After leaving Sakonji Urokodaki's cabin, Dan Lei didn't head straight for the places where the Upper and Lower Rank demons from the original story were known to be.
Dan Lei knew full well that you had to take things one step at a time, eat one bite at a time, and start training with the basics.
The demons within dozens of miles of Sakonji Urokodaki's cabin had basically all been caught by Kojiro Sasaki. They'd all become Dan Lei's test subjects, then died in various lethal experiments.
So now, if Dan Lei wanted to find demons, he had to go farther afield.
Fortunately, finding demons wasn't too hard. He could just ask at the police station.
Dan Lei knew a simple Suggestion magic spell, which was more than enough to control ordinary people.
Telephones already existed in the Taisho era. Dan Lei could just have a senior police official ask around among his friends, and then he'd know which places had seen ongoing disappearances or several people suddenly going missing.
Once he had a location, he could use the police identification papers and the money contributed by the police chief, who was fat with excess, to take a train straight there.
Dan Lei wasn't worried about running into Enmu, Lower Rank One.
For one thing, he had mental defenses, so it was unclear whether Enmu's Blood Demon Art would work on him. And even if it did, Kojiro Sasaki was still nearby.
Dan Lei certainly wasn't going to buy Kojiro Sasaki a train ticket. He could just follow along in his Spirit Body form.
If a demon ambushed Dan Lei and managed to catch him off guard, Kojiro Sasaki would naturally deal with it.
At the very least, he could definitely carry Dan Lei and run.
Of course, Dan Lei wasn't lucky enough to run into Enmu just by taking a random train.
His several train trips during the Taisho era all went smoothly. He didn't encounter a single demon.
As for those villages and towns with missing people, two-thirds of the cases turned out to be human trafficking. It was proof enough that, in any era, people were scarier than demons.
There wasn't much to say about the human traffickers. Dan Lei took down the whole gang, and if they had anything like gems that could be used in magecraft rituals, he took those too.
As for the people being trafficked, he gave them some money and left them to go their separate ways. Dan Lei wouldn't concern himself with whether they lived or died after that.
The remaining few demons all died by Dan Lei's blade.
Just as Kojiro Sasaki had said, after a few real close-quarters fights with demons, Dan Lei had indeed gained some insight into his swordsmanship. He'd also started combining it with Type-Moon Magecraft, trying to develop a Magic Swordsman fighting style of his own.
It was just that these demons put too little pressure on him. To be honest, even without using the Breathing Technique, he could toy with these guys to death using Magecraft Threads.
After wandering around Japan like this for over half a year, Dan Lei still hadn't come across any demons worth mentioning.
So, unable to find any powerful demons, Dan Lei began wondering if he should just go after those few demons from the anime whose whereabouts were known.
Since he still hadn't fought any Lower Rank demons, Dan Lei planned to take a look around Mount Natagumo.
But just as Dan Lei had given up on looking for demons, he passed through a town on his way to the train station—a town with no record of any disappearances at the police station.
The moment he entered the town, Dan Lei sensed that something was wrong. Judging by the number and age of the houses, quite a few people lived there. There were plenty of utility poles along the roads, and the town seemed fairly modern.
But in broad daylight, there were very few people on the streets, and one by one, they covered their faces with cloth and hurried along.
Dan Lei could also sense quite a few ill-intentioned gazes coming from the surrounding houses, as if they wanted to rob him.
There seemed to be a plague in this town, and the townspeople were extremely agitated. Something wasn't right.
Just in case, Dan Lei cast Air filtration magic on himself, to avoid getting caught out by some strange mishap.
After that, Dan Lei headed straight for a restaurant in town, only to find that they were all closed.
With no other choice, and figuring that the police were the right people to ask for help, Dan Lei had no choice but to pay a visit to the town's police station.
But in a town this large, there wasn't a single person in the police station. Dan Lei scanned the building with Detection Magecraft and confirmed that the last time a living person had entered was at least four days ago. There were also clear signs that the place had been ransacked.
However, in a corner of the room, Dan Lei found some hair that didn't belong to a human. There was a demon here.
During the Taisho era, a small town's police station would have had at least a dozen officers.
There had been no word at all of anything happening here, which meant all information had been cut off. Those dozen or so officers had most likely met with misfortune.
For a demon to eat more than a dozen people without making a sound—it seemed this one was no weakling.
Just then, Dan Lei suddenly heard a noise at the entrance to the police station. He went downstairs to see what was going on.
The noise had come from a young woman. When she saw Dan Lei coming down from upstairs, she looked a little flustered, but didn't run. Instead, she asked nervously,
"Who are you? Why are you here?"
Clearly, she was a local and knew everyone at the police station, so she could tell at a glance that Dan Lei didn't belong there.
Dan Lei figured she was a ready-made source of information. He cast a Suggestion magic spell on her, then asked sternly,
"I'm a special envoy from the prefectural police station. Do you know where all the officers in this town have gone? Not a single one is here in broad daylight. This is completely unacceptable!"
Under the influence of Suggestion magic, the woman didn't doubt a word Dan Lei said. She immediately hurried over and said anxiously,
"My name is Ono Yunako. I'm the wife of Taro Hirata, an officer at this police station. My husband has been missing for five days for no reason, and now there's a plague in town. I'm at my wits' end. Please, sir, help me find my husband."
Dan Lei thought Ono Yunako was telling the truth, so he continued questioning her. Under the influence of Suggestion magic, she told him everything she knew.
Only then did Dan Lei get a general idea of what was going on in the town.
Five days ago, a sudden outbreak of influenza had hit the town. It was a terrifying plague: those infected would cough desperately for hours, until they coughed themselves to death.
The town doctor said the water supply had been contaminated. They'd also found many animals dead for no apparent reason by the river, so now no one dared drink the local water.
But the town's police officers had all gone missing, and the telephone lines connecting them to the outside had been cut.
The town had sent people out to seek help and buy water, but not a single one had returned.
Ono Yunako had actually come to the police station five days ago, but she hadn't found anything at the time.
She'd come today hoping to find some weapons at the station to protect herself. After five days without water, the town's order had nearly collapsed. She was a young woman alone in an empty house, and she was terribly afraid.
After learning all this, Dan Lei immediately felt that he'd found a big fish.
It was now all but certain that the town's police officers had been killed. The most likely reason the demon had killed them first was so that no one would be left to stop the town from descending into chaos.
The town was surrounded on all sides by dense woods that could block out the sunlight. Even during the day, a demon could move through them and ambush anyone trying to leave town for help.
This demon clearly had a bigger plan. So far, it had only eaten the people from the police station and those who'd gone out to seek help. But it was most likely trying to plunge the town into chaos, then take advantage of the turmoil to eat people.
If a plague caused a major riot in a town, then a fire broke out and several hundred people died, it would be perfectly normal for the bodies to be incomplete. No one would think the demon was responsible.
But the demon had to have an inside contact in the town government. Otherwise, how could it have intercepted every single person who'd gone out to report what was happening?
Before you continue