Chapter 202: Wherever There Is a Demon, Strike There
The night hung heavy over the vast wilderness, the hours slipping silently toward the third watch. Time itself felt completely frozen.
No wind stirred the desolate plains. The moon had vanished behind a thick veil of clouds.
Within Hikaru's mind, a sprawling map of the island nation ignited. From Kanto to Kinai, stretching across Hokuriku down to Kyushu. A dense, suffocating constellation of stars flared to life in his perception, marking every twisted soul hiding in the dark.
Muzan stared up at the towering, six-meter Asura projection looming in the center of the wasteland. The Progenitor of Demons knew the undead samurai was not bluffing.
He felt it. Through the twisted blood tethering him to every demon he had ever created, Muzan sensed the crushing weight of the Earth Barrier. The suppression shrouded every single piece of flesh bearing his signature.
His primal desire for survival violently intensified. A creature only truly seeks survival when the icy breath of death brushes against its neck.
The Demon King's vertical pupils constricted into thin slits. Every hair on his pale body stood on end. Muzan ground his teeth together, forcing the sheer terror threatening to consume him down into the depths of his stomach, replacing it with burning rage.
He forced his breathing to steady.
Kibutsuji Muzan had survived for five hundred years. He had never relied on brute force to endure. He lived through suffocating caution, endless suspicion, and always preparing a dozen backup plans.
"So what?" Muzan spoke, his voice regaining its chilling composure. "You have indeed marked me. You have seen all of my flesh scattered across this land."
He took a slow step forward. "But you stand here in Musashi Province, and your shrine maiden remains there as well. You can suppress my kind from afar, but can you execute every demon in this world from thousands of miles away? From this Kanto region to the Chubu, to the Capital, and all the way to Shikoku and Kyushu?"
He had a point.
Hikaru possessed the Soul-Chasing Archer Transformation. Once he locked onto a soul, his attack would never miss. But a guaranteed hit did not guarantee death. Separated by such a colossal distance, the kinetic force of any projectile would degrade to practically nothing by the time it crossed the country.
Yet, as the words left his mouth, Muzan suddenly froze.
The Demon King's vertical pupils snapped wide open. A forgotten variable crashed into his calculating mind.
The Demon Slayer Corps.
And the Hashira.
Seven Hashira had been dispatched toward Kyoto. Previously, Muzan assumed the Demon Slayer Corps had swallowed his bait. He believed the sickly Ubuyashiki was a foolish pawn chasing false information.
But what if they had not been fooled?
What if those Hashira marching into Kyoto was the true killing stroke of this entire operation?
"It seems you have finally realized it."
Hikaru's voice rumbled from the Bone-Thunder Giant Body of the Asura Transformation, echoing across the barren earth. "The members of the Demon Slayer Corps are currently in the Kyoto area. The exact place you hid the bulk of your forces and your spare flesh."
His demonic eyes stared down at Muzan through the gaps in his armored face. His tone remained entirely indifferent, devoid of any gloating.
"All the flesh you left behind, all the demons you created, have been marked by me. Their locations are completely exposed."
Hikaru raised a massive hand. "And the Demon Slayer Corps carry Nichirin Blades. They have mastered Breathing Styles. Breathing Styles, combined with steel forged to absorb sunlight... that is more than enough."
Muzan's expression shattered.
The cold, arrogant facade melted away, leaving behind absolute blankness.
"In my plan, those Hashira in Kyoto were never looking for you in the first place," Hikaru stated flatly. "They are there to clear the field."
Muzan did not speak.
He stood completely still, his feet rooted to the earth by the crushing pressure of the Earth Barrier. Dozens of his hidden clones across the country fell into a synchronized, deathly silence.
It was a silence far more deafening than any roar of rage. It was the quiet realization of a five-hundred-year-old monster understanding, for the very first time, that he was going to die.
At that exact moment, hundreds of miles away.
Inside the main hall of the Ubuyashiki Estate at the Demon Slayer Corps Headquarters.
Ubuyashiki Rikiya stood in the center of the room, his frail left hand gripping the shoulder of a maid beside him. His sickly body shuddered violently.
He could not see the night sky.
But he felt the shift in the world.
The prophetic instincts carved into the Ubuyashiki bloodline roared to life. A monumental power pierced through the heavens from the southeast, forming a suppression net born from the fusion of Hikaru and Kikyo.
