Chapter 182: The Path of Solitude, Naraku and Tamayo
Kobe Hikaru did not return directly to Kaede Village.
Instead, he turned his steps eastward, traveling along the rugged mountain ridges of Totomi Province. He had decided to carve a massive circle through the entire Kanto region before finally making his way back to Musashi Province and the familiar wooden gates of Kaede Village.
He harbored two distinct objectives for this solitary journey.
The first was naturally to condense his Sword Intent.
Things that could not be forged by the heavy strikes of a blacksmith's hammer had to be sought through the edge of a blade. He needed to truly learn the sword. It was no longer about simply crushing opponents beneath overwhelming brute force, nor was it about relying on the supernatural control of the Spirit-Tracking Archer Transformation to force the blade into fast, accurate, and ruthless arcs.
He needed to start from the absolute foundation of technique.
He had to immerse himself in the most fundamental sword arts—the very styles created by mortal humans through generations of spilled blood and exhausted sweat, specifically designed to bridge the vast gap of physical weakness. He needed to understand what a mortal blade could truly achieve when pushed to its absolute limit. Only by grasping the dirt and grit of human swordsmanship would he ever be qualified to touch the ethereal heights of Sword Intent.
The second objective was to scour the lands for any lingering traces of the Demon Slayer Corps and the elusive Nichirin Blade.
The directions Totosai had provided were frustratingly vague. Pointing toward a mountain north of Kanto was a range so massive it was hardly better than saying nothing at all. But Hikaru carried the rough cloth token tucked safely into his robes. As long as he could find them, he could at least prove his origins and intentions. By asking the right questions in the right shadows along the road, he would eventually piece together the necessary clues.
Before fully committing to the wild roads, he sent another pulse of Yao Qi back toward Kaede Village, carrying a message to Kikyo that his return would be delayed a while longer.
The reply returned through the spiritual tether with surprising speed. It was short and carried her usual cool demeanor.
"Stay safe."
"Come back soon."
And then, a final whisper.
"I miss you too."
That second sentence carried a much softer tone than the first, as if she had intentionally lowered the volume of her spirit during the transmission, hiding a flush of warmth behind her stoic shrine maiden facade.
Receiving those words, Hikaru allowed a small, quiet smile to touch his lips. A deep sense of peace settled over his undead heart.
Even though he possessed the power to sense and visually observe the exact situation in Kaede Village at any given moment, watching Kikyo go about her daily routines, and knowing she could sense his distant gaze just as clearly, this was different. Though they were separated by thousands of miles of untamed wilderness, their spiritual connection made it feel as if they were standing side by side day and night. Yet, he found himself deeply enjoying this specific mortal feeling—the quiet, grounding knowledge that someone was waiting for him at the end of the road.
With his mind settled, he set off.
From that morning onward, his boots rarely stopped moving.
He pushed north from the borders of Totomi, crossed into the lush valleys of Mino, handled the treacherous passes of Hida, and traveled straight through the northern territories of Shinano Province currently under the iron grip of the Takeda Clan. He arrived in Kozuke and Shimotsuke before finally turning his path southward to complete the loop back toward Musashi.
A massive circle. A journey spanning well over a thousand miles of dirt, mud, and blood.
This was the grueling route he had chosen to temper his blade. Along this winding journey, he challenged every single practitioner he encountered.
Any dojo, hidden school, or private martial academy that displayed a wooden sign offering sword instruction found a quiet, pale youth standing at their doors.
He used no Yao Qi. He summoned no Bone Spikes, conjured no suffocating blood mist, called down no thunder, and absolutely kept the terrifying ninth layer of his Asura Transformation locked away deep within his marrow.
He carried only a single weapon: Muramasa. Over his shoulders rested a simple straw hat and a woven raincoat he had casually swiped from the outer walls of a wealthy noble's estate on the road.
After the Blood-Fire Transformation had thoroughly forged his Asura heart, his physical appearance had undergone another subtle evolution. His skin was no longer the sickly, grayish pallor of a rotting corpse. Instead, it had taken on the pristine, porcelain white of a living human who had simply been locked away from the sun for an extended period.
His facial features were sharp, regular, and well-defined. To the outside world, he looked exactly like a cold, grim young samurai of seventeen or eighteen, his dark hair tied loosely down his back.
