Baiyun County. West Street.
Shen Yi turned back to look at the group. “You’re all dismissed. Get home and rest.”
Tonight had been an undeserved ordeal for all of them. Particularly Zhang Dahu, who’d spent years as the county’s most reliable bully without a scratch — and then the moment he’d started pulling back, his own colleagues had nearly put a blade in him.
“Take care, sir.”
Chen Ji and the others clasped their hands and said their goodnights.
Zhang Tuhu opened his mouth, clearly about to revisit the earlier question.
“I wasn’t holding back. I just rarely spar with people, so I had some realisations in the moment.” Shen Yi rubbed his temple.
“That’s more like it.” Zhang Tuhu clicked his tongue, some of his dignity returning.
Shen Yi sent them off and walked unhurriedly back to his small house.
With the Dog Demons and the apes both gone, the county’s nights would be quieter for a while. Unimpressive cultivations compared to what was out there — but they’d caused more harm to ordinary people in Baiyun County than anything else nearby. The coming days would be easier.
He reached his door and raised his hand to knock — then glanced at the dense dark outside and lowered it.
She should be asleep by now.
Lin Baixi was sitting at the table, transcribing the martial arts text with careful concentration.
Only her clenched left hand betrayed any worry.
She’d started this whole thing intending to manage a simple constable — keep him just useful enough to stay alive herself. But the past several days had worn away at that framing. He came home almost every night with demon blood on his clothes. Her view of him had shifted whether she’d intended it to or not.
In a world like this one, people willing to go out and kill demons were rarely truly bad.
Last night’s events, though, had lit a quiet fire of anger in her chest.
Was this enormous county supposed to rest entirely on one man’s shoulders? Any small mistake and they came at him with weapons drawn.
She’d been washing demon blood out of his clothes with her own hands every day. She knew perfectly well whether Shen Yi was the sort of person who sat on information out of laziness.
The assignment had been unreasonable from the start.
“You’re back?”
She heard the door and felt something lift in her chest before she could stop it. She stood to look.
Shen Yi paused slightly, nodded, took off his outer robe and draped it over the cabinet. He picked up the papers from the table and began flipping through. “This much?”
“Jade Liquid Realm technique involves meridians, apertures, and the movement of condensed jade liquid — it’s naturally more complex than ordinary martial arts. Don’t rush — let me review it a few more times first to catch any errors.”
She explained briefly, then noticed he’d come back uninjured and let out a small breath. “Go wash up. I’ll heat the food.”
“No need. Not hungry.”
Shen Yi was turning pages with apparent carelessness, but his eyes had lit with something that contradicted the tone.
A new entry had appeared on the panel.
【Jade Liquid · Four Harmonies True Astral Force — Untrained】
A Jade Liquid Realm technique. In all of Baiyun County, there probably wasn’t another copy to be found. And it was sitting quietly in his hands.
“Even by Jade Liquid standards this is a particularly demanding technique — not suited to those without deep foundations. It isn’t ideal for your current situation, but it’s the only thing I can produce right now.”
Lin Baixi went to the kitchen, pausing to add: “Cultivation should be gradual.”
A moment later she set a bowl of reheated braised meat soup and a large bowl of rice on the table. “My teacher always said — no matter how much blood you’ve seen, or what you’ve witnessed, you still have to eat.”
Lin Baixi, who had consistently denied having a teacher at all, let the word slip out without any particular concern tonight.
Shen Yi pressed his lips together and didn’t refuse the gesture. He picked up his chopsticks, stirred the soft braised meat into the rice, and cleared the bowl.
The warmth of the food pushed back against whatever had settled in him.
He drained the last of the soup, pressed a satisfied hand to his stomach.
Lin Baixi’s mouth curved slightly. She collected the bowls and left the room.
Quiet settled over the house.
Shen Yi lay back on the bed and opened the panel again.
Four Harmonies True Astral Force. Not an internal art, and it didn’t sound like blade or fist technique either.
What made it so formidable?
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 651 years】
He didn’t rush the simulation. Instead he took out three beast cores — from the tiger demon and the two apes.
One went into his mouth. Demon lifespan flowed into the Four Harmonies True Astral Force.
【Year one — you force your way into a Jade Liquid Realm method, working through the obscure text piece by piece while simultaneously absorbing the tiger demon’s beast core.】
【Year three — you finally understand this technique. The beast core has long since been absorbed. All the qi within your first aperture has transformed into jade dew.】
【Year twenty-nine — you grasp what the Four Harmonies actually means: Heaven, Earth, Other, and Self. You successfully complete the first step, “unifying qi with body.” Four Harmonies True Astral Force: Novice.】
【Year thirty-two — progress slows. The primary obstacle is insufficient internal energy — each attempt drains the accumulated reserves of every aperture.】
Shen Yi paused, put the second beast core in his mouth, and resumed.
【Year forty-three — with the ape demon’s beast core accelerating your recovery, you comprehend “Heart-Ape,” and after sustained practice break through to Minor Mastery.】
【Year seventy-two — once again you feel the weight of both natural talent and rare medicines. The former limits your pace. The latter means diligence cannot compensate.】
Without hesitating, the third beast core.
【Year ninety-four — Four Harmonies True Astral Force: Major Mastery. A sweep of your hand sends astral force across the sky like rain — something an immortal descended to earth might do. But only you know that one sweep costs years of accumulated reserves.】
【Year one hundred and thirty — years of no progress. You feel the ache of it. Cultivation is no longer a matter of effort yielding return. What you don’t understand, you don’t understand. What you can’t grasp, you simply cannot grasp. You begin to blame everything around you.】
【Year one hundred and ninety — the years wear away the impulse to complain. You sit quietly, filling your apertures, refining jade dew, waiting for the next attempt.】
【Year two hundred and sixty — you rise one morning without any particular awakening. No flash of insight. Only the ten-thousandth repetition of the same movement — and this time, something is faintly different. Your numbed mind doesn’t even know why.】
【Four Harmonies True Astral Force — Perfection.】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 391 years】
Shen Yi’s eyes went distant for a moment.
That crushing weight — the experience of not knowing what you don’t know, succeeding and finding yourself more confused than before — all of it moved through him in a single flash, and his stomach clenched involuntarily, as though his body wanted to turn itself inside out.
It passed immediately.
“Hss.“
He rubbed his face.
Cultivation and his old life’s studying turned out to have something in common. Getting started wasn’t hard — learning the entry-level material, memorizing the formulas. But Perfection was something else. That was the territory of someone who’d internalized everything so thoroughly they could reconstruct it from first principles, absorbed the entire text until it became instinct. The kind of person who was, at minimum, a true master of their domain.
Only someone with absurd external assistance like his own would ever entertain the idea of pushing every technique to Perfection.
Once the useless emotions had passed, what remained was everything the Jade Liquid Realm technique had deposited in his mind.
【Jade Liquid · Four Harmonies True Astral Force — Perfection】
【Threshold · Heart-Ape: You have absorbed the nature of ape-kind into your understanding. Mountainous terrain presents no obstacle. Cultivation efficiency for all movement-based techniques is increased.】
(End of Chapter)