Chapter 553: Eating Its Flesh Raw

The next morning.

Miyoshi Ryota stood up from his chair with bloodshot eyes, tied the long and short *tachi* swords to his waist, and pushed the door out.

Nanako was packing her luggage in the outer room.

"Where did Big Sister go?"

Miyoshi Ryota asked.

"Went to deliver breakfast to that Master."

Nanako replied.

"Oh."

Miyoshi Ryota nodded. He hadn't slept all night; he was both uneasy and excited. Now that he was about to set off, he felt sleepy instead, and couldn't help but want to say something to refresh himself.

"Speaking of which." He looked at Nanako: "I see you don't know martial arts, and you even performed a Buddhist ritual to the corpses hanging on the street yesterday... How can a noble woman and Buddhist believer like you travel with those two?"

Nanako shook her head, unwilling to answer, but now that their situations were similar, she didn't want to end the conversation just like that, so she turned to another question she had been suppressing in her heart.

"I have a question."

"Enryaku-ji acts like this, wantonly slaughtering innocent people... why does no one manage it? And why has no one mentioned it?"

Miyoshi Ryota snorted coldly when he heard this.

"Who wants to manage it?"

"The Uesugi family? The Takeda family? The Emperor? Stop joking... Enryaku-ji has nearly ten thousand warrior monks, and there are countless believers in the world, and they have no ambition or righteousness to seize the world."

"Reputation, righteousness, interests; those *daimyos* kill each other just for these things. What can they get by exposing Enryaku-ji's evil deeds?"

He narrowed his eyes, his teeth grinding.

"Yesterday I chatted with Big Sister, and it turns out that Central Plains monks are not allowed to eat meat, drink alcohol, or marry and have children! Keeping the precepts and guarding the Zen heart, that is a monk!"

"Chanting scriptures and worshiping Buddha during the day, drinking and having fun at night, and returning to the room to entangle and have sex with wives and concubines after being full of wine and food—what kind of monk is this! But our Japanese monks are just like this! Temples passed from father to son! Monks with three wives and four concubines!"

"Such Buddha, such temples, such monks, doing such beastly things... is it very strange?"

Nanako was stunned, her hands tightly clutching her chest, only feeling her faith shattering piece by piece.

But Miyoshi Ryota, who knew that Enryaku-ji was his true enemy, clearly didn't finish his words, nor did he notice her gaffe, just kept talking in one breath.

"Do you know how many people have died in Akutagawa Mountain Castle in the past six months, and do you know how many Akutagawa Mountain Castles there are in the world?"

"No, you don't know."

"*Heh*, nobles! *Heh*, *daimyos*!"

Miyoshi Ryota spat disdainfully.

After a long while, Nanako asked hoarsely.

"I have one more question... why did killing a few monks yesterday attract pursuers? But after killing the pursuers, it seems no more monks came for revenge, even though it was their territory?"

"Is it—"

Before Nanako could finish, Miyoshi Ryota sneered and interrupted her.

"You want to say that the Akutagawa Mountain Castle incident might not be Enryaku-ji's top-down behavior, but just the private calculation of the monk who died yesterday, so he died, and the matter ends there?"

"Ha!"

He mocked.

"Akutagawa Mountain Castle is only a hundred *li* away from Enryaku-ji, and it is the last pass from Settsu to Kyoto. If there was no top-down instruction, could a monk ruin Akutagawa Mountain Castle to this extent?"

"Besides, how do you know no one came to seek revenge?"

"You think that Master didn't live with us for no reason? The one who killed the monks was that Master, and the Gu insect only points to him. Would he leave us alone and live by himself without a reason?"

"I don't know how many bald donkeys died under his hands last night! We can sit here, yet you are still thinking about finding excuses for those evil monks!"

Miyoshi Ryota said it happily.