“Wait—”
Hong Lei blinked. He looked at the people around him and found their expressions completely unsurprised.
So in all the days of surrounding the mountain, the demon-hunters had already gone through this swordsman’s entire history. Zhang Hengzhou had even confirmed his own demonic nature.
Then — why hadn’t Chen Qiankun moved?
Even Shen Yi was lost on this one. Hong Lei looked toward the old general at the front with a blank expression.
Chen Qiankun’s eyebrow hadn’t shifted. He faced Zhang Hengzhou’s venom with perfect calm, voice unhurried. “To be honest, I did hesitate once. I asked myself whether there could truly be a demon that sincerely wanted to live among ordinary people. Then I thought it over. In the past century or so, the women around you number somewhere between three and five hundred.”
“They came of their own will, drawn by my name.” Zhang Hengzhou was breathing heavily, the wounds across his body showing faint signs of reopening.
“That’s not what I’m referring to.”
Chen Qiankun waved it off, his tone going reflective. “I was only thinking — each time one of them conceived your child, a demon appeared and carried her off. Nine in ten were never heard from again. The rare few who were rescued, who became part of your story as the gallant hero — they died quietly a few short years later. What would it feel like, carrying to term as a mortal woman, and then seeing what you’d given birth to?”
A pause.
“When the time came to deliver, a demon arrived to take them away. When your children were hungry, a demon attacked a village. Every time, without fail. Across hundreds, sometimes thousands of li.”
“What offense could the demons of Qingzhou possibly have committed, to keep running into this family of heroes?”
“How many children must Linjiang Prefecture’s people bear each year, to sustain you?”
In the voice that carried a faint edge of cold, the figure in dark lustrous armor stood slowly.
The old man gripped the iron halberd and looked forward with empty eyes.
“I am a man with crimes of my own on his record. What virtue or standing do I possess — that would make it my place to give you a chance?”
Under that freezing gaze—
Zhang Hengzhou’s face went rigid. He stumbled backward several paces.
Until a pair of slightly weathered hands steadied his shoulders.
He looked back, breathing ragged. “Teacher.”
The Sect Master wore a flowing cloud-grey robe, hair loose and scattered. He appeared not to have slept in days. His face was worn through, but he patted the shoulder gently.
“I know you feel wronged. He won’t give you a chance. I will.”
At those words—
Among the sword-practitioners kneeling silently across the plaza, something shifted in their bleak expressions. Despair.
Anger moved through the Division Commanders. A short-tempered Deputy Commander stepped forward immediately, voice sharp: “You’ve been given all this time, and you’re still this confused — he is a demon. What chance are you giving him?!”
The Sect Master paid no attention. He stepped in front of his disciple and looked toward Chen Qiankun.
“Old friend.”
He smiled suddenly, something in his face drifting backward through time, a thread of plea running beneath it. His hand gestured a small shape. “When I found him, he was this small.”
Another Deputy Commander laughed coldly. “When he was this small, he was already older than your grandfather!”
The Sect Master continued as if he hadn’t heard, fixed on Chen Qiankun, words tumbling faster. “You know I was born incomplete — the Qingfeng Mountain of the Zhang lineage cannot end with me. I pulled him from the river, I named him Hengzhou, I taught him swordsmanship, made him eat his meals, watched over him from the shadows while he went out to kill demons—”
He seemed to have a great deal more to say.
“He is a flood dragon.” Chen Qiankun said it quietly.
“I made him into this! I even prepared the sword pool refinement for him! I prepared the Sect Master’s seat for him!”
The Sect Master’s weathered face twisted suddenly, voice going ragged and raw.
“It was that shameless woman who ran to the yamen to give birth in public who turned him into a flood dragon!”
He spun around.
Hair loose, face contorted — in a single instant the Sect Master of a great sect had become something that looked like a man in the grip of a breaking mind.
“Qingfeng disciples — form up! Form up!!”
Across the plaza — elders, administrators, disciples — every head turned away.
“…”
The Sect Master seemed to have anticipated this. He let out a sharp laugh, reached into his front, and produced something the size of an infant’s fist — a sword pellet.
He released it.
The pellet floated upward, emanating a gentle glow, hanging suspended in the air.
“I said this was the Qingfeng Mountain of the Zhang lineage.”
The blood essence dropped into the sword pool hadn’t formed a covenant with Qingfeng Mountain. It had formed a covenant with the Zhang bloodline.
Before everyone watching, he dropped to his knees and drove his forehead into the white stone with a crack.
