Li Muqing walked ahead, thoughts drifting.
Her brother had impulsive instincts but genuinely sharp eyes. She’d been privately skeptical of how much weight Li Xinhan had placed on Shen Yi — and then Shuiyun Township had settled the question definitively.
Where her brother’s approach was blunt — straightforwardly offering status and women — Li Muqing’s method was more patient. Draw close first. The easy, unguarded manner of someone without agenda: dissolve the wariness that talented people from nothing had toward established families. Make them feel there was no difference between you and them — fellow practitioners, colleagues who knew each other, perhaps something warmer.
Then, gradually, let them experience what it meant to have a great family in their corner. Once someone was used to that ease, whatever they told themselves about independence, they’d already carry the family’s mark in everyone else’s eyes.
Qingzhou families repaid debts of gratitude. That was real.
Her bow earlier had been genuine. So was her willingness to share the Li family’s resources and connections with someone like Shen Yi — more than she’d give most people. The rare medicines alone: whatever he needed to get from Threshold to Jade Liquid Perfection, the Li family could cover that entirely.
And yes — the desire to bring him into her orbit, to have him available when needed, was just as real.
That instinct was something bred into her by decades of watching how a great family operated. It was bone-deep.
What she hadn’t anticipated was that he’d read it this quickly and quietly declined.
Recalling the way he’d calmly removed her hand from his arm, multiple times now—
This young man from Baiyun County had never believed, not from the very beginning, that the two of them were genuinely alike.
Genuinely impervious to persuasion.
She rubbed at a mild headache.
There was something about Shen Yi that felt like a groundedness she couldn’t quite account for. He’d arrived in Qingzhou alone, not attached to anyone, and seemed perfectly prepared to stand on his own.
Where did that confidence come from?
Fang Heng had come from poverty, was roughly the same age — and had still needed years of medicinal baths before breaking into the Threshold Realm. Now he was at Jade Liquid mid-stage, a level of talent that had left the family patriarch visibly envious.
And even then — before the General took him as a disciple, before all the recognition that followed — Fang Heng had come within a breath of dying against that late-stage Jade Liquid demon. One mistake, and he would have disappeared without a trace.
Replicating that road was something even Fang Heng himself might not manage a second time. And Shen Yi was starting from somewhat below that point.
“…”
Li Muqing stopped in front of a row of side courtyards and looked back.
He’d find out soon enough.
The Division’s real face was considerably colder than the welcome. It used people without ceremony. Immeasurable treasures in the storerooms, immeasurable corpses under the foundations.
Even with family support, she and her brother had nearly died at Shuiyun Township. For those without any backing at all — across all these years, the ones who’d made names for themselves could be counted on one hand.
“Make do with this. Tell me if you need anything.”
She wasn’t going to push. Li Muqing stretched, gave a wave, and headed off. “I’m sleeping.”
Once she’d gone, Shen Yi turned and walked into the side courtyard. Eight rooms total, a connecting archway on the right leading to the next courtyard.
This was where Division Commanders were supposed to live.
He picked an empty room, drew water from the old well in the courtyard, filled a wooden bucket, and scrubbed himself down from head to foot.
Clean uniform on. He looked at the two cloud-bands at his cuff for a moment — Liu Xiujie had mentioned it was a few hundred taels a month per band. Less than what the Gaunt Monk had been earning, but the cultivation resources that came with the salary were where the real value sat. Two hundred taels a month for food and drink and perhaps a house somewhere — already substantial.
He set the thought aside and opened the martial text that was supposedly among Qingzhou’s top three Jade Liquid internal arts. His eyes warmed.
He flipped it open to find almost every section had annotations left by previous readers — unclear passages circled, common misinterpretations flagged.
This was probably the first martial text Shen Yi had been able to follow without significant effort. He didn’t rush. He read carefully.
Understanding it in advance would save him a meaningful amount of lifespan in the simulation.
“Using the force of qi and blood to connect the apertures within the body — forging them into a blood-flesh furnace to smelt the breath of heaven and earth…”
He stopped.
He remembered. Buried beneath the hundreds of years he’d spent simply extracting lifespan passively from the Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation, there had been a moment — a glimpse — of golden jade liquid condensing in a few of his apertures.
The Thunder-Wind Solar-Fusion Scripture was the method for accelerating that process.
The apertures, connected by qi and blood, became the Solar-Fusion Furnace — trapping the twelve major apertures within it. The body as the furnace itself. Qi and blood as the fire. Refining the internal energy like an alchemist refining pills, over and over.
The human body had three hundred and sixty-two apertures in total. Setting the twelve major ones aside, three hundred and fifty remained.
According to the annotations: a lower-grade furnace used seventy apertures, middle-grade used a hundred and five. The Solar-Fusion Furnace built from two hundred and seventy apertures was the finest expression of the finest tier.
The difference wasn’t academic — more fire meant faster smelting, cultivation efficiency varying enormously as a result.
In the jianghu, people would bet everything they had to take something like this. Inside a sect, you wouldn’t see the cover unless you were a personal disciple.
“…”
He turned to the last page. Characters transcribed from the original, the killing intent of whoever had written them still faintly visible in the brushwork.
Those who pass this art without authorization will be entered on the Demon Warrant List. Execute.
Shen Yi closed the volume and opened the panel.
【Jade Liquid · Thunder-Wind Solar-Fusion Scripture — Untrained】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 1,500 years · Condensable】
Lifespan poured into the scripture like a river finding its course.
【Year one — you mobilize your qi and blood, beginning the work of connecting the apertures within your body.】
【Year two — qi and blood depleted. You return to the Thunder-Wind Scripture, Volume One — the method that brought your mortal frame to peak long ago. You use it now to replenish what you’ve spent.】
【Year seven — your understanding of the furnace method has grown solid. Execution remains somewhat clumsy, but you’ve successfully connected seventy-six apertures without error so far.】
【Year thirteen — the technique grows increasingly fluent. You’ve navigated every pitfall. Combined with the settled temperament built over many years of cultivation, not a single mistake has occurred. One hundred and ninety apertures are taking shape as the furnace’s rough form within your body.】
【Year seventeen — the surging qi and blood begin to boil. The Solar-Fusion Furnace roars. The breath of heaven and earth within you strains toward escape — and is held fast by what is almost a perfect furnace-body.】
【Year twenty — breathing and smelting at once, two major apertures have been completely filled with jade dew.】
“…”
Shen Yi paused the lifespan flow.
He remembered the early days, when he’d stumbled through the derivation with almost no understanding — a hundred and thirty-five years of accumulated effort to convert half an aperture’s worth of jade dew.
Twenty years, now. Two apertures completely filled.
Nearly two hundred times the efficiency. The Solar-Fusion Scripture’s power needed no further argument.
But it still wasn’t enough.
In principle, given the same internal art, natural talent should only affect how long the furnace construction took — not the actual smelting rate, which should be comparable across practitioners. By conservative estimate, reaching early Jade Liquid Realm would still take eighteen years. The gap between that and what others in the Division achieved with the same method was too large.
Shen Yi reached into his front slowly.
One beast core. Two demon cores.
As the lifespan began flowing again, he placed them in his mouth one by one.
(End of Chapter)