Towering mountain ranges ringed the horizon, green grass swaying in a gentle breeze.

Having been thoroughly pestered by Jiang Yuanhua, Shen Yi simply mounted his cloud and left the city behind, making his way to some uninhabited stretch of wild hill country in Qingzhou.

The grass wasn’t as soft as bedding, but it had its own particular charm.

He allowed himself, briefly, to savor the hard-won quiet.

Shen Yi opened the panel, his gaze sweeping one by one across the entries listed in the techniques column.

Setting aside demon techniques, the rarest among them were, without question, the Unfettered Wind-Riding Art, the Twin-Harmony Dragon-Tiger True Intent, and the Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art.

These were already the most top-tier techniques available anywhere in Qingzhou.

But for him, as he stood now, their usefulness had dwindled down to next to nothing.

It was only after truly breaking through to the Mixed Origin realm that Shen Yi finally understood what Jiang Qiulan had meant, back then, when she’d said there was nothing within the immortal sects that he actually wanted.

The reason wasn’t hard to guess, really.

Take himself, for instance — he had forged his path infant out of demon power, while Jiang Qiulan had achieved Mixed Origin through the Mysterious Ice Seven-Kill Sword Intent.

A path suited to one person was not necessarily suited to another.

A divine spirit was different — every one of them was condensed from accumulated faith, and so there was a common thread to be traced and learned from there.

“Exceptional comprehension.”

Shen Yi looked over his more than twenty thousand years of banked demon lifespan, and a sudden uncertainty crept into his chest.

Forget it. What was the point in overthinking it? He’d take it one step at a time.

At the very least, for now, there was still a direction left to push toward.

With that thought, Shen Yi gritted his teeth, and ten thousand years of banked demon lifespan vanished in an instant.

【Demon Origin: Capable of reshaping a demon soul into one bound to serve at your side — eternally enslaved, never to transcend, doomed to endure every manner of suffering this world holds, all in defense of its master’s supreme art】

【Quantity: 1】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 10,400 years】

Watching the number shift, Shen Yi felt his heart give an abrupt lurch, and whatever leisurely ease he’d been enjoying drained away at once.

If his guess was right, and this thing could actually help him cultivate his divine spirit in tandem with everything else, fine. But if he’d guessed wrong…

He cleared his throat and quickly shook off the ridiculous thought.

“Does this work the same way as a demon treasure crystal?”

Shen Yi turned his gaze to the Demon Origin, hesitating over which technique to feed it into, when a great crowd of shadowy phantoms abruptly appeared within his field of vision.

A fox cobbled together out of shreds of flesh. A flood dragon with only half a body left. A headless white deer…

So this was who — or what — he’d been deriving his techniques alongside, all this time, inside the panel?

Shen Yi felt a flicker of unease, though nothing more than that — after all, every one of them had died at his own hands.

What stood before him now, he supposed, must be what people called demonic vengeful resentment.

As for whose essence the Demon Origin should be drawn from, Shen Yi hesitated barely at all — lifespan this vast deserved nothing less than a demon king.

And the gap in strength between the Howling Moon and the bull demon was simply too pronounced.

“Reshape the demon soul.”

A thought stirred faintly in Shen Yi’s mind, and a panel prompt at once unfurled before his eyes.

【Through ten thousand years of tribulation, the resentment in the heart is dissolved away; only by coming to understand the boundless grace of one’s master may the soul of a former life be reshaped anew】

Brief as the prompt was, a faint, almost-imagined wail drifted through Shen Yi’s mind all the same.

Alongside the sound, an insubstantial shadow slowly began to take shape before him.

It grew steadily more solid, taking on the form of the thirty-zhang bull demon, before gradually shifting into a human shape.

The entire process unfolded with agonizing slowness.

While he waited, Shen Yi drew out the bull demon’s corpse, opened his mouth slightly, and the massive carcass shriveled away in an instant, demon blood leaping from the husk and pouring straight into his mouth.

A full eighty-six drops of demon blood were banked away into his qi sea.

By this point, the woman had only just finished condensing her upper body. She stared at the young man, eyes unfocused, utterly without expression.

As time passed, a long blue-flower-patterned dress rippled gently across the grass, her bare feet hovering some three inches above the ground.

