The shockwave still hummed through the rails when the air inside the Mugen Train began to warp unnaturally. The once-still lanterns overhead flickered wildly, shadows dancing in jagged, erratic shapes across the walls. A low, guttural rumble echoed beneath the floorboards—followed by a series of loud creaks, like bones being twisted out of place.
Then it began.
A grotesque surge of purplish muscle erupted through the gaps in the walls, coiling around the handrails, slithering over windows, and tearing through the wooden ceiling like ivy from a nightmare. The sinewy mass pulsed with sick rhythm—alive, feeding, growing. It spread fast, stretching through each carriage, enveloping them in a suffocating embrace of hot, damp flesh.
The walls seemed to breathe. The floor squelched underfoot.
Passengers screamed as their surroundings transformed into a living organism.
From within the tendrils, whispers echoed—a lulling voice that promised eternal peace, endless comfort, and beautiful dreams. The voice seemed to crawl into the ears of the weak-willed, drawing them down into slumber like a lullaby woven with venom.
But the deeper the train sank into the demon's blood-soaked illusion, the more the air reeked. The stench of old blood and rotting flesh became unbearable. It wasn't just an attack. It was consumption.
The oppressive stench of demon blood filled the carriages—a thick, coppery odor that clung to the air like a curse. The lights above flickered under the weight of demonic pressure, casting eerie shadows that stretched unnaturally across the walls. Passengers cowered, frozen in place, some crying out, others too stunned to speak.
Yoriichi's gaze sharpened instantly, his senses narrowing like a blade drawn from its sheath. His crimson eyes locked onto the unnatural veins pulsing along the ceiling, the grotesque rhythm of the train-turned-beast vibrating through the floorboards beneath his feet.
"Rengoku," he said, his voice calm but edged with steel, "protect the passengers in carriages. I will strike at its neck."
There was no hesitation.
Rengoku gave a single, fierce nod, his golden eyes burning like twin suns. "Understood."
In one fluid motion, his hand gripped the hilt of his Nichirin blade. The moment it left its sheath, the air rippled with heat. His stance widened, grounded like a mountain rooted in fire. Flames crackled faintly at his feet—not of magic, but of spirit.
"The passengers will be safe," he said with unwavering conviction. "Go."
Yoriichi turned and moved forward like a ghost in a storm—silent, fluid, unstoppable. Every step was precise, unaffected by the chaos. Around him, the fleshy tendrils of Enmu's monstrous form curled and writhed, trying to entangle his path, but he slipped through them like wind through tall grass.
Behind him, the sound of steel rang out as Rengoku leapt into action.
"Everyone, stay behind me!" he roared, his voice both a command and a promise.
A pulse of flame exploded down the carriage as he charged, striking at the growing corruption, severing tendrils, shielding civilians with his very body.
With a quiet breath, Yoriichi entered the See Through the World—the rare and godlike ability that peeled away the surface of reality. The walls of the train, once pulsing with the grotesque sinews of Enmu's demon flesh, now seemed as thin as mist. The confusion of darkness and chaos cleared into perfect clarity. Every heartbeat, every blood vessel, every cursed knot of energy woven into the monster's body glowed like threads of flame in his vision.
To Yoriichi, the entire train was no longer a mechanical vehicle overtaken by horror—it was a living demon laid bare, every secret visible. The corrupted engine up front, where the demon's neck and consciousness now hid, called to him like a beacon of decay. He saw it all. The pulses of demonic energy that ran through the carriages. The way Enmu's will clung to the steel like a parasite. Even the tiny fractures where its strength faltered.
Yoriichi moved with unwavering purpose.
The twisting corridors of the train stretched before him like the veins of a beast—but they were no obstacle. With each step, he advanced through the carriages, his blade flickering like a whisper of flame in the dark. Every trace of demon flesh that dared to rise in his path was met with a stroke so clean, so precise, it vanished before it could resist. The twisted muscle recoiled from him, slashed apart before it had even finished forming.
