For Shinobu Kocho, there were usually many things she could do, but under today's specific physical circumstances, her options were rather limited.
Although the vast majority of her internal lacerations and chronic inflammation had been fully repaired by Li Ke's Dragon Fire, other forms of systemic exhaustion were not so easily dispelled. Neither a severely drained spirit nor an excessively fatigued muscle mass could be instantaneously fixed by the flames of the Red Dragon.
These were completely self-evident biological realities.
However, right as Shinobu was drafting a formal letter to her master, fully intending to recommend Li Ke for immediate promotion to Hashira status, critical new intelligence disrupted her work.
Tengen Uzui—the Sound Hashira who famously boasted three wives—suddenly materialized right in front of Li Ke and Shinobu.
"Yo, Shinobu. Apologies for crashing the party, but we've got official business to handle."
Tengen carried his twin giant cleaver-blades strapped securely across his back. His tactical gear was meticulously organized down to the last detail, making it blindingly obvious that he was fully packed and prepared to launch into a high-intensity deployment.
Shinobu shot him a perplexed look, but her analytical mind quickly connected the pieces.
"Has there been a new development on the Flame Hashira's end?"
Lately, the Demon Slayer Corps' operational itinerary had been entirely consumed by establishing fortified human quarantine zones, gathering intelligence on the spatial movements of the cosmic horrors, assisting regional daimyos and nobles in neutralizing opportunistic bandits, and aggressively training fresh recruits. The workload was absolutely immense. It was precisely because Shinobu's combat methodology relied strictly on synthetic venoms rather than raw, physical Breathing Style parameters that she had been granted a relatively lighter scouting schedule.
This systemic exclusion was, in truth, one of the primary reasons she harbored such a deep-seated lack of structural security within her own ranks.
"Spot on. Rengoku actually located a massive hive of those alien monsters over in Mount Natagumo nearby," Tengen confirmed, his expression turning sharp. "But the terrain is entirely overrun with highly anomalous toxic insects and arachnid freaks. We desperately need your specialized assistance to deploy wide-range counter-toxins against that swarm of bugs. And... wait, that's weird. Didn't you receive the dispatch report?"
Tengen looked at Shinobu with pure confusion. The Corps systematically utilized highly trained Kasugai Crows as their primary communication vanguard. These avian couriers possessed an exceptionally high level of cognitive intelligence, and were even fully capable of human speech, meaning Shinobu should have already been thoroughly briefed.
"Ah... about that..."
Shinobu couldn't help but awkwardly avert her gaze. The plain truth was that she had completely ignored her Kasugai Crow during the early morning hours, and since those birds were remarkably sharp, her personal courier had likely deduced that she was entirely... indisposed at the time.
"My apologies. A few personal matters arose, and I lost track of the timeline."
Tengen Uzui shot a highly curious look at Li Ke, who was standing to the side wearing a similarly awkward expression. He couldn't quite fathom exactly what had transpired between Li Ke and Shinobu, but channeling his ninja sensory training, he distinctly perceived that their baseline auras had become intricately entangled and mixed.
He hadn't paid close attention earlier, but now that he had pinpointed the anomaly, Tengen's facial expression turned remarkably subtle.
"No worries... it's just that time is of the essence, so you need to accelerate your preparations. Right now, the entire frontline perimeter over there is being held together solely by Kyojuro's sheer willpower."
Shinobu gave a firm nod. Given the critical gravity of the tactical situation, she naturally wouldn't dream of declining the assignment. Even though her lower body was still experiencing a wave of lingering, raw discomfort, putting her personal welfare aside for the mission was the fundamental duty of a Demon Slayer Corps warrior.
However, Li Ke took a brief, calculating glance at Shinobu's fragile posture before abruptly rising to his feet.
"In that case, I'll take her place on the vanguard. My flames happen to possess exceptional restorative properties. I'll spearhead the deployment alongside you right now, and Shinobu can simply follow behind at her own pace once her body acclimates."
Hearing Li Ke utilize such an intimately close moniker for the historically frigid Insect Hashira made Tengen instinctively cock an eyebrow. It wasn't that he harbored any personal designs on Shinobu; it was simply a well-known fact within the organization that she was an absolute block of ice. Countless suitors within their ranks had tried and failed miserably to court her, yet this stranger had somehow managed to completely lock down her affections in record time—all while actively traveling alongside his own stunning woman...
"Then I'm tagging along too."
