--Terrible news!!
Seven days.
Seven whole days.
Giyu Tomioka felt as if he had finally come back to life.
He has never loved his work as much as he does now.
He distanced himself from the academic seminar at Mount Sagiri that made him feel uneasy, and even further from the Sister Alliance at Swordsmith Village that made him restless.
He is now alone in his patrol area, enjoying this hard-won, peaceful, solitary, and precious working time.
The mountain air was so fresh, the birdsong so melodious, and even the rustling of fallen leaves underfoot sounded like a beautiful symphony.
There were no complicated terms that required racking your brains to understand, nor any ambiguous glances that needed to be carefully avoided.
There are only mountains, only wind, the Nichirin Blade at his waist, and a pure heart beating for the cause of slaying demons.
This is the correct way for Giyu Tomioka, as a Pillar, to be himself.
He even had the leisure to silently make a long-term plan for his future career while on patrol.
First, you should try your best to persuade your Oyakata-sama to assign you more tasks, especially those that are remote, sparsely populated, and require long-term business trips.
Secondly, I need to strengthen my self-cultivation and strive to develop the thirteenth form of Water Breathing as soon as possible, so that I can legitimately engage in a longer period of seclusion.
Finally, and most importantly, the next time you see the Kocho Sisters, be sure to maintain a safe distance of more than three meters and avoid any eye contact unless absolutely necessary.
Perfect.
Giyu Tomioka was extremely satisfied with his seemingly flawless self-protection plan for his social anxiety.
He took a deep breath, preparing to end his patrol for the day and find a place to eat his favorite salmon and radish.
But just then...
A strange smell, carried by the mountain breeze, entered his nostrils.
It was a... extremely ominous smell.
Like countless rotten fruits mixed with spoiled meat, it was thrown into a sealed, damp basement and fermented for an entire summer.
It was foul, cloyingly sweet, and carried a... nauseating, putrid feeling of life decay.
Giyu Tomioka's brows furrowed immediately.
As an experienced Demon Slayer Corps swordsman, he can distinguish hundreds of different scents.
The carcasses of wild beasts, the miasma of the mountains and forests, and even the unique bloody smell of ghosts.
But he had never smelled this before.
This is definitely not a smell that should exist in nature.
He abandoned his plan to eat the salmon and radish, his expression turned serious, he gripped the knife hilt, and followed the increasingly strong stench, speeding towards the depths of the forest.
Soon, a small mountain village, which should have been filled with the sounds of cooking smoke and the chimneys of chickens and dogs, came into his view.
At this moment, the village seemed to have been silenced by a deity.
Deathly silence.
There was no smoke from cooking fires, no barking of dogs, no children playing, not even a whisper of wind.
The pungent stench was like a thick, invisible blanket, tightly enveloping the entire village.
Giyu Tomioka's heart sank little by little.
He slowed his pace, step by step, and entered this ghostly village.
Then he saw it.
I saw the hellish drawing that he would never forget in his life.
A strong middle-aged man who was chopping wood collapsed in his own yard, still holding the axe high.
A woman who was hanging clothes to dry slumped limply under a bamboo pole, clutching a child's garment tightly in her hand.
Several children, who had been chasing and playing, lay face to face on the muddy ground at the village entrance, as if they had simply fallen asleep from exhaustion.
The entire village, hundreds of people, regardless of age or gender, all collapsed in various places.
There were no external injuries, no bloodstains, and not even any signs of struggle on their bodies.
It was as if an unseen demon had drained all their life force from them in the same instant.
The only thing they had in common was their bizarre deaths.
Everyone's skin had an extremely abnormal, mottled, blackish-green color, as if it had been eroded by the most vicious plague.
Their faces were contorted in extreme pain, their eyes wide open and their mouths agape, as if they had witnessed the most terrifying and desperate sight in the world before they died.
Giyu Tomioka stood motionless in the center of the village.
He slowly closed his eyes.
When he opened his eyes again, the whole world had become completely different in his eyes.
Transparent World.
In his field of vision, the outlines of all objects disappeared.
He could clearly see the blood that had completely stopped flowing and the already rotting internal organs inside the bodies of each dead villager.
His gaze swept across the air.
Then he saw it.
I saw those extremely faint, ominous-looking green particles, invisible to the naked eye, floating slowly in the air like dust...
They are everywhere, densely packed, like a never-ending... snow of death.
They clung to the houses, to the trees, and even... to the bodies of every villager.
These damned particles are what took the lives of everyone here!!
Blood Demon Art!
It's a ghost!
Moreover, it is a powerful demon possessing extremely rare, extremely vicious, and wide-range destructive Blood Demon Art!
Giyu Tomioka noted down the shape of the particle, and the anger within him had reached a critical point.
He swore he would find the ghost and then, in the most cruel way, tear it to pieces!
Just then...
A bloodcurdling scream, as if he were about to die, exploded from above his head!
"Gah--! Gah--! I'm going to die! I'm going to die! I'm going to crash!"
Giyu Tomioka subconsciously looked up.
Then you see his senile Kasugai Crow, Kanzaburo, in a completely aerodynamic, propeller-malfunctioning manner, frantically flapping its wings and screeching as it plummets vertically from the sky!
"Bang!"
A muffled thud.
Kanzaburo, in a perfect pose, faceplanted himself in front of Giyu Tomioka.
It plowed a furrow half a meter long in the ground, and finally stopped upside down, its eyes revealing two constantly spinning mosquito coils. (@_@)
Giyu Tomioka stared expressionlessly at his unreliable partner, who always seemed to make a dramatic entrance at the most crucial moment.
Normally, he might even feel a little worried about its intelligence.
But right now, he's not in the mood.
"Cough... cough cough..."
Kanzaburo shook its head, which was on the verge of a concussion, and struggled to roll over.
It looked at the man in front of it, who exuded a terrifying aura that kept strangers at bay, and its feathers stood on end in fright.
But the Oyakata-sama's orders supersede everything.
With all its might, it strained its hoarse voice and roared:
"Urgent! A message from our Master!"
"Return immediately! Return to Mount Sagiri immediately!"
"Sabito-sama... Sabito- sama... encountered an Upper Rank Moon demon! He... is severely injured!"
"His life... his life is hanging by a thread!"
"Boom!!"
Like a thunderclap from the heavens, it exploded in Giyu Tomioka's mind!
Sabito...
Upper Rank...
Seriously injured...
His life was in danger...
Every word was like a red-hot branding iron, fiercely searing his heart.
His mind went completely blank.
His world collapsed instantly.
How could we possibly lose?!?!
How could this be... a matter of life and death?!?!
Impossible!
That's absolutely impossible!!
Overwhelming anger and worry intertwined and collided within him, almost tearing his reason apart completely.
He subconsciously glanced again at the green death particles floating in the air.
A terrifying thought, chilling him to the bone, suddenly took shape in his mind.
Could it be...?
Could it be... the same ghost?!?!
"Huh...? Giyu...? Your face... it's terrifying..."
Kanzaburo looked at the man's face, which could no longer be described as cold but had become completely lifeless, and was so frightened that he could hardly speak.
Giyu Tomioka did not answer it.
Or rather, he could no longer hear anything.
He simply turned slowly, facing the direction of Mount Sagiri.
In an instant, all the emotions in his blue eyes vanished.
Anger, sadness, fear...
Everything settled down, eventually coalescing into... pure killing intent.
The next second.
His figure disappeared.
It left no sound, and stirred no breeze.
Just like that, they vanished from the spot, as if out of thin air.
Only a trembling, pitiful Kasugai Crow remained, and a desolate village filled with death and despair.