The converging paths of six blades came crushing down as one.
Cracks in the collapsing air had already spread to the grass beneath their feet. Only a streak of white light remained in Tanjiro's pupils. His body instinctively recoiled, and he wrapped both arms around Kotetsu and rolled across the ground.
Yaha stood where he was.
He raised his right hand, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and lightly flicked them upward at the combined strike pouring down on him.
Hiss.
The sound was exceedingly faint. It was not the sharp ring of colliding metal. Something far more precise was happening in the air.
The lethal strike of six wooden blades united as one stopped the instant it reached a point three inches in front of his fingers.
Not the kind of stop caused by opposing force.
The structure itself had been dismantled from within.
The wood fibers at the blade tips began separating. Layer by layer, following the grain, they peeled apart as though an invisible hand were stripping them along their growth rings. It happened blindingly fast, spreading from tip to hilt. In less than a breath, all six wooden blades had become a skyful of drifting wooden strands.
Thinner than toothpicks.
Finer than hair.
Sunlight streamed through the gaps between the strands, illuminating the entire clearing as though a golden snowfall had swept through it.
Cursed Technique Eight.
A dismantling slash that automatically adjusted its output to the target's hardness. Applied to wood, it broke the material down along its fibers into its most basic units. Precise. Clean. Not a single unnecessary splinter.
Tanjiro lifted his head from the ground.
The wooden strands were still falling. His mind was still processing what had happened in that instant. A combined six-blade strike, the prototype of Sun Breathing's