Although he believed there would be no demon inside, Teiichi still approached the house cautiously.
He glanced down at the small patch of blood at his feet, then raised his head. His right hand gripped the hilt of the Nichirin Blade at his lower back, while his left slowly pushed the door open.
"Creeeak~"
With a grating creak, the door slowly swung open. Teiichi watched the interior nervously, but no demon lunged at him.
Sunlight spilled through the gap in the doorway, clearly revealing the scene inside.
It was an ordinary house. The entrance opened into a spacious main room, with two rooms beside it whose doors were shut.
Several corpses lay piled loosely together in the main room. Most were incomplete, and Teiichi even saw an arm sticking out of one corpse's abdomen.
Maggots crawled thickly over the corpses, while countless flies buzzed above them.
As he looked at the scene before him, a mixture of nausea and anger kept welling up in Teiichi's heart.
Looking at the unbearable sight before him, Teiichi felt a wave of nausea and anger. He took a moment to steady his breathing, then raised his left hand loosely over his mouth and nose, trying to block some of the stench of decay washing over him. Then he lifted his leg and carefully stepped inside.
He carefully checked every room in the house.
As expected, there was no demon.
He returned to the main room, his gaze sweeping over the corpses again as an indescribable sorrow welled up within him. He went outside, snapped a branch off a tree, and returned to the house.
Holding the branch, he approached the bodies, shifted the piled corpses apart a little, and began counting.
"One, two... six."
Six corpses. Did that mean yesterday's little boy was already among them?
Teiichi stood silently beside the corpses for a while, then slowly backed out of the house.
Standing in the doorway, Teiichi studied the scene inside in detail, his gaze like a searchlight.
Inside, several corpses were piled together, with a large pool of blood spreading beneath them like a dark red lake.
His gaze followed the trail of blood, and he discovered that its source was actually beneath the wooden door outside. Between the wooden door and the corpses, blood lay scattered in splashes, like an incomplete map.
Teiichi sank into thought.
There was nothing to puzzle over about the blood covering the largest area beneath the corpses. They had still been bleeding when the demon tossed them there, creating that large pool.
There was also a large patch of blood outside the wooden door. The demon must have stood outside for a little while holding a human corpse. So what had he been standing outside for?
He continued thinking, his gaze slowly shifting to the stretch between the wooden door and the corpses. The blood lay scattered across the floor, as though telling him something.
The following scene began to take shape in Teiichi's mind:
On a pitch-black night, a demon stood silently at the wooden house's entrance, holding a limp human figure in his right hand. Blood dripped steadily from the figure, staining the ground before the wooden door red. After a moment, the demon slowly opened the door, tossed the figure in his hand into the house, then slowly closed the door.
But the scene broke off there.
Teiichi's brows knitted tightly. No matter how he tried, he could not work out what had happened before that.
A string of questions arose in Teiichi's mind:
Why had the demon stood at the entrance? Had he eaten there?
But the amount of blood seemed a little off!
If he had eaten at the entrance, the area stained with blood should not have been smaller than the one inside! Besides, being so close to the house, wouldn't the stench of the corpses still drift out?
But if he hadn't eaten at the entrance, where had he eaten?
At that thought, Teiichi raised his head and looked around outside the house.
Why couldn't he see blood anywhere else outside?
Was it a Blood Demon Art?
Or something else?
Yet although these questions circled in Teiichi's mind for a long time, no answers came.
He shook his head helplessly and pulled his thoughts back to the present.
He glanced once more at the corpses inside, especially the two that were still relatively fresh, his heart filled with sympathy and regret. He quietly apologized, telling them he could only notify their families to come bury them after the demon had been eliminated.
Slowly pulling the wooden door shut, Teiichi left the vicinity of the house.
He had searched six houses without finding any sign of the demon. Did that mean the demon was in the last house?
He thought silently.
"I thought my luck hadn't hit rock bottom, but it turns out I still have to search every last one."
Teiichi sighed softly, but then straightened his back, roused himself, and headed into the woods.
Another hour passed before Teiichi finally made his way through the dense woods and found the last abandoned house.
He took a deep breath and slowly approached it.
"Hiss-"
He increased the intensity of his Wind Breathing, rested his right hand on the Nichirin Blade behind him, and slowly pushed the house's door open.
"Creeeak~"
As the wooden door creaked open, the interior remained utterly silent, as though time had frozen there.
There was no sign of the demon he had expected.
Teiichi stepped inside, his gaze sweeping warily over his surroundings. He carefully pushed open the doors to the other rooms, but they were just as silent, with nothing unusual inside.
Teiichi slowly walked out of the wooden house.
"Tsk."
He glanced at the setting sun in the distance, knitted his brows tightly, and clicked his tongue.
"That makes no sense! If he isn't here, where is he? I didn't see any caves or anything along the way, either..."
Teiichi muttered to himself, his voice betraying a little confusion and anxiety.
He stood where he was, trying to think of clues about the demon, but his mind was utterly blank, as though something had blocked it. Without realizing it, he began staring into space, lost in thought.
After a long while, Teiichi snapped out of his daze.
He looked up at the sky and saw that only a small part of the sun's disk remained visible. He frowned slightly, realizing it was already getting late.
"There's no time to get back for dinner. Am I going to go hungry tonight?"
Teiichi sighed, feeling a little annoyed.
He thought that when it rained, it really poured. Had he known, he would have brought some dry rations so he would not have to go hungry.
"Why does my very first demon have to be so much trouble!" His voice betrayed a little helplessness and dejection.
"Sigh~"
He sighed, turned around, and headed toward the little wooden house where he had found the corpses earlier.
Since he could find no other clues, he could only lie in wait at the place where the demon dumped his corpses.
Although doing so might put more people in danger, he had no better method.
He could only hope that he would find the demon as soon as possible, eliminate him, and secure justice for those innocent victims.