“Just came to see you.”
Shen Yi stepped forward, smiling pleasantly. “What brings Yellow Sixth Brother down from the mountain without so much as a word?”
The Dog Demon stopped chewing. A long silence. Then it shifted its bulk slightly to one side, revealing what lay on the bed behind it.
A second demon — leaner, lighter — lay quietly on the mattress, taking small, delicate bites of a piece of soft organ meat. Nestled against her underside, a puppy the size of a hand curled up and nursed.
“Too many enemies on the mountain. Needed somewhere to lay low.”
Yellow Six’s voice was a dull rumble. “Don’t talk to me about rules. The food here suits me fine. I’m staying half a year, until my boy’s big enough to travel. That’s the end of it.”
Shen Yi’s smile brightened. “Congratulations! Mother and pup, both doing well — wonderful news.”
He crossed to Yellow Six’s side and dropped onto the edge of the bed without a glance at the blood-soaked planks beneath him.
His arm settled around the demon’s neck. “A happy occasion like this, and you didn’t think to tell your brother in advance?”
Yellow Six shot him a sideways look but didn’t pull away. “Save the sweet talk. I don’t care if the county magistrate himself shows up today — I’m not going anywhere.”
“Of course not. Of course not.”
Shen Yi’s smile held steady, his eyes clear and bright as he looked at the demon.
Something in that gaze finally softened Yellow Six’s expression. It turned back toward him, about to speak —
— and its pupils snapped shut.
A steel blade had already entered its chest.
The muffled sound made Chen Ji’s head jerk up.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Shen Yi sat with one arm still around Yellow Six, his face perfectly calm. “You’re a guest. I’d never drive you away.”
The blade went in a second time, straight through the heart. Blood spattered across them both, adding a fresh brightness to the room’s existing dark red.
“You should stay right here…” Shen Yi’s voice grew softer. His movements grew more practiced. “Right here, forever. Don’t go anywhere.”
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Each sentence came with another thrust, unhurried, until that powerful body had been reduced to wreckage.
Yellow Six fought with everything it had. It didn’t matter. Against the arm draped over its shoulders, all that strength went nowhere — absorbed without a tremor, like a stone dropped into deep water.
To anyone watching, it looked like the demon was simply sitting there quietly, a cooperative guest, watching the blade go in and out.
Finally, Shen Yi let go.
He watched Yellow Six tip over and hit the floor without expression.
Then he looked up. “Wait outside.”
Chen Ji stood rigid as a post, his mind a storm of noise.
Under Shen Yi’s gaze, he startled back to himself, turned, and walked out. At the threshold he couldn’t help glancing back one last time.
Shen Yi was sitting on the bed’s edge, drawing the blade slowly from Yellow Six’s body. He glanced sidelong at the second Dog Demon on the bed — her eyes wide and flooding with terror — and reached over to remove the half-eaten organ from her mouth.
His murmur was almost gentle. “A family ought to stay together, don’t you think?”
Chen Ji’s foot caught the doorframe.
He stepped outside and stopped, eyes shut, pulling in long slow breaths.
A moment later, Shen Yi emerged, wiping his fingers clean on a cloth rag, tone light. “Go in and clear it up. Make it tidy.”
Chen Ji opened his eyes. He stared at that familiar face, thoughts tangled into a knot that eventually pulled itself into one bewildered question: “Why?”
“Why what?” Shen Yi raised an eyebrow.
What the—
Chen Ji’s jaw locked. His eyes went wide.
Why did you suddenly do that?! Why were you making small talk one second and then stabbing a demon to death the next like you were slaughtering livestock — sitting right next to it, not even standing up?!
And why were you still smiling?! That smile — what does it mean? Do you hate them or don’t you? What do you actually feel about the people who died here? About those demons you’ve been calling your brothers?!
From where Chen Ji stood, this man had looked at the butchered remains of his own kind with complete indifference — and then turned around and treated his demon “allies” with the same indifference, right down to a newborn puppy that couldn’t even open its eyes yet.
It made no sense. None of it made any sense.
He pressed it all down and asked the one practical question underneath all the others: “Why kill them? Aren’t you afraid of the Yellow King coming for revenge? Or do you already have a plan for dealing with that?”
“A plan?” Shen Yi’s brow creased. “It didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to let it keep eating people. The simplest solution seemed to be one that made everyone satisfied.”
“That’s… that’s your reasoning?”
Chen Ji took a slow breath, recognized that he wasn’t going to get anything more out of this conversation, and turned to go deal with the corpses.
A few days apart, and I can’t read him at all anymore.
Once Chen Ji was inside, Shen Yi stood alone in the doorway.
The rag dropped from his fingers.
His hand was trembling slightly. He stared down at his palm, then made a fist, willing the shaking to stop.
He’d transmigrated into this world and watched people die before — but this was the first time he’d truly seen it up close. The stench of rot and blood. Flesh torn away in mouthfuls. He’d been near enough to see the threads of meat between the demon’s teeth.
He’d genuinely wanted to be sick. The repeated stabbing had been the only way to push the fear and revulsion somewhere manageable.
But he’d had to hold himself together. Stay cold.
Because falling apart wasn’t something he could afford. The Demon Suppression Division’s inspection was a month away. In this whole county, there wasn’t a single person who was going to pull him out of trouble — he had to walk himself to the other side of this.
As for Chen Ji’s question — he’d thought about it, and arrived at a simple answer.
Was there another way? No.
If he’d done nothing, those villagers would have died anyway. No good options. An unwinnable situation. So do what can be done and stop making it complicated.
He’d had enough of numbing himself with phrases like “the bigger picture” and “endure now for peace later.”
Better to focus on collecting more demon lifespan. Get stronger. And the next time one of these creatures reached out its claws — cut the hand off cleanly.
Speaking of demon lifespan — today’s haul was substantial.
【Sentient Dog Demon — Pre-Threshold. Total Lifespan: 145 years. Remaining: 59 years. Absorbed.】
【Sentient Dog Demon — Pre-Threshold. Total Lifespan: 152 years. Remaining: 61 years. Absorbed.】
【Non-Sentient Dog Demon. Total Lifespan: 80 years. Remaining: 79 years. Absorbed.】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 199 years】
【Remaining Personal Lifespan: 1 year】
“They even rounded it up for me. Two hundred even.”
He hadn’t decided yet where to put it.
Push further with the Demon-Subduing Bladework, using the Solarblade as a foothold to dig deeper into the Threshold Realm — or keep testing the Cloudscattering Longfist and see if he could develop more from that Striking Affinity.
While he was still thinking, Chen Ji had already loaded the demon corpses onto a flatbed cart and walked the donkeys over.
“Whatever your reasoning, sir…”
Chen Ji held out the reins, expression tangled. He looked back over his shoulder at the distant fields.
The scattered farmers on the paddy paths were still standing in the same hollow way — arms at their sides, faces blank, like the living dead. But when their eyes drifted to the loaded cart, something faint and human briefly crossed their features.
“At least today… you kept them alive.”
Chen Ji finished and tried to produce a smile, conciliatory and awkward.
The reins were pulled from his hand.
He looked up. Shen Yi was already on his donkey, ambling away at a leisurely pace, not looking back.
“…”
Shen Yi stretched, rolled his eyes at the sky.
Just say it, then. All that buildup — the backhanded dig first, then the compliment. What a performance.
Exhausting.
(End of Chapter)