Inside the dim river deity’s shrine.
The great statue was swallowed in shadow, the benevolent carved face taking on a strangeness in the dark.
A heavyset woman in a blue-green robe lay pressed across the offering table, both hands gripping its edges. The entire table — statue and all — shook with the rhythm of her body.
She had her neck arched back, veins standing out, the fat of her face pushed and compressed until you could see the decent features underneath — seven parts resemblance to the carved figure towering above.
“Hgh—!“
Where the deity’s expression was gentle, hers was contorted — eyes rolled back, breath labored, something feral in the twisted lines of her face.
Behind her, a young man with sharp, unfinished features watched with cruel eyes. His back was bare, mottled black scales covering his spine, countless scars crusted to dark red and webbing across his skin like cracked earth.
Most noticeable of all: a horn jutting from his forehead, roughly the width of a small finger.
He stared at the river deity statue with bare teeth — white, pointed. “That’s you?”
“That’s me—!” The woman let out a long exhale. The horned young man shuddered, grabbed her by the head, and slammed it into the table.
Then he bent and bit into her throat.
Blood ran freely into his mouth. He swallowed in long pulls, and the scar tissue across his body knit a fraction further together.
The heavyset woman convulsed, but the expression on her face grew increasingly reverent — as if being fed on was some profound honor.
“Tch. Fish smell.” The young man’s brow twitched. He wiped his mouth, visibly dissatisfied. “I want real medicine.”
Practitioners’ bodies contained the richest concentration of heaven and earth’s essence available. They were, in every sense that mattered, the finest medicine there was.
The river deity pulled herself upright, caught her breath, adjusted her clothes with unsteady hands, and smoothed the wound at her throat. Adoration and anxiety together in her eyes. “The medicine has arrived. Better than last time — five of them. Two at the Jade Liquid Realm, young and potent. I won’t let any of them leave. You’ll be satisfied.”
“The usual arrangement — those two are mine.”
The young man raised an eyebrow. “Just hold one of them for me. The other three are initial-stage — I’ll leave those for you.”
“This servant wouldn’t dare.” The river deity shook her head quickly. Even though her own cultivation ran slightly deeper, her posture couldn’t have been more deferential.
The young man reached out and pinched her face. “It’s a gift. Take it.”
“Go.”
“Yes!” The river deity dragged her weakened body toward the door.
Bamboo courtyard.
The widow carefully ladled soup into bowls.
The madman had gone quieter since everything that had just passed — sitting tucked into a corner outside, sipping fish soup in small mouthfuls.
Shen Yi sat in the courtyard, working through flavorless fish.
He ate with deliberate attention, as if he intended to extract every trace of nourishment and put it somewhere useful.
If he’d read things correctly — from the moment they’d entered this village, they’d been under a demon’s watch.
The danger could come at any time.
One lapse in attention and they’d vanish like the Commanders before them. Some of those men hadn’t even had the chance to get a bloodstained token back to Qingzhou.
“There you are — I’ve been looking everywhere. Sneaking food without me.”
Li Muqing drifted into the courtyard.
The widow recognized a second Division Commander when she saw one, and took her bowl out to sit with the madman at the gate without being asked.
“Is it good?”
Li Muqing looked at the young man with interest.
She didn’t entirely believe he could beat Fang Heng in a straight fight — but making Fang Heng back down at all was enough to suggest he was something beyond an ordinary Threshold practitioner. Combined with the fact that this was his first mission, and he was apparently calmer than her own brother—
Unafraid because he doesn’t know what he’s facing? Or just genuinely composed?
Either way, that particular quality was valuable.
“Alert the others. Stay together — don’t separate. There’s a demon in this village.”
Shen Yi set down his bowl and looked up.
“What?”
Li Muqing blinked, then smiled. “Now you’re giving orders—”
The words stopped. Under Shen Yi’s level, unsmiling gaze, the smile faded on its own. “Got it. I’ll go tell them now.”
She didn’t ask how he knew. Experienced Commanders didn’t question a potential warning — even a fraction of a possibility demanded preparation.
