That was right-this was not swordsmanship training like he had done under Kazami.
Nor was it endurance training high in the mountains, as it had been under Urokodaki.
This time, he faced a crude forge, with a heavy hammer in his hand.
All he had to do was hammer iron.
It sounded simple.
In practice, it proved far harder than Xia Xi had expected.
Matsuyama required him to put his full strength into every swing while maintaining the rhythm of Stone Breathing throughout.
Merely imitating Stone Breathing already pushed him to his limits. After a single hammer blow, the recoil left his arm numb, and the rhythm of Stone Breathing naturally fell apart.
He turned to look at Matsuyama beside him.
The Cultivator, who was also working at the forge, was entirely different.
He stood firmly on one leg, gripping the iron with a pair of tongs. The old hammer in his hand was much larger and more battered than Xia Xi's.
Clang!
Steady and focused, the blow sent sparks cascading like a waterfall.
Clang!
His breathing, heartbeat, and the force of his hammer blows seemed to resonate in some subtle way.
Clang!
Xia Xi could even faintly hear the tiny sounds of impurities being squeezed out of the iron, of metal growing denser under immense pressure.
"Your breathing is off again."
Matsuyama did not look up. His voice mingled with the roar of the bellows.
"Grip your hammer as you would your breathing. Remember, you aren't swinging the hammer. Your breathing is swinging it. The earth is swinging that hammer through your arm."
It all sounded terribly mystical.
Xia Xi could only grit his teeth and steel himself to keep swinging alongside the retired swordsman.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Compared with Matsuyama's, his hammer blows rang out more sharply, but lacked cohesion.
Sure enough, after a few strikes, the Breathing Style he had maintained fell apart again.
"Keep going."
Matsuyama still did not look at him, silently continuing his struggle with the iron ingot before him.
It was as though he, rather than Xia Xi, was the one training his Breathing Style.
"Turning a piece of [iron] into good [steel] takes more than brute force. You can't rush it, either."
"Quiet your mind."
Xia Xi nodded.
Setting aside his exhaustion, he actually found this training sequence the game designers had created rather interesting.
Among all the games chasing the thrill of combat, few let players settle down and truly experience the essence of training.
Of course, the main reason was that he could not trigger the accelerated training animation yet.
Assisted acceleration could only be used for highly repetitive actions he had already mastered.
When learning a new skill like this, or fighting fiercely against demons, he had to experience every second himself.
Ever since the raven had brought word of his promotion,
the hammering had continued for days.
On the third day, Xia Xi found the feeling Matsuyama had spoken of.
His Breathing Style was interrupted noticeably less often as he hammered the ingot.
And on the fifth day, when his mind sank completely into that state of resonance between breathing and hammering,
the familiar system feature finally unlocked: blacksmithing training could now be fast-forwarded.
Naturally, Xia Xi chose to throw himself into it wholeheartedly, hammering every drop of sweat and every ounce of effort into his training with maximum efficiency.
Time streamed past like visible grains of sand, racing beyond his awareness.
Heat it red-hot, hammer it, cool it, heat it again...
Sweat had long since soaked his clothes and crusted into salt on his skin. His arm went from aching to numb, then reached a strange state in which it felt like an extension of the hammer's handle.
The subtle resistance and yielding of iron beneath the hammer.
His Stone Breathing progress, which had not yet reached halfway, also began to climb slowly and steadily on the system panel, like a heartbeat.
Beside him, Matsuyama Daimon silently watched Xia Xi, who was immersed in a flow state.
This boy was more gifted than he had expected.
Learning multiple Breathing Styles was no easy task. After all, a person had only one set of lungs and one brain.
Mastering a single Breathing Style was already a harsh test of body and will. Studying two or three meant memorizing several times as many entirely different breathing rhythms and sword forms.
It was an immense burden.
Not only would it do little to improve one's strength, but one also had to switch to the necessary breathing pattern at the right moment.
To him, it served almost no purpose beyond broadening one's horizons.
