“The Nine Demons Transmutation Method.”
He glanced once more at the name of this new technique.
Shen Yi sighed, sank into inner vision, and looked over his blood-red, savage-faced path infant — even the divine spirit beside it seemed to have caught some of the influence, a faint air of killing intent now bleeding off it as well.
How had he ended up drifting further and further from the dashing wandering-hero image he’d once pictured for himself?
White robes, a fine steed in tow, a sword at the hip, roaming the world far and wide.
Back in Baiyun County, with his life on the line, he hadn’t exactly had the luxury of being picky — back then, just having any technique at all to practice had been cause for secret celebration.
He’d once thought that once he’d cleared away the troubles his predecessor had left behind, he might finally get to ease up a little — do the things he’d actually wanted to do, like drawing his sword for a stranger in trouble, meeting some dashing, spirited heroine or other, and leaving behind some romantic legend of his own across the martial world.
Instead, the moment he’d left the county town, he’d plowed headfirst into the giant pit that was the Qingzhou demon catastrophe.
Dashing wandering hero, romantic legend… and then the moment he’d shown his face, someone had bellowed, “That demon is Commander Shen!”
A muscle twitched at the corner of Shen Yi’s eye.
Now that he’d finished off both the Howling Moon Demon King and Lady Qinghua, Qingzhou was at least stable for the time being — but in the process he’d gone and offended the Thousand Demon Den, the kind of name that sounded like trouble the instant you heard it.
In under a year, his opponents had escalated from a newly-awakened black dog demon to a Spirit-Transformation-realm demon emperor.
And of all things, Shen Yi happened to be exactly the sort of person who hated surprises more than almost anything else.
By rights, given his current strength and cultivation, as long as he didn’t run into the Demon Emperor itself, he ought to be safe enough to protect himself, free to roam the world as he pleased.
Besides, that Demon Emperor couldn’t even spare the time to come after him right now, as it stood.
But if, by some unlucky chance, they happened to cross paths…
With that thought, Shen Yi gathered his focus and turned his gaze back to the panel.
With no clear path ahead for the moment, the only thing left to do was plant his feet that much firmer right where he stood!
【Mixed Origin · Nine Demons Transmutation Method: Not Yet Begun】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 8,552 years】
His original plan had been to forge a demon body out of demon blood; the logic of this technique, instead, was to feed the immortal-demon spirits themselves — much the same method he used to feed the path infant — until all nine of them had grown to demon-king caliber.
All nine spirits, subdued and kept bound within his own body.
A roundabout path, in the end, but it still came back to body refinement.
Shen Yi drew on his banked demon lifespan and poured it in.
【Year 1 — You draw the demon blood within your body and fold it into flesh and bone and sinew, feeding it to the immortal flood dragon. It accepts the offering obediently, a fresh thread of crimson vein appearing within its demon-power-condensed body, and begins digesting the demon blood】
The immortal flood dragon had originally been condensed from the demon power of a mere budding-core-realm creature.
The gap between it and a true demon king was vast beyond measure — its contribution to Shen Yi’s own strength had grown all but negligible by this point.
But now, fed on demon blood, the presence radiating off the immortal flood dragon was climbing at a remarkable pace.
【Year 52 — The immortal flood dragon has successfully absorbed one drop of demon blood; its cultivation now approaches that of the immortal deer. Without any awareness of its own, it swims freely through your body, while the mountain lord and toad spirits instinctively give way before it】
…
Shen Yi watched the panel, doing some rough math in his head.
Back then, the White Deer, weakest of the Core-Nurturing demon lords, had only yielded a single drop of demon blood from its entire flesh and body. At the Junior Demon King’s tier, it had been eight drops. The two genuine demon kings had given forty-six and eighty-six drops, respectively.
He had no idea what the flood dragon’s ceiling might turn out to be.
The panel’s prompts leapt past in rapid succession, his banked demon lifespan shrinking along with them.
【Year 2,649 — The immortal flood dragon has digested its fiftieth drop of demon blood. Crimson patterns now spread across its entire body, and in this instant they begin to glow faintly. A thick, overbearing presence floods outward all at once — before it, even the immortal wolf must yield ground】
“It’s still consuming?”
Shen Yi sank into inner vision, noting that the demon blood was still steadily dwindling.
【Year 3,816 — With seventy-two drops of demon blood now folded into its body, the immortal flood dragon finally stops feeding, growing visibly more savage and fierce. The remaining eight immortal-demon spirits all retreat into corners, no longer daring to draw near it. Your innate divine ability drawn from the immortal flood dragon has been enhanced】
【Mixed Origin · Nine Demons Transmutation Method: Beginner Stage】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 4,736 years】
From the weakest of the nine, it had leapt straight to becoming the strongest.