“I summon the Founding Sword! Bring down judgment!”
As the pristine stone split under his skull—
The pellet called the Founding Sword began to hum.
Shaking with it: every sword at every disciple’s waist. Beyond the swords, an unnatural flush rose in every one of their faces.
The Sect Master struck the ground a second time.
Someone spat blood.
“…”
Shen Yi stood at a distance, the scene in front of him somewhat beyond his frame of reference.
“Hold them down!”
Hong Lei’s roar came out hard. The group of disciples they’d escorted up — docile as sheep until a moment ago — were now reaching for their own hilts under some invisible torment.
The Commanders swarmed forward and got control of them before anything could happen.
On the plaza above, the sound of swords clearing their scabbards ran on and on — only gripping the hilt offered any relief from what the Founding Sword’s summons was doing to them.
Blade after blade turned slowly toward the Division’s people.
At the front of the main hall, the senior elders who had been sitting cross-legged closed their eyes with grim resignation. Dense qi gathered and projected forward.
“Hell — even if we needed to worry about demons slipping out, we shouldn’t have sent this lot back up the mountain. What is the old General actually thinking?”
Even Hong Lei couldn’t hold back the question.
The Sect Master had this capability — Chen Qiankun had to have known.
Thousands of disciples, their qi converging, forming the Ten Thousand Swords Demon-Slaying Formation — with the Sect Master and two other Condensate Realm elders anchoring it.
Invisible sword intent swept across Chen Qiankun like a cold tide, closing in from every direction.
“With this formation, keeping Old Friend Chen occupied for half a month seems reasonable.”
The Sect Master lay prone on the ground, the violence gone out of him, looking back with quiet desolation. “You know where to go. Leave now.”
Zhang Hengzhou’s face broke open with desperate joy. He shot one last glance toward the distant figure with the dark blade at his hip — then without hesitation launched himself into the air.
“…”
Shen Yi had a young disciple’s wrist in his hand. The disciple’s face was full of despair, the grip on his own sword entirely beyond his control, knowing exactly what striking a Division Commander would mean.
Shen Yi wasn’t watching the disciple.
He was watching the figure cutting away through the sky, and feeling something sink in his chest.
The guess was right. This flood dragon can sense me.
And now it’s running.
Then — beneath the canopy of sword light closing around him from every direction — Chen Qiankun slowly closed his eyes.
The Sect Master stared in open shock.
The iron halberd in his hand — as if an invisible figure had simply taken it — was no longer there.
The man remained where he stood. The weapon shot upward on its own.
A boundless, world-tearing force gathered in that invisible grip, and the halberd came down toward Zhang Hengzhou’s retreating back with something that felt like the parting of heaven and earth.
“Aoooonh—!!“
In a piercing dragon’s cry, the entire plaza went dark and still.
Above Qingfeng Mountain’s main hall, a flood dragon nearly a hundred zhang long blotted out the light — black, massive, coiling with frantic power, the single horn on its brow sharper than any forged weapon.
Then — in one instant.
The halberd came down.
Demon blood sprayed across the sky. Half a flood dragon’s body crashed down from the heavens.
What remained of the flood dragon — half a body, organs and blood raining down — fled into the distance in raw terror and was gone in the blink of an eye.
The halberd returned to the waiting hand. Chen Qiankun opened his eyes, expression unchanged, and looked down at the Sect Master.
“Half a month is too long. I’ll give you one incense stick. Use it to say what needs saying.”
“You — you’ve broken through?”
“Halfway.”
Chen Qiankun looked up at the sword pellet hanging in the air.
“Predecessor. You kept me waiting.”
Genuinely, the bones had started to go soft from all that sitting.
“No—!”
Seeing him move toward closing his eyes again, the Sect Master cried out and reached for the pellet — but the Founding Sword moved first. It shuddered, hummed, and flew into the Sect Master’s arms on its own.
In an instant, the swords in every Qingfeng Mountain disciple’s hands settled back to normal. The canopy of sword light dissolved in a breath.
“What was there to panic about — Old General Chen wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.” Hong Lei released the disciple in his grip and shoved him off without much gentleness.
“The mountain was surrounded to prevent demons from escaping. The flood dragon was trapped to force the Founding Sword out. The old man predicted all along that the Sect Master would try something — better to let him play it out in the open and cut it off clean, rather than have him work around the edges. And the flood dragon was never going to get away—”
Hong Lei turned around with enthusiasm, ready to tell Shen Yi about the time he’d worked under the old General.
He stopped.
“Where did he go?”
(End of Chapter)