“How long are you planning to stay?”

Watching her eat with such evident satisfaction, Shen Yi found himself unexpectedly hungry. He reached for a flatbread — and a slender white hand gave his fingers a light tap.

Lin Baixi picked out a clean one and passed it over. “I set up a small shelter in the back courtyard. I’ll stay out of your way. As for how long—” she considered, “—another month, maybe?”

She wasn’t entirely sure.

Shen Yi took the flatbread. His expression gave nothing away.

This woman hadn’t said a true thing since they’d met. Her background looked clean on the surface — a merchant’s sheltered daughter — but the reality was that she’d been sent away years ago, come back with abilities she wouldn’t disclose, and walked out alone to hunt demons like she knew what she was doing.

He’d initially taken her for a reckless amateur. But the past day of observation had changed that. She thought carefully. She had the particular quality of someone who’d been through difficult things and come out practical rather than brittle. Not the clueless noble daughter he’d assumed.

More importantly — she’d tangled with that fox demon faction and come back breathing. With her cultivation sealed, no less.

The predecessor had thought of her as a convenient acquisition. To Shen Yi, keeping her here read like someone who’d picked up a venomous snake and called it harmless. Setting aside what the Lin family would do if they ever found out — why had the fox demon spared her? What was the reason?

He couldn’t work it out. He stopped trying.

“No,” he said evenly.

Lin Baixi didn’t look surprised. She laughed softly. “Why not? Weren’t you keeping me around to make me your wife? Changed your mind?”

The man who’d originally locked her in here hadn’t exactly hidden his intentions.

She’d expected that at even the smallest concession on her part, Shen Yi — however composed he was playing it — would show something. A flicker of interest, a shift in posture, something.

Instead, after a brief pause, those clear black-and-white eyes carried the faintest trace of mockery.

Lin Baixi’s chewing slowed to a stop. She brushed a crumb from the corner of her mouth with one finger, held his gaze, and felt the carefully deployed charm drain away from her own expression.

“Ah.”

She smoothed a strand of hair back from her temple and sighed, entirely without drama. And then, quietly, something about her changed.

She sat up straight. The softness was gone. What replaced it in her narrow eyes was a sharper quality — precise, appraising. “I don’t know whether you’re just a constable who got in over his head, or whether you were actually working for the demons. But something drove you to cross them.” Her gaze moved across his blood-soaked clothes. “Holding yourself together isn’t comfortable, is it? You want to break into transcendence badly.”

She laid out the fact of his mortal peak cultivation with no particular ceremony, crossed her legs, and smoothed her borrowed robe at the hem with unhurried hands, something cool and clear settling over her features.

“Call me Master, and I’ll help you cross the Threshold. How’s that?”

She’d been too rushed the first time. The technique names she’d invented had been sloppy. Today she’d come prepared.

Try bluffing your way past me now, she thought, brimming with quiet confidence.

She waited, watching him.

Then she saw Shen Yi lift his hand, remove the saber from his hip, and set it on the table between them without apparent urgency.

“You left home to train under a sect.”

His voice had gone flat. “Was it a performing arts troupe?”

He rested his fingers on the scabbard. Lin Baixi felt a dense, oppressive pressure settle over her without warning, and swallowed involuntarily. “What are you—”

“I have no interest in you.”

He shook his head. “But I’m very interested in your sect.”

“I already told you, there’s no sect.”

She started to explain — and then Shen Yi reached into his front and placed a small cloth bundle on the table beside the saber. He unfolded it, revealing the faintly pulsing lump of flesh inside.

“Prove your worth.”

He stood with his hands at his sides. The posture was relaxed. The saber and the bundle said everything his posture didn’t.

Pick one, and please, less theater. His patience had reached its limit.

“…”

Lin Baixi stared at the lump.

The fingers hidden in her sleeve trembled, just barely.

After a moment she said: “A beast core? Where did you—”

She looked back at the blood on his clothes. The answer didn’t need saying.

