【Year 7 — The divine spirit’s consciousness has been torn down to a single thin remnant. Lady Qinghua begins attempting to merge with it】

【Year 18 — Lady Qinghua has successfully fused with the divine spirit’s consciousness】

“Huh?”

Watching the prompt halt the instant it had appeared, Shen Yi couldn’t help but freeze for a moment.

He sank into inner vision.

Within his qi sea, the divine spirit had already been reduced to an empty shell.

He summoned Lady Qinghua out.

She stood before Shen Yi, hands clenched, a fresh trace of fear in her eyes — having merged with the divine spirit’s consciousness, it seemed she hadn’t come away entirely unaffected.

And in the divine spirit’s own memories, its assessment of the young man before her had been remarkably concise.

Stingy. Terrifying!

“Get in.” Shen Yi gave a small nod.

Lady Qinghua obediently entered his body, then merged into the divine spirit within his qi sea.

The pale, hazy divine spirit’s eyes snapped open.

Shen Yi’s spiritual sense stirred faintly, issuing a command to Qinghua, and the divine spirit drifted lightly free of his body, shrinking down to the size of an ordinary person, white robes fluttering, its face bearing a faint resemblance to his own.

This was, by rights, an ability only a Martial Immortal should have possessed.

After feeling it out carefully, Shen Yi found there was both an upside and a downside to it.

The downside was that there was now an extra step in between — he had to issue an order to Qinghua first, and only then would she take control of the divine spirit. It wasn’t quite as seamless.

The upside, on the other hand—

Shen Yi rose to his feet and looked over to his side.

The divine spirit looked back at him in turn.

A single inner core, now giving rise to both a Mixed Origin cultivator and a Martial Immortal at once — and able to act simultaneously, no less. Going forward, in any fight, that counted as one more killing move in his arsenal.

“Master…”

Lady Qinghua began to bow on reflex, then suddenly realized this divine spirit body was, in fact, her master’s own honored form, and hastily straightened up, mimicking Shen Yi’s posture, her expression settling into something more composed.

Shen Yi looked away. He might have a Martial Immortal’s ability now, but not a Martial Immortal’s depth of foundation.

After all, the inner core had been shattered through the path infant alone, back then.

The divine spirit had only ever absorbed the accumulated faith of a single prefecture — a tenth, at best, of what a true Martial Immortal commanded.

Still, the path itself was now proven workable. All that remained was figuring out how to come by more accumulated faith.

Shen Yi had no intention of bleeding Qingzhou’s reserves dry — You Longtao genuinely needed that faith for his own purposes. And if he remembered right, he himself still held the status of a registered disciple under the War Temple.

That bunch seemed to have plenty of time on their hands, as it happened.

“Alright. Come on out.”

He gave a nod, watching the divine spirit return to his qi sea, and Lady Qinghua drifted back out, somewhat stiffly.

“Setting the divine spirit aside, how much of your own strength do you still have left?”

“In answer, Master — having had her demon soul reshaped across ten thousand years, Qinghua has no demon power of her own left to draw on. But against an ordinary Martial Immortal’s divine spirit, or any other kind of soul, I should pose no great difficulty.”

Lady Qinghua explained softly — which was, in fact, exactly why she’d been able to overcome the divine spirit’s consciousness so quickly.

“Do you know anything about the Mixed Origin realm?” Qinghua had already proven her worth, but Shen Yi still wanted to make sure his banked demon lifespan was being spent as efficiently as possible.

“No. Most demons rarely waste time studying anything a human cultivator uses — factions like Qingqiu, who study and emulate human methods, are very much the exception, not the rule.” Qinghua shook her head.

At that, Shen Yi looked over his banked demon lifespan, just over ten thousand years remaining, and waved Lady Qinghua back into the panel.

He spent another thousand years to condense a single demon treasure crystal.

And began deriving further along the Heaven-Devouring Core-Consuming Art.

【Year 1 — You consume the demon treasure crystal and begin deriving the path beyond Mixed Origin. The demonic resentment remains dormant; only Lady Qinghua is able to offer any insight】

Hm?

Shen Yi looked quietly at the panel, and a realization struck him all at once — once a demon soul had been reshaped, it seemed there’d no longer be any need for a demon treasure crystal just to rouse the lingering resentment.

Still, there was no real need to economize that tightly right now — there was strength in numbers, after all, and pooling everyone’s wits together would surely move faster than leaving Qinghua to puzzle it out alone.

【Year 79 — Every demonic resentment has stirred back to wakefulness, gathering around you, every one lost in thought. Aside from the Howling Moon Demon King and Lady Qinghua, none of them have ever even laid eyes on a Mixed Origin Grandmaster before — they ask you to show off a move or two】

【Year 123 — The little fox offers a suggestion: since you once used an external pill method, why not now try an external infant method as well. Lady Qinghua raps it on the head and informs it that the thing that leaves the body is called a divine spirit】

“Ugh.”

