Chapter 200: What Do You Take Life For?
The lingering light of the lunar eclipse bled across the wilderness, painting the tall grass in a deathly, pallid hue.
Kobe Hikaru stood in the desolate expanse, his Crimson Demon Eyes locking onto Muzan's slitted, vertical pupils from thirty feet away.
The Progenitor of Demons, an immortal abomination twisted far beyond her human origins, stood before him in the elegant guise of a woman. The silken hem of her dark kimono swayed gracefully in the chilling night wind. A gentle, unnervingly perfect smile rested upon her impossibly beautiful face.
Then, she spoke.
"The news of the Blue Spider Lily," her voice carried a soft, melodic cadence. "You are the one who released it."
It was not a question.
Hikaru remained perfectly still, though a minute twitch at the corner of his brow betrayed his focus.
Muzan continued, her tone as casual as if discussing the weather. "It is fake. I know this."
"Whether that flower truly exists, what form it takes, and where it hides in this vast world—I understand these matters far better than anyone else. Five hundred years have passed. I have scoured the earth and found nothing. It will not suddenly fall from the sky."
"So, the moment that rumor reached my ears, I knew it was bait."
Muzan tilted her head, allowing a curtain of obsidian hair to slide smoothly off her shoulder.
"And since I knew the fabricated rumor was bait, I naturally would not bite it."
"What I desired to investigate was never the Blue Spider Lily itself, but the architect of this falsehood. Who released it, why they went to such lengths, and where they hid afterward."
Hikaru maintained his deadpan silence. His expression gave nothing away.
However, his left thumb shifted, pressing gently against the tsuba of Onikiri. A single inch of cold steel slid free from the scabbard, catching the pale moonlight. Simultaneously, his right hand settled comfortably over the hilt of Yomikiri.
Muzan's slitted crimson eyes swept over the twin blades. She displayed absolutely no emotion at the subtle threat.
Her gaze drifted back up, locking onto Hikaru.
His pale, undead visage, the glowing crimson of his eyes, and the menacing contour of his demon mask reflected perfectly in her predatory pupils.
"The clues were incredibly clear," Muzan mused. "The Demon Slayer Corps suddenly acquired information regarding my whereabouts. This is something those pathetic insects have never managed before. Only two sources could possibly provide such intelligence. The first would be a traitor among my own ranks. But my blood dictates absolute loyalty; I have no traitors. The second option is an outsider."
"While I have never pinpointed the exact location of the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters—those rats scurry deep underground—I know they operate within this province."
"And, quite coincidentally, an outsider arrived here merely half a month ago."
"That outsider would be you."
She paused, letting the silence stretch for a fraction of a second.
"The Oni Samurai who travels beside the priestess guarding the Shikon Jewel. The sole Lord of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons in the Kanto region. The Kishin, Kobe Hikaru."
"I have heard your name."
A faint, amused hum vibrated in her throat. "Kidomaru, the loyal dog serving Hagoromo Gitsune in the Kyoto underground, returned with a severed arm. Tsuchigumo lost a limb as well. Every time your name graces the air, that wretched fox becomes incredibly irritable."
"I admit, I was curious. What sort of ability does a mere demon among youkai possess to inflict such humiliating defeats upon Great Yokai who have lived for centuries? Therefore, I came to see for myself."
"At this very moment, the Demon Slayer Corps and that pathetic Ubuyashiki bloodline have dispatched all their Hashira toward Kyoto to ambush me. How many fools did they station there? Thirty? Fifty? Plus seven Hashira?"
She let out a soft, mocking sigh. "What a tremendous pity."
"What they cornered in Kyoto is merely a flesh puppet I left behind. A high-ranking demon saturated with a heavy dose of my own blood. It carries my scent. It wears my face. But it is not me."
"That current generation Ubuyashiki..."
A chilling, utterly devoid-of-warmth smile curved her lips. "His expression right now must be quite a wonderful sight to behold, wouldn't you agree?"
She had deduced everything perfectly.
Muzan took a single step forward.
Just one step.
The moment her foot touched the dirt, the very atmosphere warped. An oppressive, suffocating pressure crashed down upon the wilderness. It was the absolute dominance of an apex predator standing at the pinnacle of the biological chain, a walking natural disaster. The accumulated malice of five hundred years bled into the physical world through that single, silent movement.
