Rui looked down at his left arm and shoulder lying in the muddy pit.
His gaze traveled up from the severed limb.
The cut along the edge of his torso was smooth as a mirror.
Muscle fibers, cross sections of blood vessels, and the internal structure of his bones lay exposed to the air with the clarity of an anatomical diagram.
His mind froze.
There was no spurt of blood, no wrenching sensation of flesh tearing.
After a brief pause, his body's defenses collapsed completely.
Agony that felt as though a piece of his very soul had been gouged out raced up his spine and slammed through his skull.
Rui opened his mouth wide.
A distorted scream squeezed from his throat, its rasp piercing the heavy stench of blood hanging over the mountain forest.
He desperately drove the blood inside his body.
The powerful regenerative instinct Muzan had granted him was forced to its limit by the searing pain.
The flesh around the cut in his torso began to bulge outward.
Fresh buds of flesh scrambled to the surface, intertwining and pressing against one another as they tried to rebuild his severed bones.
A faint sizzling sounded.
The newly formed flesh gave off foul-smelling white smoke the instant it touched the air.
It blackened before his eyes, carbonizing into charred powder that showered down his remaining shoulder.
It fell into the muddy water, becoming a puddle of dead ash.
The guarantee of survival he had trusted for centuries was torn to shreds.
"Why won't it grow back?!"
Rui screamed, his voice thick with sobs.
His unbalanced body rolled helplessly through the blood-soaked mud.
His remaining right hand clutched the dead grass on the ground, veins bulging across its back.
As long as a Nichirin Blade did not sever his neck, he could recover from any injury, however severe.
That certainty, etched into his genes, had been utterly shattered, and the terror trembling deep in his soul left him unable even to stand.
Ten paces away.
Giyu knelt on one knee in the muddy pit, gasping for breath.
He looked up at the back of the figure in the black uniform ahead.
Yaha stood casually, his hands still in his trouser pockets, not even the hem of his uniform disturbed.
A few days earlier on Mount Fujikasane, Giyu had seen Yaha use the same method to slice the Hand Demon apart.
He had thought it was merely a means of dealing with low-level demons.
But now, the demon kneeling in the mud and screaming was a Lower Rank of the ruling Twelve Kizuki.
Before this man, there was no difference between the Twelve Kizuki and bottom-rung fodder.
With nothing more than a casual lift of his hand, Yaha had erased the iron law governing demons.
Giyu swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva and dug his fingers hard into the soil, forcing his aching muscles to steady him.
Yaha walked forward at an unhurried pace.
His military boots crushed the dead grass and broken branches underfoot with sharp cracks.
A sudden, violent rustling came from the treetops on the left.
Rui abruptly raised his remaining right hand, curled his fingers into claws, and yanked back with all his strength.
Several invisible threads instantly pulled taut.
Three deathly pale figures were dragged bodily out of the depths of the forest and slammed into the muddy water.
They were the "family" Rui had forcibly cobbled together-Spider Sister, Demon Mother, and a Mutant Demon.
They had been hiding in the shadows, trembling, but now Rui had turned them into his last human shields.
"Stop him! Hurry, stop him!" Rui roared himself hoarse.
Spider Sister screamed in terror, tears streaming down with the muddy water, but the threads controlling her forced her to spit out a sky-filling web of gray-white poison.
The poisonous web descended from above, trying to block Yaha's advance.
Yaha did not even spare them a proper glance.
He stopped and drew his right hand from his pocket.
Holding his index and middle fingers together, he casually traced two strokes through empty air.
The poisonous web overhead split into hundreds of pieces on the spot.
The severed edges rapidly blackened and carbonized, turning to ash that drifted away.
The invisible slashes continued unabated, sweeping straight through the three figures being used as shields.
The dull sounds of tearing flesh blended together.
The three demons' bodies came apart in midair.
Their heads, torsos, and limbs were sliced into remarkably even pieces, and dozens of chunks struck the mud.
No blood flowed from their cuts either.
The moment buds of flesh tried to emerge and repair their bodies, they sizzled and carbonized.
Before they could even beg for mercy, they became a scattering of charred remains.
Yaha continued forward.
He reached Rui and stopped.
He raised his right foot and planted it directly on the remaining half of Rui's chest.
The hard sole of his military boot ground down viciously.
Crack.
Several ribs caved in, piercing Rui's lung.
"You dragged your 'family' over to use as shields just to stay alive."
Yaha looked down at the white-haired demon on the ground.
Dark red light slowly swirled in his eyes, brimming with mockery.
His boot pressed down again.
Rui opened his mouth and vomited a great mouthful of purplish-black blood mixed with fragments of his organs.
"These are the bonds you made playing house?"
Yaha's voice carried a chill that stabbed straight into the marrow.
"Trash forced together through fear and tyranny. Give it the slightest touch, and it shatters all over the ground."
He tilted his head, glancing at the still-smoking scraps of flesh nearby.
Those words pierced straight through Rui's last emotional defense.
His sham family affection was the only fig leaf that sustained his existence.
Now Yaha had brutally ripped that cloth away and trampled it underfoot, grinding it apart again and again.
Rui's eyes bulged, webbed with bloodshot veins.
Fear and humiliation intertwined, driving the demon into one final frenzy.
Rui let out a beastlike growl.
His remaining right hand shot up and clamped onto the edge of Yaha's military boot.
His nails scraped against the black leather with an ear-piercing sound.
He forcibly squeezed every last drop of Muzan's blood within him, his heart pounding at a dangerously overloaded rate.
Purplish-red veins bulged across his pale cheeks and neck.
Blood Demon Art: Slaughterous Eye Cage, Thread Rotation.
This was his final strike, burning through his remaining life and gambling everything.
His toughest blood-red threads erupted from his fingertips and pores, their hardness and speed of contraction several times greater than before.
The sky-filling red threads whipped up a strangling storm.
The densely packed threads sliced through the air with shrill screams.
Tree trunks within a dozen meters were instantly shredded, sending wood chips and dirt flying everywhere.
Red death sealed off every avenue of escape, trying to grind Yaha into pulp with the resolve to take him down along with Rui.
Behind him, the howling wind pressed so hard against Giyu that he could not open his eyes.
The blood seeping from his wounds was stripped away by the wind blades, and he did not even have the strength to shout a warning.
Yaha watched the blood-colored storm rushing toward him.
The fierce wind whipped up the hem of his black uniform.
The black curse markings on his face spread unchecked, trailing from the corners of his eyes to his forehead.
The dark red light in his eyes blazed at full intensity.
Wild, arrogant laughter burst from his mouth, cutting through the noise of the slicing air and echoing across all of Spider Mountain.
Yaha did not use Dismantle, his single-target slash, again.
He slowly raised his right hand.
The muscles in his arm tensed slightly, and his joints gave soft cracks.
His five fingers suddenly spread in empty air, pointing straight at the blood-colored meat grinder rushing toward him.
"Since you don't understand."
Yaha's voice overwhelmed the storm's roar, striking Rui's ears with perfect clarity.
"Let me show you a little mercy and teach you what a real monster is."
The high-strength red threads were less than three inches from his palm.
The razor-sharp currents severed several strands of black hair above Yaha's forehead.
His gaze turned utterly cold.
"You call this crude garbage cutting?"
The cursed energy gathering in his five fingers surged to a terrifying level.
Unable to withstand that power, the surrounding air visibly warped.
"Open those damned eyes and watch."
Yaha's lips spread into a smile of utter savagery.
"This is a blade that cuts flesh."
"Cleave."
Before you continue