The Spider Family's Destruction: Part One

After settling the last Corps member controlled by the Spider Mother, Moyu slipped silently toward the heart of Mount Natagumo, where the sinister aura was strongest, like a ghost melding into the night. The closer he drew to the mountainside, the more suffocating the stench of blood and the cold, viscous Demonic aura became, laden with an utterly twisted obsession. The surrounding trees were gradually covered in thick, deathly pale webs that gave off a faint glow, as if a giant spider had wrapped up the entire mountain forest. The stillness held an air of death.

Six Eyes' perception was pushed to its limit. Moyu could "see" a presence occupying the center of a relatively open clearing not far ahead, its energy far stronger than that of any Demon he had encountered before. The energy was not merely violent or cold; it was filled with a kind of pathological order. Countless fine, resilient strands of energy radiated outward from that presence, controlling everything in the domain like a network of nerves. The strands even seemed to faintly resonate with the webs covering the entire mountain.

At the center of the clearing, a figure sat quietly with his back to Moyu on a crude web woven from white bones and spider silk, its appearance possessing an eerie beauty.

It was a small, slender boy Demon. His white hair resembled withered straw, and the locks at both temples had been deliberately left long and twisted into shapes resembling a spider's legs. He wore a white kimono patterned with spiderwebs and went barefoot, his dark blue nails gleaming faintly in the dim moonlight. Most strikingly, he used the long hair on his left side to cover half his face, but Moyu's Six Eyes easily saw through it and "saw" the Chinese characters engraved with unmistakable clarity in the pupil of the hidden eye: [Lower Five].

Lower Rank Five, Rui.

He seemed to be playing with several slender, nearly invisible threads. At their other ends hung the corpses of several Demon Slayer Corps members, long since lifeless and dangling in midair like rag dolls. His movements were gentle, as if he were weaving a work of art, but the air was thick with a sickening aura of death.

Moyu did not conceal himself. He walked straight into the clearing shrouded by the domain of spider silk. His footsteps rang especially clearly in the deathly silence.

Rui's hands paused, but he did not turn around immediately. He spoke slowly in a cold, hollow voice utterly at odds with his youthful appearance, as though talking to himself, yet also as if making a proclamation to the intruder:

"Another one... An uninvited guest. It's always like this, disturbing my family's life." He tugged lightly on a thread, and a corpse swayed with it. "Why... do you always have to destroy the 'home' someone else worked so hard to build?"

Moyu stopped about ten zhang from Rui. His azure eyes watched the small figure's back calmly, his voice betraying neither anger nor pleasure. "A home? A cage built from fear, slaughter, and manipulation—does that deserve to be called a home?"

Rui's body trembled almost imperceptibly, as though the words had stung him. He slowly turned his head, revealing a pale face marked with red spots and half hidden beneath his white hair. The [Lower Five] engraving on his covered left eye appeared and disappeared through the gaps in his hair. The pupil of his right eye was blood-red, devoid of emotion, holding only a barren chill and... a trace of savagery from having a sore spot touched.

"What do you know?" Rui's voice rose sharply, taking on a shrill edge. "How could an outsider like you understand the bonds between family members?! We need each other, rely on each other! Father, Mother, Brother, Sister... We're a complete family! Everything I do is to keep this family together! Those who disobey or break the rules must be punished! That's the order there should be between family members!"

His words were twisted and obsessive, glorifying control and abuse as familial love and order.

Moyu looked into his hollow, frenzied eyes and understood. This was a soul that had grown up utterly starved of love in a twisted environment. After Muzan turned him into a Demon, he had projected his pathological longing for familial affection outward, using extreme violence and a desire for control to build the false dream of a "family." Pitiful, but even more detestable.

"Bonds?" Moyu's lips curved ever so slightly, almost mockingly. "Controlling puppets with threads, holding relationships together with fear—is that what you call bonds? Your 'father' and 'mother' probably feared and hated you until the day they died. All you're after is a toy house that will never betray you. How... pathetic and ridiculous."

