Atop Pingkang Mountain. Stone and rock shifted.

A lean figure burst upward and shot into the open air.

The thirty-odd golden-eagle Commanders who had been holding position, led by their two Deputy Commanders, were caught slightly off-guard — but their hands were already moving.

“Lock him down!”

Cold chains uncoiled like striking serpents, wrapping around the figure in midair in seconds.

Dozens of demon-suppression chains stretched taut. Both Deputy Commanders steadied themselves, anchored in the formation’s key positions, drawing all the qi of every Commander together through the chains.

They reached for the silver hooks used on shoulder blades, about to launch upward—

And their expressions changed.

The chains were pulling harder. These could hold Condensate Realm demons — they wouldn’t break. What was going wrong was below the chains: the dozens of Commanders holding them. Their faces were contorted, veins standing out across their foreheads, every last bit of strength going into the grip. Boots driven into the earth. Knees cracking.

Even so, the figure in the air was still slowly, faintly swaying.

“…”

Up in the canopy of a tall old cypress, Jiang Chengyun stood with hands clasped at his back.

He watched from a distance. “That’s a formidable body-refinement technique.”

Only someone who had genuinely reached the Condensate Realm could understand how terrifying the gap between it and Jade Liquid was. What the abbot was displaying right now had crossed — roughly halfway. Perhaps more.

The abbot looked down, then looked at the chains covering him. Something cleared in the clouded eyes.

The strange smile faded. What replaced it was a flat, vast indifference.

“Below the Condensate Realm, I am unbeatable.”

He reached back and pulled at the chains. The dozens of Commanders staggered.

“Above the Condensate Realm—”

He worked the chains off his body without hurry, unhurried as a man removing a robe. “That remains to be determined.”

“Ha.”

Jiang Chengyun shook his head, and didn’t argue the point internally.

He extended a palm and quickly collected a thread of the dark-pale qi, storing it away. With the abbot’s current capacity, escape was within his reach — even moving personally, he couldn’t be careless.

He was about to drop from the branch when something made him pause.

At the main hall entrance, a black-robed figure stepped out without any hesitation and launched straight upward.

A sweeping kick — sharp, clean, final — drove into the abbot’s shoulder.

Bang!!

The abbot had been calmly removing the last of the chains. He had no time to react. The lean frame was slammed downward.

Boom—

Cracks spread outward from the point of impact in every direction.

The abbot lay in the crater and looked up at the figure above him in pure incomprehension. Shen Yi straightened his collar, stripped off the wolf cloak that had been getting in the way, and came down again.

Leading with the Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture.

Two fists came down like a rainstorm.

The abbot rolled upright and answered with palm and fist. Neither of them dodged. No technique in either approach, just force meeting force — brutal and clean.

Enormous old trees were knocked down when they caught the edge of anything. Stones worn smooth by centuries shattered at a touch.

Everyone watching felt it land in their chests. Neither of these looked like Jade Liquid Realm strength. Not from either of them.

“…”

Jiang Chengyun watched from the distance in silence.

In a contest between body-refinement practitioners, who would win — even he couldn’t call it clearly.

But he was revising his assessment of Shen Yi’s capability upward.

No wonder the arrogance. Jade Liquid Perfection at that age, and a body-refinement foundation that takes your breath away.

Even without him here today, Shen Yi might not have been able to bring down the abbot — but protecting himself was well within his means.

Good. Very good.

Arrogance without ability was conceit. Arrogance matched by genuine force — that was someone worth having.

Qingzhou needs new blood like this. Only with this kind of ability would he eventually deserve to stand at Jiang Qiulan’s back.

Jiang Chengyun had no interest in being Chen Qiankun’s babysitter, and no fondness for Grandmother’s inexplicable moments of mercy.

But right now, he stepped forward along the branch — covering for a junior colleague who hadn’t yet fully grown into the job was fine by him.

Then—

In the middle of the exchange, Shen Yi glanced sideways across the distance.

The sudden attention landed on him. Jiang Chengyun’s brow contracted slightly.

I only barely released any qi. He’s in the middle of a fight and still tracking the surroundings?

And what was the meaning of that look — that particular warning in it?

Something shifted in Jiang Chengyun’s face. He’s not actually trying to protect anything this time — this one just adapted to what the silver bell means faster than any of us imagined.

“You thieving heretic!”

The abbot let out a sudden long cry, fury fully arrived. The dark-pale colors down both arms deepened and brightened — the force behind them stronger than before by a visible margin.

He’d seen it. He knew where Shen Yi’s body had come from.

In the fury: envy.

The Bodhi tree had been stripped to death by practitioners who understood nothing of what they were doing, and here was someone who had found a comparable spiritual plant from somewhere. If the school had simply obtained it themselves — none of the rest would have been necessary. All those years of improvised alternatives, trying to restore what was lost.

And the young man’s raw strength had already passed the Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body’s ceiling. Compared to his own half-volume Condensate Realm text — only a few parts short.

If he hadn’t finally reached completion today, he might have lost.

“…”

Shen Yi adjusted his breathing and put in the last sealing punch — locking the abbot’s right arm with a straight strike.

Between the Flood Dragon’s Power, the Hundred-Tempered Caiman Body, and the upper-grade Jade Liquid body-refinement — all stacked — he still found it difficult.

The Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture was being partially blocked by the dark-pale qi, giving only a slight slowing effect. Enough. Not enough for the abbot to flee.

The dark blade cleared the scabbard in a single motion.

The Devouring Wolf Demon-Slayer at full capacity — the blade went black, darker than shadow, and drove straight into the abbot’s chest, sinking in about an inch.

The old monk pressed both palms together, catching the blade between them.

The pierced muscle worked rapidly. The dark-pale light pulsed and breathed — and the blade edge began, slowly, to be pushed back outward.

“I told you. Below the Condensate Realm, I am unbeatable!”

His expression went savage. The smile beneath it went cold. Both palms increased the pressure steadily, aiming to fold the straight blade in half.

Shen Yi’s face didn’t move.

Only in his pupils — a point of crimson surfacing.

The Solar-Fusion Furnace built from countless dark-red meridian threads gave a single deep roar, opened for an instant. In the qi sea, the external pill woke. Threads of demonic force began to move.

Unlike the uncontrolled scatter of the first time — with experience behind him now, guided by Shen Yi’s intent, they poured through his palm and into the blade.

A dark, bewitching energy rose from the black steel.

Thunk.

The abbot looked down.

The blade had gone all the way through.

The body’s qi and blood were moving without his direction, flowing into the blade’s edge.

The powerful frame withered rapidly. Smooth skin folded and sagged in plain view.

He moved to push the young man away with lightning speed — but the red light that had appeared without warning on the blade tore through him, savage and indiscriminate, and the organs were ground to nothing in an instant and consumed with the rest.

“…”

The Commanders and Deputy Commanders watching had thought the two were evenly matched, and then Commander Shen had apparently decided he was done playing, drawn his saber, and put the old monk down with a single strike.

“…”

Jiang Chengyun had seen it more clearly than the others, and felt much the same.

First the Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture to partially seal the abbot’s meridians — buying insurance against escape, which means he wasn’t confident in his own movement speed. Then that final strike: simple on the outside, expensive and dangerous underneath.

Even I would have needed some effort to receive that.

Jade Liquid Realm really has become something no one can predict anymore.

Shen Yi pulled the blade free and sent it back into the scabbard with an easy motion.

He straightened his collar and glanced at what had been left behind — a skin without much substance inside it.

You said below the Condensate Realm, you were unbeatable.

Then what am I.

(End of Chapter)