Lying on the bed, Shen Yi attempted to circulate his qi along the paths the technique had mapped out.
What hit him was a sensation of profound depletion — as if something vast were trying to drain an ocean through a thimble. No, worse than that. A single cup of water.
The feeling was alarming enough that he stopped immediately.
He’d finally experienced firsthand what his simulated self had endured for two and a half centuries.
Practitioners at the Threshold Realm absorbed the breath of heaven and earth slowly. The qi stored across the twelve major apertures was more like principal in a savings account — day to day, you only spent the interest, and ordinary Threshold techniques barely dipped into reserves at all.
Even the Blood-Corruption Bladework, formidable as it was, consumed very little.
But once the principal was touched — once the reserves ran genuinely low — it constituted fundamental damage, and recovery took a very long time.
Every single use of the Four Harmonies True Astral Force in the simulation had cost years of accumulation. For a practitioner without external assistance, that was close to inhuman torment.
He thought of what he’d glimpsed in the panel — qi condensing into jade liquid.
Of course. Without that transformation, there was nothing to sustain a technique like this. The gap between what the art demanded and what ordinary Threshold cultivation could supply was simply too wide.
“So you train it and never dare use it — a killing move that empties you completely, and then you just wait to be finished off afterward?”
He frowned, and then something clicked.
He looked at the Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation on the panel.
It had been sitting there without yielding results — no matter how much demon lifespan was poured in, nothing came of further derivation. A bottomless drain. All it knew how to do was pull in the breath of heaven and earth at its usual dull pace.
His brow smoothed.
That’s actually convenient. It could repair the qi consumption while simultaneously providing another attempt at deriving something new. One expenditure, two returns.
Based on previous experience, refilling all twelve apertures completely took roughly five years of demon lifespan. Using his own lifespan for that would be poor value — he’d only had forty-six years since crossing into the Threshold, and burning through it carelessly was foolish. But using demon lifespan to maintain the reserves while searching for a path forward was entirely workable.
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 391 years】
Shen Yi suppressed the urge to go outside and test things immediately. He forced his eyes shut.
Understanding a technique’s power in theory was valuable. Disturbing people’s sleep in the middle of the night to test it was considerably less justified.
Perhaps because of the sleepless night before, he dropped off quickly.
The flatbreads in this world were warm. The salted pork had substance to it. The bed boards were hard. The night had been what it had been. Everything was vivid and present.
Dismembered bodies moved through his thoughts. Demons with their mouths full.
Shen Yi’s fingers tightened imperceptibly. With this many techniques behind him, he no longer needed the excuse of borrowed time to summon the will to draw a blade against demons. He’d finally arrived somewhere more solid than that.
Using imminent death as a license for recklessness worked for a while. It didn’t last.
A second life, like waking from a long dream.
When the roosters called, Shen Yi was already awake. He stepped outside and breathed in the morning air — cool, clean, the kind that made everything feel slightly more possible.
“Up this early?”
Lin Baixi was stretching in the back courtyard as she came inside, glancing toward the door with curiosity.
“Morning.”
Shen Yi turned around. There was something in his eyes that wasn’t usually there — faint, but unmistakable.
“Did you find money on the ground?” Lin Baixi studied him with suspicion.
“Something like that.”
He went inside to change into clean clothes.
By his count, the Demon Suppression Division’s inspection was still more than twenty days out. Enough time to fill any remaining gaps. A decent posting shouldn’t be out of reach.
His current ability was more than sufficient for Baiyun County under normal conditions — but normal conditions had a way of not holding.
Lin Baixi was the obvious example. The fact that she could transcribe a Jade Liquid Realm technique from memory meant she’d personally cultivated it once. That was an entirely different thing from simply owning a copy. Before the fox demon sealed her cultivation, she’d likely been considerably stronger than he was now.
Bad luck didn’t announce itself.