"Shut up!!!" Rui sprang to his feet from his seat of bones, a powerful killing intent erupting around him! Moyu's words were like the sharpest needles, piercing the most fragile truth in his heart, the truth he least wanted to face. What he feared most was having someone see the true nature of this false family and reject his twisted "love."

"You don't know anything! How dare you... How dare you insult my family! Insult my bonds!" Rui's right eye instantly became bloodshot, and the [Lower Five] engraving on his left eye seemed ready to ignite. "I'll cut you... into pieces! I'll weave your bones into my collection too, so you can stay here forever and see with your own eyes how strong my family is!"

Before the words had left his mouth, Rui flung both hands forward!

"Blood Demon Art: Thread Prison!"

In an instant, countless slender wires, almost impossible to see with the naked eye yet gleaming with a deadly chill, appeared out of thin air from every direction as if they were alive. They interwove into a massive web covering the entire clearing and descended upon Moyu! The threads sliced through the air with shrill whistling sounds, tough enough to cut through refined steel with ease!

Faced with this deadly web that could dismember any intruder in an instant, Moyu's expression did not change in the slightest. Six Eyes had already captured the energy trajectory, nodes, and weak points of every thread.

He chose neither to force his way through nor to retreat. Instead, he raised his right hand, aiming his palm at the raging tide of threads surging toward him.

"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue."

This time, it was no longer a prototype, no longer a miniature test. At Moyu's low words, the space before his palm began to warp and compress violently! A pitch-black sphere the size of a fist, so deep it seemed capable of swallowing all light, took shape in an instant! The space around it formed rippling folds visible to the naked eye, and it radiated a terrifying suction force! Dust, fallen leaves, and even light in the air seemed to stretch as they were drawn inside!

A complete "Blue"! A preliminary interference with the laws of space!

"Go."

At a thought from Moyu, the pitch-black "Blue" shot silently toward the vast net of threads like an arrow released from its bow.

There was no earth-shaking crash.

The instant the threads of "Thread Prison" touched "Blue," something terrifying happened. Every thread that entered the black sphere's range was not severed, but forcibly twisted and stretched by that "negative infinity" gravitational singularity, ultimately breaking down into the most basic particles of energy. They were sucked into the sphere and vanished without a trace!

Wherever "Blue" passed, the incomparably resilient web melted like ice and snow in sunlight, leaving a straight, empty passage! The threads at the passage's edges hung limply and fell apart as their structure was destroyed.

Rui's pupils contracted sharply, and for the first time, his face showed incredulous horror! "What?! My Thread Prison... How is that possible?!"

The threads of his Blood Demon Art: Thread Prison were far harder than steel, difficult to cut through even with a Hashira-level swordsman's Nichirin Blade. Yet now they had been directly "erased" in such a bizarre manner?!

Moyu's figure flashed through the passage "Blue" had opened, closing the distance to Rui in an instant. Azure Star was already drawn, its blade flowing with a deep azure radiance as it aimed straight for Rui's throat!

"Blood Demon Art: Cutting Thread Cage!"

Though startled, Rui did not panic. His hands danced rapidly, deft as if playing cat's cradle. More threads, denser than before, shot from his fingertips. This time they were not a flat web, but instantly wove into a three-dimensional cage with no blind spots in all 360 degrees. It contracted inward from above, below, left, right, front, and back at once, seeking to shred Moyu inside! The threads spun and tangled, producing a grating friction that set the teeth on edge.

"Parlor tricks."

Moyu snorted coldly, and Six Eyes analyzed the entire structure of "Cutting Thread Cage" in an instant. Without breaking stride, he traced arcane paths with Azure Star. Rather than chopping through the threads, he struck precisely at the nodes most crucial to the flow of energy through each leading thread!

"Azure Flow Breathing, Zero Form, Second Style: Mirror Dissection, spread application!"

