A vein at Sabito's temple pulsed twice.
"Say that again."
Yaha rolled over on the branch, both hands behind his head. His eyelids drooped, betraying his undisguised weariness.
"I said, if you want a beating, just ask."
He deliberately slowed his speech, drawing out every word in a lazy drawl.
"I could beat you into the ground and make you beg for mercy without a Breathing Style."
Veins bulged across the back of Sabito's hand as he gripped his wooden sword.
Beside him, Giyu stopped swinging his sword and turned to look, clearly wanting to say something but holding back.
"Giyu, tell me who's right." Sabito turned and glared at him. "You and I train from dawn till dusk, and he's slept in that tree all day. Did Master take him in to raise a pig?"
Giyu fell silent for a few seconds, glanced at Sabito, then looked up at his younger brother in the tree.
"Yaha does sleep too much."
"Oh, my stone-faced brother actually learned to take sides." Yaha yawned and jumped down from the branch three meters above the ground.
His feet landed without stirring even a trace of snow.
He stood in the snow with his left hand in his pocket and his right hanging loosely at his side. He never even touched the wooden sword at his waist.
Sabito stared at his flippant demeanor and clenched his back teeth.
"You're not even drawing your sword?"
"No need."
He tossed out the two words lightly.
"What did you say?"
"I said, no need." Yaha tilted his neck, eliciting a sharp crack. "At your level, drawing my sword would be an insult to this piece of wood."
Sabito's gaze darkened instantly. His pride as a swordsman had been thoroughly provoked.
"Giyu, move."
Giyu quickly hugged his wooden sword to his chest and retreated behind the old pine nearby.
Sabito lowered his center of gravity and drove both feet against the ground, blasting the snow outward in a ring.
Water Breathing, First Form: Water Surface Slash.
His wooden sword swept horizontally, trailing a deep-blue arc of light straight toward Yaha's waist.
Yaha leaned back less than three inches. The blade skimmed past his hem without brushing a single thread.
"Too wide."
Sabito gritted his teeth and changed techniques, bringing his wooden sword down in a vertical slash. Water Breathing, Second Form: Water Wheel.
Yaha merely shifted half a step sideways. The wooden sword passed within two finger-widths of his nose and cut into the snow.
"Too slow."
"Enough talk!"
Sabito's eyes reddened as he chained one technique after another. Third Form flowed into Fourth Form, his sword moving like running water, each attack fiercer than the last. His wooden sword whipped through the air, leaving a spray of watery afterimages.
Yaha's evasive movements were absurdly small.
Only when each strike was on the verge of touching his skin did his body shift a fraction. Not an inch wasted, not a scratch taken-his precision made it seem as though he had measured the space with a ruler.
"Hey, Sabito." Yaha tilted his head to avoid a horizontal slash, his tone as casual as a chat in a teahouse. "Got anything new? You keep cycling through the same few moves. Watching you is putting me to sleep."
"Shut up!"
Sabito growled, pushing his Water Breathing to its limit.
Faint patterns of flowing water appeared along his wooden blade, the culmination of two years of grueling practice.
This was his strongest attack.
Sixth Form: Twisting Whirlpool.
The wooden sword thrust toward Yaha's chest amid spiraling currents of air, moving so fast that the air let out a piercing shriek.
Yaha took a casual step to the left.
Sabito's wooden sword passed just outside his right shoulder, stabbing empty air.
Unable to halt his all-out lunge, Sabito pitched forward, leaving himself completely exposed.
Yaha moved.
He raised his right hand and gently brought his index and middle fingers together, unhurriedly catching Sabito's wooden sword despite the fierce wind surrounding it.
Clack.
Sabito's pupils contracted.
He tried with all his strength to pull the sword back, but those two fingers were like an iron clamp rooted in place. The wooden sword did not budge.
"How did you..." Disbelief filled Sabito's face.
"All right, that's enough."
Yaha released his fingers and smoothly raised his right leg, planting the sole of his shoe squarely in Sabito's abdomen.
Thud.
Sabito flew backward more than three meters and plunged headfirst into a roadside snowbank, leaving only his legs kicking outside.
Giyu leaned halfway out from behind the pine, his mouth slightly open, utterly dumbstruck.
"Too slow." Yaha brushed the snow dust from his hands and tilted his head toward the snowbank. "Like a turtle."
Sabito struggled out of the snowbank, ice chips covering his head. He coughed out a mouthful of melted snow and pointed at Yaha, his hand trembling uncontrollably.
"What technique did you use?"
"None."
"Bullshit!"
"Why would I lie?" Yaha turned toward the tree, plainly intending to go back to sleep. "I've never even practiced a Breathing Style. Where would I get a technique?"
