The blade.
The instant the Sun Blade left Tsugikuni Yoriichi's waist, every ounce of the extreme physical enhancement produced by his fully concentrated Breath of the Sun compressed itself into that single blade.
The blade turned red.
An orange-red glow bled out from within — the same color molten iron takes on as it flows through a mold.
That was the color of sunlight.
The sun's hue, condensed by human will and breath, now clinging to the very edge of the blade.
This was no ordinary Sun Blade, but something further still — a Bright Red Nichirin Sword.
A state in which an overwhelming Breathing technique drove the body to a further peak, and sheer grip strength fully activated every trace of solar energy the blade carried.
Muzan's slit pupils contracted to their limit.
Even as contempt for humans and arrogance in her own immortality still lingered in her heart, she moved.
She who called herself a natural disaster would never allow herself to be 'trampled' by a human.
Her five fingers splayed. The skin at their tips burst open, and purple-black tentacles shot out from between them — each as thick as an arm, their tips branching into razor-sharp bone spikes, moving so fast that under the moonlight they left only afterimages.
Ten tentacles, ten directions — every escape route Yoriichi might have taken was sealed off.
But Yoriichi didn't dodge.
He took one step forward.
Just one.
The tentacles swept past both sides of his body; the nearest one grazed his ear, shearing off a few strands of red hair.
But none struck home.
The Transparent World — the innate ability Tsugikuni Yoriichi was born with, letting him see through to the underlying motion of all things — laid bare, in that instant, every trajectory, speed, force, and rhythm of Muzan's tentacles within his field of vision.
To his eyes, those tentacles might as well have been standing still.
He turned his body, planted his feet, and swung the blade.
A simple horizontal slash.
The edge cut straight into Muzan's left shoulder as she brushed past him, slicing diagonally down to her right hip.
In the instant the Bright Red Nichirin Sword state opened Muzan's body, it drove the heat of the Breath of the Sun deep into the wound.
Muzan's body split in two.
The cut surfaces were charred black, giving off a scorched stench.
The next instant, the progenitor of the Demons' regeneration kicked in — purple-black flesh-buds sprouted wildly from both sides of the wound, trying to fuse the body back together.
But Yoriichi's second strike had already arrived.
Straight down from the crown of the head, cleaving in one stroke.
Then came the third strike.
Once drawn, the Sun Blade never paused. Yoriichi's body became a golden afterimage under the moonlight, the blade tracing countless overlapping crossing arcs —
That was the sword form created to match the Breath of the Sun.
The Thirteen Forms.
Dance, Clear Blue Sky... Fire Wheel, Fake Rainbow, Flame Dance, and the final form returning to the start — the Thirteen Forms cycling endlessly, with neither beginning nor end.
The Thirteen Forms of the Breath of the Sun weren't thirteen separate techniques but one complete cycle — beginning with Dance and ending with Dance, head joined to tail, never stopping.
It had been designed with a single purpose from the start — to shatter, in the same instant, every vital point of Kibutsuji Muzan, who possessed five brains and seven hearts, leaving regeneration no room to work.
This was exactly why Kobe Hikaru had said Tsugikuni Yoriichi was the only blade capable of killing Muzan.
And this was the fruit of the intelligence Kobe Hikaru had given him in advance — details about Kibutsuji Muzan that even the Demon Slayer Corps had never managed to accurately record.
In an astonishingly short time, Tsugikuni Yoriichi had created a Breathing swordsmanship complete enough to utterly kill the progenitor of the vengeful Demons.
Far more refined than the Breathing sword style he'd created in the original story upon encountering Kibutsuji Muzan.
Crimson blade-light wove a net across the night sky.
Every flash of the blade carried the searing heat of the Breath of the Sun, and every strike landed, without fail, on the brains and hearts inside Muzan's body.
Muzan's regeneration was fast.
But the cycle of the Thirteen Forms was faster.
In the span of just a few breaths, he unleashed thousands of strikes!
The crimson blade-edge sliced apart flesh-buds the instant they formed, and the burn of sunlight kept carbonizing the cut tissue, destroying the regenerating flesh again and again.
Five brains, seven hearts — shattered over and over within the cycle of the Thirteen Forms.
At last, Muzan screamed.
The sound was neither human nor Demon — it was the shrill grinding noise flesh makes under ultimate pressure.
Her body kept collapsing and reforming within the crimson blade-light — each reformation weaker than the last, each regeneration slower than the one before.
