Meanwhile.
Kyoto, Honno-ji Temple.
This Nichiren-sect temple within the city of Kyoto burned with incense day and night, its many monks chanting sutras without pause.
The vow-power and dharma power of dozens, even hundreds of monks formed an invisible dome over the entire temple — any yokai aura, demon-qi, or turbid qi that entered this space would be naturally purified and dispersed.
It was forbidden ground for yokai.
A dead end for vengeful Demons.
And for that very reason, it was the last place anyone would think to look for a hiding spot.
Kibutsuji Muzan's final split-off body was hidden here.
Deep within a crack in the stone base of the Buddha statue in Honno-ji's main hall.
A fist-sized lump of purple-black flesh, giving off no trace of aura, producing no ripple at all — like an insect's egg sealed in amber.
The Demon Slayer Corps couldn't find it.
The Earth Barrier couldn't seep in.
And no yokai would ever set foot here.
This was Muzan's deepest fallback.
He had hidden the last part of himself inside the most solemn Buddhist sanctuary of the age — concealing poison within medicine, hiding filth beneath purity.
As long as this lump of flesh didn't wake on its own, nothing could ever find it.
But tonight—
the instant his main body was utterly destroyed by the strike that fused sun and moon.
In the crack at the base of the Buddha statue, the purple-black lump of flesh — moved.
An almost imperceptible twitch, so faint that not even the old monk meditating before the statue noticed.
Regeneration began, slow and laborious, like a seed frozen for five hundred years finally cracking its shell.
Muzan's consciousness surfaced from the chaos, fragmented and scattered, like shards of a shattered mirror forced back together.
His first thought was: alive.
His second thought was: flee.
But the third thought never had the chance to form before it was cut off.
"Awake, are you."
The voice came from the darkness — clear, gentle, laced with a pleasure that sent a chill down the spine.
Muzan's regeneration seized to a halt.
Impossible.
This was Honno-ji.
Within the vow-power barrier of a hundred monks.
No one could have guessed his final split-off body was hidden here — not even... a Demon he himself had made!
"Lord Muzan, you're still thinking there's no way a Demon could be here, aren't you?"
There was laughter in the voice.
In the shadow cast by the Buddha statue's backlight, a pale woman's face emerged from the darkness.
An elegant, plain-colored kimono, black hair falling loose, sharp features carrying a faint smile.
She looked like a noble young lord.
And also like a spider crouched on its web, watching its prey.
"Onigumo."
Muzan's voice squeezed out of the not-yet-fully-regenerated flesh, hoarse and weak, thick with utter disbelief:
"How could you possibly be here?"
"When did you find out about this place?"
His voice shifted from hoarse to icy — even, tinged with dread.
He had never told any Demon that he'd hidden a fallback at Honno-ji.
Never.
It was the secret he guarded most closely.
But now — it had been discovered?
Onigumo's smile deepened.
"Have you forgotten, Lord Muzan?"
She crouched down, her pale face drawing close to the purple-black lump of flesh. "You can read the memories of every vengeful Demon — but that ability, actually, goes both ways."
Muzan's consciousness exploded with shock.
Both ways.
He had never once considered that possibility.
As the progenitor of the Demons, whenever he granted a vengeful Demon his blood, he also implanted absolute obedience — a curse of blood that made it impossible for any of them to defy his will, to betray him, or to hide anything from him.
He could read the memories of any vengeful Demon, and could annihilate any of their existences in an instant.
This was the progenitor's absolute authority.
But—
what if a Demon's will was strong enough, its obsession deep enough, its cunning sharp enough to peer back into the progenitor's memories even while being read?
That should have been absolutely impossible, in theory.
And yet — what if?
What if, every time Muzan read Onigumo's thoughts, Onigumo had been reading his in return?
A little each time, stealing bit by bit.
Stealing for a month.
Until she'd stolen — Honno-ji.
And a will of that magnitude wasn't, in fact, an absolute impossibility in this world.
At the very least, Kibutsuji Muzan himself had glimpsed it once, from afar.
