Tanjiro looked utterly baffled. "What do you mean?"
"When I said he came away empty-handed, I meant exactly that," Tetsu no Sosuke said with a smile. "Still don't understand?"
Tanjiro stared at him blankly.
Tetsu no Sosuke sighed. "You think he came here this time to deal with us? Have you forgotten why we came?"
"My senior?!" Tanjiro froze, then understanding dawned, and his face broke into a smile. "He's all right?!"
"If something had happened to him, we should have seen him by now. But ever since we came out of the Spiritual World, we haven't seen him at all, while our enemy was here... That suggests one possibility."
"He didn't get what he wanted, and the Water Pillar should still be somewhere nearby," Tetsu no Sosuke said. "Of course, I can't be certain. There's no way to predict every move an enemy makes..."
"So that's why you said that just now?" Tanjiro understood what Tetsu no Sosuke had been doing.
He had deliberately asked whether Upper Moon One had come away empty-handed. If the demon had succeeded, he would have had a hard time hiding his satisfaction. If Tetsu no Sosuke was right, the question would only make him angry.
Upper Moon One's reaction had told Tetsu no Sosuke that the Water Pillar was safe!
The subtlety of it astonished Tanjiro. Beside Tetsu no Sosuke, he felt as green as a schoolboy, hardly worth mentioning.
Tetsu no Sosuke smiled at Upper Moon One. "Now that I think about it, our chances of winning seem even better."
Upper Moon One sneered. "Since you're so confident, here's a friendly warning... There's a Hammer Pillar hidden among them."
Tetsu no Sosuke frowned.
That made things difficult. Upper Moon One had clearly put everything he had into creating this "Hammer Pillar."
Otherwise,