The heat of the Breath of the Sun accumulated inside her, the nature of sunlight seeping into every cell of her body like poison.
Kobe Hikaru stood thirty paces away, Onikiri in one hand and Yomikiri in the other, blood mist spread wide to serve as his sensory net.
He didn't intervene.
There was no need to.
This battle, from the very start, had been Tsugikuni Yoriichi's solo performance.
All Kobe Hikaru needed to do was handle the aftermath.
Make sure none of Muzan's fragments escaped this stretch of wilderness.
Until Yoriichi's final strike fell.
Dance, returning to the start.
The crimson blade-light traced a perfect circle, reducing the last remaining clump of purple-black flesh before him to dust.
The blade-light faded.
All that remained across the wilderness was drifting ash filling the sky, and the lingering scorched smell in the air.
Muzan's body was gone.
Not even a fragment remained.
But Yoriichi didn't sheathe his blade. He stared at the Sun Blade in his hand, brow furrowed.
Suddenly, he spoke.
"He's still here."
"Not dead."
Indeed — even though every fragment of the progenitor of the Demons before him had been cut down, Tsugikuni Yoriichi's instincts still told him that vengeful Demon progenitor was still out there.
Watching from the side, Kobe Hikaru raised his gaze and clicked his tongue. "Just as I expected."
Shadowy figures came striding forward from all directions.
"I really did underestimate the two of you."
One of the figures said.
A pale face, handsome features — that was Kibutsuji Muzan. But not the female form this time — a male one.
Another figure spoke as well. "This is the first time I've ever been pushed this far."
That was also a pale face, beautiful features — unmistakably another Kibutsuji Muzan.
Then a third, a fourth, a fifth.
A full several dozen Kibutsuji Muzans.
Male or female, old or young, tall or short — yet every one of them carried the same aura, the same slit pupils.
They spoke as one.
"But this ends here."
Spoken in perfect unison.
Or perhaps it should be called — one mouth, one voice.
Such a sight was, without a doubt, horrifying.
Especially since Yoriichi's Transparent World told him clearly — each of these figures had an independent heart, an independent brain, an independent bloodstream.
Several dozen Kibutsuji Muzans.
Every single one, an original body.
Kobe Hikaru stood where he was, his demonic eyes sweeping across the figures emerging from the darkness, his voice unexpectedly calm.
He had, in truth, already considered this possibility.
He'd kept Tsuchigumo's words in mind all along.
That great yokai, in its Gasification form, had warned him about Muzan before leaving Kaede's Village — mentioned that Muzan had been struck dead by his hand seventeen times, and each time, he'd reappeared.
Reappeared.
Not restored in place, not simply unharmed.
Appearing anew, somewhere else entirely.
Only one thing could explain that.
Kibutsuji Muzan must have split off portions of himself before ever being 'killed.'
Pre-stored flesh.
As long as even one portion of that flesh remained alive, Muzan would never truly die — that flesh would, in a short time, regrow a complete body, complete five brains and seven hearts, and a complete consciousness.
This wasn't an ability Muzan possessed in the original Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
But this world wasn't a pure Demon Slayer world alone.
This was a blended world.
There was Hagoromo-Gitsune's hundred demons of Kyoto, the confrontation over the Shikon Jewel, the divine might of Bishamonten wielded through Uesugi Kenshin, and great yokai like Tsuchigumo and Sesshomaru who'd lived for over four hundred years.
In a world like this, a vengeful Demon progenitor who'd survived five hundred years on nothing but immortality — if regeneration in place were truly his only trick, with no other fallback, there was no way he could have lasted this long.
After all, on the human side of this world, there was no shortage of great figures either.
People like Midoriko, even Minamoto no Yorimitsu.
Even if Kibutsuji Muzan never went out of his way to provoke those great yokai, since all vengeful Demons fed on humans, sooner or later some reckless Demon was bound to provoke something it shouldn't have.
But across those long five hundred years —
Facing exorcists, onmyoji, great yokai, divine artifacts, and even reincarnated avatars of gods and Buddhas, Kibutsuji Muzan had still survived five hundred years.
He had to have a fallback.
And that fallback — quite clearly, was exactly this: splitting off pieces of his own flesh in advance, hiding them scattered across the land.
Something like the phylactery of Western legend — the lich's box.
As long as the box remains intact, the lich cannot die.
As long as a single scrap of flesh survived, Muzan was immortal, reaching a level even a seal couldn't touch.
