The air churned. The first snow of the winter night evaporated in an instant.
The wooden remains of the Infinity Castle ruins spontaneously combusted without any ignition source. The iron signboards on both sides of the street became hot enough to burn skin!
"Aaaaahhh—!!"
Bloodcurdling screams first erupted from the shadows.
The lower-ranking demons lurking in the darkness, trying to find a chance to survive, turned into blood in agony and lament the moment they touched this golden-red light!
Their flesh melted rapidly like wax blocks thrown into a furnace, without even room to struggle.
This blazing sun seemed to have an extremely strong destructive power against them. No demon could endure the power within it.
This caused certain special allies on another corner of the battlefield to also meet their doom.
Yushiro let out a muffled grunt. His handsome face had already begun to disintegrate under the intense light. Veins bulged on his forehead. Dark red blood oozed from his eyes.
As a demon, even standing on the side of justice, he could not violate his biological instinct—
He feared this light. This light was stripping away his life.
On the other side, Hakuji, who called himself the Fist Hashira, was in an even worse state.
He was already on the verge of death from his desperate fight with Muzan, having been injected with too many toxic cells.
Before this blazing sun, his body began to emit smoke, disintegrating at the cellular level.
"....Bastard." He gritted his teeth, trying to use his fists to brush away the relentless heat, but his arms began to peel away mid-swing.
"Inosuke! Quick!"
Tanjiro let out a roar. Ignoring his own injured body, he abruptly lunged forward.
Though the pressure emanating from the blazing sun made his body feel a burning pain, he was, after all, human and did not suffer excessively.
He endured the drowsy dizziness. Relying on his extraordinary will, he firmly blocked Hakuji.
"Boar Rush! Boar Rush! What is this sun that burns people!" Inosuke was not to be outdone.
His beastly intuition told him that if he didn't block this power, that doctor's lackey, the demon kid, would die.
His sturdy back was exposed to the scorching sun, rapidly turning red, but it solidly shielded Yushiro beneath him.
But the change was not over.
As his momentum further climbed, the Reiatsu within Taka's body finally tore open a corner, spreading outward like an avalanche.
The weight of the air increased. Every inch of skin felt like a thousand pounds pressing down. The flow of blood became sluggish and slow.
"This... feeling...."
Mitsuri only felt a dizziness before her eyes. Her consciousness gradually sank in that golden-red ocean, and she finally fainted, the first to fall.
Not just her, but the battered Hashira, the barely alive members, all collapsed at this moment like harvested wheat.
And Inosuke and Tanjiro fainted on top of their two demon comrades, using their bodies to shield them from the sun.
This was not an intentional attack, just the unavoidable aftermath of Taka's power.
The human body, ultimately, could not withstand the wrath of a god at such close range.
"Impossible!! Such a thing absolutely cannot be human power!"
Muzan's voice carried an unconcealable tremor.
His blood-red pupils were now bloodshot. He madly wove through the ruins, seeking every sheltering shadow.
His once-prized regenerative ability, his millennium-defying demon blood, his never-aging vitality… all seemed so ridiculous at this moment.
Because that blazing sun seemed to have eyes. No matter which shadow of a broken wall Muzan hid under, the light would instantly penetrate the obstacle and directly irradiate his flesh.
This was the Reiatsu Storm bursting from Taka's body, the convergence and extension of his will.
The exposed skin on Muzan's body had largely ulcerated. His flesh began to disintegrate.
This burning sensation was more terrifying than simple sunlight… it was the pain of directly burning the soul.
He tried to dive underground, but the soil beneath his feet instantly crystallized into hard iron.
He tried to split and flee, but his body resisted....
Or rather, it was firmly pressed down by Taka's pressure, not giving him a chance to split!
Muzan was trapped in Taka's prison!
And beneath this blazing sun, Taka's condition was equally not optimistic.
Blood was seeping from the corners of his eyes, his nostrils, even between his fingers.
His body was collapsing.
[Kid! Ten minutes left! Don't pretend!]
Tonan's voice sounded in his heart, accompanied by the muffled sound of blood vessels bursting inside his body.
"It's over, Muzan."
Taka's voice was very light, but it exploded in Muzan's ears like a death knell.
He slowly raised both hands.
