"What... what are you talking about?"
The woman grew nervous.
Sweat soaked her back, and beads of it ran down her cheeks to the tip of her chin.
"Because I think you're that devil."
"She's a devil!" Denji jumped back to a safe distance in shock.
Yet the woman gave a confident laugh. "You're a Devil Hunter, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am."
"Then you should be able to tell whether I'm a devil, shouldn't you?"
"When someone's desires grow too strong, they can become a devil, too."
"You... mean you suspect me of killing Eiko?"
"I don't suspect you. I'm certain."
"Impossible. Why would I kill Eiko? We've been friends for ten years."
"Friends for ten years!! I haven't even been with Pochita that long." Denji knew how deep his bond with Pochita was.
A friendship of ten years had to be even more deeply rooted.
"They've been friends for ten years. There's no way she'd kill her friend."
"You're still too green, Denji. You've never gone to school or held a job. You've spent your whole life stuck in that little cabin. Come out with your master more often, and you'll learn a lot."
"I'm not your apprentice," Denji shot back.
"You say I killed Eiko. Where's your evidence?"
The woman remained utterly confident.
"We'll get to the evidence. First, let's go over the suspicious details."
Meng Fan stood up with both hands in his pockets.
He no longer treated the woman sitting on the floor as a victim.
"Fine." The woman raised an eyebrow.
"First, when the head was thrown over to us, I examined the cut. It was uneven and ragged. Clearly, it took several chops to sever it. No devil could be that pathetic, no matter how weak."
"Second, the devil left right after killing someone, even though there was a witness. It neither drank blood nor ate anyone. So what was its goal? If it wanted to kill, you wouldn't be alive. If it wanted blood and flesh, the body wouldn't still be here. That leaves this devil with no motive. It simply showed up and vanished. That's nothing like how a devil behaves."
"Third, 'Did it work?' Those were the first words you unconsciously blurted out when you woke up. Clearly, they weren't meant for us, but for someone else. That was exactly what made me think something was off about you."
Listening beside him, Denji could hardly believe his ears!!! ∑(ﾟДﾟノ)
He had only come over to kill a devil.
But then everything had taken a sudden turn.
The woman who had fainted had become the devil instead.
"Hahahaha..."
After hearing him out, the woman burst into laughter rather than showing any surprise.
Smack!!!!
Meng Fan slapped her, instantly turning her laughter into shock.
"What are you doing!!"
The woman held her cheek, stunned by what Meng Fan had done.
"You're only laughing to hide your unease."
"If you're so determined to believe I killed Eiko, why would I scream and draw attention? Why wouldn't I run?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't she run after killing someone?" Denji was puzzled, too.
"That's the clever part of your plan to make someone else take the fall. Originally, you intended to run after killing her. But you must have overheard us talking about devils and guessed we were Devil Hunters, so you came up with a plan to pin it on a devil."
"You threw the head toward us and screamed 'devil' to make us think one had appeared. By then, you'd already dressed and were ready to escape. Even if anyone questioned you later, you could say you'd run away out of fear."
"But you never expected the head you threw to fly back on its own. Instead of escaping, you were frightened into passing out."
"That's a nice theory, but if I killed someone, why isn't there any blood on me?"
The woman continued making excuses.
"You're lying. There are clearly bloodstains on your clothes," Denji suddenly said, as if he had spotted a detail everyone else had missed.
"That's from catching the head, okay? And it's only a little!" The woman nearly screamed.
"Simple. You weren't wearing clothes when you killed her, so there couldn't have been blood on them. You must have washed the blood off your body with the water in the cold-water bucket. That also explains why the bucket was knocked over: you didn't want anyone seeing the bloodstains in it."
The woman's expression froze. Only after a long pause did she speak. "Who exactly are you?"
"I already told you. A Devil Hunter. Whether they're devils in this world or in hell, I hunt them all."
"You... whatever you say, if I really killed Eiko, where's your evidence? Everything you just said was only deduction. If this really is a murder committed by a human, it's not a Devil Hunter's business anyway. It's for Public Safety to handle."
