Gyutaro climbed out of the pit and spat out a mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of internal organs. He stared fixedly at Yamada, who was walking over slowly, and there was finally no jealousy in his eyes, only desperate madness.
"Bastard! Don't think you've won! My sister and I are much stronger than humans!"
Gyutaro gripped the sickle tightly with his newly grown right arm, his poisonous blood boiling to the extreme, preparing for a life-or-death struggle.
Yamada stopped, and the six-pointed star pattern in his eyes contracted slightly. "Today, I will let you witness what it means to be burned to ashes, even down to the soul."
Hum!
The ocular power in his left eye focused instantly.
Amaterasu!
Puff!
Without warning, a cluster of eerie, ink-black flames ignited out of thin air on Gyutaro's chest.
There was no firelight, no heatwave, only an aura of destruction that was pure to the extreme. These black flames were like maggots on bones. The moment they touched Gyutaro's flesh, it was as if they had encountered the finest fuel, spreading wildly in all directions.
"What is this?! So hot! It's burning me!"
Gyutaro let out a heart-rending scream. He desperately used his hands to pat the black flames on his chest, only to find that the flames could not be extinguished at all, and instead, even his hands were ignited.
His regeneration became a joke under the burning of Amaterasu. The newly grown granulation tissue was instantly burned to ashes, regrown, and burned again. This was an endless torment.
Under the burning of the inextinguishable black flames, Gyutaro could only roll and wail in pain on the streets of Yoshiwara.
He raised the sickles in his left hand, attempting to ruthlessly carve out his burning chest along with the flesh.
Splat!
A large amount of poisonous blood sprayed out, but he discovered with despair that those black flames were following the splattered blood, climbing onto his sickles and his left arm.
This kind of fire could not be extinguished by physical means at all.
"Brother! What happened to you, brother!"
In the ruins of the Kyogoku House not far away, Daki, who was left with only her head, screamed shrilly.
Although she had been decapitated, under the special mechanism of the Upper Rank Six being two bodies in one, as long as Gyutaro did not die, she would not turn to ash.
Watching Gyutaro who had always stood in front of her rolling on the ground, burned by a bizarre black fire, unprecedented fear finally welled up from the bottom of her heart.
"Don't... don't come over! Run!"
Gyutaro's face was covered in charred remains, and his eyes had been burned down to two black holes. Even under such excruciating torture, his remaining reason was still roaring at his sister.
"Run? Where can you run?"
Yamada stood less than five steps away from Gyutaro, looking down at the desperate siblings.
The Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan slowly rotated in the night, and the ocular power of his right eye suddenly constricted.
Kagutsuchi!
The black flames originally clinging to Gyutaro instantly split into a pitch-black whip of fire.
The fire whip drew a sharp arc in mid-air, wrapping around Daki's head and her headless torso in the distance.
"Ahhhhh!!! It burns! Brother, save me! I don't want to die!"
Daki burst into ear-piercing screams, her face instantly melting and deforming under the licking of the black flames.
The decapitation rule of the Upper Rank Six might be an absolute iron law in this world. But in the face of Amaterasu's incineration, whether you are beheaded together or separately, as long as you are burned into ash without a single cell remaining, even the strongest rule is just a scrap of paper.
Yamada did not listen to their dying wails and confessions. He was not one of those sentimental Demon Slayers, and he had no interest in exploring what kind of miserable encounters these two demons had in their past.
Since they stood on the opposite side, he would send them to hell with the cleanest and most efficient method.
After just over ten seconds, the screaming gradually weakened and finally subsided completely.
The Upper Rank Six siblings, along with their clothes and sickles, all turned into a pool of black ash under the burning of Amaterasu.
As the night wind blew, it scattered into the air of the Yoshiwara Red-Light District, as if they had never existed in this world.
"Finally quiet."
Yamada closed his right eye. When he opened it again, the residual black flames on the ground extinguished instantly without damaging the surrounding buildings in the slightest.
Kagutsuchi's perfect control over the flames allowed him to retract them at will.
Boom!
Just then, there was a loud crash of roof tiles shattering at the end of the street.
A burly figure descended from the sky, and two huge swords flashed with cold light under the moonlight.
The moment Tengen landed, he assumed the most rigorous defensive posture. He had just sensed the suffocating demonic pressure from afar and rushed over at top speed, prepared to face a life-or-death battle.
Immediately following, three slightly disheveled figures also rushed out from the street corner.
Tanjiro held his nichirin blade, and Zenitsu and Inosuke had also torn off the cumbersome, low-quality kimonos they were wearing. The three were panting, looking around with wary faces.
"Yamada-san! Where is that Upper Rank?!" Tanjiro sniffed nervously, trying to find the enemy's location.
Yamada turned around, looked at these four guys who were wary, and pointed casually at the pile of black ash that still held residual warmth at his feet.
"You're late. The ashes have already been scattered."
"..."
Tengen maintained his sword-raising posture, freezing in place.
He looked down at the pile of ash, then at Yamada, who didn't even have a wrinkle on his clothes or a change in his breathing, and felt his head buzzing.
"Dead? Just like that?"
Tengen's voice rose an octave involuntarily, "That's an Upper Rank! I hadn't even finished my warm-up, and you're telling me you slaughtered them by yourself in a few minutes?!"
Tanjiro was also stunned. He had clearly smelled two extremely terrifying demonic auras just now, and that level of oppression was definitely several levels higher than Enmu on the Mugen Train.
But...
The battle ended in less time than it took them to get here?
"Otherwise? Should I have kept them for a midnight snack?"
Yamada sheathed his Kusanagi Sword, making a crisp metallic sound.
"A weakling that only knows how to play with ribbons, and a sick demon who likes to throw boomerangs. Except for being a bit tenacious, they were completely useless."
Listening to this merciless evaluation, Tengen swallowed his saliva.
He had actually dared to challenge such a guy before.
A monster who could clean up an Upper Rank like trash—if he had really wanted to kill him back then, it probably would have been a matter of a blink of an eye.