The lingering light of the lunar eclipse dyed the wilderness a ghastly white.
Kobe Hikaru's demon eyes locked with Muzan's slit pupils across three zhang of distance.
The progenitor of the Demons, twisted from a human being, stood there in the form of a woman. The hem of her plain, elegant kimono swayed gently in the night wind, and an unnaturally beautiful face wore a warm, gentle smile.
Then she spoke.
"The information about the blue spider lily — you're the one who put it out there.
No question about it."
Kobe Hikaru's brow twitched.
Muzan continued, her tone very casual. "Fake. I know that already."
"Whether that thing exists, what form it takes, where it's hidden — I know more about all of that than anyone. Five hundred years, and I still haven't found it. Which tells you it isn't about to fall out of the sky."
"So the moment that piece of information surfaced, I knew it was bait."
Muzan tilted her head, black hair sliding off her shoulder.
"And since I knew the false lead was bait, naturally I wasn't going to bite.
What I actually wanted to trace was never the blue spider lily — it was the source of the false lead.
Who planted it, why, and where he went afterward."
Kobe Hikaru still said nothing.
But his left thumb had already eased Onikiri's tsuba open, revealing an inch of blade-light. At the same time, his right hand settled on Yomikiri's hilt.
Muzan's slit pupils flicked over the two blades without a ripple of reaction.
Her gaze settled back on Kobe Hikaru.
Reflected in those red slit pupils were his pale face, his scarlet eyes, and his oni mask.
"The trail is clear enough. The Demon Slayer Corps suddenly had information on my whereabouts — something they'd never had before. There are only two ways they could get that: a traitor from within my own ranks, but I don't have traitors, or someone brought it in from outside.
I've never quite known where the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters is — those insects hide deep — but I do know they're somewhere in this ritsuryo province.
And as it happens, half a month ago, an outsider arrived here.
That would be you."
She paused.
"The oni warrior at the side of the shrine maiden who guards the Shikon Jewel — the one and only master of the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons in all of Kanto, the Demon God Kobe Hikaru.
I've heard your name.
Heh heh heh. Down in Kyoto, Hagoromo-Gitsune's man Kidomaru came home missing an arm, and Tsuchigumo lost one too... every time your name comes up, that fox gets irritated."
"I'll admit I've been curious — what exactly does a Demon among yokai have, that he can hand defeat after defeat to great yokai who've lived for centuries, even millennia?
So here I am.
Right now, the Demon Slayer Corps, that Ubuyashiki bunch, have sent every last Hashira to Kyoto to sit and wait by a stump for a hare. How many people did they station there? Thirty? Fifty? Plus seven Hashira?
A pity.
What they found in Kyoto was only a decoy I left behind — a high-ranking vengeful Demon I fed my own blood into. It smells like me, looks like me — but it isn't me.
That current head of the Ubuyashiki..."
She smiled, a chillingly cold smile. "His expression right now must be quite something to see."
All of this, she truly knew, every bit of it.
Then she took a step forward.
Just one step.
But the instant that step landed, the air changed.
A presence like something from the very apex of living creatures, like a natural disaster descending — five hundred years of accumulated Demonic power released silently in that single step.
With her as the center, the withered grass within ten paces crumbled, charred and disintegrated all at once.
The ground cracked.
The air grew heavy.
Even the horses being evacuated at Aya-Gozen's camp in the distance whinnied in fright.
Yet Muzan's voice remained even. "Kobe Hikaru, I'm quite interested in you. And in what stands behind you... the Shikon Jewel, just the same."
Those four syllables slipped from between her lips with a softness that bordered on greed.
"A jewel that can make a yokai's power surge several times over in an instant.
Do you think I might want it?"
Muzan's slit pupils narrowed to thin lines.
"If I killed you, wore your skin, and went to find that shrine maiden — with your face, your scent, your voice—
then the Shikon Jewel would be mine."
"And once that happens—"
She licked the corner of her lips.
"Sunlight, weaknesses — all of it would become a thing of the past."