Mai Shiranui stood up abruptly. Trapped in a state of profound vulnerability and existential confusion, she was desperately starving for a high-intensity opportunity to prove her worth to the team—to definitively demonstrate that her family's Shiranui lineage was absolutely not as weak, useless, and obsolete as Li Ke's corporate logic made it out to be!
Even though Li Ke had formally agreed to study her style down the line, she fiercely refused to let him look down on the Shiranui-ryu or treat her heritage as some trivial, low-tier trick that anyone could seamlessly pick up.
According to the official dispatch files, the Corps hadn't recklessly ordered a blind offensive into Mount Natagumo yet; their immediate strategic blueprint involved having Shinobu guide the medical division to the base of the mountain to establish a fortified field hospital, ensuring any wounded slayers could be aggressively treated and stabilized without delay.
"No. You're staying behind to help monitor Shinobu, Mai. Use the downtime to thoroughly analyze the baseline traits of this world's monsters," Li Ke rejected her request smoothly on the spot. His reasoning for benching her was incredibly simple.
Mai was undeniably a top-tier martial artist. If the two of them were to lock into a serious, no-holds-barred sparring match, she possessed a concrete mathematical chance of landing a critical strike or holding her own.
But the real structural bottleneck lay in the nature of the enemy.
If they were marching out to face a conventional division of human targets—such as a rogue encampment of heavily armed bandits or elite samurai commanders—Li Ke wouldn't hesitate for a single second to bring Mai along to shatter their lines.
But these were cosmic horrors and yokai—entities operating on an entirely different plane of existence. Li Ke possessed absurdly high physical attributes across the board, backed by the absolute defense of his Dragon Fire, which allowed him to completely ignore the brutal "first-encounter kill" mechanics that slaughtered ordinary slayers.
Furthermore, his Berserker-class bloody-qi secret technique could easily burn away baseline toxins and alien parasites from his bloodstream. Short of a direct, conceptual attack on his soul, he harbored absolutely zero fear.
Even if his internal organs suffered severe structural damage, his mastery over Seimei Kikan (Life Return) guaranteed he could systematically regenerate the tissues over time, provided he didn't suffer a total, irreversible loss of a limb.
Whether it was a legendary, instant-death venom or a bizarre parasitic infestation, he could violently detonate his own blood-qi to blast the foreign corruption right out of his pores, following it up with Dragon Fire and Seimei Kikan to patch himself back together.
He could physically expel lethality in a single, fluid heartbeat and instantaneously restore his peak combat metrics.
But Mai Shiranui lacked those structural safety nets.
The moment he looked away to focus on his own fight, she could easily drop dead.
It was strictly a matter of technical compatibility.
It was exactly like how a veteran hunter from the Monster Hunter universe could effortlessly butcher a colossal, mountain-sized Elder Dragon, yet if you dropped them into a flat-line arena to face a traditional fighting game protagonist, the martial arts master would cleanly secure the victory every single time.
Ordinary mortals having highly specific specializations was just basic universal logic.
"Don't look down on me!"
Mai was already nursing a severe headache from her sleepless night, and being so bluntly dismissed by Li Ke caused her temper to flare instantly. She glared at him in pure frustration, showing absolutely zero intention of backing down.
But Li Ke had no intention of coddling her feelings, cutting straight to the bone.
"Be honest with yourself—if I hadn't been actively keeping a defensive shield around you the other night, what do you mathematically estimate your chances of survival were?"
His words struck Mai entirely silent. Reflecting on the sheer, suffocating density of the Night Parade, she knew that without Li Ke's intervention, her baseline Qi would have eventually run dry. While she didn't fear individual yokai—and even the strongest entities in that vanguard wouldn't have been her match in a direct duel—surviving a relentless, systemic siege of that caliber was a different story.
It was an impossible feat.
If she had been a completely irrational, hysterical woman, she would have continued to throw an empty tantrum to save face. But as a deeply principled martial artist, Mai could only lower her head, quietly forcing herself to swallow the bitter truth.
"I wouldn't have survived."
"Exactly," Li Ke grunted softly before turning his focus back toward Tengen Uzui.
"So, what's your take on the itinerary? Or do you need to throw down in a quick sparring match with me to verify my capabilities before we set off?"
Li Ke casually rolled his wrists. Even though his most reliable, heavy greatsword had been reduced to slag, a standard katana would suffice for the time being.
In fact, since traditional kataras were notoriously brittle and prone to rapid thermal melting, they were actually the absolute perfect disposable fuel for his newly developed molten shrapnel explosion technique!