The remaining shinobi hesitated. Fear had replaced the confidence they'd shown when the numbers were fifteen to three.
One of them took a step back. "What is that thing?"
Muzan answered by moving forward.
The first man swung his katana at Muzan's neck. Muzan caught the blade barehanded, let it cut to bone, then tore it from the man's grip and drove it through his chest. A kunai stabbed into Muzan's back from a second attacker. He grabbed the wrist behind it, pulled the man overhead, and put him into the ground. His foot came down on the man's skull.
CRACK!
An explosive tag slapped onto Muzan's chest. He looked down at it.
BOOM!
The blast engulfed him. When the smoke cleared he stood in the same place, charred black from the collar down. The burned skin split and peeled and fresh flesh pushed through underneath. Within seconds the damage was gone.
No one moved.
Muzan's arms began to change. Red tissue erupted from his forearms, muscle fiber visible beneath the surface, covered in jagged spines. His fingers fused and curved and hardened into blades. The transformation ran from his hands to his elbows in seconds and kept going, flesh extending outward into whips three meters long lined with razor edges.
Behind him, Amanai's voice came out barely above a breath. "Muzan... How?"
One shinobi turned and ran. Muzan's right whip crossed the distance and wrapped around him. The spines punched through armor. Muzan pulled back and the man came apart.
The rest broke in every direction.
It didn't help them. The whips moved faster than any technique in the clearing and the fight ended in seconds. When it was done, six bodies lay scattered across scorched ground and only Sasuke and Kaze remained standing.
Muzan turned to face them with blood running down both whips and dripping from the bladed tips.
Sasuke gripped his staff in both hands. His casual confidence was gone. He watched Muzan the way a man watches the ground before he steps. "Kaze. We can't hold back."
Kaze raised his war fan and the seals along its surface flared bright. "Agreed."
Sasuke inhaled until his chest expanded visibly. "Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"
A dragon's head of white flame roared across the clearing twenty feet wide. Trees exploded from the heat before the fire reached them.
Kaze swung the fan behind it. "Wind Style: Vacuum Serial Waves!"
The compressed air fed the fire and the two techniques merged into a wall of white flame thirty feet across that consumed everything in its path.
Muzan crossed his whips and spun them but the technique was too wide. The fire broke through and took him completely.
When it cleared fifteen seconds later, the ground around him had turned to glass. Smoke rose from his skin. He was whole.
Sasuke's jaw tightened. He said nothing and charged.
They met in the center of the clearing. Sasuke was fast and experienced and used his staff's reach to control distance while Kaze sent cutting wind from the side to force constant repositioning. Muzan took damage and healed through it and kept pressing forward. A vacuum blade opened his chest wide enough to expose what was underneath before the flesh closed over it.
Kaze's eyes moved to the wound before it sealed. He watched without speaking and kept fighting.
Sasuke's staff caught Muzan's knee and buckled it. Muzan went down on one leg and came back up as the joint reset. His right whip swept at Sasuke's feet. Sasuke jumped and formed seals mid-air.
"Fire Style: Flame Bullet!"
The stream of fire hit Muzan's chest and burned through to the ribs before he redirected it with his left whip. His chest was open for two full seconds before the flesh closed.
Kaze looked again. His eyes stayed on the wound longer this time.
Sasuke landed and drove forward with a combination that cracked two ribs and split Muzan's shoulder open. Muzan grabbed the staff and yanked. Sasuke released it rather than be pulled in and drew a kunai instead.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Smoke exploded beside Sasuke. When it cleared, a seven-foot monkey with white fur stood in the clearing wearing mesh armor and a sleeveless kimono. Its eyes found Muzan immediately and stayed there.
"Menma," Sasuke said. "Help me end this."
The monkey looked at Muzan's whips, at the wounds closing across his torso, at the glass ground around his feet. Its expression was serious. "I see the problem."
Menma moved in from the right while Sasuke came from the left. They were coordinated and their timing forced Muzan to split his attention. Menma took the spine damage from the whips without slowing down and used the pain to close distance. Its strikes were precise and it targeted the same spots repeatedly, chest and ribs, always the chest.
A combination from both sides landed simultaneously. Menma's fist caved in Muzan's ribs from the right. Sasuke's staff hit his chest from the left. The two impacts met in the middle and Muzan's sternum cracked and his chest opened completely for a long moment before the regeneration began its work.
Kaze saw it clearly this time. He kept his expression flat and said nothing and watched the flesh close over what was inside.
The three of them kept the pressure constant and the fight continued for another minute with Muzan healing through every exchange. His regeneration was slowing as his reserves depleted. The hunger had become a physical ache.
Then Kaze stepped back from the perimeter and lowered his fan slightly. Sasuke caught the movement and broke away from the exchange. Menma followed.
The three of them stood together with Muzan twenty feet away.
Kaze spoke quietly to Sasuke without taking his eyes off Muzan. "Every time his chest opens I see the same thing. Multiple points pulsing independently. Not one heart. Seven of them, distributed across the torso."
Sasuke was still breathing hard. He processed this for one second. "Could it be the reason behind his unnatural regeneration? If so, we have to take all seven at once."
Muzan heard every word.
Menma cracked its knuckles slowly and looked at Muzan with something close to respect. "So, he is not a human after all."
"There's no way he is one," Kaze said. He raised his fan and the seals began to glow again.