Radiating outward from her position, the withered grass within a ten-pace radius instantly shriveled, carbonized into black ash, and shattered into dust.
The dry earth groaned and cracked under the invisible weight.
The air grew thick, making it difficult to draw breath.
Miles away, the warhorses being evacuated from Aya-gozen's camp reared up, neighing in sheer, instinctual terror.
Muzan's voice remained perfectly steady, cutting through the heavy pressure. "Hikaru, I am highly interested in you. And the object you protect... the Shikon Jewel. I feel an equal fascination for it."
The words slipped past her lips with a sickening, greedy softness.
"A crystalline jewel capable of causing a youkai's power to explode exponentially in a mere instant."
"Did you truly think I would not desire such a prize?"
Muzan's vertical pupils narrowed into razor-thin slits.
"If I butcher you here, peel away your skin, and wear it to approach that priestess... I will possess your appearance, your scent, and your voice."
"The Shikon Jewel will fall right into my hands."
"By then..."
She slowly dragged a pale tongue across the corner of her lips.
"Sunlight, fatal weaknesses... all of it will become a distant memory of the past."
Though the Shikon Jewel was not the legendary Blue Spider Lily she had sought for centuries, its rumored omnipotence offered a different path. If it truly possessed the power to elevate a demon's existence, it could easily eradicate her fear of the sun.
This was Kibutsuji Muzan's true objective.
This was the intoxicating prospect that had lured her out of the shadows of Kyoto.
Her words faded into the night wind.
The wilderness fell into a suffocating silence.
Then, a sound shattered the quiet.
Laughter.
It was a harsh, unrestrained sound echoing from beneath the demon mask that now fully covered Hikaru's face.
Hikaru threw his head back and laughed. He laughed boldly, wildly, the sound grating and piercing the heavy atmosphere. It was a complete departure from his usual deadpan, pragmatic demeanor. It sounded as though a feral, chaotic instinct suppressed deep within his undead bones had suddenly snapped its chains.
Muzan froze, a flicker of genuine confusion crossing her features.
"What exactly are you laughing at?"
Hikaru's laughter died down. The purple demonic patterns and the burning orange light within his Crimson Demon Eyes flared to life simultaneously, glowing fiercely in the dark.
He stared dead at Muzan. "I am laughing at you. I am laughing at your pathetic attempt to use cheap words to shake my resolve. I am laughing at your blinding, self-righteous arrogance."
His voice dropped into a low, mocking register. "And most of all, I am laughing because... you finally fell for it."
Muzan's facial expression remained completely frozen.
However, her forward momentum halted.
An ancient monstrosity that had survived for five centuries, a being that prided itself on being infinitely close to absolute perfection, stopped dead in her tracks.
Even if the hesitation lasted only a fraction of a second, she had stopped.
"Fallen for it?"
Her slitted pupils contracted. The innate arrogance etched into her features did not waver, but a dangerous, suppressed edge crept into her voice.
"What nonsense are you spouting?"
"I am saying that the rumor of the Blue Spider Lily was indeed bait."
Hikaru's tone returned to its usual deadpan, pragmatic coldness.
"But the trap attached to that bait was never meant for the Demon Slayer Corps to ambush you in Kyoto."
"I set the trap for myself."
Muzan did not move a single muscle.
But her footsteps remained firmly planted.
"The Demon Slayer Corps was nothing more than a loud diversion," Hikaru continued, his grip tightening slightly on his blades. "I fed them the intelligence. I knew they would believe it, mobilize their forces, and send every single Hashira straight to Kyoto. You calculated all of that perfectly."
"But what your arrogant mind failed to calculate was that I already knew you would never bite the initial hook."
"I knew you would never set foot in Kyoto."
"I knew you would track the source of the rumor and come straight to me."
Since Muzan had attempted to use psychological warfare to break his focus, Hikaru naturally returned the favor with ruthless precision.
And so, Muzan's vertical pupils twitched.
The microscopic contraction of her red irises was a minute detail, one that would have been entirely impossible for a normal warrior to perceive. But through the enhanced visual acuity of his Sharp Eye Transformation, Hikaru caught the subtle flinch.