Wherever the blade's tip touched, the tough threads seemed to lose all their resilience. They became unbearably fragile, trembling slightly before breaking and dissipating on their own. Moyu moved through the dense, deadly cage as casually as if strolling through a garden. Every thread that approached was deflected by an invisible force before it could touch him, or disabled by a precise strike to its node. He alternated between Blue's repulsive field and Mirror Dissection's disintegration field, combining defense and technique-breaking into one.

Rui's killing move had been easily neutralized once again!

"Damn it! Damn it all!" Rui flew into a complete rage. He realized that long-range and area attacks seemed to have limited effect on the blue-eyed swordsman before him. He shrieked, pressed his palms together, and the Demonic aura throughout his body boiled!

"Blood Demon Art: Thread Rotation!"

The hardest threads in his body poured out wildly, spinning and compressing at high speed before him to form a massive vortex-shaped cocoon over a meter across, made of countless tightly wound layers of thread! Light shimmered across its surface, and it radiated a cutting and penetrating force that made the heart tremble! Rui thrust both hands forward, and the immense vortex of threads hurtled toward Moyu like a high-speed drill, bearing the force to tear everything apart!

This was Rui's assault-type Blood Demon Art, combining the toughness of his threads with the destructive power of rotation to the utmost!

Faced with the terrifying attack, Moyu finally stopped. He gripped Azure Star in both hands, light flowing through his azure eyes as he saw the axis of Thread Rotation's spin, its energy core, and its weakest structural point with perfect clarity.

"Azure Flow Breathing, Zero Form, First Style: Vortex Slash, ultimate intent!"

Azure Breathing Cursed Energy spiraled and compressed along Azure Star's blade at an unprecedented speed and density, until the entire blade seemed to become a bolt of azure lightning rotating counterclockwise! At the same time, Moyu's left fingertips twitched, and a miniature "Blue" instantly formed about a foot in front of him. It did not fire, but served as a gravitational anchor, slightly altering the giant silk cocoon's flight path and exposing its core weakness more clearly before his blade!

Slash!

The blade's radiance and the silk cocoon crashed together!

There was no explosion, only an unbearably shrill grinding sound, as though space itself were being torn apart! The azure spiral blade energy and the rapidly spinning threads ground against each other, cutting and annihilating one another! They held in a stalemate for less than half a second—

"Crack... Boom!!!"

The spiral blade energy forcibly bored through the giant vortex of threads at its core, tearing it apart. At last it burst completely, scattering broken, inert threads through the air!

Moyu shot out through the exploding threads, his blade aimed straight at the center of Rui's brow! He moved so fast it was like teleportation!

Fear finally appeared on Rui's face! He hurriedly laid dozens of dense layers of thread before himself as a shield wall while rapidly retreating!

"Puchi!"

Azure Star's tip tore through every layer of threaded defense as easily as if piercing sheets of thin paper. Though Rui's retreat kept it from striking the center of his brow, it still opened a gash across his chest deep enough to expose bone, sending dark red Demon blood spraying out!

"Ah!" Rui cried out in pain and staggered back, staring at Moyu with fear and venom. This swordsman... was too strong! His eyes and his techniques completely countered Rui's Blood Demon Art!

Moyu pressed his advantage, preparing to pursue Rui and end the fight once and for all.

But Rui suddenly raised his head. The current of air swept the long hair away from his left eye, revealing the eye engraved with [Lower Five], filled with madness and despair. He stared fixedly at Moyu and let out a shrill, hoarse laugh.

"Haha... Hahaha! You're strong! But... it's no use! You can't kill me! The power Lord Muzan gave me... cannot be defeated! And besides... you don't understand at all! You don't know how strong the bonds between family members are!"

He plunged both hands into the ground, and Demonic aura erupted from his body like a volcano! The webs throughout the clearing began to squirm violently, as if they had come alive!

"I'll show you... the power of a true 'family'!"