A thousand miles away.
Northern Kyoto.
Amid the mountains, dark clouds hung low, pressing the peaks down until only their blurred outlines remained.
Thick fog surged up from the valley floor, carrying the rank stench of rotting leaves and damp earth, veiling everything in a grey-white haze.
On this ridge, where not even birds cared to tread, a man stood.
An elegant, understated kimono, a handsome face, skin far too pale.
The red slit-pupils narrowed faintly in the mist.
Kibutsuji Muzan.
Beneath his feet lay a scene of devastation—shattered rock, scorched black earth, and blood.
A great deal of blood.
And it was no one else's. It was his own.
Fresh, old, dried, and not yet congealed—layer upon layer, blanketing the ground for several yards around him.
He had "died" here many times.
Then come back to life, and died again.
Over and over.
Muzan's expression was calm.
Not the calm of relief—the numbness of someone who had grown used to it.
Suddenly, too, he turned his gaze toward the east, toward Musashi Province. It was far too distant to see, but he could feel it.
Those seven Demons he had sent out—all wiped out.
Cleanly killed.
Not even a lingering trace of their presence remained.
Yes—the wicked Demons drawn to Kaede Village by Tsubaki… in truth, Muzan had sent them there deliberately, to scout out what was happening in that region.
After all, one of his Demons had died there before, and he had to find out exactly what that thing was.
To find out whether it was the Demon Slayer Corps.
And those seven Demons had been his carefully chosen, comparatively powerful wicked ones.
Yet now, once again, they had been annihilated to the last.
But it was fine—this time, those Demons had brought him news interesting enough to make it worthwhile.
Their disappearance, as it turned out, was even connected to the very reason he had come to this place.
Muzan withdrew his gaze, silently turned, and faced another direction.
At the far end of the ridge, the fog grew thicker still.
That was yōkai aura—so dense it had nearly condensed into something physical, a grey-white yōkai aura that resembled a natural phenomenon.
Like a cloud that would never disperse, coiled in the deepest heart of the mountains.
Within a dozen or more miles of this region, the grass and trees had withered yellow, the ground had cracked open, and even the stones had been squeezed by that oppressive force until fine fissures spread across them.
It was pure, crushing pressure—brought about by the sheer fact of its existence.
No living thing dared draw near.
Because at the center of that cloud, something crouched.
Seven and a half meters.
That was its height while its body was curled up.
If it stood, no one knew how tall it would be, for in two hundred years, it had never once stood up.
Its bulk was absurdly enormous.
Though it bore a human-like outline, its two thick legs were folded beneath it, the knee joints bending backward yet resembling a spider's hind limbs, its broad soles and five toes clawing into the rock strata of the ground, making the entire mountaintop its cushion.
It also had six more arms extending from either side of its torso.
The uppermost two were the thickest, resting on its knees, knuckles as thick as bowl rims.
The middle two were slightly slimmer, crossed against its chest.
The lowest two were the longest, hanging to the ground, fingertips sunk into the mud.
Most terrifying of all was its face.
—Or rather, its mask.
A white bone mask covered its entire face.
The mask's design fell somewhere between man and spider: a broad forehead, cheekbones flared outward, a sharp jaw, its surface smooth as porcelain, with only three narrow slits left at the eye sockets and mouth.
Behind those slits were two clusters of ghostly green light.
Those were its eyes.
Behind the bone armor, wild, disheveled red hair sprawled.
The Tsuchigumo.
According to Kōbe Hikaru's summary—and also according to the rules of transformation that some Kyoto yōkai, like Kibōmaru, had roughly worked out for themselves—it had undergone at least thirteen metamorphoses, completing a total qualitative change and entering Gasification as a great yōkai.
As the finest, even the strongest, among the common yōkai group known as the Tsuchigumo, in ancient times it had served as the leader of the Tsuchigumo, and it was even an ancient yōkai fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with Shuten-dōji and the Great Tengu—short-tempered, bloodthirsty by nature.
The thing it loved most was challenging the strong.
It had once been gravely wounded challenging the lord of all demons and spirits of that age, falling into a deep slumber.
Now, it had only just awakened.
And it was still in a groggy, out-of-sorts state, cranky from being roused.
It was, in fact, the very target of Muzan's journey—the being that, under the borrowed name of a lowly Demon in Kibōmaru's service, he had come to summon on the orders of Hagoromo-Gitsune.
For Muzan, this too was genuinely interesting.
Those who had killed the wicked Demons under his command were not the Demon Slayer Corps, but the shrine maiden and yōkai who guarded the Shikon Jewel—the ones who had sent Kibōmaru limping home in defeat.
And the reason he had come here to summon the Tsuchigumo—the target—was likewise them.
So-called fate and coincidence—this was precisely it.
