Soon, Tanjiro returned with a broken bamboo basket and a few pieces of bamboo, stopping in front of the cave.
"Why is there suddenly a cave here? Did I get the location wrong?" Tanjiro set the basket down and scratched his head.
"Nezuko doesn't like sunlight. I made it for her."
Ivan's voice came from deep inside the cave.
"No… way." Tanjiro was stunned by Ivan's strength. He looked at the knife-sharp cuts around the cave entrance and couldn't help reaching out to touch them.
Then he sat cross-legged at the cave entrance, used the axe at his waist to split the bamboo, and skillfully repaired the broken basket with bamboo strips.
While Tanjiro worked on the basket, Ivan kept his eyes closed, forming new eyeballs inside his body. This was nothing difficult for him anymore. At the same time, he noticed that ever since fusing Hyper Sensitivity, his control over his body had reached a whole new level.
"Ivan Onii-sama, are you training?" Tanjiro asked as he brought the repaired basket into the cave.
Since Ivan had mentioned his name on the way, Tanjiro had remembered it right away.
"You could say that." Ivan's tone was cold.
Tanjiro was already used to Ivan not wanting to talk to him much, but he didn't mind.
Tanjiro walked over to Nezuko and placed the finished basket on the ground. "Want to get in here? This way we can travel during the day too."
"Go in… here… inside the basket." Tanjiro pointed at the basket and patiently guided Nezuko.
Nezuko understood. She wriggled into the basket like a caterpillar, but it could only fit half her body.
"Can you make yourself a little smaller? Otherwise the basket won't hold you."
The second Tanjiro spoke,
Nezuko kicked her legs and dove headfirst into the basket. She wiggled her little legs to adjust, then poked her small head out, looking at Tanjiro and Ivan beside him.
"Very good." Tanjiro patted Nezuko's head. Nezuko closed her eyes in enjoyment.
"Let's go." Ivan opened his eyes and walked out of the cave.
Tanjiro quickly picked up the basket and followed behind him.
Along the way, the three of them passed several villages. Most of the people left in the villages were kind old folks. They answered Tanjiro's questions warmly and pointed out the road to Mount Sagiri.
Dusk arrived and night fell. When the three passed a small shrine, Tanjiro stopped.
"Ivan Onii-sama, I smell blood nearby."
"Yeah." Ivan had also caught the faint scent of blood in the air, but he didn't feel like getting involved.
"Someone must be hurt."
Ivan was about to tell Tanjiro to keep walking, but the kid ran straight up the stone steps toward the shrine.
Whatever. Ivan also wanted to see what a real demon was capable of.
But when Tanjiro opened the shrine doors, he saw a room full of corpses. The gruesome state of the bodies made Tanjiro's heart tremble.
Nezuko, who had jumped out of the basket, saw the scene and it seemed to trigger something deep inside her. Tears poured uncontrollably from her eyes.
"You dare interrupt my meal. I won't forgive you." The demon feasting on a corpse lifted its head with a hideous expression and glared at them. It had deep green hair and green striped patterns on its body.
It stood up, wiped the blood from its mouth, and laughed wildly. "Humans? Fresh food delivered right to my door. First time I've seen that."
"Really? This is the first time I've seen a demon like you either."
"Who's there?"
The demon immediately looked behind it and saw a shirtless man staring at it with curious eyes.
"That look on your face really pisses me off!" The demon grinned viciously and swiped its claws at Ivan's neck, but it grabbed nothing but air.
Before the demon could even look surprised, a palm filled its vision.
Ivan grabbed it by the head and dragged it outside the shrine. The sticky floor made him a little uncomfortable.
"Ivan Onii-sama, be careful!" When Tanjiro saw the demon's arms stabbing toward Ivan's waist, he couldn't help shouting a warning.
"I heard you can only die if your head gets cut off with a Nichirin sword?"
"Damn it, why can't I pierce this guy's skin?" The demon realized it might have bitten off more than it could chew, but it still tried to act tough. "Since you know, why don't you let me go? I'm in a good mood today. I'll let you off."
"But I don't believe you."
The next second, Ivan's other hand broke apart into countless tentacles. In an instant, they chopped everything below the demon's neck into pieces smaller than soybeans. The whole process took less than a blink. Tanjiro only saw a flash of white light across the demon's body before it crumbled to the ground like sand.
"What did you do to my body? Let me go!"
The head Ivan was holding roared in panic. It couldn't even sense its own body anymore.
"Is it because of the extremely strong cell activity? If I'm right, some kind of mineral used to make Nichirin swords should suppress and kill the regeneration cells inside demons. After the head is cut off with a Nichirin sword, the cells inside the demon's body can't keep multiplying and lose their vitality. That should be why Nichirin swords can kill demons."
