Back at the sixth transformation, he had forcibly bound a Core-Nurturing White Deer.

Which meant the demons he could accommodate afterward were a full tier stronger.

By the normal progression, the Junior Demon King was already the absolute limit of what the Immortal-Demon Nine Transformations could hold. Once it was fully absorbed, this Rare-ranked body refinement technique would reach a level where nothing below a demon king could stand against it.

It was, after all, only a Condensate-level body refinement technique.

But things were different now. If Shen Yi’s guess was right, he might actually be able to bind a true demon king inside himself.

Forcing a Condensate body refinement technique up to Mixed Origin level.

With that thought, he swallowed the demon core and channeled the demonic lifespan.

He watched the lifespan count drop quickly.

A thread of anticipation rose in him. The boost to his body from demon qi this powerful went without saying — the first seven transformations combined would barely equal the Junior Demon King.

What Shen Yi actually wanted to know was what the bull demon’s innate ability had been, and why he had never seen it used in the fight.

He watched the panel notifications calmly. Since the battle with the path embryo’s consciousness, his strengthened divine sense could now perceive every minute change within his own body with perfect clarity.

How demon qi condensed into a spirit within the Nine Transformations. How the consciousness took shape inside it.

Thousands of years of evolution, playing out inside him one stage at a time.

He didn’t know exactly what use these impressions would be, but accumulating experience was never a waste.

It was clear enough that the flood dragon and the caiman from the early transformations had been limited in both realm and understanding.

Their instincts had been right, but their methods were the clumsiest possible. Using vitality to tame demon qi, waiting for it to take shape naturally, then slowly letting consciousness emerge on its own — each transformation was like watching a demon grow from birth to adulthood. No wonder it took so long.

The question was where to find more advanced techniques to replace it.

【Year 8,600 — a Blood-Transmuted Demon Bull takes form within you. You have tamed it with your vitality for thousands of years, yet its demonic nature could not be fully purified. It does not qualify as an immortal-demon spirit. It remains a demon.】

【Transform into the demon bull. Devour living creatures. Offer flesh and blood to the five organs. Transmute vital essence into demon blood. Bathe yourself in it. Forge the demon body. Cast the demon bones. Ascend to the throne of the Demon Emperor Supreme.】

【Immortal-Demon Ninth— Eighth Transformation.】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 7,573 years】

A transformation he had repeated many times was suddenly different.

Shen Yi felt a flicker in his chest — a sudden, intrusive surge of killing-intent flooding into his mind. Fortunately his divine sense had been tempered well beyond what it once was, and he was not seriously affected.

He continued channeling the demonic lifespan. Deal with it all in one go.

Another nine hundred-odd years spent.

At last the death-intent erased the demon’s consciousness completely.

What was born from the bull had returned to the bull — nearly all the lifespan he had gained from the Junior Demon King went straight back into subduing it.

“So what was its ability actually?”

Shen Yi stared at the panel notification. Devour living creatures? Every demon ate people.

With the aid of his divine sense, he quickly reasserted control over a body that had gained a tremendous boost. If the bronze mirror hit him again, he was fairly certain he could handle it with room to spare.

He stood up, then remembered something.

He gave his silver bell a slap.

A massive White Deer corpse appeared in the room.

He had originally intended to try the new ability on the Junior Demon King, but it was simply too large — it wouldn’t fit in the courtyard.

Shen Yi stared at the White Deer on the floor, then opened his mouth on instinct.

The next moment, the Core-Nurturing demon lord rapidly shriveled. Its flesh and blood dissolved entirely into a crimson liquid, which condensed in an instant into a blood droplet the size of a fingertip and flew into his mouth.

He felt the sweet metallic taste spread through his mouth.

He dropped into his inner vision.

As expected — the blood droplet now hung suspended within his qi-sea. As he watched, its crimson color darkened steadily to black.

Forge the demon body. Cast the demon bones.

Going by the ability’s description, this should be usable to refine the organs and skeleton.

But Shen Yi did not do that. The Junior Demon King’s body had been solid and formidable, but nothing particularly remarkable compared to other demons he had absorbed.

What he could feel from this demon blood was something far more familiar — it was essentially liquid demon core.

Heaven and earth’s spiritual qi was absorbed by demons and refined into their cores, and it also nourished their bodies — but simply eating demon flesh couldn’t extract it cleanly.

The Junior Demon King’s ability was a method for drawing that portion of spiritual qi into itself directly.

Blood-Transmuting Demon Bull. That was what it meant.

No wonder it had reached that cultivation level in just nine hundred years.

Heaven and earth were impartial in this regard. Ordinary people with no cultivation still carried spiritual qi within them — thin beyond measure, but they were countless in number. Other demons ate people too, yet none of them could absorb that qi without waste the way this one could.

If the Junior Demon King had taken Qingzhou and eaten through it city by city, the rate of its growth would have been almost unimaginable.

Shen Yi opened the panel again.

His path embryo had already been one step away from forming a true path infant, and he had been wondering where to find another demon core. This was a pillow arriving precisely when he needed to sleep.

By pure impression alone, this demon blood was a match for the White Deer’s core.

【Year 1 — you absorb the demon blood and begin attempting to condense the path infant…】

Last time, the old flood dragon’s core had already carried the process to its final stage, and the path embryo’s consciousness had been thoroughly subdued.

The moment the demon blood merged into it, it opened its eyes.

Slowly, it severed the blood-threads connecting it to the core, rose, sat cross-legged, and placed its palms folded against its lower abdomen.

At this stage, the path embryo had completed its final purpose.

Shen Yi’s vast divine sense poured into it, seized the last remaining thread of its consciousness, and forcibly merged with it.

【Year 320 — you successfully condense the path infant and take control of it.】

【Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art: Perfection】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 6,323 years】

In that instant, Shen Yi felt as though he had been given two bodies at once.

Eyes open — the ordinary, unremarkable interior of his room.

Eyes closed and reopened — something entirely different.

Through a blurred and warped field of vision: a vast, lightless prison. Red-veined meridian lines spread across the ceiling overhead, pressing down with a weight that made it hard to breathe.

Under that suffocating pressure, Shen Yi quickly withdrew the Solar-Fusion Furnace’s suppressive force, and the sensation eased.

He stood, and experimentally knocked on the translucent inner shell.

Thud. Thud.

He tried punching and kicking at it for a moment, and found it considerably harder than he had imagined.

“Break this inner core, and that’s Mixed Origin?”

The Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art had reached its limit. What came next was simply accumulating strength.

Shen Yi’s divine sense returned to his body.

Accumulating strength was not a serious problem — feed it enough and it would come. But a question had just occurred to him.

He was simultaneously nurturing both a path infant and a divine spirit seed.

If the path infant shattered the inner core — the divine spirit was still at the seed stage. Would it just die outright?

“Time to go visit old man Chen.”

(End of Chapter)