The severed arm had lain on the red carpet for less than three seconds before the purplish-black corrosion on its surface exposed the bone.
Doma crouched, pressing the ribs of the fan in his right hand against the stump of his left shoulder. Bitter cold poured from the fan, and white mist instantly sealed the entire wound beneath a thick shell of ice.
Stop the bleeding. Seal the wound. Isolate it.
A method that had never failed him in hundreds of years.
Beneath the ice shell, fresh buds of flesh emerged around the edges of the wound. Red, moist, and brimming with the extraordinary vitality unique to an Upper Rank Demon's blood.
Then those buds of flesh made a sound.
Sss.
Like red-hot iron plunged into cold water.
Even as their surfaces froze, the buds collapsed inward, their cellular structure breaking down from the outermost layer. The ice shell blocked physical spread, but the sliver of law carried within the poison did not travel through physical channels at all.
It acted directly upon the very rule of "regeneration."
Doma moved his right hand away from the fan's ribs.
He straightened and looked down for three seconds. Every bud of flesh inside the ice shell had died, turning into grayish-black wisps embedded in the ice like dead insects trapped in amber.
The curve of his lips vanished.
That face, forever wearing a gentle smile, became an expressionless white slate beneath the lanterns' warm light. His rainbow-colored irises fixed on Shinobu Kocho, his wandering focus narrowing to a needlepoint.
"This isn't poison."
His voice remained airy, but its underlying tone had changed. Carelessness had given way to a kind of calm calculation running at full speed.
"It's a curse that strips away rules."
Shinobu Kocho said nothing. She turned her Nichirin Blade