Chapter Ninety-One: Qiao Qiao's Response Strategy

Never had the Great Shrine of Atsuta been busier than it was tonight.

Shrine maidens in red and white robes hurried to and fro, while the priests wore grave expressions; in the hours when the whole city was on the verge of sleep, there was not a trace of drowsiness among the people of Atsuta Shrine.

"A tremendously powerful demon has been found in the west. It is highly likely to be the Great Serpent, which vanished forty years ago."

"There are multiple high-intensity spiritual readings. All of them are powerful demons not registered with the Association."

"We are short-handed at the scene. Requesting backup!"

One piece of urgent report after another echoed through the side hall of the shrine.

The chief priest of Atsuta Shrine, Tomisaburo Asagami, remained seated in formal meditation, eyes closed, listening to the news.

The murmurs around him seemed not to reach his ears at all.

Qiaoqiao, having changed into fresh clothes, sat among the Tokyo exorcists. Apart from a few who had not yet returned, most of the others had only just been roused from sleep and still looked somewhat weary.

Masato Kondo yawned, sitting with easy indifference.

As for miko such as Ayano Fujiwara and Ariko Asano, who were accustomed to rising early for training, they had already rested enough and were now watching Tomisaburo Asagami with faint unease.

As Qiaoqiao listened to the reports from the front, the situation gradually came into focus in his mind.

The great demon named the Great Serpent had been exposed by one exorcist who happened upon its disguise, and a battle had broken out.

Faced with reinforcements of exorcists arriving in increasing numbers, the Great Serpent, unable to flee, had summoned its companions.

And so the two sides had plunged into a fierce clash.

At this point, it was hard not to connect the appearance of the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds with the Great Serpent.

Especially with the snake scales Qiaoqiao and the others had discovered yesterday.

A conspiracy hovered just out of sight.

Those scales had not been placed in the old gym storage shed recently. Judging from the analysis, they were at least thirty years old.

In other words, the Great Serpent had set its sights on the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds thirty years ago?

Yet that did not seem strange at all, Qiaoqiao thought.

Demons lived far longer than humans. Thirty years was an eternity to a person, but to a demon, especially a great demon like the Great Serpent, it was little more than a fleeting moment.

If Qiaoqiao could live so long, he would not mind spending thirty years lying in wait for a target, either.

He looked at the dossier he had just been given, pulled from the exorcists' association database.

The Great Serpent was a serpent demon, estimated to have a lifespan of more than seven hundred years. Its last appearance had been forty years ago.

Back then, the Great Serpent had just committed several incidents in Hokkaido, only to turn around and appear near Australia.

No one knew what had happened, but it shed its skin there.

For a serpent demon with a seven-hundred-year lifespan, shedding its skin was less a sign of growth than a method of escape after severe injury.

The discarded skin was accidentally hauled in by the Japanese fishing vessel Riyo Maru. Because of its peculiar shape, it was once believed to be the remains of a sea monster.

Of course, after the intervention of several major shrines at the time, the matter became nothing more than a mysterious ghost story, with no further developments.

As for events even earlier than that, there were several demon disturbances for which the mastermind may well have been the Great Serpent, but the passage of time had made the details impossible to verify.

That was the sort of mysterious demon it was.

Because of how serpents were portrayed in the traditional culture of the islands, serpent demons were already exceedingly rare.

Among those officially recorded and marked as powerful serpent demons, one could count them on one hand.

Most of them lived extraordinarily long lives; the oldest had even surpassed a thousand years, ancient demons whose records dated back to the Heian era.

While Qiaoqiao was reading the file, Tomisaburo Asagami finally made his decision.

Exorcists from Kyoto, Nara, Tokyo, and a portion from Atsuta Shrine were dispatched to destroy the Great Serpent.

As for newcomers like Qiaoqiao and Ariko Asano, along with some older exorcists, they would remain at Atsuta Shrine.

The judgment was reasonable enough.

Whether or not the Great Serpent was connected to the theft of the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds, it was still a great demon capable of endangering society and had to be eliminated.

And as for Atsuta Shrine, it was inside the city to begin with and protected by multiple barriers. There was also no treasure here that would especially tempt demons. It could be counted as the safest place of all.

Once the decision was made, everyone moved swiftly.

The people in the side hall all departed, leaving only Qiaoqiao and the others behind.

"So can we go back to sleep now?"

Masato Kondo yawned again; every sentence out of his mouth seemed to circle back to sleep.

It was clear he was the type who, on an ordinary day, could sleep until noon before getting up.

"Maybe it's a diversion."

Qiaoqiao said it aloud. It was hard to imagine that if the Great Serpent had spent decades preparing to steal the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds, it would then accidentally reveal itself to exorcists.

And now, by drawing away powerful exorcists such as Tomisaburo Asagami, it had left Atsuta Shrine empty.

Wasn't that the classic pattern of luring the tiger away from the mountain?

"But there's nothing left in Atsuta Shrine that it wants, is there?"

Ayano Fujiwara adjusted her glasses.

The shrine's greatest treasure, the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds, had already been stolen. What remained were only a few miko and priests, together with the shrine's main hall.

There was no need for a demon to go to such lengths just to kill a few people or destroy the shrine.

More than that, aside from Atsuta Shrine, there were many temples and shrines nearby.

If the demons came, the resistance they met would not be any weaker than the force that had been sent out.

From the standpoint of motive, there was no reason for an invasion here.

"I still think something is wrong."

Qiaoqiao flipped through the materials and found the specific locations of the strange incidents that had occurred throughout Nagoya after the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds was stolen.

Those locations were all marked on a map.

They seemed utterly random, scattered across every part of the city, with no pattern to be found.

Qiaoqiao stood up.

"Where are you going?"

Masato Kondo was already half reclined, looking as though he might fall asleep at any moment.

"I'm just taking a look around the shrine."

Qiaoqiao left at once, and Ariko Asano glanced at him before following after him.

"Teacher, is there a problem?"

Ariko Asano asked in confusion.

"Yes. If the Great Serpent stole the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds, then why has it not left Nagoya after so long? Why, instead, was it discovered by exorcists and forced into open battle?"

Qiaoqiao came to a corner of the shrine and opened his backpack.

There, revealed, was a triple-mounted four-hundred-and-sixty-millimeter naval gun.

"?"

Why had he packed the model into a box and brought it along?

Qiaoqiao took the model out of the bag and had Ariko Asano hold it for him.

Then he pulled out an extremely thin steel wire and a lunchbox.

"What are you doing?"

Ariko Asano watched as Qiaoqiao seriously hung grenades in some concealed corners, stuck the "putty" from the lunchbox onto the pillars, and threaded the wire through the grenade pins, quickly setting up a trap.

"Defensive measures. I believe there is more than an eighty percent chance the demons will attack here tonight."

Qiaoqiao replied.

"These mechanisms can effectively delay a demon's intrusion."

"But the shrine is protected by barriers. Demons shouldn't be able to get in, right?"

Ariko Asano looked worriedly at the explosives attached to the torii pillars.

Those pillars must be a thousand years old, wouldn't they?

"But the demons stole the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds, didn't they?"

Qiaoqiao did not stop working.

"If they can steal the Heavenly Blade of the Imperial Clouds without anyone noticing, why assume the shrine's barriers will certainly be able to stop a demon invasion?"

That did make a certain amount of sense.

Ariko Asano found herself at a loss for words.

After half an hour, Qiaoqiao had completed half of the traps he intended to set in places where he believed the other side might infiltrate.

Just as he was preparing to set the next one,

an explosion rang out from not far away.

It came from the back mountain of Atsuta Shrine.