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Chapter 185: Just to See You Once More
Hakuji, Hakuji, Hakuji...
The instant Suyan's fist obliterated his skull, Akaza felt a deafening RING echo through his mind. The world froze. All ambient noise vanished into dead silence.
He had no head.
Yet, in that hallucinatory void, he clearly heard an ethereal, crystalline voice calling out the name 'Hakuji'.
"Who? Who's there?! Show yourself!"
Akaza's headless body thrashed wildly, his fists tearing through the empty air in a desperate bid to locate the source of the voice. But his strikes met nothing but air, the violent sonic booms of his punches the only sound cutting through the silence.
A moment later, his head regenerated, violently bursting forth from his neck. He ceased his frantic swinging, freezing in place like a statue.
In his mind's eye, a phantom image materialized. A woman. She was looking down, her face obscured by a brilliant, blinding white light, preventing him from seeing her features.
Akaza lowered his head, muttering deliriously, "Who are you? Why are you inside my head?"
It was a question directed as much at the phantom as it was at himself.
Time lost all meaning. He received no answer. The silhouette in his mind began to slowly fade, dissolving into mist.
"Hakuji, hurry up. We're all waiting for you."
Just as the figure was about to vanish completely, the ethereal voice whispered into his ear once more. And with the voice, the figure seemed to be pulled away by an invisible force, drifting further and further into the distance.
"Wait! Don't go!"
Akaza instinctively lunged forward, reaching out a desperate hand as if he could physically pull the phantom back from the void. But it was merely a projection within his shattered mind. His physical actions meant nothing.
The figure—the woman his instincts screamed was more precious to him than life itself—continued to drift away. No matter how desperately he screamed for her to stop in his heart, she didn't slow down.
Then, Akaza did something that would have left any spectator utterly speechless.
He raised his fist.
And slammed it directly into his own temple.
BOOM!!
The concussive force ruptured his eardrums, filling his head with a deafening ringing. But it worked. The self-inflicted trauma caused the fading phantom to decelerate.
So, he hit himself again.
One punch. Two punches. Three...
Akaza saw a glimmer of hope. He began striking his own skull with increasing, terrifying force. But the figure didn't stop; her retreat merely slowed.
Finally, Akaza stopped holding back.
SPLAT.
He obliterated his own head.
He felt no pain as his skull caved in. On the contrary, a bizarre, euphoric joy swelled within his chest. The phantom in his mind was returning!
She's closer... closer... she's getting closer...
But the victory was fleeting. The moment his brain began to regenerate, the distance between them violently expanded once more. No matter how many times he shattered his own skull into bloody paste, he couldn't stop her from leaving.
"No... no! Please, don't go!"
Akaza collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, staring blankly into the empty space before him.
Suddenly, two streams of warmth slid down his cheeks.
They were crimson. Blood... and tears.
Every single cell in his body was trembling. His very soul screamed that whoever this woman was, she was infinitely more important than the pinnacle of martial arts he had spent centuries chasing.
"That human! That human!" Akaza's head snapped up, a manic, desperate frenzy blazing in his eyes.
He remembered Suyan. The man who had brutally pummeled his skull. Suyan's attacks had triggered the vision. That man definitely knew something! If Suyan punched his head again, maybe he could fully remember!
Driven by this singular, desperate hope, Akaza hauled himself to his feet. Focusing his Battle Compass, he locked onto Suyan's lingering battle aura and sprinted after him at top speed.
It didn't take long to find him.
When he did, he witnessed a scene that defied all comprehension.
He saw Muzan Kibutsuji—the Demon King himself—being held by the throat and ruthlessly beaten by Suyan.
"Muzan. Who gave you permission to kill Tamayo-san? Tell me!!"
Suyan's left hand, crackling with blinding red lightning, was clamped like a vice around Muzan's throat. The Red Lightning surged down his arm, flooding Muzan's body, violently paralyzing every cell in his being and rendering him completely immobile.
His right hand was wreathed in pitch-black, highly corrosive lightning. The terrifying CRACKLE drowned out any attempt Muzan made to speak.
Suyan drove his lightning-wreathed fist into Muzan's face.
A violent web of electricity exploded upon impact. The black lightning cascaded across Muzan's body, tearing his skin open in deep, charred fissures. Muzan's elegant, aristocratic guise was completely destroyed. His face was a swollen, bruised mess, his flesh emitting plumes of foul-smelling smoke. Even his pristine, wavy hair had been fried into a scorched afro.
If it weren't for the absolute authority of the blood link humming in his veins, Akaza wouldn't have believed the battered wretch before him was the Demon King.
Suyan noticed Akaza's arrival out of the corner of his eye, but he completely ignored him. He continued his relentless, merciless beatdown.
Kaigaku's Blood Demon Art was absolute trash in Kaigaku's hands, but in Suyan's, it was an instrument of god-like suppression. Kaigaku was a placeholder Upper Rank Six who couldn't even defeat Zenitsu. But Suyan had evolved the ability into a dual-wielding nightmare of crowd control and catastrophic damage, perfectly pinning the Demon King in place.
"I thought you were the master of running away, Muzan?" Suyan taunted brutally, delivering another bone-shattering hook. "Why don't you split into 1,800 pieces and run away like a coward? Go on, do it!"
Muzan felt like he was being force-fed glass. Give me a chance to do it, you bastard!
This was easily the most humiliating moment of Muzan's long, wretched life. It was even more degrading than his defeat at Yoriichi's hands. At least Yoriichi had fought him in a straightforward duel. But this?
He had just crushed Tamayo's head. The next second, Suyan appeared out of thin air and swatted the Demon King away like a fly. Before Muzan could even regain his footing, he was grabbed by the throat and flooded with paralyzing electricity. He couldn't even twitch his fingers, let alone undergo the complex cellular division required to flee.
Furthermore, whatever Tamayo had injected into him was aggressively retarding his regenerative capabilities. If he had time, he could eventually purge the drug. But if he tried to split his body now, with his healing factor compromised? He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to put himself back together.
Muzan was trapped in an inescapable dead end.
Fortunately for him, Suyan was prioritizing inflicting pain and venting his rage rather than securing a quick kill. While the lightning strikes were excruciating, they weren't immediately lethal. What truly terrified Muzan was the absolute paralysis. If this man kept him stun-locked until sunrise, and his body couldn't build an immunity to the lightning in time, he was dead.
Then, Muzan spotted Akaza.
A desperate flicker of hope ignited in the Demon King's eyes. If Akaza could just distract this monster—even for a few seconds—it would be enough to break the paralysis and let him escape!
Muzan threw every ounce of his strength into jerking his head to the side, barely dodging Suyan's next punch. "AKAZA!" he screamed.
"Still trying to dodge?!"
Suyan's fury flared higher. The grief over Tamayo's death was already eating at him. Seeing Muzan still daring to resist poured gasoline on the fire. For a split second, Suyan truly considered erasing Muzan from existence right then and there.
He clenched his fist, condensing a massive, terrifying volume of aura around his knuckles...
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