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Chapter 100: The Philosophy of Right and Wrong, Benefit and Harm
Faced with Suyan's brutally logical deconstruction, Ubuyashiki Kagaya was rendered entirely speechless. For the first time, he didn't know how to respond.
And it wasn't just Kagaya who was silenced. The Hashira, who had been directing absolute, murderous hostility toward Suyan just seconds prior, found themselves similarly stunned into silence.
An eerie, suffocating quiet descended upon the courtyard.
Suyan calmly swept his gaze over the assembled swordsmen. Truthfully, his overall assessment of the Demon Slayer Corps was quite high. They were, at their core, a tragic gathering of broken people united purely by a desperate need to avenge their loved ones. Furthermore, their relentless crusade against demons actively benefited humanity as a whole.
But when it came to their leader, Ubuyashiki Kagaya, Suyan held very little respect.
First and foremost was the point he had just made. They had arbitrarily assigned the blame for their genetic, hereditary disease directly onto Kibutsuji Muzan.
Of course, from a strategic standpoint, Suyan couldn't exactly fault them for that. Pinning every conceivable tragedy onto the main villain was a highly effective propaganda tactic. It layered a deeply personal blood feud right on top of their grand, righteous cause, dramatically reinforcing their faction's motivation to fight.
What Suyan genuinely couldn't comprehend was the Ubuyashiki family's method of operation. Regardless of whether their illness was truly a mystical curse from Muzan or just a horrific genetic disorder, actively choosing to continue breeding while fully aware that their offspring were doomed to agonizing, abbreviated lives was fundamentally twisted.
To forcefully saddle their children with the despair-inducing, seemingly impossible task of eradicating Muzan? To pass down that suffocating inherited trauma generation after generation?
Perhaps to the zealous swordsmen of the Corps, this unwavering dedication seemed incredibly selfless and profoundly noble. But perhaps because Suyan had grown up as an orphan, he viewed the situation through a starkly different lens. He found the Ubuyashiki family's methodology—pushing their generational failures onto their descendants while claiming it was "passing the torch"—to be the absolute pinnacle of catastrophic irresponsibility.
Even modern doctors would severely counsel expecting parents to deeply reconsider bringing a child to term if they knew the infant would inherit a guaranteed, fatal genetic disease.
And it wasn't as if the Ubuyashiki bloodline was somehow cosmically indispensable to the Demon Slayer Corps. Even if the Ubuyashiki family went extinct, and the current iteration of the Corps collapsed, the war wouldn't end.
As long as Muzan never abandoned his frantic search for the Blue Spider Lily, and as long as he continued to desperately seek a way to conquer the sun, he would endlessly manufacture new demons. The biological reality that demons had to consume humans to grow stronger permanently guaranteed that humanity and demons would exist in a perpetual state of total war.
Throughout history, there would never be a shortage of humans whose lives had been shattered by demons. These victims would inevitably band together. Maybe they'd call themselves the Demon Extermination Squad, or the Demon Killers. It would just be a different leader operating under a different banner.
Hell, one could easily argue that as human technology inevitably advanced, Muzan was on a ticking clock toward being violently outclassed by modern weaponry. If Muzan had the profound misfortune of living anywhere near Hiroshima a few decades down the line, the Demon Slayer Corps wouldn't even need to lift a finger. Little Boy would effortlessly vaporize the Demon King into subatomic ash.
If Suyan could categorize the Ubuyashiki bloodline's generational trauma as 'incomprehensible but theoretically respectable,' then Kagaya's specific handling of the Corps' Final Selection was something Suyan could only describe as 'mind-bogglingly idiotic.'
Turning the entrance exam for the Demon Slayer Corps into a chaotic, battle-royale meat grinder by throwing completely inexperienced recruits onto a mountain infested with starved demons? It completely ignored a recruit's actual potential or skill ceiling, instead heavily favoring blind, dumb luck. As long as they managed to rat their way through the time limit, they were officially welcomed as full-fledged combatants.
