The rabbit demon had understood what he meant.

She let her gaze drift toward the two women at the table with an expression of complete ease, then moved to stand as well.

Something crossed her face.

Because she had clearly made the motion to rise — and hadn’t actually risen.

The reason was a hand that had appeared on her pale, smooth shoulder — resting there casually, but pressing her into the seat with unmistakable force.

She looked up. A sharp-featured young man. Clear, bright eyes beneath the dark hair.

This young man, who had walked into the teahouse without urgency, hadn’t looked at the gold bell on the table. Hadn’t looked at the woman beside him.

As though none of it particularly concerned him.

He was watching the rabbit demon’s pretty face with quiet attention, as if only she occupied his field of vision.

“What are you—”

The rabbit demon’s heartbeat lurched. Even in the years of greatest closeness with her husband, she had never experienced a gaze like this — as if, in all the world, she was the most important thing to him.

More confusing was the very well-hidden happiness buried in those dark pupils, flickering like a flame, as if it wanted to consume her entirely and greedily.

Under that gaze, a chill shot from her spine straight to the top of her head. Her whole body went rigid.

“…”

Shen Yi felt a quiet internal relief.

That was close. Almost didn’t make it.

This demon core was far too appealing. He’d nearly been beaten to it.

The slightly unusual scene in the teahouse didn’t last long.

The next moment—

Shen Yi’s fist came around and drove into the rabbit demon’s pretty face with the force of a white jade ram.

No qi fluctuation at all. Pure physical strength.

The skull fractured. The entire face caved inward in an instant, the smooth pale skin torn completely out of shape under that driving fist.

“I—”

The rabbit demon was a core-nurturing demon lord — her body was hardened beyond most things.

And yet she went blank for a moment, the entire mind occupied by searing pain.

“…”

You Longtao hadn’t expected it to start this quickly. He’d still been planning to ask about the gold bell.

But he was a Demon Suppression General. His response came in the same breath.

The instant Shen Yi moved, he closed his eyes and reached for the divine spirit’s power.

At that moment—

Shen Yi seemed to sense something. He grabbed the rabbit demon by the hair, swung without any hesitation, and sent the shapely figure crashing through the teahouse roof. She flew upward like a broken sack.

He became wind out through the teahouse.

His hand formed a sword-seal casually.

The path seed in the Heaven-Devouring inner core erupted into savage ferocity. Vast demonic force poured from every major aperture, staining the sky a pale red.

A crimson sword-intent roughly ten zhang across condensed rapidly.

Dragon-cry and tiger-roar rolled through Yongan City without stopping, as though a dragon had risen from some abyss and a ferocious tiger was pacing through deep forest.

The enormous sword-intent projection erupted outward.

Dragon and tiger wound around the blade in a streaming arc of light, and drove straight at the fragile figure in the air.

The overwhelming demonic force swallowed the woman. Two ferocious beast mouths — like they intended to grind her to nothing.

Shen Yi hung in the sky, dark robes moving, looking down at the demon falling below with a flat expression.

He stepped forward in midair. Appeared behind the rabbit demon.

With the sixth transformation behind him, six supreme demons inside roared simultaneously — the sound only in his mind, but the formless pressure was enough to make the whole of Yongan City feel like something had fixed its attention on it. The atmosphere turned oppressive and silent.

Cyan light rose across his five fingers.

He watched the rabbit demon falling toward him. When she reached mid-air — the cyan light rippled — and his palm drove into her again.

Under the combined force and the tearing cyan light, the demon’s body came apart. Tendons snapped. Bones broke.

Scalding demon blood bloomed in the air like vivid roses.

“Still alive?”

His voice at her ear. The rabbit demon had gone to a kind of delirium from the pain — and then his hand closed around her throat and kept tightening.

That slightly lean frame concealed a force that even a demon found frightening.

She thrashed desperately.

Wanted to threaten. Wanted to intimidate. And there was one thought she couldn’t push away — a purely instinctive urge to beg.

But the young man was simply, silently, trying to break her neck.

He’d asked a question and hadn’t left so much as a breath of time to answer it.

Don’t ask if you don’t want to know—

The rabbit demon screamed internally.

Then — the grip at her throat seemed to ease slightly.

She cried out on instinct. “He ran — the gold bell was my illusion — he escaped!”

The words weren’t finished when she felt something hollow open in her abdomen, as though something were missing. The motion had been practiced, the cyan light at his fingertips so precise it was almost painless.

After that, the young man pulled back his attention completely, not even glancing at her again. Every trace of the earlier focus was gone.

Shen Yi placed the demon core into the bell, disposed of the demon, and collected the blood qi.

【Core-Nurturing Red-Maned White Jade Rabbit Demon slain — Total Lifespan: 8,100 years. Remaining: 2,900 years. Absorbed.】

Tch. Less than the White Deer.

Shen Yi felt mild disappointment. He’d assumed a core-nurturing demon lord bold enough to enter Qingzhou would have some depth to it.

He wondered who had given her the confidence.

“…”

You Longtao walked out of the teahouse in silence.

When Shen Yi had thrown the demon away, he’d understood the young man didn’t want him involved.

He’d been puzzled, but held back.

He simply hadn’t expected the tea to still be warm.

And the Howling Moon Demon King to be a widower.

In a handful of exchanges, Shen Yi had shown a True Intent technique that Qingzhou had nothing to match, and a body-refinement foundation that defied comprehension.

Against that backdrop, even the core-nurturing cultivation and the movement arts he’d already heard about somehow felt like the easy parts to accept.

In Yongan City, almost every person had retreated inside. Under the savage demonic force that felt as though it intended to slaughter the whole city, even the Deng family’s senior elder — the highest cultivation in the city — could only stand at a very great distance and look on with unease.

Then they looked more carefully at the dark-robed figure in the sky.

Growing more familiar the longer they looked.

The jianghu practitioners in the street didn’t dare look at all.

Which made the group of demon-hunters still standing openly on the street look conspicuous.

Shen Yi put away the Unfettered Wind-Riding Art and landed beside the group.

After what they’d just watched — these demon-hunters who made their living at a blade’s edge found themselves with an inexplicable unease. He’d been killing a demon. And yet something about the whole process felt distinctly off—

“General Shen — what brings you here?”

You Longtao settled his mind — or rather, there wasn’t much to settle. He was still largely confused.

Shen Yi should have been in the capital. Why was he suddenly in Tingyang Prefecture, and without the black armor?

“I happened to be passing through. I picked up the message General You left.” A small nod.

Telling the man he’d taken his qi trace and traveled through the night at full power from Qingzhou city would, he felt, sound odd.

(End of Chapter)