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Chapter 94: The Perfect Lifeform Bathed in Sunlight
Right now, it was the darkest hour of the day. There was still some time before dawn. Under the cover of night, the girl's attack pierced through the darkness, becoming the most dazzling streak of color in the gloomy sky.
"Insect Breathing, Dance of the Dragonfly: Compound Eye Hexagon!"
The girl's figure drifted down like a butterfly. Her uniquely designed Nichirin Sword shot forward in a rapid thrust.
Among all the Hashira in the Demon Slayer Corps, Shinobu's physical strength was undoubtedly at the very bottom. She was so weak that she couldn't even decapitate a demon with a standard slash, lagging behind even ordinary low-ranking members. To compensate, she had developed her own exclusive Breathing Style, Insect Breathing, derived from her sister's Flower Breathing.
Forging an unconventional path, she abandoned decapitation altogether. Instead, she developed specialized poisons lethal to demons, coated her Nichirin Sword with them, and utilized a fighting style centered on piercing the demon's body to inject the fatal toxins.
Consequently, unlike other Breathing Styles, Insect Breathing possessed absolutely no slashing motions. It consisted solely of the simplest, fastest, and most deadly thrusts.
And the 'Compound Eye Hexagon' technique was designed to rapidly seal off the enemy's escape routes while unleashing a flurry of continuous strikes, injecting massive amounts of lethal poison to ensure a swift kill.
If Shinobu was the weakest Hashira in terms of raw power, her thrust-centric style made her attack speed and frequency unequivocally the highest in the entire Demon Slayer Corps. Thus, the speed of her thrust was incredibly fast. So fast that it left afterimages in the air, making it appear as though she had launched six simultaneous strikes at different targets.
Yet, to Suyan, a Nen user, even without coating his body in aura, her attack still felt far too slow.
"Sun Breathing, First Form: Dance!"
Suyan swung his White Oak Bokken. Propelled by the Breathing Style, the life energy within him instinctively coated the wooden blade. Despite moving a split-second later, his blade arrived first. He used no flashy techniques. With just a single, simple slash, he parried every single one of Shinobu's thrusts.
"Insect Breathing, Dance of the Butterfly: Caprice!"
Seeing her fastest attack fail, Shinobu immediately shifted her breathing rhythm. She fluttered around Suyan like a butterfly, raising her blade to deliver another rapid volley of five thrusts.
"Sun Breathing, Second Form: Clear Blue Sky!"
Just like his execution of the First Form, Suyan's movement was noticeably unpolished. Even so, he flawlessly deflected all of her attacks.
How strange. Shinobu flipped backward, using the kinetic feedback from her blade to gracefully alight on the tree branch.
She looked at Suyan, who was rigidly performing Sun Breathing, and couldn't help but feel a bizarre sense of dissonance. His swordsmanship was obviously amateurish, yet he had managed to block her attacks from a reactive position twice in a row. Furthermore, the force behind his strikes was perfectly calculated to merely nullify her attacks without harming her.
Is it a Blood Demon Art? Is he intentionally using me as a whetstone to practice? Shinobu glanced at the nearby fight between Saeko and Giyuu. Giyuu's situation wasn't looking great either. He was being completely suppressed, yet surprisingly, he hadn't suffered a single scratch.
Saeko resembled a cat gleefully toying with a mouse. She was using the exact same Breathing Style as Suyan, though her proficiency was clearly much higher.
This can't go on! "Insect Breathing, Dance of the Centipede: Hundred-Legged Zigzag!" Shinobu steeled her resolve. She immediately unleashed her strongest ultimate technique.
"Sun Breathing, Third Form: Raging Sun!" Suyan's response remained as unremarkable as before, methodically executing the next Sun Breathing form in the sequence.
At this point, he wasn't even paying attention to what form Shinobu was using. He was merely relying on instinct to counter her strikes with Sun Breathing while focusing mostly on his own body—specifically, the fluctuations in his life energy when performing the forms.
Suyan discovered that while executing Sun Breathing, syncing the specific breathing rhythm with the corresponding sword forms caused his internal life energy to instinctively gather on his White Oak Bokken without any conscious control from him. It achieved an effect akin to the advanced Nen application, Shu, reinforcing the wooden sword.
However, the consumption of life energy was significantly high. If his natural, passive aura leakage before learning Nen was a mere 1, and the massive outpouring during his Nen initiation peaked at 1,000, then performing a single Breathing Style form consumed anywhere from 80 to 100 points of life energy.
Suyan couldn't help but sigh. It was no wonder the men of the Kamado family who inherited the Hinokami Kagura all died young. Using a technique that drained so much life energy every day, with a constant outflow and zero intake—how could they not have short lifespans?
Having figured this out, Suyan only had one question left. During his past year in the Highschool of the Dead world, he had thoroughly studied the effects of his Contract and the Nen Seed. A standard Contract awakened the target's Nen, making them function like a regular Nen user.
But if the target was Contracted after they had already opened their aura nodes, the lingering presence of Suyan's aura in their body caused a unique anomaly. Besides having 100% mastery in their innate Nen category, their proficiency in the two adjacent categories would reach a staggering 90%, far surpassing ordinary Nen users.
And in cases like Minami Rika, who had painstakingly trained to master Nen the hard way over a long period—upon forming a Contract, her proficiency in her innate Specialization type, as well as the adjacent Manipulation and Conjuration types, all hit an astonishing 100%.
Therefore, knowing that Breathing Styles served as an alternative method to manipulate life energy... if he formed a Contract with a swordsman who had mastered a Breathing Style, could they achieve an effect similar to Minami Rika's? Suyan was deeply curious.
He immediately shifted his gaze to Shinobu. "Is that all? Is this the limit of a Demon Slayer Hashira?"
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A drop of sweat rolled down Shinobu's forehead.
During the brief window Suyan had zoned out, she had cycled through every single Breathing Style form she knew, to absolutely no effect. Every single strike was effortlessly parried.
Worse, her relentless assault had severely drained her stamina. Now, she could barely maintain her breathing rhythm. The young woman saw absolutely no hope of victory.
Giyuu's battlefield told the same story. Their current situation was disastrous. Forget winning; even escaping seemed impossible. Was Muzan truly this overwhelmingly powerful?
"I'm far from finished, Mr. Demon. I will pierce your heart with this Nichirin Sword," Shinobu said, straining to keep her voice steady.
"Is that so?" Suyan replied calmly. "I look forward to it."
However, just as Shinobu was about to launch another attack, Suyan spoke up, offering peace once more. "I wanted to play with you a little longer, but it seems we're out of time."
"So, can we reconcile, Miss Shinobu?"
"What?" Shinobu didn't process his words immediately. They were being completely suppressed; what did he mean by that?
Following Suyan's gaze, she looked up at the sky.
Only then did she notice that the sky had already begun to lighten. Brilliant golden lines were weaving through the clouds on the eastern horizon.
Dawn was breaking! The sun was coming out! To demons, the warm sunlight was a poison far more lethal than anything coated on her Nichirin Sword.
So he was planning to run away?
"Don't even think about it!" A flash of joy crossed Shinobu's face.
Suyan shook his head, sighing with pity. "Really? What a shame."
Just as he spoke, a radiant beam of sunlight pierced through the clouds, shining directly onto Suyan's body.
Seeing this, Shinobu froze entirely.
The Demon King Muzan... is committing suicide?!
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