Seeing the two of them finish their conversation.
Hou Wanshan finally descended, cupping his fists toward the young man. “Lizhou General Hou Wanshan, greetings to Commander Shen.”
This was Lizhou’s territory.
By rights, if the Implement Sect had some treasure worth noting, he as General had every standing to ask about it.
And Hou Wanshan was no ordinary General.
He was an upper-tier Martial Immortal who could address War Temple disciples as fellow practitioners on equal footing.
Yet when Lin Jingyi’s desperate eyes had sought him out for rescue earlier, Hou Wanshan had offered not a single response.
The reason was simple.
The blue-green robe on this Commander Shen.
The man wasn’t merely some Inspector — he was also a rotating War Temple Custodian.
Whatever this young man said could be taken as the War Temple’s own position.
A Custodian this young was unprecedented in the whole of Great Qian’s history.
Beyond that.
Hou Wanshan had one more thing he couldn’t quite make sense of, and his gaze drifted, without quite meaning to, toward Shen Yi.
On that blue-green robe, sharp eyes caught a stain.
This was not demon blood. It was human blood — the man had gone outside Great Qian’s borders and not only killed demons, but killed a person.
Stranger still, a divine-spirit cultivator, whether killing a demon or a person, should have no way of getting blood splattered onto his physical body — unless the divine spirit had been called out in plain sight of someone else.
Impossible to read.
Whether in terms of standing or cultivation, this young man seemed wrapped in a cloud of mist no amount of staring could pierce.
Faced with someone like this, Hou Wanshan didn’t dare be presumptuous, and stepped forward first. “I’ve already had people prepare every document from Lizhou’s past three hundred years. Please review them at your leisure, Commander.”
“Three hundred years?”
Shen Yi finally pulled his attention away from below the hollow, letting it settle on this General.
If anything could be more appealing than a superlative-grade artifact, it was demon lifespan.
“Any news of demons?”
At those words, Hou Wanshan struggled to keep his expression composed, but couldn’t quite suppress the satisfaction that crept to the corner of his mouth. “In Lizhou, over the past three hundred years — not a single demon incident.”
This was the deterrent force of an upper-tier Martial Immortal.
Presiding over thirty-six prefectures, with an inexhaustible supply of accumulated faith.
In Lizhou, below the Spirit-Transformation realm, he was very nearly unrivaled.
Being praised by someone this young was, admittedly, a touch unusual.
But Hou Wanshan quietly straightened his back all the same.
“Then there’s nothing worth reading.”
Shen Yi clicked his tongue and withdrew his attention clean away.
“…”
Hou Wanshan pressed his lips together, his impeccably straight posture stiffening faintly. “Then a welcoming reception—”
“No need to go to the trouble. Just a place to stay is fine.” Shen Yi replied courteously.
His hunger for deeper foundations was still considerable, as it happened.
A single high-grade treasure blade — Deep Abyss — had first helped him deal with the Howling Moon Demon King, and now, even against an upper-tier Mixed Origin Grandmaster, it had pulled its weight without hesitation, tearing the man’s body apart in a single stroke.
A superlative-grade artifact, then — or the true spirit-treasure that would surpass even that — what would its power be like?
Waiting a month for something like that was unambiguously worthwhile.
And in the meantime, he could spend the time settling down to actually study some Mixed Origin techniques.
“I’ll have it prepared at once.”
At that, Lin Jingyi shook his head quietly to himself. The treasure was clearly not going to stay.
Though his mood was actually not too bad about it.
Compared to what he’d imagined earlier — it simply being taken — Commander Shen had at least offered something of extraordinary value in return, those dragon horns.
For the Implement Sect, however fine an artifact might be, it couldn’t protect them on its own.
What they relied upon was the War Temple’s shelter.
A group of metalworkers — what they valued most was reputation.
If the name of having forged a true spirit-treasure got out, that alone was enough to honor their ancestors.
Rather than having the thing sent to the War Temple to gather dust in the armory, handing it to this ferocious young Inspector might actually be better — in his hands, perhaps the Implement Sect’s name would travel further still.
The Implement Sect might look modest from the outside.
