The dying light of the eclipsed moon stained the wilderness a ghostly white. Shinji's demon eyes met Muzan's slit-pupiled gaze across a distance of nine metres.
The Progenitor of Demons, a human twisted into something other, stood there in the form of a woman. The hem of her elegant kimono swayed gently in the night breeze. On that face, beautiful to the point of abnormality, hung a warm, liquid smile.
Then she spoke. "The rumor of the Blue Spider Lily, you were the one who released it." It was not a question. Shinji's brow shifted faintly.
Muzan continued, her tone utterly casual. "It was false. I knew that. Whether such a thing exists, in what form, hidden where, regarding all of this, I know more than anyone. Five hundred years. I have yet to find it. That means it will not suddenly fall from the sky. So the moment that rumor surfaced, I knew it was bait."
She tilted her head, black hair slipping from her shoulder. "And since I knew the false rumor was bait, naturally, I would not bite. What I needed to investigate was never some Blue Spider Lily. It was the source of that false rumor. Who released it. Why they released it. And after releasing it, where they were."
Shinji still did not speak. But the thumb of his left hand had already quietly nudged open Onikiri's tsuba, revealing an inch of gleaming blade. His right hand simultaneously rested on Yomi-giri's hilt.
Muzan's slit pupils swept across those two blades without the faintest ripple. Her gaze returned to Shinji. Within those crimson serpent-eyes, his pale face was reflected, his scarlet pupils, his demon mask.
"The trail was clear. The Demon Slayer Corps suddenly had intelligence on my whereabouts. They had never had such intelligence before. There are only two possible sources for information like that. One, a traitor among my own. But I have no traitors. Two, it was brought in from the outside. Though I have never been entirely certain where the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters is located, those insects hide themselves deeply, I do know they are within this very province. And by fortunate coincidence, half a month ago, an outsider arrived here. That was you."
She paused.
"The demon warrior who stands beside the miko guarding the Shikon no Tama. The sole Lord of the Hyakki Yagyō in the Kantō. The Demon God, Nakai Shinji. I have heard your name. Heh. Kidōmaru, who serves that fox beneath Kyōto, came back missing an arm. The Tsuchigumo as well… every time your name is mentioned, that fox grows irritable. I was indeed quite curious. A demon among yōkai, what ability could you possibly possess to make daiyōkai who have lived for centuries, for millennia, suffer defeat after defeat?"
"And so now, I have come. At this moment, the Demon Slayer Corps, that Ubuyashiki lot, have dispatched all their 'Hashira' toward Kyōto, lying in wait. How many have they deployed there? Thirty? Fifty? Plus the seven Hashira? What a pity. What they found in Kyōto was only a decoy I left behind. A high-ranking demon infused with my own blood. It smells like me. Looks like me. But it is not me. That Ubuyashiki of this generation…"
She smiled, a cold, venomous smile. "His expression right now must be quite a sight, don't you think?"
She knew. She truly knew all of it. And then she took a single step forward. Just one step. But the moment that foot fell, the air changed. A presence as though from the pinnacle of all living things, a sense of impending cataclysm, the demonic power accumulated over five centuries silently erupted with that single step.
With her as the epicenter, every blade of withered grass within a ten-pace radius simultaneously wilted, carbonized, and shattered. The ground fissured. The air grew heavy. Even the horses evacuating from Aya-Gozen's distant camp shrieked in terror. Yet Muzan's voice remained unnervingly calm.
"Shinji. I am deeply interested in you. And in what lies behind you… the Shikon no Tama. I am equally interested in that." Those four syllables were exhaled from between her lips with a softness that bordered on greed.
"A sacred jewel that can make a yōkai's power surge several times over in an instant. Do you think… I would not want it?" Her slit pupils narrowed to razor-fine lines.
"If I kill you… wear your skin… and go to that miko, with your appearance, your presence, your voice, then the Shikon no Tama will be mine. And when that day comes…" She licked the corner of her lips. "What sunlight? What weakness? All of it… will become nothing but the past."
Though the Shikon no Tama was not the Blue Spider Lily that Muzan had sought, if the legends of its power were true, that it could grant any wish, then making her immune to sunlight should also be within its power.
