"Wait, is that Nezuko?!"
The exact same instant Li Ke's sensory network picked up the signature of the main characters, Shinobu Kocho also caught sight of the two figures sprinting frantically through the dense foliage. Her hand instinctively clamped down hard on the hilt of her Nichirin blade the moment her eyes locked onto the young, horned girl.
Li Ke finally recalled that Shinobu had briefly mentioned dealing with Nezuko's unique situation earlier. Which meant...
"Have they already formally accepted Nezuko into the Corps?"
Li Ke casually ran a hand over the hilt of the massive greatsword slung across his back. Within the perimeter of his observation field, his instincts were actively tracking a highly irregular, bizarre entity pursuing the siblings from the rear.
To be entirely precise, this specific target possessed absolute zero physical mass or form.
Aside from the clear structural outline illuminated within his mind's eye via his Observation Haki, his naked eyes couldn't perceive it, nor could his ears detect a single sound. Yet, the physical trajectory of this entity remained glaringly obvious to everyone in the area.
Because...
"What on earth is that?!"
Shinobu stared ahead in absolute bewilderment. Directly behind the sprinting figures of Tanjiro and Nezuko, the ancient trees and solid boulders along the mountain path were abruptly and cleanly hollowed out into distinct, human-shaped cavities. These empty human profiles were manifesting sequentially at a terrifying speed, pressing closer and closer to the siblings as if an invisible force were relentless walking forward!
Yet, she couldn't detect the slightest rush of displaced wind, nor could she hear a single demonic growl—there were only those eerie human-shaped voids materializing out of the landscape.
"Ah?! Lady Shinobu! Run! Whatever these things touch completely vanishes out of existence! They have no scent, they don't displace the wind, and we can't see them at all!"
The instant Tanjiro spotted Shinobu, he screamed out every shred of tactical data he had gathered. At that exact moment, Li Ke violently launched himself off his horse, his massive greatsword erupting into a violent burst of flame as he executed a massive, sweeping arc.
The untamed blaze instantly materialized into a towering wall of fire, surging forward to intercept the advancing line of invisible human voids. Yet, even a reinforced barrier of pure heat failed to offer a single shred of physical resistance; the transparent 'human' shapes simply walked straight through, punching a series of clean, empty voids directly through the wall of fire.
The sheer, earth-shattering scale of Li Ke's casual flame attack left both Tanjiro and the box-bound Nezuko completely shell-shocked. Tanjiro, in particular, had trained relentlessly in his breathing style to manifest localized water currents during his strikes, but witnessing a swordsman summon a literal sea of fire with a casual flick of his wrist was entirely beyond his worldview!
Yet, looking at the absolute zero damage output his baseline flames had achieved against the target, Li Ke merely bared his teeth and slowly licked his lower lip. A localized surge of high-density Red Dragon Fire violently ignited along his blade, its terrifying, ancient draconic aura immediately triggering Nezuko's survival instincts, causing her to hiss and unsheathe her claws like a thoroughly terrified kitten.
Amused by her high-strung, defensive reaction, Li Ke let out a low chuckle, forcefully dampening the ambient aura as he compressed the massive dragon fire tightly along the edge of his steel.
"Well now, this is where things actually start getting interesting..."
Li Ke fluidly rotated his greatsword, the raw kinetic speed generating a crushing wave of wind pressure. Synchronizing his physical strength with his absolute control over thermodynamic manipulation, he unleashed a highly compressed, roaring crescent of draconic flame!
The concentrated dragon fire burned with such terrifying intensity that the very bedrock beneath its path dissolved into liquid magma—and yet—
Those transparent, human-shaped anomalies continued forward completely unscathed, phasing directly through the heart of the dragon fire without suffering a single fraction of damage!
"..."
Li Ke's razor-sharp perception locked onto the exact microsecond his draconic fire collided with the invisible targets. The torrent of flames didn't shatter, snap, or disperse under a physical counterforce; instead, the fire visibly contorted and warped along the edges of the human profiles before completely vanishing. It wasn't being violently snuffed out—it was systematically ceasing to exist.
"A time-space displacement capability?"
Li Ke didn't fully comprehend the underlying dimensional mechanics at play. However, the absolute zero impact his Red Dragon Fire achieved provided a definitive tactical conclusion: his current offensive toolkit possessed no viable hard counter against these anomalies. He shifted his gaze to the fleeing youth and bellowed a question.
"Hey! You over there with the pretty girl—Tanjiro, right? Do these bastards possess a specific structural weakness?! Or did anyone in your combat cell manage to isolate a vulnerability before you split?!"
