"Squelch!"
A clean, decisive slicing sound rang out.
Enmu's wildly laughing expression froze on his face.
His vision began to spin. He watched as his headless body remained standing where it was, black blood gushing furiously from its eyeball-covered chest.
He, the illustrious Lower Rank One of the Twelve Kizuki, had actually been beheaded with a single stroke by a swordsman who was not even a Hashira, in an exchange lasting just one breath!
"Thud."
Enmu's head tumbled heavily onto the roof of the train, the eyes engraved with numbers filled with disbelief.
Obanai slowly relaxed his stance and opened his eyes, staring coldly at the head on the roof.
"It's over. What a waste of time. Your strength didn't live up to all that arrogant drivel."
The battle seemed to have ended in an instant.
The train still thundered onward, the night wind stirring Obanai's haori. He was about to turn around and look for Rokuya and Shinobu inside the carriage, then force them awake. Although Rokuya had said that forcibly waking them was dangerous, now that the demon was dead, the Blood Demon Art should be dispelled along with him.
But just as he turned around-
"Haha... hahahahaha!"
An utterly warped, hoarse laugh, as grating as nails scraping a chalkboard, suddenly rang out from the roof beneath his feet-no, from every direction at once!
Obanai's pupils abruptly contracted, and he whipped around.
Enmu's head on the roof had not turned to ash and dispersed like other demons!
Instead of crumbling to ash, the severed surface of that head began furiously sprouting nauseating lumps of dark red flesh. As though alive, these lumps swiftly adhered to the train's metal skin and spread outward at an astonishing speed.
"Surprised, Mr. Swordsman?"
The mouth on Enmu's head stretched into an exaggerated