This was Kibutsuji Muzan's true objective. The reason she had emerged from Kyōto. The reason she had been lured out.
Her words fell. Silence returned to the wilderness. But within that silence, a sound rose. Laughter. From beneath the demon mask that had suddenly materialized upon Shinji's face, wild, unrestrained laughter erupted.
Shinji was laughing. Laughing with abandon. Laughing with audacity. Laughing so hard it was almost jarring. It was a laugh utterly unlike his usual calm, cold composure, as though something long suppressed deep within his bones had finally been unleashed.
Muzan paused, faintly taken aback. "What are you laughing at?"
Shinji's laughter subsided. The violet veins and orange luminescence within his crimson demon eyes pulsed simultaneously. He looked at Muzan.
"I'm laughing at you. Laughing at you for trying to rattle me with these words. Laughing at your self-righteous arrogance. And at the same time, I'm laughing at you… for finally taking the bait."
Muzan's expression did not change. But her footsteps stopped. An existence that had lived for five hundred years, who styled herself as infinitely close to perfection, stopped walking at those words. Even if only for a single instant. She still stopped.
"Taking the bait?" Her slit pupils constricted slightly. The undeniable arrogance on her face remained unchanged. But her tone had grown suppressed. "What are you talking about?"
"I said, the rumor of the Blue Spider Lily was, indeed, bait." Shinji's laughter faded, his voice returning to its everyday cold edge.
"But the trap set by that bait was never meant for the Demon Slayer Corps, never meant for them to ambush you in Kyōto. It was set for myself."
Muzan's expression remained still. But her footsteps halted once more.
"The Demon Slayer Corps was the smokescreen," Shinji continued. "I gave them the intelligence. They believed it. They mobilized. They sent all their Hashira to Kyōto. All of that, you anticipated. But what you didn't anticipate, was that when I gave the Corps that intelligence, I already knew you wouldn't take that bait. You wouldn't go to Kyōto. You would follow the source of the rumor… and come straight to me."
If Muzan sought to shake him with words, Shinji would, of course, strike back.
And so, Muzan's slit pupils moved. A minuscule shift in the contraction of her crimson irises. Without the enhanced vision granted by his Keen-Eye Transformation, Shinji would never have caught it.
At this, she spoke again. "And so? You believe that you, alone, can kill me?"
"Alone, of course I cannot kill you." Shinji admitted it openly. With only the Demon's Breath and Yomi-giri, without the completed Shura Lungs, defeating Muzan would not be difficult.
But he indeed lacked absolute certainty in completely severing the Demon King's immortality. His forthright admission gave Muzan pause. As the Progenitor of Demons, Kibutsuji Muzan's true strength had never lain in sheer combat power. It lay in her undying body.
As long as she could not be killed, she could never be defeated. She could flee. She could escape. She had infinite chances. And in the end, she would be the sole victor. Onmyōji had learned this.
Yōkai had learned this. And now, a yōkai about to face the Progenitor of Demons openly admitted he could not kill her. This was either the height of stupidity, or there was another card yet to be played. Muzan did not believe this creature, who had just annihilated over thirty demons in a single slash, was a fool.
As expected.
"But I am not human. And I am not alone."
Shinji's words fell. On the southeastern horizon, a light suddenly blazed. Not the moon. Not fire. It was the sun. Or rather, it was the incandescent radiance emanating from a single person, like the first ray of dawn piercing through the clouds.
A golden thermal mist rose from the distant meadow, the air itself heating to the point of visible distortion. A figure emerged from within that light. Crimson hair. Deep crimson eyes.
The flame-like birthmark at his left temple blazed brightly within that golden haze. The sun-patterned earrings hanging from his earlobes swayed gently with each step.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
He wore no armor. Only a Nichirin Blade was sheathed at his waist. But the aura radiating from his body was heating the air for ten paces in every direction.
That was the Breath of the Sun. On the inhale, his chest expanded to its absolute limit. On the exhale, heat poured from his very pores. The golden thermal mist cloaking his body was not yōki. Not reiryoku. Not the power of faith.
