"Steel Cannon!"
Mousse's voice was raspy, trembling with a mix of shock and horror. He, too, had failed to perceive exactly what had happened in that split second.
Clearly, the man had been in a vulnerable position, seemingly leaning down to check the courtesan's corpse. Steel Cannon had seized that opening perfectly, and numerically, his attributes should have held the advantage. So why was Steel Cannon decapitated in an instant?
Even more bizarrely, Mousse had caught a fleeting glimpse of the man's blade. It didn't look like a Nichirin Sword forged from Scarlet Crimson ore. Yet, why did Steel Cannon remain motionless after losing his head?
That was the most unsettling part. Steel Cannon's presence had vanished—Mousse could see through the Team Channel that he was officially dead—but as a demon, his body wasn't disintegrating. This defied every rule of being slain by a Nichirin Sword.
Steel Cannon's shell remained, but his soul... it felt as if it had been cleanly severed.
"Stop watching and move! Now! This isn't just some ordinary Hashira!"
Mousse screamed. They had entered Demon Slayer as a pre-made team of six. They had meticulously planned to ambush high-tier Explorers and Hashira here in Yoshiwara, but they never expected to run into such an anomalous monster right out of the gate.
"Are you... a newly appointed Hashira?!"
Hinatsuru had only just recovered from her stupor. She thought she was facing a certain death, only for the man beside her to execute a "New Twelve Kizuki" in a single exchange.
Lu Li didn't answer her. "Go contact your partners and evacuate the civilians. Yoshiwara is about to become a battlefield."
In a way, the enemy was right. He wasn't an ordinary Hashira—primarily because he wasn't a Hashira at all.
CRASH—! CRASH—!
Accompanied by the sound of splintering floorboards and flying debris, dozens of patterned silk sashes dropped from the ceiling, piercing toward Lu Li like razor-sharp blades. This was the Blood Demon Art of Upper Rank Six, Daki.
Facing the storm of lethal fabric, Lu Li moved with minimal, precise shifts. The wind pressure whipped the edges of his Pure Black Nightmare coat, making him look like a dancing owl against the backdrop of the artificial twilight.
"Disturbing a girl's dreams so early in the morning... though, looking closely, you are quite a handsome man..."
The ceiling shattered completely, and a lazy, arrogant voice drifted down from above.
Bathed in the dim indoor light, a woman with hair as white as frost looked down at Lu Li with disdain. She wore a delicate, flowing kimono embroidered with elegant landscapes. Her skin was as pale as curdled milk, contrasting sharply with her hair, and her bright lime-green eyes bore the characters for 'Upper Rank' and 'Six'.
She arched a slender eyebrow, showing both irritation at the interruption and contempt for the slayer below. "...I wonder how you'll taste~"
Standing nearby, Mousse wanted to curse the woman out. Do you have any idea how much danger you're in? Without your brother, you're nothing! You really think you're stronger than us?!
Didn't you see Steel Cannon get one-shotted? Call your brother out already!
Hinatsuru finally realized she couldn't intervene in a fight of this caliber. She immediately bolted out of the Kyogokuya, intent on finding her two sisters to evacuate the citizens of Yoshiwara.
As for the patrons and courtesans still inside the building... it was a cruel reality, but she knew she couldn't save everyone with her strength alone. Once Yoshiwara became a war zone between Upper Moons and a Hashira, everyone was in peril. She could only try to save the majority.
As a Demon Slayer, she wanted to protect every life, but she wasn't as naive as the younger recruits. She now had two priorities: evacuate as many people as possible and get a message out to the Corps so they could send reinforcements.
Aside from the First Generation of slayers, the Corps had no record of successfully killing an Upper Moon in centuries. This meant an Upper Moon was not something a lone Hashira could handle.
She had never seen this man before, so she assumed he was a recently promoted powerhouse. Forcing him to face such odds alone seemed like a death sentence.
"I truly don't understand that person's thoughts. These Lower Moons are utterly useless, dying in a single hit," Warabihime—the Upper Rank Six, Daki—sneered. She felt no pity for Steel Cannon; in fact, she detested these outsiders intruding on her territory.
If her brother hadn't warned her that since Muzan had sanctioned the "New Twelve Kizuki," they shouldn't kill each other, she would have bound these demons in her sashes and left them to burn in the sun long ago.
She licked her lips. "He's just another Hashira. I've already eaten seven of them."
"Use your full power! This guy is dangerous!"
Mousse yelled again, desperately signaling Daki to summon Gyutaro. He cursed the brainless woman a thousand times over in his head. If we weren't here with our sun-shading items, you'd be ash by now!
"It seems you lot have it quite rough," Lu Li said with a grin. He didn't mind a bit of small talk; it gave Hinatsuru and her sisters more time to clear the area.
The only risk was that the pause also allowed the enemy team to converge.
Lu Li's raid was unsanctioned and unannounced. It wasn't that he was reckless, but he had absolute confidence in his strength—and there was no way to explain his meta-knowledge to the Corps. Furthermore, this was a blitz mission; the longer it took to start, the more variables would arise.
As for why he didn't evacuate the area secretly first? It was impractical. Neither the wealthy patrons nor the courtesans would believe a stranger's warning. The Demon Slayer Corps had zero government recognition or public credibility. People generally don't believe in a crisis until they see the coffin being lowered.
All he could do was finish the demons as quickly as possible once the fighting started to minimize collateral damage.
"To be pitied by an enemy... it really makes us look incompetent," a voice called out from behind.
Across the street, a figure stood on a rooftop. Dressed in white and holding a longsword, the man looked down. "Being surrounded and staying this calm... Steel Cannon didn't die for nothing."
In Lu Li's perception, besides Daki, five others had now encircled the Kyogokuya. From Hinatsuru's perspective, it truly looked like a desperate, inescapable trap.
Lu Li closed his eyes. Using the new sensing techniques he'd refined through his Reiryoku (Spiritual Pressure) training, he mapped out the life signatures in the building.
He took a deep breath, dropped his center of gravity into a low stance, and gripped the hilt of Qiu Mo.
"Kill him! Together!"
Mousse screamed. At his signal, the five Explorers lunged simultaneously.
The swordsman in white dropped from across the street, targeting Lu Li's back. A sniper at a distant high point locked onto his head. Mousse gripped a poisoned dagger, waiting for an opening.
Bursting through the left wall of the Kyogokuya, the team's main tank, Armor Plate, charged forward with a massive tower shield, acting like a runaway juggernaut.
The right wall exploded as well, blasted by a crimson Blood Demon Art released by Mole, the team's mage.
Simultaneously, Daki's sashes rained down from above like a lethal net.
For one heartbeat, time seemed to freeze. Attacks converged from every direction, forming a deadly, concentric circle around Lu Li.
A massive volume of high-pressure steam erupted from Lu Li's mouth with a whistle like a steam engine. Along with it, a blinding, violent golden electricity wreathed his entire body.
In the next microsecond, Lu Li's form vanished in a flash of lightning.
The legendary blade left its scabbard! Qiu Mo was unleashed!
The pitch-black blade drew a golden arc of light, resembling a bolt of divine lightning striking from the heavens. The strike was so violent it sheared through the architecture, literally cleaving the entire Kyogokuya in half!
When Lu Li's form solidified, he was already high in the air above the building. Beneath the artificial moon, his silhouette stood out against the sky as a rain of demonic blood fell behind him.
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