Beneath that overwhelming power lay another, far more intimate sensation.
The curse of blood.
The Ubuyashiki family shared the same cursed bloodline as Kibutsuji Muzan. It was a plague that doomed their generations to short, agonizing lives, but it also granted them a faint, instinctual connection to the Demon King and his spawn.
Normally, this connection was too vague to be of any tactical use.
But tonight, the moment the Earth Barrier slammed down upon the country, forcing every hidden demon to reveal their true forms, that bloodline sensation magnified a hundredfold.
Rikiya saw them.
He saw the directions. He felt where the demons thrashed against their invisible chains, where the struggles were the most violent, and where the presence of evil was already beginning to fade. The information flooded his fragile mind.
"They are exposed." Rikiya's voice trembled. A tear slipped from his clouded eye. "All the demons have been exposed."
The maid beside him flinched at his sudden surge of emotion.
Rikiya released her shoulder. An expression of deep, indescribable relief washed over the half of his face ruined by purple corruption.
Five hundred years of suffering.
"Send the order." Rikiya's voice steadied, carrying a gentle, unwavering authority. He spoke the words his ancestors had bled and died hoping to one day say. "To all members of the Demon Slayer Corps."
Outside the estate, the night erupted into motion. Hundreds of Kasugai Crows took flight simultaneously. Pitch-black wings blotted out the stars, their golden eyes gleaming in the dark.
"Tell them," Rikiya's voice echoed through the empty halls of the mansion. "The demons have nowhere left to hide. Open your eyes. Find them. Slay them. Slay every single demon in this world!"
The piercing cries of the Kasugai Crows shattered the quiet night as they scattered to the four winds.
But in truth, the birds were far too slow. Hikaru's soul-lock had already done the work for them.
Demon Slayer Corps swordsmen across the entire country, whether they were patrolling, resting, or traveling between towns, did not need a crow to tell them where the enemy was.
They could see it with their own eyes.
All across the dark nation, demons that had spent decades hiding in the shadows were suddenly dragged into the light. They burst from underground cellars, collapsed ruins, and deep caves, their bodies enveloped in hissing white smoke. They howled in agony, pinned to the earth like insects, serving as glowing beacons in the dead of night.
No passing swordsman carrying a Nichirin Blade could possibly miss them.
And none of them would show mercy.
Rikiya stood alone in the quiet main hall. Moonlight filtered through the wooden window lattices, casting pale shadows across his plain white Kariginu.
He closed his clouded eyes.
Five hundred years. It was finally coming to an end.
Deep within the stone passages on the outskirts of Kyoto's underground labyrinth.
The Seven Hashira had been lying in wait for days. Their original objective had been to ambush Muzan after luring him out with false intelligence, only to discover a mere double had arrived in his place.
They had been preparing to retreat.
Then, the stone beneath their boots ignited.
A soft, radiant light bled upward from the deep soil, crawling along the jagged rock walls and illuminating the suffocating underground corridor until it was as bright as noon.
The towering, bald muscular man looked down at his feet. "This is..."
Before he could finish his thought, a chorus of guttural shrieks echoed from the darkness ahead.
It was not just one voice. It was a legion.
Every single demon Muzan had buried beneath Kyoto, his vast army of flesh-and-blood backups and disposable pawns, were violently forced out of the shadows by the rising light.
Their feet fused to the glowing stone. Their gray skin blistered and released thick plumes of white smoke. Their regenerative abilities crashed to a halt. They thrashed and screamed, completely incapable of breaking free from the invisible weight crushing them.
They looked like overturned beetles, limbs flailing uselessly in the air.
The bald muscular man stared at the writhing mass of monsters. He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it shut.
He drew his weapon.
The Seven Hashira moved as one.
Steel sang as Nichirin Blades cleared their scabbards. Seven distinct colors flared to life within the damp underground ruins. They advanced on the paralyzed demons with lethal intent.
The bald muscular man charged at the vanguard. His heavy Nichirin Blade swept through the air, driven by the raw, overbearing force of Stone Breathing. The brutal strike cleaved straight through three paralyzed demons at the waist.
The severed flesh charred instantly, blackening as the sunlight-infused steel burned away their regenerative cells. They crumbled to ash before they could even scream.
