The final confrontation between the wandering assassin Ogami Itto and the Yagyu clan moves to the snowy mountains of northern Japan. After the deaths of his three legitimate sons at Itto’s hands, the aging clan leader Lord Yagyu Retsudo faces political disgrace from the Shogun. In a desperate attempt to save his family’s honor, Retsudo deploys his last two remaining children. First, he sends his daughter Kaori, a skilled assassin who wields flying daggers. She confronts Itto but is ultimately killed in their duel.

With his legitimate heirs gone, Retsudo turns to Hyouei, an illegitimate son he abandoned as a child. Hyouei was raised by the Tsuchigumo, a mysterious mountain clan that practices black magic and lives as outcasts. Rather than serving his father’s quest for revenge, Hyouei sees an opportunity to use the conflict to destroy the Yagyu clan from within and elevate his own status. He commands three of the Tsuchigumo’s most feared warriors, assassins who possess the supernatural ability to burrow through the earth like ghosts, emerging to kill anyone who offers aid to Itto and his young son, Daigoro.

Ogami Itto defeats Hyouei in single combat and eliminates his three mystical warriors. The pursuit pushes the lone wolf and his cub into a frozen, desolate landscape where the Tsuchigumo’s earth-burrowing powers are useless against the solid ice and snow. It is here that Retsudo makes his final stand, personally leading a massive army of nearly one thousand Yagyu warriors on skis in a climactic attack across a mountainside. Daigoro’s baby cart, which contains hidden weapons, is converted into a sled. Itto uses a concealed Gatling gun mounted on the cart to decimate the approaching forces before engaging the survivors in close combat.

Despite the complete destruction of his army, the one-eyed Lord Retsudo escapes the battlefield on a sled, vowing to continue the blood feud another day. The film ends not with the definitive conclusion of the manga, but with an exhausted Ogami Itto standing victorious yet unreconciled, surrounded by the bodies of his enemies in the snow.