An unassuming loft room inside the Division compound.

Deep into the night.

Lights still burning. Occasional laughter from inside.

Behind a low table, Aqian wore an expression of unusual seriousness, brush in hand, leaving line after line in the gilt record book.

Jiang Chengyun stood in silence behind her. He watched his grandmother concentrating, then looked at the handwriting — which looked like earthworms had been rolling through ink — and instinctively looked away.

He remembered she’d had fine, elegant calligraphy in her youth.

Too long following the Howling Moon Demon King around, and she’d grown rusty at everything, down to holding chopsticks.

Dozens of demon-hunters with all their jianghu habits stood in something loosely resembling a queue, too restless to keep still. One woman was cheerfully mocking a colleague.

“Looks like you went on a nature walk. Three demon qi traces, all Jade Liquid level. How did you come back here with your face intact?”

“Mind your own business.”

The man rolled his eyes, picked up his copper bell from the table, and walked toward the loft exit.

He nearly ran into an unfamiliar face.

He stopped, curious. “Brother, new here? Haven’t seen you before.”

The woman who had been doing the mocking waved vigorously — Lin Rou, not seen in some time. “Commander Shen, you’re back too!”

Shen Yi gave a small nod to the man and stepped into the loft.

“Commander?” The man blinked, and then stood in the doorway without moving further. In the same instant, both Aqian and Jiang Chengyun raised their heads.

“Could’ve said something when you got back.” Jiang Chengyun produced something that was almost a smile.

Every demon-hunter in the room stared. Apparently this perpetually unimpressed man didn’t have a permanent expression of disdain after all.

“Just arrived.”

Shen Yi walked to the back of the queue.

Aqian set down the brush to re-dip in the ink, and with this many people watching, dropped the child’s act for once.

“Just come up. They’re all deep in conversation — they won’t mind waiting a little.”

Honestly, she hadn’t expected Shen Yi to show up for this at all. He’d been gone for — by generous count — under two months. He must have been impatient. From what Jiang Chengyun had told her, the young man had killed three tiger demons in Yongan City. There was even a rough-core stage among them. A standard Condensate method would be more than sufficient.

As the words settled, the other demon-hunters parted without being asked, though their expressions showed obvious curiosity.

Queue-jumping was a minor thing — but you had to have something to show for it. That was the only thing they respected.

When Shen Yi reached the low table, Jiang Chengyun prompted: “Take out the bell.”

A silver bell with a faint flowing light was placed on the table.

Under the glinting silver, several demon-hunters held their breath. Only Lin Rou had a small, knowing expression — she’d already been surprised once, and was prepared to let the others have the same experience.

“Though—”

Lin Rou looked at the table. She was curious too — what else had the young man picked up between leaving Yongan City with Xiao Qiangwei and now?

Aqian said nothing. She formed a single-handed seal.

The bell gave a small tremor.

Then rotated a few lazy circles.

“…”

Lin Rou and the others blinked.

It had reacted. Where was the qi?

Jiang Chengyun swept a look around the room.

Under his gaze, everyone swallowed whatever they were about to say and kept it to raised eyebrows and silent faces.

Only then did Jiang Chengyun pull his gaze back.

How long had Shen Yi been a demon-hunter? He’d killed a rough-core stage demon already. Who were these idle people to doubt anything?

He gave a small nod in reassurance. “No matter. You’ve only been with us two months. The qi-drawing method takes time to fully master.”

At those words — the demon-hunters who hadn’t been planning to say anything found their expressions shifting rapidly to something peculiar.

Two months. Qi-drawing method not yet mastered. Silver bell.

Those three facts on one person led to thoughts none of them wanted to voice out loud — thoughts that touched on things uncomfortably close to the founding principles of their entire organization.

“…”

Aqian gave a gentle smile, as if she’d already read the room. No more delay. She formed a different seal, quickly.

Best to let these young ones see what the bell she’d given out was actually worth.

The bell gave a slight tremor.

The next moment — the entire loft turned red.

A concentrated smell of blood filled every nose in the room. Expressions went blank in unison.

Dense demon blood qi tumbled out in a mass, as though there had been too much to sort properly and it had all simply been stuffed in without ceremony.

The gentle smile on Aqian’s small face froze in place.

The brush in her hand gave a slight shake. A few drops of ink fell onto the record page.

Jiang Chengyun’s face was doing something involuntary. He maintained a strained composure, but the speed at which he reached forward to begin separating the blood qi exposed everything.

First: three threads from the aware small demons.

Then: four threads from rough-core stage demons.

Following those: five threads from full-core stage demons.

“…”

Jiang Chengyun had never encountered this situation before. As the tier of the demons went up, the volume of blood qi was somehow increasing. Wasn’t it supposed to work the other way?

He stared at the remaining mass of still-dense blood qi, and his expression gradually matched everyone else in the room.

Four Condensate Perfection demon lords. Four individual threads floating quietly in the air. Each one representing a name that meant something in one part of Qingzhou or another.

One of them he recognized immediately — the mountain lord of Xitai Mountain.

And things were still not finished.

When all the other blood qi had been separated — the last thread, the thickest of all, remained.

The others hadn’t quite processed everything yet. Jiang Chengyun lurched a half-step backward, staring at it fixedly.

“Who is that?!”

Aqian set the brush down and closed her eyes.

A long silence.

The two small hands resting on the table were pressed tighter and tighter together.

Finally she let the name out.

“The White Deer.”

An existence that had been entangled with all twelve Demon Suppression Generals and every gold-bell demon-hunter for centuries.

And now, it drifted quietly in the air, as if a strong enough breath would scatter it.

Aqian had always believed that demon-hunters and the Division were fundamentally different. Where the Division feared to use something, the demon-hunters would. A blade that might cut back — the demon-hunters didn’t care.

But right now, this blade had become something beyond imagining.

Sharp enough that it felt like it might turn and drive through all of their throats in the next instant.

In the dead silence of the loft, only the dark-robed young man still had the same calm expression as when he’d walked in — except now, the crimson blood qi around the table made the silver bell look modest by comparison.

Shen Yi looked down at the table.

“What can I exchange for all this?”

That was all he cared about.

Jiang Chengyun thought back suddenly to the image from Yongan City — the young man walking in from outside the main hall. Two months had passed. The expression was exactly the same.

He stared at the young man, jaw set.

Something stirred in those eyes that he usually kept very controlled.

A thread of fervor.

(End of Chapter)