“Four hundred years, approximately. That’s from the Yellow King?”

She closed her hand slowly, concealing the surprise. He’d walked out this morning with a flatbread in his mouth, and come home at night carrying a Threshold Realm demon’s beast core.

When did Baiyun County’s constables become this terrifying.

She looked at him sidelong and went straight to it. “That quality of beast core — the standard use is as the primary material for a Qi-Gathering Pill. It can also be used as a secondary material in refining a higher-grade Condensate Pill. In a situation where neither is possible, direct consumption and refinement works too — about seventy or eighty percent efficiency, but the impurities are significant and there’ll be some cost to long-term cultivation. Best done slowly.” She paused, and her tone became genuinely serious. “Regardless of how it’s used — none of it is accessible to anyone below the Threshold Realm. That part is the truth.”

Shen Yi nodded and folded the cloth back over the core.

Roughly what he’d guessed.

If she’d tried to tell him it was poison or otherwise useless, that would have been when the blade came out. But there was something that did surprise him — she’d identified the beast core’s origin at a glance. Did she have knowledge of every demon faction operating near Baiyun County?

“You can stay. I won’t involve myself in your situation with the fox demon, and I won’t ask about your background.” He put the bundle away. “In exchange — two genuine Threshold Realm cultivation methods.”

“The Mountain-Cleaving Peach Blossom Axe, the Demon-Slaying Peerless—”

Lin Baixi had barely raised the first finger before she caught the cool, flat look aimed at her. She put the hand down and pressed her lips together. “I don’t have anything on me right now. You’ll get them once I’m out of this situation.”

“Agreed.”

Shen Yi didn’t push. He had no particular philosophy about keeping all his options in one place. The Demon Suppression Division was the priority — but a connection to a martial sect, with access to more knowledge about cultivation, was worth having alongside it.

“Aren’t you worried about what the other demon factions will do now that you’ve killed the Yellow King?” Lin Baixi picked up another flatbread, packed it generously with salted pork, and bit into it. She spoke through the chewing. “Demon factions fight each other constantly, but when it comes to dealing with the court, they’re all on the same side. If you ask me, starting with the Yellow King was a mistake. You’ve stirred the water.”

Shen Yi’s attention sharpened. “Meaning?”

“The Dog Demons had barely crossed into Threshold. The ape — what do they call it, Yuan Tongtian — has been sitting in the Eastern Mountains for years without showing its face. It’s preparing to break through to Threshold Perfection. That kind of demon is the most paranoid about disruption.” She swallowed with some effort, and let out a breath. “Then there’s the Azure Scale Matriarch. Rumors more than a century old put her at the Jade Liquid Realm already. If I were you, I’d send word to the court, request a few Demon Suppression Division generals, take out the serpent demon first — the old ape and the Dog Demons would scatter on their own.”

Shen Yi listened quietly, then noticed she’d stopped. “What about the fox demon?”

The girl rolled her eyes.

She had cleared every last piece of food from the table. She gave her chest a satisfied pat.

“Hm.” A pause. “Tired. Very tired.”

Shen Yi sat back on the bed’s edge and inclined his head. “Thank you for the information.”

Lin Baixi drifted toward the back courtyard, glancing back at him with an expression that had softened fractionally. “At least you have some decency.”

She stepped into the quiet of the small yard.

And there, with no one watching, the ease dropped from her face.

She could say whatever she liked about the Yellow King — but that had been a genuine Threshold Realm demon. A constable with no lineage, no complete cultivation method, piecing together whatever scraps of knowledge he could extract from strangers — and he’d killed it.

If someone could smooth the path ahead of him and give him a proper foundation, what he became would be something remarkable.

A person like that, dying in the muddy tangle of Baiyun County’s politics — that would be a genuine waste.

Unfortunately, she could barely keep herself afloat right now. No capacity to take on anyone else’s problems.

Also, still hungry.

(End of Chapter)