Yuu tilted his head back and tried to look at the sky, but he could not make out anything at all.
The wind and snow were raging, churning the clouds and making the heavens feel fickle and unknowable.
On top of that, his mind had been fogged and dazed before this, and he had no idea how long he had been running. Right now, he could not even tell what time it was.
Moonlight spilled across the snowfield. Crystals of snow caught and flung the light back again and again, so even though it was still night, everything around him looked bright and clear.
"The old folks always said that demons do not die, they do not fade, and that they only fear the sunlight."
"When the sun rises and its light covers the land, no matter how strong the demon is, it turns them into ash and scatters on the wind."
"If this blizzard suddenly stops and if it happens to be daytime, when sunlight breaks through, would I be done for?"
He had wanted to figure out where he was and what time it might be, but the hunger gnawing at his belly surged back and cut Yuu's thoughts short.
Helpless, Yuu bent down, scooped a handful of snow, and put it into his mouth. The icy flakes melted into cold water against the warmth of his mouth, then slid down his throat.
A chill ran from his throat into his stomach, and the blaze of hunger in his gut dimmed by a fraction.
The very next second, a wave of nausea rolled up. His stomach twisted, rejecting the snow water he had taken in.
So, not long after swallowing it, Yuu brought it all back up.
The hunger did not lessen. It sharpened.
"So as Demons, we cannot eat anything except people, right?"
"If I do not eat people, I will have no strength, and energy is conserved. Even if I do not die, even if I cannot be killed, a demon should still burn through stamina and fall into a dormant state."
"If I have no strength, how am I supposed to take revenge, how am I supposed to kill that demon, is my only choice to eat people?"
So long as it was not his own family, so long as it brought him the power he needed to find the killer and avenge them,
Yuu did not mind eating people.
"No, I cannot eat people at random. If I have to eat, I need to seek out evil men, or feed only on those already killed by other demons."
"Otherwise, if I ever run into Tanjiro again, how could I face him?"
Even eating evil men would be a last resort. If there was any other choice, Yuu would never choose to eat people.
It was not a matter of a bad temper. Even the most vicious person would not choose to feed on their own kind.
That would not make you ruthless, that would make you a monster.
Unless, if he could devour demons instead, that would be best.
Deep down, a thought kept welling up, the fierce urge to devour demons. It was so strong that, for a moment, he forgot the hunger.
The footprints he had left when he came were already filling in with fresh snow falling from the sky.
Yuu looked around and realized this world of snow had no sense of direction at all.
The steady fall of wind and snow had also stripped him of any ability to navigate.
"I cannot waste time. I can already feel my body growing weaker. Soon I will lose control."
He was badly wounded, and he had pushed himself across a long distance at speed. Since becoming a demon, he had only licked a bit of blood, and now he was at the edge of collapse.
He had a demon's physique, yes. On the surface, his body was perfectly intact, even stronger and more capable than before.
But in truth, every cell in Yuu's body was screaming for energy, begging for nourishment. Otherwise, they could only stop their work and wait until, one day, blood and flesh called them back to life.
Sensing how bleak his condition was, Yuu could not stand there any longer, thinking, regretting, blaming himself.
"Right now I need to find something to fill my stomach, the kind of food I can actually take in, and I need a place to hole up where sunlight cannot reach."
He had no way to tell direction. Yuu simply picked one at random and set off, thinking through what he would do later while he quickened his pace.
Quickened pace was the phrase for it. His speed matched a normal person's light jog.
Even a newborn demon, even one weakened by starvation, outstrips ordinary humans in raw physique.
After all, demons are predators, and humans are their prey.
As he pushed forward, Yuu kept a count in his head. After about half an hour of that near jog, he stopped.
His nose twitched. In an instant, blood vessels crawled like red threads across his eyes.
He drew a long breath, let the icy air fill his lungs, and forced his frenzied mind to settle.
It was a familiar feeling, and it took real effort to shove his cravings back down.
"Haa."
"This smell, it is blood."
"And there is a savage, brutal, chaotic scent mixed in... a demon?"
Since family shared the same genetics, he, too had a keen nose. Though it was nowhere near the level of tanjiro, who could sense a person's mood purely based on their scent.
But now that he was a demon, with all his senses heightened, that once good nose had turned really sharp.
He still could not match Tanjiro as he was now, but it was starting to feel like how Tanjiro's sense of smell had been when he was little.
"A demon."
Yuu clenched his fist. His sharpened nails bit into flesh, and at this moment, he paid the pain no mind.
Before Kibutsuji appeared, Yuu's skull had already been smashed by the black-haired demon.
Wounded as he was, he had not seen Kibutsuji's face clearly at the time, he only felt, dimly, that Kibutsuji was there.
"That man turned me into a demon, but I can tell I do not have the power to turn others."
"Does that mean only he can make demons, or maybe only a certain group of demons can create more?"
"Either way, those who can create demons must be rare."
"I will act on that assumption."
Yuu's guess was not far off. Only Kibutsuji Muzan possessed the power to create demons.
"Wait for me. One day, I will find you."
With that, Yuu made up his mind. He would go find the nearby demon.
It was not only the blood scent spurring him on. He also needed a trail that could lead him to Kibutsuji.
In Yuu's mind, Kibutsuji and demons had to be connected. If he kept tracking demons, he would eventually learn something about Kibutsuji Muzan.
Demon blood carries a kind of knowledge, a passing down of what it is to be a demon.
That was how Yuu understood why he could not create demons.
That inheritance also meant that, in the instant he became a demon, he grasped a demon's essence.
Endless greed for human flesh and blood, a bottomless thirst for manslaughter.
No matter how gentle and harmless a person had been, once they turned into a demon, all their human kindness gets twisted away.
Cruelty and savagery, that is a demon's nature.
Yuu, though, was not like other demons. He felt like there was something different about him.
He craved flesh and blood, yes, but his human reason and his memories had not faded.
To a certain extent, he could resist his instincts.
⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫⟪⟫
Read Advance Chapters on Patreon.com/Yuuma046