At that moment, the blazing sun in the sky abruptly contracted. All its radiance collapsed in an instant before Taka.
His right hand formed a loose fist, pressed against the tiger's mouth of his left hand.
Within that ultimate golden-red light.
He extended his arm and pulled horizontally.
A sharp, space-rending screech sounded.
Shriiieek—!!!
Sparks flew. Space trembled.
A long tachi, one meter fifty in length, its entire blade golden-red, its guard engraved with ferocious patterns, was drawn from the void!
The blade was not like ordinary steel. It was as scorching as molten lava, as turbulent as a violent storm, and from time to time, the sounds of thunder and lightning raced across it.
The moment it appeared in the human world, all surrounding light seemed absorbed by this blade.
The sky, bright as day moments ago, instantly plunged into darkness again.
Only that golden-red tachi still flickered with dazzling light.
"Th-this... what is this...."
The moment he saw that blade, he felt a real sense of death, never felt in a thousand years.
He believed what Ubuyashiki said.
There really were gods in this world.
Once this blade fell... once he was struck by it, even the qualification to be reborn would be stripped away.....
"No! Taka! Are you a god! I was wrong! I was truly wrong!!"
"What do you want! I can build you an immortal cult! I can serve you forever....."
Muzan completely abandoned his dignity and knelt on the ground.
His body, twisted by fear into a ball of flesh, had countless tentacles and eyeballs madly darting across it, trying to find a crack to survive.
Taka did not speak.
There was no hatred in his eyes, nor pity.
Only a weariness of this long nightmare.
A golden-red arc of light flashed and was gone.
In that moment, the world seemed to stand still.
Muzan's pale head, in a strange sensation, slowly slid from his neck.
No blood gushed forth. The wound was completely carbonized upon contact with the blade.
'.....Severed?'
Muzan's head fell onto the scorched earth. His eyes were filled with confusion.
'No!! Not yet! I'm not dead!! As long as my brain and heart....'
Even though his head was severed, Muzan's survival instinct was frantic to the extreme.
The muscles beneath his severed neck shattered on their own, spewing countless dark red flesh buds. Those flesh buds madly grew, trying to reconnect his head.
Not only that,
His torso even broke free of Taka's suppression and began to swell violently. His skin burst open!
Densely packed, maggot-like writhing flesh thorns shot out, carrying Muzan's millennium-old resentment and will to survive, actually trying to turn around and pounce on Taka!
"Since you won't let me live... then I'll assimilate you! Become a part of me!!"
Muzan roared madly.
He wanted to bore into Taka's riddled body and seize that god-like power!
But in Taka's eyes, these movements were too slow.
In his perception, the rhythm of every one of Muzan's cells was clearly visible.
He breathed lightly. The golden-red tachi in his hand brought a blur of afterimages.
If anyone clear-headed could witness this battle, they would surely find Taka's movements had surpassed the limits of human vision.
Thud Thud Thud Thud Thud—!!
Those chunks of flesh trying to bore into Taka's body were sliced into tiny particles by countless intersecting golden trajectories the moment they approached him.
Blood splattered. Muzan was truly minced.
Muzan's consciousness wailed.
He felt his soul being torn apart inch by inch by this blade.
"No... I am... I am the king who transcended the rules of nature...."
"I am... immortal...."
[You're just a coward, Muzan. Come to hell with me.]
[No one is eternal, Kibutsuji… Only faith.]
[…Do you still find killing others amusing now?]
[Ubuyashiki-sama… I've always wanted to tell you, the Blue Spider Lily only blooms during the day…]
Countless voices sounded in the depths of his mind. His charred head seemed grasped by countless pairs of invisible, ice-cold hands, tearing and dragging him into the abyss.
Those blood-red eyes finally began to dim.
The last of Muzan's flesh also began to burn.
A millennium of accumulated resentment, a millennium of fear, before the gradually rising dawn, finally turned into wisps of black smoke.
Muzan's face dissipated in the stench.
In his eyes, always filled with greed and arrogance, the last image reflected was Taka's calm, water-like face.
Taka flicked the blade, made a motion of sheathing, and returned the blade to his tiger's mouth.
The golden-red tachi in his hand transformed back into specks of light and returned to his body.
Dawn had broken.