"Stone Breathing, Second Form: Heaven-Surface Shatter!"
While Muzan was still bewildered, a red-glowing Meteor Hammer descended from above, smashing apart the head Mitsuri had just slapped, along with half his body.
Although Muzan did not care about injuries of this degree, his newly regrown head still bore an expression of shock and anger.
He had clearly seen this hulking man take a lash almost head-on with his flesh-and-blood body to disrupt his rhythm.
Even if the man's body had been sturdy enough not to be cut clean in half, the wound had definitely been deep enough to expose bone. With the poison on the whip added in, even if he had not died on the spot, he should have been bedridden for ten days or half a month, and would most likely have suffered an injury that affected him for life.
How had he come charging out, alive and kicking, after so little time?
Muzan could not understand.
Muzan: I don't get it!
"Sun Breathing, Eleventh Form: Sun Halo Dragon Head Dance!"
"Thunder Breathing, First Form: Thunderclap and Flash-Sixfold Strike!"
Before Muzan could figure out Gyomei's condition, a fire dragon came charging straight at him, accompanied on its flank by a flash of lightning that had launched later but arrived first.
During Muzan's earlier outburst, Tanjuro had protected Tanjiro from almost all harm at the cost of being severely injured and knocked unconscious himself. Zenitsu, like Kanao and the others, had been on the outskirts of the battlefield and had not been hurt by Muzan's strike.
Now that almost all the Hashira-level fighters had been sent flying by that single outburst, they spontaneously coordinated with Gyomei to fill the gap.
They had to hold out at least until the others brought their injuries under control and returned to the battlefield.