Susanoo had avoided Xipe Tótec’s bloody daggers and, with great ease, had decapitated the Toltec god.
The eastern god took his sword and sheathed it in his saya as he said:
“Totemo yowai (Too Weak).”
Xipe Tótec’s head rolled across the ground and stained the red-painted volcanic stone road with blood, though it was barely noticeable.
However, the Toltec god’s body remained standing, despite the fact that he had been decapitated by a power from Susanoo far superior to his own. That should have caused the deity’s death, but it had not.
At that moment, from Xipe Tótec’s body, it seemed as if a layer of bloody skin peeled away and fell to the ground. The Toltec god’s body was now completely bathed in blood.
Susanoo quickly turned to look at the Toltec god as he turned around, picked up his head, and placed it back onto his neck. The skin the god had shed had already disappeared, leaving behind a pool of blood.
Xipe Tótec walked toward Susanoo while drops of blood dripped from his entire body, leaving a trail behind him. His eyes seemed dead, and his gait was slow but constant.
“Thou seemest naught but a yokai who knoweth not he hath already died,” Susanoo said, drawing his katana once again. He swiftly split the Toltec god from his left shoulder down to his hip.
Once more, the god was dismembered, and the right side separated from his body fell to the ground. But the god remained standing.
Again, a kind of human skin detached from Xipe Tótec’s body, leaving behind a pool of blood. The god joined himself together once more and continued walking as though nothing had happened.
“Is he immortal?” Susanoo wondered as he launched several slashes, tearing the Toltec god into hundreds of pieces that scattered across the ground. His totema, along with his internal organs, lay spread over the earth.
However, once again, a layer of human skin fell to the ground, emanating from the Toltec god’s pieces. Those pieces then rose and reassembled themselves, once more forming Xipe Tótec.
“Now I understand why thou art called the Flayed One,” Susanoo said as he prepared to attack again. “I assume thou usest those human skins as lives, and each time I slay thee, thou losest one life.”
Xipe Tótec still said nothing and once again made bloody daggers appear before him to attack Susanoo.
The eastern god then raised his katana with both hands and said to the Toltec god:
“That means I must cut thee down until all thy lives are extinguished.”
Susanoo brought down his weapon as he said:
“Shi no ame (Rain of Death).”
The light rain falling over Teteocán became a downpour, and every drop of falling water turned into a small sword that tore Xipe Tótec’s body apart more and more. Layer after layer of human skin fell from the god’s body and dissolved into the planet’s flooded ground.
However, Susanoo began to notice an interesting phenomenon. Each time, Xipe Tótec took longer to be dismembered and shed his human layers. It was as if each layer he lost made him more resistant.
“Shimata!” Susanoo shouted when he realized his mistake, and he removed the rain with a slash through the air. But Xipe Tótec had disappeared.
The eastern god realized that the Toltec god had finally entered attack mode and remained alert for whatever charge he might make. However, he could no longer sense his presence.
Then enormous bloody knives emanated from the ground. Sensing the attack, Susanoo immediately jumped to avoid it.
The knives were green and shaped like closed ears of corn. Soon, the entire ground of Teteocán was covered with those peculiar blades. At that moment, the leaves of those plants opened, revealing a red ear full of sharp spikes.
Susanoo realized he could not touch the ground, or those blades would quickly pierce through him, so he remained floating in the air, trying to locate the presence of the flayed god.
Xipe Tótec emerged from the ground as if he had been planted beneath it. Despite the spikes piercing through him, the god did not seem to feel any pain. His body was bathed in blood, but he was only a small red point on the ground, now completely carpeted with red, spiked ears of corn.
In his right hand, the Toltec god held a kind of staff with a tip ending in a red rattle, which began to sound.
Susanoo did not give the god time to use his weapon against him and shouted:
“Mizu no yari (Water Spear)!”
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The eastern god hurled a spear of water at him, but Xipe Tótec absorbed the attack as if he were a plant.
“Naruhodo,” Susanoo said. “My water attacks only increased his power because he is a Chikyu (Earth) god. And he hath the ability to absorb any liquid attack.”
The eastern god moved his katana again to deliver a devastating attack against the flayed god, using the air element instead of water. But Xipe Tótec drove his staff into the ground, and an earthquake began. The ears of corn shed their kernels, and millions of spikes were expelled from the sword plants. They shot toward Susanoo at tremendous speed.
“Kaze no koka (Wind Shield)!” Susanoo shouted, creating a tornado that protected his body. However, the spikes grew larger as they advanced and easily pierced through the eastern god’s wind shield. There were so many that they bathed him in blood.
Susanoo fell, weakened, toward the field of spikes, and from the impact, he was impaled on the ears of corn full of thorns.
At that moment, Susanoo looked toward the sky and saw that on the dimensional shield preventing escape from that planet, those ears of corn had also grown, their horrid spikes all pointing toward the eastern god.
“He intendeth to crush me with these plants,” Susanoo said as he tried to stand. Then he realized that all the blood he had lost from his wounds had disappeared.
The god looked down and realized that all the blood was being absorbed by the infinite field of bloody ears of corn. They were growing at considerable speed.