The whites of his eyes remained a pitch, abyssal black, and his irises were still a piercing scarlet. But as long as one did not stare too closely into his face, or if he kept the wide brim of his straw hat pulled low, or fought within the dim, flickering candlelight of an indoor dojo, his demonic gaze could easily pass as some rare, unfortunate medical condition.
He could finally walk openly through human settlements without triggering immediate panic.
The first dojo he stepped into was located within the bustling castle town of Totomi.
The master of the hall was a grizzled old samurai in his late fifties, a man who dedicated his life to the heavy tachi techniques of the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu.
Tenshin Shoden, widely known simply as Katori Shinto-ryu.
Created over a century ago during the twilight years of the Kamakura Shogunate, its core martial philosophy revolved entirely around the rigid structure of three elements: Heaven, Earth, and Man. The style used three foundational stances—upper, middle, and lower—to perfectly correspond to those three elements. From those three basic postures, every single offensive strike and defensive parry in their arsenal was derived.
Stripped of its philosophical weight, the style meant breaking down all complex tachi techniques into rapid permutations and combinations of three basic kinetic movements: a heavy vertical slash from top to bottom, a sweeping horizontal cut across the middle, and a vicious upward thrust from the bottom.
It was simple. It was incredibly solid. There was absolutely nothing flashy about the old master's movements, yet every swing was clean, efficient, and carried the heavy weight of decades of muscle memory. It was highly impressive to witness.
But it only took three moves. Hikaru dismantled the old master and brought him to his knees in exactly three moves. There was no dramatic suspense, no drawn-out struggle.
And he defeated the man using the master's own proprietary techniques.
In the brief span of exchanging three strikes, Hikaru's demonic perception had completely memorized the exact direction of force, the subtle shifts in footwork coordination, and the precise transfer of the body's center of gravity required for the style.
The flawless cutting technique the old samurai had bled to hone for thirty years was casually ripped apart and fed back to him in three echoing clashes of steel.
Yes. This was his chosen method of learning.
He had no intention of kneeling on tatami mats and faithfully apprenticing under mortal men for years. He would nurture his battle instincts through endless combat, violently fighting his way through the accumulated martial knowledge of the human world.
For an undead creature possessing the combined sensory overloads of the Spirit-Tracking Archer and the Sharp Eye Transformation, blessed with terrifying hand strength, kinetic vision, and absolute muscular control, this was the most efficient and correct method available.
Everything his eyes tracked could be perfectly replicated by his hands. Leaving the stunned master behind, he continued on his way.
The second dojo he breached was hidden away in Mino Province.
A lean, intense young samurai who claimed to practice Kage-ryu served as the head of the establishment. His swordsmanship was highly unorthodox, strange to the eye, and relied heavily on blinding feints.
The so-called Kage-ryu was famous for this exact deception. Created decades ago by a legendary master swordsman named Aisu Ikosai, it stood alongside Shinto-ryu and Nen-ryu as one of the three great foundational sources of modern swordsmanship.
Its core philosophy was entirely reactionary: striking after the opponent. The practitioner never initiated the attack, but instead waited with coiled tension for the exact fraction of a second the enemy revealed a structural flaw, instantly counterattacking across the shortest possible distance.
The sword paths were tricky, varied, and highly unpredictable. The young master was exceptionally skilled at using physical feints, fake weight shifts, and intense eye contact to psychologically induce the enemy into attacking first, making the style extremely lethal in actual life-or-death combat.
However, Hikaru only needed two moves this time. His blade moved even faster. And once again, he crushed the young master using the exact same Kage-ryu counter-strikes.
The third dojo fell. Then the fourth. Then the fifth.
In the span of half a month, he kicked down the doors of seventeen different dojos. He suffered not a single defeat, not a single scratch upon his clothes. In every single instance, he completely absorbed and replicated the opponent's lifelong martial arts within the first few strikes.
Transitioning rapidly from simple, heavy strikes to complex, deceptive arcs, the personal sword style of Hikaru—which had originally relied entirely on overwhelming demonic brute force—gradually underwent a massive, fundamental evolution. His strikes gained countless new variations. His footwork became a ghost-like dance of lethal efficiency.
Although he still had not fully grasped the elusive concept of Sword Intent, Hikaru felt no anxiety. As an undead anomaly, his capacity to learn and adapt was monstrous. In just half a month of bloody dojo crashing, he had easily matched the technical progress a normal, talented human swordsman would take decades to achieve.
