After getting confessions from Tree demon and Bat demon, Dan Lei learned what he needed to know about the remaining three demons and, true to his promise, gave them a quick death.
Dan Lei kept the Nichirin Blades he had gotten from Sakonji Urokodaki in a box.
He thought the things were too light, and Kojiro Sasaki didn't find them comfortable to use, either.
Besides, in the eyes of Dan Lei, someone from Luofu, Taisho-era swordsmithing was little more than a kind of handicraft or toy. As weapons, the blades just wouldn't do.
So Dan Lei used the two blades only as tools for dealing with demons.
Simply put, whenever Dan Lei defeated a demon and decided it had outlived its usefulness, he would cut off its head with a Nichirin Blade. The rest of the time, the blades stayed in the box, aside from the occasional cleaning.
After dealing with Tree demon and Bat demon, Dan Lei knew that Lower Rank Three Sickle Leaf was in town, so he immediately hurried back at full speed.
However, as soon as he emerged from the woods, he saw the town engulfed in flames.
When he rushed into town, he found that the place which had maintained the peace during the day had descended into complete chaos.
People were fighting, smashing things, looting, and setting fires everywhere. From the shadowy corners of many houses and streets came the pleas of women and the wanton laughter of men.
The townspeople were giving free rein to the evil in their hearts, turning the town into something like hell.
And it seemed everyone in the town had grown bold as a lion. As soon as Dan Lei entered, ordinary people attacked him several times.
Dan Lei had no intention of showing mercy to these civilians who had become rioters. If they had enough sense not to provoke him, he couldn't care less what they did while he searched for demons.
But if they tried to pick a fight with him, he would break their arms and legs and leave them by the roadside.
As for what happened to them afterward, that was up to whether Heaven chose to take them at that moment.
Of course, these people were also bait Dan Lei was using to lure the demons into action. He had placed a special mark on each of them. If a demon touched one of the marks, the magic power within it would activate the mark, letting Dan Lei know where a demon was.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before a demon couldn't resist attacking the people who were unable to move.
The first one Dan Lei lured out was a demon that could use a bell to emit sound waves, briefly leaving people dazed and staring blankly. The effect wasn't strong; even ordinary people could break free if they had enough willpower.
But when it caught people unawares, silently killing ordinary people was child's play.
The people at the police station had been controlled by it in one go, then killed with the help of other demons.
Dan Lei casually conjured an Ice Longsword and beheaded the demon. Then, using its blood, he drew a Magic Extraction Array on the spot and drained it completely, making it vanish into dust.
Actually, when a Magic Extraction Array drained the magic power from a demon, it produced a small blood-red Magic Crystal.
The problem was that the magic power inside the crystal was extremely impure, like industrial wastewater. It had to be refined before it could be used.
But refining it cost more than the crystal was worth, so Dan Lei usually just crushed it and threw it away.
This time, though, he deliberately placed it inside a fireball, shot it into the sky, and blew it up.
It looked very much like a distress signal. Sickle Leaf would surely come to investigate soon and find out who had sent a call for help.
Sure enough, before long, Sickle Leaf appeared in front of Dan Lei with a two-meter-tall, hulking demon that looked like a Meat Mountain.
In fact, Sickle Leaf had arrived a little earlier. He had simply spent some time confirming whether Dan Lei was a Hashira.
Fortunately, Dan Lei never carried a weapon in his hands, and the only thing on his back was a box. His clothes also had nothing to do with the Demon Slayer Corps.
Besides, Dan Lei's aura was strange, and he could conjure ice into a sword. Sickle Leaf therefore decided that Dan Lei wasn't a Hashira, but some demon from who knew where, here to scavenge.
As soon as Sickle Leaf appeared, he taunted Dan Lei.
"Tell me, where did you come from? You've got no manners, barging into someone else's hunting ground like this."
Seeing Sickle Leaf show up, Dan Lei smiled and conjured an Ice Longsword again.
"Lower Rank Three Sickle Leaf, good of you to show up."
With that, Dan Lei slashed at Sickle Leaf, sending an ice blade flying toward him.
The ice blade wasn't a Breathing Technique. It was purely a probing attack.
But the fat demon beside Sickle Leaf immediately stepped in front of him and blocked the blow with its body.
The ice blade cut open its belly, exposing the disgusting fat within and inflicting frost damage over a wide area. But for this demon, it didn't even count as an injury. It healed within seconds.
Seeing this, Sickle Leaf grumbled in annoyance.
"Damn, so you're another idiot who thinks beating me will let him take my place as Lower Rank Three. Then there's 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 Tree demon and Bat demon had already told Dan Lei everything about it. Its Blood Demon Art was strange: it simply grew fat.
Its fat had remarkable defensive and shock-absorbing properties, and it regenerated quickly. It could even tear off chunks and throw them, making them explode.
Aside from its poor speed, the demon had both incredible durability and serious firepower.
With Dan Lei's swordsmanship, cutting up such a huge mass of flesh was genuinely troublesome. Most of his powerful skills were fixed in place, making them hard to land on a moving target, while his weaker attacks were inefficient against Meat Mountain.
But human beings were human because they had brains.
With a big fellow like this, all Dan Lei needed to do was use a little force to redirect its momentum.
Dan Lei swung the ice blade in his hand, forming a sheet of ice on the ground in front of him. Then he swapped out the cooking oil from the box on his back, splashed it over the ice, and finally raised the far end of the sheet to create an upward slope.
He completed the whole maneuver in the blink of an eye. Meat Mountain had just picked up speed when it charged straight onto the oily ice.
The result was obvious. It fell on the spot, and its enormous momentum sent it flying through the air.
Up there, with its already clumsy body, it was nothing but a lump of fat.
Dan Lei strengthened his body, lightly leaped into the air, and rose to the same height as its neck. He swapped the Ice Sword in his hand for a Nichirin Blade and used a plain Water Surface Slash to cut off its head.
Afterward, Dan Lei remembered to swap the Nichirin Blade in his hand back for the Ice Sword, giving Sickle Leaf the false impression that he had killed his subordinate with an ice blade.
In fact, Sickle Leaf was already starting to panic. Dan Lei had practically killed Meat Mountain in an instant.
Sickle Leaf knew that he wouldn't be able to take down that mass of flesh so quickly himself. Dan Lei might even be stronger than him.
So when Dan Lei looked back at him, Sickle Leaf dropped his earlier arrogance and asked again,
"Who are you? What is Lord Doma to you? Did he turn you into a demon?"
Dan Lei answered Sickle Leaf's question by darting forward and slashing at him, as if to say, "You tell me."
However, Sickle Leaf caught Dan Lei's blade with one arm.
Dan Lei hadn't used a Breathing Technique, but he had underestimated the physical strength of a Lower Rank demon. Leaf-shaped scales had grown on Sickle Leaf's arm, so after the scales reduced the damage, the blade bit straight into the bone and got stuck in the flesh.
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