Doma lowered his fan and looked at the two unharmed people, his gaze becoming slightly more serious. "Spewing flames instead of using a nichirin blade? No wonder Akaza-san suffered at your hands."
Doma set aside his contempt, grasping both golden fans in his hands and snapping them together in front of him.
Blood Demon Art: Crystalline Divine Child!
As the cold air reconsolidated, five ice clones—half the size of a normal person and looking exactly like Doma—appeared out of thin air around Yamada.
These clones not only possessed independent consciousness but could even perform Blood Demon Arts with the same power as the original.
The five mini-Domas simultaneously waved their ice fans. Cold winds howled, and sharp ice vines swept in from all directions, cutting off Yamada's path of retreat.
"Boring toys." Yamada sighed softly.
His right hand, resting on the hilt at his waist, suddenly drew the blade.
Clang!
The black blade left its scabbard, lightning patterns flowing across the steel.
Yamada's figure left an afterimage where he stood. Immediately following, five consecutive crisp cracking sounds echoed in the ice chamber.
Crack! Crack! Crack...
The five ice clones, which were about to release their Blood Demon Arts, froze in mid-air in unison. Then, a smooth cut appeared at each of their necks.
Five sculpted ice heads fell simultaneously, and their bodies shattered into a floor full of glittering ice shards.
"What?"
Doma's rainbow eyes widened.
He hadn't even seen how Yamada had drawn his sword before his clones were completely wiped out.
Before he could reorganize his stance, that terrifying aura of lightning had already closed in on his face.
Yamada had crossed the Lotus Pond at some point and was now standing atop the ice throne.
A black sword slashed upward diagonally.
Squelch!
Doma felt a chill across both shoulders.
His reaction speed was useless before this strike.
Both arms holding the golden iron fans were severed at the root, falling onto the ice along with a spray of blood.
"Oh my... this truly is..."
Doma looked down at his bare shoulders, just about to use his regeneration to grow new arms. But no flesh buds wriggled at the wounds.
A layer of bottomless black flames had attached itself to the cuts on his severed arms at some point. The black flames burned quietly, without heat, yet they ruthlessly devoured the demon cells inside him meant for body repair.
No matter how he surged his blood, the black fire was like a bone-deep curse, firmly blocking his path to regeneration.
"Can't grow them back?"
Yamada held his sword, looking down at Doma seated on the ice throne.
Doma finally felt a flicker of panic. He had lived for over a hundred years and had never experienced this uniquely human emotion.
He had always thought of himself as an emotionless bystander, until today, when he found his body trembling involuntarily. It was a fear rooted in biological instinct.
He wanted to retreat, to create distance, but as soon as he looked up, his gaze collided defenselessly with a pair of crimson eyes.
A pattern of an interlaced hexagram and three tomoe rotated slowly in Yamada's pupils, like two bottomless spiritual vortexes.
Genjutsu: Sharingan!
Doma's brain let out a roar.
The ice chamber, the Lotus Pond, and Yamada all disintegrated in an instant. He found himself hanging upside down from a large tree, surrounded by a dark red void of space.
His body lost all sensation, he couldn't even move a single finger.
In this mental world constructed by the Sharingan, the concept of time was stretched infinitely.
In the outside world.
Doma's body knelt stiffly on the melting ice. His rainbow eyes lost all their luster, becoming cloudy and dull.
The black flames at the severed arms were retracted by Yamada, but he remained as motionless as a statue, with only a faint wheezing sound coming from his throat.
"I've neutralized his hands and his ability to resist. His mind is locked down by me, he won't be able to move a step."
Yamada sheathed his Kusanagi Sword, turned around, and looked at Shinobu, who had been standing by the Lotus Pond.
"He's yours."
Shinobu stared blankly at the kneeling, defenseless Upper Rank Two.
For this day, she had envisioned countless tragic endings. She had even prepared herself to fill her entire body with Wisteria Toxin and let herself be eaten to ensure their mutual destruction.
But she never imagined this revenge would come so smoothly, to the point of feeling somewhat surreal.
She took a deep breath, stepped forward, and walked across the cracked ice toward Doma step by step.
With every step, the pale face of her sister Kanae, still wearing a gentle smile before she died, surfaced in her mind.
"Shinobu, leave the Demon Slayer Corps. Live your life as an ordinary girl."
Her sister's last words echoed in her ears.
Shinobu walked up to Doma and stopped.
She looked down at the face she loathed with every fiber of her being and slowly drew the uniquely bladed sword from her waist.
She didn't use ordinary Wisteria Toxin as she usually did. Instead, she took out a syringe filled with a pale purple transparent liquid from a specialized leather pouch at her waist.
It was the ultimate poison she had developed using Yamada's Yang Release Chakra, mixed with high concentrations of Wisteria and Tamayo's human-transforming drug.
"Doma."
Shinobu's voice was surprisingly calm, without angry roars, only a coldness from the release of a years-long obsession.
"Don't you like to call eating people salvation?"
She gripped the syringe and unhesitatingly plunged it into Doma's carotid artery, pushing the entire vial of medicine to the end.
"Take your hypocrisy and repent in hell."
The moment the medicine was injected, the Doma trapped in the illusion jolted violently, his rainbow pupils suddenly shrinking to their limit.
He felt it.
A severe pain, unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life, spread instantly from his neck to every cell in his body.
The massive vitality of the Yang Release and the toxins of the Wisteria produced a violent chemical reaction.
The cells inside him began to divide and grow uncontrollably and frantically. Newborn flesh burst through his skin, and bones pierced out of his body in distorted postures.
Simultaneously, the human-transforming drug was stripping away the source of his power as a demon. His body was aging, collapsing, and self-destructing.