"Who the hell are you guys?"
The cold voice echoed slowly in the deathly silent alley, each word like an icicle striking the soul.
The blade remained firmly planted at Tamayo's neck, without the slightest deviation.
If Giyu Tomioka had moved his wrist just an inch further forward, this female ghost who had lived for hundreds of years would have been utterly destroyed.
However, Tamayo caught a very faint trace of wavering emotion deep within those ice-blue eyes.
She keenly sensed that the terrifying killing intent that had almost torn her to pieces was gradually fading away.
The young man before him did not immediately strike.
Tamayo's extremely tense nerves quietly relaxed a little.
She let out a long, silent sigh of relief.
She cannot die yet.
At the very least, she absolutely cannot die here before she witnesses Muzan Kibutsuji, the source of all evil, descend into hell.
Driven by this obsession, she has walked alone in the shadows for centuries.
I will tell you everything you want to know.
Tamayo raised her head, meeting Giyu's unfathomable eyes, her tone calm and sincere.
"But this is not the place to talk. If you're willing to trust me this once, please come with me, and I will give you everything I have to say."
She extended an invitation, entrusting her life and death entirely to the other party's judgment.
Giyu's gaze lingered on her face for several seconds.
In those icy blue eyes, it seemed as if countless pieces of information were rapidly flowing and calculating.
Finally, he flipped his wrist.
"Clang."
With a crisp clang, the blue and white Nichirin Blade, exuding a chilling aura of death, was slowly sheathed.
Don't try anything funny.
Giyu's voice remained cold and clear, yet it already conveyed his decision.
The moment the sword was sheathed, the terrifying pressure that had enveloped Tamayo and the pile of "parts" on the ground suddenly dissipated.
Tamayo's body swayed slightly due to the sudden relaxation after being overly tense.
She strode to the blood and flesh scattered on the ground, and took out a syringe containing a pale green liquid from a delicate little bag at her waist.
She crouched down, precisely located Yushiro's relatively intact head, and inserted the needle without hesitation.
"Hmm..."
As the pale green liquid was slowly injected, Yushiro, who had been twitching slightly on the ground due to anger and resentment, instantly fell silent.
Then, something truly jaw-dropping happened.
The scattered pieces of flesh and blood, as if drawn by some mysterious force, began to writhe wildly, converge, and piece themselves back together!
Meanwhile, Tamayo's two severed arms grew rapidly from the wounds, and the bones regenerated, restoring them to their original state in the blink of an eye.
"Hey, Giyu..."
Sabito moved closer to Giyu, lowered his voice, and his face was full of worry and confusion.
"Are you sure it's okay? We're heading to their lair! What if there's an ambush?!"
As he spoke, he kept a wary eye on the two ghosts that were reassembling themselves, his hand never leaving the hilt of his knife.
However, Giyu acted as if he hadn't heard him at all.
He crossed his arms, tilted his head slightly, and his icy blue eyes lost focus once again, as if he were lost in a trance.
To him, everything that had just happened was nothing more than a trivial interlude.
These two ghosts are indeed a bit unusual.
The female ghost was unusually calm when facing death. And the boy ghost, though boisterous, seemed genuinely loyal to the female ghost.
Most importantly, the smell of blood on them was so faint that it was almost undetectable.
But that's not enough to change anything.
Before absolute power, any conspiracy or trickery is nothing but a futile struggle.
Insignificant...
Fifteen minutes later.
Under the guidance of Tamayo and the extremely reluctant Yushiro, Giyu and Sabito wandered through many twists and turns before finally arriving at a magnificent Western-style villa hidden deep in an alley.
Looking at the spacious, brightly lit, and obviously extremely expensive two-story villa in front of him, Sabito's mouth gaped open into an "O" shape again, and his jaw almost dropped to the ground.
"No... no way?!"
He looked at the mansion, then down at his faded team uniform, and a huge sense of imbalance welled up inside him.
"This is unfair!!"