A new line of text appeared beneath the Demon Origin’s description.

【Demon King: Lady Qinghua】

An abrupt, tightly-bound connection sprang into being within Shen Yi’s spiritual sense.

Within Lady Qinghua’s clouded eyes, it was as though some unseen brush had given the faintest touch, and in an instant a flicker of awareness sparked to life.

As though she were waking from some lingering memory.

Her lush, supple figure bowed low in respect. “Qinghua greets her Master.”

Before she’d even finished speaking, Lady Qinghua’s entire form vanished from where she stood.

Shen Yi gave his hand a wave, and she reappeared, looking somewhat dazed. He waved again, and she vanished at once, just as quickly.

“Huh. So it works like that, too.”

So she could be recalled into the panel after all.

Shen Yi summoned her back out, then tried reaching out with his spiritual sense to touch that tight bond now woven through his mind.

In the next instant, Lady Qinghua’s face went deathly pale, and without the slightest hesitation she dropped into a kneeling bow. “Mercy, Master!”

Only once he’d confirmed he held complete control over her did Shen Yi finally let out a breath of relief.

This was, after all, someone he meant to try merging into his divine spirit — not a small matter by any measure.

But before that, there was something else he wanted to test first.

“Do you still remember who you are?”

At the question, a flicker of confusion crossed Lady Qinghua’s eyes. She thought hard for a long moment before answering. “Qinghua was once a demon king under the Thousand Demon Den’s banner, wife to the Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor. Now I serve as Master’s guardian, and would not hesitate to die ten thousand deaths in that service.”

“Tell me about every demon den you know of.” Right now, all Shen Yi wanted was to claw back the ten thousand years he’d just spent.

Lady Qinghua fell into thought again for a moment. “The Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor resides in the Thousand Demon Den’s nineteenth cave. The Hundred-Spirit Demon King resides in the Thousand Demon Den’s hundred-ninety-seventh cave. The Nine-Headed Azure Sparrow Demon King resides in the Thousand Demon Den’s…”

“Hold on.” Shen Yi cut her off. “I mean the kind out here. The kind that live alone.”

Qinghua blinked, then said, timidly, “Me.”

Shen Yi arched an eyebrow. “…”

Lady Qinghua hurried to explain. “The Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor kept a tight rein on me, once, and resentful of it, I left the Thousand Demon Den to find a quiet cave estate of my own, where I could raise my son in peace. I kept only servants and guards close by — they’d report my movements back to the Demon Emperor on schedule, to keep me from making contact with any demon king outside the Thousand Demon Den…”

Shen Yi’s brow furrowed slightly, catching something off in that. “You came to Qingzhou this time without any guards?”

“I brought two personal handmaidens, the ones who carried my sword and parasol. I granted them a cloak and a cloud-riding treasure, and had them wait outside the city — to keep watch over Qingzhou’s demons in the meantime, find the Howling Moon Demon King’s whereabouts, and see how it reacted. If anything went wrong, they were to return to the Thousand Demon Den at once and report to the Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor.”

Qinghua laid it all out carefully, not daring to leave out a single detail. “They’re bound to me, heart to heart, through a secret method. Now that Qinghua has been slain by my Master, they should already have made their way back.”

Shen Yi listened, then slowly closed his eyes.

At the sight, Lady Qinghua said softly, “Master’s divine power is vast beyond measure, and the art Master cultivates is supreme. There’s no need to worry over the Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor.”

“Speak plainly.”

“It devoured the one and only registered disciple of the Mysterious Sword Perfected Master, Nie Jun, and has been hunted for over three years now — it can’t even make it back to the Thousand Demon Den. Escaping won’t come easily for it. It’s entirely possible it’s already been killed, for all anyone knows.” Lady Qinghua offered, by way of reassurance.

Entirely possible?

Shen Yi opened his eyes, his hand drifting slowly to the hilt at his waist. Only the cool touch of Deep Abyss could settle his mind, even a little.

He drew Qinghua back into the panel.

Then he opened the panel and began pouring his banked demon lifespan into the Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art.

【Year 1 — You attempt to merge Lady Qinghua into your divine spirit, locked in a struggle against the steadily maturing consciousness within it…】

(End of Chapter)