Shen Yi watched in silence as his banked demon lifespan drained away, suddenly realizing that this whole crowd of demons had fallen rather behind his own pace — whether in vision or in experience, every one of them was still stuck at a fairly low level.

He sank into inner vision.

The path infant sat quietly cross-legged within his qi sea.

The demon power radiating from it had grown overwhelming to the very extreme, like a great vat filled right to the brim — one drop more, and it would spill over.

Its face and limbs alike had grown utterly solid and defined; aside from the overall crimson hue, it was nearly indistinguishable from a living person.

“What’s still missing, then?”

Shen Yi studied it carefully for a long while, then suddenly noticed the organs and meridians lying beyond the qi sea itself…

For a divine-spirit cultivator, so-called Spirit-Transformation meant abandoning the mortal body entirely and forging an entirely new golden dharma form. For a Mixed Origin cultivator, the realm above was called Spirit-Transformation too — it ought to carry the same essential meaning.

If the path infant was meant to serve as the new body, then there was a great deal still missing.

The five viscera and six organs. The meridians and great apertures.

【Year 723 — You throw yourself again and again into all-out exertion, burning through everything your path infant has accumulated, hoping this might let you grasp some entirely new path forward. The mass of demonic resentments watch on in awe, submitting to your Grandmaster’s might, unable to stop themselves from clapping and cheering you on】

“…”

He’d used this very trick once before, back when his mortal body had broken through the Threshold realm — burning through everything he’d stored up, until he’d finally worked out the twelve great apertures. Now, trying to push from Mixed Origin to Spirit-Transformation, he was reaching for the same trick again. Old habits, apparently.

Shen Yi shook his head and stopped pouring in more lifespan. This whole crowd of demons had been kicking back, chatting and showing off, burning through his hard-earned lifespan, and after all this time still hadn’t offered up a single useful idea. Best they just sat quietly for now.

Compared to matters concerning the path infant, Lady Qinghua was likely to have far more insight into body-tempering.

When she’d revealed her true form earlier, the bright crimson patterns across her body had been unmistakably the very same divine ability he’d gained during his own eighth transformation.

Shen Yi had never gotten around to forging demon bone or a body of demonic blood with that, precisely because it was a divine ability rather than a technique — there was no way to fast-track it through the panel.

The Blood-Transmuting Demon Bull bloodline burned through tens of thousands of years of lifespan with barely a thought, using this very divine ability to reach the exalted rank of Demon Emperor — and Shen Yi had been in this world for less than a year now. For him, this ability was simply, hopelessly slow.

It would be far better if he could fold this divine ability into an actual technique.

With that thought, Shen Yi went straight into deriving further along the Immortal-Demon Nine Transformations.

The panel’s prompts surfaced once more.

Sure enough, just as he’d guessed — even without a demon treasure crystal, Lady Qinghua was still able to lend her help.

【Year 1 — You describe the Immortal-Demon Nine Transformations to Lady Qinghua in detail, along with the original line of thinking behind its creation. She is somewhat astonished by your inventiveness, then explains in turn how a demon body might be forged from demon blood】

【Year 9 — You turn over privately what common ground the two might share, and a question suddenly strikes you. Among the nine transformations you’ve undergone, the Howling Moon Demon King and the Junior Demon King made for decent contributions, but the very first ones — the budding-core-realm flood dragon and the mountain lord — are now clearly something of a dead weight】

【Since the path infant is able to absorb demon blood, why not try using demon blood to let these nine immortal-demon spirits grow further still】

【Year 107 — Lady Qinghua diligently refines this line of thinking on your behalf, completing a method for feeding demon blood to the immortal-demon spirits】

【Subduing demons to transform oneself — now that your Nine Transformations have reached Perfection, what remains is simple: when one ascends, even the chickens and dogs rise with them】

【Mixed Origin · Nine Demons Transmutation Method: Not Yet Begun】

Trust a demon technique to live up to its reputation — crude and bare-bones as ever.

A hundred years was barely enough for a human cultivator to get past the entry threshold of something like the Twin-Harmony True Intent — and here a pack of demons had gone and cobbled together an entire Mixed Origin technique in that span without batting an eye.

Whether it could actually be cultivated, what might go wrong along the way — none of that was their concern. As far as they were concerned, if it worked in theory, then there was nothing wrong with it at all.

“…”

Shen Yi stared at the panel in silence. Precisely because the cost had come so cheap, he found himself, if anything, all the more suspicious of it.

Within his qi sea, a hundred and fourteen drops of demon blood hung suspended, quiet and still.

(End of Chapter)