Once the room was empty.
Shen Yi shook his head.
Letting his body-tempering cultivation show had actually been part of his plan all along.
After all, he still needed to rely on the War Temple for accumulated faith — but also needed to go out and kill demons to harvest lifespan and demon blood. As a divine-spirit cultivator who could nonetheless go around slaying demon kings in various places, he’d always needed some explanation for that.
He tightened his grip on the Golden Wolf jade token and opened the panel again.
As demon lifespan poured into the Three Origins Immortal Ascension Method, the abundant accumulated faith came surging in once more.
A divine spirit, if it required direct personal control, was honestly of limited use to Shen Yi. But if a demon soul could handle it instead — that was an entirely different matter.
Just as he’d proven this time.
With both himself and Lady Qinghua working in tandem, the demon lifespan they could harvest doubled.
“Should this accumulated faith be enough to break through to the upper tier?”
Shen Yi watched the derivation prompts surface on the panel. Through countless attempts, the divine spirit had clearly found a path that suited it — the white mist flowing through it had grown smoother, more harmonious, and it probably wouldn’t cause any more serious problems going forward.
Two cloud-patterns marked the upper tier.
Yet this technique was called the Three Origins Immortal Ascension Method.
Which meant the upper tier wasn’t the pinnacle.
But whether from the General or from Senior Brother Wu, what he’d heard was that the upper tier was when one could start thinking about condensing a golden body.
Probably owing to the strain on lifespan, he supposed.
Shen Yi figured he’d work through it and see — he had plenty of banked demon lifespan right now, and the War Temple wasn’t short on accumulated faith either.
【Year 2,400 — With sufficient accumulated faith replenishing you, a second cloud-pattern gradually takes shape around your divine spirit’s form. Your body has condensed to near-solid substance, your expression growing ever more remote — born of the mortal world, yet having left it far behind. This is the upper tier of Martial Immortal】
【Three Origins Immortal Ascension Method: Major Mastery】
Within his qi sea, the divine spirit’s presence now clearly overshadowed the path infant’s.
It sat in a pose that evoked an exiled immortal.
The two cloud-patterns coiled behind it like a yin-yang pair of fish.
“Come on out.”
Shen Yi reached out with his spiritual sense to Lady Qinghua.
And yet the room stayed utterly still.
“Hm?”
Shen Yi frowned and sank back into inner vision.
The divine spirit was doing its best to stand up, and failing — like a newborn that hadn’t found its legs yet, both knees buckling, before it sat back down hard.
Every trace of exiled-immortal dignity — gone.
Shen Yi could barely imagine what it would look like if someone saw a divine spirit in this state. Especially given that it was wearing his face.
“Master, please give Qinghua a little more time.”
Lady Qinghua was nearly on the verge of tears, struggling to right herself inside the qi sea.
Just a little harder, and she wouldn’t be replaced!
“…”
Shen Yi watched the divine spirit topple over a dozen-odd times, and satisfied himself that it wasn’t going to manage to stand up.
He let out a faintly pained sigh.
It seemed that ten-thousand-year debt in demon lifespan wasn’t going to be avoided after all.
Well — this trip had been a good harvest. No reason to be so tight-fisted about it.
A thought stirred in his mind.
Ten thousand years of lifespan condensed into a Demon Origin, which he sent to Lady Qinghua’s entry on the panel.
The divine spirit went still.
As time passed, a noticeably more powerful presence began radiating outward from within.
【Demon King (Rare): Lady Qinghua】
The text on the panel had changed.
In the next instant, the divine spirit drifted free of his body, two auspicious clouds filling the room, and a handsome young man stepped out through the clouds with flowing robes and a bearing entirely removed from the mundane world.
Exactly what Shen Yi had imagined for himself.
He gave a satisfied nod.
Lady Qinghua withdrew from the divine spirit and returned to her demon-soul form, her lush, graceful figure kneeling formally before Shen Yi, her voice like a silver bell. “Qinghua is deeply grateful for Master’s gift. Qinghua will not fail Master’s trust.”
