Night of the Riot (Seeking Reads)

After the tree demon and bat demon confessed, Dan Lei finished learning about the remaining three demons and, true to his word, gave them a swift end.

The Nichirin Blade he'd gotten from Sakonji Urokodaki he kept stored in the box day to day.

Dan Lei found the thing too light, and Kojiro Sasaki also found it unwieldy.

Besides, the forging techniques of the Taisho era, to someone like Dan Lei who came from the Luofu, were nothing more than a handicraft toy—forget using it as a weapon.

So those two blades served Dan Lei only as tools for dealing with demons.

Simply put, whenever Dan Lei defeated a demon and decided it was useless, he'd lop off its head with the Nichirin Blade. The rest of the time, aside from daily polishing, they stayed in the box.

After finishing off the tree demon and bat demon, Dan Lei, knowing that Lower Rank Three Sickle Leaf was in the town, immediately rushed back at full speed.

But the moment he stepped out of the woods, he could already see the town ablaze with flames.

Charging into the town, the place that had maintained peace during the day had completely descended into chaos.

People were fighting, smashing, looting, and burning everywhere. In the shadows of many houses and streets, women's pleas and men's unrestrained laughter could still be heard.

The people were now indulging their darkest impulses, turning the town into a hellscape.

And it seemed every person in this town had the guts of a bear and the gall of a leopard—Dan Lei was attacked by several waves of ordinary folks as soon as he entered.

For these civilians who had degenerated into a mob, Dan Lei showed no mercy. Those with enough sense not to provoke him, he couldn't be bothered with—they could do whatever they wanted until he found the demon.

But anyone who came at him got their limbs broken and was tossed by the roadside.

As for what fate awaited them after that, that was up to heaven if it wanted to take them now.

Of course, these people also served as bait to lure the demons out. Dan Lei had placed special marks on them—if a demon touched the mark, the demon's magic would activate it, and Dan Lei would know where the demon was.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before a demon couldn't resist going after one of the immobilized people.

The first one Dan Lei hooked was a demon that used a bell to emit sound waves that briefly stunned people into a daze. But its effect was weak—even an ordinary person with strong will could break free.

Still, catching someone off guard and silently taking out a civilian was basic routine.

The police station's men had been caught by that wave of control, then finished off by other demons working together.

For a creature like that, Dan Lei casually condensed an Ice Longsword and beheaded it, then used its blood to draw a Magic Extraction Array on the spot, draining it dry until it turned to ash and vanished.

Actually, when a demon's magic was fully extracted by the Magic Extraction Array, it would form a small blood-red Magic Crystal.

But the magic inside that crystal was extremely impure—like industrial wastewater. To use it, you'd have to purify it.

And the cost of purification was higher than the crystal's own value, so Dan Lei usually just crushed and discarded it.

This time, though, he deliberately placed it inside a fireball, shot it into the sky, and detonated it.

That looked just like a distress signal—Sickle Leaf would surely come looking to see who was calling for help.

And indeed, before long, Sickle Leaf appeared before Dan Lei with a two-meter-tall, mountain-of-fat demon that looked like a Meat Mountain.

Actually, Sickle Leaf had arrived a bit earlier—he'd just spent some time confirming whether Dan Lei was a Hashira.

Fortunately, Dan Lei never carried a weapon in hand, only had a box on his back, and his clothes had nothing to do with the Demon Slayer Corps.

Plus, Dan Lei's aura was strange, and he could directly condense ice into a sword, so Sickle Leaf judged that Dan Lei wasn't a Hashira, but some unknown demon poaching on his turf.

So, the moment Sickle Leaf appeared, he sneered at Dan Lei and said, "Hey, where the hell are you from? Don't you know the rules, just barging into someone else's hunting grounds?"

Seeing Sickle Leaf show up, Dan Lei grinned and condensed an ice longsword again, laughing, "Lower Rank Three Sickle Leaf, good that you're here."

With that, Dan Lei slashed an ice blade straight at Sickle Leaf.

This ice blade wasn't a Breathing Technique—pure probing.

But the fat demon beside Sickle Leaf stepped in front, blocking the strike with its body.

The ice blade cut open its belly, revealing disgusting layers of fat and causing localized frost damage, but to this demon, it wasn't even a wound—it healed in seconds.

Seeing this, Sickle Leaf clicked his tongue in annoyance and complained, "Tch, another idiot who thinks beating me means they get to be Lower Rank Three. No need to waste words—Meat Mountain, kill him!"

At Sickle Leaf's command, the demon named Meat Mountain charged at Dan Lei like a wild boar.

But the tree demon and bat demon had already spilled all its info to Dan Lei. This thing's Blood Demon Art was weird—just pure fat growth.

Its fat had incredible defense, cushioning, and regeneration, and it could even tear chunks off and throw them as explosives.

In short, aside from being slow, this thing was both tanky and high-damage.

With Dan Lei's swordsmanship, fighting a lump of fat like this was a bit troublesome—his big-damage skills were mostly fixed-position and hard to hit moving targets, while his small-damage skills were inefficient against Meat Mountain.

But the reason humans are human is because they have brains.

For a brute like this, just use leverage.

Dan Lei flicked his ice blade, creating a sheet of ice on the ground ahead, then swapped cooking oil from the box on his back and spread it over the ice, finally tilting the far end of the ice sheet upward to form a ramp.

This all happened in a flash. Meat Mountain, just getting up to speed, charged straight onto the oil-slicked ice.

The result was predictable—it slipped, and with its massive momentum, it launched into the air like a rocket.

Once in the air, that thing's already clumsy body was nothing but a lump of pure fat.

Dan Lei simply reinforced his own body, lightly leaped to the height of its neck, swapped the Ice Sword in his hand for a Nichirin Blade, and with an unadorned Water Surface Slash, lopped off its head.

After finishing, Dan Lei didn't forget to swap the Nichirin Blade back, giving Sickle Leaf below the illusion that he had taken down its subordinate using just the Ice Sword.

In truth, Sickle Leaf was already starting to panic, because Dan Lei had practically obliterated Meat Mountain in an instant.

Sickle Leaf asked itself whether it could take down that lump of meat in a short time—the answer was no—so Dan Lei might very well be stronger than it.

Thus, when Dan Lei turned his gaze back to it, Sickle Leaf shed its earlier arrogance and asked again, "Who the hell are you? What's your relationship with Lord Doma? Are you a demon he turned?"

In response to Sickle Leaf's question, Dan Lei simply dashed forward in a single stride, slashing a sword straight at it, with an expression that said, "Take a guess."

However, that slash from Dan Lei was caught directly by Sickle Leaf's single arm.

Though Dan Lei hadn't used a Breathing Technique for this strike, he had underestimated the physical resilience of a Lower Moon demon. Sickle Leaf's arm had sprouted leaf-shaped scale armor, so when the blade cut down, the scales reduced the damage, and the sword bit straight into bone, getting stuck in the flesh.