A girl with braided hair followed in his wake. Her pale pink blade traced a brilliant arc through the dim corridor, dancing like a fluttering butterfly. Her strikes were surgically precise, severing cervical spines without spilling a single drop of blood.
The remaining five Hashira branched off, plunging deep into the sprawling, intertwined passages beneath the ancient capital.
This was not just a hideout. It was an entire city suspended upside down in the earth, a labyrinth designed to house an army. Under normal circumstances, this stronghold would have been defended by thousands of bloodthirsty monsters shielded by Hagoromo Gitsune's Yao Qi.
But tonight, the Earth Barrier stripped away all defenses.
The demons were pinned to the glowing floor, fangs bared, howling at the ceiling, utterly incapable of taking a single step.
Wherever the Nichirin Blades flashed, ash rained down.
The sheer volume of demons buried beneath Kyoto defied logic. Muzan had hidden a terrifying amount of his power here. From the deepest corridors to the hidden side chambers, gray-white figures choked every inch of the ruins.
Yet, stripped of their regeneration and mobility, creatures that would normally require a Hashira and a squad of lower-ranked slayers to defeat were effortlessly decapitated by a single strike.
The Seven Hashira carved a path of absolute destruction back and forth through the underground city.
In less than half an hour, the screaming stopped. Only drifting ash remained.
The slaughter echoed across the entire country.
On a winding mountain path in Iyo Province, a young female swordsman traveling under the cover of darkness stopped dead in her tracks.
The dirt beneath her sandals flared with light. A soft glow seeped from the soil, illuminating a dense patch of bushes just off the road. Inside the thicket, a demon lay flattened against the dirt, its limbs pinned by the light, its skin sizzling.
The monster locked eyes with the young swordsman. Its clouded eyes swam with absolute terror. It feared the burning light beneath it, but it feared the drawn steel in the girl's hands even more.
The swordsman hesitated for two seconds, then swung her blade.
Steel met flesh. Ash scattered into the wind.
In a ruined, abandoned shrine in Mutsu Province, three demons were dragged out of their cellar by the blinding light. They huddled in the center of the overgrown courtyard, shoving against one another in a desperate, futile attempt to flee.
Two passing Demon Slayer Corps members shared a silent look, drew their swords, and stepped into the courtyard.
Deep in the treacherous mountains of Kyushu, an ancient demon that had successfully evaded the Corps for over a decade was ripped from its burrow by the glowing earth. It was decapitated by a local patrol before it could even process what was happening.
From the freezing north to the humid south, from the eastern coasts to the western mountains.
Even the perimeter of the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters became a hunting ground.
Kakushi Butterfly, who had just awoken from a brief rest, did not even have time to mourn the fact that she had missed saying goodbye to Hikaru before the overwhelming stench of burning demon flesh drew her outside.
Dozens of reserve swordsmen poured out of the headquarters, weapons drawn.
Distance no longer mattered.
Every demon marked, suppressed, and exposed by the Earth Barrier was like a maggot writhing in the sun after a damp rock had been kicked away.
There was nowhere left to run. They were exterminated one by one.
Back in the desolate wilderness of Kozuke Province.
Muzan felt every single death.
The sensation was agonizingly clear, like his own fingers being snapped backward one by one. Every demon slain, every backup vessel burned to ash, vanished from his mind, leaving behind a cold, hollow void.
The severing of his connections was most violent in the direction of Kyoto.
The efficiency of the Seven Hashira was terrifying. The thousands of demons he had carefully hidden beneath the capital were being erased at a rate of several per breath.
The rest of the country followed suit. The Demon Slayer Corps was scattered, but the Earth Barrier provided every single swordsman with a glowing, obvious map straight to their prey.
His forces were vanishing.
They were disappearing at a speed he could track with sickening clarity.
For the first time in five hundred years, true, unadulterated fear clawed its way up from the darkest depths of Kibutsuji Muzan's soul.
[Inorin's Note:
Enjoying the story? Dropping a quick review, comment, or Power Stone means the world to me and keeps these daily updates flowing!
Want to read 50 chapters ahead or just want to help keep a shameless translator alive? (My livelihood actually depends on this, haha 😭). You can support me directly here:
(P.S. Just remove the brackets and replace the [.] with a regular dot . to use the links!)
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters): patreon[.]com/InorinTL
☕ Ko-fi (Support / Sponsor): ko-fi[.]com/InorinTL
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]