He did not rush. He did not waver. His movements were neither desperate nor violent—only perfectly still within, like the calm eye of a storm.
As he advanced, flashes of terrified faces passed him—passengers trapped in nightmarish slumber, untouched by the horror around them. Rengoku's presence behind him ensured their safety. He could feel the flare of Rengoku's flame breathing life and protection into the rear carriages, cutting through despair with warmth and courage.
But Yoriichi walked alone toward the core.
Each carriage trembled beneath his footfalls, not from the motion of the train, but from the presence that moved through them—too fast for the eye, too refined for the ordinary mind to comprehend.
As Yoriichi advanced across the roof of the speeding train, the cold wind tore past him in howling bursts, tugging at his long hair and rippling his haori like a banner of war. The night roared with sound—screeching metal, shrieking wind, and the rumble of wheels devouring the tracks—but none of it touched him. He walked with a quiet that defied the chaos, his presence steady and composed, yet charged with something deeper. He was calm, yes—but not still. He was moving, always moving—like a storm rolling over the horizon, inevitable and untouchable.
Below him, the train surged forward, not with the rhythm of human invention, but with the grotesque vitality of something alive. The structure pulsed beneath the metal as if it had veins. Flesh, muscle, and bone had fused into the engine and carriages in unnatural harmony. Walls breathed, pipes twitched, and the screeching of metal sometimes sounded like screaming. Enmu had made this train his own body—his domain, his weapon, and his tomb all at once. He thought himself untouchable here, spread across every gear and plate, wrapped around every bolt like a parasite fused to its host.
But then it changed. Something shifted. Not in the world around him—but in himself. At first, it was just pressure. A wrongness in the air. A weight that had no source. It came without warning, crawling into his awareness like a fog that thickened too fast to notice. For a moment, Enmu was confused. He strained to focus. Nothing seemed to be attacking him. Nothing had pierced the train's defenses. No blade, no blow, no technique.
And yet he felt it.
An ancient presence, impossible to comprehend but undeniable in its force. His senses, already scattered across the train's length, reeled as if something cold and massive had stepped into the world—not above it, not beneath it, but through it. It was more than spiritual pressure. It was deeper than instinct. It was something buried in his blood. A sensation that didn't feel like his own.
That's when he saw the figure.
A man walking across the roof of the train with unnatural grace. There was no hesitation in his stride, no wasted movement. He advanced with the patience of eternity, and yet every step closed the distance like the ticking of a final clock.
Yoriichi.
Enmu's many eyes focused on him, but they saw only confusion. He didn't know this man. He had never fought him. Never heard his name. There was no file, no memory, no whisper of him in Muzan's orders. And yet, as the figure came closer, Enmu's thoughts began to unravel. His vision warped. The world seemed to tilt. Reality itself twisted at the edges like paper burning from the corners.
It wasn't the man himself. It was something within Enmu that reacted—something foreign. Something buried.
And then it broke.
A sudden, violent rupture from inside. Not pain, not fear—something deeper. Like an old wound torn open. Muzan's blood, the very source of Enmu's demonic power, flared to life in an uncontrollable frenzy. It screamed, not with voice, but with memory. A memory not Enmu's own. A terror older than him. A silhouette bathed in red. The sun. Death. That image flooded his mind—not with clarity, but with overwhelming force. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to. His body had already recognized it.
Something had triggered the trauma locked inside Muzan's cells—cells that now lived inside Enmu. The fear of a man Muzan had tried to erase from the world, burned into his very being like a brand he could never remove. Enmu staggered within himself, every nerve screaming. The cursed flesh of the train began to ripple, sections of the wall pulsing violently as if rejecting their own form.
"What is this?" Enmu gasped, his voice warping and cracking. He tried to steady his thoughts, to locate the source, to suppress the chaos—but it was too late. His mind, fused to the train, fractured. He clutched at his head with ghostly limbs that barely resembled hands anymore, fingers twitching, metal grinding against bone. "I don't know him! I don't know who he is!"