He was not anxious, and there was simply no need to rush the process. During his travels between towns, he even found plenty of free time to eliminate wandering demons and slaughter rogue ghosts.
Throughout the sprawling Kanto region, demons and twisted monsters ran rampant through the shadows. Although his personal Night Parade of One Hundred Demons already cast a dark net over three entire provinces, the untamed areas beyond his borders were still vast. Various hidden boundaries, remote mountainous peaks, deep ancient forests, and fog-choked valleys were still heavily infested with a large number of wild demons and ghosts who refused to bow to any established jurisdiction.
Whenever he encountered these feral creatures blocking his path, he would casually draw his blade and clear them out, or violently beat them into submission and incorporate them into his own expanding Hyakki.
The Twenty-three Demons of Musashi Province, the twenty-one demons of the wilderness. Even counting those small, pathetic demons and monsters hiding under Tono, his forces did not truly constitute a full hundred demons yet. His numbers were naturally insufficient for the wars to come.
But beyond the standard feral yokai, he was actively hunting for something else. He was searching for those evil ghosts that were not naturally born demons—the creatures directly related to the Demon Slayer Corps, and more, the abominations tied to the blood of Kibutsuji Muzan. Though they were rare in these parts, Hikaru's intentional, methodical search eventually bore fruit.
He found the immortal ghosts created by Muzan. They were neither true demons nor natural monsters, but horrific mutations born from ordinary humans infected by highly concentrated, special blood. They possessed near-infinite, sickening regenerative abilities, with their only true weakness being the burning rays of the sun.
He tracked them down. These particular ghosts cowered in damp cellars and rotting caves, refusing to step out during the daylight hours, only creeping out under the cover of night to ambush and devour passing pedestrians. Ordinary mortal samurai could not kill them. Even if a master swordsman chopped their limbs into dozens of pieces, the writhing flesh would simply reassemble and snap their swords.
But Hikaru could kill them. He had the Blood-Fire Transformation.
The boiling Yao Qi fire flowing through his undead blood vessels was violently poured directly into the steel of his blade. The jagged edge of Muramasa would instantly ignite, glowing with a terrifying, dark red luminescence. Although it was not the pure, purifying light of the sun, the sheer, overwhelming temperature combined with the continuous, supernatural burning effect of his demonic fire was more than enough to severely interfere with the ghost's cellular regeneration. In practice, it worked even better than his Bone Spikes.
Relying on the absolute lock-on targeting of his soul-seeking, sure-hit hands, he would casually swing dozens of blinding strikes in the span of a single breath, literally chopping the shrieking ghosts into dust-like particles before they could even blink. In this situation, unless Muzan himself personally descended upon the road, no matter how strong the creature's recovery speed was, it was entirely useless.
Raw stats completely crushed mere mechanics. The ghosts collapsed into piles of burning ash while howling in agony.
It was perhaps not as clean, instant, and efficient as the specialized sunlight power of a true Nichirin Blade from his memories, but it got the job done.
In this chaotic, mixed worldview, evil ghosts always followed the same fundamental rules. They did not fear normal physical trauma, but they were terrified of various high temperatures that transcended natural fire, and they would immediately retreat upon encountering anyone wielding such power.
However, the individuals who possessed this kind of supernatural heat were either high-level martial experts, elite Onmyoji, wizards who had mastered special arcane arts, or they were high-level demons acting as lords over their own territories. Their numbers were incredibly small. It just so happened that Hikaru stood firmly among their ranks.
After his first kill, he encountered four more of Muzan's creations along the road. Each one was handled in the exact same, brutal manner. Blood-Fire Ghost Slaying.
Throughout this violent process, the sleeping sword soul trapped within Muramasa became increasingly active and hungry. Every single time he slaughtered a ghost and burned its flesh to ash, the dark red light pulsing along the blade's edge would burn noticeably brighter than the last time.
The cursed blade was still eating.
It was greedily consuming the shattered fragments of will and agony overflowing from the one-sided massacres.
It was waiting patiently for that final, bloody puzzle piece to fall into place.
When there was no immediate need to fight or travel, Hikaru did not allow himself to remain idle.
He had not brought the massive halberd Banryu on this journey, instead tossing the heavy weapon to his Hyakki subordinates and ordering them to carry it back to the safety of Kaede Village.
Yura of the Hair, however, was still hanging securely at his waist in her comb form, and the dark, venomous poison jiao scale remained pressed tightly against the skin of his chest beneath his robes.
