Above the county town.

Jiang Yuanhua gave Shen Yi one long, deep look, then wasted no further time on sentiment — the man had just bought him the most precious thing of all.

Nothing could rival a swing this dramatic, from the depths straight back up to the heights.

This wasn’t over yet. He was still Qingzhou’s General, and nowhere near the point of laying down the weight on his shoulders and giving up on everything out of spite.

The treasured sword tore through the crimson mist blanketing the sky like a rainbow piercing the sun, racing toward Qingzhou City!

“…”

The Howling Moon Demon King hunched its body, both paws gripping its great crescent blade tight.

The young man before it had an unfamiliar face — it couldn’t even put a name to him. Right under its nose, Qingzhou had somehow, without a whisper of warning, acquired a Mixed Origin Grandmaster.

The wolf king suddenly remembered the five demon lords under its command who’d vanished without explanation.

It had guessed that Qingzhou had gained some new, unfathomably skilled warrior, but never once imagined the man would be at the Mixed Origin realm.

The logic was simple enough.

If a Mixed Origin Grandmaster had been stationed here, given Jiang Yuanhua’s nature, the two of them would surely have joined forces and marched straight out of Qingzhou to kill it outright.

Not done what he’d just done — abandoning Qingzhou City entirely and throwing himself into a fight-to-the-death stance instead.

Of course, there was an even more important reason.

Even it knew that, in the three-way alliance’s stand against the Thousand Demon Den, by the current rotation it should be Great Qian’s turn to bear the brunt of it — and any spare Mixed Origin cultivator would surely have been called away by the immortal sects and sent to the most dangerous front.

“The Howling Moon offers its respects.”

The old wolf cradled its crescent blade against its chest, claws cupped together in salute, and forced a smile to its lips. “Might I ask the Grandmaster’s honored name?”

Offending a Martial Immortal and offending a Mixed Origin Grandmaster were two entirely different matters.

Jiang Yuanhua could only sit holed up in Qingzhou City cursing it from a distance, but this young man could actually chase it down and dog its every step, leaving it no peace at all.

As fellow powers of the same tier, it offered the salute first, in the role of the elder — extending the man every courtesy it could.

“…”

Shen Yi stepped forward, his robe sleeves billowing, and threw a punch with the weight and force to overturn rivers and topple seas, slamming it out without hesitation!

Beneath his skin, a red glow flared bright.

The path infant was a being distilled from the essence of heaven and earth, already beyond the realm of mortal flesh.

There was no longer any need to marshal his qi — every motion now carried full force by default.

The Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art demanded enormous resources, but the foundation it built was likewise far beyond what others of the same realm possessed.

The cultivation and flesh of countless great demons, all transmuted into demon power, now poured entirely into his arm, descending before the Howling Moon Demon King’s very eyes.

It narrowed its eyes and abruptly raised its crescent blade, answering with a slash!

Flesh and bone against a treasured weapon!

Crack—

The mighty crescent blade, which had taken who knew how many heads in its time, shattered to pieces outright beneath that glowing red fist!

Savage demon power swept over the Howling Moon Demon King’s entire body. Its expression changed abruptly, and it crossed both arms to meet the blow, trying to block the punch.

Its armor was shredded to pieces under the force of the demon power, its whole withered frame sent tumbling backward, skidding some thirty-odd zhang before it finally steadied itself.

The old wolf’s gray fur stood on end across its entire body, its gaze flicking quietly down to its own forearm.

A demon king’s body, formidable enough to put any human warrior to shame.

And yet a single punch from this man had left its arm bones faintly threatening to snap.

This was nothing like someone who’d only just broken through to Mixed Origin!

“Quite the skill you’ve got there, Grandmaster… but isn’t this a bit much? This king only popped in for a bit of a stroll, that’s all.”

Sensing how the situation had shifted, the Howling Moon snapped its gaze away with lightning reflexes, swallowing the agony and brushing the shattered armor fragments off itself without so much as a flicker in its expression.

However shaken it felt inside, none of it could be allowed to show.

