Sound Breathing

Sound Breathing takes its cue from noise, especially its disorienting volume, and channels that into the user's motion and attacks. Its forms lean on blasts to inflict heavy damage while moving at speeds that echo how quickly sound carries, and they draw on the wielder's keen hearing. The user pictures bright, thunderous detonations going off as each technique lands, like a fireworks display.

Tengen Uzui, the only known practitioner, built a method called Musical Score that relies on his superhuman ears. He reads an enemy's movement, breaks it down into rhythm, and then strikes into the gaps as if laying down the beat of a song. Alongside it he carries compact yet potent anti-demon bombs strong enough to wound the bodies of Upper Rank demons.

Because Tengen is presumed to have created the style, it calls for a particular pair of weapons: two oversized nunchuck-like Nichirin cleavers, each notched along its cutting edge and joined at the grips by a metal chain. The blades are said to pack tremendous explosive force, and before his fight with Upper Rank Six, no demon had ever endured even one strike from them.

At least five forms exist, of which three appear in the story. The First Form, Roar (Episode 38), raises both blades overhead and slams them down with enough power to crash like thunder. The Fourth Form, Constant Resounding Slashes (Episode 42), holds the twin swords apart and whirls them around the body to shred anything nearby, serving as a sweeping defensive guard. The Fifth Form, String Performance (Episode 41), grips the connecting chain and spins the blades at high speed while rushing forward, so the user keeps cutting without ever altering their hold.

Tengen Uzui is the lone wielder of the style. Of all the breathing arts shown, Sound Breathing has the fewest forms actually demonstrated, only three out of its five. Its slashes are pictured in amber and turquoise tones beside loud, colorful explosions, though individual forms can carry their own hues. Per the second databook, slain demons remembered the cuts as clean and the wielder as muscular yet eerily quiet and nimble, with Gyutaro noting how precisely calibrated every movement was.