Her voice retained its gentle melody, but a thin, razor-sharp layer of ice coated her words.
"So, you genuinely believe you can kill me all by yourself?"
"Alone? Naturally, I cannot kill you."
Hikaru admitted the fact with brutal frankness. Relying solely on the Breath of the Demon via Yomikiri, and lacking the complete physiological structure of the Shura Lungs, overpowering Muzan in a physical clash would not be an impossible task. However, he completely lacked the absolute, obvious means to permanently sever the Progenitor of Demons' absurd immortality.
This blunt honesty caused Muzan to startle.
As the absolute ruler of demonkind, Kibutsuji Muzan's true terror had never stemmed from pure, overwhelming combat power. His ultimate weapon was his unkillable body.
As long as an opponent lacked the means to permanently destroy him, they could never truly win.
He could run. He could hide. He possessed an infinite amount of time and endless opportunities to strike back.
In the grand scheme of eternity, the final victor would always be him.
This cruel reality applied to powerful Onmyoji and ancient youkai alike.
Yet here stood an Oni Samurai, staring down the Progenitor of Demons, casually admitting his inability to secure a kill. This behavior indicated either the absolute height of suicidal stupidity, or the presence of a devastating trump card.
Muzan did not believe for a second that the pragmatic swordsman standing before her—a warrior capable of butchering over thirty vile demons with a single, casual strike—was a fool.
Her instincts screamed at her.
"But I am not human," Hikaru stated calmly. "Nor am I alone."
The moment his words faded into the chill air.
On the southeastern horizon, a blinding light flared.
It was not the pale glow of the moon. It was not the chaotic flicker of a wildfire.
It was the sun.
More accurately, it was a scorching, blinding radiance erupting from a single human being, piercing through the darkness like the very first ray of dawn shattering the night sky.
A dense, golden mist of pure heat rose from the distant meadow. The temperature spiked violently, causing the air to warp and distort in shimmering waves.
A solitary figure walked out from the center of that blinding light.
Deep crimson eyes locked forward. Dark red hair shifted in the thermal updraft. A jagged, flame-like birthmark rested upon the left side of his forehead, glowing with an intense, terrifying vibrancy from within the golden heat mist.
Hanafuda earrings bearing the crest of the rising sun hung from his earlobes, swaying with a quiet, rhythmic grace with every step he took.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
He wore no heavy armor, dressed simply in a traditional haori. A single Nichirin Blade rested quietly at his waist.
Yet, the sheer, powerful aura radiating from his physical form caused the ambient temperature within a ten-pace radius to skyrocket.
This was Sun Breathing.
With every inhalation, his chest expanded to its absolute physical limit, drawing in vast quantities of oxygen. With every exhalation, blistering heat seeped outward from his very pores.
The golden mist enveloping his body was not the dark Yao Qi of a demon, nor the refined spiritual power of a shrine maiden, nor the ethereal power of faith. It was pure, unadulterated thermal energy generated by a human body operating at a state of absolute, terrifying perfection.
The heat was intense enough to literally scorch the oxygen from the air.
Muzan laid eyes upon Yoriichi.
Deep within her slitted red pupils, a deep, inexplicable unease suddenly bloomed, rapidly evolving into a state of hyper-alertness.
It was the primal, uncontrollable terror of a biological organism coming face-to-face with its ultimate natural predator.
She did not know the name Tsugikuni Yoriichi.
She had never crossed paths with this red-haired youth in all her five centuries of existence.
But every single cell in her immortal body was screaming at her. This man is dangerous.
To her specific biology, he was infinitely more lethal than the Oni Samurai standing nearby, and vastly more terrifying than the combined might of every single Hashira in the Demon Slayer Corps.
It was not a matter of raw physical output; her senses told her that the approaching youth's base strength did not eclipse Hikaru's demonic power.
It was the essence he carried. The pure, concentrated power of the sun itself.
"Who is this?"
Muzan demanded. Her voice had entirely lost its flat, arrogant melody, snapping like a cold, sharp whip.
Hikaru did not answer the question directly.
Instead, he spoke words that absolutely no one in this era, in this entire world, could possibly comprehend—save for himself.
"In the story I know, you will eventually be pushed to the absolute brink of death by a single man."