If the young man realized just how badly it had come off worse in this exchange, getting out of here in one piece today would become very difficult indeed.

“The one who truly wants your Qingzhou wiped out isn’t this king at all. That Lady — she’s from the Thousand Demon Den. Jiang Yuanhua alone won’t be able to hold her back.”

It earnestly laid out the stakes for the young man.

There was no real feud between the two of them, anyway… and even if there were, it certainly hadn’t been the one to start it. At least until things played out over in Qingzhou City, it was more than willing to let bygones be bygones.

What in this world couldn’t be talked through? Everything had room for negotiation.

“Matters have their priorities, their urgencies…”

Before the old wolf had even finished speaking, Shen Yi, through the punch he’d just thrown, had already gained some feel for this brand-new realm of power.

Familiarization complete, his figure bore down through the air once more.

The red mist in his eyes had condensed solid as substance; he no longer reached for any of his flashier techniques.

This, supposedly, was what it meant to be a Grandmaster — a return to simplicity, to the unadorned root of things.

When the simplest straight punch could tear mountains and rivers apart, everything else became mere decoration.

His elbow slammed down hard into the Howling Moon’s face, sending the old wolf flying once more, its savage beast-face caving inward, every sharp fang shattered to fragments.

Shen Yi’s figure vanished abruptly from where he stood.

He had never made a habit of chatting with his food before eating it.

He seized the old wolf by the throat in midair, then hurled it violently down toward the ground.

The Howling Moon Demon King clamped both claws desperately around the young man’s wrist — claws sharp enough to tear a Core-Nurturing demon lord’s body apart with ease — and with everything it had, finally managed to sink them into Shen Yi’s skin.

And yet beneath that skin it had so hard-won broken through to was no flesh and blood at all, only crimson demon power condensed solid as substance.

His body was merely a husk now; his path infant was the bone beneath it.

The Howling Moon Demon King was already a tremendously aged demon, no longer the powerhouse it had once been in its prime — but even so, it still couldn’t quite believe that, pinned in this young man’s grip, it could come across as this feeble.

But it was, after all, still a demon king.

The old wolf’s eyes bulged from their sockets, every scrap of demon power in its body gathering into both claws, until at last it managed to wrest itself a sliver of breathing room from that pale, glowing red hand.

“Awooo—”

It tore open its blood-smeared jaws and let loose a long howl, shrill and piercing!

“…”

Shen Yi’s brow furrowed tight. Within that wolf’s howl, he felt, of all things, as though he were being driven straight out of his own body… a divine ability aimed at the soul.

One capable of forcing a soul out of its body, then scattering it into nothing.

Having spent a full seventeen hundred years locked in battle against his path infant’s own consciousness, his spiritual sense was now far more tenacious and resilient than anyone else’s — and yet even in such a state, he found himself gripped by a strong, dizzying haze of disorientation.

At last, he let go of the hand clamped around the Howling Moon’s throat.

Relief at having survived the brush flooded across the old wolf’s face, but it didn’t dare let up on the divine ability for even an instant — if anything, it let its howl ring out louder still!

At a distance this close, this might well be its only chance — to seize the momentum and shatter the young man’s soul in one go!

In the next instant, Shen Yi’s hand fell to the hilt at his waist, and the moment it touched Deep Abyss, a cool, soothing sensation flooded through his body.

As a top-grade treasure, Deep Abyss had only one function beyond sheer sharpness.

Guarding the soul!

It might not be able to fully nullify the Howling Moon Demon King’s divine ability, but combined with his already formidable spiritual sense…

Schlick!

Shen Yi gripped the blade with both hands and plunged it straight down, the black mist trailing off its edge, driving it directly into the old wolf’s gaping bloody maw, piercing clean through its mouth and out the back of its neck.

He released the hilt at once and slammed out another brutal punch!

Boom—

The old wolf’s eye sockets shattered, its face a mask of blood. Unable to break free, it could only lash out with its claws on pure instinct.

(End of Chapter)