So then, here and now.
"You're not surprised?"
The nearest male-formed Muzan spoke.
"Not surprised."
Kobe Hikaru admitted it plainly.
"Because this was part of my plan too."
The expressions of over a dozen Muzans shifted at once. "—You had a plan for this too?"
Kobe Hikaru did indeed have a plan — just as in the Demon Slayer story he knew so well, where Tsugikuni Yoriichi inflicted a wound on Kibutsuji Muzan that he'd never recover from for the rest of his life, and yet Muzan still slipped away in the end, surviving all the way to the Taisho era, centuries later.
To deal with Kibutsuji Muzan, one Tsugikuni Yoriichi clearly wasn't enough.
A scheme within a scheme was necessary too.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi, in the end, was only ever part of the plan... in fact, Tsugikuni Yoriichi was merely bait — bait meant to draw out these several dozen Muzans standing here now.
The original Tsugikuni Yoriichi was strong enough to hold his own against Kibutsuji Muzan, but his very nature meant he would only ever be a hair's breadth stronger than whatever enemy he faced — his abilities grew with the environment, but he would always be only one notch, one step, stronger than the threat before him.
So as long as Kibutsuji Muzan regarded Tsugikuni Yoriichi as merely Kobe Hikaru's trump card, he would go on acting recklessly.
And that — was exactly what Kobe Hikaru wanted!
He wouldn't be bound by the original story.
The only thing he'd rely on was himself.
"Did you really think I only prepared Tsugikuni Yoriichi?"
As he spoke, Kobe Hikaru raised his left hand.
His palm turned over, blood mist surging out from between his fingers — not spreading downward, but rising upward.
Toward the sky.
Dark red blood mist wrapped around yokai aura, forming a visible crimson pillar of light that shot straight toward the heavens.
No attack.
This was only... a signal.
A signal calling out to someone far away.
The direction it called toward was Musashi Province, Kaede's Village.
The one it called for — Kikyo.
This was, in fact, Kobe Hikaru's true preparation.
He knew Muzan would come find him. He knew Tsugikuni Yoriichi could inflict grievous wounds on Muzan.
But he also knew — grievous wounds weren't enough.
A monster capable of endlessly splitting and regenerating, existing in a world this complicated, likely couldn't be killed clean with a single blade alone.
A net was needed.
A net wide enough to blanket a sufficiently vast area, one that could trap every single one of Muzan's splintered bodies at once.
And in this era, in this land of the eastern isles, in this region of Kanto especially, there was only one person capable of that.
His beloved, the shrine maiden with the strongest spiritual power — Kikyo.
At that very same moment.
Hundreds of miles away, in Musashi Province, Kaede's Village.
The night lay deep, and the lights of the Shrine's main hall still burned.
Kikyo knelt before the offering altar, her white-and-red shrine maiden robes spotless, black hair cascading like a waterfall behind her, her face cool and precise, eyelids half-lowered.
She was waiting.
Ever since Kobe Hikaru's last contact with her that day, she'd been waiting for his signal.
No extra explanation had come.
Nor had she asked for one.
Because she knew he never acted without purpose, and she knew every step he took had its reasons.
This trust needed no words.
She only needed to wait.
And that moment — was now.
A pillar of crimson light pierced the night sky on the horizon.
Kikyo's eyelids opened, and in her cool, clear eyes, the red glow on the horizon was reflected.
She rose to her feet.
Her movements were light, utterly steady.
Kaede was watching over the courtyard; the little girl had been dozing on the veranda, and hearing footsteps, she lifted her head groggily, rubbing her eyes.
"Big sister...?"
"Go back inside."
Kikyo's voice remained soft, but it left no room for argument.
Momiji and Botan came running out from the side hall — Momiji with black hair in a ponytail, in red-and-white shrine maiden robes; Botan with a round face and big eyes, in blue-and-white robes.
Both their faces carried tension.
"Lady Kikyo, that light in the sky—"
"It's him."
Kikyo said nothing more.
She walked to stand directly beneath the Shrine's torii, then pressed her palms together. Spiritual power surged from her hands, seeping into the soil beneath her feet through her fingertips.
Then—
She began to speak, her voice carrying the rhythmic cadence of a shrine maiden's prayer.
It wasn't loud, but it echoed clearly through the night.
That was—
The Earth Barrier she'd once demonstrated before Kobe Hikaru — one that could use a piece of an enemy's body left behind as a medium to lay down a suppressive effect targeting that enemy's power.
