of death itself.

Immediately afterwards——

"Ugh……"

A distant, ethereal voice, seemingly emanating from the ancient land of death, sighed softly, carrying an absolute stillness that could end all things and freeze souls. The voice was ethereal and melodious, carrying a strange, intoxicating sweetness, but intertwined with the nauseating slithering sound, it added an air of eeriness and foreboding.

Kamiya's impending explosive movement abruptly halted!
It wasn't that he wanted to stop, but the moment the sounds of swimming and sighs arose, the divine power flowing around him, the surging lightning, and even his boiling fighting spirit seemed to be bound by an invisible yet irresistible absolute force.

And in that frozen moment—

Ashiya Dōman, who had been beheaded, had his severed head and body tightly enveloped and bound by the surging, viscous, black tide of deathly energy from the underworld! Within that deathly energy, countless slender shadows, composed of pure decaying laws, seemed to flash by, like tentacles assisting in the stitching.

Under Kamiyagawa's solemn, even slightly astonished gaze, the severed head and neck were forcibly mended and pulled together by this primal death energy, and finally, amidst a tooth-grinding sound of bones grinding together, they were forcibly reassembled!
In Daoman's empty eyes, the mist seemed to deepen. He stiffly moved his neck, making a soft "crack" sound. The deathly pressure emanating from his body was even stronger than before!
"That one just now was..."

Kamiya's heart sank a little.

An eerie sound and sigh echoed from the void behind the torii gate, a sound capable of bringing Ashiya Dōman "back to life"...

Is it Izanami?
Without a doubt, aside from the Mother Goddess of the Underworld, there is absolutely no other being on the land of Izumo that could exude such a soul-chilling sense of oppression. That sigh, tinged with both sweetness and death, was undoubtedly a manifestation of Izanami's true will!
The Ashiya Doman before me is probably no longer a complete self, but a puppet driven by the power of the underworld, an agent of the Mother Goddess of the Underworld walking in the mortal world.

However, the seals on both "Ruins" still exist, which means that Izanami's true form should still be firmly imprisoned deep within the projection of the Divine Nest.

Kamiya's sharp gaze swept across the black torii gate, which throbbed like a filthy living organ, and behind it, the twisted shrine that continued to expand, constructed of stark white bones.

"So, this is the passage through which the power of the underworld connects to Ashiya Dōman, right?"

In the blink of an eye, the situation became clear.

The Yellow Springs will never dry up, and the Way will never die!
As long as the black torii gate and the white bone shrine that connect to the source of the underworld still exist, and as long as the power of Izanami can continue to flow into him through them, Ashiya Dōman, blessed by the power of the mother goddess, will be immortal.

Continuing to attack Doman himself incessantly is only a futile waste of his own strength, playing right into Yomi's hands.

This thrilling exchange, though not entirely successful, allowed Kamiyagawa to glimpse the key to breaking the deadlock.

He quickly grasped the true strategy for this battle:
To truly defeat Doman, we must first sever his connection with the underworld!

So, what to do next is now clear.

"Mary!" "Prajna!" (End of Chapter)