A shortcut derived through demonic methods — and it was more powerful, more complete, than a proper Condensate Realm method. As if it had been made specifically for him.
In the dim tent, when the wave of excitement had settled somewhat, the expression on Shen Yi’s face gradually went still.
Perhaps a certain skepticism had come with him from his old life.
He found it difficult to believe in things falling from the sky.
Precisely because the Heavenly Demon Yama Essence-Devouring External Pill Art looked so unreasonably attractive — that was what made him uneasy.
Everything has a price. That principle should apply to most things.
And even if something genuinely flawless did exist — it shouldn’t be derivable in two hundred years by a flood dragon and a fox demon casually throwing things together.
If it were that simple, Condensate Realm methods would be common as dirt.
After a moment, a quiet exhale moved through the tent.
“Now I’m getting picky.”
Shen Yi’s eyes flickered, something faintly self-deprecating in them. From Baiyun County on through — the demon dog, the Yellow King, the ape, the fox — the river deity, the young flood dragon, the caiman, the old flood dragon.
If he’d always played it safe and taken the measured path, he’d have died eight hundred times over by now.
With his particular combination of talent and insight, a measured approach wasn’t an option he had. He was always going to end up leaving safe ground to go out and plunder lifespan from wherever it could be found.
Once you stepped outside the city walls, the unexpected was always waiting.
And looking back across the whole road, Shen Yi felt he’d always been the one doing the catching. The Li siblings went down — he caught it. Hong Lei and Zhao Kanglin misjudged the situation — someone would have died. It had worked out because he’d barely been able to manage it.
But who caught him?
The Division’s backing?
Lin Baixi had the most formidable connections in nearly all of Qingzhou, and her own cultivation at Jade Liquid Perfection — and in the end, what had kept her alive was a panicked swing from Old Liu’s father.
Staking your life on that kind of small-probability event was not a comfortable way to exist.
“Still — paying more attention doesn’t hurt anything.”
He drew a slow breath, and rather than immediately feeding lifespan in, he began a careful examination of the newly derived technique in his mind.
This was the Condensate Realm. It warranted extreme care.
If there was some problem that couldn’t be resolved — however much those reserves cost — the technique would simply have to wait.
The Heavenly Demon Yama Essence-Devouring External Pill Art drew most of its substance from the flood dragon and the fox demon. Even Shen Yi found it somewhat opaque.
Lines of text surfaced slowly through his mind.
The candle burned down by degrees. The swaying flame shrank to something the size of a bean.
Brow faintly furrowed, Shen Yi worked through the external pill art’s content with the thin martial knowledge the panel had given him, managing to make sense of it only with considerable effort.
Until the end—
Through this exquisite method, the sinister essence-devouring precious implement is forged.
“Forged? Precious implement?”
He opened his eyes, expression odd.
It reminded him of the caiman, inexplicably.
The demon’s scales — refined through some process, both offensive and defensive, and when Erhei had scraped them away the demon had shown no sign of pain.
So this external pill wasn’t some veiled metaphor for a cultivation realm — it was literally an implement? Something analogous to a treasured tool?
Another knowledge gap.
Shen Yi raised an eyebrow without much enthusiasm. His biggest problem was that he’d had too little time since arriving here, too brief an exposure to cultivation, and no proper lineage to fill in what he didn’t know.
That said — if it was an implement, using it felt considerably less fraught.
He let his focus go inward, and demon lifespan began carefully feeding into the Heavenly Demon Yama method.
【Year one — you mobilize the jade liquid throughout your body and, within the Solar-Fusion Furnace, begin forging the mysterious precious implement described in the external pill method.】
Shen Yi exhaled slightly.
He kept watching the panel’s progress, a stream of notifications scrolling past in quick succession.
【Year thirty-two — you accumulate jade liquid…】
【Year ninety-eight — you gather every thread of qi that cannot be held within your meridians and flesh, collecting it all in the qi sea, using the Solar-Fusion Furnace to smelt it, and through a sinister technique forcing it to condense.】
【Year one hundred and seventy-two — you accumulate jade liquid…】
【Year three hundred and seventy — the external pill takes rough shape, hovering quietly in the qi sea.】
【Year six hundred and ninety — the external pill is wrapped in a dense coating of golden jade liquid, luminous beyond description. It begins drawing in qi on its own.】
【Year nine hundred and thirty-one — within the Solar-Fusion Furnace, the golden light fades, revealing the full and round external pill. Its interior is hollow and empty, waiting to be fed.】
【Heavenly Demon Yama Essence-Devouring External Pill Art — Perfection.】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 1,125 years】
The final notification confirmed what he’d suspected.
