Yamiyo no Hotaru

Volume 2 Epilogue

It was the 7th day of the 8th month of the 10th year of the Seiryou era, or the 1440th year of the Imperial Era. An exorcist was invited to a ceremony at the Grand Inner Palace, the central part of the imperial court, which stretched over 400 meters from east to west and over 500 meters from north to south.

To be more precise, the exorcist was given an official rank as well as a prize by the Imperial Court. The rank was the sixth, and the prize consisted of twenty loaves of silver, six silk cloths, and several goldsmith's wares and furnishings. The reason for the reward was ostensible that the exorcist had vanquished the monster fox that had attacked the capital and its people, and had presented its corpse to the imperial court.

To be precise, this was also the reason, but more than that, it was a kind of hush money. That is to say, it was to keep Tachibana Trading Company quiet about the cargo that the Imperial Court had requested.

'Now, what exactly was the cargo, Uemon-dono?'

Kizuki Uemon, sitting on a cushion in a dimly lit room with the lights off and only moonlight shining in, is asked by a woodpecker (Kizuki Shisui) perched on a candlestick in the corner of a house rented from the Oumi family. No, it was not the woodpecker (Kizuki Shisui) itself. A tag with the word "Shiki" written in blood was affixed to its face. In other words, it was a shikigami in the exact form of a woodpecker (Kizuki Shisui).

Several candlesticks were placed in front of Kizuki Uemon. On each of them stood a shikigami in the shape of a bird: an egret, a woodpecker, a kite, a magpie, and so on. Uemon could clearly feel the gazes of those who were looking at him through the eyes of the shikigami.

It was a meeting between Uemon, who had come to the capital, and the elders of the Kizuki family, who had remained in their hometown. Exorcists tend to use this kind of shikigami for real-time conversations with distant people. The final topic of discussion was the merits of one of the candidates for the next head of the family who had come to the capital.

"According to what I have heard through my contacts, the contents of the cargo are youkai captured alive... I am sure that is not a lie, but perhaps that is not the only reason for this reward. That alone would be a bit excessive as a reward."

Kizuki Uemon replies confidently, his cheeks and chin quivering. Those were not words without foundation.

On the surface, it is probably true that the living youkai for experimentation and research that the Onmyou dormitory was planning to secretly bring into the inner palace were carried by the Tachibana Trading Company. And it is also true that the contents were not very good.

The capital is protected by four layers of boundaries. To be more precise, there are six kinds of 12-layered boundaries on the city walls that protect the whole capital except for the outer city, eight kinds of 24-layered boundaries that protect the area called Chukyo (中京) where especially wealthy merchants, noble families, and daimyo residences stand, and 10 kinds of 33-layered boundaries that protect the inner palace (Daiuchiura), the political center of the capital, and 12 kinds of 36-layered boundaries that protect the great inner palace (Uchiura), the last emperor's residence. ...Naturally, it is impossible to construct such a network of boundaries, which is almost ironclad in terms of sorcery, by human power, no matter how many exorcists are gathered together. Therefore, the enormous consumption of spiritual power is covered by the natural spiritual energy from the spiritual veins overflowing from right under the capital.

The spiritual veins emit an unlimited amount of spiritual energy, and depending on how it is used, it can even interfere with the reason of the world. In fact, the Imperial Court has been utilizing unlimited spiritual energy to give fertility to the lands around the capital year after year and to exorcise disasters, epidemics, and other calamities before they occur. On the other hand, for youkai, it is a special place where they can raise the status of their existence and become more powerful at a rate dozens of times faster than usual just by staying there, and that is why the stray youkai have been targeting the spiritual veins of the capital for thousands of years.