"Why? He got his head cut off, but he's still not dead?" Tanjiro asked, incredulously.
"Because that wasn't his real body~" Uchiha Nagi murmured, frowning.
"Exactly. If he's not dead, then his real body definitely isn't here," Kyojuro Rengoku said gravely.
Lower Rank One, Enmu, slowly regrew a body from his severed head.
"My body has long since merged with this train. You can't kill me. So, what do you say? Do you want to kill everyone on the train? I'm so excited~"
Then Enmu let out a coquettish giggle, "Can you protect everyone on the train? They're all in my stomach, hahaha~~"
After speaking, Enmu, with a perverted giggle, merged directly into the train. Kyojuro Rengoku didn't try to stop him, because that wasn't his real body; cutting it off a few more times wouldn't make a difference.
Clearly, Enmu's plan was simple: use his demon advantage to devour the hundreds of passengers on the train, forcing Uchiha Nagi and his group to constantly run around saving people, thus exhausting their stamina.
A demon's stamina is endless; at least, fighting until dawn wouldn't be a problem, whereas human stamina clearly couldn't last that long.
Foolish—
Uchiha Nagi scoffed. Using passengers as hostages? And then hoping to exhaust their stamina to ultimately win? Only Tanjiro and his group would fight for ordinary people.
The first lesson a Ninja learns on the battlefield is not to concern themselves with the lives of civilians... "Oh no, he's making a move. We need to get down there quickly and save those passengers..."
By the time Uchiha Nagi, Tanjiro, and the Flame Pillar got into the train, fleshy growths had already begun to appear in the car, rapidly growing and wrapping around passengers, intending to devour them.
"Listen, there's a plan. There are eight cars on this train." Kyojuro Rengoku held up five fingers. "I can protect the passengers in five cars."
"Nezuko can protect one car, that blonde boy one car, and the boar-headed boy one car. The rest is up to you. While protecting the passengers, you two can search for the demon's neck. No matter what form he takes, he will always have a neck."
"Young Tanjiro's strength is very good, and with you, Uchiha brother, your Pillar-level strength combined with Tanjiro's, you two will definitely be able to eliminate the demon."
At this point, Uchiha Nagi proposed a different method, "No, I have another way. What if we don't need to protect the passengers?"
Having said that, Uchiha Nagi formed hand signs and created a large number of Shadow Clones.
Uchiha Nagi's lips curved into a slight smile, "Clearly, he wants us to protect the passengers to exhaust our stamina and then defeat us. How can we let him have his way? As long as the passengers aren't on the train, we won't be so constrained."
If this were the Ninja world, a demon wouldn't care about the lives of civilians, but now that they were mixed with them, if they still acted with the cold-blooded style of a Ninja, they would definitely be ostracized.
When they first woke up, seeing the assassins they had killed, they all felt uncomfortable, and the way they looked at them was off. Clearly, ignoring the people on the train would definitely lead to them being ostracized later.
A dozen Shadow Clones each picked up one passenger in the car, some Shadow Clones picked up two, and then jumped directly out of the train window.
After the high-speed train traveled a certain distance, the Shadow Clones automatically dispersed, and the passengers lying on the ground were already far from the train.
"Good idea~ Yosh." Kyojuro Rengoku's eyes lit up. "Then after we rescue all the passengers, we'll all work together to deal with this Enmu."
Uchiha Nagi's lips curved into a slight smile, "This is called digging your own grave. Merging with the train also means he can't move as flexibly. Once there are no hostages, he's just meat on a chopping block." Competing with me in wisdom? You're asking for death. When you were still wearing open-crotch pants and playing in the mud, children in the Ninja Academy were already playing with kunai and strategizing.
Chunin and Jonin ranks require passing comprehensive factors to be promoted. On different battlefields, using different perspectives to deal with enemies is a basic skill for a Ninja.
According to a Ninja's battlefield thinking, since hostages are a burden, the first thing to do is to find a way to deal with the hostages, rather than the enemy, to put the mission in an unassailable position.
So Uchiha Nagi immediately thought of how to deal with these hostages who were dragging them down. The first method was to not care about their lives; if Enmu wanted to eat them, so be it, he would just go and cut down Enmu.
The second method was to act first and kill the passengers on the train himself... The second method was clearly not feasible, otherwise, the Flame Pillar would turn against him. So, the first method, let them protect the passengers while he went to kill Enmu?
Although Uchiha Nagi had transmigrated too many years ago and couldn't recall too many details, he still remembered that Kyojuro Rengoku had expended too much stamina protecting the passengers on the train, and then fought Upper Rank Three in an exhausted state, almost killing him.
Since a major BOSS was about to appear, conserving stamina was key. It was right to use Shadow Clones to carry those burdensome passengers outside.
"Flame Breathing, First Form: Unknowing Fire."
A burst of flame surged through five train cars. Wherever it passed, all the flesh that had grown from the ceiling and floor of the cars was annihilated, completely reduced to ashes by the Flame Breathing sword techniques.
And at the tail of the train, there was also a thunderous roar flashing, it was Zenitsu... "Tanjiro, you guys hold on, it'll be over soon."
"Got it, Uchiha big brother." In just a moment, Uchiha Nagi rescued one car, then entered the second, again using Shadow Clones, again carrying the passengers out of the car, then entered the third car... [Hehe... The entire train is my body, and the more than two hundred people on the train are my hostages. Will you watch them die, or choose to save them?]
[If you choose to save the passengers, then when you exhaust your stamina, hehehehe~~]
The coquettish giggle, like that of a Tony teacher, rang out once more. By that time, he would eat these few people. Pillar-level demons must have a lot of energy, right? However, this time he stopped halfway through his laugh.
Because he noticed that the number of passengers in the cars was decreasing one by one. In ten seconds, the people in one car were gone. In one minute, the people in three cars were gone.
[What's going on? What's going on? Where are the people? They're all sleeping in dreams, it's impossible for them to jump off the train themselves.]
[All... all the hostages are gone?!]
Enmu was stunned. He had painstakingly transformed his body to merge with the train, wasn't it precisely because he had hundreds of hostages as food?
Rumble!! Not long after, the train began to slow down... Because the passengers were all gone, there was no longer any meaning for the train to run at high speed. All he could do now was kill these demon slayers.