Demoralized after his crushing defeat to Zojiro at the shogun’s dance competition, Oniyasha whiles away his days by the river, escaping reality with Kogane and the other affable drifters encamped on its banks. He’s reeled back by Toku-san, a destitute monk who sees that he’s meant for more, and who reveals that he, too, once suffered a devastating loss—as a warrior who fought against the Ashikaga shogunate. When Toku-san is arrested and executed for a crime he didn’t commit, Oniyasha resolves to use the next competition to tell the stories of those left battered and broken by his mercurial patron’s rise to power.