Under the cover of night, Kamado Asaki sprinted through the forest.
From Black Fang's memories, he learned that the town ahead was called Shiqiao Town, much more prosperous than the town at the foot of the mountain where Asaki had been before. [T/N: No idea, it seems to be an OC location. If it's not, comment down.]
He wanted to look for Tanjiro, but Asaki didn't know where this was. He needed to ask around in Shiqiao Town to confirm his location, then go to the previous town to look for Tanjiro.
At a bright brook that reflected the moonlight, Asaki stopped.
He lowered his head and slowly cast his gaze onto the stream's mirror-clear surface.
Asaki really didn't want to see a ferocious demon's face.
"Phew, that's okay."
Seeing how he looked at this moment, Asaki let out a breath.
The face reflected on the stream still looked roughly as before, except his complexion showed a sickly pallor, making him seem somewhat delicate and uncanny.
But when Asaki opened his mouth, he could see a mouthful of sharp fangs.
"These fangs—I should be able to control them, right?"
His fingernails could turn blade-sharp with a thought, and could also return to normal at will.
The fangs should be the same, right?
Focusing his awareness on his fangs, Asaki tried to retract them.
After a while, the mouthful of fangs slowly changed shape into flat, smooth teeth, except for two fangs that were hard to fully change. They only became smaller and shorter, then stood firm in Asaki's mouth, unwilling to change further.
"Alright, they look a bit like little canines. Pretty nice. I'll keep you."
Originally, Asaki had thought to knock them out and see whether he could control them when they regenerated, but after seeing their shape, he felt it was acceptable, so he kept them.
Casting a somewhat disgusted look at the clothes and body covered in dust and brown bloodstains, Asaki did a dolphin dive straight into the brook, and the clear brook immediately turned turbid and dim.
Vaguely, a few small fry flipped their bellies and floated up. Asaki scratched his head, a bit embarrassed, then sank his head into the stream, feeling the cool water flow and circle around him.
"It seems there's a larger pool beneath this brook."
"Let's go there. This water's too shallow, no fun."
The water here only reached Asaki's chest, and it was a bit narrow on both sides, less than two meters. It was enough for bathing, but Asaki wanted to unleash his body's vitality in the water to his heart's content, and this wasn't enough.
Right now, he always felt brimming with inexhaustible strength, with nowhere to vent the overflowing energy.
Black Fang had given him quite a lot of power, but Asaki still needed time to digest it into his own.
Diving straight under without surfacing, Asaki swam quickly toward the pool from Black Fang's memories. He loved the feeling of his whole body in water; it let him forget all his troubles for a while.
Occasionally breaking the surface for a few breaths, after a dozen minutes or so, Asaki swam to that pool.
"Black Fang, do you have some misunderstanding about a pool?"
"This is clearly a lake!"
As Asaki looked out, the lake surface glittered with waves. Now and then, a few big fish leaped, as if searching for a Dragon Gate that didn't exist. [T/N: Dragon Gate is a Chinese idiom where it's said fish that cross the gate evolve into a Dragon]
Asaki was silent for a moment, then entered the lake from the tributary.
He dove into the lake and didn't stop until about ten meters deep.
A big carp over a meter long swam lazily past Asaki. On a mischievous impulse, Asaki tugged the carp's tail. Startled, the carp gave a fierce flick, then swam forward head-down and flustered.
Its dopey look made Asaki smile.
The mountain-heavy pressure and responsibility on him seemed to lift for now, leaving him a bit lighter.
Asaki suddenly accelerated in the water. A demon's physique was indeed powerful. He shot toward the big carp like an arrow loosed from the string.
Sensing danger, the big carp panicked and lost its direction, then sped toward the surface.
Asaki chased from behind. The distance between them shrank.
Asaki reached out, only a knuckle's length from catching the tail, but the big carp snapped its tail again and burst out of the lake.
But although the big carp leaped up, Asaki was faster. After it broke the surface, Asaki caught it in midair.
After catching it, Asaki vaulted out and landed, dripping all over, on the opposite shore.
He patted the big carp and tossed it back into the water, watching it panic-dive into the deep.
But at that moment, Asaki suddenly felt a gust. The wind circled gently at his neck, then suddenly rose and sheared off a lock of hair at his temple.
"Hm? What's with this wind?"
Asaki looked up. A figure like a graceful butterfly was bathing in the moonlight, looking down at him from above.
In a daze, Asaki seemed to see swathes of purple butterflies dancing in the moonlight.
At this moment, a very unusual pair of eyes met Asaki's.
In this world, people's eyes and hair colors were strange, but Asaki swore this pair was the most unusual and beautiful he had seen so far.
On that delicate face, those eyes shaded from bottom to top into purple. Where the purple was deepest, there was an invisible dividing line, and above the line was gray-white.
To Asaki, those two-toned eyes were incomparably beautiful and enchanting.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
A crisp, pleasant, and gentle voice entered Asaki's ears.
He froze for a moment, then said calmly, "I'm just passing through. Felt like it, so I took a bath."
Shinobu Kocho's hand holding the Nichirin Blade was behind her back, trembling slightly.
She had nearly mistaken this person for a demon and cut him down.
She had just been leaping through the trees, searching for the demons of Blue Mountain, when Asaki suddenly burst out of the water and truly startled her. [TL Note: I changed "Lanli" to blue as "Lanli" can be interpreted as "Blue".]
If she hadn't pulled back her blade at the last second, she might have cut him down outright.
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