“This place… somehow feels familiar…” Kamamara carried the enormous iron club on his shoulder, walking steadily along the mountain path.
His gaze swept over the grass and trees on both sides as he murmured to himself, “In the previous owner’s memories, I think he came here before…” At the moment, he was walking along a narrow mountain trail that had clearly been worn down by nearby villagers entering the mountains.
He was planning to visit a human settlement nearby and take a look.
Just as he stepped out of the forest, a village at the foot of the mountain suddenly came into view.
When he saw the village, especially the familiar shrine behind it, Kamamara stopped in his tracks, surprise appearing on his face.
“I didn’t expect to come back here.” The village before him and the shrine behind it were both deeply etched into the previous owner’s memories.
Because that shrine was the shrine where his mother had lived.
It was also the place where the previous owner had spent his childhood.
He really had not expected that after being gravely injured, the previous owner’s instinctive flight had brought him back near this place.
“So the previous owner actually died near his home?
Was that a coincidence?” Kamamara stared at the shrine behind the village and thought silently.
In the open area at the village entrance, several villagers were drying crops.
When they saw the unfamiliar figure carrying a giant club, they all stopped what they were doing and looked over from a distance with curiosity and caution.
Kamamara paid them no mind and walked straight into the village.
The village layout faintly overlapped with what he remembered, yet it also felt somewhat unfamiliar.
Kamamara’s gaze swept over the wooden houses and villagers along the way.
He did not find a single familiar face, which did not surprise him.
From the previous owner’s memories, he knew that more than a hundred years had passed since he left the shrine.
For ordinary humans with only a few decades of life, everyone he had known in this village back then had long since turned to dust.
Besides, even if someone from that time had somehow survived until now, they probably would not connect him with the priestess’s child from back then.
After all, no one else had ever seen him in his current form, with silver hair and golden eyes.
The villagers were intimidated by the huge iron club on his shoulder.
They only dared to stand far away and watch, allowing him to swagger through the village without anyone coming forward to question him.
Kamamara ignored the villagers’ gazes.
Although he was currently in his half-demon state, aside from his conspicuous silver hair and golden eyes, his appearance was not that different from a human’s.
Compared to Inuyasha, whose fluffy dog ears were exposed on top of his head, Kamamara had no obvious inhuman features.
His ears were merely a little sharper and more slender.
Unless someone observed carefully, they would not notice his half-demon identity at all.
Of course, if he encountered a priestess or monk, they would most likely be able to sense the demonic aura on him.
After taking a quick walk around the village, Kamamara headed straight toward the shrine behind it.
“My lord!” Just as he stepped onto the stone stairs leading to the shrine, a clear young woman’s voice suddenly came from behind him.
Kamamara paused slightly and looked back.
A plainly dressed girl was standing not far away, her face carrying a trace of unease.
Seeing him turn toward her, she nervously said, “Have you come to see Ori-san?
She went out not long ago and hasn’t returned yet.
She isn’t at the shrine right now.” Kamamara glanced at her.
The girl was only an ordinary villager.
She was probably helping watch the shrine after the priestess there left, reminding visitors like this when they came to worship.
And the Ori-san she mentioned was most likely the current priestess of this shrine.
“It’s fine.
I’m only going in to pay my respects.” Kamamara smiled and answered, then continued climbing the stone stairs toward the shrine.
“But the shrine’s barrier…” The girl hurriedly tried to warn him, but her words stopped halfway.
Kamamara’s figure passed through the torii gate without the slightest obstruction and disappeared into the shrine grounds.
Clearly, the shrine’s barrier had not stopped this strange outsider.
The girl’s eyes widened in shock.
“He went in… H-how is that possible?
Ori-san clearly set up a barrier outside the shrine before she left.
Outsiders shouldn’t be able to enter.” This shrine was the place where Kamamara had grown up as a child.
Naturally, its barrier would not stop him.
He crossed the torii gate at the top of the stone steps and entered the shrine grounds.
A familiar aura washed over him.
The worship hall, the purification basin, the ema rack, and the tall main hall behind them all overlapped with the images in his memories.
This was not an official grand shrine.
It was not large, and only one priestess looked after it.
In the world of Inuyasha, this was very common.
Many shrines beside villages were like this.
Kamamara did not go to the worship hall to pray.
Instead, he crossed the courtyard directly and came to a corner behind the shrine.
Rows of small stone reliquaries stood there.
Following the position in his memories, he walked to one of the stone shrines and gently placed a bundle of wildflowers he had picked along the road in front of it.
Then he slowly sat down and quietly gazed at the stone reliquary without speaking.
These stone reliquaries were the graves of the priestesses who had served this shrine across the generations.
Beneath each one was buried a ceramic urn containing the priestess’s remains.
The stone reliquary before him was the resting place of Priestess Nindō, the previous owner’s mother.
Since he had transmigrated into this body, he felt that he ought to come and see her.
The previous owner was already dead, so Kamamara would pay respects in his place.
It could be considered settling a piece of karma.
He closed his eyes and let the fragments of the previous owner’s memories flow through his mind, piecing together that contradictory and heavy childhood.
Although Priestess Nindō hated the yōkai blood flowing through her child, as a mother, this kind-hearted priestess had not chosen to abandon him.
Instead, she had chosen to hide his half-demon identity.
Because during the day, he would regain his demonic power and become a half-demon.
At night, he would lose that power and become human.
During the day, Priestess Nindō would lock him inside a room hidden deep within the shrine by a barrier, forbidding him from seeing anyone.
Apart from bringing him food, even she rarely visited, as if she were avoiding the child who carried yōkai blood.
Most of the previous owner’s childhood memories were of sitting alone in that dim room, reading or staring blankly into space.
But once night arrived and the previous owner lost his demonic power and became human, Priestess Nindō would become a gentle mother.
She would personally teach him the spells passed down through the shrine and tell him about the customs and people of the outside world.
During those times, Priestess Nindō not only stopped restricting his freedom, she would even take him out to play nearby and warmly introduce him to the villagers.
Those memories of the night were always filled with bright colors in the previous owner’s mind.
He met many playmates his own age and even developed a childish fondness for a little girl in the village.
Although the villagers were curious about the boy’s father, war was constant in that era, and families being separated was common.
After wondering about it for a while, they stopped asking.
They simply assumed the child’s father had died in some accident.
Under Priestess Nindō’s deliberate concealment, his half-demon identity was never discovered by anyone.
The villagers always believed that her son suffered from a strange illness that prevented him from seeing sunlight, so he could only go outside at night.
Even Priestess Aoi, Nindō’s closest disciple, never discovered the secret.
Mother and son depended on each other like that for more than ten years, caught between conflict and protection, until the previous owner turned fifteen.
By then, Priestess Nindō had been worn down by the struggle between maternal love and hatred for yōkai, and she passed away in grief.
Kamamara could clearly feel that this poor mother may have only been willing to acknowledge the child who lost his demonic power at night and returned to being human as her true son.
After his mother died, the previous owner worried that his half-demon identity would be exposed and stain his mother’s reputation.
So he left a letter for Priestess Aoi, Nindō’s disciple, telling her to inherit the shrine.
Then he resolutely left the place where he had lived for fifteen years.
For the next hundred years and more, he wandered through the mountains like a lonely ghost.
Influenced by his mother, he loathed and feared his own half-demon identity.
He kept avoiding both humans and powerful yōkai, living a rootless, drifting life.
Until not long ago, when he was gravely wounded while stealing the Shikon Jewel and fled, finally dying in a nearby cave.
And after that, Kamamara had crossed over into his body.