The precious implement wasn’t a metaphor for anything. It was a literal object. The technique had jumped straight from Untrained to Perfection without intermediate stages — because you were forging a tool. Tools didn’t have stages.
He let his eyes close and looked inward.
Organs luminous. Golden blood moving. The Solar-Fusion Furnace built from countless interwoven threads of dark red — like a great prison, radiating heat.
And within that prison, a smooth, translucent pill of what looked like white jade hung suspended in perfect stillness.
Unless he actively directed it otherwise, the jade liquid flowing through his body passed nowhere near it. In the seamless, complete inner form he’d built — this object was entirely out of place, fully isolated by the Furnace around it.
Nine hundred years of demon lifespan expended. Not a single measurable change to cultivation or ability.
“…”
He wasn’t disappointed. If anything, his expression had become faintly strange.
He opened his eyes and slowly extended his palm.
The white jade pill materialized in it.
It could be removed from the body.
Demons were demons — their cultivation was nothing but raw lifespan accumulated through brute endurance over the ages. They understood nothing about proper Condensate methods.
Shen Yi pressed his lips together and brought the caiman’s beast core close.
In an instant, a domineering, predatory hunger burst from the white jade pill.
“Wait.”
Something occurred to him and he pulled it away quickly, returning the pill to the qi sea.
He’d almost forgotten — there was still the chance to comprehend a talent passive from the beast core.
The external pill only needed what the core contained in terms of cultivation essence, after all.
He placed the caiman’s beast core in his mouth. His tongue registered sweet and bloody at once.
He opened the panel again, channeling demon lifespan into the Heavenly Demon method.
【Year one — you consume the Jade Liquid Perfection caiman beast core. You draw the vast, surging demonic force into your body, let it move through the apertures and meridians, carefully refine away the impurities, and guide the remainder toward the Heavenly Demon external pill.】
【Talent Passive Comprehended: Jade Liquid · Hundred-Tempered Caiman Body】
【Hundred-Tempered Caiman Body: The water clan’s innate method of renewing scale-armor. Your body receives an enhancement, with a significant breakthrough every hundred years.】
Shen Yi closed his fist and took a careful measure.
Compared to the Flood Dragon’s Power, this was considerably less dramatic — roughly thirty percent increase in raw strength. Manageable. Still within the range of things he could actually direct.
As for the breakthrough that came every century — nothing to think about right now.
He settled back into the familiar movement, then looked inward again.
And was somewhat taken aback.
The white jade external pill had not changed at all. Still round, still translucent.
Only under very careful attention could he make out, deep within the pill, a layer of demon-essence fluid — essentially nothing at all.
“A thousand-year caiman. Jade Liquid Perfection cultivation. And that’s what it produces?”
He placed the flood dragon’s core in his mouth.
One year of lifespan spent. He guided the demonic force toward the external pill, as before.
【Year one — you consume the flood dragon’s core—】
An explosion shook his inner ear.
Shen Yi’s expression changed instantly. He traced the disturbance to its source — and found the Solar-Fusion Furnace, woven from countless dark-red meridian threads, was trembling.
Within that great prison, the external pill remained perfectly still.
But the demon-essence fluid inside it had filled to half capacity.
The Furnace shook. After several breaths, with what seemed like considerable effort, it pushed the external pill back under control.
“That nearly exceeded the limit.”
Good thing it held. If that much lifespan and demon core had been invested and the Furnace had failed to contain the pill — he’d have had to pull it out and leave it unused. That would have been genuinely painful.
He looked inward at the external pill, and through the communication method described in the art, pressed his awareness against it.
The Solar-Fusion Furnace slowly opened.
From within the white jade pill, a thread of murderous demon energy seeped outward, staining the pale surface with something dense and darkly foreboding — blood-red, saturated. Then it followed the channel the Furnace provided, spreading rapidly through every corner of the body.
“…”
Shen Yi’s eyes opened abruptly. The black pupils filled with red.
His face was calm.
Not because he felt nothing — he simply did not know what expression to put on for what he was experiencing.
What moved through his body was a force he had never encountered, could not entirely comprehend. The presence it gave off as it stirred was something that invited fear.
Like an enormous thing breaking free from a deep abyss and showing its shape for the first time.
Three thousand years of accumulated cultivation — the flood dragon lord’s.
Shen Yi extended his hand slowly.
The cleanly jointed fingers looked, in that moment, capable of crushing anything in the world.
At the same time.
Above Qingfeng Mountain, in the thin early morning light.
The two Condensate Realm elders, who had been standing in silence behind Chen Qiankun, both looked up abruptly toward the distance. Their eyes would not stop moving.
(End of Chapter)