【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 8,164 years】
The panel notification surfaced.
Shen Yi had been about to open his eyes and withdraw from his inner vision — and that was when he saw the expression on the path embryo’s face.
He paused for a moment, not particularly surprised, then marshaled his suppressive force and gave it two solid slaps across the face. What exactly was it smiling about.
Back when he was preparing to leave Tingyang Prefecture, Shen Yi had already come to understand how central innate talent was to cultivation.
Condensate realm or Core-Nurturing. Path infant or divine spirit.
In practice, they all amounted to the same thing.
You nurtured, using the qi of heaven and earth, a vessel capable of holding your own divine sense.
But the qi of heaven and earth was a deeply numinous thing.
The vessel it formed had a strong tendency to develop a consciousness of its own.
And for a Core-Nurturing cultivator seeking to break through to Mixed Origin, the task was to fight that consciousness for control of the vessel.
This was not something that could be compensated for by simply spending more time.
Because the longer the lifespan consumed, the more mature the consciousness within the path embryo would become — until, toward the end, it was fully capable of turning against its host.
A divine spirit formed from accumulated faith, or a path infant nurtured by ordinary qi, might have a considerably gentler temperament and be easier to subdue.
But feeding it on fierce demon qi as he had done — combined with the Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art’s innate greed, and a cultivation base far richer than anything at the equivalent stage — meant this path embryo would be more savage than most.
In other words: a person of already middling talent was now facing a difficulty that far exceeded anything a normal Core-Nurturing cultivator would encounter.
“…”
Shen Yi slowly chewed and swallowed the flood dragon’s inner core, now almost entirely spent.
【Year 1 — you swallow the flood dragon’s inner core, refine away the dross, and your Flood Dragon’s Power talent improves.】
【Condensate · Flood Dragon’s Power (Rare)】
Six flood dragon demon cores consumed in total, and at some point the bloodline had broken through a barrier.
The sacrifice of the flood dragon clan — its young and its old alike — had finally produced something.
Shen Yi felt the blood inside him growing hotter, a stifled pressure building in his chest, and an inexplicable urge to throw a few punches just to let it out.
He clenched his hand instinctively, steadying himself.
Bear in mind: after completing the seventh transformation, his physical body had already reached a level that was frankly terrifying. And yet this flood dragon bloodline ability was producing an improvement he could feel with unmistakable clarity.
That was no small gain.
As it turned out, thrift really was a virtue.
Once he had settled himself, Shen Yi channeled demonic lifespan into the core again.
Having absorbed the old flood dragon’s cultivation, the path embryo was fully formed. He was one step away from condensing a true path infant — but before that step, every preparation had to be made.
He hadn’t put in this much work to end up sewing a wedding dress for someone else.
The Solar-Fusion Furnace’s dark-red meridian lines all began to glow faintly as its heavy suppressive force converged rapidly on the Heaven-Devouring inner core.
【Year 1 — you look at the path embryo, which is feigning sleep, and begin to work your divine sense into it. But the moment you enter this body condensed from demon qi, you feel that something is wrong. It has been growing for thousands of years — nothing like the newly-born thing it once was. A creeping unease begins to stir in your heart.】
Don’t panic. It can’t actually fight back.
Shen Yi quietly encouraged himself.
Just keep pressing forward. There’s more than enough demonic lifespan.
As if it had heard him, the words in the panel notifications began to grow vicious.
Divine sense and the path embryo’s consciousness threw themselves at each other in a fight to the death.
Shen Yi had watched this play out many times before. Every breakthrough of the Immortal-Demon Nine Transformations had sparked something similar between the demon spirits — except that now he was the one down in the mud fighting.
【Year 307 — you are defeated again. The intense spiritual punishment makes you genuinely want to rest. Though the path embryo’s consciousness is held under firm suppression, it remains something you cannot yet consume. Your divine sense has nevertheless grown stronger.】
Shen Yi closed his eyes. Unexpectedly, his mind felt clear and refreshed.
The whole world seemed somehow more receptive.
He understood now.
The process of wrestling with the path embryo for control was itself a form of cultivation — not of the body, but of the spirit and soul.
The stronger the opponent, the greater the gain.
Thinking of it that way, he wasn’t really losing much.
【Year 732 — like a weary and solitary wolf, you stare quietly at the path embryo’s consciousness — nothing more than a slab of meat that cannot move. You charge it again, you have lost count of how many times now.】
Erasing the blue-faced lion’s consciousness with death-essence had taken just over eight hundred years.
A similar span of time here, and the fight had barely begun.
Shen Yi’s sense of himself had become profoundly strange.
It felt as though an invisible hand had wrenched his skull apart and forced its way inside — cramming in exhaustion, pain, despair — all of it, without asking.
Yet whenever he was on the verge of breaking, he would feel his divine sense grow in that same instant, like a weakling slowly, stubbornly becoming strong.
Until the whole of Shen Yi had gone numb.
And then, at last, another notification surfaced.
【Year 1,790 — you look at the shredded remnants of the path embryo’s consciousness. The last remaining thread trembles and pleads with you. You feel no particular elation. You simply stand beside it, watching its face in silence. Held under your gaze, it finally understands who is the master of this body.】
【Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art: Major Mastery】
【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 6,373 years】
The notification that should have appeared when the path embryo first condensed arrived only now.
Shen Yi sat in silence on the edge of the bed. He did not know how much time had passed before his eyes gradually cleared.
Inside his qi-sea inner core, the path embryo lay enveloped in crimson blood-threads — truly asleep this time.
Now that the consciousness was dealt with, all it needed was a few more demon cores to give it the strength to sever those threads, and he would formally break through to the path infant stage.
Which would also mean standing on the same cultivation level as Jiang Qiulan.
Add in the Immortal-Demon Nine Transformations and the rest of his techniques.
If she could even get a single counter-strike off, Shen Yi hadn’t been hitting hard enough.
“…”
He looked toward the wooden door, something anticipatory stirring in his eyes.
He had been fighting demons all this time. He had never tested himself against a true martial cultivator at full strength.
After all this training, he finally felt he had a decent chance.
But the thought passed quickly, and he looked away.
Better to wait until after the breakthrough.
Once the post-breakthrough excitement faded, Shen Yi lay quietly on the bed, using red light to massage his body, easing the tension that had been coiled in his mind.
As things stood, the only enemies who could genuinely threaten him and had cause to want him dead were the Howling Moon Demon King — and, it seemed, one fox from Qingqiu.
He had been clean about it at the time.
But there was no guarantee they had nothing — a bloodline connection, a spiritual artifact — capable of passing messages.
Better to deal with all of it quickly and be done.
Being on someone’s mind day and night made him feel vaguely uncomfortable.
“Demon cores…”
(End of Chapter)