"Muzan Kibutsuji is a coward, but he is an incredibly powerful one," Giyu said, his voice low and steady. "It is nearly impossible for even Oyakata-sama to track him down, let alone us."
He and Rengoku paused in their flight, their gazes meeting.
"We have to split up," Rengoku declared. "One of us to Mount Fujikasane, the other to Mount Sagiri. The headquarters..."
"Is well-defended by the others," Giyu finished. "Even if Muzan has gone completely mad, he wouldn't dare attack our home base directly."
With their decision made, their figures blurred, vanishing in two different directions.
Meanwhile, in Asakusa, Yushiro's body slammed heavily onto the ground with a sickening thud. A pained scream tore from his throat as blood began to pool beneath his broken limbs.
The sound snapped Tamayo out of her terrified trance, her shock instantly turning to rage. The shock was from the sheer speed and strangeness of Muzan's attack; she hadn't seen him move at all. The anger was for Yushiro, her loyal companion for so many years, the boy she had personally saved by turning him into a demon.
"You..." she hissed, her face flushed with fury.
"Me?" Muzan's expression remained perfectly calm, a stark contrast to her rage. "You know exactly who I am, Tamayo. Why do you still hesitate to speak my name? Did you truly believe that just because I left you alone for a century, you had broken free from the blood that binds you?"
As he spoke, a strange and powerful aura radiated from him, washing over Tamayo. The blood in her own veins began to boil, a primal command from its source overriding her will. An overwhelming sense of agitation seized her, and with a gasp, her knees buckled, sending her to the floor. Sweat drenched her body as a tide of forgotten memories and instincts flooded her mind.
Muzan was right. She had used a moment of his weakness to escape his mental control, but his blood was still her blood. She was a powerful doctor, a genius even, but she had not yet found a way to rewrite the very foundation of her being. She was not yet strong enough to defy the call of her creator.
"Lady Tamayo! What's wrong!?" Yushiro shrieked from the floor, his own pain forgotten as he saw her collapse. He knew that if even she could not resist Muzan, then their fate was sealed. They were fish on a chopping block, completely at his mercy.
"What... what do you want?" Tamayo forced the words out, looking up at Muzan with a complex mix of hatred and desperation in her beautiful eyes.
"Ah, now we can have a conversation," Muzan said, a faint smile touching his lips. "It seems you're finally willing to listen." He stepped closer, his presence looming over her. "What I want is to become the king of this land. The ruler of this country."
His gaze was intense, burning with a new and terrifying ambition. "I want to become a truly perfect being. I want to create a truly perfect world." He spoke like a visionary, his voice filled with passion. "Tamayo, you must understand. We are not the 'vicious demons' they call us. We are simply the next stage of human mutation. In this new era, they have a word for it: evolution. And the goal of evolution is perfection."
His eyes shone with a brilliant light. "A perfect being would be immortal. It would not need to consume human blood. It would be able to walk freely in the sunlight. The past is over, Tamayo. The present is what we must control. My power and your medical skills—it is the perfect combination."
He paused, his tone shifting. He glanced down at the broken, whimpering form of Yushiro.
"Of course, if you are truly unwilling to cooperate..." he said, letting the words hang in the air. "Well, Tamayo, you wouldn't want that, would you?"
At the same time, in the Ubuyashiki ancestral land, Kagaya's expression was incredibly grim as he sorted through reports with his wife.
In a matter of hours, Japan had been plunged into a catastrophe. Demon attacks, political assassinations, and the dreaded Twelve Kizuki appearing everywhere at once. The slanders against the Demon Slayer Corps had already pushed them into an extremely difficult position with the government.
But Kagaya knew this was not the most terrifying part. This chaos was a smokescreen. Muzan was fishing in troubled waters, and his true goal was likely to infiltrate the government and seize control of the army itself.
The Taisho era was no longer a time when battles were won with swords alone. As the head of his family, blessed with a keen foresight, Kagaya understood this better than anyone. It was why, for many years, he had been stockpiling firearms, explosives, and other new weapons from the West. He had prepared for a new kind of war, but he never expected it to begin so suddenly and with such devastating speed.
"A message just arrived from former Water Hashira Sakonji Urokodaki," his wife said, her voice tense. "He is being attacked on Mount Sagiri. The opponent is Upper Rank Three, Akaza."
Kagaya's expression remained calm. "The more important point is that the demon girl who sleeps is by his side. She may be the key to defeating Kibutsuji Muzan."
Before his wife could speak, Kagaya sighed heavily. "We know this news. And if we know it, I believe Kibutsuji Muzan knows it as well. Yet he only dispatched one Upper Rank..."
His face fell into shadow. "I am worried this is a trap. A terrifying trap set by Muzan with the sole purpose of luring our Hashira into his grasp." He looked at his wife, his eyes filled with a weary sorrow. "But the problem is, it's an open scheme. It's a trap we are forced to walk into."