“Shimata!” the eastern god shouted in frustration. “If I do not do something, I shall die impaled here.”
Then Susanoo remembered that Xólotl could use three elements: fire, darkness, and thunder. Until that moment, he had believed such a thing was impossible. But if someone could do it, then he should be able to do it as well.
“I was born with the power of kaze, wind,” the eastern god continued thinking, “but I learned to use the power of mizu, water. I should be capable of generating electricity, after having been in contact with it for so long.”
Xipe Tótec, who stood in the middle of the field of bloody corn, made his rattle sound again and recited:
“Esonitlamanalistli (Blood Offering).”
Obsidian stakes emanated from the ears of corn and grew at dizzying speed, lifting Susanoo toward the sky, where the ears of corn on the ceiling were doing the same. The eastern god understood that he was about to be impaled by those thousands of stakes, and if that happened, it would be his end.
Concentrating his air ability, the eastern god invoked his wind shield again, and with it, he managed to break the stakes that were about to impale him. Quickly, he concentrated all the wind into his katana and hurled it at Xipe Tótec like an energy sickle, shouting:
“Kagayakashi kaze (Shining Wind)!”
However, when the attack struck Xipe Tótec, it simply vanished. The Toltec god’s skin had become so resistant that Susanoo’s attacks could no longer injure him.
The Toltec god made his rattle sound again, causing the plants once more to emanate their terrible stakes to impale Susanoo. This time, the plants bent to point at the eastern god, so he would not be able to destroy all the attacks.
“My power of kaze, wind, is not enough,” Susanoo thought. “Only kaminari, thunder, remaineth.”
The stakes grew again at tremendous speed while Susanoo concentrated and tried to remember the electricity he had already felt. Khine’s electricity, Hé-no’s electricity, Menrva’s electricity; but nothing happened.
Then he remembered Tul’s electricity, and he felt an entirely different sensation. It was a warm and beautiful energy. His entire body felt in harmony and ecstasy at sensing the presence of the Maya goddess.
The stakes finally impaled Susanoo, who could do nothing to prevent it. They came from the ground and the ceiling, and when the tips collided with each other, they fused together, leaving only the illusion of a cage.
But at that moment, electricity traveled through the entire obsidian network, causing the field of bloody corn to burn under the effect of thunder. The obsidian stakes then shattered. Susanoo remained floating in the sky, his wounds already healed.
The ground and the sky burned with flames from the eastern god’s electric power, and he had likewise adopted his electric transformation.
“Tul-chan, once again, thy beautiful energy hath saved me, just as on the day I had the honor of meeting thee,” Susanoo said with a smile, then immediately descended to the burning ground where Xipe Tótec stood amid the fire.
Susanoo then drew his sword, wrapped in electricity, and entered a combat stance while watching Xipe Tótec do the same with his bloody staff.
“Even if I can cut him, it will not be enough,” Susanoo thought. “I must regard him as an intangible deity and cut his core. Only in that way can I defeat him.”
The eastern god remembered when he was young and practiced combat with his sister Amaterasu. She could turn into fire, preventing Susanoo from injuring her.
“Onee-san. That is cheating!” Susanoo protested angrily while swinging his sword through the fire and failing to harm his sister.
“I have already told thee, ototo. All gods who can render our bodies intangible possess a tiny core that maintaineth our essence and consciousness,” Amaterasu replied. “Until thou art able to find it, thou shalt never defeat me.”
Susanoo sat angrily on the ground and drove his sword into it.
“That is impossible, Onee-san,” the eastern god replied irritably.
“Thou must concentrate and feel it with thy very soul, ototo,” Susanoo’s sister replied. “That shall be the only way thou canst ever hope to defeat me."
The memories of his past faded from the eastern god’s mind at that moment. It was clear that this Toltec god was the same as his sister: intangible. It was necessary to strike the god’s core with one precise attack, to prevent him from continuing to shed his skins and increase his power.
“Now I have become much stronger than when I was a child,” Susanoo said. “I shall be able to combine elements, just as Tul did that time in Cahokia, when she joined mizu (water), with shinsei (holy power).”
A whirlwind began to emanate from the eastern god’s feet while his sword released more and more lightning. The eastern god closed his eyes to harmoniously balance the union of his powers and sense the Toltec god’s core.
Xipe Tótec then threw himself toward Susanoo with his bloody staff to try to impale him. But before he could do so, Susanoo delivered a precise slash to the Toltec god’s chest while reciting:
“Ten to umi no kami no bunkatsu (Sacred Division of the Heavens and the Oceans).”
The fire across the entire planet immediately went out, leaving everything in deep darkness, while lightning was drawn across the path of Susanoo’s cut.
Xipe Tótec’s spear split in half, and a cut crossed the Toltec god’s entire chest. The god’s core, which was the size of an atom and located precisely in his chest, was split by the attack, causing the Toltec god’s illusion to emit a powerful glow and explode, leaving only a small crimson sphere on the ground.
Susanoo withdrew his transformation and sheathed his katana in its saya.
“The union of kaze (wind) and kaminari (thunder) is arashi (tempest). And without question, it is a terrifying power,” he said.