The Ji royal estate. The front courtyard.
The scene playing out was distinctly unusual.
Setting aside attendants and servants — the courtyard held several dozen figures, each different in age, each impeccably dressed, each individually striking.
All of them were young women.
Even having heard about the Ji estate’s dozens of princesses beforehand, Jiang Chengyun still found the sight unsettling.
Unless the Prince of Ji had some physical limitation, there was simply no way he could have only one son.
Most likely the others had either died or been quietly sent away. The true master of this grand estate was the woman standing in front of them — who looked, on the surface, entirely gentle.
The Princess let her gaze pass briefly across the crowd and cleared her throat.
In the same moment, the princesses parted smoothly to reveal the slight figure standing among them.
A young man with a pale, delicate face, wearing a dark teal silk robe. He looked somewhat unwell.
“Jinjiang — this is the martial arts teacher your mother went all the way to Qingzhou to bring back for you. This is the renowned General Jiang. Won’t you come and pay your respects?”
The Princess seemed slightly tense — but when she saw that neither the servants nor the princesses dared look directly at the dark-robed figure, the tension eased somewhat.
This was the closest she’d been able to find to someone genuinely deserving of the phrase extraordinary presence.
Jiang Qiulan’s features were unadorned and unsupported by any cosmetics or jewelry. She wore only a plain dark robe. She was standing casually in the courtyard, and still somehow drew every gaze in the space without effort.
The delicate young man looked up with some hesitation, then finally took a step forward.
The Princess exhaled quietly.
“Miss Jiang.” The Ji prince Jinjiang came closer and gave a small bow.
“No need for formality.” Jiang Qiulan shook her head.
“The child is just shy — he’s not used to people yet. Once you’re better acquainted, you’ll see.” The Princess produced her smile again.
Not far away, both silver bells at the waists of the two men gave a small tremor and passed a quiet message.
“The more I look at this, the more wrong it feels. This isn’t about asking General Jiang to teach cultivation at all — this is clearly—”
Jiang Chengyun’s brow pressed tight.
“Mm.”
“You see it too?”
“Mm.”
“Then why do you have no reaction at all — General Jiang is Qingzhou’s—”
“I just want to get my Condensate method as quickly as possible.”
Shen Yi’s expression was level. Right now he wanted to know when these people were going to finish talking.
Everything else — he genuinely had no interest in.
The logic was extremely simple: if Jiang Qiulan didn’t want to be here, who in all of Qingzhou could make her? She was already here, which meant she’d made her choice, and other people inserting themselves accomplished nothing.
Just as Shen Yi was growing faintly bored, standing in place with nothing to do —
The Ji prince Jinjiang suddenly tightened his hand and looked in their direction.
Black armor, severe and imposing. The crimson cape shifting slightly. The young man’s expression empty of anything, just quietly looking off into the distance.
“Might I ask, General—”
The prince gave another small bow, then stopped mid-sentence as something came to him.
“I — I am Chen Jinjiang. May I ask the General’s name?”
Before the words finished, the Princess finally remembered Shen Yi existed. The corner of her eye twitched almost imperceptibly. She stepped forward slightly and smiled.
“This is General Shen of Qingzhou. He has business at the War Temple — best not to keep him from it.”
After all this waiting, that was finally the sentence.
Shen Yi clasped his hands without bowing too deeply.
“Shen has urgent matters to attend to. I hope the Princess will forgive the early departure.”
“Official duties come first. General Shen, please.” The Princess nodded with considerable understanding.
Shen Yi turned and walked toward the estate entrance. Jiang Chengyun, worried about General Jiang, kept looking back every other step — then found himself pulled out by one arm.
“…”
Jiang Qiulan watched the two departing figures in silence. The pale hand tucked inside her sleeve tightened very slightly.
Outside the Ji estate.
Jiang Chengyun was almost grinding his teeth.
“The General — how could the General do something like this!”
Qingzhou’s sharpest blade — not used to kill demons, but for a political marriage?
Was the man too old and losing his mind?! Damned old thing!
He glanced up to find Shen Yi already well ahead and hurried to catch up.
“General Shen — you’re going the wrong way!”
Shen Yi had assumed the War Temple would be something like a shrine hall.
But under Jiang Chengyun’s guidance, he was led all the way to the street closest to the imperial palace.
“…”
When the War Temple came into view—
Even someone who had grown up seeing towers of glass and steel in a previous life felt something shift in the chest.
Two pillars of precious timber, each over thirty zhang tall, showing an amber translucence — they supported an enormous hall that looked as though it was pressing upward to pierce the clouds.
The double-eaved hip roof crouched like the spine of some great beast, settled quietly within the imperial city.
Shen Yi wasn’t puzzled by how it had been built — he had personally watched mountain peaks collapse, and in a world with forces like that, architecture at this scale made a kind of sense.
What he genuinely didn’t understand was the practical purpose of making the building quite this tall.
“General Shen — I know what you’re thinking.”
Jiang Chengyun seemed to have once had the same question. He said nothing further and led Shen Yi inside.
Compared to the extravagance of the exterior, the interior was stripped to near-absolute simplicity.
All of it designed so that the eye was pulled, immediately and inevitably, toward the high platform at the far end.
On that platform—
Three on the left, three on the right — six golden forms on each side, each three zhang tall. Unlike the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas of ordinary temples, these were entirely individual in form — some with ferocious yaksha faces, some with animal heads on human bodies. One was unmistakably modeled on the shape of a lion-bear demon lord.
Twelve golden forms in total, surrounding the center.
In the center — a single golden form, six zhang tall. The wrathful arhat.
The bodies were vast and strange, looking blankly down at everything below. The features were indistinct in the dim light, carrying a powerful, pressing weight.
Shen Yi looked up at them, and something faintly unusual moved through him.
Not for any abstract reason — but because with the mountain lord’s divine pupils, he could clearly see a faint shadow residing inside the central six-zhang form.
This thing is alive?
“Don’t keep staring.” Jiang Chengyun lowered his head and offered a quiet word. “These are every Spirit-Transformation stage practitioner from the founding of the Great Qian empire.”
Above Martial Immortal was Spirit-Transformation.
Spirit-Transformation, in brief: using the accumulated force of faith and prayer to forge a golden dharma form, the divine spirit abandoning the physical body and merging into the form, becoming what the stories called a true deity.
From that point: no longer bound by the suffering of a mortal body. As long as the divine spirit endured and the faith continued, they persisted through tens of thousands of years.
“That is the Great Qian empire’s most precious possession.”
“The Golden Arhat Dharma Form.”
Jiang Chengyun glanced quietly again at the central six-zhang figure.
It was the existence of this ancestor that allowed the Great Qian empire to hold its grip on nine provinces.
Everyone who stepped into the War Temple felt it inevitably — a sense of reverence, as if standing before an immortal or deity, suddenly aware of their own smallness.
Shen Yi was no exception, naturally. It would probably take him a while to come back to himself.
“…”
Shen Yi studied the golden dharma forms and felt something working its way through his mind.
If he could get hold of something like this — wouldn’t killing demons be considerably more convenient afterward?
(End of Chapter)