Li Ke smoothly rotated his wrist, dispersing the ambient thermodynamic heat from his blade into the crisp mountain air. He was already mentally mapping a tactical retreat.
If this entity truly operated via conceptual time-space displacement mechanics, it fell squarely outside his specialized comfort zone. Had he been wielding a reality-severing weapon like the Yamato from Devil May Cry, capable of cleanly cleaving through dimensional fabric, he might have harbored some genuine curiosity to stand his ground and test its parameters. But under the current conditions, he valued his survival far too much to waste energy on an uphill battle.
"No!" Tanjiro barked back without a single fraction of delay. "We found absolutely nothing!"
"Then we run."
Sheathing the radiating greatsword securely onto his back, Li Ke didn't hesitate for a single microsecond. Reaching down with his immense raw strength, he scooped Tanjiro up with one arm and hoisted Nezuko with the other, seamlessly launching his frame onto the saddle of his mount.
He casually dumped Tanjiro onto the horse's rear before settling the small, horn-browed Nezuko firmly within his lap, immediately issuing the operational command to fall back.
"Move out!"
The entire convoy executed the retreat protocol without a single moment of hesitation. If a powerhouse of Li Ke's caliber openly refused to engage the target, the probability of anyone else surviving a direct confrontation hovered at absolute zero. Before spurring her horse forward, Shinobu quickly deployed a specialized cloud of chemical contact-powder into the path of the oncoming threat. Stealing a quick glance over her shoulder as they accelerated, her eyes narrowed in grim realization; the refined powder simply vanished into nothingness upon contact, and the invisible human profiles left absolute zero physical footprints on the earth. Shifting her focus, she locked her eyes forward and concentrated entirely on the escape.
Despite their eerie nature, the entities maintained a remarkably high tracking velocity. Though they lacked the top-end speed to overtake galloping warhorses, it still required a grueling, high-intensity twenty-minute sprint through the rugged terrain before Li Ke's sensory map indicated they had officially broken the enemy's pursuit line.
Halting beside a pristine, trickling mountain stream, Li Ke thoroughly swept the surrounding geography with his Observation Haki to verify their perimeter. Once he confirmed the immediate zone was clear, he signaled the party to dismount and let the horses recover, maintaining an active sensory watch over the valley himself.
With a temporary operational breathing window secured, it was time to extract some concrete answers.
The first to initiate the interrogation was, predictably, Shinobu. Her hand hadn't drifted more than an inch away from her Nichirin blade ever since her eyes locked onto Nezuko, her defensive instincts primed to maximum alert.
"Weren't you and your sister explicitly ordered to execute your current deployment under the direct supervision of the Water Pillar?" Shinobu questioned, her brow furrowing deeply. Given the severe, high-stakes nature of the initial tribunal, the leadership had only granted a temporary stay of execution for Nezuko after confirming her baseline safety parameters, immediately placing the siblings under the direct command of Giyu Tomioka for active field duties.
If a situation went sideways, the Water Pillar possessed strict directives to execute an immediate containment purge.
Yet, here stood Tanjiro and Nezuko, completely separated from their handler. A cold, dark suspicion crept into her mind—had this boy broken operational protocol and fled the moment a high-tier threat manifested?
As the thought took root, an exceptionally heavy, suffocating wave of killing intent violently radiated from her frame.
"N-No! I—I don't actually know what happened!"
Slammed by the crushing weight of a Pillar's raw killing intent, Tanjiro felt a suffocating pressure squeeze his chest. He frantically scratched his head, his mind racing to assemble a coherent explanation that could accurately convey the absolute absurdity of their situation without sounding like a fabrication.
"Those invisible monsters... they were explicitly and relentlessly targeting only me and Nezuko! We couldn't decipher why they ignored everything else, leaving us with absolute zero options but to keep running! The rest of our vanguard unit was still resting at the secondary camp when the pursuit began... Oh, wait! We only crossed paths with those transparent anomalies right after we successfully slaughtered a massive, high-tier Yokai and settled down to recuperate!"
Tanjiro poured every ounce of his internal resolve into gaining her validation, desperately praying she would sense the absolute truth behind his words. However, the narrative he was spinning stretched the boundaries of baseline operational logic far too thin. Shinobu narrowed her eyes into dangerous slits, staring down at him as she interrogated him with icy, deliberate precision.
"Do you possess a single shred of empirical evidence to validate that claim?"
In the original, undisturbed fabric of the canon timeline, Shinobu would have gradually allowed her defenses to soften, swayed by the sheer purity of Tanjiro's sibling devotion and his undeniable battlefield integrity. But in this fractured, chaotic reality, she met his explanation with absolute, uncompromising distrust.
