Becoming A Monk In Tokyo

Chapter 55: As Long As I Keep Quiet

After that, Baishi Shū bade goodbye to Hoshino Riho. As he rushed towards the direction of the four-faced yokai with the assistance of his Divine Eye, he mulled over the question he had in mind just now.

‘The four-faced yokai is a hundred-year-old yokai? This is weird.’

Using his Divine Eye, Baishi Shū had a good look at the four-faced yokai’s body composition as well as their yokai power before they ran away. According to his calculation, if he used the same unit to quantify both yokai power and spiritual power, he found that the amount of yokai power the four-faced had was only equivalent to 49 points of spiritual power in his body.

He found it kind of understandable as he knew some of the yokai were older while the others were younger. As a yokai that was tasked to run errands, he reckoned that the four-faced yokai was on the younger side. There might an outside chance that they did not have time to cultivate, so they did not have much yokai power within them. This was pretty normal. Ayumi and Akiko did not have much yokai power as well since they had just become yokai not long ago.

However, when he heard the four-faced yokai say they had already cultivated for more than a hundred years and that they had seen the atomic bomb explosion, he was puzzled.

If they had cultivated for more than a hundred of years like what they had claimed, how come they had only 49 points of yokai power? Baishi Shū found it extremely hard to believe. Even if they were not as talented as him and could only gain one point of yokai power per day, even if they were so lazy that they always slacked off during their cultivation to go out and create trouble, it was impossible that they would have only 49 points of yokai power after a hundred years.

Was it possible that the four-faced yokai had only cultivated for 49 days in the last hundred years? Apparently, it was despite being impossible.

“Is there something wrong with my calculation?” Baishi Shū frowned.

The yokai power the four-faced yokai owned was merely a fraction of his power. He had 19,120 points of spiritual power, yet the four-faced yokai had only 49 points. The gap was too huge, and a bold idea surfaced in his mind.

‘Could I be… more talented than I thought?’

Maybe the spiritual power he gained each time he chanted the scripture was not 10 times of the four-faced yokai’s, but 100? Topped up with his occasional enlightenment, that was why the gap between their power would be so immense. At the same time, this was also the reason why the four-faced yokai and their organization had been observing the whole time, yet they still had no idea about his actual strength. Compared to them, maybe his development was a little too fast!

…

On the other side of Tokyo, the four-faced yokai arrived at Setagaya City. The trepidation on their faces was apparent. They went through layers of walls and slipped into an apartment building.

Setagaya City was the most prestigious area in Japan. Concurrently, it was also the base of the four-faced yokai’s organization. Their organization was not located in a remote area or deep in the forest. Instead, it was right smack in the middle of one of Tokyo’s 23 central wards.

According to their boss, it likened this to “the greatest hermit retreating into the noisiest fair”. Therefore, as a yokai who was more than a hundred years old, it would only do justice to its status by making its base in the center of a city.

The four-faced yokai had been following their boss for a hundred years. Speaking of which, they had not lied when they said they saw the explosion caused by the atomic bomb before. During that time, they had been standing about a hundred meters away from the explosion site as they looked at the rising mushroom cloud from afar and gaped at the weapon of massive destruction created by humans they once detested raze an entire city to the ground.

All of the yokai during that time fell silent as they could feel that the times had changed.

Humans were no longer the meat on the chopping board or their sources of faith. Although humans still did not pose much threat to the yokai community, who would know when the situation would change?

Several hundred years ago, ordinary humans were not even qualified to pose a threat to the yokai. Generally, only experienced holy monks, deities who were formally humans, Shinto priests and priestesses, as well as freewheeling swordsmen with strong spirits could vanquish them in a confrontation.

Shocked by the damage caused by the atomic bomb, a group of yokai started to join the human society and learn about the humans’ creation they once despised. They called themselves the revolutionary faction, and the boss of the four-faced yokai was one of them.

As for those who refused to keep themselves abreast of the times, they continued to stay in the depth of the forest. They were the conservative faction. Both factions disliked each other, but they did not fight with each other. After all, although they held different ideas, they were still yokai.

The boss of the four-faced yokai had been searching for a way to keep him and his yokai comrades hidden in human society without being discovered by monks and deities since hundreds of years ago. And, it succeeded.

Right now, the yokai could erase the traces that they left behind by using the spell the boss created so that monks and deities would not be able to trace them.

To successfully settle down in the city, they made use of their ability to hypnotize an ordinary human and took over his house, turning it into their base. Amongst them, those with a mind like a steel trap then seized the chance to pick up some networking techniques. They hacked into the monk’s handphone and monitored him from the base.

When the four-faced yokai returned to the base, they saw their boss was laying on the couch with a bucket of fried meat next to it. Holding a can of black concoction, it was enjoying the latest anime from a tablet.

A smile tugged at the corner of its lips although the smile only made it look even more terrifying.

Sometimes, even the four-faced yokai had to admit that what humans created were very addictive.

“Oh? Welcome back, Four. How is everything going?”

“Haha, that yokai was exorcised by that monk, but I have collected all the magic dust in the air!” Jovial replied as it shook the sachet in its hand.

The four-faced yokai let out a sigh of relief when they saw the smile on their boss’s face. They did not dare to tell their boss about them being chased by the monk. Otherwise, it would eat them.

The boss might look harmless right now, but when it got angry, things might become very bloody.

Right now, in the organization, nobody had ever made Big Boss angry before, because anyone who made it angry would be eaten by it. Nobody could tell what kind of meat was inside the bucket next to Big Boss, and nobody dared to ask. Anyone who did so might end up being in the bucket tomorrow.

‘It’s okay… As long as we keep quiet, Big Boss won’t know it is us who brought the monk here. We can say it is the technician’s fault because he didn’t do his job right when it came to monitoring the monk…’

All four expressions on the four-faced yokai worked as one at this moment. They did not tell Big Boss the truth, and Big Boss could not see through their actions just like that time when they had still been human.

At that time, they had only one face but had worn four masks.

After that, Big Boss picked up a piece of fried meat from the bucket and threw it into its mouth as it continued to watch the anime.

Seeing this, the four-faced yokai let out a sigh. As they went deeper into the room, they thought, ‘The monk didn’t have the ability to go through the wall, so he can only come in from the door. As long as we stay in the deepest part of the house, we will be safe…’

…

Baishi Shū felt strange. He had been observing the four-faced yokai with his Divine Eye. After the yokai returned to their base, they did not warn their comrades about him. They just walked into the room and acted as if they had never seen him before.

“What are they up to again?”