"What's going on?!" Hearing the shrill scream, Yu Luo had no time to study with the system what the demons of this world looked like. He hurriedly pulled his mind out of his head, gripped Raikiri in his right hand, and surveyed his surroundings.
This world was also in the middle of the night. A bright moon hung high in the sky, allowing Yu Luo to easily see the surrounding area.
It was an Edo-style town with only a few hundred residents. The low, squat houses did not obstruct Yu Luo's view. He was currently standing outside a household's courtyard wall, beside a wooden utility pole.
"The Bakumatsu? The Meiji era?" This blend of old and new styles was far too distinctive. Yu Luo, who had done a little research into the history of the Far East nation, quickly narrowed down the era he was currently in.
"Zzt..." Yu Luo drew Raikiri and held it diagonally toward the ground. Sasaki Kojiro's Card was pinched between the fingers of his left hand, ready to activate Henshin at any moment.
Yet the scream had only sounded once. After that, the entire town fell silent. Only crickets chirped restlessly in the grass. The town streets were empty, with only Yu Luo's shadow stretching long behind him, as though that scream had merely been his illusion.
Yu Luo's nerves were taut, every rustle of wind and grass tugging at them. The night breeze gently brushed against his face, and his expression immediately changed because he caught a familiar scent in it—the smell of blood he often encountered in Changkong City.
"This smell..." Yu Luo carefully identified the direction from which the wind blew, then sprinted after the bloody scent. For some reason, every dog in town had gone silent, cowering and shivering in their kennels. Even as Yu Luo ran right past them, they acted as though they had not seen him.
"Was it a demon?" Such an abnormal situation made Yu Luo think of the basic information the system had provided about this world, and he could not help pondering it inwardly.
The smell of blood in the night wind grew stronger and stronger, eventually turning into a foul stench. Even Yu Luo, who could kill Zombie Girl without changing expression, frowned at it. At last, he rounded a corner along the street and stopped.
The alley was barely over two meters wide, shrouded in the shadows cast by tall walls on either side. A large figure crouched in the middle of the road. The bloody stench was overwhelmingly thick. Yu Luo could only see the figure hunching and rising repeatedly, accompanied by crunching sounds.
"Pfft!"
"Thud..." The figure casually tossed out something with its right hand. It landed at Yu Luo's feet with a dull sound. When Yu Luo clearly saw what it was, his head immediately swam and his stomach churned.
The thing tossed out was a colorful mass of internal organs, lying slimily at Yu Luo's feet, coated in thick fresh blood. The intense foul stench rushed straight into his nose, nearly making his eyes water.
"Fresh human..." A hoarse, inhuman voice came from the tall figure crouching in the middle of the road. It stood up, a full two meters tall, broad and burly, its arms thicker than Yu Luo's thighs.
"Whoosh..." The burly figure hurled an object at Yu Luo from the darkness. It came straight at him with a howling gust. An ordinary person would surely have had their bones and tendons shattered by such a blow, but Yu Luo had remained on high alert. The instant the figure made its move, he instinctively leaped to the left.
"Smack!" The violent airflow was like tiny blades. The unknown object grazed Yu Luo's cheek, cutting a small wound across his face. Blood slowly trickled from it.
The unknown object smashed viciously into the wall behind Yu Luo. Flesh and blood splattered, minced meat mixed with blood spraying toward his back, only to be mercilessly blocked by Raikiri's inherent Super Electromagnetic Field.
"Food, food, food is food..." The figure seemed half-crazed, mindlessly shouting as it pounced viciously at Yu Luo like a leopard. Its movements were far more agile than those of an ordinary person. Yu Luo only saw a blur before a monstrous claw reached him.
"Bang!" Dark blue lightning suddenly exploded in the air before Yu Luo. The claw, as large as Yu Luo's head, was violently knocked away. Yu Luo himself was also sent flying by the tremendous impact, crashing heavily into the wall. The air was knocked straight out of his lungs, and he nearly blacked out.
The figure seemed to have been badly shocked by the Super Electromagnetic Field as well. It did not pursue while Yu Luo had lost his ability to move. Yu Luo took two harsh breaths of the foul air before finally seeing the tall figure that had attacked him beneath the bright moonlight.
