It was the darkest hour of the day.
There was still some time before dawn.
Under the cover of night, the young girl's attack was like a symbol tearing through the darkness, seemingly becoming the most brilliant splash of color in the gloomy night sky.
"Insect Breathing! Dance of the Dragonfly! Compound Eye Hexagon!"
The girl's figure descended gracefully like a butterfly.
Her Nichirin Sword, uniquely forged compared to those of other Demon Slayer Corps members, thrust forward rapidly.
Among all the Hashira in the Demon Slayer Corps, Shinobu Kocho's physical strength was undoubtedly at the very bottom.
She was so weak that she couldn't even use a Nichirin Sword to properly decapitate a demon, falling short of even some ordinary Corps members.
Because of this, she derived her exclusive Insect Breathing from her older sister Kanae Kocho's Flower Breathing.
Taking a different approach, her goal was no longer to sever a demon's head.
Instead, she developed a lethal poison effective against demons, coated her Nichirin Sword with it, and killed her enemies by thrusting her blade into their bodies to inject the fatal toxin during combat.
Therefore, unlike the breathing styles of other Demon Slayer Corps members, Shinobu's Insect Breathing lacked any slashing motions.
It consisted solely of the simplest, fastest, and most lethal thrusts.
This specific technique, Compound Eye Hexagon, was designed to rapidly seal off the enemy's escape routes while delivering continuous strikes to inject massive amounts of lethal poison into their body.
If Shinobu's physical strength was the weakest among the Hashira, then her attack speed and frequency—relying entirely on straight thrusts—were absolutely the fastest in the entire Demon Slayer Corps.
Thus, the speed at which she thrust her Nichirin Sword was fast, incredibly fast.
It was so fast that it left afterimages in the air, as if she had launched six simultaneous attacks at different locations.
However...
To Su Yan, a Nen user, even without actively using Nen to enhance his body, it still seemed a bit too slow.
"Sun Breathing! First Form! Dance!"
Su Yan swung his white oak wooden sword. Driven by the breathing style, his life energy instinctively clung to the wooden blade.
Striking later but arriving first.
He used no flashy techniques.
With just a simple slashing motion, he completely intercepted all of Shinobu's attacks.
"Insect Breathing! Dance of the Butterfly! Caprice!"
Seeing that her fastest attack method was ineffective against Su Yan, Shinobu immediately adjusted her breathing rhythm.
Her body fluttered around Su Yan like a dancing butterfly.
Then, she raised her hand and delivered another rapid five-hit thrust.
"Sun Breathing! Second Form! Clear Blue Sky!"
Just like the First Form of Sun Breathing moments ago.
Even though Su Yan's execution appeared incredibly unpolished, he still perfectly blocked every single one of Shinobu's strikes.
'How strange.'
Shinobu flipped backward, using the force transmitted from his blade to gracefully retreat to a tree trunk like a butterfly.
Watching Su Yan mechanically execute Sun Breathing, she couldn't help but feel a sense of bizarre incongruity.
He was clearly using a breathing style he was extremely unfamiliar with, yet he managed to strike later and still block her attacks twice in a row.
Moreover, the force he used was just enough to neutralize her attacks without harming her.
'Is it because of his Blood Demon Art?'
'Or... is he intentionally using me as a whetstone?'
Shinobu glanced at the nearby battlefield between Busujima Saeko and Giyu Tomioka.
She realized that the situation there was also far from ideal.
Giyu was being completely suppressed the entire time.
Yet strangely, he hadn't suffered a single injury so far.
Saeko was like a cat playfully toying with a mouse.
She was executing the exact same breathing style as Su Yan, though her proficiency was clearly a cut above his.
'This can't go on!'
"Insect Breathing! Dance of the Centipede! Hundred-Legged Zigzag!"
Shinobu steeled her resolve.
She immediately unleashed the ultimate secret technique of her Insect Breathing against Su Yan.
"Sun Breathing! Third Form! Raging Sun!"
