"Strange..."
Asakura left the school, walked down the slope, and arrived at a somewhat secluded alley behind the shopping district.
As he stepped forward, a dense swarm of snakes began to crawl out from places like the drainage ditches.
A moment later, those small snakes quickly burrowed back into the manholes and disappeared, leaving behind only one king ratsnake that remained motionless, as if in hibernation.
Asakura gave the belly-up snake a kick. The snake rolled over with a gurgle and then rapidly expanded and contorted during the roll, finally transforming into a human form.
That's right, he was the wanted criminal who had been knocked out by Asakura's snake venom.
To prevent the man from being reported to the police by passing bystanders before he could find him, Asakura had specifically engraved [Snake Flash Sigils] on several snakes during his break. After ensuring the target was captured, he turned him into a snake to be temporarily contained in the drainage ditch.
However, after Asakura carefully observed the man's condition, he couldn't help but frown again.
It wasn't that there was anything strange about the man; on the contrary, he was truly just an ordinary person with nothing special about him at all.
Could it be that his initial deduction was wrong, and this guy really was just a Muggle? Was his ability to remain a fugitive for so long in modern society purely because the island nation's police were too incompetent?
"What a pain. If only 'Truth Vision' were still usable."
Asakura scratched his head, but he had no intention of turning the man back into a snake. Instead, he directly dialed the police emergency number and reported the situation to the police stationed at the Usagiyama Shopping District.
Before long, the police arrived and took away this wanted criminal whose survival now depended entirely on luck.
Because he was the one who discovered the fugitive, Asakura was taken to the station to give a statement. The officer taking the statement even guaranteed that he would receive a substantial reward—perhaps it would have been something worth being happy about for himself a few months ago, but now that Rabbit House had already started making a profit, it felt a bit like a "chicken rib"—useless despite its slight value.
"You did well, don't carry any psychological burden..." the young officer who arrived might have misunderstood Asakura's frowning, silent expression. He comforted the 'young student' earnestly: "The guy you reported is an absolute scumbag, and so are his accomplices. Honestly, instead of spending taxpayer money to lock them up, it would be better if they just died under a snake's bite and stayed quiet..."
"Was he really such an awful criminal?" Asakura recalled the characteristic look of "clear stupidity" in the eyes of a fresh college graduate. While trying his best to replicate that look, he asked the officer with feigned innocence.
"Even worse than you imagine... I'll never forget the day I saw their crime scene for the rest of my life..." A heavy expression appeared on the young officer's face.
"Wasn't this guy a drifter who moved to Chiba?"
"Correct. They committed their crimes in Ashikura District. Apparently, they believed in some evil cult and performed sacrificial rituals. Several children were dismantled as sacrificial materials. Those animals..."
The young officer shook his head and pursed his lips: "I happened to be on a business trip in the neighboring town at the time and helped out with cordoning off the scene. Being able to catch this guy in my own jurisdiction now can be considered a kind of karmic retribution."
"Hey, don't just disclose things like that to a kid..." an older officer passing by warned him.
"What does it matter? There are already a ton of YouTubers who have made detailed videos explaining the case anyway. Besides, with this guy caught, that whole gang has now been brought to justice."
The young officer grumbled a bit defiantly, but after that, no matter how Asakura tried to fish for information, he didn't reveal anything more. After asking Asakura to leave his contact information, he impatiently urged Asakura to hurry home.
Seeing that no more information could be obtained from the police station, Asakura went straight back to Sobu High—with the little snakes acting as his informants, he didn't have to worry about bumping into patrolling teachers on the way.
Asakura didn't go directly to the Clubroom. Instead, he ran to the Service Club activity room: the desktop computer with the software he got from Ryunosuke was there.
Actually, after the Chiba Tower incident, Asakura hadn't used this computer much. After all, it was just a regular desktop. Even if the RAM, hard drive, and processor were all high-end configurations, there were still limits to its capabilities. After a month of continuous AI training, this computer finally succumbed to the overwhelming and redundant data and crashed.
While it wasn't completely unusable, compared to its initial smooth state, the computer now felt nothing like an expensive high-performance desktop. Instead, it felt like a second-hand netbook worth only a few hundred dollars that would freeze for half a minute just to open a Word document.
That said, there was still no problem if he just wanted to access data already stored on the hard drive or watch a video on YouTube.
Using 'Ashikura District' and 'Sacrifice' as keywords, Asakura found the incident the officer mentioned on YouTube after some filtering.
Since the event happened three years ago, before Asakura crossed over to this world, he knew nothing about it, even though it was quite a big deal at the time and had a very negative impact.
The specific details of the case were somewhat vague because of laws and regulations, and the YouTubers' descriptions were also indistinct. They only mentioned that the victims were four students—three were local students, and the other was an international student.
However, a YouTuber with a leaning toward conspiracy theories and the supernatural mentioned a very interesting conjecture: the purpose of that cultist criminal group's sacrificial ritual was to create the legendary 'Soul-Returning Incense' (Hangonko).
That is a treasure that only exists in myths and legends. It is said that one can see the souls of the dead or even bring the dead back to life. It can be traced back as far as the Han Dynasty of the great nation across the sea. Later, due to various reasons, it was introduced to the island nation, and it is even recorded in "The Tale of Genji."
According to that YouTuber's research, the location of the last reported sighting of Soul-Returning Incense in the island nation was precisely Ashikura District.
The vast majority of comments in the section below were jeers at his rather far-fetched research, feeling that he was just chasing clout. However, a few people seemed to express support for his views.
"Come to think of it..."
After pausing the video, Asakura first retrieved the rumors about 'Ashikura District' from Ryunosuke's software. Then, he looked through the volume of ghost story records compiled by Saori and found the part related to 'Ashikura District'—thanks to her compiling the records in the form of marking points on a map like an ancient nautical chart, otherwise, it would have been quite troublesome to find the target among so many rumors.
"It really is there! No wonder I had a subtle sense of familiarity when I heard 'Ashikura District' at the station!"