"Then how could you stop my full-strength strike?"
Yaha stopped and glanced back at him.
"I'm strong."
The answer left Sabito feeling a suffocating tightness in his chest.
"Your breathing rhythm was already off by your third attack." Yaha sat against the trunk and closed his eyes, his tone offhand. "Your right shoulder was two inches higher than your left. You put too much force into that last move and shifted all your weight onto the ball of your front foot. If you'd faced a real demon, the grass on your grave would've grown back three times by now."
Sabito opened his mouth but could not muster a single word in rebuttal.
Every detail Yaha had pointed out was precisely correct.
Giyu stepped forward and reached out to pull Sabito up from the ground, muttering quietly.
"He has a point."
"You shut up too." Sabito shook off Giyu's hand and stared hard at Yaha, who was resting beneath the tree with his eyes closed. His voice was slightly hoarse. "Tomioka Ye Yu, if you're this strong, why won't you practice swordsmanship properly? You have ten times my talent. Do you realize what you're throwing away?"
Yaha did not open his eyes.
"What good is practicing swordsmanship?"
"What did you say?"
"Even ten thousand sword swings..." Yaha raised his right index finger and casually swept it through the cold air. Nothing happened. "Can't compare to one finger."
Without warning, the hairs along Sabito's spine stood on end.
He could not explain why. He simply felt something terribly dangerous and out of place creeping through the gaps in his bones into every part of his body.
"What kind of madness are you talking?"
"Call it madness, then." Yaha rolled over with his back to them and tucked his arm behind his head. "Stop making noise. Let me get some sleep."
Sabito stood there holding his wooden sword, staring at Yaha's back for a long time.
Giyu stood quietly for a while, then reached out and patted Sabito's shoulder.
"Come on. Let's get back to training."
"Next time, I'll make him draw his sword." Sabito tucked his wooden sword into his waistband and walked away, his back rigid.
Giyu glanced back at his younger brother, who was pretending to sleep beneath the tree, then silently followed. Their footsteps gradually faded into the snowy distance.
Yaha opened one eye halfway.
The cold, mechanical voice sounded in his mind right on cue.
[Roleplay level +1%. Current roleplay level: 12%.]
Yaha's lips twitched. Two years for a one-percent increase. This lousy system was even better at slacking off than he was.
He put the notification out of his mind, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.
He had already worked out everything he needed to practice alone on the mountain's rear slopes in the middle of the night. During the day, there really was nothing to do except conserve his energy. Sabito's swordsmanship was decent, half a body-length faster than Giyu's. Given time, he might genuinely amount to something.
Unfortunately, choosing Yaha as his opponent was simply asking for trouble. Yaha had not used even a tenth of his strength.
Wind swept through the treetops, scattering snow across his face. He could not even be bothered to wipe it away.
Fifty meters away, in the shadow of a thick old pine.
Sakonji Urokodaki had been standing there for a long time.
The eyes beneath his Tengu Mask stared through layers of overlapping branches, fixed on the boy feigning sleep against the tree trunk.
The rough bark cracked faintly beneath his tightly curled fingertips. At that moment, the former Water Hashira's breathing faltered-something exceedingly rare over the past two years.
Memories from two years earlier surged through his mind like a tide.
The night the Tomioka Family had been slaughtered, the cuts he had personally touched when he arrived at the scene.
On collapsed roof beams, hard frozen earth, and thick tree trunks.
Every cut surface had been smooth as a mirror. Even the finest swordsmith in the Swordsmith Village could never hone an edge with that kind of sharpness, capable of severing even souls. Those marks belonged to no known Breathing Style.
He had brought the three children back to Mount Sagiri partly out of his duty as a swordsman.
But he also needed to keep a personal watch on this boy named Tomioka Ye Yu.
For two whole years, the child had acted like an ordinary loafer drifting through life. But just now, Urokodaki had witnessed the truth with his own eyes.
A twelve-year-old boy, one hand in his pocket, neither drawing his sword nor using a Breathing Style, had toyed with Sabito despite the latter giving everything he had.
Two fingers had caught the blade in midair.
One kick had sent him flying three meters.
From beginning to end, his heartbeat and breathing had remained as calm as stagnant water, as though he had merely kicked a pebble aside on the road.
Urokodaki released his hand from the trunk, turned, and disappeared into the wind and snow, heading toward his dwelling.
Beneath the mask, his expression was utterly grave. What lingered deep in his mind were still those mirror-smooth cuts strewn across the Tomioka Family's home two years ago, like traces of a miracle-or the descent of a demon.
His figure soon vanished into the depths of the snow-covered forest.
Before you continue