takes the advice and heads toward the village, encountering a young woman with a large scar on her left cheek along the way. The woman, named Aya, takes Hikage to the village and introduces him to several of the villagers, most prominently Taichi, a cheerful man who enjoys drinking and partying; and Ito, a woman with a suspicious air about her. During one of the villagers' parties, Hikage spots Marou for a brief instant, apparently entering a hut in the village, but is unable to find him in the following days, despite his intensive searching. One night, he meets with two of his fellow Takeda ninja to explain why he is staying in the village. After hearing he has seen Marou, and explaining to Hikage that this is where Marou's trail stops, they allow him to continue investigating the village, but remind him that he must show no mercy toward Marou. The following night, Hikage sees Aya suffering from a nightmare. He holds her to try and comfort her, but immediately hears screaming coming from the forest. He rushes to the source of the screaming only to find Taichi and one of the Takeda ninja he spoke with earlier dead, along with another badly injured Takeda ninja. A spider yōma attacks, but Hikage uses shuriken to drive it off, seeing a brief, transparent vision of Marou in the yōma's wake. Before dying, the injured ninja reveals that Marou is a "child born of the ground" and that everyone in the Takeda village knew about it, but never discussed it. Left with this mystery, Hikage confronts Aya with Taichi's death, only for her to deny it. When Aya goes to her house to store some water, she hears Ito's voice asking her to do her a favor that night. Hikage goes down to the riverbank to find that the bodies of Taichi and the dead ninja, along with the bloodstains and weapons, have disappeared without explanation. Hikage hears Aya singing unusually late that night and goes to investigate. He finds Aya being held in a different spider yōma's mandibles and attacks it. It drops Aya, but soon runs away with Hikage in pursuit. He arrives at the temple and finds the priest from the waterfall standing before him on the path. He tells Hikage that he is erasing the villager's memories in order to ripen them for Kikuga no Miko's (the