Following Daki's cries, a bone-chilling sound of grinding bones suddenly came from the back of the headless corpse.
"Hehehe..."
The flesh on the back of the corpse began to churn violently like a boiling swamp. Immediately after, a pair of emaciated hands with long black nails tore through the skin and flesh on Daki's back and crawled out.
A demonic aura, ten times more intense than Daki's and carrying a nauseating stench of decay and death, instantly enveloped the entire Kyogoku House.
"Who made my dear sister cry?"
An extremely thin man with a bare upper body and black spots covering his skin stood up from the flesh, his back hunched. He held two strangely shaped bone sickles in his hands, and the characters "Upper Rank" and "Six" were clearly engraved in his eyes.
The true Upper Rank Six, Gyutaro.
He turned his stiff neck, his gaze sweeping over the panicked civilians fleeing around him, before finally landing on Yamada, who was stepping on Daki's head.
There was no anger in Gyutaro's eyes, only a twisted, extreme jealousy.
Looking at Yamada's handsome face, upright figure, and spotless clothes, his shriveled lips curled into an ugly arc, revealing a mouth of jagged fangs.
"It's so infuriating. Such a handsome face, such clean clothes. You must be very popular with women, right? You must have never suffered in your life, right?"
Gyutaro murmured in an extremely malicious voice while scratching the spots on his face with his nails, causing blood to flow freely.
"So jealous... I really want to peel that face off. Daring to bully my only sister, I'm going to use this sickle to cut your flesh off piece by piece."
Facing this pathological raving, Yamada moved his foot slightly off Daki's head.
"Finally willing to crawl out from under a woman's skirt."
Yamada raised his eyelids, his pitch-black pupils undergoing a qualitative change at this moment.
A scarlet background instantly spread across his entire eyeballs, and a complex pattern, where a six-pointed star and three tomoe were perfectly fused, slowly took shape in his pupils.
Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, activate!
The moment these eyes opened, the air on the first floor of the Kyogoku House seemed to be instantly drained away.
A terrifying sense of oppression, indescribable in words, poured out from Yamada's body without reservation.
Gyutaro, who had been rambling and scratching his face frantically, stopped his voice abruptly. His eyes, which were usually devoid of ripples, widened sharply, and even the hand holding the bone sickle trembled instinctively.
What is going on?!
Gyutaro's heart was in turmoil.
As an Upper Rank who had survived for over a century, he had killed countless Hashira and drunk the blood of countless strong individuals. But the moment he met these scarlet eyes, his body's instincts were screaming warnings to his brain.
Run!
You will die! You will absolutely die!
This shivering feeling from the depths of his soul was something he had only experienced when meeting Muzan.
"You're the guy who injured Akaza near the Mugen Train?!"
Gyutaro finally realized—the warning Muzan had shared with them via blood not long ago, the black-haired swordsman who mastered eerie lightning.
"Are you so-called Upper Ranks all this weak?"
Yamada held the Kusanagi Sword in one hand and walked toward Gyutaro step by step.
The dull sound of his leather boots stepping on the wooden floor fell into Gyutaro's ears like the countdown of death.
"Don't be too arrogant! Humans are, after all, just humans!" Gyutaro suppressed the fear in his heart and let out a beast-like roar.
His legs exerted sudden force, shattering the wooden floor beneath him, and he turned into a green afterimage, charging toward Yamada.
Blood Demon Art: Flying Blood Sickles!
Swish... Swish...
He swung the twin sickles in his hands frantically, throwing out dozens of crescent-shaped wind blades condensed from poisonous blood.
These blades were not only incomparably sharp but also carried deadly poison. Even if they just grazed the skin, a Hashira would die from the poison in a very short time.
Facing this airtight slaughter of poison blades, Yamada didn't stop his pace. The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan in his eyes rotated slowly.
Gyutaro's lightning-fast movements were like a clumsy performance slowed down by ten times in his vision. The trajectory of every blade and the splashing angle of every drop of poisonous blood were parsed clearly.
"Too slow."
Ding... Ding...
The dense sound of metal clashing exploded. Those dozens of deadly poisonous wind blades were all blocked and deflected by Yamada's extremely precise parries. Not a single drop of poisonous blood could stain his clothes.
"How is this possible?! He didn't even use Breathing Techniques!" Gyutaro was terrified.
This was his pride-and-joy Blood Demon Art, yet it was resolved so casually?
Before he could recover, Yamada's figure had already penetrated the blockade of blood blades and appeared at his side.
"Your speed is far worse than that idiot who likes to throw punches." A cold voice sounded in Gyutaro's ear.
Splat!
The black blade, carrying a cold purple light, slashed diagonally from bottom to top.
Gyutaro felt a chill in his right arm, and immediately after, the arm holding the sickle flew high into the air.
"Ahhhh!"
Gyutaro screamed, his body retreating violently, and the sickle in his left hand subconsciously hooked toward Yamada's neck.
Yamada didn't even look, raising his left leg and delivering a whip kick that struck Gyutaro's abdomen with force before the attack could land.
Bang!
Gyutaro, who was kicked away, crashed through the layered wooden walls of the Kyogoku House, flying dozens of meters, and slammed heavily onto the main street outside the Yoshiwara, creating a huge deep pit.
Yamada carried the Kusanagi Sword on his shoulder, stepped over the wreckage everywhere, and walked out through the smashed hole.
On the street, the crowd that had originally been seeking pleasure had long fled without a trace, leaving only the red lanterns on both sides swaying precariously in the night wind.
"With just this much ability, you deserve to occupy the title of Upper Rank?" Yamada looked at Gyutaro, who was struggling to reorganize his arm at the bottom of the pit, his eyes full of boredom.
This was the overwhelming power after activating the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. Without the worry of vision loss and physical backlash, every casual strike he made carried an insurmountable chasm of difference.