But the Earth Barrier she'd shown before had only covered Kaede's Village.
Now, though—
The shrine maiden's spiritual power took root in the soil beneath her feet and spread outward through the veins of the earth in every direction.
Starting from Kaede's Village, with Kikyo at its center.
First, Musashi Province.
Then across the border, flooding into Sagami.
Then expanding further still — into Kozuke.
Covering three provinces, nearly a thousand miles!
Such power was, without question, beyond what Kikyo alone possessed. She was truly strong — strong enough to face a great yokai head-on, and if the yokai she met happened to have a disadvantageous affinity against her, she could even drive it back outright.
But there was no way she alone could mobilize the spiritual power across a radius of hundreds, even a thousand miles.
Even if her soul alone were enough for it.
Her physical body simply couldn't carry that much weight.
This was...
The faith of two provinces.
Because the Shrine of Kaede's Village had been elevated to the central hub of Shinto worship for both Musashi and Sagami.
The place where the 'Demon God Kobe Hikaru' was enshrined.
And also because the faith of over a hundred thousand people across both provinces converged here through the Shrine's network of barriers — and Kikyo, as the one shrine maiden Kobe Hikaru had personally designated, the Shrine's resident priest, the sole head priestess of Kobe Hikaru's shrine, was the hub of this web of faith.
Her own spiritual power alone couldn't cover hundreds of miles.
But the faith of the people of two provinces could help her do exactly that.
This was exactly why the shrine maidens and priests of the great shrines looked down on the maidens of unaffiliated rural shrines — what they relied on was never individual power, but the faith of the whole nation, even the whole world.
Now, Kikyo finally possessed that kind of faith.
She had grown even stronger — strong enough to surpass the peak she'd ever reached on her original path.
And within the range covered by the Earth Barrier she'd unfurled, Kibutsuji Muzan existed.
Along with the several dozen 'original bodies' of Muzan.
And, more importantly, the ashes of the flesh Yoriichi had cut from Muzan.
That was exactly the ideal medium for the Earth Barrier to spread smoothly!
So then, here and now.
The light of the spiritual barrier rose from the ground — not a dome descending from the sky, but light growing up from beneath the earth—
The soil glowed, the plants glowed, the stones glowed, the earth itself became part of the barrier.
The light was gentle, carrying the warmth of soil.
Not harsh, not burning.
But it pinned down and even nailed in place every trace of anything carrying Kibutsuji Muzan's bloodline.
Kikyo knelt beneath the torii, her black hair lifted by the currents of spiritual power, her cool face showing not a trace of extra expression.
Only the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth.
Almost imperceptible.
But Momiji and Botan exchanged a glance — both of them had seen it.
Lady Kikyo... was smiling.
Because he'd sent the signal.
Which meant his plan was going smoothly.
Which meant everything was proceeding exactly as he intended.
Which also meant — he would be coming home soon.
She was already growing impatient waiting for him.
Meanwhile.
Out on the wilderness of Kōzuke Province.
The light of the Earth Barrier crept across the ground from a distance — not fast, but its coverage was staggering. In just a few dozen seconds, the entire Kanto plain lay blanketed beneath that soft light rising from below.
All several dozen Muzans felt it at once.
The earth beneath their feet was rejecting them.
—The earth itself recognized what lay within their bloodline, and refused them.
They wanted to run.
The soil beneath their feet turned viscous, every step feeling like wading through a swamp.
They wanted to split.
Any new flesh that formed and left the body was swallowed by the light-net on the ground the instant it appeared, reduced to ash.
They wanted to burrow underground.
The earth itself was the vessel of the barrier — every inch of soil was working against the blood of the progenitor within them.
"You—!"
The nearest male-formed Muzan's slit pupils, for the first time, showed genuine terror.
"What is this?!"
Kobe Hikaru looked at him.
Beneath his oni mask, his crimson demonic eyes flickered with faint light. "This is called the Earth Barrier. It targets your power specifically."
The Earth Barrier certainly wasn't unbeatable — it was useless, for instance, against a great yokai who'd already achieved Phenomenalization and no longer had true blood.
But Muzan was still far from the level of a great yokai.
No matter how much he called himself a natural disaster, called himself a calamity — he still fell short.
Far, far short.
Muzan's face twisted.
That unnaturally beautiful face showed, for the first time, genuine ferocity.