Inside, though, the furnishings were among the most lavish imaginable — finer, even, than what imperial relatives might enjoy.
Shen Yi strolled into the room.
On the wall above the bed hung a jade mirror — reaching out to touch it let the scene inside the room shift freely among mountains and rivers.
The humid breath of a river. The sound of crashing waves.
Like being there in person.
Shen Yi played with it for a while with some interest, then settled down on the meditation cushion in the center of the room.
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 40,600 years】
Looking at this abundance of lifespan — something he’d never dared even dream of once — Shen Yi felt no ease at all.
The process of condensing the golden body had made him look at himself clearly again.
Unremarkable talent, compounded by cultivating multiple paths in parallel.
The time he would need was far greater than anyone else’s.
To say nothing of other matters — at minimum, ten thousand years had to be held in reserve for a Demon Origin. Otherwise the golden body would be permanently stuck at seven feet.
“Headache.”
Shen Yi rubbed at his temple. Turning his attention back to those previously abstruse Mixed Origin techniques, compared to what he’d glimpsed of the Spirit-Transformation realm, he found them almost approachable by comparison.
The armory’s collection held fourteen Mixed Origin methods in total.
Six of these were complete.
Seemingly not few — but breaking them down one by one.
Two turned out to be formation arts. One was an alchemy method. The genuine “martial techniques” numbered only three.
【Mixed Origin · Golden Sun Blazing Flame Hand: Not Yet Begun】
【Mixed Origin · Extreme Yin Soul-Suppressing Sword: Not Yet Begun】
【Mixed Origin · Heaven’s Net Thunder-Shaking Art: Not Yet Begun】
As the saying went — trying to swallow too much at once left nothing properly digested.
Shen Yi went through Perfected Master Changqing’s storage treasure and confirmed the man had brought no techniques with him, only a heap of miscellaneous books.
He reined in that particular line of thought and focused on the three techniques before him.
First, he spent a thousand years to exchange for a demon treasure crystal.
Then poured demon lifespan into the palm technique — the one closest to his natural strengths.
【Year 1 — You open the Golden Sun Blazing Flame Hand, attempting to work out its deeper mysteries. For a proper technique like this, Lady Qinghua can offer you no help at all】
【Year 39 — Most of the demon resentments have woken up and started offering you advice. You drive them all back out】
The demons would take a Mixed Origin technique that was perfectly sound and reshape it into something that suited their own tastes.
What Shen Yi was actually waiting for was the Qingqiu demon king.
【Year 87 — Perfected Master Hu stirs back to consciousness. He comes to stand beside you, looks at the technique in your hand, and in puzzlement asks you to manifest your path infant. Looking at the blood-red Heaven-Devouring demon infant, he hesitates slightly, then says — cooking without grain, fire without fuel, wouldn’t that be absurd?】
【You don’t have a spiritual root — so how do you expect to cultivate the Golden Sun Blazing Flame?】
Shen Yi watched the prompts scroll past on his panel without rushing to stop pouring lifespan in.
He spent another year chatting idly with Perfected Master Hu.
And then a great deal of knowledge about cultivation flooded into his mind.
It turned out what those things inside Perfected Master Changqing’s body were called, among human cultivators, were spiritual roots.
Put it more bluntly.
A spiritual root was the tool for converting the vast qi of heaven and earth into heaven’s thunder, earth’s fire, and other such forces.
“And I need a demonic spiritual root?”
“No… it’s killing-force.”
“Ferocious killing-force thunder. Savage killing-force fire. Extreme-yin killing-force water… anything can be taken in, but the prerequisite is that it carries an intrinsically malevolent nature?”
A flicker of something complicated crossed Shen Yi’s eyes.
He wasn’t sure whether to count this as good news or bad.
Take Jiang Qiulan, for instance — she needed various extreme-cold materials as her spiritual root, and all the techniques she could cultivate afterward were likewise bound up in cold intent.
Perfected Master Changqing had had heavenly thunder.
And for himself — there appeared to be no particular restriction. Anything could be taken in, the one stringent requirement being that it carry a thread of killing-force along with it.
(End of Chapter 247)