"Coincidence? What coincidence?" He Ma asked in surprise.
"Of course it's a coincidence in time." Tamazamo gave the head of the family a look, "My master moved the Jizo statue back, and the Kiryu Dojo became Changanji, and many daydreaming people appeared on the streets of Tokyo next to it. Come on... do you think this is just a coincidence?"
"...Really?" Hema blinked, this was a blind spot he hadn't noticed yet, "You mean, the appearance of those lost people is actually related to our dojo!?"
"So, this is what I'm divining." The fox bit his lip, staring at the divination objects on the table slightly annoyed.
"But I don't know whether it is the wrong way to ask the question, or the matter itself is not so clear. No matter which method is used to account for it, the results obtained are quite ambiguous..."
"I see." He Ma nodded, taking a deep breath to ease his emotions. It has been basically confirmed that there are mysterious side forces behind the lost people, but to be honest, He Ma didn't connect this with his own dojo in his consciousness.
It’s not wrong to think about it carefully. After all, after the statue of Jizo entered the Kiryu Dojo, it turned into a dark place, and it was an existence close to the mysterious side. Tamazamo’s words made Kazuma realize this fact again, and he was stunned and shocked.
Kazuma murmured, and told Yuzao about the experience of rescuing Hasegawa Mikoto with Kurosaki Nagahide today, and also mentioned that he obtained information from the police station and found that there were more than 200 lost people like Hasegawa so far. within the entire Tokyo metropolitan area.
"Well, Kazuma, do you still remember where those people appeared?" Yuzao asked after thinking about it.
"It's impossible to write them all down, right? There are more than two hundred people." He Ma smiled wryly.
"It doesn't need to be too detailed. How about counting the total number of lost people in various places based on the local police station?" The fox slightly lowered the request.
"This can probably be done, what do you want to do?" He Ma was puzzled.
"I want to clarify something." Under Kazuma's attention, Yuzao got up and went to the file cabinet next to him to take out a map of Tokyo, spread it on the desk and looked over, "Then let's start, the police department, first of all It's Chiyoda District, it seems that this is the first place where the news came out..."
In the next few quarters of an hour, Hema reported the statistical data he saw at the police station from memory, and Yuzao marked the corresponding numbers on the map with colored pens.
Most of the incidents of a single local police station encountering lost people are in single digits, at most no more than 20 people. However, if the scope is extended to the entire Tokyo, the number soars to about 270 people, which is not counted. At least half of the incidents do not make it into the archives.
"Okay." After writing the last number, Yuzao put away her pen, looked at the map and frowned suddenly. "This is really..."
"What? Did you find anything?" Hema took the map from Yuzao and looked at it.
Yuzao marked the number of lost people in different positions on the map according to the distribution of local police stations, and also used different shades of color pens according to the grades of five people, ten people and fifteen people, so that it can be understood immediately at a glance. The distribution is quite regular. Specifically, the light-colored numbers on the map are obviously concentrated towards the dark-colored numbers.
"...Wait a minute, I'll make another mark on it, so I can see it more clearly."
While Kazuma was staring at the map, Tamamo picked up a color pen and drew a triangle mark on a certain position on the map, and wrote the word "HOME" next to the mark, so that the situation was immediately clear. The dark numbers on the map are only two or three blocks away from the HOME mark, and the position of the triangle mark is almost the center point where the dark numbers converge!
"This is!?" Kazuma widened his eyes and saw the dark numbers on the map, which surrounded the neighborhood of the Kiryu Dojo in an almost encircling manner. If this situation were deduced, Kazuma seemed to see those stumbling and lost people rushing towards the Kiryu Dojo, but was separated by an invisible force on the way—
"It's coming for our dojo!?"
And Ma flew into a rage. There was no reason for the rage to come so violently, but maybe it didn't need a reason either. Just like when Tsuda-gumi messed with Kiryu Dojo back then, which beast that got kicked in its nest wouldn't go berserk
"Wait a minute, I'll make a divination." Yuzao also became serious at this time, put down the flower card and picked up the bone dice next to it.
She read a long prayer first, and then threw the bone dice into a porcelain bowl from an unknown dynasty on the table. The bone dice were jingling and bouncing in the porcelain bowl, and slowly stopped after counting breaths, revealing three completely different dice faces in the porcelain bowl. Kazuma couldn't understand it, but Tamamo was obviously relieved after observing it.
"It's not our dojo... well, it's not entirely correct to say that. It should be said that they didn't come to the Kiryu dojo on purpose, but just happened to be looking for a similar place. There may be no other targets within their range of activities, so the map That's how it looks." Tamamo explained in this way, and the gentle tone calmed Kazuma's anger a little.
"...The place similar to the Kiryu dojo refers to the place of eternal darkness?" Kazuma tried to understand the fox's words, but couldn't help frowning, "Wait, they are ordinary people who have nothing to do with the mysterious side. What do you want to do in the dark land?"
"I don't know. If we want to investigate, we can only start from their mental state... Like the Hasegawa you rescued, didn't it mean that she frequently had strange dreams for a while? Dreams are the result of human subconscious activities. If there are frequent strange dreams, it just means that someone is tampering with her mentality." As expected of a top-ranking figure on the mysterious side, Yuzao's analysis is clear and logical.
"Is it so easy to attack the human spirit?" He Ma wondered. After all, there are nearly 300 lost people who are known, and the scale of this kind of mass production is really scary.
"Well, although the human spirit is strong or weak, it's generally not that easy to deal with, even in the past... As far as I know, there is probably only one horse that can do this." Yuzao Zhao and Ma Weiwei smiled. "By the way, that guy is also your acquaintance."
"... Nightmare-eating tapir." Kazuma said the name in a cursed tone. In Japanese mythology, the nightmare-eating tapir is a big monster as old as Tamamo, but it has also been weakened by the overall decline of the mysterious side since modern times.
But unlike Yuzao, who readily accepted it, the nightmare-eating tapir strongly resisted this trend, and even desperately wanted to regain the power of the past. For this reason, he turned into a human form and left many descendants in this world. He met one of them when he was in the hot spring street with Ma, and even fought against the nightmare in the dispute.
The nightmare-eating tapir suffered a dark loss in that conflict, and disappeared without a trace after threatening revenge. The dream-eating tapir, who is eager to revive the mystery, and the mysterious technology that tries to meddle with the blessing, both are existences that stand on the opposite side of order and goodness, and Kazuma even guesses that they may have joined forces in secret.
This time, there are so many unexplained lost people suddenly appearing on the streets of Tokyo, and the timing is so coincidental, Kazuma has reason to suspect that the other party is planning to attack Chang Anhua's Kiryu Dojo. But when he came to the conclusion, the fox at home shook his head unexpectedly.
"No, maybe it's the other way around."
"… How to say?"
"Oh, they couldn't have imagined that you would move the statues back to the ashram. The chances of the ashram getting darker are even smaller than winning the lottery. Since those lost people were tampered with as early as two or three years ago, it's even more unlikely. It is necessary to be exposed suddenly now." Tamamo analyzed.
"You mean, those guys originally planned to make troubles quietly, but the Dojo Chang'an suddenly disrupted their steps?" Hema blinked.
"That's right." The corner of the fox's mouth drew a slightly sinister arc. "Although it is not clear what they plan to do, I am afraid that they are panicking because the project is out of control. This is our chance!"