The night was still deep at this hour, somewhere between midnight and the third watch. The wilderness stretched vast and empty, yet it felt as though everything had frozen in place.
No wind stirred. No moon showed.
In this instant—
—Kobe Hikaru's senses lit up like a map of the entire land of Japan.
From Kanto to the home provinces, from Hokuriku to Kyushu.
Points of light, scattered everywhere, dense as stars.
Watching the towering six-meter Asura projection rise at the center of it all, Kibutsuji Muzan knew the man wasn't lying.
Because he could feel it too — through his own control over every vengeful Demon, through his awareness of all the flesh and blood he'd scattered across the world, he could sense that everything connected to his existence had been swallowed beneath the power called the Earth Barrier.
And because of that, his hunger to survive was sharpening.
When does a creature truly want to live?
Only when death itself closes in.
The Demon King's pupils contracted into vicious slits. Every hair on his body stood on end.
But—
Muzan clenched his teeth. The fear in his slitted eyes was crushed down by fury.
He steadied himself quickly.
Kibutsuji Muzan had survived five hundred years, and never by brute strength alone. He'd survived on caution, on suspicion, on always keeping a card in reserve.
"So what if you have?"
He spoke at last, his voice cooling from raw rage back into something cold and composed.
"You've marked me, yes. You've seen every scrap of my flesh and blood."
"But you're standing in Musashi Province. And that shrine maiden of yours — she's in Musashi Province too."
"You can suppress every Demon across the land from where you stand, but can you destroy them all, a thousand miles apart, from Kanto to the Chūbu region, to the capital region, to Shikoku, to Kyushu—"
Maybe not.
Kobe Hikaru's Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation locked onto souls and never missed once loosed — but a hit wasn't the same as a kill. Across such vast distances, even the strongest strike would arrive weakened, its force bled away to almost nothing by the time it landed.
And yet—
At that thought, Muzan suddenly stopped himself again.
The Demon King's slitted eyes contracted sharply. Something else had occurred to him.
He remembered... the Demon Slayer Corps.
And the Corps' Hashira.
All seven of them, sent toward Kyoto.
He'd assumed the Corps had taken the bait — that Ubuyashiki, that sickly wretch, had been fooled by false intelligence into moving his pieces.
But what if—
What if it hadn't been a trap at all?
What if sending the Hashira to Kyoto had been part of the plan all along?
"It seems you've figured it out."
Kobe Hikaru's voice rolled out from the massive, bone-lightning frame of his Asura Mutation. "The Demon Slayer Corps' members are, right now, exactly where you've hidden the most vengeful Demons, the most flesh and blood — the Kyoto region."
His Demon eyes stared at Muzan through the cracks of his mask, his tone flat.
"Every scrap of flesh you've left behind, every vengeful Demon you've made — all of it has been marked by me. Their locations are exposed."
"And the Demon Slayer Corps carries Sun Blades. Most of them have learned some form of breathing technique by now."
"A breathing technique, paired with a blade that channels sunlight and is built for one purpose — killing Demons. That's more than enough."
Muzan's expression finally changed.
From icy composure to blankness.
"In my plan, those Hashira in Kyoto were never sent to find you. Not from the very start."
Kobe Hikaru finished his last sentence.
"They were sent to clear the field."
Muzan said nothing more.
He stood rooted to the spot, his feet pinned by the Earth Barrier. Dozens of his clones fell silent all at once.
That silence was more terrifying than any roar could have been.
Because it was the silence of a monster who had lived five hundred years, realizing for the first time that he might actually die.
...
At that same moment.
At least several hundred miles away, at Demon Slayer Corps headquarters.
In the main hall of the Ubuyashiki Mansion.
Rikiya stood at the center of the chamber, his left hand braced on the shoulder of the maid beside him, his frail body trembling faintly with excitement.
He couldn't see.
But he could feel.
The precognitive gift passed down through generations of the Ubuyashiki line suddenly stirred to life — from the southeast came a force that pierced heaven and earth, the suppression network formed by the fusion of Kobe Hikaru and Kikyo.
