The fish market of Shuiyun Township was unusually empty.
Little Er and Liu Xiujie had borrowed an extra carriage and loaded Li Xinhan and Ma Tao — trussed in bandages to the point of resembling wrapped dumplings — into it.
Despite the medicinal pills, Li Muqing’s qi was still thin. She settled outside on the carriage edge, legs crossed, doing what she could toward pointing out the road.
Shen Yi had only ever ridden Baiyun County’s yamen donkey. The sudden switch to a tall, powerfully built half-demon horse left him briefly at odds with the animal. The horse, which by all accounts had a difficult character, was today completely obedient — in fact, faintly trembling.
Shen Yi looked at the dried dark red on his clothes and let the expression on his face settle without reflecting what was actually moving in his mind.
The river demon’s last words came back.
Consort to the lord of the Yangchun River.
That was what it had gambled everything on. That was what had made it willing to turn on the Division.
He didn’t believe there was an actual dragon in the river. The panel had been clear about what it was — a flood dragon demon. Total lifespan of fourteen hundred years, and the creature had lived barely a century of that.
Convert it to human terms: not yet ten years old.
Not yet grown, and already at early Jade Liquid Realm.
He’d killed a demon with prominent backing once before, in Baiyun County — but that time he’d had Lin Baixi’s name to shelter behind. The fox clan’s retaliation had been directed at the Qingzhou General, not at him.
This was different. Li Xinhan’s shoulder probably wasn’t broad enough for this particular burden.
“…”
Shen Yi turned it over quietly.
The flood dragon had been covered in old wounds. It had clearly been hiding in that fishing village to recover — and had paid the river deity with promises it had no intention of keeping.
A dragon stranded in shallow water looks like driftwood. If the creature had any real standing to draw on, it wouldn’t have needed to run.
No point in pointless worry. And with the panel, avoiding conflict with demons wasn’t something careful behavior could guarantee regardless — the panel required demons to function. Not something he could set aside.
The necessary precaution remained the same as always: strength.
Enough of it, and a few old flood dragons showing up to settle scores would be something to look forward to, not dread.
The panel opened before him.
【Fish Demon slain — late Jade Liquid Realm. Total Lifespan: 1,020 years. Remaining: 70 years. Absorbed.】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 1,500 years · Condensable】
Minus the five years spent after the flood dragon’s death to refill the depleted apertures, the reserves had reached a genuinely staggering number.
The river deity had had only seventy years of lifespan remaining.
That hadn’t surprised him. A demon without hope doesn’t gamble with its life unless it has nothing left to lose.
There was a pattern to it. Demons near the end of their lives tended toward higher cultivation — their beast cores carried denser essence, and the probability of gaining a talent passive was higher.
He’d developed a solid appreciation for talent passives. Just the Striking Affinity had saved him more than a hundred years of simulated time when learning the Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture. And the blood-corruption extracted from the Yellow King had allowed a Jade Liquid Realm martial art to evolve into something genuinely vicious.
More was always better.
Young demons, on the other hand — their lifespan reserves made older practitioners envious, but they weren’t stupid. You didn’t wander around alone at a young age unless there was a reason for it.
The kind that was both young and highly cultivated — like the flood dragon — tended to have backing, and tended to cause cascading complications. They were also extremely difficult to fight. If the flood dragon hadn’t underestimated him and come in a coordinated trap with the river deity, forty years of astral force wouldn’t have been nearly enough. Four hundred might not have been enough.
“…”
Shen Yi looked at the word that had appeared after the lifespan count.
He didn’t think he was misremembering — this was new, appearing for the first time since the reserves had crossed a thousand years.
Text surfaced slowly.
【Condense one thousand years of Lifespan into a Demon Crystal.】
【Demon Crystal: An object that concentrates the residual incomplete memories and resentments of demons. When used to fuel martial arts derivation, it draws on those memories to assist the simulation process. Consuming it extends lifespan.】
The meaning came to him quickly.
He was, by his own honest accounting, a person of ordinary talent. He knew what insight and accumulated knowledge were worth — the Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation had been running without progress for what felt like forever. And now that he was working with Jade Liquid Realm material, the sparks of sudden understanding had grown increasingly rare.
Part of that was simply the gaps in his martial knowledge. The other part was, bluntly: his brain wasn’t that sharp.
The people who built entire schools and established new ways of cultivation were the exceptional talents of their generations. An ordinary person could absorb two or three parts in ten and consider themselves set up for life. Reaching for more was greed.
Borrowing demonic memory to assist with martial derivation — that was a way to break past that ceiling.
“Might not even be that useful,” Shen Yi thought to himself, expression blank, with a trace of something that was maybe sour.
A thousand years. Bold of them.
Good thing. That was inarguably true.
Expensive. There was no hiding that part.
He closed it without hesitation.
He steadied his thoughts. Given where he actually stood, pulling something ready-made from the Division’s resources and building strength quickly was the right move. He’d placed his marker. Time to find out whether the Division really was as well-stocked as Zhang Tuhu had made it sound.
The carriage slowed.
He looked up.
A dense crowd had gathered at the only road out of town. Vendors with carrying poles. Fishermen in short jackets smelling of the river. Every kind of person — every face carrying the same flat, dark expression.
They weren’t speaking. Just standing at the roadside and watching.
Yamen constables had fanned out with hands on their sabers, arms spread wide, physically pressing the crowd back, the effort visible in the sweat on their foreheads.
“Don’t look. Keep moving.”
Li Muqing stopped the gentle swinging of her legs and leaned slightly toward the young man beside her.
Another set of cold eyes added itself to the mass looking at her.
“Don’t look, don’t look.” She kept her smile in place. Her palm had gone damp.
She was watching for Shen Yi to be provoked.
A practitioner who could put down a late-stage Jade Liquid Realm river demon — even weakened — had more than enough to kill ten villagers. Or a thousand. Once the momentum built, one thousand and seventy thousand stopped looking different.
Which was exactly why Qingzhou-born Division talent, no matter how strong, had historically left that river demon alone. They all had names to protect. Slaughtering common people in a place like this — the story would follow them back to Qingzhou, and they’d have no way to look their families in the face.
“Trust me — it won’t take long to change.”
Li Muqing reached over and gripped his sleeve.
The short measuring stick from before hadn’t been measuring a person. It had been measuring a deity.
These villagers were lost — their center of gravity had been knocked out from under them overnight. They needed a new shrine.
And the upright figure that had stood on the offering table and taken the river deity’s head had left something in their memory that wasn’t going anywhere.
Give it a little time.
A new name would start appearing in storytellers’ tellings. Would surface at tea stalls and food vendors. By the time the story finished being reshaped, even the person himself might not recognize it.
That was also why Li Muqing had been privately impressed at the clean approach. Someone less decisive would have struggled to wash the stain off afterward.
“Hmm?”
Shen Yi glanced back at her, mild confusion in his eyes.
“Are you — not angry?”
She blinked at his untroubled expression.
Shen Yi rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the reins.
In Baiyun County, people had said considerably worse about him, privately and otherwise.
Fifteen hundred years of demon lifespan in hand. Two Jade Liquid Realm demon cores in his pocket. Who had time to worry about what people were saying.
Such a fuss.
(End of Chapter)