Demon Slayer: Tanjuro Kamado returns from Sekiro

Chapter 46 - The 'Gate' to the Other Shore

……

"Mixiang...!"

Zhu Shi suddenly opened her eyes, she subconsciously stretched out her hand upwards, trying to grab something, but it was in vain.

But when the blurred field of vision gradually focused, the sea of ​​wisteria flowers that had been dreamlike just now had disappeared.

Instead, it was the ceiling of her own mansion, which she was all too familiar with.

She was slightly dazed, her outstretched hand froze in mid-air, her slender eyelashes trembling slightly.

"Master Zhushi!" Yushiro who was sitting next to him heard Zhushi's voice, he quickly raised his head, and looked at Zhushi worriedly:
"Are you okay! Just now..." Yushiro's voice paused for a moment, and he stared at Zhu Shi's face in a daze.

As if sensing Yushiro's gaze, Zhu Shi slowly turned his head.

She slowly raised her hand and touched her face.

When you touch it, it is a cold touch.

Tears that had long since lost their temperature were silently flowing down his face.

Zhu Shi looked at the tears stained on her fingers, she felt a little lost, and slowly covered the left half of her face with her hands, feeling the tears pouring out of her eyes.

After a long while in a trance.

creak...

Zhu Shi slowly supported the side of the bed, trying to sit up.

Seeing this, Yushiro quickly came back to his senses. He leaned over and helped Zhu Shi to sit up:

"…Please be careful with it."

"Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?"

Hearing this, after opening her eyes, Zhu Shi, who had been somewhat melancholy, blinked slowly, she raised her head, as if she had recovered, she shook her head.

Then, Yushirou's purple vertical pupils looked at the table where Zhu Shi was working just now, with a solemn expression:
"Just now, I checked your workbench carefully."

"I found that that guy's blood is slowly evaporating in the air."

Yushiro looked at Jushi:
"I'm afraid, you accidentally inhaled that guy's blood, which led to a coma!"

——Is it because of the blue Bana flower?
As he said that, Yushiro squinted his eyes, with some vigilance in his eyes.

Zhu Shi listened quietly to Yushiro.

She was thoughtful.

"... Just now." Zhu Shi's gaze slowly focused on his workbench, and the blood drop on the microscope had been collected by Yushiro.

"I saw my daughter."

Zhu Shi lowered her misty lavender eyes, and she said slowly with nostalgia in her tone:

"And my husband."

heard.

Yushiro, who was thinking about it, raised his head in a daze.

Zhu Shi lowered her head, her hands intertwined:
"...Definitely not a dream."

After careful consideration.

Zhu Shi concluded that her gaze gradually became firmer:

"That place is the other shore."

After seeing his daughter, Zhu Shi actually didn't wake up immediately.

Her "body" continued to sink.

Until——she fell to a place that looked rather dim compared to the sea of ​​wisteria flowers just now.

Unlike the blurry figures in the sea of ​​wisteria flowers, the figures here are all very distorted.

And there, without exception.

——All of them are evil ghosts with hideous faces and a cut mark on their necks.

When those ugly ghosts turned around and looked at her with puzzled expressions.

Zhu Shi suddenly woke up.

— This is hell.

She, who once ate people, is here to atone for her sins.

This is probably also the reason why she couldn't stay by her daughter's side for a long time and the shackles on her body existed.

"It's the one who escaped."

"Ah, she's finally dead."

"Did Master Wu Mi kill her?"

"There is no mark on the neck, it should be."

Conversations like this go on and on in hell.

after that…

She seemed to have opened her eyes directly and escaped from hell.

Thinking, Zhu Shi raised his head and looked at the four needles filled with Tanjuro's blood on his desk.

live on...

She remembered the last sentence her daughter said in her mind.

She, who once regretted killing her family and slaughtering innocent people, felt extremely heavy in her heart.

She should have died in the end.

The tragedy of the death of family members kept reappearing in front of them.

"Wu Mi...!" Zhu Shi gritted her teeth, frowning tightly, and the blue veins that belonged to ghosts rarely appeared on her face.

……

……

……

a few days later.

night.

Somewhere in an unknown woods.

The wet ground was somewhat muddy, and in the dark environment, there was a line of deep footprints on the muddy ground.

pat, pat.

The purple-black snake-pattern feathered figure walked slowly in the woods.

He is tall and straight, with a ferocious dark red mark entrenched on his left forehead.

The hideous blade on his waist proves his identity as a swordsman.

"... Those who are poor in their way will return to the same place."

Hei Si Mou muttered in a low voice, he raised his head and looked at everything around him.

The powerful perception brought by the penetrating world allows him to observe everything around him, and even faintly feel the "emotions" of other creatures.

Heishimu raised his finger, and a butterfly with blue wings fluttered down, resting safely on his fingertips.

This is what he once, when he was a child, Jian Yuanyi did it.

Yuanyi...

Hei Si Mou looked at the butterfly on his fingertips.

I can do it too.

Since the battle with Tanjuro, he has been walking aimlessly like this for several days.

He is thinking, feeling.

As a ghost, what is the meaning of his existence?

In the extremely quiet and undisturbed deep mountain, Heixin Mou felt a completely different inner peace than before.

He walked slowly to the open space, raised his head, and looked at the moon exposed between the treetops with six eyes.

pat.

The dark sky gradually became cloudy, and the sparse moonlight leaked from between the treetops, and finally disappeared completely.

The damp and cold rain, through the clouds, dripped into the raised eyes of Heishi Mou.

It's raining.

The rain in early spring is quite cold.

……

wow——

Dense raindrops join in lines, forming a rain curtain, and the rainstorm washes over the forest.

The rain poured down.

A dark and damp oppressive atmosphere immediately enveloped the entire mountain.

in the rain.

"Ho...hah!"

The figure of a man wearing a bamboo hat and coir raincoat is struggling to step between the muddy rocks washed by the rain.

He stretched out his hand to support the stone beside him, resisting the torrential rain that came with the strong wind, pressed his bamboo hat, and walked cautiously.

The wet smell of rain filled his nostrils. Even though he was wearing a coir raincoat, the clothes on the man's body were already soaked.

"...Hurry up, hurry up!" His frozen teeth trembled, he clenched his teeth, and his dark red eyes scanned the surroundings through the dense rain:

"Where…"

—He was looking for a herb.

It was a yellow flower called forsythia.

The wife at home had a high fever.

If you don't find the herbal medicine quickly and rush back, I'm afraid it will endanger your life.

Thinking of this, the sense of urgency in the man's heart became stronger, and his breathing became more and more rapid.

at last.

In the field of vision when he looked up, the man found it accurately.

——The cluster of yellow flowers growing on the side of the cliff, swaying in the violent wind and rain.

(End of this chapter)