Having subdued the Howling Moon Demon King, and then fed the immortal flood dragon on demon blood until it reached demon-king caliber, Shen Yi’s physical body alone was already something no ordinary demon could withstand.
One fist down, and the bear demon’s head was driven into the earth.
He hauled it back out, and drove down another.
“This lord… I am a divine lord… you vile creature…”
Both of its eyes smashed to ruin, the old bear demon, driven half-mad with agony, was fighting desperately to get back up.
And every time it managed to sit upright, Shen Yi sent it back down with a sweeping kick.
Two fists came down like a thunderstorm.
“Louder. I can’t hear you.”
Hearing that flat, indifferent voice in its ear, the black bear wrenched its great bloody jaws open. “I am—”
Beneath the black sleeve, a pale arm drove clean through its lower jaw, then caved in its tongue.
“You are what?”
“AARRGH!!”
The bear demon let out a wail. The arm had barely pulled back before it shattered half the skull along with it.
I am the Red-Eyed Divine Lord…
It wore magnificent armor, its fur blazing vivid red.
The bearing of an awesome divine general.
And yet here it lay, forced flat on the ground, unable even to rise.
Shen Yi hadn’t drawn on anything else at all — Deep Abyss at his waist hadn’t been touched — both fists moving without pause for even a single moment.
Until his arms ached, and his whole body was drenched in viscous blood, did he finally straighten up slowly from the carcass, the entire mountain behind him already trembling on the verge of collapse, as though the next moment might bring it all crashing down.
The soaked black robe came into the sight of every person at the foot of the mountain.
The young man stood atop the enormous bear carcass, his figure slight against the scale of it, the pressure radiating off him enough to make every watching person feel they couldn’t breathe.
“…”
He looked down at the corpse at his feet in silence for a moment.
Then, with a wave of his hand, stowed it into his storage treasure.
He turned and walked back down the mountain.
“This…”
Yang Qianxiang drifted in the air, and during the slaying of the demon, he’d felt no opening where he might have intervened — but now that the demon had been put down, he was even more at a loss than he’d been before.
A War Temple disciple. A divine-spirit cultivator.
So where had the divine spirit been?
All he’d seen was something like a human-shaped demon, in the most horrifying manner possible, efficiently and cleanly reducing the Red-Eyed Demon King’s skull to a mixture of bone and flesh.
The Red-Eyed Demon King had held the center of all four prefectures, simultaneously holding down both the Demon Suppression Division and the other demon king, one in each paw.
Overwhelmingly savage and powerful, without question.
And yet in the Inspector’s hands, it had been helpless as a small child.
It left every onlooker feeling they couldn’t breathe.
At the foot of the mountain.
The toppled stone statue, the overturned incense stands, broken timber and shattered rock littered everywhere — it looked a complete shambles.
Shen Yi walked over to the others, a thick reek of blood spreading around him.
“Commander Shen!”
Zhang Xuan dropped to one knee, fists together in salute.
He was shaking all over with emotion.
That scene just now had completely overturned everything he’d ever assumed about divine-spirit cultivators.
It turned out a Mixed Origin Grandmaster wasn’t the only one who could patrol the Nine Provinces.
So long as one combined body-tempering methods with the rest, a Martial Immortal could do it just as well!
Going by what Commander Shen had just shown, Zhang Xuan was even starting to think that even in bare physical combat, even a Mixed Origin cultivator might not be the Inspector’s match.
“Hh— hh—”
All around, people had buried their heads in the ground in terror, trembling without cease, not one of them daring to so much as lift their face for a direct look.
The earth-shaking spectacle they’d just witnessed was, for them, no different from the legendary battles of immortals they’d heard tell of.
The Red-Eyed Divine Lord, whom they’d worshipped day and night, had left them nothing but wail after wail of suffering and grief.
Until the middle-aged man in black armor knelt down upon the ground.
The title of Inspector wasn’t something ordinary people had any contact with.
