Demon Slayer: Rewriting Tragedies with Super Vision — Chapter 186

Chapter 186: Where is Douma?

Nestled deep within the mist-shrouded mountains stood the headquarters of the Eternal Paradise Cult, an opulent sanctuary masked by the dense, ancient woods.

Hundreds of years ago, Douma was born into a highly superstitious family. From the moment he took his first breath, he was an anomaly, naturally possessing hair as pure as freshly fallen snow and a pair of captivating, rainbow-colored pupils.

Seeing his otherworldly appearance, his parents fell to their knees. They firmly believed they had birthed a Child of God, a divine vessel capable of hearing the voice of the heavens. Capitalizing on this supposed miracle, they founded the Eternal Paradise Cult, placing their young son upon a lotus dais as its supreme leader.

The cult recruited followers under the grand banner of eliminating worldly pain and spreading eternal happiness. In truth, it was nothing more than a cynical tool for Douma’s parents to amass a staggering fortune. By heavily promoting Douma’s title as the Child of God, they attracted countless desperate souls who climbed the mountain to pray, weep, and seek divine guidance.

The young Douma, sitting quietly upon his elevated cushion, naturally knew that he could not hear any so-called voice of God. The heavens were entirely silent. He found his parents’ ignorant, greedy perceptions laughable. Yet, out of a cold, clinical sense of pity, he never bothered to expose the lie.

At first, he would use his sharp intellect to craft comforting responses for the weeping followers who came to bow before him. But as the years bled by, listening to endless tales of tragedy, disease, and betrayal, Douma gradually came to understand the sheer absurdity of the world. He saw only the fragility, the ugliness, and the absolute helplessness of humanity.

, because he knew with absolute certainty that gods did not exist, and combined with his innate, biological inability to experience the emotions a normal human should have, he was completely incapable of empathizing with a single tear shed in his presence. Watching them sob over lost loves and ruined crops made him feel that these followers, who came solely to vent their pathetic grievances, were incredibly foolish.

From those endless sessions of listening to human misery, Douma established a core realization. Only by leaving this wretched world could humans ever achieve true paradise.

Later in his youth, Douma’s mother discovered that his father was having multiple affairs with several of the female followers within the cult. In a shrieking fit of hysterical rage, she took up a blade and hacked her husband to death, leaving his ruined body on the tatami mats before swallowing a lethal dose of poison to end her own life.

Witnessing the brutal murder-suicide of his creators, Douma felt absolutely no emotional fluctuation. His heart rate did not spike. His breathing did not hitch. Standing over their cooling corpses, he only felt mildly annoyed that the sliding doors were splattered with crimson, that the room had been made a sticky mess, and that the heavy, metallic stench of blood was ruining the incense. He simply wished someone would come and clean it up quickly.

But because of this bloody incident, the realization in his hollow heart took deep, permanent root. Living only brings senseless pain, and only death brings true liberation.

Of course, Douma himself did not feel pain, sorrow, or despair, so he saw absolutely no reason to end his own life.

Without his parents’ relentless money-grubbing, the cult underwent a bizarre transformation. Douma himself had no concept of money or material greed. Combined with the fact that the Eternal Paradise Cult’s overt teachings were entirely focused on living a happy life with a calm, optimistic attitude, this organization originally built for scamming the vulnerable inexplicably took on an aura of genuine charity. It was a scam so devoid of malice that it accidentally turned righteous.

Those battered followers who had encountered terrible hardships in reality actually found a brief, genuine moment of peace deep within these mountain walls.

Years later, Douma happened to cross paths with Kibutsuji Muzan. The Lord of Demons was immediately intrigued by the young man’s complete lack of human emotion, recognizing a perfect predator. Muzan offered him his blood, turning the cult leader into a demon.

This dark transformation finally prompted Douma to put his lifelong realization into physical practice. Living in the world is painful, and only through death can one attain paradise. Therefore, by being devoured and absorbed into his immortal demonic flesh, these pitiful humans could finally be free of their suffering. They would enjoy a fleshly paradise, gaining eternal life together as a part of him.

It was a twisted, deeply absurd perception of salvation, but Douma had believed it with absolute sincerity for hundreds of years. He viewed the act of tearing them apart and eating them as the ultimate act of mercy.

Correspondingly, the grand halls of the Eternal Paradise Cult became his personal dining hall.

Built upon that twisted worldview, his culinary tastes became highly particular. Douma believed that women, possessing the biological ability to nurture life, held far more spiritual and physical nutrients in their bodies, allowing him to grow stronger and faster than if he ate men.

also, he reasoned that beautiful things were simply more deserving of salvation and eternal life. Therefore, he liked eating beautiful young women the most.

Under the influence of this dark philosophy, combined with the tragic reality that women in this era were already far more susceptible to poverty, abuse, and persecution, the Eternal Paradise Cult flourished. After hundreds of years of steady development, the sanctuary currently housed over two hundred followers, all of whom were female.

This number was only kept at two hundred because Muzan had strictly warned Douma to maintain a low profile. Had he been allowed to operate openly, there would have been thousands of willing victims lining up at his door.

