Demon Slayer: The Forest Pillar

(A kind reminder from Mu Zi: The protagonist travels through time, but does not know the plot of Demon Slayer. The protagonist travels through time about ten years before the main story begins. P.S. The heroine is Shinobi, the only heroine)

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"Shinichi, Shinichi! You little brat! What are you daydreaming about? Where is today's money?" The sudden rude roar brought the pale and skinny boy back to reality. The tattered and ill-fitting clothes were draped over his body, and his black hair was an unhealthy yellow.

He walked numbly to the low table, took out two coins from his dirty pocket and put them into the pottery jar on the low table, "Only twenty coins? What a useless thing!" The rude voice sounded again, but the boy named Shinichi did not react at all. After putting the money, he walked to the corner of the ruined temple in silence and squatted down.

Then, more than a dozen children, big and small, dressed similarly to Shinichi, lined up and put all the money they had earned from begging into the pottery jar. Looking at the coins piling up in the pottery jar, the bald man sitting behind the low table showed a satisfied expression.

The bald man was strong and sturdy. Although the hunting clothes he wore were not very luxurious, they were very different from the tattered clothes of Shinichi and other children.

It was obvious that the man was a black head who controlled beggars. He relied on the orphan beggars under his command to beg every day to make money. Such people were not uncommon in the entire Matsudaira Prefecture.

The bald man was called Ohei Saburo. He controlled twelve children. The oldest child was fifteen years old and the youngest was only five or six years old. But no matter how old these children were, in Ohei Saburo's eyes, they were just tools for him to make money.

While Ohei Saburo was counting the money, Shinichi and the other children received their own dinner, a small bowl of stale rice, covered with two wilted and blackened green vegetables. Eating such food every day, it is no wonder that these children look so haggard, but every child eats very anxiously, because if they don't eat, they may really starve to death.

As Shinichi swallowed the rice in one gulp, his black eyes, which seemed to have no emotion, quietly looked in a certain direction.

After dinner, Ohei Saburo went out with a handful of coins. As for Shinichi and his friends, a group of orphans who were not full at all did not have any mood to play, and they all found a place in the dilapidated temple to lie down and sleep.

As the night gradually fell, the bright white moonlight fell, and a small figure quietly walked out of the dilapidated temple. His calm black eyes scanned the surroundings. After confirming that there was no one, Shinichi opened his mouth and gently called: "Yuan Er, Yuan Er..."

Swish! A small shadow suddenly emerged from the bushes nearby. The next second, a ball of fur rolled into Shinichi's arms. With black and white fur, a red tongue, and a pair of sparkling eyes, the black Shiba Inu wagged its tail and barked at Shinichi affectionately, "Ahhh!"

Stroking the little Shiba Inu Enji, Shinichi's originally emotionless black eyes also revealed a hint of tenderness. He fumbled out a rice ball from his pocket and fed it to Enji. Shinichi raised his head, looked at the moon in the sky, and whispered softly, "It's been three years."

Three years ago, Shinichi was not called Shinichi, and he was not even in this country called Japan. At that time, he was still an ordinary student. He never thought that one day he would encounter a magical story that only novels and animations would encounter. He traveled through time.

When Shinichi opened his eyes and saw his thin body and the language spoken by the people around him, which was completely different from his previous life, he realized that he had traveled through time. Unlike the protagonists in novels and animations, Shinichi did not have any golden fingers in the stories, and an ordinary college student in another world could not make any waves in a foreign country where he did not speak the language.

As an orphan, Shinichi did not even have a surname, and he had no choice. By chance, he and a group of other orphans were recruited by Ohira Saburo as a tool to make money, and he spent three years in a daze.

When Shinichi was teasing Yuanji, a figure quietly approached behind him.

Crash! Shinichi, who was originally quiet, suddenly jumped up, turned around and threw the figure behind him to the ground, and then a cry of surprise rang out, "Wow! Brother Shinichi! It's me!"

Five minutes later, the little boy with a runny nose grinned with a big mouth missing a front tooth and chased Yuanji to play.

Shinichi quietly watched the harmonious scene in front of him. After a while, the tired boy came to Shinichi with Yuanji in his arms. He sniffed and said to Shinichi, "Brother Shinichi, you are always like this. Your expression is too stiff. Look, even Yuanji doesn't dare to play with you when you look so cold. Can you smile more?"

Perhaps touched by the little boy's carefree smile, Shinichi nodded, and the little boy happily took out half a piece ofThe Dorayaki was stuffed into Shinichi's hand. "This was given to me by a kind grandmother this morning. Brother Shinichi, I specially left half for you. Be happy!"

Looking at the half piece of Dorayaki in his hand, Shinichi felt an inexplicable emotion in his heart. In the three years since he came to this world and became an orphan, he had seen too much darkness and evil. In three years, the bodies of four children were buried in the land behind this dilapidated temple. They were all children who tried to escape from here.

Ohei Saburo cruelly controlled this group of poor children. In order to prevent the money-making tool from escaping, he used various means, coercion and inducement. There were even spies he trained among these children, who were always monitoring other children. Once someone wanted to run away, Ohei Saburo would let that child experience what it meant to be worse than death.

In such an environment, these more than a dozen children lived in darkness and fear all day long, and lost the innocence and happiness that should belong to their age group. Instead, they were numb, but the only exception was Junbo in front of Shinichi.

Although this child is only five years old, his cheerful personality is not affected by his companions around him. The smile on his face never fades, and his emerald green eyes are always full of vitality. It is hard to imagine that a lively and lovely child like Junbo would be an orphan beggar. In fact, the cheerful Junbo is more popular with the people than Shinichi and others. Junbo always gets the most from begging every day. Ohei Saburo is naturally kind to Junbo, the cash cow.

Junbo actually says the same thing to Shinichi every day, "Smile, brother Shinichi, smile more, okay?" Among this group of orphans, Junbo's favorite is actually Shinichi. Although he is very cheerful, children's intuition is very sensitive. He subconsciously tends to judge who is really good to him.

Compared with other jealous companions and Ohei Saburo who is greedy under his smile, the care and concern under Shinichi's cold expression is what Junbo likes the most.

"Brother Shinichi, I heard a story from Grandpa Tanaka, the fishmonger, today. Grandpa Tanaka said that you can't go out alone at night, otherwise you will encounter a terrible man-eating evil ghost! The evil ghost is afraid of the sun, so it only appears at night! The evil ghost has long and sharp claws, and it can make a roar that is more terrifying than that of a beast!" Junbo opened his little hands and pretended to be scary and frightened.

"Evil ghost? It's scarier than encountering a ghost in this broken temple." Shinichi murmured as he looked at the broken temple behind him. In his heart, this broken temple is much scarier than the man-eating evil ghost, but he has been planning for two years. Soon, he will be able to escape from this hell!

"But Grandpa Tanaka also said that in addition to the man-eating evil ghost, there are also ghost hunters who will protect humans and defeat the evil ghosts to maintain peace!" Junbo waved his little arms.

Touching Junbo's hair, Shinichi said softly, "Junbo, can I take you to Kyoto in the future? There are so many delicious and fun things there, and there are food stalls selling candied haws everywhere on the roadside."

Junbo's eyes lit up, "Okay! Let's go to Kyoto! Shinichi, don't regret it!"

Shinichi didn't take the story of the man-eating evil ghost to heart. Who would believe such a story that deceives children? But this story is inexplicably familiar. In my previous life, I seemed to have heard a similar story in some anime recommendation. Well, what was it called? Ghost Hunter? But it doesn't matter...