“I don’t have high expectations. Just do your job well.”
Shen Yi rose to his feet, thinking over how to use Qinghua to earn back these ten thousand years.
He drew both the divine spirit and Lady Qinghua back inside.
He looked up at the thin, barely-there white mist above.
The Demon Suppression Division’s entire accumulated faith was barely enough to sustain an upper-tier Martial Immortal. That was its limit.
He’d need to go ask Senior Brother Wu whether there were any other openings.
That blue-green robe of his certainly looked like it came with something worthwhile attached.
“Actually, let’s wait a few days.”
Shen Yi stepped out the door, and changed his mind.
The man already considered him a prodigy — but even so, this pace was frankly a bit much.
And since the accumulated faith he’d gathered was all destined for the golden body cultivation anyway, he might as well go to the armory and pick a Golden Body method first, get a feel for it at entry level, and think about more accumulated faith after that.
Besides, the Martial Immortal path was a shortcut that moved fast — but his primary cultivation was still the Mixed Origin path. He should grab some Mixed Origin techniques along the way as well.
With that, Shen Yi turned his steps toward the armory.
The imperial capital’s armory.
Shen Yi pressed his spiritual sense to the Golden Wolf token, the gold-and-jade staircase appeared, and he made his way briskly down.
The same bag-of-bones old man was at the door as ever.
But this time, when he saw Shen Yi, something shifted in his expression, and he called out on his own initiative, “Come to take a look? Go right in.”
The divine spirits drifting through the armory all stopped in their tracks, turning to look on with open curiosity.
“…”
Shen Yi nodded in acknowledgment.
Clearly this group of Martial Immortals had grown so starved of anything interesting that the business in the courtyard had already spread down here in the short time since.
“Martial Immortal method, or body-tempering method?”
One of the Martial Immortals drifted over with a smile, offering a casual joke.
A divine-spirit cultivator practicing body-tempering — it was a first in all of Great Qian.
“Much appreciated — I’d like to take a look at the Golden Body methods.” Shen Yi replied politely.
Before the words had even settled, the other Martial Immortals looked over again.
Old Wu had apparently said the armory was completely open to the young man — but it had been less than an hour, and here he was already unable to wait to come look at the Golden Body methods. That eagerness, that curiosity toward everything and everyone — fitting enough for a young prodigy.
No one said anything to dissuade him. They only smiled and pointed him in the right direction.
There was a living example in that direction.
One look at it would serve better than a thousand words of warning.
Shen Yi followed the direction to a corner of the main hall.
A small loft.
At its entrance stood a divine spirit, merged with a skeleton, both of them frozen in the posture of someone deep in thought.
“Senior, would you mind stepping aside?”
Shen Yi could pass through a divine spirit well enough, but there was no passing through a skeleton — and the two of them happened to be blocking the middle of the doorway.
“Ah… oh…”
The divine spirit looked up in a daze, then turned, scooped up the skeleton, moved it to one side, and merged himself back into it.
After a blank moment, he asked, “You’ve come to look at the Golden Body methods?”
Shen Yi had already stepped into the loft, and glanced sideways. “Mm.”
“Then I’ll keep you… company.”
The divine spirit floated up somewhat blankly, and a self-satisfied smile settled onto his face. “The twenty-odd Golden Body methods in here — I’ve read them all. Committed every one to memory. In all of Great Qian, there is no cultivator more versed in the Golden Body methods than me.”
On the topic of Golden Body methods, his speech had grown noticeably more fluent.
“My surname is… forgotten. You may just call me Senior Brother.”
“Thank you, Senior Brother.”
Shen Yi arched an eyebrow slightly. Clearly, this was someone whose talent had always set a ceiling on him — never able to break through to Spirit-Transformation, until eventually even his physical body had withered away to nothing.
Fortunate, that his own demon lifespan was so plentiful.
Without it, he’d probably have ended up in much the same position.
(End of Chapter 232)