Chapter 212: A Beautiful Poison
The night deepened, but beneath the archway of Yoshiwara the lights blazed as bright as broad daylight.
On stage, the women unfurled a dance of hypnotizing elegance and beauty. Below, the crowd of dirty old men churned with euphoria, whistling and hurling cheers.
The atmosphere had reached its peak.
However, among the audience, some merchants and officials exchanged odd glances.
No one was a fool.
During the streak when Yoshiwara collapsed under the plague of demons, they had appeared daily. It was then that Marcus, under a façade of good intentions, combined a heavy hand with diplomacy to buy up every establishment at fire-sale prices.
During the remodeling, not a single demon poked its head out. And now, right at the reopening, three burst in at the same time only to be executed in three seconds.
By wiping them out in record time, they proved to the crowd that Yoshiwara was an impregnable sanctuary.
After such a maneuver, the clientele was put at ease, the business secured, and Marcus’s authority rigidly established.
But to the shrewd folks who had spent years moving among the spheres of power, the ploy was obvious.
A chance attack by demons? It was nothing more than a show staged by Marcus, a man with strings everywhere.
"How filthy..." a former proprietor of the place muttered under his breath.
The man beside him tugged at his sleeve at once.
"Shut your mouth. It’s not wise to mess with that guy."
The merchant looked at the bloodstained executioner who stood silently holding his sword beneath the platform, swallowed hard, and kept the rest of his words to himself.
He realized it was a trap, felt rage and helplessness, but had no way out. The other man controlled the money, the force, and the law: breeding demons, releasing them, and executing them at his convenience.
Against that, all a mere merchant could do was swallow his anger.
In the private room on the second floor, Marcus rested against the railing, surveying the scene.
Shinobu sat beside him, chin propped on her hand, watching him with a smile.
"Marcus-kun~ this move of yours is truly..."
"What?"
"Truly filthy."
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
"This is called business strategy."
"Strategy?" Shinobu chuckled. "You call this strategy?"
"You don’t have any proof either. All three ended up as ash—who’s going to accuse me?"
With that, he turned his head toward Zenitsu.
"You had your share of the credit in this too..."
Zenitsu was grinning ear to ear, drooling with excitement in the front row of the balcony so as not to miss a single movement of the dance.
He neither heard Marcus’s voice nor noticed that, among the three demons slaughtered below, there was a figure that up close looked painfully familiar.
Marcus shot him a quick glance. Him not realizing was for the best—that way explanations could be avoided.
Then he looked at Ivy, beside him.
"So those three little demons went down—no problem. I’ll get you something better later!"
Noticing that he was still thinking of her, Ivy felt a warmth in her chest. She pressed gently against his back and murmured sweetly:
"There’s no need, Master~ I don’t like fighting or killing."
Marcus shifted his posture. "None of that. If you’ve got nothing to defend yourself with, what are you going to do when Ume picks a fight with you?"
"What do you mean I bother her?" Off to the side, Ume took offense. "You’re slandering me!"
Hearing her talk that way, Marcus shot her a look.
Ume shrank back instantly, ducking her neck. "Master... I was wrong..."
After admitting her mistake at once, she saw that Marcus was no longer looking at her and immediately gritted her teeth, seething inside.
’Just you wait, pervert! I’ve got the whip and candles ready for when I gather the money!’
Below, the women’s dance concluded, giving way to the reading of the votes.
"Number one: Fuujin. Highest bid at the moment: forty-three thousand. We invite Mister Ida to come up on stage."
A middle-aged man, potbellied and in expensive clothes, climbed onto the platform with a flushed face.
Fuujin, who wore the number one tag, was also quite perceptive and immediately approached him.
Her petite figure contrasted sharply with Ida’s.
It was distressing to watch them, though that distress was nothing but pure envy. The dispossessed crowd watched with pent-up rage as Ida’s fat hand settled as it pleased on the woman’s waist.
Under the furious gaze of more than a thousand pairs of eyes, Ida’s satisfaction reached ecstasy.
His body trembled with euphoria.
Seeing them like this brought him a pleasure greater than that of the very company he had on his arm.
No man enjoys betrayal, but seeing the contorted faces of the crowd made him feel he’d beaten more than a thousand people at once.
Behind him, Pearl didn’t interrupt the display.
She knew Ida had taken the bait completely. And as for the spectators with red eyes, from that night on their greatest aspiration would be to occupy that very spot on the stage.
Watching the scene, Shinobu sighed.
"The people have already been poisoned by you."
"Even if it’s a poison, it’s a beautiful one, like a dream," Marcus replied, observing Shinobu’s face. "Never mind them—even I’d like to taste such a poison."
Shinobu took a second to process the meaning of the phrase, until she noticed Marcus’s fixed, burning gaze.
Her cheeks flushed instantly. She gritted her teeth and stood up, seized by panic.
"I hope you poison yourself!" she blurted out before walking off with firm steps.
Seeing her leave, Marcus lost interest in the spectacle. He quietly exited along with the rest through the back door.
The reopening of Yoshiwara had been a resounding success, lifting a great weight off his shoulders. From now on, the money would flow under its own momentum to finance the construction of Yoshiwara and consolidate his dominion.
For his part, he was already preparing for the trip to the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters to collect the agreed-upon money, claim resources, and pick up some people.
But before that...
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Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎
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