"This way! I can smell blood in the air. I think there's someone up ahead!"
Tanjiro's nose twitched slightly.
After confirming the direction, he warned Zenitsu and Inosuke behind him, his hand tightening around his Nichirin blade as he prepared to enter battle at any moment.
His body still bore wounds from the previous fight, but his eyes were still astonishingly bright.
Behind him, Zenitsu quickly jogged after Tanjiro, his golden hair swaying as he ran.
"Tanjiro, are you sure it's this way? This place all looks the same. I feel like we already passed through here earlier."
There was a faint tremor in Zenitsu's voice, but it no longer carried the cowardice it once had.
Even he could not say exactly when he had begun to change. Perhaps it had been the moment his master, Jigoro Kuwajima, vanished before his eyes.
Perhaps it had been the moment his senior, Kaigaku, revealed his true face.
Either way, he was no longer the Zenitsu who only knew how to cry and be afraid.
Inosuke quickly ran to the front.
Beneath the boar mask, his eyes gleamed with a beastlike light.
His twin blades were crossed behind his back, and every step he took carried a rough, savage force.
"Gonpachiro's right! My great instincts are telling me it's this way too! There's definitely something up ahead!"
The three of them were currently lost in a twisting, maze-like area.
In truth, they did not even know when they had entered this section.
Countless towers, platforms, streets, and corridors of the Infinity Castle stretched around them, all so similar that there seemed to be no end to them at all.
Following the direction Tanjiro pointed out, the three soon arrived at a corridor blocked by a wooden door.
Inosuke was as direct as ever.
He stepped forward and kicked the door open with all his strength, sending out a thunderous boom.
Behind the door was an even darker hallway.
The walls on both sides seemed to exude a faint chill, and an eerie presence hung in the air, making them hold their breath without realizing it.
The three slowed their steps.
"It's there."
Tanjiro lowered his voice and pointed toward the corner ahead.
"There's blood coming from that direction, and another strange smell too. It's like a demon, but somehow not quite the same?"
Inosuke gripped the handles of the twin blades on his back. Zenitsu also swallowed nervously.
The three exchanged a glance, then walked toward the corner together.
The moment they turned and saw the figure suddenly standing before them, Zenitsu's legs nearly went soft from fright.
At the corner, a figure stood in silence.
A tall, slender frame. Dark-red hair. Six cold eyes glimmering faintly in the shadows.
He wore ancient but tattered samurai robes, and in his hand was a twisted, abnormal blade.
Across the flesh-like sword, one hideous eye pattern after another gleamed with a cold luster.
Upper Rank One—Kokushibo!
Tanjiro's eyes widened sharply.
It felt as if all the blood in his body had frozen in that instant. His body instinctively fell into a battle stance, his Nichirin blade held before him as Hinokami Kagura began circulating madly.
"U-Upper Rank One?!"
Zenitsu's voice sounded as though it had been squeezed out of his throat. He had already drawn his blade, and golden lightning danced across its edge.
Although his voice was trembling, the tip of his sword pointed at Kokushibo without the slightest wavering.
Inosuke said nothing.
His twin blades left their sheaths at the first possible moment, and he lowered his body like a wild beast about to pounce on its prey.
However, faced with the three youngsters treating him as a deadly enemy, Kokushibo made no move at all.
He only stood there in silence, his six terrifying eyes empty and unfocused. His body was covered in countless fine wounds, and his robes were torn and broken.
Those were the traces left behind by his battle with Yoriichi Tsugikuni not long ago.
Yoriichi.
That man was still so powerful.
He could have taken Kokushibo's life as easily as slicing tofu, yet he had not done so.
Just like several hundred years ago.
Even as an old man at the end of his life, Yoriichi had still been able to kill him with a single slash.
Several hundred years had passed.
And yet, after all those centuries, was the result still the same?
Kokushibo felt as though something deep within his soul had been completely crushed.
At Kokushibo's feet lay a corpse.
The moment Zenitsu's gaze fell on that body, his entire frame shook.
"Kaigaku… Senpai?"
Kaigaku's corpse had been cut in half at the waist, his upper and lower body separated. Extreme terror and disbelief were still frozen on his face.
His eyes were wide open, filled with unwillingness toward death.
Zenitsu stared at that face, both familiar and unfamiliar. His lips moved, but in the end, he said nothing.
The complicated feelings he once had toward this senior of his had already turned into a faint trace of sorrow after Kaigaku's betrayal and their master's passing.
Tanjiro also saw Kaigaku's corpse, but he had no time to dwell on it, because Kokushibo's six eyes slowly shifted before finally locking onto the three of them.
There was no killing intent in that gaze.
No fighting spirit.
Only a numbness so hollow it had reached the extreme.
"I…"
Kokushibo spoke, his voice calm.
"Why?"
He did not finish.
He lowered his head and looked at the abnormal blade in his hand, falling silent.
Tanjiro tightened his grip on his sword and took a deep breath. Flames began to flow along his Nichirin blade.
"Hinokami Kagura!"
Crimson sword light lit up in the darkness like the rising morning sun.
"Zenitsu, Inosuke, Upper Rank One is incredibly strong. We attack together!"
Tanjiro shouted to his companions, and the two beside him immediately answered.
But—
"That again!"
Kokushibo's voice suddenly turned furious without warning.
He raised his head. In his six eyes, that empty light was replaced by anger so intense it bordered on madness.
He stared fixedly at the flames on Tanjiro's blade.
At that crimson light.
A suppressed, beastlike growl rumbled from his throat.
"Sun Breathing! Why… why is it that breathing style again?!"
His voice grew faster and more distorted.
"Why can you use that breathing style too?! Why can all of you use that breathing style?! Yoriichi Tsugikuni!!! You have been dead for hundreds of years! Why can you still stand above me?! Why?! What gives you the right?!"
Kokushibo's figure vanished from where he stood.
'Too fast.'
So fast Tanjiro did not even have time to react.
In the next second, an icy claw had already closed around his throat, lifting his entire body off the ground.
"Gh!"
Tanjiro's feet left the floor. His Nichirin blade slipped from his hand and fell with a clear ring.
His face flushed red in an instant.
Both hands clamped around the arm gripping his neck, but it was like trying to pry apart steel.
"Tanjiro!"
Zenitsu and Inosuke lunged forward almost at the same time.
"Thunder Breathing, First Form: Thunderclap and Flash!"
"Beast Breathing, Third Fang: Devour!"
Two blade lights slashed toward Kokushibo at once.
However, Kokushibo merely waved his hand casually, and two crescent-shaped waves of sword energy easily blasted them away.
They slammed into the wall and crashed to the floor.
"Answer me!"
Kokushibo lifted Tanjiro in front of him, his six eyes filled with twisted rage.
"Why can you use that breathing style too?! I trained for hundreds of years, yet I could never surpass him! Why?!"
Tanjiro's face had gone crimson from being choked, and his vision was already beginning to blur.
Even so, he still heard Kokushibo's words.
He heard those distorted, painful questions, filled with a childlike unwillingness to accept defeat.
He remembered his father.
He remembered how, on winter nights, his father had taught him how to dance and pass down that ancient Hinokami Kagura.
His father had never said that this beautiful dance was a powerful breathing technique.
"Father… once told me…"
Tanjiro forced out the words with the last of his strength, his voice hoarse and broken.
"Hinokami Kagura… is a dance that brings people hope. It exists to protect!"
He struggled to lift a hand and pointed toward his own chest.
"To protect! Not… to surpass anyone!"
Tanjiro's words made Kokushibo's hand suddenly stiffen.