No driver was needed at the reins; four magnificent demon-horses paced forward steadily of their own accord.

Within the opulent carriage sat only one person — and one divine spirit.

Shen Yi sat with his eyes closed, feigning sleep.

Compared to his last trip to the capital, he’d left the grim black armor behind this time, dressed instead in nothing but a clean, neatly pressed black robe.

Reporting to the War Temple carried no dress code requirements — that privilege belonged only to a province’s General.

Jiang Yuanhua drifted, insubstantial, in the seat across from him. “My, the General’s in such a hurry, is he? I’d have thought you’d stay on at least another two months.”

By his own reckoning, with Jiang Qiulan’s path infant still damaged, she should have lingered a while longer in Qingzhou City — and he’d assumed these two young people would take the chance to enjoy some hard-won peace and quiet together.

Tsk.

Jiang Yuanhua shook his head. As for whatever quiet feelings Lin Baixi might be nursing… she was still so young, she really ought to put her mind toward cultivation. Matters of the heart were better left to Senior Sister, for now.

“Ugh.”

Shen Yi shifted slightly in his seat. He really, genuinely did not want to share a carriage with this chatterbox.

The man was a divine spirit, plain and simple — he could have just floated through the sky, and instead insisted on aping mortals by riding in a carriage.

“Oh, right — actually, I’m still rather curious. What exactly happened between you and Qiulan, last time the two of you went to the imperial capital?”

Ever since losing his body, Jiang Yuanhua’s shamelessness had only grown thicker — the sort of question that would have infuriated anyone else, and here he was, asking it outright.

“…”

Shen Yi opened his eyes and shot him a silent glance.

Jiang Yuanhua suddenly felt a faint chill run through him, his face creasing in confusion.

It would only make sense for Qiulan to resent him — he’d known something ridiculous had gone on at the Princess of Ji’s estate at the time and never said a word of it. But where on earth was this resentment from Shen Yi coming from?

“Could it be…”

Suddenly recalling something, Jiang Yuanhua’s face lit with sudden understanding — but before he could finish the thought, he found himself shutting his mouth, awkwardly, under the young man’s placid stare.

No wonder they’d come back so quickly, that time.

It seemed the problem hadn’t been on Qiulan’s end at all.

“Looks like I miscalculated.”

Jiang Yuanhua gave a sheepish laugh.

At the time, when he’d seen the group off, he’d merely put in a casual word — genuinely meaning nothing more than to value Shen Yi’s talent and hope the Princess of Ji’s connections might help him get hold of more resources.

He’d simply forgotten that a young General this striking, with a killer’s edge underneath the good looks, was bound to draw far more interest from a young lord of Ji who’d grown up surrounded by women than Jiang Qiulan ever would.

That young lord really did have nerve, daring to overstep even right in front of the Princess herself.

“The Princess of Ji comes from outside Great Qian’s borders, herself — marrying into the Ji household was something of a step down for her, if anything. I’ve heard she has an elder cultivating at Xuanguang Cave, though I couldn’t say which one. Still, you’re a province’s General — there’s no need for you to worry over having offended her.”

“She cursed you, not me.” Shen Yi replied flatly.

If Jiang Yuanhua hadn’t brought it up, he’d have all but forgotten the woman entirely — he’d only ever met her a handful of times, after all.

“Came close to having that curse land, too.”

Jiang Yuanhua let out a casual sigh. If not for Shen Yi — this Mixed Origin Grandmaster who’d dropped out of nowhere — he himself would have been picked clean by the Howling Moon, never mind that the whole of Qingzhou would likely have been buried along with him.

Bringing it up, he finally fell quiet for a moment. “Qingzhou’s simply too small a province, and my own talent was never anything to boast of. If it had been Li Prefecture instead… even Tan Prefecture could have raised a mid-tier Martial Immortal, and taking down the Howling Moon would never have been any trouble at all.”

“So the difference in strength between Martial Immortals comes down to a province’s population?”

Shen Yi suddenly realized — here he’d been going to Lady Qinghua all this while for information about human cultivators, when sitting right across from him was a genuine, bona fide human powerhouse.

It was just that the man had carried on looking so consistently useless that Shen Yi had been unconsciously tuning him out.

“For a General, that’s about right.”

Jiang Yuanhua nodded. Now that Shen Yi was a Mixed Origin Grandmaster, it really was high time he got a handle on some information about divine-spirit cultivators — nurturing a divine spirit wasn’t unique to Great Qian, after all, and it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared in case he ever crossed paths with one elsewhere.

