Yagyū clan

As we can tell by this volume, the pace was very fast.

And so the pace continues to get fast, and the connection of everything continuing on, the story continuing on, Um, also, uh, you know, as we gravitate towards, towards the end, um, that's, that's how the rest of the series will go, which is, you know, typical for a long series like this, um, to have, uh, to start with a lot of episodic stuff and then, you know, eventually evolve into a, uh, into an ongoing, uh, epic, uh, So, yeah, so we get the continuation of this Abe No Kai guy, this poisoner, who the Yagyu at first... employed to take out Ogami Ito and then regretted their decision to employ him.

Um, and this, uh, this guy has his own ideas of what he wants to accomplish by killing this, by killing Ogami, uh, right off the bat in the first story, he attempts it in this very strange way.

Um, basically by poisoning himself to make himself look kind of dead and floating down a river in disguise um so that you don't know it's who it is uh and it's uh very interesting they they drag him out of the river he he he he uh He poisons them with some smoke of some sort, which puts them to sleep.

Yeah, and being paid is part of it.

And as we get further into this volume, we see his plan for that payment, that money he got.

But I found it very interesting that in the very next – episode in here, Flood or Fire, that this poisoner tries to do the same damn thing to Yagyu Retsudo, tries to poison him, and in this case, Retsudo's like, what are you, an idiot? Of course I'm prepared for you to poison me.

He's a poisoner who

That could easily just get repetitive and be the substance of the book.

It's not, though, but we get some interesting developments in here and some interesting... pictures of of uh certain things that were in historical japan that he you know he he researches something and then he expands that into a fictional situation and uh um in this case we have uh these fire watchers of the black gate who uh you know they they're fantastic at using their ladders in certain in a certain way you know that's um that's pretty crazy and how they how they use them And, you know, they get involved at the behest, of course, of the Yagyu.

And they're trying to use their skills and techniques to take out Ogami Ito.

And so this was interesting because this storyline actually continued into two different, you know, how these are broken up into different parts.

And the interesting thing is...

You know, the emperor himself is going through the towns at the beginning of this one, and it's interesting to see how that emperor procession goes through the towns, and, you know, people are supposed to bow and they're supposed to do the right things.

And the Yagyu Rasuto, he has to follow along at his pace, and I love how in the artwork that... kojima shows the little the little kind of drawn out maps that they have and stuff and uh it's just really neat how all that's presented yeah

i think the The desperation level is starting to rise on Ritsudo killing Ito.