Chapter 946: Dogs and Wine
The Three Great Yokai were all deeply entangled with the royal family of Fenglin.
Strictly speaking, all three were slain by the royal family. The shogun had slain Ootakemaru. The Minamoto clan, a branch of the royal family, purged Shuten-Doji. Tamamo-no-Mae had also been slain by them.
Furthermore, the domains of these yokai were all connected to the throne.
Ootakemaru’s Mount Suzuka lay within Ise, whose Saio was an Imperial Princess. The Ise-jingu also had countless ties to the throne. Shuten-Doji’s Mount Oe was under the jurisdiction of Heian Capital, and Tamamo-no-Mae went further by infiltrating the royal palace.
It was well known that the Three Great Yokai were often counted as four, much like the Daoist Three Prodigies frequently included an inexplicable fourth.
The so-called Fourth Yokai was known as the Great Tengu.
The Central Plains also had tales of tengu that devoured the moon. The Classic of Mountains and Seas described them as foxlike hounds. However, Fenglin’s tengu was entirely different. They were tall figures with long red noses and powerful wings on their backs. They wielded feathered fans, wore wooden clogs and warriors’ armor, with swords hung at their waists. They also had straw capes to vanish at will. In some ways, they resembled Western angels, though the tengu were far more menacing and arrogant.
According to legend, after a certain emperor of Fenglin was defeated in battle, he cursed the world. He wished to become a Demon King and plunge the realm into chaos, commoners turned kings, and kings to commoners. He also cursed the Five Great Sutras for them to go on a wicked path. From then on, he refused food or cultivation and died in furious resentment. His corpse was twisted, and his vengeful spirit transformed into a tengu, wreaking havoc upon the world. He was then known as the infamous Great Tengu.
Unlike the Three Great Yokai, the Great Tengu was not unique. His curse was passed down like a lineage, so there were eight Great Tengu in total.
At this very moment, Mount Oe was locked in battle with the Fenglin royal family’s troops.
After several centuries, the two sides once again clashed, and the commander of the royal army once more hailed from the Minamoto clan.
Now the leader of Mount Oe, Ibaraki-Doji, stood atop a peak and surveyed the battlefield below.