Rather than a person, it was more accurate to call it a humanoid monster. Its crimson eyes were full of madness, its body packed with knotted muscles, and a savage horn protruded from its head. Its hands, each as large as an adult's head, bore sharp claws capable of easily piercing flesh. Its right claw, however, hung limp, apparently badly injured by Raikiri's Super Electromagnetic Field.
Yu Luo struggled up from the ground. Raikiri's blade still shone with a dark blue glow. The bronze card between the fingers of his left hand drew a diagonal line before him.
"Henshin!" The dazzling silver light appeared and vanished in an instant. A long blue ponytail drifted in the wind. Yu Luo wore a pale purple kimono, holding Raikiri horizontally before himself as he watched the claw-clutching monster with full vigilance.
"Hey, you don't have the Heroic Spirit Card's attribute boosts anymore. Watch yourself!" The system suddenly spoke up. "Your physique after transforming is the same as before you transformed. You're just an ordinary person, so don't get too reckless!"
"You already said that. Do you have dementia?!" Yu Luo replied irritably in his mind, then activated B+-rank Clairvoyance and A+-rank Mind's Eye.
The state of mind of Mirror-Still Water instantly took effect on Yu Luo. His heart calmed completely, and everything around him appeared in his mind without omission. No matter what the monster did, he would be able to make the most advantageous response at the first moment.
This monster had clearly lost its mind after being stimulated by human flesh and blood—or perhaps it had never possessed a mind to begin with. Once the pain in its right claw eased slightly, its scarlet eyes locked onto Yu Luo, making him feel as though he had been targeted by a ferocious beast.
Unfortunately, Yu Luo was currently in the state of Mirror-Still Water and was not affected in the slightest. The monster let out a roar and pounced directly at Yu Luo like a wild beast, incomparably swift. An ordinary person would have had virtually no chance to react.
"Shing!" A dark blue flash suddenly appeared beneath the night sky. Yu Luo passed by the monster, and a savage arm flew into the air before landing heavily on the ground. The severed edge was charred black, with not a single drop of blood flowing from it.
Yu Luo raised Raikiri again and cautiously watched the monster that had lost its right arm. With Mind's Eye, he could find flaws in his enemy's movements. Against the monster's beastlike attacks that relied purely on its body, it simply could not touch Yu Luo.
"Roar!" Having lost its right arm in the clash, the monster opened its huge bloody mouth and howled at Yu Luo, revealing teeth still caught with bits of unknown flesh. The severed area of its right arm began to wriggle, as though countless little worms crawled beneath its skin.
But the wriggling quickly stopped. The right arm remained charred black, without the slightest change. The monster's roar abruptly ceased, and a trace of astonishment flashed through its crimson eyes. It warily glanced at Yu Luo, who stood ready with his sword. Seeing that Yu Luo had no intention of attacking proactively, it decisively turned and fled into the distance at high speed, vanishing in just a few bounds.
Yu Luo stared in the direction the monster had fled, then released his transformation. Milky white particles lit up around him as he returned to his original clothes. He sheathed the bloodless Raikiri at his waist and sat down right where he was, completely unconcerned with the dirt on the ground.
"Ah..." Yu Luo let out a long breath, his spirit somewhat drained. He had first maintained vigilance for a long time, then used the Heroic Spirit's power to enter the state of Mirror-Still Water. It had taken quite a toll on his mind.
"That monster was a demon?" Yu Luo asked the system in his mind.
"Yes." The system confirmed Yu Luo's guess and added, "That demon's Demon King blood was far too diluted. It could not even maintain self-awareness and had only the instinct to prey left. It could be called the weakest kind of demon."
"Higher-ranking demons, such as the Twelve Kizuki, not only possess their own consciousness, but even have special supernatural abilities known as [Blood Demon Arts]. With your current strength, you'd probably be eaten in a single encounter."
"I understand." Yu Luo sighed, stood up from the ground, and walked over to the wall. A corpse, already completely unrecognizable, lay there. It was the unknown object the demon had thrown as a weapon earlier.
Half of the body had already been gnawed away by the demon, making it impossible to tell whether it had been male or female. A conspicuous pool of blood stained the wall the corpse had struck. If an unsuspecting passerby came across this, they would probably think Yu Luo was some perverted serial killer.
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