“…”
She turned to go — and something made her pause.
A black wind surged from nowhere and screamed across the sky toward the village’s outskirts.
The two people who had been sitting at the gate a moment before were gone.
“Don’t wander — go get Xinhan!”
Li Muqing’s languid manner evaporated. She drew the short sword without hesitation and went after it. No deliberating.
Brazen enough to snatch people from under the Division’s nose — the provocation in that couldn’t be missed.
She launched off the muddy path, clearing dozens of zhang in a breath.
Then her eye caught something to the side and her expression shifted.
Black robes, hair moving with the speed — Shen Yi, face expressionless, dark blade in hand, running.
Three paces ahead of her.
“Why are you coming? Go tell the others—”
Li Muqing held her breath and watched the black wind dive into the low forest along the riverbank.
With her Jade Liquid cultivation behind her, the energy in her body pressed outward like a tide.
“I told you — that thing is clearly a Jade Liquid Greater Demon. You can’t change anything by rushing in.”
Before she finished, she felt something wrong at her back.
She turned.
On the Yangchun River, past the edges of the fishing village, the water was roaring. A wave surged to ten zhang of height.
At the crest: the blue-green robed woman, bare feet on the water.
Like the river deity of legend — one turned palm could swallow the village whole.
“Damn it.“
She recognized that figure.
She still didn’t understand why the deity had abandoned four hundred years of careful equilibrium.
But the last trace of hope she’d been holding quietly burned away.
Shen Yi had been right. Not just a demon — demons that had come prepared.
She looked back at the low forest. Both the black wind and Shen Yi had vanished in the moment she’d looked away.
“…”
“We’re in trouble.”
Her teeth came together. She’d handled enough Division work to know better than this — letting herself get pulled in two directions at once was exactly the kind of mistake that got people killed.
And that young man had moved too fast.
Where did he get the nerve?
Shen Yi steadied his breathing. The White Ape Dancing with the Python, refined to Perfection, opened fully.
Moving through mountain terrain as if it were flat ground. Faster, in fact, than before.
He’d noticed Li Muqing falling behind. He’d seen the Yangchun River’s rising threat.
Something had stirred in him, then settled.
This was a coordinated ambush against Division Commanders. Most likely designed to split the Li siblings, then take them separately.
Shen Yi was not impulsive.
Quite the opposite — his thinking right now was exactly clear.
If the river deity was truly late-stage Jade Liquid Realm, the Li siblings together might not come out ahead. And the black wind ahead of him was Jade Liquid Realm as well.
In that situation, gathering all five accomplished nothing. One of them was going to face one of these demons alone regardless.
Both demons had calculated for this. The only reason they’d bothered with the separation step at all was to minimize how damaged they came out.
Which made Shen Yi the only variable they hadn’t accounted for.
He wasn’t going to concern himself with the villagers, or with whether the Li siblings could handle the river deity. In a crisis like this, a single hesitation meant death without a grave.
He forced his mind to the immediate.
The only way to survive was to take the head of the demon in front of him.
Then.
The dark blade cleared the scabbard. Long fingers closed around the hilt. Mountain wind howled, pulling at the black robes.
Shen Yi raised the blade and stopped.
The black wind dissipated, revealing a scaled form beneath.
Two figures lay crumpled where they’d been dropped — both unconscious.
When the demon’s eyes found Shen Yi’s face, its expression shifted to something impatient and irritated.
“Why is it you who followed?”
You dare follow?
It hadn’t expected the one who gave chase to be a Threshold Realm practitioner. Which meant the river deity was now facing two Jade Liquid Commanders simultaneously.
But there was no concern in the demon’s eyes. Only a flicker of urgency and mild annoyance — urgency because it wanted to be back there tearing into that young woman’s flesh before anything interrupted, and annoyance for a simpler reason.
The Commander in front of it was too weak.
Compared to those two living vessels of refined qi, this one was so negligible it barely registered as worth eating.
Being a flood dragon had its standards. Not everything qualified to be consumed.
(End of Chapter)