Before he'd ever met this female bandit now called Onigumo — back when he'd gazed out over the vast plains of Musashi Province.
And it lay, too, in the very object of his current pursuit.
The Shikon Jewel!
"Figured it out, have you?"
Onigumo narrowed her eyes, and within them, a faint jewel-like violet glow truly rose.
It was the 'jewel' she had once seen in a dream.
It was also the origin of her obsession with that particular figure.
Now she understood more clearly just what it was that had once pulled her back from the brink of death.
The Shikon Jewel.
Or rather, a fragment of the Shikon Jewel — a faint seepage of the Magatsuhi.
A trace of influence!
As a mere bandit, Onigumo could never naturally have possessed such a terrifying will — only the jewel, saturated with endless yokai grudges, could have granted her one.
"But in the end, it's also because your mind isn't an iron wall either, Lord Muzan."
Onigumo sighed, her tone full of something like regret. "Especially when you're thinking about your last life-saving measure — that's always when your defenses are loosest.
"Because you feel safe, see."
"And once you feel safe, you can't help replaying that safe place over and over in your mind."
"Honno-ji. The main hall. The base of the Buddha statue. Inside the crack in the stone—
"Every single detail you thought of, I saw."
Muzan fell silent. The purple-black lump of flesh stopped moving, as if even its regeneration had been frozen by fury, even fear.
But he still had one last card.
The progenitor's authority — annihilation.
As long as he lived, he could erase any vengeful Demon he'd created in an instant.
He invoked that authority.
His will surged through the blood connection, aimed straight at the core of Onigumo's existence. Nothing happened.
The connection was severed.
The bloodline thread running from progenitor to servant had been cut clean through the middle, as if by scissors — both ends sprang apart, never to reconnect.
"If you were hoping to destroy me — well, too bad."
Onigumo rose to her feet, and from the shadows behind her stepped another figure.
Another woman.
Black-haired, composed, dressed in a plain kimono — she looked to be in her thirties, but the vitality in her eyes, with their slitted, dark-violet pupils, far outstripped her apparent age.
The instant he saw this woman, Kibutsuji Muzan's will trembled even harder.
Of course he recognized her.
Tamayo.
She too was a vengeful Demon Onigumo had selected as fit for the Twelve Kizuki — but unlike other Demons, Tamayo's Blood Demon Art was 'Blood Bewitchment': corroding, decomposing, and reconstructing the information carried in blood, altering the scent it gave off.
Muzan valued her highly — not as highly as Onigumo, but enough to let her live within his own estate.
After all, in Muzan's eyes, an ability like hers might one day help him find the blue spider lily.
But as it turned out—
it was she who had helped Onigumo sever the blood connection to Muzan.
"Lady Tamayo was a huge help."
Onigumo laughed, doubling over with mirth. "Cutting a blood connection — one person alone can't manage that. But two people? That's a different story.
Muzan managed to regenerate a single eye and turned it on Tamayo.
Tamayo didn't look away, her face set with a calm so complete it bordered on cruelty.
"You two... since when have you been working together?"
"Since the third day after I was turned.
Onigumo answered without a moment's hesitation. "You didn't know, did you?"
"When I found her and asked to work together, she meant to kill me at first. But I said one thing to her, and she changed her mind.
Muzan's lump of flesh trembled faintly.
"What did you say?"
"I said—"
Onigumo crouched down again, her pale palm resting over the purple-black lump of flesh.
Her fingers sank into the flesh, gentle as if stroking a lover's cheek. "'Let's eat Kibutsuji Muzan together.'"
Muzan's consciousness turned utterly to ice.
He understood, at last.
From the very beginning — from the moment he'd seen that dying female bandit on the roadside and thought she'd make excellent material for a Demon—
he had already lost.
Not to the Demon Slayer Corps. Not to that swordsman who'd appeared out of nowhere wielding the Breath of the Sun, Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
Not even to Kobe Hikaru.
He had lost to a monster of his own making — one he'd believed he had complete control over, one he had raised with his own hands.