"You little brat... you little brat!"
He was furious now, more enraged than before, and more desperate too.
Even though the several dozen 'original bodies' he'd gathered here still weren't the entirety of him — as the progenitor of the Demons, he could split infinitely, and every fragment of flesh and blood he split off carried his will —
He was, in the truest sense, an undying, indestructible being. But precisely because of that, he could feel all the more clearly that the barrier blanketing three provinces wasn't suppressing just individual bodies.
It was suppressing his source.
The very being called Kibutsuji Muzan, itself!
No matter how many pieces he split into, no matter how many fragments he divided himself among, it was all, still, one whole.
Every vengeful Demon that entered this region would be suppressed; every vengeful Demon that arrived here would be overpowered.
But if that were all, it still wasn't enough.
Suppression alone couldn't destroy him.
And that, too, still wasn't Kobe Hikaru's goal.
Standing amid it all, Tsugikuni Yoriichi watched the barrier blanket heaven and earth, and couldn't help but feel a stirring of deep emotion.
After that.
Kobe Hikaru rose up off the ground.
He spoke.
"I know you're in a hurry, but don't be, not yet."
He said:
"This isn't over."
As his words fell,
the Asura Mutation abruptly unfolded.
Bone spikes erupted simultaneously from elbows, shoulder blades, and spine, a white skeletal frame extending and weaving itself together at visible speed.
Lightning burst from the gaps between the bones, filling the spaces, condensing into a layer of purple muscle.
A membrane of yokai aura expanded from the body's surface, wrapping around the entire bone-and-lightning structure.
A six-meter-tall giant frame of bone and lightning rose up out of the wilderness.
But this Asura Mutation was different from before.
At the very center of the chest floated a light of intertwined dark red and orange — that was the Asura Heart, beating.
At the waist, a dark green light core churned — that was the Asura Kidney, pulsing.
Two organs, beating in tandem.
Fire and water, two cycles reforming into an extremely simple circuit within the Asura Mutation — the heart pumping, the kidney storing.
Yokai aura no longer flowed in one direction from his true body — it now generated, circulated, and multiplied on its own within the Asura Mutation.
The amplification from these two organs, stacked on top of the base Nine Mutations, pushed the Asura Mutation's actual output all the way to an Eleventh Mutation.
Still a considerable distance from great yokai level, but in terms of sheer yokai aura concentration and total volume, it was already enough.
Enough to do what he needed to do next.
Inside the massive body of the Asura Mutation, Kobe Hikaru opened his eyes.
In his crimson demonic eyes, purple patterns and orange streams of light intertwined, and now, at their deepest core, a thread of silver-white moonlight had joined them.
This was, unmistakably, the Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation.
The hand of soul-tracking and certain-hit — the ability to lock onto a soul and strike it regardless of physical distance or obstruction, guaranteeing a hit — under the amplification of the two organs, his sensory range exploded outward.
From half an inch beyond his skin.
Expanding to ten paces.
A hundred paces.
A mile.
Ten miles.
A hundred miles—
It touched the edge of Kikyo's Earth Barrier.
Then—
It resonated with the barrier.
What sustained and drove the Earth Barrier had, from the start, been faith directed at Kobe Hikaru.
So he could use it too.
He could — mobilize it!
The moment the sensory network of the Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation touched the sealing net of the Earth Barrier, the two overlapped and fused—
Kikyo's barrier, using Muzan's split bodies here as a medium, had marked the existence of the entirety that was Muzan across the land.
And now.
Kobe Hikaru's Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation, anchored on souls, locked onto every marked target.
The two networks became one.
The entire eastern isles.
From Kanto to Kyoto, from Echigo to Shikoku, from Kyushu to Mutsu.
Every single vengeful Demon born of Kibutsuji Muzan's blood, every hidden cache of Muzan's flesh scattered across the land—
All of it, locked on.
It was as if countless red points of light lit up all at once in Kobe Hikaru's perception.
Scattered across the entire land.
"I... see it."
Kobe Hikaru's voice came from within the massive body of the Asura Mutation, muffled, distant.
He looked at the several dozen Muzan bodies before him, pinned in place by the Earth Barrier, unable to escape.
"Every scrap of your flesh, every Demon, every backup hidden in the shadows—"
"I see it all now."
Kibutsuji Muzan was enraged — and even, for the first time, terrified.
This, at last, was Kobe Hikaru's true objective.
This was his killing blow.
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