Demon King – Chapter 421 – Strange Village

After finishing their meal, the silver-haired couple first found a guesthouse to settle their lodging. After putting away their luggage, they set off toward the location of the ancestral hall according to the address provided by Ziyu.

They arrived at the small county where Ziyu’s hometown was located. After taking a taxi through a town, they reached the foot of a mountain. As Ziyu had explained, the two of them first bought some fruit and gift items in the county seat, since they would need to visit some of the elders in that small mountain village later.

After traveling for most of the day, they finally reached their first destination. Even though they were mentally prepared, the sight of the village’s dilapidated state still made them frown.

The entire village consisted of scattered mud-brick and tile houses. Cowsheds and pigsties were nothing more than simple enclosures made of straw and wood. The villagers’ daily water supply had to be fetched from nearby mountain streams, not to mention electricity.

Yuki frowned and took out his phone to check. Just as he expected, there was absolutely no signal in this backwater mountain nook. If not for the road that led up from the mountain’s foot, the entire village could practically be described as completely cut off from the outside world.

“Didn’t Ziyu say that almost everyone living here is either elderly or children, and that the young people all went out to make a living. Then how come no one ever came back to take a look at this place?”

Her Majesty the Demon Lord found it hard to understand. Quite a few people had gone out, and the village was not totally isolated. There was no reason for it to be this run-down.

Helping develop one’s hometown was not an obligation, after all, and was more about personal sentiment. But leaving the elderly at home in a mountain nook like this without a second thought was indeed a bit hard to justify.

“Don’t worry about it. Ziyu said the situation here is complicated and told us not to ask. We just need to find out where the ancestral hall is.”

Afraid that the girl might start meddling, Yuki spoke up to remind her.

Even though this girl now possessed all kinds of strange abilities, out of selfish concern, Yuki still did not want Eiru to get involved in troublesome matters like this. Especially when it was clearly a problem that had accumulated over a long period of time.

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“Oh.”

She responded perfunctorily. In truth, Her Majesty the Demon Lord had no intention of getting involved anyway. She was just complaining out loud.

After all, Eiru was not some warm-hearted saint. While she was bad at refusing people and would usually agree if someone asked her for help, that was always based on someone actually asking her.

So unless it involved people close to her, someone like her who feared trouble and loved slacking off would normally stay as far away from such messes as possible.

“The most respected elder in the village, the house with a copper door knocker… ah, found it.”

Following the information Ziyu had given, Yuki quickly spotted a house that matched the description. Carrying the gifts, he hurried over with the girl.

Perhaps it was due to simple folk customs, or maybe the place was truly so poor that there was nothing worth stealing. Almost none of the houses in the village had door locks. Using the copper knocker on the door to announce themselves, Yuki gently pushed the door open and walked inside with Eiru.

The exterior looked dilapidated, but the interior was surprisingly neat and clean. Though simple, the furnishings and the spotless condition gave off a refreshing feeling.

The house was not large, but it had both an outer hall and an inner hall. At the moment, there was no one to be seen in the outer hall or the kitchen. Presumably, the elder they were meant to visit was resting inside.

“I’ll do the talking later. Don’t say anything.”

Yuki gently patted Eiru on the head as he reminded her. He knew that she was actually quite afraid of interacting with adults and especially elderly people.

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Moreover, when Eiru was in her true form, her self-control was really not great, and her words tended to have a childlike bluntness. While he was not worried about her causing trouble, it was still better to limit her involvement, just in case.

“Hello, is anyone here?”

Passing through the outer hall and lifting the curtain to the inner hall, Yuki called out softly, but still did not see a single person.

“That’s strange. Did they go out? Didn’t they say that the elderly here have bad legs and feet and usually stay at home?”

Yuki glanced into the inner rooms, his head full of question marks. At this moment, the entire house only had the two of them.

And one of them was not even human. Setting aside the girl who was currently fooling around with a sparrow that had flown down from the roof, there was, in reality, only Yuki himself here.

Aside from the sounds made by the two of them and the sparrow, the entire house was completely silent. The emptiness all around, coupled with the quiet broken only by the chirping of the sparrow, was honestly a bit unsettling.

Listening to the wind passing over the door beam and the sparrow’s chirps, goosebumps rising on his back, Yuki suddenly realized something was off.

According to Ziyu, the entire village only had elderly people and children. The elderly having mobility issues and staying inside their homes was normal enough. But what about the children?

From the moment they entered the village until now, they had not seen a single person. In broad daylight, with not a single figure outside in the entire village, something was definitely wrong.

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Though the outside looked run-down, there were clear signs that it had been maintained. At the very least, someone had definitely been living here recently. If everyone had truly moved away, the animals from the mountain would have taken over this place long ago.

“Lu Brat, something feels wrong. This place isn’t suitable to stay in for long.”

Yuki grabbed Eiru’s hand, planning to leave this troublesome place as quickly as possible, but Eiru instead pulled back and stopped him.

“Leave the fruit here first.”

While Yuki looked at her in confusion, Her Majesty the Demon Lord pointed at the gifts in his hands.

“There’s no one here. What are we leaving them for?”

“Listen to me. Leave the fruit and all that here first.”

The little Demon Lord shook her head and repeated herself.

“Then when we meet that elder later, what are we going to use to pay our visit and ask around. And if we leave it here, they won’t even know it was from us.”

Though he said that, Yuki still obediently placed the items on the floor of the inner hall. After all, you could not ignore your wife’s words.

“Alright, let’s go. Hurry.”

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Just as Yuki finished putting the things down, Eiru suddenly threw out that sentence, then grabbed him and ran straight toward the door.

“So what exactly is going on? I don’t understand the situation at all.”

After running outside, Yuki bombarded Eiru with questions.

“Did you sense something? Does this place have something to do with demons or something like that? So we came to the right place.”

Though he had noticed that something was off, Eiru’s string of actions really left Yuki at a loss. To be honest, if it were not for the Demon Lord backing him up, he would have thought he had wandered onto the set of a horror movie.

It could not be that there was something unclean in that house, right. Speaking of which, if ghosts and demons fought, which would be stronger. One was fantasy, the other was occult. They did not even seem to belong to the same system at all.

“Ziyu didn’t tell you, but he told me.”

The little Demon Lord patted Yuki on the back, signaling that everything was fine.

“There are some things I can’t tell you either, because this village only has the elderly and children. And you… don’t count as either.”