With that reminder sitting in his peripheral vision every day, carelessness wasn’t an option. In a world like this one, finding a substantial organization to stand behind was the most rational long-term move — stable access to martial arts, resources, and if things went badly wrong, even a demon that had caught you might hesitate before acting if you had the right name behind you.
He went out and bought two sets of breakfast, brought them back, finished his quickly, and headed for the duty room.
On the way, his pace slowed. He glanced sideways.
The young man with the candy-figure pole was smiling pleasantly. “Care for something sweet today, sir? Try a couple of sticks.”
Shen Yi shook his head and kept walking. “Sorry — didn’t bring money.”
A jianghu practitioner selling candy figures — not something he was putting in his mouth.
As for why the man was in Baiyun County, Shen Yi didn’t particularly want to know. His job was demons, not counting the city’s unusual visitors. There were probably several interesting people passing through every day. He simply hadn’t had sharp enough eyes to notice before.
He stepped into the duty room courtyard to find Zhang Tuhu already running the others through their paces. Zhang Dahu took one look at what was being asked of him, grabbed his saber, and found somewhere urgent to be. “I — I have — patrol—”
Zhang Tuhu let him go without comment. “Too old for any real future in this anyway. You three — no slacking.” He turned on the Niu brothers. “Don’t look at me like that. If you make it into the Demon Suppression Division, your parents will be bringing me cured meat to say thank you.”
Two more kicks landed on Niu Er’s sides. “Lift your arms higher. That’s the Demon-Subduing Bladework — you’re making it look like a folk dance.”
“I’ve got a decent post as a constable. Not trying to climb anything. Getting involved with demons gets people killed,” Niu Er complained through gritted teeth.
“You’ve all gotten too comfortable.” Zhang Tuhu’s laugh had no warmth in it. “Five months ago, Three Rivers County was taken over by the Demon Suppression Division. More than ten Commanders went in to hold the position. Three days, straight through demon territory — two hundred soldiers died, over eighty demons slain. You think things there were like here, with the civilians dying before the constables had to?”
“Death in service pays a forty-tael condolence sum. But if you’re on the Division’s rolls — even as a reserve recruit — forty taels is two months’ supplementary income.”
The Niu brothers quietly ran the arithmetic. The saber strokes began to sharpen.
“They take ordinary constables?” Shen Yi came into the courtyard, genuinely curious.
“Why do you think those three techniques were handed down to begin with?” Zhang Tuhu looked up, grinning. “Bring all three to Minor Mastery within a set timeframe — or bring any one of them to Major Mastery — and you have a legitimate shot. Give it ten or twenty years and they’ll put you through enough medicinal baths to push you into the Threshold Realm outright.”
He seemed to grow increasingly agitated as he talked, as if the Division’s resources personally offended him.
“Do you know what it looks like when Threshold Realm practitioners grow in batches like rice crops? It’s terrifying.“
“If there are that many of them, why do they always seem short-handed?” Shen Yi raised an eyebrow, skeptical.
“You’ve never harvested rice? The crops grow in batches and fall in batches.” Zhang Tuhu drew a finger across his throat and continued. “For those with greater talent — take the demon hunter the Qingzhou General took as a personal disciple ten years ago. Ten years. While I was still doing foundation stance work and hauling water, she was eating rare medicines like daily meals. Jade Liquid Realm Perfection. Cuts demons with qi-formed blades like slaughtering livestock.”
“Hss. An illegitimate child?” Even Shen Yi couldn’t quite keep the impression off his face.
“An illegitimate child would be an improvement on the reality.” Zhang Tuhu’s energy deflated sharply. He waved it off. “You don’t understand what a demon hunter is. The principle is roughly: eat the best food and endure the worst training. Exceptional natural talent is necessary but insufficient — the temperament has to match it. Patience. The capacity to endure hardship and isolation.”
“They travel alone across vast distances, hunting demons and serving as the Division’s eyes and ears. Half the outstanding demon warrants in the Daqian Dynasty are closed because of them.”
(End of Chapter)