“After all, the only way we gather accumulated faith is through the prefecture we’re sworn to protect. The bigger the province, the stronger its General — though talent plays its part too, of course. Take someone like General Chen, for instance: hand him all of Li Prefecture, and he might still never manage to shatter his own inner core.”

At that, Shen Yi arched an eyebrow.

Why did this master-and-disciple pair both keep reaching for Chen Qiankun as their go-to example? Could the old man not be shown a little more respect?

“Beyond the Generals, the War Temple holds plenty of Martial Immortals of its own. They’re the ones who really hold Great Qian’s reins, controlling the fate of all Nine Provinces… and within the bounds of the imperial capital, every one of them can fight at the strength of an upper-tier Martial Immortal.”

“And even…”

Jiang Yuanhua paused a moment in thought, then said quietly, “The very best among them can even take brief control of a golden dharma form.”

“The twelve that fell?” Shen Yi’s expression stayed unchanged, though a flicker of something passed through his eyes.

“They might not be able to draw out the full strength of a golden dharma form, but they’re still well beyond anything a cultivator below Spirit-Transformation could hope to stand against.” Jiang Yuanhua spoke plainly, laying bare Great Qian’s greatest trump card.

“At least as far as I know, two of them have actually been mobilized before — the Lion-Camel dharma form and the Yaksha dharma form.”

As someone who’d once held the post of Qingzhou’s General himself, a trace of genuine envy crept into his expression as he spoke of it.

What divine-spirit cultivator wouldn’t want to join the War Temple and climb further still?

Unfortunately, the War Temple recruited purely on raw talent, never on existing strength — they only took those who stood a real chance of breaking through to Spirit-Transformation, even an ordinary unawakened person, if the talent was there. Without that chance, even a Threshold-realm Martial Immortal like himself would only ever be turned away at the door.

Without reaching Spirit-Transformation, there was no saving Great Qian.

Only by condensing a golden dharma form could one ever step beyond the Nine Provinces and, with strength beyond imagining, win back face and standing for Great Qian and the War Temple alike. Otherwise, however strong one grew, it amounted to little more than throwing one’s weight around at home.

“Mobilized, huh…”

Shen Yi let his gaze drift away. If he could get his hands on a golden dharma form, wouldn’t that be the equivalent of securing half a Spirit-Transformation cultivator’s worth of strength, ahead of schedule?

He gathered his focus and pressed on. “And Mixed Origin, then? How does the ranking work there?”

“Well, I actually looked into this once before, on Qiulan’s behalf. There’s a Perfected Master at Xuanguang Cave who once cultivated something similar to her ice-killing intent. He later used a method called Condensing the Killing Force, Returning to the Source, along with an unimaginably precious crystal treasure-fruit, to complete the heart of his path infant, and stepped into the middle tier of Mixed Origin.”

“He happened to be a guest in Great Qian at the time, trading with the War Temple’s Ancestor for the item — that’s the only reason any record of it survives at all.”

Jiang Yuanhua spoke carefully, adding none of his own speculation.

He knew exactly how badly something like this could throw Shen Yi off course if he got it wrong — it might even cut off the man’s path entirely.

“Either way, though, there’s no getting around the Thousand Demon Den in all this.”

He didn’t know the specifics, but every Mixed Origin cultivator out there was locked in fierce battle with the Thousand Demon Den. If Great Qian fought to shelter its people and keep the War Temple’s foundations standing, then what reason did the immortal sects have?

A mere handful of dozens of people, each one a genuine powerhouse — surely they could find somewhere to settle down and live in peace, if that was all they wanted.

It seemed unlikely they were truly fighting out of some grand concern for the world at large.

Wutong Mountain, he could believe that of. Xuanguang Cave, not so much.

“Understood.”

Shen Yi felt, once again, like he’d found a new direction.

Wherever the other cultivators were headed — that was bound to be where the answer lay.

But from what he could tell so far, a Mixed Origin Grandmaster was easily cast as cannon fodder in all of this — Spirit-Transformation was where the real fruit got harvested.

He’d need to build up the foundation to actually have a seat at that table, and soon.

The two of them let the conversation lapse, though the carriage never slowed its swift pace.

Day gave way to night, and night to day again.

At last, the magnificent imperial capital came back into view before Shen Yi’s eyes.

(End of Chapter)