Shen Yi felt a faint burning sensation rise across his shoulder. He pulled his robes open to look and found the once dim-gold flood dragon pattern surfacing once more — though this time, a thread of crimson ran through it, as though living blood were coursing along its lines.
The burning sensation traced back to the dragon’s single eye, set within its head — the very spot where the crimson hue burned deepest.
“…”
Shen Yi stretched his arm out. The boost from this derivation, somehow, had turned out even more staggering than subduing the Howling Moon Demon King had been.
Trust a demon technique — odd as it was, the results really were ferociously effective.
Only forty-two drops of demon blood remained in his qi sea now, set aside for the time being as a reserve to replenish the path infant.
He put his robes back on properly, then called Lady Qinghua out and had her enter the divine spirit in his qi sea once more, to settle further into the role.
Might as well see how she worked out, for now.
If her performance proved lacking, or if he ran into something stronger down the line, he could always reshape another demon soul later on, fold her in, and swap her out for someone better.
Manifesting the path infant drew far too much attention, and the Red Cloud was too conspicuous besides.
Shen Yi simply fell back on the Unfettered Wind-Riding Art and made his way back toward Qingzhou City. It was a touch slower, but at least no one would mistake it for another demon descending on the city.
The Demon Suppression Division offices were in an uproar.
All for the sake of repairing the buildings that had collapsed.
Beyond the craftsmen brought in for the job, countless officers had been put to manual labor as well, including, among them, even a Deputy Commander still draped in his formal cloak.
Their usual duties had grown scarcer and scarcer of late — from running themselves ragged at the start, to now scouring the area hunting for any trace of demon activity at all.
That whole pack of savage, vicious beasts now wanted nothing more in the world than to slip out of Qingzhou without a sound, careful not to let the Division’s black-armored men catch so much as their tail.
“You’re back?”
A bound document hovered in midair within the courtyard, with Jiang Qiulan sitting beside it, eyes closed, regulating her breath.
Shen Yi looked at Jiang Yuanhua, struck with a sudden flicker of admiration for the man’s composure. “Still haven’t left?”
His divine spirit was on the verge of scattering into smoke, and somehow he could still keep this calm.
“I wanted to take a bit more time looking over Qingzhou.”
Jiang Yuanhua gave a cheerful laugh. Chen Qiankun had once told him he’d end up abandoned by everyone close to him.
Now that he had no physical body left, no one could see him at all anymore — which, in a roundabout way, had solved that whole problem rather neatly.
Out of sight, out of mind, after all.
“Oh, right — this is the report I’m planning to submit to the War Temple. Take a look, see if there’s anything wrong with it?”
The matter of the Howling Moon Demon King’s death would, of course, need to be reported.
Since it concerned him directly, Shen Yi didn’t bother standing on ceremony, and took the document to flip through it.
It was a meticulously composed report.
It laid out the demon king’s death, true in nine parts out of ten, while leaving the specific details deliberately vague — and Lady Qinghua had been left out of it entirely along with the rest.
Shen Yi closed the document and raised his eyes. “My thanks.”
“Glad you don’t mind. Whatever the court awards for this, you’ll be receiving it in my stead when the time comes — just take it for your own.” Jiang Yuanhua nodded.
As for the credit and any promotion that might follow, he was nothing but a wisp of divine spirit now — things like that could simply be “handed over” to Shen Yi outright.
Neither of them spelled it out directly, but the meaning was clear enough.
Jiang Yuanhua had never been one to trust others completely — not even the War Temple. Offending the Blood-Transmuting Demon Emperor was far too significant a thing to keep entirely hidden, but at the very least, the identity of whoever had actually struck the blow could be left obscured.
Even if there was only the faintest chance the War Temple might buckle under pressure and sell Shen Yi’s identity out to some outside party, it was worth heading off in advance.
Of course, even bringing the full weight of his authority as General to bear in concealing it, if anyone determined enough went looking, the truth would eventually come to light — however remote and out-of-the-way a backwater Qingzhou might be.
But to Jiang Yuanhua’s mind, given the terrifying pace at which Shen Yi was growing, even buying him an extra year or half-year of concealment was well worth the effort.
“Time I headed off, then.”
Jiang Yuanhua took the document back, then added, by way of a parting word, “You’ve met the Princess of Ji before, so you’ve probably heard a little about Xuanguang Cave. They’ve got a great many disciples there, all sorts of temperaments, and with the War Temple as weak as it is these days, it doesn’t really have much say anymore…”
(End of Chapter)