He cried out in grief and indignation, pointing at the villa, his voice filled with accusation against the world.
"Why can even demons live in such nice houses?! Me! A-Rank A swordsman in the Demon Slayer Corps! I work myself to the bone every month, and I still live in a small wooden cabin deep in the mountains!!"
His shout earned him a glare from Yushiro, who had just finished "assembling" and was still looking annoyed.
"Hmph, you country bumpkin."
Yushiro crossed his arms, curled his lip, and spoke with utter disdain.
"A weakling like you should only live in a wooden hut. If everyone were like you, humanity would have gone extinct long ago."
"Huh?! What right do you, a defeated opponent, have to talk to me like that?!"
Sabito instantly bristled, pointing at Yushiro's nose and cursing back.
"If Giyu hadn't held back just now, you'd be chopped into eighty pieces and having a tea party in the sewers by now!"
"What did you say?! You ugly, flesh-haired monster!"
"You're the ugly one! Your whole family is ugly! You're just a green algae with sparse eyebrows!"
"You..."
As the two "youngsters," whose combined age exceeded one hundred, were about to engage in a real-life showdown at the villa's entrance, two helpless sighs rang out simultaneously.
"Yushiro."
"Sabito" (Qiantu)
Tamayo and Giyu spoke almost simultaneously.
Tamayo rubbed her forehead, her head aching, and stopped Yushiro from rushing forward, her tone stern. "You need to be polite! Besides, our lives are in the hands of our guests."
Yushiro reluctantly shut his mouth, but still snorted at Sabito with a hint of resentment.
Giyu glanced at Sabito, who was still indignant, and uttered two words indifferently.
"Quiet."
Sabito's anger was instantly extinguished, and he could only pout in grievance, carrying the box as he followed.
The villa's reception room is elegantly decorated, filled with a unique blend of Japanese and Western styles characteristic of the Taisho era.
The four people (two ghosts and two guests) sat down as host and guest respectively.
Without any unnecessary pleasantries, Tamayo poured the tea and got straight to the point.
Her voice was soft, yet it carried a weight that seemed to transcend the passage of time.
My story begins a long time ago...
She began to tell her story.
She recounts how she was once a human being, with a beloved husband and adorable children.
The story recounts how, suffering from a terminal illness, her yearning for life led her to be targeted by a demon and transformed into a ghost.
She recounts how, after losing her mind, she killed her husband and child with her own hands.
As she spoke, Tamayo's voice trembled slightly, and the pain and regret that had accumulated in her beautiful eyes for hundreds of years almost overflowed.
Sabito, sitting to the side, had completely lost his playful expression, replaced by shock and pity. He couldn't help but let out a low sigh, and his gaze towards Tamayo became complicated.
"Later, it took me over two hundred years to break free from Muzan Kibutsuji's control by modifying my own body."
Tamayo took a deep breath, calmed herself down, and continued.
"From that moment on, my sole purpose in life was to avenge myself on him. I became a doctor, saving lives while researching a drug that could defeat Muzan."
"Yushiro, I saved him in an accident. He was also seriously ill at the time, and I turned him into a demon in order to keep him alive."
"We never eat people; we survive only by purchasing small amounts of human blood. I swear to God that."
Her words were calm, without any deliberate attempt to evoke emotion; she was simply stating a cruel fact that had persisted for hundreds of years.
Giyu didn't say a word from beginning to end.
He simply listened quietly, his icy blue eyes always revealing Transparent World.
In his field of vision, he could clearly see Tamayo's every heartbeat, every breath, and every flow of blood.
There was no indication that he was lying.
In other words, everything she said is true.
The woman before me is a pitiful yet admirable being, burdened with a deep-seated blood feud, who practices medicine and saves lives in the body of a ghost, while also seeking revenge against the Demon King.
The last trace of killing intent in Giyu's heart quietly dissipated.
He picked up the teacup in front of him and took a small sip.
The tea was at just the right temperature.