Something that could suppress cell regeneration… Ivan wondered if it could suppress his own.
But he figured the chances were low. His healing ability and a demon's healing ability were two completely different things. Demons got theirs from Muzan's blood while his came from himself. So something that worked on Muzan might not work on him.
"Nezuko, you want this talking ball?"
Ivan smashed the demon's teeth with one punch, then turned and shook the head at Nezuko.
Nezuko seemed to think the demon was Muzan, the one who killed her family. She charged straight at Ivan.
"Here." Ivan tossed the demon's head toward her.
Nezuko kicked it right back.
"Good one."
Ivan jumped up and kicked the head back with perfect accuracy. Nezuko quickly got into the fun of the game.
They kept going back and forth, leaving Tanjiro completely stunned.
Ivan's appearance had completely destroyed the terrifying atmosphere from earlier.
If he lived in the modern world, he would understand that all fear came from insufficient firepower.
"They can't kill the demon like that." Right then, a hand landed on Tanjiro's shoulder. Tanjiro turned and saw a man wearing a tengu mask had appeared behind him at some point.
"Then how do you kill a demon?" Tanjiro asked.
"I want to hear your judgment first." The old man wearing the tengu mask was Sakonji Urokodaki. He used to be the Water Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps.
Now he had retired and become a trainer. Trainers, as the name suggested, were people who trained new recruits to become Demon Slayers.
Forty-seven years ago during the Keio era in Edo, he had defeated a hand demon that was causing trouble in the Edo area and imprisoned it in the Wisteria Prison at the Final Selection on Fujikasane Mountain.
"You cut off the demon's head with a Nichirin sword."
Hearing Tanjiro's answer, Urokodaki looked a little surprised. "So Giyu actually told you that much. Looks like he's made some progress over the years. But I still need to add one more method. Sunlight. Besides using a Nichirin sword, warm sunlight can also kill them."
"Are you sure, old man?" Tanjiro stretched out his right hand and pointed in Ivan's direction.
"Tired of playing?" Ivan saw Nezuko biting her bamboo tube, standing there half-asleep like a kid dozing off in math class. She could sleep standing up.
"In that case, you can go ahead and die."
Ivan grabbed the demon's head and squeezed hard. In an instant, invisible tentacles burst from his palm and shredded the demon completely.
"If you could also chop a demon into powder, you could kill it too. But that method isn't something normal people can do. Even the greatest swordsman couldn't cut a demon smaller than sand in the blink of an eye."
Urokodaki looked at Ivan with a heavy gaze.
Just like Giyu had said, this man had no demon scent on him, yet he could do things only demons could. His body was also surrounded by chaotic air currents. Those currents were powerful but showed no trace of breathing techniques. Was he another special kind of human?
Urokodaki had seen a few special humans like this before.
There was the current Stone Hashira Gyomei Himejima, whose body was like diamond and possessed immense strength.
Then there was the Love Hashira Mitsuri Kanroji, whose muscle density was eight times that of a normal person.
There was also Genya, who was something like a demon. Their physiques were all very special.
"Is he a demon eater?" But the man hadn't shown any signs of demon transformation. Strange. Had a new kind of physique appeared in the world?
The demon eaters Urokodaki was thinking of had first appeared three hundred years ago. Their ability was to consume and digest demon cells to transform themselves into demons.
Unfortunately, their strength was never very high. In the end they usually couldn't suppress their own demon transformation and completely turned into demons.
Seeing Ivan walking toward him, Urokodaki spoke again. "I am Sakonji Urokodaki. Giyu Tomioka sent you, correct?"
"My name is Tanjiro Kamado. This is my sister Nezuko."
"I'm Edogawa Ivan."
"Edogawa? I haven't heard of that surname before. But that doesn't matter. Giyu told me about you. He said you're a very interesting person."
Normally Urokodaki wouldn't teach the breathing technique to someone with a bad personality. They had learned that lesson the hard way many times, and the consequences had been painful. The number of Hashira who had died because of it was countless.
The reason was simple. People like that couldn't resist Muzan's blood. They always wanted to become stronger, even if it meant turning into a demon.
But Ivan was different. From what Giyu had told him, Urokodaki learned that Ivan not only didn't fear Muzan, he actually looked down on him.
If Ivan had said those things without knowing who Muzan was, Urokodaki would have thought he was unreliable and arrogant.
But since he knew Muzan and could easily defeat Giyu, it meant he had real confidence in his own strength. People like that, once their confidence got crushed by Muzan, would immediately crave even greater power.
The only way to break this cycle
was to keep making his strength grow and give him a path to climb higher.
That way, even if he got defeated by Muzan, he wouldn't immediately choose to absorb Muzan's blood to get stronger. Instead he would consider training the breathing technique to its peak.
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69