And now, because of the Upper Rank demon Gyokko’s recent death, Muzan had forced Douma to mobilize his vast network of followers to gather intelligence.

Naturally, this mobilization was solely to scour the country for any rumors regarding the elusive Blue Spider Lily, not to investigate the Demon Slayer Corps.

After all, setting aside the sheer improbability of these sheltered women finding any classified information on the Demon Slayer Corps, even if they did, it would inevitably come attached to horrific tales of man-eating demons. If they dug too deep, they would quickly realize their beloved, smiling Cult Leader was the very monster described in those bloody rumors.

Thinking back to those favored followers who periodically attained paradise behind closed doors, if the truth leaked out, the Eternal Paradise Cult would disband in a screaming panic on the spot.

On an ordinary, freezing night, the sprawling headquarters of the Eternal Paradise Cult had completely quieted down. The lanterns were dimmed, and the only sound was the wind rustling through the pines.

But in the dense woods on the outskirts of the main compound, two figures stood perfectly still, staring intently at the grand architecture.

Though the temple looked exquisitely decorated with gold leaf and fine wood, it constantly radiated a chillingly eerie aura, a heavy Yin energy that made the surrounding air feel unnaturally cold.

After a long stretch of absolute silence, the unusually tall, broad-shouldered figure spoke first, his deep voice a low rumble in the dark. “Amitabha… it seems that evil demon is not here at the moment.”

“Tsk. We actually came all this way for nothing.”

The other figure crossed his arms, curling his lips in clear annoyance.

The two men waiting in the freezing shadows were, naturally, Himejima Gyoumei and Kanzaki Akira.

After spending the last few days in intense focus, Akira had preliminarily mastered the use of the Transparent World. The moment he stabilized the technique, he immediately tracked down Gyoumei, proposing a direct strike that would leave the Upper Rank demon completely bewildered and dead before he knew what hit him.

To this aggressive plan, Gyoumei naturally agreed on the spot.

After the Stone Hashira had comprehended the Transparent World himself, he had come alone to investigate this very mountain once before. Standing at a distance, he had felt Douma’s sickeningly cold aura radiating from the temple.

If it were just himself, Gyoumei knew he did not have the absolute certainty of a guaranteed kill against an Upper Rank of that caliber., his enhanced senses picked up a massive number of ordinary, innocent people sleeping inside the cult’s walls. If he acted rashly and the battle escalated, Gyoumei could not guarantee their safety. Unwilling to risk civilian casualties, he had no choice but to retreat.

Now, with Akira fighting by his side, the tactical situation was completely different. Gyoumei, a man who hated evil with a burning, righteous passion, was naturally unwilling to let this monster breathe for another day.

In his own words, filthy and evil creatures like demons were a festering stain on this world for every extra moment they existed.

Unfortunately, the two powerful slayers, full of lethal ambition and fully intending to solve the Douma problem once and for all tonight, had to face a completely unexpected hurdle.

Where was Douma?

Pushing their senses to the absolute limit and using the piercing vision of the Transparent World, the two warriors scanned every inch of the compound. They could see the blood flowing through the veins of the sleeping women, the mice scurrying under the floorboards, and the structural beams of the temple. But they could confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that Douma was not at the headquarters.

When he had left, they did not know.

Where he was right now, they also did not know.

When he would return, they knew even less.

Unwilling to give up their perfect ambush, the two slayers stubbornly stood guard in the freezing woods for three consecutive nights. They barely moved, blending into the shadows, but still failed to wait out Douma’s return. Finally, with their supplies running low and other duties calling, they could only leave the mountain in helpless frustration.

Neither Gyoumei nor Akira could afford to stay hidden in these woods waiting forever.

“Sigh…”

Akira let out a long, heavy breath, rubbing the back of his neck.

At this moment, he felt a deep sense of powerlessness. It was the exact, infuriating feeling of having stayed up all night carefully memorizing complex math formulas, only to sit down at the desk and find out the exam was entirely on reading comprehension.

Meanwhile, far away from the snowy mountains, Douma had just been abruptly teleported back to the Infinity Castle right before dawn.

Ever since Gyokko was killed, the frequency of his mandatory visits to this shifting, gravity-defying fortress had been steadily increasing.

Even though every single time he came to report, the result was exactly the same. An ancient, mythical flower like the Blue Spider Lily was something Muzan himself had failed to find in over a thousand years of searching. How could the Demon Lord possibly expect a group of sheltered, traumatized women who had fled into the deep mountains to produce any tangible results in such a short amount of time?

A while ago, Muzan seemed to have thrown a massive, violent tantrum for a reason Douma didn’t quite know or care about. As a direct result, Douma was currently receiving a telepathic scolding even more intense and vicious than usual, entirely because there was zero progress in his intelligence-gathering mission.

Unfortunately for Muzan’s temper, Douma would neither feel sad because of this harsh reprimand, nor could he empathize with his master’s boiling anger. Kneeling on the wooden tatami of the shifting castle, the Upper Rank demon could only maintain his long-accustomed, perfectly empty smile, listening quietly to the screaming in his head until it was finally over.