"So, you finally came to see me, brother?"
"Silence."
In the dark, empty room, Muzan Kibutsuji's sharp command echoed.
With a snap of his fingers, a single light flared to life, illuminating his cold, arrogant face and the wretched scene before him.
His scarlet, slit-pupiled eyes looked down with utter contempt at the figure tightly imprisoned by a cage of writhing, bloody thorns.
The prisoner slowly lifted his head.
Messy black hair covered part of his face, but the exposed eye was a burning scarlet, hauntingly similar to Muzan's own.
As the light caught his features, it revealed a face that was an almost perfect mirror of Muzan's.
This was his "dear brother" from a thousand years ago, Shokyu.
"Haha… brother," Shokyu rasped, a weak but genuine-looking smile gracing his lips.
"Seeing that smug look on your face, I take it you are close to achieving your goal? Have you found the Blue Spider Lily?"
"Shokyu," Muzan's voice was ice, each word dripping with mockery.
He began to walk forward, his polished leather boots making soft, deliberate clicks on the stone floor.
"Drop the disgusting hypocritical tone. Do you truly believe you still need to pretend in front of me?"
Shokyu's body was completely immobilized by the living thorns, only his head was able to move.
Hearing Muzan's words, his smile didn't fade.
"Hypocrisy? Brother, I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean."
"You don't understand? Hah!" Muzan sneered, stopping less than a meter from his brother.
He leaned in, his scarlet eyes like abyssal pits, staring directly into Shokyu's.
"Don't think for a second that the pathetic stories you spin for humans can fool me. What a perfect little tale. A cruel, heartless monster of a brother, and a sincere, kind younger brother who only wants to help. Tsk. You were always so good at making up stories, even when you were child."
A sharp, black claw extended from Muzan's fingertip.
He gently dragged the cold tip across Shokyu's cheek, leaving a wound that writhed, struggling and failing to heal against his oppressive aura.
"Of course, your lies have worked on countless idiots over the centuries," Muzan continued, his voice a low, vicious purr.
"They truly believed you were some great benefactor to mankind. I simply allowed you to survive, to scurry around like a mouse, because you were an irrelevant bug not worth my time. But now, you've delivered yourself to my doorstep. You didn't really think planting your blood in Maito and Lee would go unnoticed, did you?"
Shokyu's expression finally broke, shifting to one of theatrical horror, just as Muzan had expected.
"You… Maito and Lee?!"
"You imbecile! My evolution is absolute!" Muzan suddenly backhanded him.
CRACK!
Half of Shokyu's head exploded into a fine, bloody mist.
"Did you really think you could challenge me by secretly creating a few crude imitations?" Muzan scoffed, watching the flesh begin to squirm and regrow.
"I've seen everything inside their heads. I never imagined a fool like you would actually believe those old wives' tales. The power of the underworld? Are you still trying to become a god?"
Even as his head was slowly regenerating, Shokyu's intact lips began to move.
He sounded like a child whose greatest secret had been exposed.
"It seems you know everything. Good. I've wanted to tell you for so long, brother. Your vision is limited to the material world! To cells, blood, and sunlight. But that is not all there is! The Master's notes were true. Yomi… the underworld… it truly exists. It is the boundary between life and death, a source of unimaginable energy. If I could only control it…"
Before he could finish, Muzan cut him off with a low, terrifying laugh.
"Shokyu, your stupidity is truly breathtaking. Stop making excuses for your failures. What I pursue is tangible evolution, quantifiable eternal life, and absolute power! Conquering the sun, achieving biological immortality—these are the true paths, based on the material world I can see and control! Not some mythological fantasy scribbled in a dead man's notebook."
Shokyu fell silent, lowering what was left of his head.
Muzan snorted, turning his back on him.
"It is time to end this meaningless conversation. This is the last time I will indulge you. I still hate you as much as I did a thousand years ago. You, who always feigned weakness to gain sympathy. You, who always pretended to be virtuous to make me look like the monster. You, who thought you could become a god through childish fantasies. The only end for you is to watch as I become the ultimate, perfect being… and then be crushed into dust by my own hand."
Without another glance, Muzan walked away.
The light winked out, plunging the room back into absolute darkness and silence, leaving only the sound of faint, ragged breaths.
After a long moment, a weak voice echoed in the blackness.
"My dear brother… you are still as simple-minded as ever. You will see. However… Maito and Lee turning so easily was… unexpected."
Leaving the special cell, Muzan's face was a mask of cold indifference.
To him, Shokyu was just a failed experiment, an idiot who took the wrong path and dared to challenge his authority.
His visit had been a final, disappointing confirmation of that fact.
The power of the underworld?
How could his brother's mind be so filled with such ethereal nonsense?
Muzan had never believed in ghosts or gods.
If they existed, why hadn't the devout prayers of his human family had any effect when he was dying as a child? Only science, only the reliable, physical evolution of this world, was a truth worth pursuing.
The Blue Spider Lily.
Muzan's patience had run out.
It was time to get the final answers himself.
His crimson pupils gazed into the twisted void of the Infinity Castle, but what he saw was the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters being ground into dust.
Oh, and that other annoyance, the Ubuyashiki clan.
Were they as foolish as Shokyu, attributing a simple genetic disease to some "curse" he had laid upon them? Pathetic.
That despicable family, and everything they stood for, would be utterly erased from existence.
---------
Read 40 chapters ahead and support me on patreon.
patreon (.)com/Newbietranslator