But clearer still was another kind of sensation.
The sensation of shared blood.
The Ubuyashiki family shared the same bloodline, the same origin, as Kibutsuji Muzan — a curse that doomed them to short lives across the generations, but which also granted them a faint awareness of Muzan and the vengeful Demons he created.
Normally that awareness was so faint it meant almost nothing.
But at this moment—
The instant the Earth Barrier suppressed every vengeful Demon under heaven and forced them into the open, that bloodline sensation was amplified a hundredfold.
Rikiya could see.
Directions.
Which direction held Demons struggling, which direction held the fiercest struggle, which direction was already falling silent — it all flooded into his awareness.
"They're exposed."
Rikiya's voice trembled.
He was shaking with excitement. "Every Demon. All of them are exposed."
The maid beside him flinched at his sudden movement.
Rikiya released her shoulder. Across the half of his face eaten away by purple corrosion, an indescribable expression surfaced.
Not joy. Release.
Five hundred years.
"Send word—"
Rikiya's voice no longer trembled. It was calm now, even carrying a faint gentleness.
Like a sentence he'd waited far too long to say:
"To every member of the Demon Slayer Corps."
Outside the hall, dozens upon dozens of Kasugai crows took wing at once.
Their black wings blotted out half the night sky, golden eyes gleaming like stars beneath the moon.
"Tell them—"
Rikiya's voice carried through the entire mansion.
"The Demons have nowhere left to hide."
"Open your eyes. Find them. Cut them down."
"Go — cut down every last Demon under this sky!"
The crows' shrieks split the night as they scattered in every direction.
But in truth, no crow could fly as fast as the net of Kobe Hikaru's soul-lock had already spread.
The Demon Slayer swordsmen scattered across the land — those on patrol, those resting, those on the road — likely wouldn't even need to wait for the crows to arrive.
Because they could see it themselves.
In the darkness, Demons that had once hidden without a trace now burst up in white smoke from the ground, from caves, from ruins, snarling and unable to move, like signal lanterns lit one by one in the dark.
Any Demon Slayer carrying a Sun Blade who passed by couldn't possibly miss them.
And couldn't possibly let them go.
Rikiya stood alone in the empty main hall.
Moonlight slipped through the gaps in the window lattice, falling on his plain white kariginu.
He closed his clouded eyes.
Five hundred years.
It was finally coming to an end.
...
Kyoto.
In the stone corridors ringing the underground palace.
The seven Hashira had been lying in wait for days. The original plan had been to surround and kill Muzan once he was lured out by the false intelligence — but all that had come of it was a decoy.
They were preparing to withdraw.
Then the ground beneath their feet lit up.
A soft glow seeped up from deep within the earth, spreading along the rock walls of the corridor, lighting the entire underground passage as bright as day.
The bald, burly Hashira glanced down at his feet.
"What—"
Before he could finish, a snarl rose from the darkness ahead.
Not just one.
Many.
The vengeful Demons that had been hiding in every corner beneath Kyoto — those Muzan had planted here as flesh-and-blood backups or outlying pawns — were all forced into the open by the light rising from the ground.
Their feet were pinned to the glowing earth, unable to move, skin smoking white, regeneration crashing to a crawl, snarling helplessly, unable to break free.
Like insects flipped onto their backs, limbs thrashing uselessly, with nowhere left to go.
The bald, burly Hashira stared at the sight before him. His mouth opened.
Then closed.
He drew his blade.
"Move."
All seven Hashira moved as one.
Sun Blades slid from their sheaths, seven different colors of blade-light igniting in the underground passage of Kyoto.
They advanced on the vengeful Demons pinned and exposed in the light by the barrier.
The bald, burly Hashira charged in first. His heavy Sun Blade swept out in a wide arc, driven by the crude, brutal force of his newly grasped Stone Breathing, and cleaved three Demons pinned to the ground clean through at the waist.
The cut surfaces charred black, carbonization spreading outward — the sunlight nature carried in the Sun Blade activated the instant it touched Demon flesh, burning away the very point from which regeneration would have begun.
