Clashes between demons were the most brutal of all — aside from innate divine abilities, most came down to raw, hardened bodies smashing against one another.

Strong was strong, weak was weak; there was no reasoning around it.

And here, now, in this desolate stretch of land, Shen Yi stood with a foot planted on the Howling Moon, fist following fist, giving it a true taste of what a fight to the death actually meant.

"Awooo!"

The Howling Moon Demon King's counterattacks grew steadily weaker — where it had once been able to tear Shen Yi's flesh open, it was soon left feebly slapping at his arms.

Until, at last, the wolf demon's skull was smashed to powder.

A demon king once renowned far and wide, beaten to death beneath someone's heel, fists pounding the life out of it, in some backwater corner of nowhere that didn't even have a name worth shouting.

Every one of its calculations had come to nothing.

Because the man across from it had never once answered a single word it said, from start to finish.

Shen Yi grabbed a fistful of fur at its neck and hauled it up, red light flickering in his eyes. He opened his mouth slightly, and the withered carcass slowly shriveled away.

A full forty-six drops of demon blood gathered into a single mass and poured into his mouth.

Shen Yi wiped at the corner of his mouth, casually picked up its demon core, called up a flare of peacock-bright crimson light to mend the wounds across his body, and sat down cross-legged on the ground.

His spiritual sense returned to his original body.

The path infant shrank rapidly, returning to its former size, settling quietly back within his qi sea.

Its consciousness had already been fused with Shen Yi's own; now it was nothing more than an empty shell.

After the battle just past, every scrap of demon power that had been spilling off him had been spent in full.

"Hah."

Shen Yi opened his eyes; the red mist in them had vanished, and he was back to…