The Stranger

Heeding Giyu's warning to shield Nezuko from sunlight, Tanjiro acquires a damaged carrying basket from a local farmer, stubbornly forcing payment despite the man's repeated refusals. Once it is mended, he coaxes his sister into shrinking herself so she can ride inside, then sets out across the hills toward Mount Sagiri after asking a worried villager for directions.

Night arrives and the siblings stop at a small woodland temple. The smell of blood draws Tanjiro inside, where he finds a demon devouring the slain occupants. Realizing a human has appeared, the creature lunges at him, and Tanjiro's hatchet strike heals almost instantly. Cornered and pinned, he is rescued when Nezuko kicks the demon's head from its shoulders.

The headless body keeps attacking, and the severed head sprouts new limbs while demanding to know why a demon would accompany a human. Tanjiro drives the creature against a tree with his hatchet, then tackles its body off a cliff to save Nezuko, leaving the demon stunned but alive below.

When Tanjiro draws a knife to finish the pinned head, he hesitates despite knowing the danger it poses to others. In that pause, a person in a peculiar mask, later revealed as Sakonji Urokodaki, steps up behind him and tells him that ordinary blades cannot end a demon's life.

This chapter marks the first appearance of both the Temple Demon and Sakonji Urokodaki, and it stages Tanjiro's earliest confrontation with a man-eating demon. The events here are adapted in Episode 2 of the anime, which falls within the Final Selection Arc covered by Volume 1.

The fight establishes Nezuko's surprising combat ability and her capacity to alter her size, traits that recur throughout the series.