Linjiang Prefecture. Shimen Cliff.

Hezhen stood in his wolf-pelt cloak, the yin-yang fish pattern embroidered at the collar — the bearing of a proper personal attendant Deputy Commander.

At this moment, he was standing with a group of officers, expression blank, staring at the cliff face ahead of him like a man who had lost his wits.

The great demon here had an extraordinary talent for tunneling. It had hollowed out the entire mountainside and made this place its home for centuries. No one had ever found a satisfactory way to deal with it.

Boom.

The young man in dark clothes hung in the air and drove his fist through the rock face.

A blinding green light split the mountain behind it, revealing a dense network of tunnels within.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then launched himself forward and snapped a kick into a section of wall.

Under that tremendous force, a demon roughly ten zhang long came scrambling out in a panic — scales covering its body from head to tail — and the moment its head emerged, a surge of fist-wind shattered it apart.

【Earth Dragon, Condensate realm, slain. Total lifespan: 4,300 years. Remaining lifespan: 760 years. Absorption complete.】

Shen Yi carried the corpse back to where the others were standing, then took out the records and leafed through them.

After a moment he looked up, mildly puzzled. “That’s all of them?”

The officers kept quiet. Hezhen said woodenly: “That’s all of them.”

Over ten-odd days, General Shen had gone to eight locations. Of the demons that hadn’t already fled, five had been killed — not one of them had survived a second exchange.

This was Linjiang Prefecture. The place demons liked best of all.

And now there was genuinely not a single one left.

“What about the Jade Liquid ones?”

Shen Yi glanced sideways. “Gather the intelligence and send it back to the General’s residence.”

Five Condensate-realm demons, and the total lifespan harvest had been barely over two thousand years — each one more sluggish than the last. One of them had only sixty-odd years left and still hadn’t broken through to Core-Nurturing. Compared to the Junior Demon King, the gap was staggering.

Hezhen couldn’t help wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Most of the others have fled… I’ll look into it right away.”

He was going to personally deal with Jade Liquid realm demons too. Had the court’s budget gotten tight lately? He kept getting the feeling he was about to be made redundant.

Shen Yi nodded and swept back up through the sky.

He came down in a deserted stretch of wilderness, dropped the earth dragon, then pulled the other five demon corpses from his silver pouch and laid them out on the ground — the Junior Demon King among them.

He opened his mouth. A surge of blood and flesh condensed in an instant, transmuting into demon blood that he swallowed down.

Five demons in total, and it barely produced a single drop.

The eight-zhang bull demon had been the smallest of them in size, yet by far the most productive — eight drops from it alone.

Shen Yi picked up the demon cores and stuffed them into his mouth without ceremony.

He opened the panel with practiced ease, and ran the Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art derivation.

A few years of demonic lifespan, and the demon blood and cores that would normally take time to absorb were swallowed entirely by the path infant in an instant.

He sat cross-legged and dropped into his inner vision.

His divine sense poured into the path infant, and his perspective shifted again.

He was the path infant inside the inner core once more.

He felt the strength filling his body — far more than when he had first taken shape — and raised his fist and slammed it into the inner core’s wall.

Thud—

“This hard?”

The path infant rubbed its wrist. Shattering this inner core meant breaking through to Mixed Origin.

What he had accumulated so far was clearly still not enough.

He considered for a moment, then looked sideways at the divine spirit crouched trembling beside him. “What are you sitting there for? Get up and help.”

After day after day of suppressive force, the divine spirit had become considerably more cooperative. It scrambled to its feet and pressed its palms against the inner shell, dissolving the core from another angle.

Many hands make light work.

Before long, the Heaven-Devouring inner core gave a sharp crack, and a thin hairline fracture appeared across its smooth surface.

The path infant lay on its back, out of breath, directing the divine spirit to use accumulated faith to massage its arms.

He was only testing the ground — he had no intention of trying to force a breakthrough through the panel yet.

Not enough strength, forcing the core to shatter prematurely… that would count as premature birth, probably.

Qingzhou. Division yamen. The General’s residence.

Aqian sat cross-legged on a stone stool. Jiang Yuanhua stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

Both of them were staring at a white dove on the table.

The dove was formed from qi, a small silver bell hanging at its neck.

“You take it.”

Jiang Yuanhua glanced at her. If he remembered correctly, she had been rather full of herself when they returned to Qingzhou.

“Ahem.”

Aqian coughed twice, gritted her teeth, reached out and unclipped the silver bell. The dove dissolved quietly.

She channeled her qi and drew out what was inside.

Two items in total. A gilded envelope, clearly from the War Temple. Beside it, a piece of white jade two fingers wide.

“One each.”

Aqian’s hand shot out and snatched the envelope.

Even when they had killed the Junior Demon King, she had long since prepared herself for the worst. But now that the answer was almost in front of her, her breathing quickened all the same.

Jiang Yuanhua, by comparison, was considerably calmer.

Once he had lost all control over this situation, whatever the outcome, there had been nothing left to do but accept it.

Aqian unfolded the letter.

A single line.

Thousand Demon Den. Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor.

A handful of small characters — and yet Aqian’s hands froze. Even with prior expectation, even having guessed it, now that the answer was truly before her, a single title was enough to make it hard to breathe.

Tiny little Qingzhou, and they had managed to offend a demon on par with Spirit-Transformation.

The War Temple must be thrilled.

A brief shadow crossed Jiang Yuanhua’s eyes, but he said nothing. He reached quietly for the white jade.

Channeled his qi into it.

Aqian tensed. “Is that Xuanguang Cave or Wutong Mountain?”

Jiang Yuanhua examined it for a moment. “Wutong Mountain.”

When his qi had filled the jade, a voice came through — faintly sharp-edged.

“It’s busy. I’m currently beating it.”

The voice cut off. Apparently there was nothing more worth saying.

Jiang Yuanhua and Aqian looked at each other. Both fell silent.

A long moment passed.

Then Aqian shot to her feet, threw herself onto the stone table, and rolled onto her back laughing until she had to hold her stomach. “It’s over! It’s finally over, it’s finally over!”

Jiang Yuanhua watched her with helpless resignation as she jumped down from the table and bounced toward the courtyard gate. “Right, I’m off! Things to do!”

Things to do. Right. Spending sweet time with Wu Feng, was it.

The voice from the jade had been distinctive enough that Jiang Yuanhua could place its owner without needing to think.

One of Wutong Mountain’s twelve disciples. Had achieved Spirit-Transformation through the path infant.

The Mysterious Sword Perfected Master — Nie Jun.

Even within the immortal sects, he was the kind of existence that made other cultivators step aside. Even the War Temple’s Ancestor at full strength might not have come out ahead against him.

“…”

Jiang Yuanhua sat back down, the jade gripped tight in his hand.

When fortune reaches its lowest, it turns?

All his years of careful arrangements had ultimately come to nothing. Heaven had sent a Junior Demon King — and then sent Qiulan and Shen Yi to Qingzhou alongside it. Had given the Junior Demon King extraordinary backing — and then, as if by coincidence, had a Mysterious Sword Perfected Master nearby to handle it.

A demon emperor being watched by Wutong Mountain would most likely not dare come somewhere like Great Qian again so lightly.

As long as his people did not venture out, it seemed as though this might truly be finished.

With that thought, Jiang Yuanhua pressed a hand to his brow and tucked the jade away with great care — handling it not as though it were jade, but as though it were Qingzhou itself.

(End of Chapter)