"That's why I brought you the false lead about the blue spider lily, why I told you that what you should investigate wasn't the rumor itself, but the person behind it. I'm sure you saw just how 'loyal' I was... Lord Muzan."
Onigumo's voice dropped very soft. "Thank you for your blood. And thank you for your power.
"Thank you for making me."
Her mouth opened.
It split all the way to her ears, two rows of interlocking fangs glinting cold in the light behind the Buddha statue. "But from now on—
"the progenitor of the Demons will be me."
She bit down.
Muzan let out a howl.
The sound was completely sealed within the crack at the base of the Buddha statue by the vow-power barrier of Honno-ji's hundreds of monks — not an inch of it escaped.
Outside, the old monk turned a page of his sutra.
Utterly unaware.
The devouring was absolute — not just his flesh, but every scrap of Muzan's remaining consciousness, memory, and the information carried in his bloodline, all chewed, swallowed, and digested mouthful by mouthful.
Five hundred years as progenitor of the Demons.
and tonight, he was devoured by a vengeful Demon of his own making.
Tamayo stood off to the side, her face betraying no emotion, but the fingers gripping her sleeve trembled.
The devouring lasted the time it takes an incense stick to burn, until every last flicker of motion vanished.
Onigumo rose to her feet.
Her body was changing.
Her face was still that pale, sharp-featured one, her build still slender and lithe — but the essence of her had changed.
The power surging out from within her no longer belonged to any tier a Demon should possess.
It was a progenitor's.
Though it was only the last thread of blood, the last scrap of flesh, its quality and nature were, beyond doubt, something only the progenitor of the Demons could possess.
Little in quantity, but immense in density.
Utterly pure.
Inherited.
Onigumo closed her eyes, savoring the power churning within her.
Then opened them.
Her eyes had changed.
Crimson, almost gem-like in its redness — in her pupils reflected the Buddha's merciful face, the flickering candlelight of the main hall, and reflected...
an endless obsession for one particular person.
Tamayo took a step back.
The aura of the progenitor of the Demons spread out from Onigumo's body, filling every inch of the crevice.
The pressure of it far exceeded anything she'd felt from Kibutsuji Muzan while he lived.
Because Muzan's aura had been cold, suppressive, a domineering pressure from above.
But Onigumo's aura was hot — scalding.
It coiled around her sticky as spider silk, clinging to the skin, to the veins, to the deepest reaches of the soul.
Suffocating.
But Onigumo paid Tamayo no mind. She simply stood in the darkness, eyes closed, savoring the rush of her newborn power.
Then, as if sensing something, her crimson eyes snapped wide open.
Her body froze for an instant.
Inside her — at the deepest core of the flesh she had just devoured, at the very bottom layer of Muzan's remaining soul — there was something.
Not blood. Not flesh. Not a soul fragment.
But an anchor.
An impossibly thin, impossibly hidden, impossibly delicate thread of soul.
Onigumo seemed to recognize exactly what it was, and began to tremble.
It was the anchor of the Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation.
Kobe Hikaru had already discovered this final split-off body hidden at Honno-ji, back when he first locked onto Muzan's soul.
He couldn't pinpoint its exact location, couldn't pierce the monks' wall of vow-power.
But he didn't need to pierce it.
All he needed was to leave a thread on Muzan's soul as a whole.
No matter where that soul eventually ended up — destroyed, devoured, or transferred — the thread would follow it there.
Just like fishing.
Except the fish wasn't Muzan. Muzan was only the bait.
The fish... was whatever dared to devour Muzan.
And so Onigumo had bitten.
And the other end of that anchor was connected, without a doubt, to Kobe Hikaru!
This was the true "leave no evil unrooted" that Kobe Hikaru had been aiming for all along.
A plan already fully formed in his mind the moment he'd learned of Onigumo's existence.
A voice, sounding as if it understood everything, exploded in Onigumo's ears the very next instant.
"So that's how it is."
Across heaven and earth, out on the wild plain, Kobe Hikaru had watched the entire scene unfold, finally understanding just how this Onigumo had come to be.