Muzan's brow furrowed deeply, her crimson eyes darting between the two warriors.
"That man," Hikaru continued, his voice steady and cold, "used a single swing of his blade to shatter all five of your brains and all seven of your hearts in a fraction of a second. You only managed to escape total annihilation by desperately detonating your own body into eighteen hundred pieces of scattered flesh. And even then, only a pathetic, tiny fraction of you managed to slither away and survive."
"You do not know his name, because before tonight, your paths had never crossed."
"Except now—"
"He is here."
Hikaru shifted his stance, stepping slightly to the side and clearing the line of sight entirely.
Yoriichi had already closed the distance to within fifty paces.
The golden heat mist steamed with increasing density around his form. The withered grass beneath his sandals toasted to a scorched, blackened yellow, every single footfall leaving a shallow, smoldering burn mark stamped into the earth.
His Nichirin Blade remained sheathed at his waist.
Not yet drawn.
But Hikaru knew the absolute truth of this world. The moment that blade left its scabbard...
He would become the divine instrument destined to sever the Progenitor of Demons.
This was the ultimate countermeasure Hikaru had carefully prepared against Kibutsuji Muzan. Well, one of them, at least.
By weaponizing the rumor of the Blue Spider Lily as a smokescreen and using his own life as the bait, he had successfully engineered this exact convergence. He had drawn out Tsugikuni Yoriichi—the singular existence perfectly designed by fate to eradicate the Demon King in the narrative he knew from his past life.
Muzan stared unblinkingly at Yoriichi, her slitted pupils contracting to the size of needlepoints.
Despite the screaming instincts of her flesh, her arrogant mind still refused to accept reality. She simply could not fathom that a mere mortal human and an Oni Samurai who hadn't even reached the world of a Great Yokai could actually end her life.
After all...
She had slaughtered exorcists, legendary Onmyoji, peerless swordmasters, and blessed shrine maidens for centuries. Her list of vanquished foes was endless.
Even if a rare few had occasionally brushed against her weaknesses, and even though the Demon Slayer Corps had forged Nichirin Blades carrying the sun's essence decades prior, none had ever truly threatened her absolute immortality.
She was the Demon King.
The eternal, unkillable Progenitor.
Yet, the bitter taste of reality lingered on her tongue. She had been thoroughly outmaneuvered.
The sensation made her skin crawl with extreme discomfort.
From the initial fabrication of the Blue Spider Lily rumor, to the Demon Slayer Corps blindly marching their entire elite force toward Kyoto, down to her tracking the breadcrumbs straight to Hikaru's location.
Throughout the entire grand design, she had smugly believed herself to be the apex hunter toying with her food.
In truth, she had been the prey walking willingly into a slaughterhouse.
Muzan's blood boiled.
Pure, unadulterated rage at being manipulated consumed her mind.
"You truly intend to use this pathetic human who crawled out of nowhere—"
Her tone shifted from cold indifference to a dark, murderous rumble. "—to kill me?"
This time, Hikaru did not bother to respond. He didn't need to.
In that exact instant.
Behind him, Yoriichi, having closed the gap to a mere thirty paces, finally spoke.
His voice was not loud, yet it drifted through the distorted, superheated air with crystal clarity.
He was not speaking to Hikaru. His words were aimed directly at the ancient abomination standing before them.
As he spoke, the thermal waves surged violently outward, as if a miniature sun had truly descended upon the earth.
The Sun Breathing swordsman halted his advance. His expression remained placid, completely unsurprised by the monstrous entity before him.
Naturally, he was prepared.
Before Hikaru had departed from the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters, he had laid out the entire strategy. Yoriichi was one of only two individuals in the world who knew Hikaru was acting as live bait.
He knew exactly what he was facing: the immortal Demon King who had plagued the Demon Slayer Corps' bloodstained records for five hundred years.
Looking at the creature responsible for centuries of endless suffering, Yoriichi had countless questions.
He wanted to ask about her twisted purpose in creating demons. He wanted to understand her vile intent to warp humanity, and the dark truth behind her endless desecration of human will.
Yet, as he looked upon the Progenitor of Demons, all those complex questions burned away into ash.
In the end, only a single sentence remained.
A single sentence, and the slow, deliberate draw of his blade.
"What do you take life for?"
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