Overwhelming!

The incited believers were like puppets on strings. Twisted anger surfaced on their numb faces as they slowly rose and began roaring along:

"Burn him to death!"

"Purify the heretic!"

"Offer him to the true god!"

Several burly men, also dressed in white robes but with numb, vicious eyes, immediately rushed out of the crowd and roughly dragged the middle-aged man to his feet.

He struggled desperately, his gaze still fixed on his daughter's direction, and shouted himself hoarse, "Xiaohui! Run! Get out of this hellhole! They're demons that eat people!"

But the girl in the crowd merely watched blankly as her father was dragged away, the pink smoke and singing holding her mind firmly captive.

The enforcers expertly dragged the middle-aged man to a pile of dry firewood already prepared in a corner of the ritual grounds and roughly bound him to a thick wooden stake.

The wood was lit, crackling as thick smoke began to rise.

"Do you see?! This is what happens to those who betray the true god! Only absolute devotion can grant you eternal life!"

The female demon shrieked from the platform, her voice distorted with excitement.

Just as the flames were about to lick the undercover father's trouser legs...

Buzzz-!

An impossibly deep hum, as though space itself were being forcibly torn apart, erupted without warning inside the warehouse.

The sound instantly drowned out all the chanting, screaming, and crackling flames.

Time seemed to freeze for an instant.

A deep, spectral blue blade gleam abruptly appeared at the ventilation opening atop the warehouse.

There was no transition, as though it had been there from the very beginning.

Riiip-!

The sturdy steel ventilation grille, along with the thick wooden roof structure beneath it, was silently sliced open by the spectral blue blade gleam, leaving a massive breach.

Before the wood shavings and metal fragments could even scatter, the cold accompanying the blade gleam annihilated them.

Cool moonlight poured through the breach like a waterfall, instantly illuminating the billowing smoke and the demonic revelry below.

A tall, straight-backed figure wearing a white-and-gold cloak emblazoned with the character for "slay" stepped out of that spatial rift and slowly descended into the very center of the ritual grounds.

He landed right at the heart of the enormous blood-red symbol, directly before the three stunned demons.

Rolling his neck and tugging at his collar, Kirishima Bupai curled his lips into a cold, brazen smile, with a hint of amusement at the prospect of some fun.

"Good evening!"

Kirishima Bupai's icy voice swept away the thick, cloyingly sweet pink smoke in the air like a polar wind.

"A bunch of trash eking out an existence by deceiving the souls of ants. Your eternal paradise ends here! Although..."

His eyes narrowed dangerously as his gaze swept over the three demons. "Cutting you down outright would be a bit of a waste."

The entire place fell deathly silent.

All the chanting, clamor, and sounds of burning flames abruptly ceased.

The believers raised their heads in bewilderment, their vacant eyes fixed on the figure who had suddenly descended like divine punishment.

The middle-aged man forgot the flames at his feet, his eyes widening in disbelief.

The hazy eyes of the girl called Xiaohui seemed to show an extremely faint ripple as well, stirred by the arrival of that powerful presence and her father's heart-wrenching cries.

On the platform, the three demons' expressions of compassion and elegance, and the eerie smile on the mask, instantly froze, replaced by unconcealable horror.

This Demon Slayer Corps Hashira... wasn't there something wrong with his lines?

"The... the Demon Slayer Corps?!"

The female demon in the middle reacted first, her seductive face left with nothing but ferocity and murderous intent. "Why is there a Hashira here?!"

"This is only a branch... why would a Hashira be here?! Kill him! We can't let him ruin the offerings!"

Almost at the same instant her words fell-

Screee-!

A sonic passage far shriller and more lethal than before erupted from the amber-eyed male demon's mouth like an invisible sledgehammer, hurtling straight at Kirishima Bupai.

The air visibly warped and shook!

"Blood Demon Art! Soul Rend!"

At the same time, the female demon's ten fingers danced wildly. Poisonous pink mist ten times denser than before, its color nearly deep purple, surged toward Kirishima like raging waves.

"Blood Demon Art! Bone-Eroding Poison Miasma!"

The masked demon also let out an inhuman roar, the nails on both hands abruptly lengthening and flashing with a metallic chill.

His short, stocky body erupted with terrifying speed at odds with his build, hurtling toward Kirishima like a cannonball, his sharp claws aimed straight at the heart.

In the blink of an eye, three deadly attacks, coming from different angles and in different forms, engulfed Kirishima Bupai's figure.

Yet facing this combined assault, powerful enough to instantly kill an ordinary Hashira-rank fighter, Kirishima Bupai did not even change his grip on his blade.

He merely stood where he was, watching the approaching attacks calmly from behind his sunglasses, and even sighed softly, as though looking at unruly children.

At the instant the soul-rending sound waves reached his face, the poisonous miasma touched the edge of his cloak, and the claws were about to pierce his chest-

"How disappointing..." His icy voice sounded like a judgment.

Clang-!!!

A terrifying ring of steel that surpassed the limits of hearing and seemed ready to tear souls apart resounded throughout the space.

This time, everyone saw it clearly.

He had not drawn his blade. Kirishima Bupai had merely used his thumb to push the Nichirin Blade at his waist upward one inch, exposing just one inch of its edge.

A spectral blue blade gleam whose speed and form defied description abruptly lit up, like the first trace of light at the birth of the universe.

It was not a straight slash. Instead, countless crisscrossing threads of spectral blue light erupted instantly within the narrow space before Kirishima Bupai.

These threads of light had no physical substance, yet held a terrifying will that could sever space.

Wherever they passed, space itself seemed to be sliced into countless independent fragments.

The soul-rending sound waves shattered with a crash the instant they touched the web of light, like rocks striking an invisible barrier.

The poisonous miasma seemed to strike a wall of ice at absolute zero, instantly turning into a skyful of glittering purple ice-crystal powder.

The masked demon discovered in horror that his all-out strike seemed to have sunk into hundreds of millions of layers of solidified spatial amber, unable to advance even another inch.

His body had gone completely rigid as well, an invisible, icy restraining force pinning him firmly in place.

The three demons' carefully orchestrated joint killing move was effortlessly crushed like a child's toy before that single inch of exposed blade.

"Space?! A spatial ability?! Wait, he just said... a waste?!" the female demon shrieked involuntarily, her voice filled with incredulous terror and a trace of an absurd premonition.