Chihiro Masters White Purity Iai! Kagurabachi Chapter 70 Spoilers!!

In the previous Kagurabachi chapter, Ikura’s arrival enables Iori to decide to become Samura’s daughter again, revealing that she was trained in the White Purity Iai

Kagurabachi Chapter 70 is titled, “White Purity Iai”

This chapter has 19 pages.

The chapter begins with Chihiro blocking Hiruhiko, who intends to follow Ikura upstairs but Chihiro stops him.

Chihiro is still frustrated that he is far from perfecting the White Purity Iai.

“To be the fastest is to be the strongest”

This was the mentality of the White Purity Iai founder, Shirakai Itsuo.

He has a similar outfit and pose to Jujutsu Kaisen’s villain, Sukuna, albeit he has facial hair.

So Shirakai proposed the following pose:

“This stance is one that creates the utmost propulsion toward the enemy, allowing for a slash while maintaining top speeds”

However, people laughed at this idea because the commonly-held belief regarding swordsmanship and Iaijutsu is that you need to firmly grip and swing the sword to maintain its power output.

The standard grip positions the blade facing the metacarpal bones, which is only natural for ensuring a seamless transition from drawing to attacking.

The White Purity style, on the other hand, has an abnormal stance, where the sword must be rotated half a turn with your hand before reaching the target after the blade is drawn.

The user must also take a ready stance after drawing the sword.

However, we see Shirakai’s critics mock the form, saying that the ready stance is counterproductive if the spirit power built in the sheathe gets interrupted. 

Shirakai states that in the end, he literally cut down his critics with his perfected Iai.

Kagurabachi’s Genryoku or Spirit Power system is quite technical, even early on but this application of Genryoku towards swordsmanship makes sense.

Now we return to Chihiro, who says he still cannot grasp it.

The flashback being inserted quite aligns with the level of progress Chihiro has in his swordsmanship.

The White Purity Style’s main flow is presented as the grip switch is awkward for Chihiro due to how the switch reduces the speed and power of his strike.

This is because most swordsmen channel their Spirit Power into their blades consciously.

If the swordsman changes hands or adds some complicated movement, their minds get distracted and thus disturbs the flow of Spirit Power.

So the White Purity Style requires that one treat the sword as a natural part of the person but this act is a thing of intuition and Rou considers the people able to do this effortlessly as perverse.

Rou knows only three people who are licensed in White Purity Style.

However, Chihiro seems to understand what Rou was actually referring to, the “feeling of “becoming one with the sword”.

He sees it with Hiruhiko, who swaps stances with complete freedom.

Well, Hiruhiko did call himself a “student of freedom” in Chapter 68: “Metamorphosis” , and we now understand why.

We cut to a narration explaining Hiruhiko’s origins.

At age 3, Hiruhiko killed a person who tried to grotesquely assault the toddler by biting the adult man to death.

Life was a battlefield for Hiruhiko.

He was made of killing indeed.

Control over his spirit energy comes naturally to him as it was no different from breathing.

Using his spirit energy in his attacks became part of his instincts, which is why he can easily swap hands.

From this natural posture, where instinct allowed for flexible modes of fighting, a “swordsmanship of freedom” was born, as is conceived, as is instinctive.

As the narration ends, Hiruhiko realizes that Chihiro is using an abstract form of swordsmanship, which he had rejected when Kuguri tried to teach him.

To cut is to converse.

For Hiruhiko, to cut is to breathe

As such, he calls those with “forms”, such as Kuguri, “buffoons”, but he imitates them to prove that a free swordsmanship style is superior due to its unpredictability.

Even the idea of Hiruhiko mimicking Chihiro was unpredictable in itself.

This moment allows Hiruhiko to head for the elevator to reach for Iori.

Page 12 is really cool as we see both of them stare down from opposite ends, with Chihiro and Hiruhiko heading to elevators from opposing sides to a race to see who gets to the rooftop first.

Both were contemplating the other’s style.

Chihiro thinks he cannot rush things and figures out a way to mimic Hiruhiko’s switch of grips.

Hiruhiko meanwhile comments on how his mimicry of White Purity Iai style was just a one-time gimmick to catch Chihiro off hard and he considered attempting to cut one of Chihiro’s arms off but thinks that would not work on him.

Now the elevator has reached the top, where we return to Iori awakening her memories as Samura’s daughter.

Chihiro and Ikura react in unison as they are stunned by how Iori was wielding the sword.

With eyes closed, Iori acted like a precise machine, whose delicate fingers held the blade with marvelous speed, aimed towards one goal.

It was not to kill.

But to stop killing intent, cutting off fingers, targeting the means by which her enemies can fight so they can fight no more.

This was the fighting style of Samura Seiichi.

Now it all makes sense to Chihiro.

In contrast to the freedom Hiruhiko exemplified, Samura and his daughter represented absolute self-control and discipline over themselves, from their tempers to their bodies.

The sword was held as both an extension of their bodies and a delicate, dangerous weapon.

Fear of the blade, like in Bleach, but one that resulted in targeted strikes that leave no room to counter.

So when Hiruhiko’s elevator came, Chihiro responded immediately, cutting off Hiruhiko’s arm.

Kagurabachi Chapter 71 will be released on March 10, 2025.

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