The Demon-Faced Centipede rolled its massive body, launching a frenzied assault. Under its immense power, dust billowed, boulders shattered, and the surroundings were left in utter ruin.
Amidst the tidal wave of the Demon-Faced Centipede's attacks, Tsuruha's agile body leaped between the branches of tall trees, dodging its lethal strikes time and again. During this, she constantly sought opportunities to pounce on the demon faces on its head, but without exception, she was always repelled. Her sharp claws couldn't even leave a single scratch on those faces.
Just as the Demon-Faced Centipede had said, its carapace was nearly impenetrable. Without demon-breaking power, Tsuruha couldn't hope to damage its thick armor.
After a prolonged, fierce battle, Tsuruha had to admit that the Demon-Faced Centipede was an incredibly powerful yokai. Not only did it have extremely high physical resistance, but it could also absorb onmyojutsu and yokai arts. While possessing a defense that normal attacks couldn't breach, it also had considerable destructive power and speed. If it were out in the world, this Demon-Faced Centipede would be a regional yokai leader, if not a general under a demon king.
"Hehehe... Useless little fox... You can't do anything to me..."
"Your flames are strong... but I will absorb them... Your claws are fragile... they can't even graze my body..."
"How pitiful... As a shikigami... abandoned by a human to buy time here... None of those onmyoji are any good..."
"There's no need to resist... Sleeping eternally in my belly is better than being enslaved by an onmyoji..."
Amidst its relentless attacks, the Demon-Faced Centipede kept whispering, seemingly trying to shake Tsuruha's will, but she remained completely unmoved.
She was not a shikigami, she was not abandoned, and she had never been controlled. She was the divine messenger of the God of Inari.
"Hmph... You poor, brainwashed bug... I don't have time to play with you anymore..."
Seeing that Tsuruha was completely ignoring it, the Demon-Faced Centipede lost interest in tangling with her further. It needed to end this fight quickly to pursue the onmyoji who dared to injure its eye.
With a series of cracking sounds like grinding joints, the demon faces on the centipede's body opened their mouths in sequence from top to bottom. The sharp spikes once again extended from the mouths, and the surrounding demonic energy instantly coiled around them.
Seeing this, Tsuruha was startled and quickly leaped higher up the tree trunk. At that moment, the Demon-Faced Centipede made its move.
The Demon-Faced Centipede coiled its body into a spiral, then violently unwound, flinging its entire body outward with centrifugal force. The demonic energy on its spikes instantly formed sharp blades of yokai energy, which spread out and slashed in all directions with the centipede at the center.
"Needle Spin Slash..."
With the Demon-Faced Centipede as the epicenter, the blades of yokai energy sliced through all the trees within a hundred-meter radius, cutting them in half.
Although Tsuruha had leaped high enough to dodge the attack, she instantly understood its purpose. Its goal wasn't to hit her, but to clear away the tall trees she relied on to leap about and evade with agility.
Seeing the situation, Tsuruha thought, This is bad. Having leaped so high while the surrounding trees fell so quickly, she found herself in mid-air without a foothold and began to fall in freefall.
Seizing the opportunity, the Demon-Faced Centipede lunged forward, ramming into the mid-air Tsuruha.
Tsuruha was struck by the side of one of the centipede's spikes and sent flying. She landed heavily on a cleanly severed tree trunk in the distance. As she struggled to get up, she coughed up a mouthful of blood; the blow had injured her internally.
"You're finished... little fox..." Looking at the distant Tsuruha struggling to her feet, the Demon-Faced Centipede continued to crawl swiftly toward her. Tsuruha no longer had the strength to resist.
Watching the Demon-Faced Centipede charge toward her, Tsuruha didn't try to dodge. She knew it was no longer possible to rely on speed to contend with her opponent. All that was left was an all-or-nothing gamble.
"It has come to this, there's no other way..."
"Although it's very unstable, it's the only move I have left..."
Facing an unprecedentedly strong enemy, Tsuruha prepared to unleash her last resort. As the leader of the Inari foxes, she was a being who had guarded the spirit-rich Mount Inari for hundreds of years, surrounded by watchful yokai.
The slumber of the God of Inari was undoubtedly a disaster for all the foxes of Mount Inari. A divine clan that had lost its deity's protection was like a succulent piece of fresh meat that everyone wanted a bite of.
In the eyes of yokai, the divine foxes of the god's clan were delicious food brimming with spiritual power. In the eyes of humans, they were excellent choices for shikigami. Under the covetous gaze of both humans and yokai, the Inari foxes had endured a hundred bitter years. Their territory had gradually shrunk from the entire Kinki region to just Mount Inari. If they still lacked a powerful protector, their eventual extinction was only a matter of time.
As the leader of the Fushimi Inari foxes, Tsuruha had to obtain great power. However, the means to acquire this power were extremely limited. Although she was a divine messenger, without her god, she had lost her source of power. Yet, her pride as a divine messenger absolutely forbade her from falling to the path of demons to seek demonic power.
The only option for the foxes was to rely on the spiritual energy of Mount Inari to cultivate spiritual power and become spiritual beasts. Among the many foxes on Mount Inari, the only one who could truly be said to have cultivated herself into a spiritual beast was Tsuruha.
Miketsu didn't know that although Tsuruha repeatedly called herself her divine messenger, she had not actually received any power from the deity since the God of Inari fell into slumber. The strength she now displayed was all from her own solitary cultivation over a hundred years.
Standing on the severed giant tree, Tsuruha stared at the approaching Demon-Faced Centipede and took a deep breath. A golden light shone in her eyes, and the temperature around her began to rise sharply.
"Flames...? Useless..."
Crimson-gold flames spewed from Tsuruha's mouth. Seeing the approaching fire, the Demon-Faced Centipede instinctively wanted to absorb it, but it felt something was wrong. The flames Tsuruha spat out this time had a much larger range than before. This fire was like a giant wave, sweeping towards the Demon-Faced Centipede in vast sheets.
"Heavenly Fox Calamity Fire!"
In an instant, Tsuruha's wave of fire swept through the entire area, turning everything within a hundred-meter radius into a sea of flames that consumed all in its path. This included Tsuruha's own surroundings; the massive stump beneath her feet was now also burning. Relying on her own powerful fire resistance, Tsuruha endured the escalating heat and continued to spew flames.
Her goal was simple: to use a powerful and continuous stream of fire to overwhelm the Demon-Faced Centipede, forcibly saturating its absorption ability. Once its absorption capacity was exceeded, it would finally be completely incinerated by the vast inferno. Fighting alone without fear of friendly fire, she could unleash her full power.
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