Sukuna watched the woman inexplicably running toward him. Seeing her peasant attire, he didn't overthink it and simply raised his hand to cut her down.
The woman was severed diagonally at the waist. As her expression shifted to shock, her bisected body hit the ground, blood and internal organs spilling everywhere.
The man stood frozen for a moment, then tears burst from his eyes.
Sukuna glanced briefly at the man from a distance. Another farmer working the land. Their meat was tough and old. Just imagining the taste made Sukuna shake his head.
Apparently woken by the commotion outside, the child who had been sleeping pushed open the door.
Rubbing his sleepy eyes, the child called out to the man.
"Dad, what's happening?"
Sukuna had been wondering how best to extract information from the man. But with the child's appearance, he simply grabbed the child and brought him before the man.
Watching Sukuna's sharp fingertip pressed against the child's neck, seeing the crimson blood trickle down, the man seemed to lose all his strength. Despair consumed him.
Broken and devastated, the man fell to his knees before Sukuna and begged.
"Please, spare the child! Please! Kill me if you must!"
Sukuna got straight to the point. "Where can I find those guys with swords who kill demons?"
Even though the man didn't understand why Tanjiro would ask such a question, he revealed everything he knew.
"I don't know exactly where to find them, but I've heard that whenever a demon appears and causes a killing, they send someone quickly!"
When the man mentioned a demon appearing, he secretly glanced up at Sukuna.
Sukuna understood exactly what that gesture meant. He raised his hand and clawed out the man's eyes.
"AH!" The man wailed, clutching his head in agony.
This bloody scene played out right before the child's eyes.
Though he didn't fully understand what it meant yet, he could still feel his father's pain and burst into tears.
Hearing his child cry, the man somehow calmed down. Enduring the agony of his destroyed eyes, he trembled as he asked Sukuna.
"What... what would it take... for you... to spare the child...?"
The man knew how ridiculous he was being, begging for mercy from a demon that killed without blinking. But he couldn't do anything else. He admitted to himself that he was a useless father.
"So do you know where demons are?"
The man froze. His first thought was, aren't you one right in front of me?
But this time, he dared not react. He already knew what the result would be.
"I... I know! If you keep walking this way, toward Mount Sagiri, people have been going missing at night. There's a chance it's a demon."
The man, now blind, felt the ground as if trying to point Sukuna in the right direction. Blood streamed continuously from his lowered head.
"Nighttime, huh?"
"Yes, I'm not lying to you. So can you spare... my..."
Sukuna considered this, then gave the man a slash, splitting him in two right down the middle.
Since it was still daytime, Sukuna borrowed the man's house to quickly prepare some humans to eat.
This only made Sukuna miss Uraume more. Whether in the modern era or the past, this kind of work was usually done by him. Not to mention that his preparation of humans was exceptionally delicious.
It wasn't that Sukuna himself lacked cooking skills. As a 'chef', he just couldn't be bothered to do it himself.
He also found a clean set of clothes in the man's house before leaving.
The truth was, with Sukuna's strength, crossing one or two mountains wouldn't take long. He simply wasn't in a hurry and even deliberately slowed his pace.
Sukuna figured that once others discovered the people he had killed, they would come looking for him, just like how they had in the heian era.
If he moved too quickly, they might not be able to find him.
Walking along as if sightseeing, Sukuna arrived at a run-down Buddhist hall just before sunset.
Even before entering the dilapidated hall, Sukuna could smell the thick stench of blood coming from inside, along with the sounds of rough tearing and chewing.
If his guess was correct, this was likely the culprit behind the nighttime disappearances the man had mentioned.
When Sukuna pushed open the door, he saw a demon surrounded by corpses, frantically gnawing on a dead person's arm.
Witnessing the demon's crude way of eating, Sukuna unconsciously showed a look of contempt.
The demon froze for a moment, not expecting anyone to barge in at this hour.
It raised its ferocious face covered in blood, turned its head, and glared at Sukuna with a fierce warning.
"Hah? What do you want? This is my territory. No one disrupts my hunting ground!"
The demon first mistook Sukuna for one of its own kind. Though Sukuna had changed clothes, he still carried an undispelled scent of blood. And with two pairs of eyes and a face marked with black tattoos, he looked far from ordinary.
"..."
But the demon quickly noticed something wrong. Although Sukuna smelled of blood, his scent was distinctly different from a demon's. If anything, he smelled completely like a normal human.
More importantly, through the door Sukuna had opened, the demon could clearly see the setting sun outside.
A demon being able to come here in broad daylight was the most unreasonable thing of all.
The demon's face darkened as it stared at Sukuna. Looking at those two pairs of eyes fixed on him, it asked coldly.
"How strange. You should be human, right? But what's with those eyes?"
Sukuna stroked his chin and slowly shook his head, muttering to himself.
"Too bad. Only one demon, and such a weak one at that."
Hearing Sukuna's words, the demon grew even more confused.
Was this guy actively looking for demons?
Was he with the Demon Slayer Corps?
But he didn't have a Nichirin Blade?
Strike first.
With that thought, the demon lunged directly at Sukuna.
But something strange happened. In its field of vision, it saw its own headless body charging forward.