Hikaru spoke to them in low, measured tones as he walked the lonely dirt paths.
Yura of the Hair had been acting incredibly unhappy lately.
The source of her foul mood was simple: the favorability rating of the poison jiao scale had rapidly caught up, hitting a solid eighty. Although Yura of the Hair could not physically see or comprehend this numerical system of favorability, her demonic senses could clearly feel the growing, suffocating intimacy the spirit within the dead scale was developing for Hikaru.
Consequently, the red comb rattled angrily at his waist, the sharp clicking sounds constantly startling the birds in the nearby trees into frantic flight.
But after Yura of the Hair's favorability had reached eighty-eight, it had almost completely stagnated. It refused to budge a single point higher.
Hikaru currently had no solid clues on how to break through her bottleneck, nor could he provide whatever emotional trigger she was missing. But he was not in a rush. He simply ignored her rattling and continued his daily routine of walking and killing.
The poison jiao scale, on the other hand, was truly much quieter and easier to manage.
A faint, deadly miasma constantly diffused from his chest. Every single time he infused his Yao Qi into the artifact, the dark green, swirling patterns carved into the surface of the scale would light up with a sickly glow. A dense, highly toxic mist would slowly seep from its jagged edges, forming a thin, invisible layer of poisonous barrier within half a foot of his body, killing any insect that dared fly too close.
Its favorability climbed at a steady, reliable pace.
Eighty-one. Eighty-three. Eighty-five.
The required approach was entirely different from the fiery passion needed for Yura of the Hair. The poison jiao scale did not want intense, dramatic moments; it wanted slow, continuous soaking. The Venomous Flood Dragon had been a cunning, cold-blooded beast by nature, but it also possessed an extremely strong, territorial instinct. Once it grew accustomed to a certain presence, it would wrap around it and never let go.
It was a slightly strange logic for an inanimate object, but the system's rules held true.
What the scale needed was exactly what Hikaru was providing: long-term, continuous, slow infiltration of his energy, much like a steady river slowly eroding a solid stone wall over centuries.
Hikaru was exceptionally good at this kind of grinding.
He had an endless supply of cold patience.
Half a month passed in a blur of walking, swinging, and burning.
Hikaru finally set foot upon the rugged soil of Shinano—the heavily fortified seat of the Takeda Clan's rule, and the personal territory of the legendary Tiger of Kai, a warlord as famous and feared as Uesugi Kenshin.
Over the course of this journey, he had kicked down the doors of seventeen dojos, burned five immortal demons to ash, and slaughtered countless stray feral spirits that dared cross his path.
Yura of the Hair favorability: eighty-eight.
Poison jiao scale favorability: eighty-seven.
The jagged cracks running down the steel of the Muramasa blade remained visible, but the dark red light bleeding from the edges of those cracks was now more than twice as intense and blinding as it had been half a month ago.
The blade soul was expanding, stretching its ethereal limbs.
Waiting.
And Hikaru was also waiting.
He walked the dirt roads, his eyes calm beneath the shadow of his straw hat, waiting for that exact, perfect moment when everything would finally fall into place.
"The number of demons roaming the outer provinces has been decreasing rapidly lately."
Deep within the innermost bowels of a sprawling courtyard—a place so heavily shaded by architecture and overgrown trees that, despite it being the middle of the day outside, the interior was as suffocatingly gloomy as the dead of night, descending almost entirely underground.
A cold, hoarse voice echoed against the wooden walls.
Kibutsuji Muzan, dressed impeccably in a gorgeous, flowing kimono, slowly opened his eyes. His scarlet, human-demon pupils locked onto the figure kneeling respectfully opposite him.
The figure staring back possessed an equally pale, flawless face.
However, compared to the wild, dirt-streaked appearance of the dissolute female mountain bandit Hikaru had first encountered, the current iteration of this creature was drastically different. Wearing an elegant, plain-colored kimono with her long black hair tied loosely, she actually possessed the refined, arrogant air of a noble young master.
Yes, she presented herself entirely as a young master, completely discarding the identity of a young lady.
This was none other than the ruthless female mountain bandit who had been forcibly transformed into a demon by Muzan's blood while hovering at the very brink of death. This was Onigumo.
