A sleepless night.

Shen Yi tossed and turned until dawn finally arrived through sheer attrition.

He knew perfectly well that Lin Baixi had her cultivation sealed — every major pressure point on her body locked shut by the fox demon. In her current state, even the predecessor’s wine-soaked wreck of a body could have cut her down without effort. And he had his saber under his arm the entire night.

None of that stopped him from being unable to sleep with a living person at his back.

The other thing keeping him awake was simpler: he didn’t believe a word of the techniques she’d rattled off, but he was certain she had at least some genuine skill to her name.

She just wasn’t going to tell him the truth about it.

Shen Yi lay with his eyes closed, turning the problem over. If he applied pressure — food, or something more direct — was there anything to be extracted?

The predecessor’s approach would have been straightforward: keep cooperating with the yamen’s cover-up, smooth-talk the Demon Suppression Division through the inspection, let the fox demon fully settle into Lin Baixi’s identity, and deal with the real daughter however was most convenient.

That wasn’t an option for Shen Yi.

He was trying to join the Demon Suppression Division. The moment the fox situation came to light, no amount of explanation would save him — he’d be standing in filth with nowhere clean to step, and the river itself wouldn’t wash him clear.

A perfectly decent young man, somehow stuck holding a burden this enormous through no real fault of his own. The injustice of it was almost impressive.

The cleanest solution, looked at coldly, was straightforward enough: put Lin Baixi in the ground somewhere quiet, deny everything if questions arose, and claim the fox demon’s illusion had fooled him along with everyone else. Dead people couldn’t contradict testimony. He could even squeeze some martial knowledge out of her first.

“…”

His fingers drifted to the scabbard. Closed around it.

Shen Yi sat up slowly from the bed. Eyes red from the sleepless night. Expression flat as he rose to his feet.

The movement woke Lin Baixi where she’d dozed against the foot of the bed. She blinked open unfocused eyes and wiped the corner of her mouth. “Is it morning?”

Shen Yi glanced at her and walked straight out of the room.

In the brief passage of that glance, Lin Baixi felt the killing intent buried underneath it — carefully suppressed, but present. It woke her up considerably faster than the dawn had.

“I don’t even snore,” she said to the empty room. “What’s with the murderous morning mood.”

About the time it takes to drink a cup of tea later, Shen Yi reappeared in the doorway with a flatbread in his mouth, dropped an oil-paper package inside without ceremony, and stood there with no expression whatsoever.

Lin Baixi tore it open. Inside: several steamed rolls, still warm.

She swallowed involuntarily. Her eyes lit up. Her teeth were already closing around one before the thought fully formed.

“How come…” she chewed, “…no meat?”

Shen Yi shook out a clean outer robe and looked at her sideways. “Meat filling is a different thing entirely. No money. Make do.”

In two lifetimes combined, he had never actually killed a person. But that wasn’t the same as being incapable of it. He’d cut down demons without much hesitation — a far more fragile human being was hardly a higher bar.

He simply found the idea of being forced into killing someone by circumstances beyond his control deeply, profoundly stupid. It said nothing good about the person doing it.

Besides, there were other solutions.

If he could deal with the fox demon inside the Lin estate before the Demon Suppression Division arrived, the problem resolved itself cleanly. As for the woman currently eating his breakfast — out of sight, out of mind.

He finished changing and left.

When his footsteps had faded completely, Lin Baixi stopped chewing and looked toward the door for a long moment, something releasing in her chest.

She understood, more than most, what the hunger for transcendence felt like to a martial practitioner who had reached Shen Yi’s level. The craving became consuming at that stage. Nearly ungovernable.

But even with a blade at her neck, she would not have said a single word.

Those were the rules handed down from above. Break them, and the person she’d told would certainly die — and her own future wouldn’t be much brighter.

“Held himself back from that too.” She brought the roll back to her lips, impressed despite herself. “His patience almost matches mine.”

East Street, Baiyun County.

Shen Yi slowed his pace and pulled up the panel.

【Current Martial Arts】

Bone-Crushing Grapple — Major Mastery

Demon-Subduing Bladework — Perfection: Threshold · Demon-Subduing Solarblade

Cloudscattering Longfist — Perfection: Striking Affinity

Serpentine Eight Strides — Perfection

Thunder-Wind Scripture, Vol. I — Perfection

【Personal Remaining Lifespan: 21 years】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 222 years】

He found a quiet alley with no one around and sat down.

Then he began feeding demon lifespan into the Thunder-Wind Scripture.

Whether there was anything left to be gained from a technique already at Perfection was genuinely uncertain. The Demon-Subduing Solarblade alone had cost twenty-seven additional years just for touching the edge of the Threshold Realm.

What Shen Yi wanted now wasn’t a single technique that brushed against that boundary.

He wanted a complete Threshold Realm cultivation method.

Whatever it cost, he’d pay it.

【Year one — you look at the Thunder-Wind Scripture, long since committed to memory, and begin reviewing your life from the beginning…】

【Year five — your bladework and striking arts have reached the absolute peak of technical refinement. Your flesh has been thoroughly tempered by the essence of heaven and earth. And yet every piece of knowledge from the first half of your life has, in this moment, become useless.】

【Year twenty — you enter seclusion, reaching outward with your senses, chasing the elusive presence that has haunted your dreams.】

【Year thirty-seven — the Thunder-Wind Scripture is a refinement method, using essence to temper the self. You begin to wonder if what exists in medicine and what drifts through heaven and earth are really so different. Something almost clicks.】

Year after year of progress notifications drifted past.

Shen Yi couldn’t feel the lived experience behind them — the grinding weight of decades passing with nothing to show. But even imagining it from the outside made something cold move through him.

【Year sixty — you have grown as familiar with the breath of heaven and earth as with an old friend. But you cannot make it enter you. You look at the blade beside you.】

【Year eighty-two — you have used the Demon-Subduing Solarblade countless times. Each use consumes a measure of your blood and vital essence. The body that was once tempered to perfection has begun, over years of self-consumption, to deteriorate.】

【Year ninety — you have successfully reduced yourself to an ordinary person. You still haven’t put down the blade.】

【Year one hundred and five — your blood and flesh are exhausted. Nothing remains to convert. You raise the blade for the Solarblade one final time, then collapse. Your trembling hands don’t feel like your own. You close your eyes.】

【Year one hundred and six — a cool current enters through your skin. The tension in your face finally breaks into a faint smile. You know you guessed correctly.】

【Year one hundred and twenty — your approach is right. When understanding cannot be reached through thought, bring the body to the edge of death and let instinct draw in what the mind cannot grasp. You have repeated this process for years. The way breath enters the body grows increasingly familiar.】

【Year one hundred and forty-six — you complete and refine the entire process, set it down in writing, and name it: “Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation.”】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 76 years】

Shen Yi’s jaw tightened as a sudden, total weakness swept through him.

He pressed one hand against the ground to keep himself upright. His breathing was unsteady and thin.

But the information now surfacing in his mind made him forget his body entirely. Something bright moved behind his eyes.

Three ape demons. That was all it had taken. Three ape demons, and he’d purchased a path to genuine transcendence — and still had years left over.

The Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation, forged over a simulated hundred and forty-six years, turned out to be far less cryptic than the name suggested.

The human body had three hundred and sixty-two pressure points.

Of those, only twelve — the twelve major apertures — were suited to drawing in and storing the breath of heaven and earth.

What those hundred and forty-six years of grinding had accomplished, in the end, was the most tedious possible method of locating those twelve apertures and learning how to use them to refine ambient qi.

(End of Chapter)