Training Ends, Time to Test My Skills Against Ghosts (Seeking Reads)

Time passed without notice—a full year had gone by since arriving at Sakonji Urokodaki's hut.

After confirming that the magical energy in the air could also exist as True Qi, Dan Lei felt he had discovered a broad highway that the Type-Moon magical world lacked.

Breathing Technique passively dispersed True Qi into flesh and blood, strengthening the body enough to contend with demons. Dan Lei chose to achieve Total Concentration Constant through sustained accumulation.

The outer layer of the meridians was the Magic Circuits. By using the Magic Circuits to seal the True Qi within the meridians, any dissipation would remain trapped inside. When subsequent True Qi surged in, it would naturally push the preceding True Qi to circulate throughout the body.

Then, once the meridians were truly packed full, the Magic Circuits would absorb some of the True Qi from the meridians, completing a continuous flow without the risk of bursting the vessels.

Finally, the magic power refined a second time by the Magic Circuits flowed back into the body, making Dan Lei feel his physical constitution rapidly improving.

Moreover, once his meridians were strengthened to a certain degree, Dan Lei's original idea—reversing the process—also became feasible. As long as the True Qi didn't cause blood to flow backward or drain the energy from his flesh and blood, there would be no problems.

In truth, if a professional Divine Era Magician were by Dan Lei's side now, they would tell him that he was like a divine beast or phantom beast cub entering its growth phase—his body absorbing energy every day to strengthen itself.

As for Tanjiro, with Kojiro Sasaki occasionally guiding his swordsmanship, his skill improved faster than in the original story.

In the original, Tanjiro took a full year to learn all the forms of Water Breathing. This time, after ten months, Sakonji Urokodaki declared he had nothing left to teach and told Tanjiro to cut the boulder.

However, this time Tanjiro didn't have to practice swordsmanship alone. Dan Lei and Kojiro Sasaki took turns sparring with him.

The situation was roughly this: after Kojiro Sasaki finished tormenting Dan Lei with his blade, Dan Lei would go find Tanjiro to restore his confidence.

Sometimes, when Kojiro Sasaki saw Tanjiro hitting a bottleneck in his swordsmanship, he would personally step in to break through it.

"Breaking through the bottleneck" here meant physically breaking it—full-on combat, letting Tanjiro experience his flaws firsthand.

As long as nutrition was replenished properly, mere flesh wounds could be treated by Dan Lei.

Poor Tanjiro's worst incident involved over two hundred wounds when he came to Dan Lei for treatment. He was drenched in blood, which actually refined Dan Lei's Abundance Destiny power and led to his first healing technique for others: Medicine Dragon Healing the World.

Well, this technique was an imitation of Azure Dragon Cleanses the World—creating a water dragon filled with Abundance healing power. This water dragon had almost no offensive capability, but tossing it onto a wounded person and letting it coil around them a few times would rapidly heal them.

Of course, Dan Lei and Kojiro Sasaki treated Tanjiro sincerely, and he was deeply grateful.

Though entirely unintentional, during the New Year season, Tanjiro voluntarily came out and performed all twelve dances of his family's Hinokami Kagura.

This saved Dan Lei the trouble of coaxing out Sun Breathing, because with his current memory, seeing the twelve dances once was enough to memorize them.

Thus, this time it didn't take half a year. Just three months after Sakonji Urokodaki assigned the boulder-cutting task, Tanjiro split the massive rock with a single slash.

However, cutting the boulder early didn't let Tanjiro join the Demon Slayer Corps ahead of schedule. The Final Selection wouldn't move up just because of Tanjiro's progress; he still had to wait for the original timeline to take the exam.

But Dan Lei took his leave as soon as Tanjiro completed the boulder-cutting task.

In fact, even before Tanjiro finished learning all of Water Breathing, Dan Lei had already achieved Total Concentration Constant—and not through shortcuts, but purely with Breathing Technique.

Dan Lei's rapid progress was tied to his body's fast growth.

At this point, Kojiro Sasaki judged that aside from martial skill proficiency and adaptability in combat, Dan Lei had already surpassed Giyu Tomioka.

According to Kojiro Sasaki, for Dan Lei's martial arts to advance further, he needed to fight for real—not sparring with Kojiro Sasaki, where he knew he wouldn't die, but facing an enemy's killing intent head-on, blade to blade, blood to blood.

For Dan Lei, research on demons had also hit a bottleneck. Blood Demon Arts couldn't be replicated, ordinary demons had too mixed a bloodline, and progress on analyzing the demon clan's bloodline was zero.

Research on absorbing Ley Line energy had also stalled because Nezuko, having absorbed enough energy, had fallen into a deep slumber.

Still, with the thought of seeing things through to the end, Dan Lei stayed until Tanjiro completed all his training courses before bidding farewell to Sakonji Urokodaki and Tanjiro.

Over this past year, the Demon Slayer Corps hadn't contacted Dan Lei even once, clearly maintaining considerable wariness.

But that was understandable. If the Demon Slayer Corps weren't cautious, they would have been wiped out by Kibutsuji Muzan long ago—they couldn't have held out for so many years.

Fortunately, Dan Lei didn't actually need to meet the Demon Slayer Corps' Master. He had no mission in this world; he was simply stranded here because the Holy Grail's transmigration energy wasn't fully charged.

So Dan Lei could essentially do as he pleased. However, the education from his two previous lives and this one had made him someone willing to follow rules and order—but when order severely conflicted with his inner convictions, he would follow his heart. If the conflict wasn't serious, he would follow the order.

That said, thanks to the influence of his second life, don't expect Dan Lei to prioritize ordinary people's safety once he started acting.

At best, Dan Lei would consider ordinary people's safety, but if taking care of them felt too troublesome, he would completely ignore them.

And if ordinary people, out of ignorance, blocked his path, Dan Lei wouldn't hesitate to kill or burn things.

If classified by DND alignment, Dan Lei felt he belonged to Neutral Evil, but leaning toward True Neutral.

Tanjiro was very reluctant to see Dan Lei and Kojiro Sasaki leave, but he knew they couldn't stay with him forever, so he bid them farewell with tears in his eyes.

As for Sakonji Urokodaki, he had seen too many partings to be emotionally shaken.

Before leaving, Dan Lei asked Sakonji Urokodaki for two Nichirin Blades.

The reason Nichirin Blades could kill demons was that the forging metal absorbed a certain radiation from the sun, which was a natural bane to demons.

As for why only cutting the neck could kill a demon, Dan Lei said he had dissected dozens of demons and still hadn't found the reason. It could only be a rule set by the creator god.

But if someone expected Dan Lei to replicate that radiation, he would say they were overestimating him.

Sure, his research on demons looked impressive, but that was because everything about demons hadn't exceeded the scope of his knowledge.

Dan Lei's knowledge came from three sources: his understanding of various world settings from two lives ago, the puppet-making and related knowledge he learned from Aozaki Touko in his previous life, and the basic scientific knowledge, medical knowledge, puppet knowledge, basic Pathstrider common sense, and ordinary Cloud Chant Techniques available to the Chizuru Clan from the Luofu in this life.

But none of this included stellar energy. Reproducing the sun's radiation waves was the domain of the Clock Tower's Astrology Department, or specialized scholars on the Luofu.

Dan Lei belonged to neither side, so naturally, he had no idea how to reproduce stellar radiation.

Thus, even if he had other means to kill demons, using a Nichirin Blade to cut a demon's neck was still the most efficient method.

Dan Lei wasn't foolish enough to ignore a simple tool and insist on using his own magic to kill demons.