The brutal facts of the past weeks proved that Muzan's choice to save her back then had been absolutely correct. This human was exceptionally rare, perfect material for demonic ascension. She harbored an immense, rotting malice toward the entire world deep within her heart. She possessed terrifying, unshakable obsessions, an astonishing rate of physical adaptability, and was incomparably cunning. It had been less than a single month since she had survived the blood transformation, yet she had already hunted and eaten quite a few humans. Her chosen prey were exclusively the sheltered, high-status young ladies from the most powerful political families in Kyoto.
She carefully orchestrated one tragic accident after another, leaving behind flawless crime scenes. Not a single mortal investigator noticed anything unusual about the string of deaths.
Eat humans. Accumulate power. Become stronger.
This was the absolute, fundamental path of survival for any demon.
And Onigumo, without a shadow of a doubt, had already become terrifyingly strong.
She had grown so rapidly and absorbed so much power that it could easily be argued she was currently the most powerful evil demon under Muzan's direct command, without any exception.
Through her cunning and sheer utility, she had also become the only demon who was deeply trusted by the paranoid Progenitor, earning the right to follow closely by his side.
At this moment, hearing Muzan's cold observation regarding the decreasing demon population, Onigumo's expression did not twitch. Her pale, heroic face only shifted to reveal a very calm, calculated smile.
"Ah... it seems, my lord, that your grand plan needs to be accelerated."
She was referring to the dark blueprint Muzan had conceived shortly before finding her bleeding out in the dirt.
During this recent period of hiding, and further refined under Onigumo's own whispered suggestions, that abstract concept had been forged into substantial, bloody action.
"By carefully orchestrating one brutal vendetta after another, we forge human materials who harbor absolute resentment and murderous obsession toward the entire world. We transform those broken souls into evil demons, and bestow upon them a concentration of your blood that far surpasses that given to ordinary trash."
"The final number... around twelve. Taking the grand name of the Twelve Kizuki, divided evenly into the Upper and Lower Moons."
Onigumo repeated the core tenets of the plan, her voice smooth and dripping with dark anticipation.
This was indeed the exact military structure Muzan was currently building under her direct advisement.
Creating twelve overwhelmingly powerful evil demons, each possessing enough raw strength and unique blood arts to rival boss-level, high-ranking yokai of the old world. Only when that elite vanguard was fully assembled would she finally dare to try her hand against Kobe Hikaru, against the shrine maiden Kikyo, and against the legendary Shikon Jewel. Only then would she take action again.
Kikyo, the woman who possessed the terrifying ability to borrow the purifying light of the sun itself, absolutely had to be eliminated first.
And the Shikon Jewel... she desperately wanted to rip that glowing artifact from their dead hands and see if its fabled wish-granting power could finally help her overcome the fatal weakness of sunlight.
However, before Onigumo could finish outlining the next phase of her thoughts, Muzan suddenly shook his head.
The red, painted lips of his current female guise curled upward, revealing a chilling, predatory smile. "It is eleven."
Onigumo blinked, slightly stunned by the correction, before the woman sitting opposite her continued speaking.
"If this matter is handled well, and the ranks are filled to my satisfaction, you will become... the absolute head of the Twelve Kizuki."
Without waiting for Onigumo to process the weight of that promotion, Muzan gracefully stood up. His shifting face and elegant posture appeared exceptionally gloomy and oppressive as the shadows of the underground room clung to his robes.
"Go... I eagerly await your good news."
Onigumo remained kneeling, silently watching the figure of her terrifying boss instantly vanish into thin air, leaving nothing behind but the lingering, metallic scent of ancient blood in the empty room.
Slowly coming back to her senses, Onigumo's pale face suddenly broke into a soft, echoing laugh.
"The head of the Twelve Kizuki, huh..."
She stood up, brushing the dust from her masculine kimono. "What a pity, Lord Muzan. What I truly want is far more than just a title... And I will certainly not let you have the chance to lay a single hand on Lord Hikaru either... Both Lord Hikaru's life, and the Shikon Jewel, will only belong to me."
She turned her head, her dark eyes piercing into the thickest shadows on the far side of the underground chamber.
"What do you think? Miss Tamayo."
The woman... the hidden female demon standing perfectly still in the darkness, let out a cold, sharp snort. Her beautiful features were twisted in obvious displeasure and deep disdain for the creature parading as a young master.
Seeing the disgust on Tamayo's face, Onigumo only laughed harder. She laughed so happily and so loudly that her shoulders swayed from side to side, completely abandoning any pretense of her refined, noble image as her dark amusement echoed through the underground halls.
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