She was indeed the Onigumo of the original story, a bandit — but also a different Onigumo, one born under the influence of the Magatsuhi.
It traced back to a night not long after Kobe Hikaru had sought out Kikyo.
A butterfly effect set off in the brief window when the Magatsuhi had escaped.
Onigumo's birth, Onigumo's very emotions, all traced back to the Magatsuhi of the Shikon Jewel—
In that moment, Onigumo went still.
A scene seemed to reflect in her crimson eyes.
A wild plain, a waning moon, a pale-haired youth standing on scorched grassland, his blood-red Demon eyes watching her through the gap in his mask.
As if looking at an insect that had just fallen into a web.
Except it wasn't her web.
It was his.
Before Onigumo could react, Kobe Hikaru spoke a single line, simply and calmly.
"You. You've eaten people."
Thousands of miles apart, and he had truly seen it.
He'd seen the surging grudge-rancor coiled around this Onigumo, seen... her evil.
He wasn't bound by the so-called original story, wasn't going to assume — before ever laying eyes on her — that this Onigumo, who hadn't yet become Naraku, was necessarily evil.
But now that he'd seen it with his own eyes, the decision required not a shred of deliberation.
Leave no evil unrooted.
Uproot every possible threat before it can take hold.
That was all. That, and nothing more.
The words began, and ended.
The voice echoed a third time.
This time Onigumo understood, and felt it too — a shade of Yomi, dark beyond dark, exploding out from within her, through that soul-thread thinner than spider silk!
Yomikiri.
Undying-Slayer.
A blade strike, arriving across ten thousand miles!
And then Onigumo's body split clean down the middle.
For the Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation, distance — even tens of millions of miles — had never been the question of whether he could strike. It was always a question of what happened after the strike landed.
The reason he hadn't struck down all of Muzan's countless flesh-split bodies earlier was simply that there were too many of them.
That, and the distances were too great.
No matter how strong Kobe Hikaru was alone, he truly couldn't unleash a thousand blade strikes with a single lock-on — better to rely on the strength of the Demon Slayer Corps.
But now it was different.
With only a single Onigumo, having absorbed just one thread of the Demon King's remaining blood — he could strike. And more than that, he could kill.
In the end—
though Onigumo had absorbed Muzan's last flesh and blood, it had come at a cost.
For a Demon to turn on and devour the Demon King could never be entirely without price.
She had already grown terribly weak!
But even so—
even as she looked down and saw the crack still spreading across her chest, saw the light of Yomi — that person's light — seeping out from within it.
Onigumo, now fully aware of what was happening, showed not the slightest fear, not even anger.
She was still smiling.
Smiling.
"Looks like I'm going to die too."
"You really are ruthless. Truly — you leave nothing to chance."
"But still... dying by your hand — that's a kind of happiness too!"
So just what exactly had the Magatsuhi instilled in this one—?
Kobe Hikaru's brow furrowed.
The new Demon King, born deep within the crevice beneath Honno-ji, lasted from birth to end in less than a few minutes.
Tamayo, standing nearby, was frozen stiff with shock.
In the end, all that remained on the spot was pitch darkness, and...
A single bead of blood, round as a pearl.
[Capturable item detected: Residue of the Celestial Immortal Elixir]
[Quality: Divine Artifact (Incomplete)]
[Description: A legendary elixir crafted by an ancient being who journeyed from the mainland to the land of Japan, seeking immortality and the freedom to reshape one's own body — a fusion of yin and yang, sun and moon, the pinnacle of human attainment, the form of an ancient celestial immortal. Though flawed by the lack of some crucial ingredient, it can still grant mortals a twisted form of undeath. Currently only residue remains, and it carries traces of its last user's obsession — it can no longer be consumed. But if its power can be activated, it may be used to split off and gestate a clone of its last user.]
[Note: Though extremely rare, this is not a one-of-a-kind item — it originated from an overseas source.]
Under the lock of the soul anchor—
came one final, fleeting flicker of the system.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 10 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