"What is that? What kind of breathing is that?"
The strange, new energy flowing from Shinichi's blade made Iguro Obanai and Uzui Tengen, who were about to charge in, freeze in their tracks.
Iguro, in particular, felt a deep, profound warmth from the soft white light—a feeling entirely alien to a battlefield.
Tengen, for his part, was having a crisis of faith.
"Such a pure, soft white… it's not flamboyant at all… but why does it feel like the most shockingly beautiful thing I've ever seen?"
"Gah!"
A large mouthful of dark demonic blood erupted from Maito's mouth.
Inside his body, his very cells were in revolt.
The energy from the "Breath of Life" was flowing through him.
It was an energy of pure vitality, yet the moment it touched his demonic cells, they convulsed and collapsed as if a mouse had come face-to-face with a cat.
His once-powerful demonic aura plummeted.
In this state, not even a Hashira was needed to kill him; an ordinary slayer could have taken his head.
Opposite him, Shinichi stood, the soft white halo still flowing around his Nichirin blade.
He looked at the weakly breathing Maito with a complicated expression.
He didn't fully understand it, but he had a faint sense of the truth.
Maito's crazed, suicidal attack… its true purpose was to use the ultimate expression of "death" and "destruction" to force him to comprehend the final mystery of the Breath of the Forest—the form that transcends the "forest" and points directly to the origin of all things.
The Breath of Life.
As if to confirm it, Maito raised his head with great effort.
A look of calm relief flashed in his golden eyes, as if to say: My mission is complete.
"I'm sorry," Shinichi said, his own resolve hardening in an instant.
"No matter what your purpose was… tonight, you must die." He stomped, his body blurring into an afterimage as he shot forward, his white blade slashing straight for Maito's neck.
He had no time for hesitation.
His comrades were locked in desperate battles, Tanjiro was facing Muzan himself, and every second was precious.
But someone had been waiting for this moment.
"Blood Demon Art: Veiling Gauze Mist!"
A dark gray mist instantly enveloped the area, completely obscuring everyone's vision.
Shinichi's unstoppable charge was thrown off for a split second, his blade slicing through empty air and carving a deep gouge in the earth where Maito had just been kneeling.
"Lee?!" Shinichi snarled into the mist.
"Lee! What are you doing?!" Maito's weak roar came from within the fog.
"I have completed my mission! Why won't you let me die in peace?!"
But Lee, the figure hidden within a gray cloak, ignored him.
In order to save Maito, she had created a fatal opening for herself.
"Blood Demon Art, Scorpion Dance: Thousand Blades!"
A long blade, glowing with a dangerous gray light, shot out like a hidden scorpion's stinger.
It found its mark with perfect precision, piercing the chest of a demon.
But the demon was not Shinobu—it was Lee herself.
Shinobu's blade had been faster, striking her from behind even as she unleashed her own technique.
A potent liquid, mixed with concentrated wisteria and cell-aging toxins, flooded Lee's body.
With a choked gasp, she lost her balance and crashed to the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust.
"Cough, cough… the student surpasses the master, it seems…" Lee wheezed, looking at the black blood she was vomiting.
She shook his head with a strange, helpless resignation.
Shinobu's butterfly haori settled silently beside hrt.
Her face was grim, her eyes solemn.
Lee's strength was formidable.
Even with her demonic transformation and the powerful toxins she and Lady Tamayo had developed, it had been a desperate stalemate.
She had only won because he had exposed herself to save Maito.
"Mind your own business!" Maito was still yelling from the mist, but Lee was in no mood to listen.
Shinichi, Shinobu, Iguro, and Tengen were now converging on them.
Against four Hashira, even at their full strength, they would have stood no chance.
Now, it was hopeless.
"Stop your whining," Lee rasped at Maito. "If you truly wanted to die, you wouldn't have dodged when Shunichi swung at your head all those years ago! You are, and always have been, a coward who fears death. That's why you became a demon. Now, live with your choice!"
Lee's barrage of curses stunned Maito into silence.
Before he could react, Lee grabbed his shoulders, and the gray mist swirled around them, swallowing them both before vanishing completely.
....
At that same moment, across the entire battlefield, the fighting had reached a fever pitch.
The upper half of Kokushibo's formal samurai robe had been shredded, revealing a muscular torso.
The six scarlet eyes on his face now held a rare, deep anger.
His fleshy blade twisted and changed, crescent-shaped energy slashes sweeping the field.
To counter him, Sanemi Shinazugawa was a blur of motion as a hurricane of emerald-green wind blades clashing with the dark red crescents.
And at the center of that storm, Gyomei Himejima stood like a mountain, his roaring flail and axe smashing anything—demon or energy slash—that came near.
...
The battle against Douma was just as perilous.
His ice-based Blood Demon Art seemed to naturally counter their breathing techniques.
Even with the combined force of the Tokito brothers, Kanae Kocho, and Kanroji Mitsuri, they were only barely holding their own; Douma, for his part, still looked relaxed.
...
The fusion of water and fire was perfect.
Sabito's and Giyu's water breathing flowed seamlessly around Kyojuro Rengoku's oppressive flames.
Yet against the three of them, Akaza did not retreat.
He advanced, his martial arts seeming to evolve in the heat of battle, as if he were about to touch the legendary supreme realm.
Amidst all this chaos, only one spot on the battlefield drew the most attention—
"MUZAN!!"
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