After Akaza finished speaking, he departed without a second glance.
The leaves trembled slightly in his wake. Gyokko stared at the empty space around him, the words he had been holding back finally escaping his lips:
"Lord Akaza is truly willful. At the very least, you could have told me something about the demon slayers here."
Gyokko sighed, though he didn't feel particularly discouraged. From Akaza's reaction, he could already deduce several things.
First, the demon slayers in Yoshiwara were certainly not Hashira; otherwise, Akaza would have shown far more interest in them.
Second, the primary objective Lord Muzan had given Akaza was likely not to kill demon slayers. If it were, Akaza wouldn't have acted so indifferent.
And if Lord Muzan had specifically dispatched an Upper Rank for a task other than killing Hashira, then there was only one other possibility...
The Blue Spider Lily might be here!
After a moment of deduction, Gyokko felt he had grasped Akaza's purpose. He licked his purplish lips, the eyeballs inside his mouth rolling excitedly as his voice rose to a fever pitch:
"If... if I can find that lily for Lord Muzan! I might receive a massive amount of his blood. If that happens, it's not impossible for me to become Upper Rank One! Akaza... that idiot's brain can't even comprehend the difference in value between a Hashira and the Blue Spider Lily!"
Plotting his next move, Gyokko considered his strategy. His twisted, hideous body slowly slithered into a porcelain pot. With a series of "glug-glug" rolling sounds, the pot vanished, reappearing moments later in a dark corner beneath the eaves of a nearby house.
He would gather intelligence and kill the demon slayers, all while doing his utmost to find the Blue Spider Lily for Lord Muzan.
Throughout the short night, countless porcelain pots were silently placed at key points across Yoshiwara. Like silent monitors, they formed a hidden network of surveillance.
The night grew deeper, the darkness as heavy and impenetrable as lake water. Rengoku Wajuro walked through the alleyways, his tracks having long since been discovered by Gyokko.
However, Gyokko was in no hurry to strike. He would wait for the Roaring Hashira to arrive before dealing with these slayers.
The man before him, Rengoku Wajuro, was clearly not a Hashira. Most Hashira wore their signature haori—a symbol of their status and the primary target for any demon. Gyokko's patience was simple: if the Roaring Hashira hadn't arrived and Akaza was free to intervene, Akaza might steal the credit.
Even if the head of a non-Hashira wasn't worth much, Gyokko didn't want to miss even the smallest opportunity to curry favor with Lord Muzan. Just imagining the smile Lord Muzan might grant him, or the look of approval from that Great One, made Gyokko's entire body shiver with anticipation.
The appearance of the Blue Spider Lily would surely require a few heads from the Demon Slayer Corps as decoration. He would have to think of an artistic way to arrange them...
Wajuro was unaware of Gyokko's gaze. He did not specialize in detection, yet a sense of inexplicable unease gnawed at his heart. This unease did not make him retreat; rather, it confirmed his suspicions. There was a demon in Yoshiwara, and it was no ordinary one.
He didn't stop. Instead, he continued deeper into the darkness. He was waiting—waiting for the demon to launch an attack.
If he could slay the hidden demon, that would be ideal. But even if he were outmatched and became the creature's prey, it would still be a "win" in his mind.
To this day, the Demon Slayer Corps had virtually no fundamental data on the Upper Ranks. For nearly two hundred years, almost every Hashira who encountered an Upper Rank had died. Not even their Kasugai Crows had survived to bring back information.
But his crow, Ebimaru, was different. He possessed a long-distance vision capability that other crows lacked. Wajuro never kept Ebimaru by his side during night patrols for this very reason: so that Ebimaru could report intelligence after his death.
A demon he couldn't kill himself was likely an Upper Rank. Trading the life of a non-Hashira like himself for information on an Upper Rank—something that hadn't been gathered in a century—was a bargain!
Though it sounded tragic, it was the reality. At the recent Hashira Meeting, he had heard the Wind Hashira, a close friend, say that the prevailing view among the pillars was that it took three Hashira to kill one Upper Moon, while one Hashira could handle a Lower Moon. As for Upper Moons One or Two, though there was no data, there had been cases where two Hashira were killed simultaneously. This meant the highest ranks might require five Hashira to defeat.
The Demon Slayer Corps was in a precarious position. Although the Master's precognitive abilities allowed them to evade the demons' searches, the Master's body was failing under the strain of using that power.
The Master wasn't even twenty-six years old, yet he was already...
Damn it! Damn it!
Thinking of this, Wajuro felt a wave of powerlessness. He was a cheerful man, but in the face of such circumstances, he felt helpless. The Wind Hashira, the most tender-hearted soul in the Corps, had told him more than once to worry less, but Wajuro simply couldn't do it.
Taking a deep breath, Wajuro continued deeper into the alleyway.
On the other side of the region, the Roaring Hashira was traveling while fighting a losing battle against sleep.
Drowsiness hit her like a tide, a force Minami Nami could not resist.
The moment her consciousness slipped into darkness, a snot bubble formed at her nose. Her head snapped up. The coldness on her face vanished, replaced by a daft, carefree smile.
"Waaa! Chochomaru! You stole some dried fish again, didn't you?! I can smell it on your beak!"
Chochomaru looked at the drastically changed Minami Nami with a look of utter resignation. Her Hashira was perfect in every way except for this one quirk: every time she fell asleep, she switched to a completely different personality.
And it was the polar opposite of her main personality.
"Lady Minami! Please watch where you're going! There's a cliff ahead!"
"Don't worry at all, Chochomaru! A cliff of this distance is—AAAAHHHHH! This is too high!"
At dawn, Rengoku Wajuro returned. His face bore a trace of sorrow, and in his hand, he held a Nichirin Sword stained with blood.
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Demon Slayer: Starting by Snatching Daki(89 Chapter- Ongoing)
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