The Demons didn't even manage a scream before crumbling into drifting ash.
Kanae Kocho followed close behind, her pale pink blade tracing bright arcs through the passage, dancing like a butterfly.
Though she was a Hashira of this same era as the bald swordsman, her style was his exact opposite — every strike landed on a Demon's cervical spine, a single kill each time, clean enough that not a drop of blood was spilled.
The remaining five Hashira each took a different direction, pushing deeper into the tangled maze of tunnels beneath Kyoto.
This was a city.
A city hanging upside-down beneath the outskirts of the capital region, shaped like a labyrinth.
This city should have been guarded fiercely, home to hundreds upon hundreds of vengeful Demons.
But now.
Those Demons were pinned to the glowing ground by the Earth Barrier, skin smoking white, fangs bared as they snarled, unable to move an inch — like insects pinned to a specimen board.
And wherever the Sun Blades passed, ash scattered in their wake.
The number of Demons hidden beneath Kyoto far exceeded expectations.
Muzan had stashed a vast reserve of flesh and blood here, shielded under the cover of Hagoromo-Gitsune's yokai aura — from the depths of the tunnels to hidden side chambers, gray-white figures were forced into the open everywhere.
But under the barrier's suppression, their regeneration had crashed.
Demons that once required a Hashira-level swordsman working alongside numerous lower-ranked swordsmen just to bring down could now be finished off by a single fighter alone.
The seven Hashira swept a full circuit through the underground passages of Kyoto.
In under half an hour, it was over.
At the same moment, across the land.
On a mountain road in Iyo Province, Shikoku, a young female swordsman carrying a Sun Blade was traveling through the night.
The ground beneath her feet suddenly lit up.
A soft glow seeped from the earth, illuminating the grass along the roadside ahead — and in the grass, a vengeful Demon lay flattened to the ground, its limbs pinned by the light, gray-white skin trailing wisps of smoke.
The instant it saw the swordswoman, terror filled its clouded eyes.
Terror of the light pinning it down — and even greater terror of the Demon Slayer who had suddenly appeared before it.
The swordswoman froze for two seconds, then drew her blade without hesitation.
The blade fell. Ash scattered.
In an abandoned shrine in Mutsu Province, three vengeful Demons were forced out of a cellar by the light, huddling together in the middle of the courtyard, shoving at each other but unable to flee.
Two passing Demon Slayer Corps members exchanged a glance, then drew their blades and moved in.
Deep in the mountains of Kyushu, an old Demon that had hidden for over a decade was flushed out by the light and beheaded on the spot by a swordsman who arrived at the news.
Across the whole of Japan, from north to south, from east to west.
Even near Demon Slayer Corps headquarters, it was the same.
Kakushi Cho, who had only just woken, hadn't even had time to regret missing her chance to say farewell to Kobe Hikaru — her true master in all but name — before the scent of Demons outside drew her attention.
Swordsmen poured out of headquarters, sparing no one.
Near or far, it made no difference.
Every Demon marked, suppressed, and exposed by the Earth Barrier was like a maggot uncovered when a stone was flipped over, lying bare beneath the sunlight.
There was nowhere left to run.
One by one, they were wiped out.
...
Kozuke Province, the wilderness.
Kibutsuji Muzan felt it too.
The sensation was unmistakably clear — like having his own fingers snapped off one by one.
Every Demon cut down, every flesh-and-blood backup destroyed, dissolved into nothingness within his awareness.
The Kyoto region was thickest with losses.
The efficiency of seven Hashira moving at once was terrifyingly high — the hundreds, even thousands of Demons he'd hidden there were vanishing at a rate of several per breath.
Other regions were keeping pace.
The Demon Slayer Corps' swordsmen were scattered thin, but the Earth Barrier had marked and exposed every Demon, effectively drawing a living map for each and every one of them.
The Demons — they were dwindling.
Dwindling at a rate he could feel, unmistakably, in real time.
A dread he hadn't felt in five hundred years came surging up from some depth he'd thought long buried.
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