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"Exactly the opposite!"
Shuya looked at the varied expressions around him and calmly raised a single finger, waving it lightly.
In his opinion, becoming a demon was actually pretty low-tier.
Aside from a longer lifespan, there were almost no real benefits. Between the fatal weakness to sunlight and the absolute requirement to eat humans to grow stronger, the drawbacks were massive.
Even compared to the vampires in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure—who could eventually evolve into something like Kars, a perfect JO-level being that no longer feared sunlight and could freely evolve life—the demons in this world were pathetic.
Shuya spoke calmly. "My second request is very simple. I want the Demon Slayer Corps to spread the information I just gave you about the Blue Spider Lily."
"What?!"
Everyone in the courtyard froze in shock, faces full of disbelief.
Shinobu immediately asked, "Why?"
Shinobu had twice watched her closest family die right in front of her. The first time, demons broke into her home and slaughtered her parents while she and Kanae hid. Only Gyomei's timely arrival saved them. The second time, her sister Kanae fought Upper Rank Two Doma alone, lost, and died in Shinobu's arms as the sun rose and Doma fled.
After those two tragedies, Shinobu had forced herself to wear the same gentle smile her sister once had, hiding the burning, unforgiving hatred for demons beneath it.
If Shuya's answer really was that he wanted the Corps to help him find the Blue Spider Lily so he could turn himself into the very thing she despised most…
Even if he truly had been her sister's boyfriend once, she would never forgive him.
But she still couldn't understand why he would deliberately leak such critical information about the Blue Spider Lily. If Muzan learned about it and overcame his sunlight weakness, wouldn't he become even harder to kill?
"Little Shinobu, let me ask you something."
Shuya smiled gently at her. "In the thousand years the Demon Slayer Corps has fought Muzan, aside from the people he turned into demons and Yoriichi Tsugikuni—who nearly killed him during the Sengoku era—has anyone else ever actually seen Muzan in person?"
"…"
Shinobu was speechless.
It was true. Even Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the current leader of the Corps, had never laid eyes on Muzan. No one in the organization knew what the Demon King actually looked like.
It was bitterly ironic.
Shuya continued with a faint smile. "In your eyes, Muzan Kibutsuji is a terrifying archenemy. In the thousand years of conflict, the demons he created alone have been almost too much for the Corps to handle.
"But in my eyes, Muzan is nothing but a coward with power."
"You may not know this, but there are twelve permanent scars on Muzan's body that will never heal. Those scars were left four hundred years ago when Yoriichi Tsugikuni struck him with all twelve forms of Sun Breathing.
"They correspond exactly to his five brains and seven hearts—his twelve vital weak points.
"That single encounter with Yoriichi left Muzan on the verge of death and completely changed his personality. The once-arrogant Demon King became a paranoid, terrified coward. From that day until Yoriichi died of old age, Muzan never showed himself in public again.
"Even after Yoriichi's death, for the next several hundred years, Muzan obsessively hunted down and killed every swordsman who knew Sun Breathing, trying to erase every last trace of Yoriichi from the world.
"Even though he knew Yoriichi was long dead and Sun Breathing was nearly extinct, he stayed hidden in the shadows, avoiding the Demon Slayer Corps at all costs—purely out of fear that another Yoriichi might appear someday. The chance was extremely low, almost impossible… but Muzan was too scared to risk it."
Shuya paused, then asked the group another question. "Do you know why, in the hundreds of years since Breathing Techniques were created, the Corps has only ever managed to kill Lower Rank demons?"
"Why?" Nezuko asked, eyes sparkling with curiosity as she listened intently to the story.
Shuya gently patted her head and explained with a smile, "Because Muzan is such a coward that he refuses to let the Twelve Kizuki gather together in one place. He's terrified they'll team up and betray him.
"That paranoia is the only reason the Corps has ever been able to pick off the Lower Ranks one by one."
"Eh?!"
Nezuko's mouth fell open in disbelief. "That's the Demon King? The progenitor of all demons? He sounds… kind of stupid."
"He's afraid of everything, and he spent a thousand years searching for the Blue Spider Lily without even knowing the most basic information about it."
Shuya's words had completely shattered the mysterious, terrifying image of Muzan that the Hashira had carried in their hearts.
They still knew his power was far beyond anything they could face alone… but for the first time, they felt like they were looking down on him.
It gave them the strange illusion that maybe… Muzan wasn't all that.
"But—"
Even so, Shinobu still couldn't understand why Shuya would deliberately spread information about the Blue Spider Lily.
Wouldn't it be better to just let Muzan stay a pathetic clown, forever chasing a flower he could never find?
"Looks like you still don't get it, little Shinobu."
Shuya shook his head, sounding a little disappointed. "Just like I said earlier—Muzan is a complete and utter coward.
"If we don't use the Blue Spider Lily as bait, he could hide for another few hundred years and never show himself in front of the Demon Slayer Corps."
That was an undeniable fact.
In the original story's Infinity Castle arc, Muzan only appeared because he learned that Nezuko had overcome sunlight and because Ubuyashiki had intentionally leaked the location of Corps headquarters. Without those two triggers, Muzan would have stayed hidden forever.
The Corps would never have had the chance to fight him in the decisive battle.
If Tanjiro's nose hadn't been so sharp and picked up Muzan's scent in a crowded city, the Demon King might have remained invisible indefinitely.
"Or do you want to search for him like a needle in a haystack?" Shuya asked calmly. "Even if the Demon Slayer Corps had the patience for that… I don't."