He wore a well-fitted, deep-purple kimono with a honeycomb pattern, its antiquated style clearly dating back several hundred years.
His long, jet-black hair stirred in the wind. At his waist rested a grotesque katana, its scabbard covered in ugly growths and eyeballs.
Most suffocating of all were the six strange eyes on his stern face-at the center and on either side-all golden and filled with ruthlessness.
In the two main eyes at the center were clearly inscribed two lines of characters that struck terror into the entire Demon Slayer Corps.
Upper Rank, One.
"Kokushibo..." Rokuya uttered the name coldly. The blue-green radiance of the Arcana Armor began darting rapidly through the air around him, while his once softly lustrous black hair transformed, section by section, into a dazzling silver-white.
There were no screams, no severed limbs.
Nor were there corpses of slaughtered Swordsmith Village residents strewn everywhere.
Rokuya's brows drew together slightly. He had kept his senses fully extended throughout the journey, racing here at full speed with his maxed-out agility. He had already braced himself to witness hell on earth, yet he had never expected this place to be as clean as a silent graveyard.
This terrifying monster, who stood at the pinnacle of Muzan's subordinates and had lived for at least several hundred years, had done nothing but sit on a stone shrine and watch him coldly. He had not so much as laid a finger on the ordinary people nearby.
Those six golden eyes swiveled in unison in the darkness, finally fixing on Rokuya's gradually transforming silver hair and the surging pressure of Magic around him.
"You... have come..." Kokushibo's voice was dry and low. "A little earlier... than I imagined."
"What, you came all this way just to sit here in the cold wind?" Rokuya took