Chapter 84: Maru, asking me to retreat to logistics, I cannot do it.
However, the situation for Kocho Shinobu, who was sitting next to her, was the exact opposite.
"Abandon distracting thoughts? Achieve selflessness? Simply absurd!"
Kocho Shinobu sneered in her heart.
Whenever she closed her eyes, her sister's past injuries would involuntarily surface in her mind,
along with the tragic state of those Demon Slayer Corps swordsmen cruelly murdered by demons,
and the image of Tatsu threatening her just a moment ago.
How could she possibly achieve "selflessness" in front of her enemy?
How could she possibly lower her guard to sense some ethereal realm?
As time passed, not only did Kocho Shinobu fail to perceive any so-called "perception beyond the five senses,"
but she actually became restless due to keeping her eyes closed for so long and her high level of Spiritual tension.
She only felt that this so-called "Transparent World" was complete nonsense.
She even began to suspect whether Tatsu had deliberately fabricated this thing just to torture their minds.
I do not know how much time had passed, but the eastern horizon began to show a hint of white.
The deepest darkness before dawn was gradually fading, and the cold morning dew condensed on the leaves, dripping onto the soil.
Tatsu's brows furrowed slightly.
"Let's end it here for today."
Tatsu spoke up, interrupting the training.
Kanae slowly opened her eyes, turned her head to look at Tatsu, her voice slightly hoarse from sitting still for so long:
"Tatsu... I think... I felt a little bit. Just for a moment, I felt like everything around me was different."
"You did very well, Kanae." Tatsu looked at her, the indifference in his eyes fading, replaced once again by gentleness,
"Your heart is very pure, which is exactly the aptitude most needed for the Transparent World. Don't rush, take your time, you will definitely master it completely."
Hearing Tatsu's praise, Kanae revealed a brilliant smile.
Beside her, Kocho Shinobu also opened her eyes. She let out a long breath of stale air, feeling sore all over, her head feeling like a tangled mess.
What Transparent World, she hadn't even felt a ghost of a shadow! She hadn't learned a thing!
But when she turned her head and saw Tatsu showing that kind of "gentle" smile to her sister, the alarm bells in her heart rang loudly again.
"Oh my, it seems I am too stupid; I completely failed to grasp the profound realm that Tatsu spoke of."
Kocho Shinobu stood up, brushed the fallen leaves off her Haori, and looked at Tatsu with a smile,
"I am truly sorry for wasting the demon... Tatsu's time all night. However, seeing that my sister gained something, I can rest easy."
Tatsu ignored Kocho Shinobu's barbed words.
He pulled the green nichirin sword stuck in the soil, turned around, and with his back to the rising morning sun, walked out of the forest.
"The sun is coming out, let's go back." Tatsu coldly dropped this sentence, and his figure quickly merged into the final shadows before dawn.
Kocho Shinobu watched Tatsu's departing back, the smile on her face gradually fading until it completely disappeared.
"No matter what conspiracy you have," Kocho Shinobu's fingers tightly gripped her sword hilt, "one day, I will personally cut off your head!"
...
The wooden cabin.
Masashi sat kneeling in front of a low table.
On the table lay a large glass syringe.
The syringe's barrel was filled with a purple liquid so concentrated it was almost black.
That was wisteria poison, the lethal poison that Masashi had collected and purified drop by drop over this period by asking all the acquaintances he knew in the Demon Slayer Corps.
He had no hands and could not pick up the syringe like a normal person.
Masashi suddenly lowered his head, opened his chapped lips, and bit down hard on the end of the syringe's plunger.
He moved his body with difficulty, aligning his right shoulder with the thick, long needle on the table.
"Urgh..."
Masashi leaned forward abruptly, letting the needle pierce deeply into the muscle of his right shoulder.
"Hiss—" The intense pain instantly swept through his entire body like an electric current. Masashi's body convulsed violently, but he held onto the syringe tightly with his teeth, not allowing himself to retreat a single step.
Using the strength of his neck and chin, he pressed down with all his might, pushing the lethal purple poison in the syringe into his veins little by little.
The moment the wisteria poison entered his body, Masashi felt as if boiling magma had been injected into his blood vessels.
That excruciating pain, which was hard to describe in words, felt as if thousands of venomous ants were crazily gnawing at his internal organs and tearing at his nerves.
This was the torture he repeated every day. He injected wisteria poison into his own body, challenging his body's tolerance limit every single day.
Since he had already lost the arms to wield a nichirin sword, and since he had become a cripple who had difficulty even taking care of himself, he would use this broken shell as his final weapon to kill the demon.
Just when Masashi was in so much pain he was about to faint and his consciousness was beginning to blur, the half-closed window was suddenly blown open by a gust of night wind.
"Flap, flap—" Accompanied by a sudden rush of wing beats, a pitch-black Kasugai Crow, slightly larger than an ordinary crow, flew in from outside the window.
It landed steadily on the wooden shelf beside Masashi, and in those pitch-black, bean-like eyes, there was an unexpectedly anthropomorphic expression of anxiety and sadness.
This was Masashi's Kasugai Crow, named Maru.
"Caw! Masashi! Stop! Quickly stop! Caw!"
Maru flapped its wings, flew to Masashi's shoulder, and gently pecked at Masashi's clothes with its sharp beak, attempting to stop his near-suicidal, crazy action.
"Masashi, stop injecting it! Your body won't be able to take it! You will die! Caw! You will poison yourself to death!"
Maru was so anxious that it kept hopping on Masashi's shoulder, its wings helplessly flapping against Masashi's cheek.
Maru knew all too well what its master was doing. Masashi wanted to use his own body, which was filled with lethal poison, to let the demon eat him.
He wanted to kill that demon named 'Tatsu' by taking it down with him.
After that incident, a major event occurred within the Demon Slayer Corps that shocked everyone.
Flower Hashira Kanae Kocho had actually drawn her sword against her colleagues to protect a demon named Tatsu, and had taken that demon and defected from the Demon Slayer Corps.
His older brother had his bones cruelly crushed by a demon while trying to protect humans. And yet, one of the high and mighty Hashira was actually protecting a demon?
Masashi kept his eyes tightly closed, enduring the turbulent, agonizing pain inside his body, until the last drop of purple liquid in the syringe was pushed into his body; only then did he suddenly release his teeth.
"Clang!" The syringe, stained with saliva, fell onto the wooden table, making a crisp sound.
Masashi turned his head with difficulty, looking at Maru, who was anxiously spinning in circles on his shoulder, and pulled his lips into an extremely bleak smile, one that looked worse than crying.
"Maru... asking me to retreat to logistics... I cannot do it."
His gaze slowly shifted and landed in the corner of the room. There, a nichirin sword with a green scabbard was leaning quietly.
That was his former sword, and it was his pride as a Demon Slayer Corps swordsman. That emerald-green blade had once severed the heads of demons, but now, he didn't even have the qualification to pull it out of its scabbard.
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