A light wind moved across the mountainside.

Against the smooth stone face, a figure appeared from nowhere.

Yan Xingkong dragged a right leg with no feeling left in it, pressing hard against his own stomach, face still twitching uncontrollably even now. He took two steps and coughed up blood.

He wiped the corner of his mouth. Something shaken had appeared in his eyes.

Back in Tingyang Prefecture, Yan Xingkong had noticed the very young, unfamiliar face among those in pursuit. Probably a new demon-hunter just out getting experience. He’d assumed the Division didn’t consider the matter serious — which was why they’d sent someone like that.

Then the chase had followed him all the way to demon territory. And the young man had still come through.

Yan Xingkong had decided to step out and warn him. This time was nothing like the times before.

He hadn’t expected to show his face and immediately take a knee to the stomach.

The force behind it had nearly made him think he’d run into a Condensate Perfection demon.

“Good. Good.”

He came back to himself through the pain, and instead of anger, something savage had entered his eyes.

He formed a strange seal with both hands, then walked straight into the stone face.

The surface rippled, then stilled. Only a few spots of red on the ground remained to prove anyone had been there at all.

About one incense stick’s worth of time later.

Three figures came up the mountain one after another. Both Daoist priests were frowning. “The qi trace vanished?”

Xiao Qiangwei pressed her lips together, noticed the absence of Shen Yi, then looked down at the bloodstains on the ground.

She walked quickly to them, closed her eyes and felt the qi on her fingertips, then opened her eyes and looked around before settling on the smooth rock face ahead.

She reached out and touched it.

Her pale hand sank straight in.

“A concealment array?” Elder Chunyang’s eyes went wide. The composed senior of the Baiyu Monastery was somewhere much further away right now.

Elder Qingjing’s expression had gone immediately serious. An array capable of fully masking qi — ordinary wild demons couldn’t afford something like that. Only a demon with generations behind it would have this kind of resource.

They’d been chasing Yan Xingkong. How had they ended up here?

He stepped back carefully and offered a warning.

“Senior Xiao — pull back. Arrays like this alert the demon the moment you touch them without the corresponding key—”

Recovering the lost technique mattered. It didn’t matter enough to gamble lives on.

This might be exactly what Yan Xingkong had been engineering — leading them here deliberately, to let the demon do the killing.

Xiao Qiangwei looked at the bloodstains again.

She didn’t think Yan Xingkong was any match for Shen Yi. But knowing what she knew of Shen Yi — someone who had walked into Black Stone Deep without hesitation — she didn’t think a stone wall was going to stop him either.

She stepped forward and walked inside.

“…”

Both old Daoist priests stared after her. They looked at each other with identical expressions of resigned suffering, then clenched their jaws and followed.

They were all full-core stage. The woman was injured on top of it. The Baiyu Monastery existed to subdue demons — they couldn’t very well flinch because their signature technique had been stolen.

A secluded mountain valley. A spring like green jade.

A few wooden buildings stood at the valley floor beside the water.

On the cliff above, Yan Xingkong lay flat, every trace of his presence drawn in to almost nothing. As a thief king, this was the one technique he could always count on.

His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the windows of the wooden buildings below.

Both ears moved almost imperceptibly, drawing the faint sound of conversation up across that distance.

In the largest building, an old man in white robes sat with his eyes closed. The appearance suggested a refined elder of some cultivation, except for the iridescent plumage gleaming along both his cheeks.

Beside him, an old woman poured tea, her own face similarly feathered. Her voice carried a note of sorrow.

“Ying was too willful. If I hadn’t fabricated that I was ill, she wouldn’t have come back at all.”

The old man gave a cold sound. “If she weren’t willful, she never would have followed some martial practitioner around outside in the first place. Sister — we raised her, and has she listened to a single word of ours? A daughter like that, better off without.”

He opened his eyes. “She can refuse to come back herself. That crimson tailfeather — that comes back.”

Their lineage had never mixed bloodlines with outsiders.

A secret method maintained the purity of the bloodline. Each generation produced only two children — one son, one daughter — and this cycle continued, generation after generation.

Only this way could every generation condense both the azure feather and the crimson feather.

Kong Ying had been destined to unite with her brother. Instead she’d escaped from the valley and gone to Qingzhou to marry some martial practitioner. An act of complete subversion — one that threatened to cut off their entire line.

The old man was getting angrier as he spoke. He stood up.

“Frankly I feel worse for my son — forced to share a wife with some common mortal. The humiliation is extraordinary.”

Then the old woman looked toward the outside with sudden attention. “Someone entered the valley?”

Both their gazes went cold simultaneously. A moment later, the old man’s face produced a vicious smile.

“I’d been planning to wait until after the breakthrough to go to Qingzhou and take his head. Unexpectedly — this one has some sense, coming here to die on his own.”

“Jing — watch your sister carefully. I hear that one’s movement arts are remarkable.” The old woman gave a flat reminder.

The door of the adjacent building creaked open.

A young man with a delicate, cold face stepped out, wearing robes patterned with feathers, sleeves rolled back, both arms covered in dried blood.

He turned a brilliant crimson feather between his fingers, the corner of his mouth curling. “Don’t bother.”

Through the open door behind him, a peacock lay on the bed — large, beautiful plumage stripped of its shimmer, long tail feathers trailing on the floor, eyes dull. Dried blood had stained the entire surface of the bed. Dead for some time, by the look of it.

Both old ones came out, glanced that way, and made sounds of mild displeasure without saying much. “Couldn’t you have been cleaner about it.”

“Ying served Yan Xingkong while she lived. Seems fair.” Kong Jing’s gaze was indifferent. He turned the crimson feather between his fingers. “I heard that in Qingzhou she used what belongs to our lineage to save the Division’s people — things that belong to us, given to strangers. Almost laughable.”

“No need for resentment. Father will catch Yan Xingkong for you. You’ll have your satisfaction.”

The old man clasped his hands behind his back and looked with measured calm toward the valley entrance.

Condensate Perfection demon. Outside Qingzhou’s borders, short of a Demon Suppression General personally arriving, there was nothing that would give him cause for concern.

At the same moment.

Xiao Qiangwei and the two priests came through the stone face and finally saw the valley spread out in front of them.

And in the same instant—

All three faces changed together.

The entire mountain had been completely free of demon qi. Inside this place, it rushed over them like a wave.

Major demons. More than one.

Both Daoist priests swallowed, then locked their jaws, and nearly simultaneously formed sword-seals with their fingers.

Up on the cliff, Yan Xingkong looked at the peacock’s remains inside the building. The bloodshot eyes were now terrifyingly calm.

No shock — he’d sensed his wife’s death long before arriving.

No grief — those eyes had been completely consumed by killing intent so dense it had taken on weight, leaving no room for anything else.

Kong Ying had been a demon. The people here were demons. Nobody would come this far across the world for the sake of one dead demon.

The Division. The Baiyu Monastery.

These were every ally Yan Xingkong had been able to bring.

He slowly pushed himself off the ground. His right hand moved across the small cloth pouch at his waist.

In his palm appeared a long bow of brilliant gold.

Extraordinarily heavy. The draw arms formed from patterns of flowing cloud, surrounding a single blazing sun, and even the bowstring radiated soft white light.

(End of Chapter)