A Perfect Being

"This isn't a person."

"It's a demon..."

Sarutobi Hiruzen glanced at Masahiro.

Masahiro immediately went on alert, his hand reaching for the samurai sword at his waist.

But he quickly remembered that it was daytime. Even Kibutsuji Muzan could only hide in dark places now.

Under the daylight, even if a demon wasn't directly exposed to the sun, its body would become extraordinarily weak inside a building or anywhere else sheltered from the sunlight.

Even an ordinary member of the Demon Slayer Corps could subdue one.

"So, sir..."

"There should only be one demon in the Spring Pavilion, right...?"

Masahiro realized that Lord Sarutobi must have subdued the demon last night, rendering it completely helpless. He couldn't help but admire him.

"That's right..."

"So don't worry."

"The geisha you slept with yesterday wasn't human..."

Sarutobi Hiruzen glared at Masahiro, knowing what was on his mind.

Masahiro gave an awkward laugh. Good.

If he'd slept with a demon, he probably would've thrown up right there.

Just as Sarutobi Hiruzen had said last night, how could anyone get aroused in the face of demons that had eaten countless people?

Still, I wonder if demons have the same sensitive nerves as humans.

Maybe Renji fakes it every night...

Masahiro asked,

"Sir."

"Where are we going next...?"

Sarutobi Hiruzen shook his head.

"I don't know either."

"But..."

"Do you have any tall mountains around here?"

Night fell over Kyoto once again.

Amid the brightly lit streets, the Spring Pavilion, usually bustling with people, now lay utterly silent.

"So."

"You don't know anything?"

Kibutsuji Muzan's face was pale, his expression dark. His terrifying, bloodthirsty aura continued to swell.

The woman kneeling before him was the madam of the Spring Pavilion.

"My lord!"

"I truly don't know how Renji disappeared!"

"She stayed in her room all last night and didn't receive any guests."

The madam's account didn't match what had really happened.

From her tone, it was clear that Kibutsuji Muzan held a powerful position in human society.

He might have had a number of influential humans under his control.

At the madam's words, Kibutsuji Muzan fell into an eerie silence. The murderous intent inside him kept growing, almost spilling out.

Faced with Muzan's hellish malice, the madam could only tremble, barely able to move.

Kibutsuji Muzan usually slept during the day. When he awoke that night, he discovered that Renji, his subordinate in Kyoto, had somehow severed their connection.

It enraged him. Renji was not only a capable subordinate into whom he had poured a considerable amount of his Source Blood, but also a key figure who gathered information and built connections at the Spring Pavilion.

Now she had vanished without a word or explanation.

For the first time in the hundreds of years he had lived, Kibutsuji Muzan felt an inexplicable flicker of panic.

In the past, whenever a demon was killed, it had always been a low-ranking one, unworthy of his attention.

But Renji was a trusted subordinate. He had given her a great deal of his Source Blood, and she was strong enough to escape unscathed even if confronted by a human army.

After a long silence, Kibutsuji Muzan finally regained enough composure not to kill the madam before him.

Not only was she a subordinate of one of his human followers and therefore useful to him,

but after becoming a demon, Kibutsuji Muzan had gained the ability to sense human emotions accurately.

Judging by her emotional fluctuations, the old woman before him showed no signs of lying.

It seemed Renji had either been secretly killed by humans or had freed herself from Kibutsuji Muzan's control.

Neither possibility was something he could tolerate.

"Hmph."

"I'll find out what happened..."

Kibutsuji Muzan narrowed his eyes, his expression venomous.

"But first..."

"I need to find the Blue Spider Lily."

"No matter what the Demon Slayer Corps does, all they can do is plot behind my back..."

"Pathetic humans."

After centuries of unrivaled power, Kibutsuji Muzan saw humans as nothing more than food.

And so far, no one had appeared who could harm him.

Though the sudden loss of a capable subordinate angered him, he didn't take it too seriously.

He could always replace a lost subordinate. Turning a human into a demon was a matter of chance, but there were enough humans to make up for the failures.

"The Blue Spider Lily..."

"Where are you?"

At the Demon Slayer Corps' headquarters,

in the underground laboratory,

Sarutobi Hiruzen took a Blue Spider Lily from his pocket and forced it into the mouth of an unconscious human man, making him swallow and digest it.

His pocket still held a pile of dried Blue Spider Lilies.

The Blue Spider Lily that Kibutsuji Muzan had searched for desperately for a thousand years was practically worthless to Sarutobi Hiruzen.

Though the Blue Spider Lily wasn't common throughout the Land of Days, it could still be found in certain places.

The thing was, it only bloomed during the few days around the summer solstice, when the sun was at its strongest.

Before blooming, the Blue Spider Lily was indistinguishable from the weeds by the roadside.

That was why Kibutsuji Muzan had been unable to find it, and why the Blue Spider Lily had taken on an air of mystery.

Even the humans of this world hadn't discovered it until the new century, when botanists finally identified it.

As far as Sarutobi Hiruzen knew, there had been many Blue Spider Lilies near Tsugikuni Yoriichi's former home.

"Perhaps they grew so lushly around Tsugikuni Yoriichi's home because they absorbed the power of Sun Breathing..."

For that reason, Sarutobi Hiruzen had made a special trip there to collect plenty of Blue Spider Lily specimens.

"So, besides feeding the Blue Spider Lily directly to demons and trying to help them evolve past their weakness to sunlight..."

"...it has another use."

Having read the story, Sarutobi Hiruzen naturally knew how the first demon immune to sunlight had come into being.

"Humans can be made to eat it first..."

"Then, after traces of the Blue Spider Lily remain in their bodies, they can be turned into demons..."

"That may actually be the safer method."

"After all, the Blue Spider Lily's medicinal properties are so potent that even an Upper Rank demon might not be able to withstand them..."

"Only the Demon King, Kibutsuji Muzan, could attempt it..."

Sarutobi Hiruzen recalled the original story. The protagonist's family had become Perfect Beings in just this way.

"So..."

Sarutobi Hiruzen looked at the unconscious test subject. A syringe appeared, and crimson blood was injected straight into his arm.

It was a small amount of Muzan's blood that Sarutobi Hiruzen had extracted from Renji.

As expected, a demon of Renji's rank had been granted the ability to infect humans by Muzan.

She wasn't some ordinary cannon fodder.

"Now all that's left is to wait..."

"For the so-called Perfect Being to be born."

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