The Shikon Jewel wasn't the blue spider lily Muzan sought, but if it truly held the power the rumors claimed, making her immune to sunlight should be well within its reach.
This was Kibutsuji Muzan's true purpose.
It was the reason she'd left Kyoto, the reason she'd been drawn out.
Her words fell silent.
The wilderness went quiet for a moment.
But within that silence — a sound rang out.
Laughter.
It came from beneath the oni mask that had suddenly surfaced over Kobe Hikaru's face — utterly unrestrained laughter.
Kobe Hikaru was laughing.
He laughed loud, he laughed wild, even a little grating — nothing like his usual composed, cold demeanor. It was as if something long suppressed deep in his bones had suddenly broken free.
Muzan faltered slightly.
"What's so funny?"
When Kobe Hikaru had finished laughing, the purple markings and orange flowing light in his crimson demon eyes pulsed together.
He looked at Muzan. "I'm laughing at you — laughing at how you tried to shake me with those words, laughing at your self-satisfied arrogance."
"And I'm also laughing because — you've finally taken the bait."
Muzan's expression didn't change.
But her steps stopped.
A being who had lived five hundred years and considered herself all but perfect stopped in her tracks upon hearing those words.
Even if it was only for an instant, she had stopped.
"Taken the bait?"
Her slit pupils narrowed slightly. The arrogance still plain on her face didn't waver, but her tone grew restrained.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm saying — the information about the blue spider lily really was bait."
Kobe Hikaru's laughter faded, his voice returning to its usual cold composure.
"But the trap that bait set was never meant for the Demon Slayer Corps, never meant to lure them to Kyoto to ambush you.
It was set for myself."
Muzan's expression still didn't change.
But her steps stopped again.
"The Demon Slayer Corps was just a diversion."
Kobe Hikaru continued. "I gave them the information. They'd believe it, they'd act, they'd send every Hashira to Kyoto — all of that, you'd already accounted for.
But what you didn't account for is that when I gave the Corps that information, I already knew you wouldn't fall for it.
You wouldn't go to Kyoto.
You'd follow the source of the leak straight back to me."
Since Muzan had tried to unsettle him with words, Kobe Hikaru naturally struck back with words of his own.
And so Muzan's slit pupils moved.
The contraction of her red irises brought an extremely subtle change — one that would have been imperceptible without the vision enhanced by Kobe Hikaru's Sharp-Eye Mutation.
Even so.
"So?"
Her voice remained gentle, but beneath it lay a thin layer of ice.
"So you think you, alone, can kill me?"
"Of course I can't kill you alone."
Kobe Hikaru admitted it plainly — with only the Demon's Breath and Yomikiri, and without a complete Asura's lungs yet, defeating Muzan wouldn't be hard for him, but he genuinely didn't yet have full confidence he could sever the Demon King's immortality for good.
That plain admission made Muzan falter slightly again.
As the progenitor of the Demons, Kibutsuji Muzan's true strength had never been raw combat power — it was her immortality.
As long as one couldn't kill her, one would never truly be her match.
She could run, she could flee — she had endless chances.
In the end, the victor could only ever be her.
It had been true of onmyoji, true of yokai.
And now, before her stood a yokai about to face the progenitor of the Demons, calmly admitting he couldn't kill her — which meant either he was an utter fool, or he had another card up his sleeve.
Muzan didn't think the man who could kill over thirty vengeful Demons with a single strike was a fool.
Sure enough.
"But I'm not human. And I'm not alone."
Kobe Hikaru's words fell.
On the horizon to the southeast, light suddenly flared.
Not moonlight. Not fire.
It was the sun.
More precisely, it was blazing light radiating from a person, like the first ray of morning sun breaking through clouds.
Golden heat haze rose from the distant meadow, the air warping in the heat.
A figure walked out of that light.
Red hair, deep crimson eyes, and a flame-shaped birthmark on the left side of his forehead, glowing brightly within the golden haze.
An earring shaped like the sun hung from his ear, swaying gently with each step.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
He wore no armor, only a Sun Blade at his waist—
but the presence radiating from him made the air within ten paces heat up.
It was the Breath of the Sun.
