- Shanao: The gods of today are but fictions in form. Only a true god can save these desperate times - a true god with true power. And I am the only true power. I alone am capable of unifying this land. There are no more gods for me to revere. The only god that I worship is power itself. Gods large and small, of mountain and wood... I, Shanao, have assumed the power of these deities. Tonight, I have come to assume yours.
- Shanao: Only a true god can save these desperate times. A true god with true power. And I am the only true power.
- [the opening]
- Narrator: With the deterioration of the aristocracy and the rise of the warrior class began a brutal era. Long wars between the Heike and Genji ended with the Heike ruling the land. The people hoped for a lasting peace, but found only pestilence and disaster. And when began the nightly slaughter of Heike warriors at Kyoto's Gojoe Bridge... there rose the fear that the capital's festering misfortune had awoken a demon.
- Tetsukichi: Yet another monk fighting demons for the Heike? Give it up, holy man - your eyes will melt if you even look at one.
- Goujin: The intruder at the bridge was the infamous Musashibo Benkei. They say that he was born fully formed, with hair and teeth intact, feared even by his own mother as a demon.
- [Ajari stops Benkei from killing himself]
- Ajari: Consider yourself as one already dead.
- Benkei: Tetsukichi, you used to make swords for warrior monks, didn't you? Yet you abandoned forging for a life of scavenging other's swords.
- Tetsukichi: I couldn't stand seeing my work go to "holy" men. Hypocrites like you... devout in word, yet murderous in deed.
- Benkei: I don't kill men, just demons.
- Tetsukichi: What's that? Monk logic?
- Tetsukichi: Where do you think you're going?
- Benkei: Omaga Forest.
- Tetsukichi: In the middle of the night?
- Benkei: I can see in the dark.
- Tetsukichi: I heard that you used to be a real villain. That you even killed women and children.
- Benkei: Yes.
- Tetsukichi: [after a long pause] You son of a bitch.
- Benkei: Yes.
- Suzaku-hougan: [an eclipse is taking place] What's this - the moon invading the sun, a celestial rape? An apparition of once every hundred years? - No! Turn not to the darkness, nor to the demon's will.
- Tetsukichi: [Benkei has encountered Tetsukichi in the remnants of the squatter's village] What are you doing here? Everyone's dead - and you're the last person I want to see. - Perfect place for a "damned scavenger", huh? Hope you like it - 'cause this hell is all you're doing.
- [Benkei recites an incantation over the body of an infant]
- Tetsukichi: Amazing stuff, you monks and your magic powers, What's so special about being alive, anyway? Give it up.