But that didn't matter.
His cells remembered. His blood remembered. The image of that man—blurred, faceless, wrapped in flame and sunlight—was enough to tear everything apart. The train shrieked with him, panels warping, bolts snapping under phantom pressure. His core eye throbbed violently, red veins bursting across it in crooked lines. Parts of the engine screamed as if in pain, pieces of metal convulsing like wounded muscle.
Still, Yoriichi continued forward, the wind wrapping around him but never touching him. He walked with the stillness of one who had nothing left to prove. His blade had not moved. It remained sheathed at his side, untouched.
Enmu screamed—not in pain, but in terror. A raw, instinctual fear that rose from the deepest, oldest part of him. The disruption of Muzan's memory cells within his flesh was unbearable, their chaotic reaction spreading like fire through every inch of his corrupted form. The blood that granted him power now betrayed him, thrashing against itself in revolt. And because the train was no longer just a machine—but an extension of his body—the entire vessel trembled with him. Walls quivered. Floors rippled. Pipes groaned and split open. The sound of metal twisting under pressure echoed through every carriage as if the train itself was afraid.
In less than a heartbeat, Yoriichi moved. There was no warning—no stance, no shift in posture, not even the faintest breath to signal his intent. One moment, his hand rested quietly at his side, fingers relaxed against the scabbard, the very picture of stillness beneath the storm-filled sky. And then—light. His katana flashed free in a single, fluid motion so swift and precise it seemed to bypass time itself. It wasn't merely speed. It was something beyond technique—beyond comprehension. The draw of his blade was not seen, only felt, like the sudden warmth of sunlight breaking through cloud cover, or the silence that follows thunder. A blinding arc of divine brilliance erupted from the unsheathing, casting everything around him in a radiant flare that burned with the purity of the sun. It was not a strike of violence, but of judgment. Absolute. Effortless.
A radiant flare burst forth with the motion—pure, golden, and searing like the sun at its zenith. It was not mere light, but a cleansing fire, divine and unrelenting, as if the very essence of the sun had been drawn into the world through his blade. The darkness that clung to the night sky recoiled instantly, shredded by the sudden brilliance. Shadows vanished, swallowed by that blinding glow that spilled across the train's rooftop and ignited the air with sacred heat. The cursed flesh that coated the metal hissed and writhed, reacting as if scalded by something holy. Even the wind seemed to falter, held back by the sheer radiance erupting from Yoriichi's swing. For a moment, the world stood still—bathed in golden fire, caught between one breath and the next—as if the heavens themselves had opened their eyes.
In an instant, Yoriichi reached the front of the train. There was no pause, no dramatic flourish—only movement honed to perfection. His blade, already drawn and radiant, shifted slightly in his grip as he stepped forward. He didn't aim for the obvious. He didn't strike blindly. His eyes had already seen it—the precise point where the engine, now transformed into Enmu's grotesque head, connected to the rest of the train like a spine to a skull.
With a small backswing, Yoriichi charged. His form disappeared in a burst of speed so fast it warped the air around him, and in the next moment, his blade carved cleanly through the coupling joint between the engine and the carriages. The slash wasn't just powerful—it was exact, striking at the critical seam where flesh and steel fused. A single, flawless motion, and the connection was gone.
The grotesque head Enmu had formed—the core of his body and consciousness—was severed instantly. Cursed flesh spasmed, the severed engine lurching as if confused. No scream came. Not even a gasp. Just stillness. The connection was broken. The control was lost.
The radiant energy from Yoriichi's strike lingered in the air, heat and light washing over the metal as it began to cool. By the time Enmu's senses could even register what had happened, it was already over. The light had arrived first. Death came with it.
Enmu, the Lower Moon One, was dead—his monstrous body cut down at its core. The head had been severed from the body.