[Inuyasha] Miko and Youkai

Mao didn't ask what to be careful about.Since she and Dongqing got acquainted, the tacit understanding between the two has been enough for her to believe that the other party will not harm her.And as she got closer to the shrine, she also felt a little flustered for no reason.

The hands tightly wrapped in the sleeves, Mao raised his hand to caress the bow and arrow behind his back, rubbing the lines on it, only then did he feel a little more at ease.

"It's here."

Just as she was wandering in her mind, the village chief stopped, pointed to the shrine a hundred steps away, and said, "Those people are right here. The shrine has an enchantment that can trap them. If you go further, you will enter the shrine of the enchantment." It's out of bounds...Master Miko, you must be careful when you go in, none of the priestesses who came to exorcise demons before entered could come out alive, presumably they were eaten by monsters."

"Of course I have a sense of proportion."

Mao responded, then dragged Holly by the sleeve and walked slowly towards the shrine with her.

"Did you smell it?" Mao suddenly asked when he was approaching the gate of the shrine.

"Yes." Holly nodded.Her sense of smell is more sensitive than ordinary people, and she has long noticed the stench that hangs over the shrine—the smell of low-level monsters.

Mao covered his nose and frowned disgustedly: "It smells so bad."

Seeing her dissatisfied look, Dongqing smiled helplessly.Mao has always been obsessed with cleanliness, and even she herself thinks the smell is really unpleasant, let alone a person with serious cleanliness?

"... No, there seems to be a miasma smell inside." Mao suddenly raised his eyebrows, changed his disgusted face, and spread his palm towards Dongqing, "Holly, give it to me."

Dongqing understood, and took out two human-shaped talisman papers from her small bag and handed them to her.Mao took it, clasped the talisman paper with two fingers together and recited a mantra. The light talisman paper instantly turned into two blue lights and entered through the window of the shrine.

After hearing two "chi chi" sounds from inside, everything returned to calm.

Holly also frowned.

Those low-level monsters seem to be more powerful than imagined.

"The shikigami was torn apart." Mao said, looking at her.

"But it's a bit abnormal. Those monsters didn't fight back when they were attacked by the outside world." Dongqing wrote on her hand.

"Maybe it is affected by the enchantment?"

"The barrier outside the shrine can only trap them. There is no reason why they dare not even come out of the shrine. It seems that there is still a mysterious power in the shrine restricting them, but I don't know what it is."

"Since we don't know, let's go in and have a look." Mao said.

"It's better to make some preparations before going in." After Dongqing finished writing, she clasped Mao's hand behind her back.She was really worried that this little ancestor would be self-willed for a while, so he went in by relying on his own ability.

"Why are you dragging me? I won't go in now!" Maou looked down at the stones on the ground and kicked them away angrily, with a hint of annoyance in his tone, "I'm so annoying to kill demons!"

……

On the way from the shrine to the village chief's house, Dongqing saw a pair of young brothers and sisters.The siblings looked to be about the same age as Yingzi. They were ragged and huddled up in a corner, looking pitiful.

Mao followed her gaze and saw the two of them.

Before she asked curiously, the village chief explained: "That's Toranojiro and his younger sister Akiko. Their parents died in the last monster invasion, so they became orphans."

"Why don't they go home? No one cares about them?" Mao asked.

"Most of the houses in the village were destroyed by monsters, and they haven't been rebuilt yet. Everyone's life is not good now, how can they have time to worry about the two children? And I heard..." The village head lowered his voice, mysteriously He leaned closer to Mao, "They are ominous."

"Ominous?" Mao's tone rose slightly.

"It's the reincarnation of the God of Misfortune... Everyone thinks that they brought disaster to the village."

"Really?" Mao smiled coldly, and pulled Dongqing towards the two children.

Sensing someone approaching, her younger sister Akiko slightly raised her head, her amber eyes, which were as clear as water, flashed a hint of panic about being disturbed.

Ominous person?

Holly stared at those eyes repeatedly.Although she didn't know divination like Reiko, a person with such pure eyes didn't look like an ominous person at all. On the contrary, she also felt a weak fluctuation of spiritual power from him.

"Speak." She signaled Mao with her eyes.

Mao rolled her eyes at her, put on Reiko Miko's usual gentle smile with a stiff face, and asked, "You...is your name Akiko?"

The girl blinked timidly, her big watery eyes showed a bit of uneasiness.

"You don't have to be afraid..."

Mao was also struggling with what kind of language to use to appease the other party, and struggled for a long time or just squeezed out such a dry sentence.

Perhaps seeing that Mao really had no malice, the girl nodded slightly.She glanced at the old village head who was standing not far away, and said softly, "Master Miko, are you here to exorcise demons?"

"Yes, we are entrusted."

"Master Miko, you should leave quickly, this place is very dangerous."

Mao laughed at her sincere suggestion, "If it's dangerous here, we can't leave. As a shrine maiden, my duty is to protect people like you."

"But...it's really dangerous. The village chief is not the original village chief. I..." Yakiko's words stopped abruptly. She restrained all her expressions in an instant, lowered her head and shrank back to her brother and remained still.

"Miko-sama." Mao was still wondering about Akiko's behavior, but the village chief's voice suddenly came from behind, which surprised her slightly.

Is her perception so bad that no one can detect it?

She looked up at Dongqing, and found that Dongqing also shook her head with a sullen face.

"Master Miko, it's getting dark soon, let's go quickly."

"Let's go first." Dongqing silently wrote in Mao's hand.

Mao glanced at the Akiko brothers and sisters again, and then signaled the village chief to lead the way.

Her intuition told her that the siblings might know something, but with the village chief here, she might not be able to ask anything.

Thinking of this, Mao couldn't help but put a big question mark on the village chief in his heart.

What does Akiko mean by "the village chief is not the original village chief"?Why did she act so fearful of the village chief?

Mao only felt that she and Dongqing had walked into a situation full of fog, and someone had already laid a big net waiting for them in the dark.