The fox demon’s form flickered and she settled against the head of the bed.
One hand pressed to her arm, she looked up with residual alarm — then her expression shifted to contemptuous amusement. “Well, well. I thought the Lin family was lying to me. So you really did kill Yin-lang.”
As she spoke, she pulled back the covers.
Lin Baixi lay beneath them in nothing but a thin undergarment, one shoulder bared, her face marked with bruises, blood dried and crusted at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were unfocused, holding onto consciousness by effort alone.
The fox demon’s fingers closed around her throat, sharp nails biting into the skin. Her voice turned shrill. “I told you to sleep in the same room as this wretch — to torment her — to get rid of her! And instead you were learning martial arts from her!”
“Very good of you to teach, my Deputy Commander Lin!” Jealousy surfaced in those eyes, pulling the familiar face into something uglier. “How easily you turned my pet against me. I imagine you made good use of the arrangement.”
At the title being spoken aloud, something passed through Lin Baixi’s unfocused gaze — a flicker of alarm so faint it was almost invisible.
A moment later, she summoned what she had and managed a faint smile. “You do go on. That’s enough. I’m hungry.”
She closed her eyes.
The fox demon watched her, gaze going cold. “Quite the composure for someone in this condition. Backed by the right people, I suppose.” The contempt sharpened. “Why perform like this? I can’t kill you. But does that mean he can’t?”
At that, something finally moved in Lin Baixi’s expression. She pressed her lips together.
The fox demon looked sideways at Shen Yi with open disdain. “Bought so cheaply. Did you really think she had your interests at heart? Fool. Do you know what her master’s standing would mean for you — the day you laid hands on her and took her captive, you earned yourself a death that would make execution look merciful.”
Shen Yi was watching the copper bells drifting in the air.
Throughout everything, the fox demon’s attention hadn’t been on them. And yet they moved on their own, without wind. The Blood-Corruption Bladework at full Perfection driving the dark blade — and it still couldn’t advance a fraction of an inch.
This was less a weapon and more what he’d always imagined a “divine guardian artifact” to be.
So demon arts in this world really do reach this level. A minor second-generation member of a named demon faction, and she was already expanding his understanding of what was possible.
“Are you even listening?” The fox demon snapped her fingers and recalled the bells with a flick, visibly irritated.
Lin Baixi, despite everything, couldn’t quite suppress a twitch at the corner of her mouth. His indifference really isn’t personal.
Shen Yi sheathed the dark blade and walked toward the two of them.
“Stay back. Don’t move.“
Perhaps that earlier stroke had left a mark. At his approach, the fox demon’s fingers tensed instinctively — a trickle of red ran down Lin Baixi’s throat, drawing a suppressed sound from her.
He kept walking, stopping in front of the fox demon without acknowledgment.
Something registered on her face then. An uncertainty.
The relationship between this man and Lin Baixi wasn’t what she’d assumed. Not lovers with feeling between them. Not even a proper teacher-student bond, based on what she could read.
“If you don’t actually care about her — why not make it clean? I’ll give you shelter at Beiya while things settle.” She weighed the offer for a moment before voicing it. “The matter of Yin-lang — forgotten.”
She’d read the situation: Shen Yi had offended the Demon Suppression Division. There was no road back from that. They were tangled in the same net. And those insufferable Division Commanders had already slipped into the county — she’d outstayed her welcome in the Lin estate, and it was time to close this chapter.
Lin Baixi’s eyes opened. She looked at Shen Yi quietly. Her lips moved, as if she wanted to say something, then stilled.
She’d intended to find a better moment to explain herself fully. Now the fox had blown everything into the open, and with Shen Yi’s careful nature, no amount of words would repair trust that hadn’t fully formed yet.
Lost in thought, she saw Shen Yi raise his hand.
Crack.
Five fingers connected with the fox demon’s unprepared face — force beyond the Threshold Realm detonating through the tips. That deceptively delicate frame was knocked clean over, then Shen Yi’s hand closed around the back of her neck and drove her hard into the doorframe.
