Chapter 78: Incarnated Demons

Chapter 78: Incarnated Demons

The villagers stepped back. Mo Fei turned and picked up his Glaive to leave.

Kiyori also picked up her bow and arrows. She moved out quietly after Mo Fei. The armed villagers watched them go; some felt relief by that. Their grips loosen on the weapons.

Without other words. Both of them left the village’s border.

Mo Fei walked quietly, wondering what he should do next. The Serpent was still finding the pages, and one of them was in the World Six. Kiyori walked alongside him, her footsteps clicking against the ground. She stared at the pouch; at least she found another shard.

Kiyori stared down at the ground, then blinked once. Finally, she broke the silence. "So, what does your world look like? Are there demons too? Shrine or even temples?"

Mo Fei stopped walking for a second. "Do you have some problem with that tongue? How are you talking so much?"

She looked around the forest, her tone slightly changing for something else. Her gaze landed on her feet. "No... I just thought... I would stay quiet if you would rather have a quiet journey..."

Mo Fei, upon realizing, glanced back over his shoulder. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Listen, I didn’t mean it that way, but like, uh, it’s quite outstanding that you can talk so much."

A genuine smile crossed over her face as she followed him.

Mo Fei spoke again. "My world doesn’t have any demons or any dangerous things. At least not the kind you talk about."

"A different kind?"

"Yeah, a human kind."

Time passed; they passed through the forest, and it had been night already.

In their line of sight, they saw a few huts. It was another village, but as they went closer, the village showed the condition.

There was no one in the village, but there was a scent of something rusty and a copper smell of blood.

Kiyori moved forward, her eyes scanning the half-broken huts. Their debris was scattered around the ground, and within a few meters’ radius, multiple human bodies were half eaten. "The village had been annihilated..."

Her gaze lowered at the bodies; she went closer, her hand tracing the wounded bodies that were not eaten. Yet, she found all of them dead nonetheless, half-eaten or not. Her gaze fell on wet blood that still hadn’t dried yet. "It seems that happened recently."

Mo Fei observed the village, his gaze darting from the dead to broken huts. "Who did this?"

Kiyori knelt beside a samurai whose chest armor had been torn open. She pulled back the blood-soaked linen of his collar. "See this." She called out.

Mo Fei stepped closer, tilting his glaive away so the moonlight could hit the corpse. He winced slightly. On the man’s shoulder was a massive, circular puncture wound that almost seemed like an animal. "A wolf?" Mo Fei asked, though he suspected something else.

"I’ve never seen an animal jaw this wide," Kiyori sighed. Her fingers hovered just above the wound, refusing to touch it. "The spacing of the teeth is similar to a yōkai."

Mo Fei leaned in. From the flesh around the deep punctures, a black mist came out.

Kiyori stood and walked toward Mo Fei while scanning the village; the people had different shapes of bites. Some looked like a large snake bite, and some seemed as if slashed by sharp claws. "Why would demons kill these villagers? They never come in groups."

Mo Fei tapped his temple, his eyes turned silver with the faint moonlit glow. There were dull, unmoving spirit threads of the dead villagers.

But between them, there was an active thread. Alive, but the colour of the thread wasn’t silver like the other spirit threads. They were tangled in different colours like crimson, grey, black, and light orange. He had never seen this type of thread before. Suddenly his head began to ache again; the corruption slowly flared when he used his eyes.

"Great Master, don’t use the eyes yet." The Serpent hissed behind his head.

The spirits drank the never-ending darkness without stopping.

Mo Fei clenched his head and shut his eyes. Kiyori turned only to find Mo Fei’s face going pale. Mo Fei pressed his palm against a wall of a broken hut; she eaned forward and caught him before he could fall. "I don’t want to shoot you again."

"I saw something, as if multiple souls were woven into one." He forced the words out.

"Souls in one body..." Kiyori’s expression flickered at his words.

Then, her head jolted toward the end of the village. She sensed a presence of shards; they were too many, even more than what she had in her possession.

Kiyori’s hand went to her bow. She put an arrow in the string and then pulled it, aiming toward the silent, dark treeline. With a fyuu sound, the air launched toward the tree, lighting up the night.

Far away in the tree line. It hit a tree that was releasing a purple, demonic Miasma, the arrow instantly purified the smoke. In the branch, a figure stood, entirely wrapped in a thick baboon robe. The white fur was matted and stained around the edges, and the hollow, dead-eyed face of the ape’s skull acted as a hood, casting a shadow over the wearer’s true face.

Even as the arrow purified the surrounding purple miasma, the figure wearing the baboon didn’t falter from his steps.

A dry, rattling chuckle echoed from behind the hood that sounded like an overlapping chorus of voices, all speaking in perfect unison. "A sacred arrow..." He murmured, the sound scraping against the cold night’s air. "How nostalgic."

His eyes stared at the arrow through the hollow eyes of the ape.

In his hand, a rosary hung by his fingers. In the bottom of the rosary was attached a bit less than half a jewel. It swung softly from the air with an audible grinding of the beads. His other hand held a small piece of shard, which slowly turned dark black by his Miasma.

His figure disappeared from the branch, and a thud echoed on the ground. "Priestess, how do you know about my location... you must be after shards; that means you must have some too. I will take them."

The man talked to himself in a raspy murmur, a half-wicked smirk crossing over his face. His hand moved, gesturing to the half-eaten samurai near Kiyori’s feet. Suddenly, the deep puncture wounds on the dead bodies began to bubble up. Black miasma oozed from the flesh, rising into the air, growing the air heavy, suffocating, and freezing cold.

Then the figure walked away from the dark forest, leaving behind his venomous wasps to watch over.

From above the sky, Airborne Yōkai descended. There were fifty of them and perhaps even more. The moon hid behind the demons’ vast bodies.

Kiyori stepped back. The Miasma coiled around them; she pulled out another arrow and aimed it at the mist and shot it, which instantly purified the mist.

Mo Fei clenched his Glaive and looked above at the descending demons. "Divine Serpent, aren’t they from the same species as you? Do some shit against them."

"I may do that, but Great Master, you don’t have full control over the spirit world yet."

Upon hearing that, Mo Fei cursed under his breath. Kiyori, who heard his muttering, turned and said, "You are talking to yourself?"

"What about it?"

"Weirdo."

"What?? As if you don’t."

Kiyori aimed her arrow toward the demons; with a single shot, the arrows pierced through them and, within a second, purified the immense Miasma in the sky. Every demon in the line of the arrow dissolved, and only left a few demons still rushing toward them.

Mo Fei clenched the haft of his Glaive and pulled his hand back; air rippled when he threw the Glaive, spinning toward the demons.

Their bodies were slashed down by the both blades of the Glaive. The spirit threads curled around the Glaive and he clawed at the air, pulling it back to his grip.

Kiyori looked toward the treeline, her eyes squinted at the fading sense of the shards. "These demons were just distractions."

With another arrow, she pierced all the demons ahead, turning them into dust.

The baboon-robed figure had been gone.

Suddenly, Mo Fei turned toward her. He raised his Glaive and aimed directly at her guts. Kiyori stepped back slowly, her hand shooting out. "Hey, what are you doing??"