With each inhale his chest expanded to its limit; with each exhale, heat seeped from his very pores.
The golden heat haze around his body wasn't yokai aura, wasn't spiritual power, wasn't faith — it was purely thermal energy generated by a human body operating at its absolute limit.
The temperature was high enough to scorch the air itself.
Muzan saw Yoriichi.
In those red slit pupils, an inexplicable unease surfaced — an instinctive alertness.
It was the kind of alertness that came from the deepest level of any living creature, the kind reserved for a natural predator.
She didn't know Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
She had never seen this red-haired young man before.
But her body was telling her — this man was dangerous.
To her, he might even be more dangerous than the oni warrior before her — certainly more dangerous than every Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps combined.
Not because of raw strength — she could sense that the young man's strength didn't match that of the oni warrior in front of her.
It was because of the sun-like power he carried!
"Who is this?"
Muzan's voice finally lost its even tone, turning cold.
Kobe Hikaru didn't answer directly.
He merely spoke a line that no one in this era, in this world, could have understood — except himself.
"In the story I know, there's a man who once drove you to the very edge of death."
Muzan's brow furrowed.
"That man used a single blade to shatter all five of your brains and seven of your hearts in a single instant. You barely escaped with your life, blowing your own body apart into one thousand eight hundred pieces of scattered flesh, fleeing in every direction — and even then, only a tiny fraction of you survived.
You don't know that man's name, because the two of you have never met — until now."
"Except now—"
"He's here."
He turned slightly to the side, clearing the view behind him.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi had already closed to within fifty paces.
The golden heat haze around him grew ever thicker, the withered grass beneath his feet scorched yellow, each step leaving a shallow burn mark on the ground.
The Sun Blade still hung at his waist.
Not drawn.
But Kobe Hikaru knew — the moment it was drawn—
he would become the blade that severed the progenitor Demon King.
Yes — this was one of the powers Kobe Hikaru had prepared against Kibutsuji Muzan.
Using the blue spider lily rumor as cover, using himself as bait, what he had ultimately drawn out was — Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
The being that, from the story he knew as a transmigrator, was best suited to counter the Demon King.
Muzan stared at Yoriichi, her slit pupils shrinking to their smallest.
But she still didn't believe that a human and an oni warrior who wasn't even a great yokai could kill her.
After all,
exorcists, onmyoji, swordmasters, shrine maidens — over the years, she'd faced no shortage of opponents.
Even the rare one or two who'd brushed against her weakness — and the Demon Slayer Corps had discovered Sun Blades carrying the power of sunlight decades ago.
Still, none had ever truly threatened her life.
She was the Demon King.
The undying progenitor of the Demons.
Except—
she'd been outmaneuvered.
The feeling left her deeply uneasy.
From the false lead about the blue spider lily, to the Demon Slayer Corps mobilizing in full toward Kyoto, to her following the trail here to Kobe Hikaru.
Through it all, she'd believed herself the hunter.
In the end, she had been the prey all along.
Muzan's anger flared.
Pure fury, the fury of being played.
"You mean to use this human who's come from who-knows-where—"
Her tone shifted from cold to venomous. "—to kill me?"
This time Kobe Hikaru didn't respond, nor did he need to.
In that same instant,
behind him, Tsugikuni Yoriichi — now closed to within thirty paces — spoke.
His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried clearly across the field.
It clearly wasn't meant for Kobe Hikaru, but for the Demon King before them.
In that instant a wave of heat surged like a rising sun.
The swordsman of the Breath of the Sun paused his steps slightly, seeming entirely unsurprised by the scene before him.
Of course he wasn't surprised.
Because Kobe Hikaru had already told him everything before leaving Demon Slayer Corps headquarters.
He was one of only two people who knew Kobe Hikaru had used himself as bait.
He also knew that what he faced now was the Demon King recorded in the Corps' history as having endured for five hundred years.
He had many questions for this creature.
About her purpose in creating vengeful Demons, her intent in twisting humans, the truth behind her defilement of human will.
But in the end, only one line remained.
And—
one draw of the blade.
"What do you think life even is?"
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