Mid-sentence, the bald man’s mouth erupted with a jet of dark green poison.
The jet moved like a loosed arrow, punching straight through the surging astral force.
It grazed Xiao Qiangwei’s wrist. A terrible burn mark opened across the pale skin, and the green fluid began eating through flesh at a speed that was genuinely frightening — within a single breath, white bone was faintly visible underneath.
A direct hit from a poison this vicious.
Xiao Qiangwei’s expression didn’t change. Only a small twitch at the corner of her eye. The force in her palms deepened by three parts, and using the moment Shen Yi had the demon pinned, she brought a heavy, full-committed strike down onto the bald head’s temple.
The toad lord had hoped the poison jet would push the woman back. Finding she intended to trade injury for injury instead, it wrenched again to pull the blade from its neck and disengage — and found that the slight-looking body pressing it down contained strength that surprised even a demon lord.
Crack.
The palm landed. Fine fracture lines spread across the entire skull in an instant, spreading outward like a web.
The force of the blow sent the body spinning sideways through the air. Before it touched the ground, Shen Yi was already moving with the blade — dozens of cuts landing in rapid succession, each one aimed directly at something vital.
Wet sounds of flesh opening ran together. The figure was dark green with its own blood, the shape barely recognizable.
The blade carried concentrated demonic force — every stroke left some behind, tearing savagely at the demon’s resilient body from within.
Xiao Qiangwei channeled qi to slow the spread of the wrist wound, stepped forward to block any retreat, and drove her palms up from below, all the astral force condensed into that point of contact — aimed at breaking every bone it touched.
Both of them had killed demons too many times to count. First collaboration, and the coordination was seamless — no gaps left for the demon to breathe in.
At this desperate juncture, the bald man threw out an arm, and at visible speed it transformed into a vast toad limb nearly ten zhang long — sweeping hard at Shen Yi. Simultaneously both legs changed: slightly shorter than the forelimb but seven or eight zhang of thick, powerful haunches that drove full-force at Xiao Qiangwei below.
Shen Yi planted a foot on the warty toad limb, brought the blade down savage and clean — splitting through the gaps between its fingers and driving straight down until the blade was fully buried in flesh.
The toad lord howled with pain.
The rear legs drove at full power into the woman below.
“…”
Already wounded, facing a foot larger than her entire body — Xiao Qiangwei hammered both palms outward, condensed astral force punching through the limb, leaving a horrifying hole through the flesh.
She was hurled backward. She barely stabilized herself before looking up to find a shape roughly twenty-some zhang tall looming where the human form had been.
“Guurulll—“
A low, resonant toad call rolled through the depression.
The enormous creature crouched against the ground, mouth sealed, eyes fixed ahead. The surface wasn’t smooth — rough as bark, pitted all over with hollow cavities.
Which were now spraying green fluid in a continuous rain of poisoned arrows.
Through the curtain of arrows, a dark figure twisted and moved, and had actually put the blade away — waiting for each opening before driving a fist in.
A toad the height of a mountain range, being knocked off-balance and staggered backward by two fists.
The entire depression shook.
Qingzhou hadn’t produced a body-refinement practitioner comparable to the Condensate Realm in a very long time.
With that in front of her, Xiao Qiangwei felt genuinely at a loss for where to insert herself.
Fighting the demon’s actual body without relying on inner core qi and holding ground against it — this was excessive even by the standards she’d been adjusting to.
She looked down at her wrist. In the moment earlier, she’d chosen not to dodge the poison jet — the opening it left for a crippling strike had been worth it. Then two more full-power strikes after that.
The wrist now had no skin or flesh left. Just green fluid, and the constant effort of channeling most of her qi to contain it.
Xiao Qiangwei’s teeth were locked. The damage she’d been suppressing since the mountain lord fight finally broke through — fresh red appeared at the corner of her mouth.
Shen Yi’s strength had exceeded what she’d modeled. She hadn’t hesitated — had seized the moment with everything she had. But catching and killing a demon of this size within a hundred zhang — the difficulty was simply too high.
What a Demon Suppression General couldn’t accomplish, she and one other person certainly couldn’t.
As expected — the toad lord had spent the curtain of arrows mostly venting its anger. When Shen Yi’s next fist landed on its face, the fracture lines already covering the wide skull deepened considerably, and the mountain-height body arched backward — but the rear haunches had been building force.
It spoke in human words.
“You two are actually serious? This lord is done playing.”
It had been living too comfortably in recent years, apparently — it had forgotten how vicious these court dogs could be. Now that it remembered, it had no interest in staying.
The haunches drove hard. The entire body launched upward — a hundred zhang covered in a single bound. It hit the water of Black Stone Deep with an enormous crash, and a massive wave rolled outward.
“…”
Shen Yi landed and stood, breathing somewhat hard.
Four thousand years of life, and the body showed it. Considerably tougher than the flood dragon at Qingfeng Mountain had been.
He’d never encountered an opponent this difficult before.
“Driving a full-core stage demon into full retreat — that’s something to be proud of anywhere you tell it.”
Xiao Qiangwei stared at the cold, dark water, wiped the blood from her lips, and felt no particular disappointment. They’d tried on a whim. She hadn’t been carrying much hope.
Even swapping herself out for Jiang Chengyun — today’s ending would have been the same.
By the Division’s tents, the assembled Commanders and Deputy Commanders had gone completely silent watching Shen Yi batter the demon lord with open fists. The demon that had inspired genuine fear in all of them had just fled — without even leaving a threatening parting word.
Liu Bin, on the ground, had watched hope vanish from his eyes the moment the toad lord entered the water.
The demon had escaped. He was finished.
And the creature hadn’t even managed to leave a scratch on the young man.
“Hmm?”
In the middle of despair, a thread of confusion crossed his face.
He’d noticed Shen Yi walking to the edge of the deep pool, looking down into the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Xiao Qiangwei stared at the back turned to her, puzzled.
“Thank you for your help.”
Shen Yi gave a small nod.
After the second transformation of the Immortal-Demon Nine Transformations, his strength had grown quickly — but even adding some force from the external pill, against a full-core stage demon — particularly one more powerful than the flood dragon at Qingfeng Mountain — it wasn’t quite settled enough.
With the silver-bell demon-hunter’s help, the toad lord had taken severe damage. That had tilted things somewhat further in his favor.
Something warm moved through him.
The tall figure stepped forward — and without hesitation, walked into the Black Stone Deep pool, into the cold that no one else had been willing to approach.
In an instant, everyone near Black Stone Deep went still.
Xiao Qiangwei’s eyes went wide. The composure that had held even facing the mountain lord shifted quietly now.
From the low slope in the distance, Liu Bin’s unhinged laughter rang out — as if he’d seen the most ridiculous thing in the world, barely able to breathe.
“Does he not know—” he gasped, “—why a venomous toad—” he couldn’t finish the sentence, “—is called the Black Stone Deep demon lord?”
(End of Chapter)