“You won’t kill her. Stop pretending you’re frightening.”
He rolled his wrist and turned back.
The fox demon lay on her side, disbelieving, face distorted, long hairs beginning to push through her skin, lips jutting forward as she spat out a mouthful of broken teeth.
That seemingly offhand throw had snapped several of her ribs.
She looked up, eyes filling with poison. “You’re dead. I’ll go back and tell my Third Grand-Uncle — I’ll personally strip the skin from your bones—”
Provoking both the Demon Suppression Division and the Beiya fox clan at once. In all of Qingzhou, this man had nowhere left to go.
Lin Baixi’s face was blank as she stared at the straight-backed figure in front of her.
She’d expected him to at least question her — to demand an accounting. After all this time concealing herself, what she’d feared most was exactly this moment: everything exposed, and Shen Yi deciding the safest move was to eliminate all witnesses cleanly.
Instead, he’d moved like that.
The tension she’d been holding let go, just slightly. The forced composure began to peel away — the smile hurt anyway, with her lip split open.
She steadied her breathing, voice rough. “Don’t mind her. She’s not stable.”
As long as Lin Baixi remained in Baiyun County, the Third Grand-Uncle would never step foot here — otherwise the fox clan wouldn’t have bothered merely sealing her cultivation and sending her back to the city. And the little fox’s threats about killing her were her own initiative, nothing more.
Lin Baixi also didn’t want Shen Yi entangled further with this demon. The elder’s copper bells were a genuine divine artifact — even an ordinary Jade Liquid practitioner with no exceptional technique couldn’t pin the fox down. The earlier strike had only landed because it carried no lethal intent, and the demon hadn’t registered it in time. If she was pushed into actually fighting for her life, provoked into real savagery—
Then she saw Shen Yi walking forward again.
She reached out and caught his sleeve, ignoring the pain. “I’m fine — there’s no need to—”
He looked back with a slightly odd expression.
Under that look, Lin Baixi hesitated, and felt an embarrassed warmth creep in. I think I just made the same mistake she did.
“That’s not — what I meant was — you’re not her match—”
The more she said, the less sense it made. The quiet intelligence she usually wore had deserted her.
“…”
The fox demon slowly pushed herself upright, cold eyes fixed on both of them. Then she raised the bells.
Their ring was sharp and clear. The air solidified.
With deliberate activation behind them this time, her own qi drained rapidly — but the bells’ power multiplied tenfold.
She couldn’t understand it. Same face. Same clothes. And yet this other woman seemed to carry fortune with her like a personal possession — survived an encounter with the Third Grand-Uncle, got dragged off by a violent constable, and arrived here still untouched, still with that maddening little smile even in the moment before death.
The jealousy in the fox demon’s eyes deepened and curdled into something uglier. “Even you, you wretched dog, take her side. I can’t kill her — but there’s nothing stopping me from killing you!“
Two short blades appeared in her hands. In the clear ringing of the bells, she surged toward Shen Yi.
Lin Baixi felt her body go rigid. Her expression shifted.
She had once stood before a core-forming Greater Demon without losing her composure. Right now, something she rarely wore showed on her face.
Genuine alarm.
Then she felt Shen Yi’s arm gently shake her hand free.
In this dead-still field — he could still move?
In the next breath, invisible force began gathering throughout the room, condensing into something visible at a speed the eye could follow.
Like a thousand blades suspended in the air.
A cold that had nothing to do with temperature. A stillness that didn’t belong to the human world.
The fox demon stopped with her daggers raised, expression empty, staring at the young man standing with his hands at his sides.
Shen Yi stood perfectly still. His face had gone pale. His eyes were motionless as deep water.
A single pulse of intent — and the fox demon felt herself seized by an invisible grip around her qi, like a hand at her throat cutting off all breath.
The astral force came down all at once.
Countless streams of True Astral Force poured through the room and converged on the fox demon in a single crashing tide.
(End of Chapter)