Alone in the room.

Shen Yi lay back on the bed and pulled up the panel.

He was still a complete novice when it came to the deeper principles of cultivation — and Lin Baixi had just handed him a pile of new vocabulary to untangle. Qi-Gathering Pills. Condensate Pills. Jade Liquid Realm.

His mind was already running ahead.

After a moment, he took out the beast core. He wanted to test something.

Slightly smaller than a chicken’s egg.

He closed his eyes and placed it in his mouth. A raw, metallic taste spread across his tongue — but threaded through it, the breath of heaven and earth pulled at him like honey pulling at something sweet.

Then he began feeding demon lifespan into the Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation.

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 672 years】

【Year one — you spend seven months purging the impurities from the beast core, drawing only the pure essence. All the while you continue absorbing the breath of heaven and earth. Cultivation advances rapidly.】

【You successfully fill the sixth aperture. Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation: Minor Mastery. But the essence from the beast core continues flowing in — you fill the seventh aperture.】

【From the beast core, you comprehend Blood-Corruption (Incomplete).】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 671 years】

The advancement had barely started and already something electric was moving behind Shen Yi’s eyes.

His instinct had been right.

Having the rare medicine inside his body during a simulation — it affected everything.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the scale.

How long had filling two apertures taken before? Twenty full years.

One beast core equaled twenty years of grueling cultivation.

It also resolved a question that had been sitting in the back of his mind. Human lifespans capped out around a century — even after reaching mortal peak and crossing into the Threshold Realm, the lifespan extension was only around forty years. Demons, meanwhile, lived for centuries. The Yellow King — a demon whose cultivation was lower than his current level — had accumulated five hundred and seventy-odd years of life.

At that rate, a demon could simply outlast any human expert without trying.

Which meant the real substance of cultivation was plunder. Someone who sat quietly extracting from heaven and earth day after day would probably still be at early Threshold Realm when their hair had gone white.

“What’s this Blood-Corruption?”

He looked at the panel. Beneath the current martial arts section, a new line had appeared.

【Blood-Corruption (Incomplete): Formed by absorbing the corrupting influence of demonic beast cores and refining it into one’s own nature. The breath of heaven and earth within your body now carries a corrosive quality.】

Reading that, Shen Yi immediately thought of the Yellow King’s technique.

If his own cultivation hadn’t been substantially higher, the moment the qi in his body ran dry, he’d have ended up like those corpses — dissolving into dark fluid.

At least I’ve patched one gap in my offense.

He settled his thoughts and kept pouring.

【Year twenty-seven — you fill the eighth aperture. Your internal energy has grown so dense, so saturated with your own essence, that friction against the pure breath of heaven and earth begins to slow your progress.】

【Year forty-nine — nine apertures complete. Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation: Major Mastery.】

With reserves this large, he wasn’t going to stop halfway.

【Year seventy-two — the tenth aperture fills. The world around you has grown sharper and clearer.】

【Year one hundred and four — the vessel is full. Your body can accept nothing more. All twelve apertures complete. Thunder-Wind Demon-Subduing True Interpretation: Perfection.】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 568 years】

If cultivating an existing method was a guaranteed process — given enough investment, Perfection was always reachable — then deriving something new was pure chance.

After a moment’s deliberation, Shen Yi set three hundred years aside for other purposes. Everything remaining went in.

What followed was a long series of notifications that were, essentially, identical.

【Year one — even at Perfection, you believe standing still means falling behind. You continue drawing from heaven and earth without pause, without rest…】

【Year ten — you continue drawing…】

【Year twenty — still drawing…】

Line after line scrolled past, each one crowding out the last in an endless repetition.

Shen Yi’s palm grew faintly damp. He was on the verge of stopping when something finally broke the pattern — a line that was unmistakably different from all the ones before it.

【Year one hundred and thirty — perhaps diligence has its own reward. Within the first of your major apertures, a thread of energy suddenly condenses, becoming a drop of jade dew.】

【Year one hundred and fifty — a second drop of jade dew forms.】

【Year two hundred and sixty-eight — nearly half the energy within your first major aperture has converted to jade dew.】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 300 years】

Shen Yi stared at the panel for a moment, expression complicated.

The pieces came together.

Energy condensing into liquid. Combined with what Lin Baixi had said about the Jade Liquid Realm — it wasn’t difficult to guess. This was the transformation that marked the next stage of cultivation. When all the energy within all twelve apertures had converted to jade liquid, that was presumably the threshold.

The problem was that he’d found no real method.

What the simulation had shown was the bluntest possible approach — pure accumulation, year after year, waiting for energy to convert on its own through sheer time and quantity.

How many years of demon lifespan would it take to fill even a single aperture that way?

Not just diminishing returns. This was outright waste.

Shen Yi breathed out, noted the faint difference in texture between the jade dew and the ordinary breath in his apertures — denser, more substantial — and moved on.

The remaining three hundred years had always been intended for other purposes.

The three combat techniques.

Thinking back on the fight with the Yellow King, his most glaring weakness was offense. He settled on the Demon-Subduing Bladework.

【Year one — even by your current standard, this bladework is rudimentary. But you pick it up again anyway, and begin from the beginning, drilling each form with the same patient exactness you had when you first learned it.】

Perhaps what had been depleted so severely had simply needed time to refill. Either way, the news that came next was better than expected.

【Year forty-six — you make your final cut. A deep sense of ease flows through you. The basic forms have fused in your mind, gradually resolving into something entirely new.】

【Year fifty — the complete bladework has taken shape in your understanding. But somehow it doesn’t feel finished. You look at the mist curling around your fingertips and sit with the question.】

【Year fifty-five — you comprehend: Threshold Realm · Blood-Corruption Bladework.】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 245 years】

【Threshold Realm · Blood-Corruption Bladework — Novice】

With reserves still substantial, he poured in more — and the bladework’s stage began climbing steadily from Novice toward Perfection.

Dawn.

At the Baiyun County yamen, the duty room was packed.

Chen Ji stood at the center of it. At his feet: thirteen Dog Demon heads.

In the seat of authority, a white-haired old man sat with his eyes closed, dressed in a plain blue-green official robe. His paper-thin hands gripped the chair’s arms. The tendons on the backs of those hands stood out like knotted rope.

“Clerk Liu — dealing with demons falls within the scope of our duties…” Song Changfeng offered this gently.

The old man’s eyes opened. His gaze crossed the demon heads on the floor, then moved away quickly — as if a second look was more than he could manage.

He raised one hand. “Old age has left me without that kind of ability. You have it. He — Constable Shen — has it.” A pause. “If that’s the case, then let him manage the demon situation as well.”

Clerk Liu rose from the chair.

Then he drove his foot into the table in front of him, sending it crashing over.

“Let one man manage all of it!”

(End of Chapter)