Su Yan's response remained as unremarkable as ever, methodically executing the next form of Sun Breathing.
At this moment, he wasn't paying attention to which sword form Shinobu was using.
Instead, he was instinctively using the forms of Sun Breathing to neutralize her attacks while focusing most of his attention on himself.
Specifically, the changes in his own life energy when executing Sun Breathing.
Su Yan discovered that when he used Sun Breathing, following the specific breathing rhythm paired with the corresponding sword form, his life energy instinctively gathered onto the white oak sword without needing his conscious control.
It achieved an effect similar to the Nen technique Shu, reinforcing the wooden sword in his hand.
However, the consumption of this life energy was a bit excessive.
If the natural, passive drain of his life energy before learning Nen was a one, and the drain during his Nen initiation was a thousand, then executing a breathing style form consumed at least eighty to a hundred units of life energy.
Su Yan couldn't help but sigh in realization. No wonder the men of the Kamado family who inherited the Hinokami Kagura all lived such short lives.
Using Sun Breathing every day, which drained so much life energy.
With only output and no intake.
How could they not die young?
Having figured this out, Su Yan only had one question left.
During his year in the Highschool of the Dead world.
Through subsequent contracts, Su Yan had also figured out the function of that Nen seed.
Normally, after a contractor awakened their Nen, they were similar to ordinary Nen users.
But if contracted after their Nen pores were opened, perhaps because they retained a Nen aura that didn't belong to them, the contractor would have a one hundred percent training efficiency in their innate Nen category, while the two adjacent categories would also be higher than average, reaching ninety percent.
And for someone like Minami Rika, who spent a massive amount of time and effort painstakingly mastering Nen.
After forming a contract, she achieved an astonishing one hundred percent efficiency not only in her innate Specialist category but also in the adjacent Manipulation and Conjuration categories.
So, given that breathing styles could achieve an alternative method of controlling internal life energy.
Could contracting a swordsman who had mastered a breathing style yield an effect similar to Minami Rika's?
Su Yan couldn't help but feel curious about this.
He then turned his gaze to Shinobu nearby. "Is this it? Is this all a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps amounts to?"
"Pant, pant."
A drop of sweat rolled down Shinobu's forehead.
During the brief moment Su Yan was distracted, she had already unleashed every single breathing style form she knew against him.
Yet, it had been completely useless.
Every single attack was effortlessly blocked by Su Yan, and her continuous, relentless assault had severely depleted her stamina.
By now, she could barely maintain her breathing rhythm.
The young girl couldn't see any hope of defeating him.
The same was true for Giyu's battlefield on the other side.
The current situation was incredibly dire for them.
Let alone winning, even escaping would be difficult.
'Is Muzan really this powerful?'
"I'm far from done, Mr. Demon. I will definitely pierce your heart with my Nichirin Sword," Shinobu said, forcing the words out.
"Is that so?"
Su Yan replied calmly, "I look forward to it."
However, just as Shinobu was about to attack Su Yan again.
Su Yan spoke up, offering another truce. "I originally wanted to play with you a little longer, but it seems there's no time."
"So, can we call a truce, Miss Shinobu Kocho?"
"What?"
Shinobu was momentarily stunned.
They were clearly being completely suppressed by him, so what did he mean by suddenly saying something like that?
Following Su Yan's gaze, she looked up.
Only then did she realize that the sky was already beginning to lighten.
On the clouds at the easternmost edge of the sky, brilliant golden streaks had even begun to weave together.
Dawn was breaking!
The sun was coming out!
To demons, the warm sun was a poison far more lethal than the one coating her Nichirin Sword.
So he was planning to run away?
'No way!'
A hint of joy couldn't help but appear on Shinobu's face.
Su Yan shook his head and sighed regretfully. "Is that so? What a pity."
As soon as he finished speaking, a brilliant ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone directly onto Su Yan.
Seeing this, Shinobu was completely dumbfounded.
Demon King Muzan...
Was committing suicide?!
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