The figure crashed down like a cannonball, and the sheer force of it blasted Sui backward.
Shinjuro's empty eyes flicked toward her once. Red flames erupted from nowhere and swallowed him whole. When the fire died, the former Flame Hashira was gone.
But by then, no one had any attention left for the puppet of the Flame Hashira.
At the center of the crater in the earth, a man slowly rose to his feet. He rolled his shoulders, flexed the muscles in his arms, and stretched his frame. Dust slid from his skin as wave after wave of terrifying pressure burst from his body, blowing the dirt on the ground outward in ripples like rings across water.
The serpents of perception Sui had released could not get near him. They were shut out entirely.
In the distance, Kanae leapt down with her blade in hand. From above, she could see the newcomer clearly through the settling dust.
Indigo tattoos crawled across his pale skin. His golden eyes burned in the blizzard like ghost-fire. Even the light touch of his feet on the ground made the earth tremble like some ancient beast.
"What beautiful reflexes," the man said, shaking out his wrist as he narrowed his eyes and fixed them on the woman standing ahead with her eyes closed.
"I did not wish to do this. I had meant to grant you a swift death." His voice was low. "A woman in a crimson haori, wearing wind chime earrings. I had assumed you were weak. But that fighting spirit surging from you—I can see your strength with my bare eyes alone. You are a Hashira, are you not? The one Lord Muzan ordered killed."
Kanae's steps faltered.
The one Muzan had ordered killed… what did that mean?
Muzan wanted Sui dead?
Many swordsmen of the Demon Slayer Corps had fallen in battle, but never before had there been someone specifically named and marked for death by a demon.
And that one—
The aura pouring from him was beyond compare. His body shook the earth. He was nothing like any demon they had ever encountered before. Kanae rushed closer to the battlefield, and at last she saw the character engraved in his eyes.
Upper Rank Three.
"As one of the strong, you have earned the right to hear my name." The demon paid Kanae no attention at all. His gaze remained fixed on Sui. "I am Akaza, Upper Rank Three."
"So Muzan sent you to kill me?" Sui's breathing sharpened as the serpents finally broke through the battle spirit swirling around the demon and locked onto him once more.
Akaza frowned. There were tiny, unclean things probing at him—those eyes of hers.
"And he sent only you?" Sui's voice came suddenly near him. The instant she struck, her blade was already aimed straight at his face.
Even Akaza was taken aback by her speed. Then he threw back his head and laughed. "You truly are strong! Thunder Breathing—you are the Sound Hashira, aren't you? Of all the Hashira I have slain, you are the strongest one yet!"
He punched forward.
The entire mountain shook.
Kanae had only just drawn her blade when the spot where Akaza had been standing erupted with a ring-shaped shockwave.
Even in her state of total concentration, Sui was forced backward by raw force. Her blade gouged a blackened trench into the earth. In a direct clash of strength, she had come out worse. But when Akaza tried to press the attack, he found her figure blurring and shifting. What he touched were only afterimages.
"Thunder Breathing, First Form: Thunderclap Flash!"
A pillar of dark violet lightning tore through the sky—
—but it hit nothing.
Akaza's laughter came from every direction. "Too slow!"
His fist burst through the lightning and changed course mid-strike, reaching for Kanae's throat instead. "I'll clear away the useless pest first—"
"Flower Breathing, Third Form: Honorable Shadow Plum!"
Four curved slashes barely intercepted the killing blow. A crack split Kanae's blade. The aftershock of Akaza's punch tore half her haori apart, and her exposed shoulder was instantly shredded with bloody lines.
The demon remained expressionless. "Flowers are too fragile. I will not kill you. Leave."
Lightning exploded across the ground.
Sui's blade shrieked like a crane's cry as it cleaved toward the back of Akaza's neck. He caught the flat of the sword one-handed without even turning. Dark violet lightning surged like a flood between them, and the snow within a hundred-meter radius melted in an instant.
"That is more like it!" Akaza's muscles swelled, blue veins slithering beneath his tattoos. He clenched his fist, flung Kanae aside, and drove a punch toward Sui's head.
The air compressed into a visible shockwave.
"Thunder Breathing, Fifth Form: Heat Lightning."
The net of lightning born from the sword form collided head-on with the fist wind. The resulting blast snapped the pines in the distance clean in half. Kanae steadied her breathing and realized she could no longer keep up with a battle on this level. To her eyes, Sui and the demon had been reduced to streaks and afterimages. All she could see were the positions they had already occupied in the instant before.
Then came a thunderous crash.
Sui appeared in front of Kanae, scooped her up, and withdrew. Where they had been standing a heartbeat ago, the earth had exploded into a crater ten meters wide. Akaza's feet stood in the smoking pit.
"Why concern yourself with the weak? I have no intention of killing that feeble woman," Akaza said coldly, apparently dissatisfied that Sui had disengaged from him.
Even now, Kanae was still studying him. Even if she could die at any moment, she was desperately trying to find some weakness in the Upper Rank Three for Sui to exploit.
Akaza was more terrifying than anything she had imagined. Every movement of his contained overwhelming violence, yet within that violence lurked the oppressive perfection of martial skill.
"Do not lose focus." Sui pushed Kanae toward safety. Dark violet patterns flickered along Hachigū's blade, then deepened, turning black. "Kanae, I only need one opening to strike at his neck. As long as I can land the hit… no matter how strong he is, he will die."
Kanae froze.
She saw it then—the deep, icy blue glow flickering inside Sui's open eyes.
