Traps

[Huangquan, Hidden Dimension]

"Why do I get the strange feeling that we lost our way?" Arahabaki sniffed the air with a niggling doubt as he blocked Kanghui from going further.

The air smelled vaguely different, which made him uneasy. Higanbana's fragrance permeated the Sanzu river, and he expected Huangquan to be the same. Yet a stealthy undertone of another smell mingled with the sweet perfume of the red spider lilies.

"We are following them," Kanghui pointed to the translucent bodies. "They flow in one direction. Nowhere else."

Arahabaki's eyes narrowed and swept the site for any unusual aura. Nothing in his sight appeared out of place, just the never ending sea of red spider lilies on both sides, bathed in the twilight of the eternal dusk.

His instincts told him otherwise. Without Alex lugging them down, they should have reached the destination much faster.

"How many times have you been in this Huangquan, and how long ago?" He asked, doubtful of her experience.

Kanghui rubbed her chin as she frowned. She couldn't recall the exact time of her last journey to Huangquan before this second trip. The last journey was several millennia ago, before Higanbana's existence. She never held an interest in Huangquan.

To her, it is only but a long river of energy waves moving into the Pavilion of Forgetfulness before release into the mortal world.

Arahabaki lifted his hand to stop her from answering as his aural senses heightened to a strange but minute sound.

"Damn it. Not always if it is an illusion," Arahabaki growled. "Sanzu is the best place for illusions. And the makeup of Huangquan should be no different."

"How do you know?"

"I used the Sanzu as a hiding spot SEVERAL TIMES the last few centuries," Arahabaki said as his eyes glowed in a hunt for something. "Even before Higanbana infiltrated this spot in the last few millennia."

He pulled his sleeve up to reveal the chain bracelet emitting a low yet soft purplish red radiance, which seeped down from his wrist like the waterfall to the ground, running like the waves around him and Kanghui forming a perfect circle.

Then one flick of his finger and a reddish shield surrounded them as the translucent bodies continued walking through Arahabaki's circle.

Kanghui raised her head to face Arahabaki, who shook his head. Both turned upwards to the skies to spot the earlier unseen huge bright yellowish circular formation now in full visibility, rotating above them.

Her eyes darkened into a full darkness, flickering with malevolent wisps. Arahabaki scowled, letting a low growl out. An ambush has been waiting for them to enter. And they walked straight into it.

"An edict from the Xitian council: the criminal Kanghui is to be recaptured for conspiring to destroy the Mirror of Truth and unleashing chaos," a stern voice announced.

Her hands tightened into fists in trembling fury at the hasty, trumped up charge that made no sense. Someone is out to get her using Alex's incident with the Mirror of Truth.

If not for Arahabaki, she would rise to break the formation.

Suddenly, Arahabaki heard a loud booming noise as the red spider lilies withered and blacken within seconds. Out of nowhere, dark gloominess swept through the area, turning red to black.

"Not right," Kanghui muttered as she looked around for the origin of the noise. "That formation didn't do that."

A weight of a thousand mountains dropped like an anvil on the both of them, forcing them to bend down.

"I know THIS FUCKER ANYWHERE," Arahabaki hollered. "OY, YOUR FUCKING AURA."

They could hear another thunderous sound.

Then a soft spoken voice said, "If I restrain my aura, their formation will drop on you with dire consequences."

Kanghui's head struggled to turn to see two human sized soles above them as her outstretched arms trembled against the crushing weight. Recognition dawned on her face.

Between the formation and that aura, she didn't know which was worse. Unlike his twin, Yasomagatsuhi, Ōmagatsuhi was the more powerful primeval being. Last she heard, he was in a deep slumber for the last three quarters of a century.

Why had he awakened now? Then again, why the hell was he here?

Each step he took proved the worthiness of the human moniker given to him. Any movement he made had flattened more beds of flowers until a vast flat barren ground filled with a strange greyish mist laid before them. The energy waves disappeared with no translucent bodies seen for miles.

The Great Calamity himself has wrought immense damage on Higanbana as far as their sight can see.

To add injury to insult, he had assumed human guise, bearing the same features as his twin.

"Takamagahara has no business here," the earlier voice from the Xitian council spoke.

"We noted your complaint. In the fairness of our cordial relations, you can keep him," the voice of the unseen Takamagahara representative said.

"We need you to remove him."

"As per our agreement, we hand him over to you to decide as you will, thus fulfilling the conditions," Takamagahara's representative replied. "We will take our leave."

Kanghui and Arahabaki looked at each other with little surprise at how easily Takamagahara surrendered Ōmagatsuhi to the Xitian Council. The massive pressure lifted off their bodies as he landed between their crouching forms while they struggled to get up, still shaken from the earlier impact.

Ōmagatsuhi whispered to Kanghui. "Yasomagatsuhi asked me to try out this area for a stretching exercise."