And to switch smoothly between two or even more Breathing Styles during a life-or-death struggle, using them freely to meet different situations,
was far harder than drawing a circle with the left hand and a square with the right.
With its gentle, accommodating nature, Water Breathing might allow someone exceptionally talented to practice it alongside another style.
But Stone Breathing?
It was heavier and more demanding, placing extremely high requirements on both the user's temperament and physique.
And yet...
Matsuyama had never doubted whether the boy before him could master Stone Breathing.
He was simply curious what the boy would come to understand from this mountain rock.
And what new path he might forge through the wills of stone, water, and wind.
The will of mountains and stone lay in bearing weight.
What Fudō Hino had learned from him was hardness and strength. It matched the lad's temperament: a silent volcano on the outside, with scorching lava surging within.
From mountain rock, he had forged his own breathing.
He had eventually become the Corps' [Mountain Hashira].
Gyomei, however, was entirely different.
When he had first arrived...
he had carried sorrow heavier than a mountain.
He was compassionate, sensitive, and quick to empathize. He seemed gentle, yet deep within him lay a hardness and wariness few could match.
It was as though, deep down, Gyomei lacked trust in many people.
But that did not mean the boy lacked talent.
From Matsuyama's limited perspective,
Gyomei would certainly grow stronger still, even far surpassing his predecessor, the [Mountain Hashira].
How dearly he had once hoped that Fudō and Gyomei would stand shoulder to shoulder and uphold the future of the Demon Slayer Corps.
But...
Whenever he thought of the death notice for Fudō Hino that had arrived not long ago, Matsuyama still could not suppress his grief.
The boy had been only twenty-six, with so much promise ahead of him.
And he had died out in the wilderness without a sound.
According to the Kakushi's report, when they found Hino, less than half his body remained in the wilderness.
It had been covered in battle wounds and contaminated with an extremely potent poison.
Clearly, he had
perished in battle against an Upper Rank Demon.
Even giving everything he had, he had been unable to defeat his opponent.
At the moment of his death, he must have been filled with regret and pain.
More than once, Matsuyama had wondered: If I had been beside my student then, could I have saved his life?
If we had fought that Upper Rank together...
Perhaps even my skills wouldn't have changed the outcome.
But even if we couldn't win, perhaps... at least I could have given the boy a slightly better chance of survival.
The Demon Slayer Corps needed more resolute, powerful swordsmen.
That was why he had become a Cultivator, and why he had accepted Kazami Kōgi's request.
And Xia Xi, standing before him,
showed him a possibility entirely different from anything he had seen in Hino or Gyomei.
Without question, this boy possessed exceptional talent.
But what concerned Matsuyama more was that elusive [uncertainty].
When it came to slaying demons, he possessed an extraordinarily pure obsession that even Matsuyama found baffling.
To Matsuyama, it went far beyond even the desire to avenge a blood feud.
Just as people needed to breathe, Xia Xi seemed to regard slaying demons as a matter of course.
As though... as though he had been born to slay demons.
His approach to training was also somewhat baffling.
At times, he seemed restless and impatient, yet a moment later he could become calmer and more focused than anyone, with a level of concentration far beyond that of any child Matsuyama had ever seen.
Beyond that, his physical abilities far exceeded what swordsmen at this stage should possess.
He was second only to Gyomei Himejima back then.
Most surprising of all were his Breathing Styles: he actually intended to attain proficiency in all five basic breathing styles.
Yet he was different from other swordsmen who reached beyond their abilities.
While most swordsmen had yet to master even a single Breathing Style, he had already mastered wind and water.
And now, he was close to learning Stone Breathing as well.
Matsuyama exhaled softly, gratification and a faint trace of worry flickering in his eyes.
Just as distracting thoughts began to fill Matsuyama's mind, something changed on Xia Xi's side.
The sound of his hammer striking the iron ingot changed completely.
[Stone Breathing]
had activated.
[Stone Breathing] ┣ Unpolished Jade Lv. 0 ┣ Progress: 1/250 ┗ Sword forms mastered: 0/10
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