There was no time to wonder what it was. She only knew she had been entrusted with a task.
She had to create the opening.
Akaza watched the two women rearrange themselves with open amusement.
Kanae drew a deep breath. Her pale pink blade bloomed into a thousand flower petals, and Akaza shivered with excitement. "Yes! That is it! Give me everything you have! Delight me!"
He stomped.
"Destructive Death: Compass Needle!"
An ice-blue snowflake pattern spread instantly beneath his feet, every trace of living battle spirit transformed into golden lines.
Akaza found Kanae's true body at once amid the illusions of Flower Breathing and punched.
This was the foundation of Akaza's combat style: a snowflake-like formation spreading out in twelve directions from his body. Through it, he could sense his opponent's fighting spirit. Once Compass Needle was active, Akaza moved like the hand of a compass drawn by invisible magnetism, striking directly at his foe's vital weaknesses.
Illusions on the level of Flower Breathing were something he could see through in a single glance.
"Thunder Breathing, Sixth Form: Rumble and Flash!"
Sui's slash came second—yet arrived first. Dense, high-speed blows split a vacuum channel straight through the range of the Compass Needle.
For the first time, Akaza's golden eyes narrowed. Forced to withdraw his punch and block, he lost a large strip of flesh from his forearm to Hachigū's edge. Kanae's flower-like slash drew a line of demon blood from his waist.
"Magnificent!" the demon roared with laughter as he blasted the two women apart. Even as his severed waist regenerated under his Blood Demon Art, he cried, "But what about this? Destructive Death: Annihilation Type!"
An invisible pressure descended, and every animal in the mountain fled in terror.
The very ground sank.
Centered on Akaza, a circular shockwave spread like the impact of a falling meteor. Kanae's broken Nichirin Blade was knocked from her hands, and the ringing chime of Sui's earrings went wild. The serpents she had released to track Akaza were annihilated at once, unable to penetrate the battle spirit wrapping around his body.
Tons of snow were hurled skyward. Under the moonlight, only lightning and fists remained, weaving together into a blinding net.
Kanae swung her broken blade and, with the final phantom of Flower Breathing, created a momentary opening for Sui.
The flowers withered.
Lightning burst forth.
Sui had already taken to the air. Descending from above, she brought her blade down through the falling snow!
"It is useless! Useless!" Akaza laughed madly. He did not care at all that his vision had been disrupted, because Compass Needle had already found the flaw in her strike.
He clenched his fist.
He looked up.
A Thunder Breathing swordsman could not evade in midair.
It was over.
But in the night sky, Sui's ice-blue Mystic Eyes blazed. Akaza's entire body tightened instinctively, and a sensation like suffocation gripped his throat.
"What… is this?"
The Compass Needle screamed, warning him—
—and yet it still turned, pointing toward Sui's abdomen. That was the weakness in her descending blow. She had made no attempt to defend it. Akaza's fist could pierce straight through and kill her.
Sui stared fixedly at him, her gaze locked on the single crack running across his neck. Her mind felt feverish and heavy, burning with pain.
This demon's life force was too overwhelming. The number of cracks on him was far fewer than on ordinary demons. Just maintaining the Mystic Eyes' perspective cost her an enormous amount of mental energy.
Guided by the Compass Needle, Akaza struck.
So what if he took one slash? It meant nothing. Human life was always fragile. Akaza's neck was hard enough. From their exchanges, he had already judged that this female swordsman could not possibly cut through it.
But the instant his fist landed on her, that frail human body would be destroyed.
That was the difference between humans and demons.
Human life was brief and fragile. Demons possessed immortal bodies and could continue honing themselves until they reached perfection.
His fist pierced—
No.
His fist was cut.
Lightning coiled around Akaza's body like venomous snakes. Sui bent low, shifted, and severed his arm cleanly at the forearm.
And in the next instant—
Before the leaves stirred in the wind, before the snow could touch the earth, before the mountain itself could hear it—
came the roar of a god's wrath.
"Thunder Breathing, Seventh Form: Susanoo no Mikoto."
Named for the divine title of Susanoo, one of the Three Precious Children of the High Plain of Heaven.
It symbolized the terrifying might of a god of destruction. The ultimate form of Thunder Breathing. Sui had poured into it an overwhelming force meant for one purpose and one alone—
to kill whatever stood before her.
Even in its unfinished state, this strike had once torn through the Stone Hashira's defenses.
Black lightning surged, devouring all sound.
The blade of the Nichirin sword slammed against Akaza's neck with a metallic detonation.
Just as she thought—it would not sever.
Akaza thrust both hands forward, laughing wildly, ready to kill the completely exposed swordswoman before him in a single blow.
But the arm Sui had cut apart did not regenerate. The writhing flesh buds seemed to have hit a barrier. No matter how they swelled, they could not cross that invisible line to restore the limb.
The one left defenseless was Akaza.
"I see it," the woman said from within the black lightning.
She said she could see it.
What could she see?
Then—
her blade passed through his neck without the slightest resistance.
Demon blood exploded like a fountain, half of Sui's face stained red.
Akaza stared blankly into her eyes.
And in those ice-blue, monstrous eyes—
he saw his own head flying through the air.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 126)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter140)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter89)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter1165)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 145
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 135
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 84
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 150
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 125
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 105
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 53
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 80
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 66
Uma Musume: From Beginner 80
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 52
Uma Musume: I Want All 55
I Can Copy Unique Skills 53
Summoning an Evil God, but the 27
Supernatural Multiverse 27
My Harem Is Indescribable 26
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