Su Chen poured the last of his strength into his hands.
Shadowless Hand!
Su Chen slapped a dark figure away.
Fortunately, his opponent seemed very weak and failed to get up for a long time after Su Chen knocked him to the ground.
Clutching the wound on his back, Su Chen sucked in two sharp breaths.
He had been using his Breathing Style just then, and the sudden injury had also damaged his lungs to some extent.
Fortunately, though, no vital organs in his back had been injured.
The wound was not deep, either. His attacker did not seem very strong and was probably an extremely weak demon.
But when the dark figure in the distance slowly rose, Su Chen froze.
"Old man?!"
The person in the shadows was none other than the old man he had met at the foot of the mountain!
No wonder he had so little strength.
Although his mental strength was exhausted, he had remained constantly on guard against demons. He would have sensed even the weakest demon.
But Su Chen had subconsciously left humans out of consideration, giving the old man an opening!
But...
Why had the old man tried to kill him?
And how had he reached the summit?
The next moment, the old man gave Su Chen his answer.
"What are you doing?" The old man wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and roared, his eyes wide, "Look what you've done! If you people kill them all, how am I supposed to become a demon?!"
Looking at the wreckage strewn throughout the room, the old man struggled to accept it.
He had put in so much effort. He was supposed to become a demon tonight!
But Su Chen had ruined everything!
In that enormous house, only one female demon remained!
In his impotent rage, the old man finally vented all his fury on Su Chen.
Su Chen fell uncharacteristically silent.
"Do you know? Sometimes human hearts are more frightening than demons. So often, I saved them, yet they showed no gratitude and even said outright that they wanted to become demons!"
At that moment, Su Chen finally understood what Shinobu Kocho had meant in her diary.
Sometimes, human hearts were more frightening than demons.
They would help demons slaughter their own kind, even becoming one of them for the sake of their own desires.
At that moment, Su Chen understood everything.
Why there had been someone at the foot of a mountain crawling with demons.
Why the first demon he encountered had targeted him instead of going after that old man first.
In fact, Su Chen had initially been unable to understand why Shinobu Kocho had been injured, because he had found no trace of any Upper Rank here.
But Su Chen had overlooked another factor.
Humans!
Su Chen finally understood how Shinobu Kocho had been injured.
His gaze grew colder.
The wound on his back felt all the more like a thorn in his flesh, burning as painfully as the sun.
Soon, the old man moved again.
He spotted Koyuki sobbing quietly on the floor and, clinging to his last shred of hope, immediately rushed up to her mouth.
"Please, turn me into a demon! I have cancer! I'm about to die!"
"Please, I don't want to die! Let me live!"
The old man pleaded through his tears, looking utterly pitiful.
Koyuki blinked, glanced at the old man, then bit straight into his neck.
The old man was overjoyed.
The next moment, he breathed his last.
Su Chen watched it all impassively.
The contents of Shinobu Kocho's diary surfaced in his mind again.
"I was so angry. I wanted to kill them! But I'm a member of the Demon Slayer Corps. I can't do that."
What do people killed by demons have to do with me, Su Chen?
Casting aside those impractical thoughts, Su Chen silently raised the blade in his hand.
He walked toward Koyuki.
Koyuki was still ravenously devouring the old man's flesh.
Bits of meat clung to her mouth, and she looked as though she were starving.
She did not react at all to Su Chen approaching with his blade raised.
Su Chen watched her silently.
Although wisteria poison inhibited demons' regeneration, the poison would weaken accordingly if a demon replenished itself with enough flesh and blood.
Su Chen silently committed that to memory.
Watching the feasting Koyuki swallow her last mouthful of flesh, Su Chen raised his blade and cut off her limbs again.
Koyuki finally broke down.
"Why?! Why are you doing this to me?!"
"If I could just survive, I'd become Upper Rank Two!"
"If I just killed you, I'd be qualified to challenge an Upper Rank to a Rank Replacement Blood Battle!"
"Why is the world so unfair?! No! I can't die! Never!"
Squelch!
Expressionless, Su Chen slashed Koyuki again.
The wisteria poison coating the blade made Koyuki howl uncontrollably in agony.
Perhaps realizing she could not escape, Koyuki suddenly began laughing maniacally.
"Hehe, you care a lot about that butterfly-colored girl, don't you? One of our people stabbed her!"
"She was supposed to be the one who died tonight! Lord Doma really likes that girl!"
"I think when Lord Doma eats the last mouthful of her flesh, I might get a little share too! Heehee!"
Crack!
Slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash!!!!
Su Chen brought his blade down, wielding his Nichirin Blade to chop the demon head before him into powder.
But even after doing all that, Su Chen did not stop.
Instead, he kept swinging his Nichirin Blade, only stopping after he had hacked a half-meter-wide pit into the floor.
Doma. That name again.
He had not expected the demons' leader, Muzan Kibutsuji, to actually allow Doma to gather demons to act together. That had taken Su Chen by surprise.
Just as Su Chen lowered his head in thought...
There was another faint stirring beside him.
Su Chen turned his head impassively.
It turned out that Byōyō from earlier had not quite died yet. His head had now crawled over to Koyuki's headless corpse.
Before the female corpse could disintegrate, Byōyō opened his mouth and began tearing into it ravenously.
"You really are hungry." Su Chen shook his head slightly.
Then he walked over to him and gave Byōyō the same skull-shattering surgery.
He sent him off with a hundred million cuts.
Night.
A large procession passed the halfway point of Autumn Sky Mountain and headed toward the summit.
They wore black uniforms, with Nichirin Blades at their waists and a large character for "destroy" written on their backs.
Leading them was a young woman.
She wore a rainbow-colored haori, her lovely purple-black hair pinned high with an exquisite butterfly hair clip.
But her hand seemed injured, and bright blood had stained half a sleeve red.
"Lady Shinobu, stop and rest a while!"
Seeing how hard Shinobu Kocho was pushing herself, one of the members could not help stepping forward to speak.
But Shinobu Kocho shook her head.
They had already been up here for several days. If they delayed any longer, the tide of battle would turn in an instant.
The enemies on the mountain were clever. Knowing they could not defeat her, they had begun using all sorts of Blood Demon Arts to interfere with them, trying to trap them on the mountain until they died.
Added to that, Shinobu Kocho had been wounded in an old woman's surprise attack at the foot of the mountain earlier, leaving the group's strength diminished for the time being.
Why were demons gathering to act together?
Shinobu Kocho had been pondering that question all along.
"Was it that demon with the fans?" She suddenly recalled that loathsome figure.
Apart from that demon, Shinobu Kocho could think of no one else with the strength to command so many demons.
Just then...
A Demon Slayer Corps member suddenly pointed ahead and cried excitedly, "Look! The path ahead has changed!"
Before you continue