“Boom!!”

Crimson flames replaced the blue flowing water as the forest was burning fiercely. When Maple arrived, the first thing he saw was Tanjiro who had changed to “dance of the fire god”.

“This is the sun breathing, isn’t it?”

Maple’s breathing suddenly became extremely ethereal and his divine eyes also converged all his spirituality. His whole body looked like an old tree stump, but the world in his eyes had undergone earth-shaking changes.

[Transparent world]

Seeing the precious opportunity to observe the initial breathing style, Maple unhesitatingly used the technique.

“Tsugikuni Yoriichi was truly a monster.”

As Maple observed the changes caused by the sun breathing on Tanjiro’s body, he sighed in admiration in his heart.

“Everything is just right, everything is close to the limit of the human's mortal body, although it was not as harmonious as my integration of body and soul, but this purity is also the reason why it is so powerful!”

But even though he had understood the strength of sun breathing, Maple had no interest in copying it, what he eagerly learned was the ideas and inspirations contained in it.

Maple had long understood one thing, sun breathing was this world’s strongest battle technique, but it was purely a battle technique. It was different from his own soul breathing in which other than battle technique also included meditation technique. The position was different, so it was sufficient to just infer from it.

“It’s a pity, right now Tanjiro is still unable to use many sword-moves.”

Seeing Tanjiro waving his broken nichirin blade, quickly approaching the “lower-ranked fifth” demon called “Rui”, Maple could not take his eyes off, awaiting the sword move “dance”.

However, Rui, who was manipulating the spider silk, was not in a good mood as he saw the trajectory of the quickly approaching flame.

“Damn it! What the hell did you do?! Why did my spider silk suddenly become so fragile??”

Rui looked extremely ferocious as he continuously activated this blood demon technique with all his strength, as it tried to find a chance for survival.

[Blood demon art: engraved whip]!

Densely packed spider silk surged out, entangling and twisting each other, turning into a steel-bar-like long whip as it whipped towards Tanjiro.

The spider silk whip made a terrifying explosion in the air, no one would doubt its terrifying power, however, under the enhancement of sun breathing, Tanjiro, who was desperate, still managed to evade them in a thrilling dodge, and closed in towards Rui.

[Blood demon art – blood burst]!

At the same time, Nezuko, who was bound by spider silk in mid-air, seemed to have awakened. She held her hand in Rui’s direction and activated her newly awakened blood demon art.

The spider silk was burned out, the bright red demon blood on Tanjiro’s broken blade ignited into boiling flames.

Seeing the red color surging on the broken blade, no matter how arrogant Rui was, it would not want to use its own neck to test the power of the attack.

“Damn it!”

Rui secretly cursed, as it was in a crisis, its eyes suddenly flashed as it accidentally glanced at Maple, who was not deliberately hiding his figure, not far away.

“Huh?! When did that guy come?”

Rui’s heart trembled, although it did not know why it did not notice the bystander, but since there was a ready-made “hostage” standing carelessly over there, Rui ignored the discomfort it unconsciously felt and quickly stretched its hand and sent out spider silk. Intending to tie up Maple and use him to block the blade.

“Haha! God helped me!”

“Not good!”

The speeding spider silk shot passed Tanjiro’s side towards Maple who was standing in the bushes. At this moment, Tanjiro happened to look along the direction of the spider silk and immediately understood Rui’s despicable plan.

“I want to see whether you will ignore the hostage in order to kill me!”

Rui’s mouth was already grinning to its maximum arc, it clearly understood the stickiness of its spider silk, next it only needed to pull hard, the “hostage” would be in its hand, and it would be able to escape from Tanjiro’s blade.

That was how Rui thought, and that was also what it did, unfortunately, what he pulled was not hope but a faster death.

“Do you want to die so much? Having your soul cut is much more painful than a physical wound, you know?”

Such a thought passed through Maple’s mind, He, who was maintaining the [transparent world], was extremely calm. This strange calmness made Rui’s heart thump.

“Leave before I accidentally hurt you.”

“Eh?”

When Maple was pulled past Tanjiro, suddenly a voice reminded Tanjiro. Before Tanjiro could react, Maple controlled his leg and kicked him towards Nezuko which led to the brother and sister being blown away into the bushes.

“You!”

[Soul breath 1st form – Dreaming of a golden millet]

Not bothering to hear Rui’s nonsense before its death, Maple drew his blade and executed a killing blow whose speed was undeniably slow and fast.

The silver slash had a certain destructive effect on the blood demon art, and easily broke through Rui’s spider silk defense, and in the next moment, completely decapitated Rui.

“?”

Rui’s head with its dazed look and blood splash, drew an arc in the air and rolled to the ground.

“You are full of despair when you face death.”

Seeing the last emotions showed by Rui’s spirit as it dissipated, Maple whispered to himself, seemingly recalling the special “demon mother” from before.

“Sure enough, there must be some issues that I have overlooked.”

Maple rubbed his chin, and was about to continue thinking when suddenly Tanjiro’s shouting was heard not far away and attracted Maple’s attention again.

“This Tanjiro can run into trouble wherever he goes.”

Maple “complained”, he was truly dissatisfied and quickly ran towards the direction Tanjiro fell just now.