Yet before this, Muzan had in fact already come many times.
Passed along the message many times.
Died many times.
Those bloodstains, too, had all been left behind from before.
Fortunately, Muzan had never lacked for patience.
And so, as ever, amid the fog that still lay thick in the dark of night, he walked toward that even denser mass of cloud.
His steps were neither fast nor slow.
With every step, the rock beneath his feet let out a cracking crunch—not because he trod it apart, but because the pressure of that yōkai aura he faced was making the very ground surface split open in fissures.
When he was still twenty yards from the Tsuchigumo, he stopped.
Experience told him that any closer and he would be smashed to death.
"You again?"
A voice came from behind the bone mask.
Coarse and deep, like the roar of a boulder tumbling from a mountaintop compressed into a human voice—and laced with utter impatience.
"Lord Hagoromo-Gitsune requests that you—"
He didn't finish.
The two lower arms hanging at the ground moved.
Their speed was utterly mismatched with that massive body.
One giant palm slammed down.
Crash.
Muzan's body was pounded into the ground.
Everything from his chest up burst into a cloud of blood mist, his two legs still stuck in the crater that had been smashed out.
But very soon, amid the surging fog beyond the mountain, another Kibutsuji Muzan appeared from outside and walked in.
His kimono was whole as ever, his face as handsome as before.
He glanced at the legs left behind by his original self, expression unchanged.
"That's the seventeenth time now, Lord Tsuchigumo," he said.
"Then why the hell won't you just die?"
The Tsuchigumo's voice was full of irritation.
The green light behind the bone mask flickered, and all six arms twitched at once—no longer moving to attack, but simply expressing annoyance.
Just that image of six arms flinching in unison was enough to make one's scalp crawl at the mere sight.
"You can't kill me, Lord Tsuchigumo," Muzan said.
"I know."
The Tsuchigumo's middle two arms released from its chest and spread out to either side, the gesture carrying an unexpected air of shameless indolence—a bizarre contrast with that terrifying appearance.
"That's exactly why it's annoying."
It worked its jaw, and the bone mask let out a grinding creak.
"An unkillable little thing that comes around to nag every few days. Two hundred years ago, I'd have chewed you up in one bite, not even leaving the scraps."
"But you've grown weaker, so now you can't chew me away."
Two seconds of silence.
The Tsuchigumo's upper two arms lifted from its knees, ten fingers interlacing to cradle its chin.
That posture, paired with that white bone mask, actually gave off an inexplicable air of… contemplation.
"Forget it… seeing as you've stuck it out so hard, I'll give you a chance to speak, little Demon."
"So what does that Hagoromo-Gitsune want me to do this time?"
"The situation over in Kantō has changed."
This was the first time in nearly a month that Muzan had been allowed to open his mouth.
"That region was originally Lord Kibōmaru's responsibility, but at present Lord Kibōmaru is unable to handle it, so Lord Hagoromo-Gitsune requires you—"
"Kibōmaru?"
There was an obvious sneer in the Tsuchigumo's tone. "That little Demon who scurries around behind Shuten's rear? Isn't he passably able to fight? Even he can't manage it?"
"He had one of his arms broken off by an oni warrior and a shrine maiden working together."
The green light behind the bone mask brightened.
"Oh?"
The tail of that single syllable stretched long.
Laced with interest.
Not interest in the situation—interest in the battle.
Muzan noticed this.
"That shrine maiden and oni warrior… have the Shikon Jewel."
All six arms went still.
The green light behind the bone mask abruptly blazed brighter.
"The Shikon Jewel?"
"Yes."
The air froze.
Even the yōkai aura that pervaded for miles ceased to flow.
The Tsuchigumo said nothing. It seemed to be thinking about something.
For a long time.
So long that Muzan began to instinctively feel he'd be smashed to pieces a few more times this round too.
Then that coarse, deep voice sounded again.
Not fury, nor agreement.
Just—
"Let me sleep a few more days."
The six arms returned to their places.
The upper two settled back on its knees, the middle two folded back to its chest, the lower two hung back down to the ground.
"In a few days—we'll talk then!"
Muzan's slit-pupils flickered.
He did not press further.
After all, "we'll talk in a few days"—in all seventeen of his visits, this was the closest thing to an agreement he had ever gotten.
Every previous answer had been "get lost," or else being flattened outright.
Progress.
Muzan turned and walked into the fog.
Behind him, the Tsuchigumo's massive body curled back down, its six arms drawing in, like a silent hill.
The green light on the bone mask slowly dimmed.
But after Muzan had walked far off, he faintly heard a sound—
An exceedingly faint voice from behind the bone mask.
As if talking to itself.
"The Shikon Jewel… the thing that student of Suzuka's, that Midoriko, left behind…"
"How interesting."
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