But as Song Prefecture’s people, how could they possibly fail to recognize the black armor and the red cloak they had once prayed for with their whole hearts?
And now, that Demon Suppression General was offering the most respectful salute he could to the young man before him.
The people of these four prefectures had long since given up on futile hopes.
After watching, again and again with their own eyes, as friends and family were sent off to the back kitchen and brought back to the table — while that crowd of cloud-patterned black robes never once appeared — they had made their peace with reality.
And now, these officers had actually come back?
“Get your people organized as quickly as you can. Sweep the four prefectures again, and make sure no demons were missed.”
Shen Yi gave a small nod to signal the man to rise.
However experienced Lady Qinghua might be, no sweep could be perfect.
And the divine spirit, too powerful for her to manage with full ease at the moment, couldn’t keep roaming outside without accumulated faith to replenish it.
At these words, the people lying prone on the ground felt a strange weakness come over them all at once — their arms began to fail to hold up the weight of their own bodies, and if not for the sharp, overwhelming stench of blood keeping them sharp, more than a few would already have lost control and begun to weep.
This hadn’t been some demon invading from outside. These were real Demon Suppression Division officers, come to retake the cities stolen by demons.
As for Zhang Xuan — his situation wasn’t much better than the ordinary people around him.
What did he mean, sweep again?
Could it be that Commander Shen had already been through the remaining four prefectures, every last one of those hundred-odd county towns?
“This subordinate obeys!”
Zhang Xuan reined in his shock and cupped his fists at once.
Beside him, Yang Qianxiang slowly opened his eyes. Already gaunt to begin with, beneath the trembling of his movements he looked, for all the world, like a genuinely aged and failing man.
“Song Prefecture General Yang Qianxiang pays his respects to the Inspector.” He bowed low.
Then, with a thud, the old man went down on both knees. “Qianxiang failed in his duty of guardianship. I ask Commander Shen to mete out punishment.”
Having the demon crisis resolved with such apparent ease left Yang Qianxiang both moved and aching, and a pang of regret surfaced in him — all the time he’d spent thinking about how to break through to the mid-tier Martial Immortal realm, if only he’d put some of those squandered years into cultivating a body-tempering method instead…
Perhaps Song Prefecture would never have fallen to this state in the first place.
“That’s not my concern.”
Shen Yi shook his head. He’d been in the Demon Suppression Division for less than a year — what did he know about the rules for punishments and rewards?
Things he didn’t understand, he didn’t touch.
Bring the news back to the central offices, and there’d be people who knew what to do with it.
Of course, setting those rules aside and looking at it purely from Shen Yi’s own perspective — Jiang Yuanhua had faced two demon kings and nearly lost all of Qingzhou. This old man’s cultivation was weaker than Jiang Yuanhua’s, and he’d held on to half the province regardless. Dereliction of duty seemed a bit much, given the circumstances.
“Go see to things first. While you’re at it, gather the demon-hunters and put together what you know about the other demon king — I’ll come collect it shortly.”
Shen Yi mounted the demon cloud again. Song Prefecture’s demon troubles were finished, but his own business was hardly done yet.
“This subordinate understands.”
Yang Qianxiang stared up, dazed, as he began to notice something.
He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Commander Shen hadn’t come to Song Prefecture to inspect the Demon Suppression Division.
The actual state of affairs at Song Prefecture’s Demon Suppression Division didn’t seem to be very high on the man’s list of priorities.
He watched Shen Yi ride the cloud away.
A long moment passed before Yang Qianxiang drew his gaze back, turned his head, and looked in silence at the still-shaking Zhang Xuan. “Is this what you’d call… a passing familiarity with body-tempering?”
After working together this long, he really hadn’t seen that one coming from his own Demon Suppression General.
“That wasn’t my words to begin with.”
Zhang Xuan’s mouth twitched twice. How was he supposed to have known Commander Shen was this modest about it?
(End of Chapter 226)