"Getting nervous, are you?"
"I'm not nervous. Can you find any evidence that I killed Eiko? If I really killed her, wouldn't I at least need a knife or an axe?"
The entire room was in plain view.
There was nowhere to hide anything.
"It must be in the hot spring pool." After hearing all that, Denji thought Meng Fan made a lot of sense, and he was beginning to believe the woman had killed her friend.
"Then go search the bottom of the pool." The woman's face was full of disdain.
Meng Fan said calmly, "We're not searching the pool. We're searching inside the body."
Those words sent the woman scrambling backward before she quickly got to her feet.
Her sudden reaction startled Denji.
Meng Fan showed no reaction. He had already anticipated her next move.
"Impressive. You figured it all out in just a few minutes."
"You guessed right. I did kill Eiko."
"What!! You actually killed your friend of ten years!!" Denji clenched his fists and roared.
Although he thought Meng Fan's deductions were right, deep down he hadn't wanted this outcome.
"Heh. What's a friend of ten years worth? With power, I can have all the friends I want. I made a contract with the Headless Devil. All I had to do was cut off my friend Eiko's head, and I'd gain permanent power. I wanted that power so badly. Once I had it, I could kill everyone who used to mock me and look down on me!!"
"Damn you!!"
Unable to hold back any longer, Denji charged at the woman with his fist raised.
But her body suddenly twisted and rapidly swelled.
Her head snapped backward with a sickening break and dangled behind her back.
She punched Denji into the bloody bathing pool.
"I didn't want to get tangled up with Devil Hunters. I only wanted to kill the people I wanted dead. But you just had to expose me, so I'll have to cut your head off first."
The Headless Devil reached into the opening in her neck and pulled a large blade out of her flesh.
"You want to kill me? Go ahead and try."
"Die!!"
The blade cleaved straight down.
For an instant, the image of catching a blade barehanded flashed through Meng Fan's mind.
But he wasn't stupid enough to actually try it.
He revealed his blade claws and met the Headless Devil's heavy blade head-on.
As the two remained locked together, Meng Fan suddenly laughed.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I'm laughing because you went to all this trouble to gain power, yet the only ones who'll die are you and your best friend Eiko. All the people who mocked you and kept you down are still alive."
"Impossible."
The Headless Devil roared.
She pushed harder with her arms, only to find that she couldn't move Meng Fan an inch.
"Didn't you two agree to see a movie together tonight? She'd been looking forward to it for a long time, hadn't she? As her friend, shouldn't you at least have let her watch the movie she'd been waiting so long to see?"
Meng Fan's sudden words tugged at the woman's heart.
She felt dizzy, with a pressure building behind her eyes.
A succession of scenes flashed rapidly through her mind.
Thank you. Thank you for making time to come see the premiere with me tonight.
As a reward, I'll go to the hot springs with you first.
This movie is actually about the friendship between two people, too.
I'm so lucky I get to watch it with my best friend.
But the ending might be a little tragic, so you'd better prepare yourself.
Eiko had tugged at the woman as she spoke playfully.
"Ei... Eiko!!"
"You... stop talking."
The Headless Devil's strength suddenly surged.
She pushed Meng Fan back step by step.
But Meng Fan still watched her coldly. "If you'd stayed with her until the late-night movie ended, I believe you never would have run into me."
With that, he passed straight from in front of the Headless Devil to behind her.
The Headless Devil's corpse fell into five pieces.
The head that dropped from her body rolled right beside Eiko's.
The two heads rested close together, forehead to forehead.
The severed head of the woman who had contracted with the devil still retained a trace of consciousness.
Looking at the head pressed against hers, her lips trembled violently. "Ei... Eiko."
"I... I'm sorry."
"Save that for hell."
Crack!!!
The next second, Meng Fan crushed the woman's head under his foot.
(I hadn't received a single update request for days, but after taking a few days off, I came back to find over 99 of them. So I'm back to updating again. The quality is absolutely guaranteed. Please leave a five-star review!!!)
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