Bupai feigned sleep to lure the enemy

The masked demon was pinned in place, unable to move, its eyes behind the wooden mask filled with utter terror.

It struggled desperately, but the invisible spatial restraints did not budge.

The amber-eyed male demon had gone deathly pale. The Soul-Splitting Screech it had just unleashed seemed to have drained much of its strength.

Now it was further cowed by the defense-ignoring power of space, while the soul-searching question of "what does waste mean?" added to its turmoil.

But this was not over!

Before the ghostly blue threads of light had fully faded, Kirishima Bupai's figure blurred again.

"Don't call me Hashira. Call me Lord Bupai! Lord V works too! Hehe..."

His faintly teasing murmur echoed through the deathly silence.

There was no afterimage, no trail of movement. It was as though he had simply erased the distance between himself and his target.

In the blink of an eye, he appeared behind the amber-eyed male demon, as though he had been standing there all along.

The amber-eyed male demon felt a bone-chilling cold shoot from its tailbone straight to the crown of its head. It did not even have time to turn around.

"So noisy."

Kirishima Bupai's icy voice sounded right against the male demon's ear as his right hand flashed to the hilt of the Nichirin Blade at his waist.

Bzzzt-!

An indescribably terrifying grip strength erupted in an instant.

Visible waves of scorching heat spread from his palm.

Amid a teeth-grating metallic hum, the pitch-black blade instantly turned a dazzling scarlet, like a branding iron heated red-hot.

The terrifying Bright Red Blade manifested instantly under his grip.

Its scorching heat distorted the surrounding air.

"Here's something good for you... Bright Red Blade!"

With that low shout, Kirishima Bupai and his Bright Red Blade became a streak of scarlet light.

Had it been Tanjiro, these demons would probably have died comfortably. But Kirishima Bupai was not Tanjiro. Simply cutting them down would have been letting them off too easily...

Shrrrk-!!

He unleashed a blindingly fast horizontal draw slash, carrying the Bright Red Blade's searing heat and the power of spatial traversal.

The scarlet blade light swept with flawless precision just beneath the male demon's Adam's apple.

"Ugh... hh... hh..."

The amber-eyed male demon's scream was instantly strangled in its throat, reduced to a leaking hiss.

The Bright Red Blade's heat instantly scorched and sliced through its vocal cords and neck muscles, leaving it unable to produce any more of those disruptive sound waves.

Agonizing pain made its eyes bulge as it dropped to its knees, its body convulsing violently.

Its hands clamped desperately around its neck, but it could only make strange rasping sounds, having completely lost the ability to use sound as a weapon.

The Blood Demon Art it took such pride in had been crippled with a single slash!

"My voice! No-!!!"

Hearing its companion's anguished cries, the female demon let out a terrified scream, its ten fingers dancing frantically as it tried to gather poisonous mist again.

Kirishima Bupai dealt with the male demon in one fluid, uninterrupted motion. Before the scarlet Bright Red Blade had even fully returned to its sheath, the five fingers of his left hand shot out like steel hooks.

"Get over here!"

With nothing but terrifying speed and strength, he seized the female demon's alluring long hair with perfect accuracy and yanked it down.

"Aaaah-!"

The female demon felt a tearing pain rip across its scalp, and its carefully maintained elegance instantly crumbled.

An utterly unreasonable brute force dragged its seductive body straight off the raised platform.

Splat!

With a dull thud, the female demon's meticulously maintained, bewitching face slammed squarely into the dirt beside Kirishima Bupai's feet.

Dust flew, its carefully applied makeup smeared into a mess, and foul-smelling dirt and grass filled its mouth. Its carefully maintained image was utterly destroyed.

The impact left it dazed and seeing stars, unable even to cry out for a moment.

Meanwhile, the restrained masked demon had barely been distracted by its companions' miserable state when the figure holding the scarlet Bright Red Blade flashed past it like a phantom.

Immediately afterward, a succession of burning pains pierced to the marrow at the joints of its thick limbs.

Shhk! Shhk! Shhk! Shhk!

Four chilling sounds of a blade slicing into flesh and searing sinew and bone rang out almost simultaneously.

"Aaaaaaagh-!!!"

The masked demon let out an earth-shattering howl and crashed to the ground like a tower whose supporting pillars had all been removed at once.

Its limbs bent at grotesque angles.

The ligaments and major tendons in its elbows and knees had been precisely severed by the scarlet Bright Red Blade, without the slightest sign of regeneration.

Although its limbs had not been cut off, the Bright Red Blade's scorching heat had cauterized the wounds.

This left it utterly unable to move, capable only of writhing on the ground and howling in pain like an enormous worm.

In less than a minute, Kirishima Bupai had crushed all three demons while toying with them.

A different kind of deathly silence fell over the warehouse.

A pin drop could have been heard.

All the believers stood frozen, staring in shock at this abruptly changed, bloody, and violent scene.

The legendary demon-slaying lord of Hashira rank...