The sheer flaw in this system was perfectly highlighted by Giyuu's graduating class. Literally every other recruit had survived and become a Demon Slayer, while the singular most talented and powerful swordsman among them—Sabito—had been slaughtered.
Furthermore, every single year, the highly trained, elite disciples produced by the former Water Hashira were systematically butchered during this exact exam. Yet somehow, the higher-ups in the Corps completely failed to notice this glaring statistical anomaly. They happily maintained this utterly braindead selection process right up until the protagonist, Tanjiro, finally arrived to kill the Hand Demon—a creature that functioned as an early-game mini-boss.
Looking at it from the outside, one really had to wonder if this supposedly benevolent Master secretly operated under the philosophy of: If you pass, you are my precious child. If you die, you were just trash on the side of the road. Suyan truly couldn't fathom how an organization utilizing such a catastrophically wasteful recruitment system had managed to survive for a thousand years. Was Muzan genuinely just that efficient at mass-producing tragedies to ensure a never-ending supply of suicidal, revenge-driven recruits?
However, Suyan hadn't verbally dismantled Kagaya purely out of spite. He had a very specific methodology regarding how he operated.
Suyan's philosophy on life was incredibly straightforward. With strangers, it was strictly a matter of cost versus benefit—right and wrong were irrelevant; only the final outcome mattered. But with his own people, the exact opposite was true. Right and wrong were absolute, and the cost was irrelevant; the process mattered far more than just the result.
Because of this, his ruthless verbal assault had primarily been launched for the sake of the person he had already earmarked as a future Contract target: Kocho Shinobu.
While taking shots at the Ubuyashiki family seemed completely unrelated to Shinobu, the reality was that most people in this island nation possessed a bizarre, deeply ingrained samurai-loyalty complex. As the sole leaders of the Demon Slayer Corps for a millennium, the Ubuyashiki family had successfully brainwashed their soldiers into viewing the Master as an infallible, god-like figure who demanded absolute, unquestioning loyalty.
But Suyan absolutely refused to tolerate his Contracted subordinates holding primary loyalty toward anyone other than himself.
To his immense surprise, he hadn't even needed to finish dismantling the Master's ideological grip on the Hashira. When Suyan had openly insulted Kagaya, Shinobu—perhaps because she genuinely believed his fabricated story about being Kanae's lover—had not instantly dropped into a hostile combat stance like the rest of her peers.
That micro-reaction proved exactly what Suyan needed to know: in Shinobu's heart, her loyalty to her deceased sister, Kanae, vastly outweighed her loyalty to the Demon Slayer Corps.
Having confirmed that crucial piece of intel, Suyan was entirely confident in his ability to successfully form a Contract with her. The rest of this charade was just a matter of going through the motions.
"Never mind." Suyan finally broke the suffocating silence, waving his hand dismissively. "You can take your time to ponder that paradox on your own. I do, however, acknowledge your family's absolute resolve to eliminate Kibutsuji Muzan."
Suyan held up a single finger, locking eyes with Kagaya. "Because of that, I have two questions for you. First: to destroy Kibutsuji Muzan, are you willing to pay absolutely any price?"
"That…?" Kagaya hesitated, his mind still reeling from Suyan's previous psychological assault. While he fundamentally believed in the curse and possessed the ironclad resolve to sacrifice anything to destroy Muzan, he still had other complex responsibilities to consider.
"I am asking you, Ubuyashiki Kagaya, the individual. Not the Ubuyashiki family," Suyan clarified sharply.
"I am!" Kagaya answered instantly, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. If it was solely regarding his own personal sacrifice, he would gladly pay any price to see Muzan burn.
"Excellent." Suyan nodded in satisfaction. He then raised a second finger. "Then here is my second question. If a warrior capable of utterly defeating Kibutsuji Muzan—someone on the exact same level as Yoriichi Tsugikuni—were to appear right now… would you be willing to unconditionally support them and comply with their every demand?"
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