It was purely, simply, the thermal energy produced by a human body pushed to its ultimate operational extreme. The temperature was high enough to scorch the very air.
Muzan saw Yoriichi. And within those crimson, slit-pupiled eyes, unease surfaced. An instinctive wariness. The wariness that rises from the deepest, most primal layer of a living creature when it faces its natural predator.
She did not recognize Tsugikuni Yoriichi. She had never once laid eyes on this red-haired young man. But her body was screaming at her, this person is dangerous.
To her, perhaps even more dangerous than the demon warrior before her. Certainly more dangerous than all the Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps combined. Not because of raw power, she could feel that the arriving young man's strength was not equal to the demon warrior's. But because of what he carried with him. The power of the sun itself.
"Who is this?" Muzan's voice was, at last, no longer smooth. It had turned cold and sharp.
Shinji did not answer directly. He only spoke a sentence that no one in this era, in this world, could possibly understand. Except himself.
"In the story I know, you were driven to the very brink of death by a single man."
Muzan's brow furrowed.
"That man, with a single blade, in a single instant, shattered all five of your brains and all seven of your hearts. You fought with everything you had just to escape, detonating your own body into eighteen hundred pieces of flesh, scattering in every direction. Even so, only the smallest fragment of you survived. The name of that man, you do not know. Because, until now, you had never met. But now, he is here."
Shinji stepped aside, clearing the view behind him. Tsugikuni Yoriichi had already closed to within fifty paces. The golden thermal mist around him billowed ever thicker.
The withered grass beneath his feet was baked to a scorched yellow. Each step left a shallow, smoldering imprint upon the earth. The Nichirin Blade was still at his waist. He had not drawn it. But Shinji knew, the moment he did, he would become the blade that severed the Progenitor Demon King.
Yes. This was one of the forces Shinji had prepared to counter Kibutsuji Muzan. Using the rumor of the Blue Spider Lily as cover.
Using himself as bait. What he had ultimately drawn out, was Tsugikuni Yoriichi. The existence most capable of countering the Demon King in the stories he knew as a transmigrator.
Muzan stared at Yoriichi, her slit pupils contracted to their absolute limit. But she still did not believe that a single human and a demon warrior who had yet to become a daiyōkai could kill her.
After all, demon slayers. Onmyōji. Master swordsmen. Miko. Over all these years, she had faced no shortage of opponents. Even if, on occasion, one or two had brushed against her weaknesses, even if the Demon Slayer Corps had, decades ago, already discovered the Nichirin Blades that carried the power of the sun, not a single one had ever truly threatened her life.
She was the Demon King. The immortal Progenitor of all demons.
Only, she had been outmaneuvered. This sensation was profoundly, deeply sickening to her. From the false rumor of the Blue Spider Lily,to the Demon Slayer Corps mobilizing all their forces toward Kyōto, to her following the trail and finding Shinji.
Throughout the entire process, she had believed herself the hnuter. And now, at the very end, she was the prey.
Muzan's fury ignited. Pure, undiluted rage at being played for a fool. "You intend to use this human, who appeared out of nowhere...." her voice shifted from cold indifference to dark, seething venom, "....to kill me?"
This time, Shinji did not answer. There was no need.
In that same instant, behind him, Tsugikuni Yoriichi, who had now closed to within thirty paces, opened his mouth. His voice was not loud. Yet it carried clearly through the night. It was clearly not directed at Shinji. It was directed at the Demon King before him.
In that single moment, a wave of scorching heat erupted, as though the sun itself were truly rising. The Sun Breathing swordsman paused briefly in his steps. He did not seem the least bit surprised by the scene before him. Of course he wasn't. Because this was something Shinji had told him before leaving the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters.
He was one of only two who knew that Shinji was using himself as bait. He also knew that the being he now faced was the Demon King recorded in the annals of the Corps, the one who had persisted for five hundred years. He had so many questions he wanted to ask this creature.
About its purpose in creating demons. About its intent to twist humanity. About the truth behind its desecration of human will. Yet in the end, only a single sentence remained. And a single draw of the blade.
"What… do you take life for?"