First he had immobilized the demons with miraculous power, then charged in to grab one by the hair and slam its face down with his bare hand, before using a red-hot blade to ruin one's throat and sever another's arm and leg tendons?!

Was he... enjoying the process of beating demons senseless?!

"Caw!!"

The Kasugai Crow flapped down onto Kirishima Bupai's shoulder, its little eyes as wide as brass bells as it stared at the still-scarlet Bright Red Blade and the three pitiful demons on the ground.

"Impressive, Lord Void Hashira! Are you... having too much fun? Not cutting them down? Saving them for the New Year as emergency rations or laborers? Caw?"

Kirishima Bupai ignored it. With the soft click of the sheath closing, the scarlet glow of the Bright Red Blade swiftly receded like the tide, leaving the blade pitch-black again.

He looked down at the three trembling demons on the ground.

"Hehehe..."

With a cold chuckle, he slowly crouched, bringing his face almost right up against the female demon's bewitching face, now covered in mud and blood.

The corners of Kirishima Bupai's cold mouth curved into what could only be called an "evil" smile. "Tsk. You'll have to repay your debts slowly."

"Now..."

Kirishima Bupai's voice sounded like a broadcast from a frozen hell.

"Task one! Before dawn, turn over and till every bit of abandoned land outside town for me!"

"It must be a foot and a half deep, with the clods broken down as fine as wheat grains."

"One inch short, and you get a beating! Clods too big, and you get a beating! If any of you dare slack off or try any tricks..."

He clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking. Even space seemed to twist with them.

The three demons were scared out of their wits. How could they dare utter a single word of refusal?

They nodded frantically, tears and snot smeared all over their faces. "We'll till it! We'll till it! We'll make it beautiful!"

And so, under the stares of the dumbstruck Kakushi Squad members, the bewildered believers, and the man holding his daughter, whose jaw dropped just as he had recovered his senses...

Suzuran Town witnessed the strangest sight in its history...

Beneath the night sky, a masked demon limped along, swinging a hoe so fast it left afterimages. It had suffered the worst beating, but that had instead stirred its will to survive.

An amber-eyed male demon with a ruined voice could only howl silently as it desperately clawed at the earth. Its lower back was bruised, and every movement made it grimace.

There was also an alluring female demon, shedding tears of humiliation while diligently using its long fingernails as a rake to level the ground...

The face it had taken such pride in was utterly ruined. Three vicious demons that should have been eating people were now sweating buckets in abandoned fields, reclaiming wasteland!

The absurdity of the scene was enough to earn a place in the Demon Slayer Corps' annals of strange tales.

Kirishima Bupai sat cross-legged on a large rock beside a field ridge, leisurely savoring the tea the surrounding villagers had offered him, looking every bit the foreman.

The Kasugai Crow on his shoulder cawed excitedly. "Keep going! Keep going! You, digging over there! Yes, you!"

"Your form is wrong! Caw, caw! Lord Void Hashira, you're a genius! A new model for putting trash to use!"

At first, cowed by his tyranny, the three demons worked fairly hard.

The fields were barren, but under the demons' brute strength, dirt flew and progress was gratifying.

By midnight, they were more than halfway done.

Kirishima Bupai seemed a little "tired." He adjusted his posture and tilted his head back slightly against the rock.

His eyes... closed? His breathing became slow and even too? He had actually begun feigning sleep!

The three demons instantly slowed their movements, exchanging meaningful looks.

The female and male demons could still signal with their eyebrows and eyes, while the masked demon could only express itself through the holes in its mask.

An opportunity! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! This killing fiend had fallen asleep!

The masked demon was the first to lose patience. It quietly put down its hoe and tiptoed toward the nearby woods.

Seeing this, the amber-eyed male demon clutched its lower back and followed, glancing behind it every few steps.

The female demon hesitated, looked at Kirishima Bupai's seemingly sleeping figure in the moonlight, then gritted its teeth, dropped its rake, and slipped away on tiptoe too.

The three demons believed they had gone completely unnoticed. As they were about to slip into the shadows at the edge of the woods, wild joy at surviving the ordeal appeared in their eyes.

Smack!

"Aow!"

Thump!

Three strange, dull impacts rang out almost simultaneously with three piercing screams.

The masked demon felt as though an invisible iron hammer had smashed into the leg that had only just recovered...

With a crisp crack of bone, it screamed and fell flat on the ground.

The amber-eyed male demon felt a tremendous force strike from behind... an immensely powerful shove against its back!

The next instant, it went flying as though struck by a speeding train.

It plunged headfirst into the freshly turned, soft earth, getting a mouthful of mud, its lower back hurting so badly it nearly passed out.

The female demon fared even worse. It felt a force seize its meticulously maintained long hair.

Then its body was slammed into the ground like a torn sack, landing in a perfect faceplant that even knocked its nose crooked.

"Where do you think you're going?"

An icy voice sounded like a phantom beside the three demons' ears.