The underlying catalyst for her hostility was glaringly simple.
The world had long passed the threshold where the leadership could afford the luxury of granting the benefit of the doubt; the strategic situation was far too critical.
With supernatural Yokai overrunning the nation, human populations being systematically mutated into predatory horrors, and even native Blood Demons collapsing under the infection, structural security was paramount. Under these exact parameters, a low-ranking slayer who shouldn't even be within this sector had abruptly materialized alongside a demon, running straight into the perimeter of Li Ke—the single most powerful combat asset the Demon Slayer Corps possessed, and arguably the absolute final hope for human civilization.
The sole reason Shinobu hadn't already cleanly severed Tanjiro's head from his shoulders was entirely due to the baseline positive impression he had managed to leave during his initial trial.
For Li Ke, however, the situation processed through an entirely different mechanical matrix. Deep within his core, he could feel a distinct, metaphysical resonance—the very laws of this world were actively nudging his consciousness, urging him to place unconditional structural trust in Tanjiro Kamado. Furthermore, within the clean, unfiltered perception of his Observation Haki, the aura radiating from the boy's soul was completely pristine and harmonious, devoid of even a microscopic trace of malice, deception, or latent danger.
Furthermore, the moment they arrived at the nearest Demon Slayer Corps outpost, it would be remarkably easy to verify whether Tanjiro's claims were actually factual or not.
However, right as he prepared to speak up, Li Ke sensed a presence approaching their position. Snapping his head around to look, he discovered it was none other than Tifa Lockhart, a woman who had previously fought shoulder-to-shoulder alongside him as a trusted comrade-in-arms.
"What he says should be the truth," Tifa spoke up softly.
Li Ke nodded in agreement. Yet, even as he looked at Tanjiro, his gaze involuntarily drifted past the boy to scan Mai Shiranui, before finally settling right back onto Tifa Lockhart.
He remembered her with absolute clarity. Tifa Lockhart was a familiar face he and Mai had crossed paths with in another universe. Her combat skills were legendary, and she had been a steadfast ally in their previous battles.
"That's right, I'm also willing to place my trust in Tanjiro," Tifa agreed, nodding her head. However, immediately following that statement, she issued a surprising directive. "But mandatory security protocols are necessary. We should have him and his sister travel separately, maintaining a strict fifty-meter distance from the rest of us."
Li Ke nodded instinctively, yet a seed of doubt began to take root. Tifa was a comrade who valued the bonds of trust; this cold, exclusionary recommendation felt entirely out of character for the woman he knew from the world of Final Fantasy VII. Her response should have been more compassionate.
"Wait a minute..."
Li Ke's eyes sharpened as he looked over at Tifa, who was conversing with Mai and Shinobu, and then shifted his gaze back toward Tanjiro.
"Thank you so much, Miss Tifa! You and Mr. Cloud are truly such wonderful people!"
Cloud?
Li Ke's brow furrowed. Suddenly, a blond-haired youth carrying a massive Buster Sword appeared right beside Tifa. The individual was unmistakably Cloud Strife, and he stepped forward with a familiar air, standing close to Tifa.
"It's nothing, Tanjiro. This is just our duty as—"
Before the sentence could be finished, Li Ke's greatsword swung with explosive force. A torrent of flame accompanied the strike, slicing through the figures of Cloud and Tifa. The sudden action caused Mai, Shinobu, and Tanjiro to cry out in shock.
"Li Ke, what are you doing?! Have you lost your mind?!" Mai shouted, reaching for her fans. To her, it appeared he had just struck down a loyal friend.
Shinobu likewise moved toward her weapon, her mind flooded with memories of their shared travels and the close bond she believed she had formed with Tifa.
However, before they could intervene, the forms of Cloud and Tifa began to warp. Their human facades dissolved, revealing grotesque, multi-tentacled creatures with glowing green ichor flowing through them. These abominations shrieked as they collapsed, and the vivid memories Li Ke had of his history with Tifa began to unravel, revealing themselves as hollow, artificial constructs.
"You really thought these fake memories would hold?" Li Ke said, his voice cold as he incinerated the remains of the creatures. "The logic of this illusion was flawed from the start. You tried to project a reality that didn't match the true nature of the people involved."
By observing the biological nature of these entities, Li Ke realized their primary weapon was the implantation of hyper-realistic but synthetic memories to manipulate their targets. They had attempted to use his own past experiences against him, but their failure to account for the actual interpersonal dynamics of his allies allowed him to see through the deception.