The Call of Mandate

Celestial Realm, Takamagahara.

The light of faith from the mortal world pierced through the boundary wall, cascading down from the zenith onto the steel divine remains of the Ancient God of Darkness. Bathed in the radiance of the faith of all living beings, the ancient god—the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird—had finally awakened.

"Don't even think about it!"

Witnessing this, the Great Snake let out a frenzied roar. It began to bite and tear at the bound Ancient God of Darkness with madness, secreting toxins as if overdrawing its own life. However, this could not hinder the fact that Miketsu was being resurrected as the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird in the slightest.

Boom!

Amidst a thunderous roar and blinding golden light, a powerful shockwave erupted from the body of the Ancient God of Darkness. The physical strength of the Great Snake's true form could not resist this shockwave expanding rapidly from the inside out. Its constricting posture was shattered, and its massive body, nearly nine hundred meters tall, was sent flying. The flesh-covered earth below was torn asunder, and the rocky ground beneath it was blasted into a perfectly circular crater tens of kilometers in diameter. From the center of this crater, a streak of profound black shot straight into the sky.

At the peak of the heavens, the profound black wings that covered the sky unfurled once more. However, this time, the black wings were not constructed of cold metal, but of individual, massive feathers.

Between the broad black wings, which spanned over a thousand meters, a slender and elegant head rose slightly. Plumes several hundred meters long extended backward from both sides of its head, and three tail feathers stretched out for over a thousand meters behind it. Countless ethereal dark gold colors stained a small portion of the continuous feathers, tattooing the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird with profound dark gold patterns.

"You have returned... space-time anomaly..."

Witnessing the scene before her, "Princess Kaguya," floating in mid-air, spoke slowly in a stiff tone. No more snake heads were rushing into the sky to attack her now.

Blown far away by the powerful force, the Yamata no Orochi, its body covered in massive, jagged wounds, struggled to raise its eight giant heads one last time, launching a final, desperate attack toward the sky-covering black wings.

From eight bloody maws, eight dazzling purple beams of light shot toward the heavens. Though they had not been charged, these eight breaths were incredibly thick. At the same time, the cracks and wounds on the Great Snake's body did not heal; instead, they worsened. This was clearly a life-or-death strike unleashed at the cost of squeezing out its own life force.

With a slight vibration of its wings, the power of the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird spread outward. In that instant, time and space were solidified. All movement in the world came to a standstill. The future was forbidden from arriving, and all things were frozen in their current state—including the Great Snake's breath and the Great Snake itself.

Before the resurrected Ancient God of Darkness, even the true form of the Great Snake in its complete state could not escape the fate of causality stasis, let alone the energy it spat out and the space it had eroded. Before the eight beams of purple light could touch the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird in the sky, they were all frozen along with the entire space. Then, through causality severing, they were dissolved into nothingness.

Then, facing the Yamata no Orochi below, which stood frozen with its mouths agape, the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird opened its sharp, long beak. What it spat out was a pure black aurora, devoid of any other color.

The beam of pure black aurora shot down from the heavens, expanding until it was incredibly thick. When this pure black light shone upon the Yamata no Orochi, it instantly erased more than half of its body. It continued downward, carving an absolutely perfect circular hole into the ground behind it.

There was no vibration, no blinding flash, no explosion, and no shockwave... When the pure black aurora vanished, all that remained was a pitch-black hole that seemed to pierce through the entire earth of the Celestial Realm, and the Yamata no Orochi, which had lost over ninety-five percent of its body, leaving only a single mangled snake head frozen in the air.

The sky-covering black wings beat once more, and the river of time began to rush toward the future again. The only remaining snake head stared with wide eyes, filled with shock as it fell from mid-air, plummeting into the bottomless abyss below.

"How... is this possible..."

At that moment, the massive figure of the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird drifted down from the sky like a silent ghost. In the blink of an eye, it appeared above the abyss and caught the falling, solitary snake head in its long beak. Sensing this, the shock in the Great Snake's eyes transformed into terror.

"No..."

The beak snapped shut. The mangled snake head was crushed to pieces with a crisp sound. Neither flesh nor bone could withstand the irresistible pressure of that beak. As it turned to dust, a cluster of purple soul fire seeped out. The Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird did not hesitate, tilting its head back slightly and swallowing the ethereal purple soul fire whole.

With this, Miketsu had extinguished the soul of the Great Snake. From this day forward, it would never have another chance to revive.

Having completely eliminated the enemy, the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird surveyed the devastated battlefield. Her gaze pierced through the boundary wall, seeing the ruined landscape of the mortal world, which had been rendered unrecognizable by the war of the ancient gods. Beating her pitch-black wings once more, her power seeped through the now extremely thin boundary wall, affecting the mortal world.

Causality severing began again. The Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird easily cut away the causality of the ancient gods who had been destroyed. In an instant, the traces of destruction they had caused in the mortal world were rapidly cleared away.

In Heian-kyo, countless withered trees quickly regained their vitality. Various massive craters were smoothed over once more. The city, which had been completely destroyed, was reconstructed at high speed amidst the ruins, every detail identical to how it had been before the destruction.

"You... have returned..."

Standing atop Kojin-mine, Menreiki murmured as she watched the earth regain its life and the city being rebuilt. On the other side, Kikyo, leaning against a rock, shook her head, which was no longer throbbing with pain, and a slight smile appeared on her lips.

In the Kanto region, Suwako watched as the deserts and craters before her were rapidly restored to forests. She pressed down on the brim of her hat and said with a smile,

"Is it over on that side as well?"

In the skies over Central Asia, the White-robed Daoist watched the two Chief Gods flee in panic. Feeling the ancient aura in the space, he stroked his white beard and sighed.

"Could this... also be within the Mandate of Heaven?"

In the Celestial Realm, after repairing the wounds of the mortal world, the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird beat her wings and flew toward the zenith of the sky. She looked at "Princess Kaguya" nearby and spoke slowly.

"I will keep my promise. The lunar sage will prepare a suitable body for you. Until then, remain on the moon. Once you have a body, how you choose to live will be up to you."

Hearing the words of the Ancient God of Darkness, "Princess Kaguya" nodded slowly, then transformed into a streak of silver light and shot out of the boundary.

After "Princess Kaguya" left, the Heavenly Mandate Mysterious Bird looked up once more at the endless firmament of the Celestial Realm, then spread her sky-covering wings and continued to fly upward.

The fully resurrected Miketsu could clearly feel that above the Celestial Realm of this world, there was another hidden outer boundary. Within that boundary, Miketsu could sense a voice that had been calling out to her.

And Miketsu could roughly guess what it was.

"Now then, let me see your true face... Mandate..."

Amidst her murmur, the Ancient God of Darkness crossed the boundary.