Arahabaki pointed up at the huge yellowish formation still looming over them. Before he could say anything, a blinding spark set off a deafening sequence of explosions and the formation went up in a huge puff.

"I don't think they will bother us now," Ōmagatsuhi walked forward and turned around, gesturing with his head for them to follow.

"Why did Yasomagatsuhi send you here?" Kanghui halted suddenly, suspicious of the celestial crow's intentions. "And where are you taking us?"

Ōmagatsuhi never did favours for any primeval being. Only a celestial crow will pull such connections. No such thing as a free lunch with a celestial crow unless they had an ulterior motive.

"To Yato's boundary —," he replied.

"YOU BASTARD!" a far away voice of Higanbana screeched shrilly in a mix of despair and fury, interrupting his sentence. "MY FLOWERS!"

Ōmagatsuhi opened his palm, revealing several soul stones. He placed his mouth near his palm and blew the stones, turning them into flying crystalline dust towards the blackened wasteland surrounding them.

No sooner did the shimmering dust settle on the ground, the red spider lilies stalks sprouted in their brilliant green foliage as the red buds continuing growing until they burst out spreading their red petals in full glory.

Kanghui and Arahabaki stared in surprise. They knew Ōmagatsuhi long enough for his talent in destruction, not for returning life.

"YOU THINK IT IS ENOUGH?" Higanbana screamed from a safe distance with a false bravado.

"Hmmm, I remembered that when the higanbana blooms, the leaves withers, and when the flower dies, the leaves grow back. Interesting, that doesn't happen in the hidden dimension," Ōmagatsuhi commented nonchalantly, ignoring Higanbana's verbal abuse as he kept walking against the arriving flow of energy waves.

Any translucent body which touched any part of Ōmagatsuhi, vanished instantly.

"He is back to normal again," Arahabaki shuddered as both Kanghui and he tailed Ōmagatsuhi who stretched his arms and yawned.

***

[Boundary between the Hidden Dimension and somewhere in Japan]

"Done," Yasomagatsuhi said while looking at the vanishing petal of the red spider lily. "Higanbana is complaining. Nothing unusual."

"Xitian council left?" The woman asked.

Yasomagatsuhi nodded.

"What's going on?" Alex stood up, worried about their earlier reaction to his words. His gut told him by crashing through the mirror, he caused more trouble.

The way she had hurriedly whispered to Yasomagatsuhi in a secretive manner and how Yasomagatsuhi vanished elsewhere and return a while later, made Alex apprehensive and feel a tad guilty for an unknown crime of his making.

Yet the smirk on the woman's face told him she didn't care. Like she expected an incident to happen.

"Nothing to worry about," Yato replied with his arms folded behind his head, lying on his back. "If the old crow isn't, you shouldn't."

"They will arrive soon," she said.

Alex felt the strong commanding presence emanating from her human body. He wondered about how his life would turn out if he had such powers when he was still alive.

Then he thought of Yata's old brag about Xitian witnessing Arahabaki throwing the floating island in the mountains. Perhaps it is an over exaggeration by the damn spider spirit.

"Aren't they also scared of Arahabaki?" Alex asked.

"He can't summon the momunofu in Sanzu or Huangquan. No army to fight," Yato shrugged.

"So how are they going to fight when outnumbered?"

"My twin," Yasomagatsuhi replied.

"The Kami of Great Calamity," Yato said, then he quickly sat up. "Please don't tell me that Ōmagatsuhi is coming here."

Alex noticed the fear in Yato's eyes.

"No. He is only going to take them to the usual spot and let them make their way back to us."

Yato heaved an enormous sigh of relief, patting his chest.

"How powerful is he?" Alex leaned towards Yato while Yasomagatsuhi turned to discuss something with the woman.

"Ōmagatsuhi?" Yato shivered when he mentioned the name.

"Think of Yasomagatsuhi's power as a stream placidly flowing out to the river," Yato added.

Alex dared not look or mention anything about Yasomagatsuhi near him. The images of Jiuwei's injuries kept his mouth sealed.

"Now for his twin, Ōmagatsuhi, think of his power as a mega tsunami, 1000 feet high, powering down towards the coastline," Yato continued as he slowly waved his hand across above his head, regaling Alex with the unwanted story. "Wiping out entire islands, species and anything else you can think of."

Yato shook his drooping head in feigned resignation. Then he faced a dumbstruck Alex with a big smile revealing his pearly white teeth. "Don't worry, each time Ōmagatsuhi expands his powers, he needs to sleep for a very long time. No one wants to trap him, even in the Void."

"How can they even control him if he goes berserk?" Alex wondered aloud.

"Haven't you been listening? Bigger the powers used, the bigger the energy exhaustion and the longer the slumber to recover," Yato said. "So no trap can work if he sleeps long enough to recover."

"Sounds like Ōmagatsuhi himself is a trap," Alex mused.