Divining the Direction

Heian-kyo, Mount Inari, Inari Shrine.

Inside an empty room within the Inari Secret Realm, Miketsu sat cross-legged behind a low black table. An exquisite box rested on the tabletop before her.

Miketsu carefully drew a magical array on the table and wrote out incantations. This was an auxiliary jutsu-shiki used to assist her in divination; at this very moment, she was preparing for a reading.

Once the magical array was drawn and all preparations were complete, Miketsu opened the beautifully decorated small box. Inside was an extremely tiny bone fragment.

This fragment had been removed from the Decaying Bow originally kept at the shrine when Fujiwara no Kanehira was helping her upgrade her weapons to better channel her divine power. It was the primary material used to upgrade her and Toga's Blades of the Three Realms. After both blades were upgraded, this small piece remained. When she had first held this bone fragment, she felt a strong, sudden throb in her heart.

Miketsu had once been highly suspicious of the origins of the bone fragments within the Decaying Bow. After hearing Suwako's explanation a few days ago regarding the requirements for the revival of an ancient god, she immediately associated this fragment with the possibility that it was a part of her own remains.

Taking the fragment—which was smaller than half a fingernail—out of the box, Miketsu felt that same throbbing in her heart. Since the initial awakening of her ancient god power, she had become increasingly certain that this bone fragment was once part of her remains. However, for some reason, it had been stripped away and was mixed with a large amount of other impurities, making it unpure.

In such a tiny fragment, the portion that truly belonged to her remains was likely less than one percent... Rather than a bone fragment, it was more like a composite material that merely resembled bone in its entirety. She wondered why such a situation had occurred.

"As I thought... the ancient people of Qin must have possessed my remains... and from the looks of it, they processed them." Looking at the minuscule object in her palm, Miketsu murmured to herself. What she needed to do now was use this bone fragment to divine the location of the rest of her remains.

Using a part as a medium to divine the whole, using the causality between them to determine the direction—this was Miketsu's plan. To this end, she had specifically prepared a corresponding divination jutsu-shiki. In her dozen or so years at the Onmyoryo, aside from deity summoning, divination was the only other art she had mastered reasonably well.

While Miketsu's causality vision was now extensive, it could at most cover an area the size of three or four Heian-kyos. Beyond that distance, she could not achieve one hundred percent causality observation, so she had to rely on jutsu-shiki to assist her divination.

In truth, if she were divining the location of other items, Miketsu wouldn't need a medium; she could easily find them using the most basic Planchette binary method. But now, Miketsu was divining her own remains. She was an ancient god, and the causality of an ancient god was not something her current status could interfere with, even if it concerned herself. This was a rather awkward situation.

The divination art Miketsu was currently using was called Smoke-Burning Spirit Pursuit. The effect of this jutsu-shiki was to find things associated with a medium by burning it. A unique aspect of this technique was that it did not require the practitioner to have a high status, but rather required the medium itself to have one. The status of the ancient god remains within the bone fragment was certainly sufficient, allowing Miketsu to use this method to locate her remains.

With everything ready, Miketsu began the divination. She broke the tiny bone fragment into two pieces, crushed one half with her fingers, and scattered the powder into the center of the magical array. Then, she began to chant the incantations once more. The scattered powder began to burn spontaneously, and after a short while, a wisp of smoke rose slowly from it.

Watching the smoke, Miketsu continued her chanting. The wisp of smoke began to twist and sway like a snake before finally leaning in one direction, drifting horizontally toward it.

"There it is..."

Seeing this, Miketsu immediately began to confirm the direction the smoke was drifting. Then, she froze, a look of bewilderment appearing on her face.

"It's actually... South... slightly to the West..."

Looking at the direction of the smoke, Miketsu found it hard to believe. The divination showed that her remains were located to the South!

What lay to the South of Japan? The Western Pacific? The Indonesian Archipelago? Australia? Or Antarctica?

Miketsu, whose geography knowledge from her past life was quite good, immediately sketched a rough world map in her mind and found the direction the smoke pointed to be somewhat absurd.

She had assumed that since she was the totem of the people of Qin and there were signs they had processed her remains, her remains should surely be in the Central Plains. The smoke should have drifted primarily to the West. Yet now, it was drifting South, which was truly incredible.

Could it be that as an ancient god, she had fallen somewhere like Australia? But that wouldn't explain why the people of Qin were able to process her remains. Since they had processed them, they must have possessed them. How did the remains end up in such a ridiculous direction?

Surely those old people of Qin didn't just throw her remains into the sea!

As the powder burned away, the smoke gradually dissipated. Looking at the results of the divination, Miketsu couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

"Phew... There are still things I don't understand. It seems I really have to wait for Okina to return..."

Miketsu murmured to herself. To resolve all these doubts, she might have to wait for Matara Okina to appear. Their last parting was at Nightless Island, where Okina had gone to investigate matters concerning the Eternal Worm.

However, after Miketsu learned the truth about the Eternal Worm being an ancient god, she had immediately used the contact method Okina had given her to warn her to return to avoid danger. But Okina had replied that she had made an unexpected discovery during her investigation of the Eternal Worm and would need some time before she could return.

Based on Okina's previous behavior, as the former Hata no Kawakatsu, she might not know the truth about the ancient gods; she might only understand that her true form was perhaps the ancestral spirit of the Hata Clan, which was why she helped Miketsu so much. Nevertheless, she might know something about the ancient people of Qin.

Once she returned, Miketsu might be able to find further clues about her remains.

Thinking of this, Miketsu put away the remaining bone fragment. The downside of this divination was that it consumed the medium; otherwise, Miketsu could have performed it infinitely to gradually pinpoint the exact direction of her remains.

After stowing the bone fragment, Miketsu looked out the window. Dark clouds were beginning to gather thick in the sky.

"Is it... going to rain?"

... Rolling thunder echoed through the cloud-choked sky as a torrential downpour began, bathing the entire Kinki region in a curtain of rain. Amidst this deluge, a massive yokai bird was soaring with its wings spread wide. On its back sat a man wearing a straw raincoat.

Carrying the man, the yokai bird swiftly crossed Heian-kyo, passing through various barriers before flying to the Onmyoryo. When the yokai bird finally landed within the Onmyoryo, a group of guards surrounded them.

"Halt! ..."

The guards spoke sternly as they surrounded the man in the straw raincoat, who had just slid down from the yokai bird. Although his ability to pass through the barriers meant he was likely an insider of the Onmyoryo, they still had to conduct an inspection.

The man in the rain looked at the guards before him, let out a long breath, and spoke urgently.

"Phew... I am Ono no Maki. I was ordered to investigate the sea region where accidents have been occurring frequently. I must see the senior secretaries immediately!"

"The Yokai Lord of the Sea Nation... is making a move..."