Senior Brother Zhu stirred from his meditation, rose slowly, and three pale cloud-patterns drifted quietly into view around his form.

He looked down at Shen Yi, and in a very soft voice began to intone an abstruse sequence of syllables.

“…”

The turbulent violence in Shen Yi’s chest was flushed away by an inexplicable coolness, and the savagery that had begun to twist his expression settled somewhat.

Senior Brother Zhu drew Deep Abyss from Shen Yi’s waist and placed the hilt in his palm, still wearing that same vacant, unhurried expression. “You… were too… hasty.”

“My thanks, Senior Brother Skeleton.”

Shen Yi let out a long breath. The red mist in his eyes receded quickly.

“Not… not at all.” Senior Brother Zhu shook his head with a stutter.

At that, Shen Yi paused in thought for a moment. “Golden Body method.”

It was as though those three words were some kind of switch — a measure of clarity returned to Senior Brother Zhu’s expression, and his speech became more fluid. “I know a Mind-Clearing Incantation. If something feels wrong, just call out to me — but it’s a minor technique, and relying on it too much will leave you dependent.”

“You should still be working toward understanding the Suppression Word within the Golden Body method yourself.”

“Understood.”

Shen Yi nodded. He hadn’t fully appreciated just how dangerous those wandering wills could be.

An ordinary person’s mental impression meant little to a cultivator.

But when that number swelled into the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people all at once… even he found it difficult to withstand.

With that experience behind him, Shen Yi continued feeding lifespan into the Golden Body method, carefully and deliberately.

Every few hundred years of lifespan poured in, he’d pause for a moment.

【Year 6,300 — You feel your soul packed full of wandering wills, one drop more and your mind would shatter entirely. You must suppress it all — but where to suppress it… and your gaze falls on Lady Qinghua beside you】

Reading the panel’s prompt.

Pale-faced, Shen Yi suddenly had a realization — right, he still had the demon soul.

【Year 6,900 — You entrust all of the wandering wills into Lady Qinghua’s soul, and as you watch her sitting hunched in shared agony beside you, your mood somehow settles considerably】

Shen Yi’s body, which had been leaning against the shelf, went suddenly slack, and he breathed in great heaving gulps.

Senior Brother Zhu looked over curiously, only to find the young man’s eyes utterly clear, with a faint thread of relief in them.

He fell silent. “…”

A moment later, something like alarm slowly spread across his face. “Junior Brother — you’ve made it through already?”

“Halfway, perhaps.”

Shen Yi struggled upright.

Whether he’d truly made it through depended on how much more Lady Qinghua could bear.

She was a demon — the very thing all those wandering wills most despised — and now they’d been forcibly lodged within her soul. It was like being roasted over flame and fried in oil, a living purgatory.

Doomed to endure every manner of suffering this world holds, all in defense of its master’s supreme art.

The words were beginning, faintly, to ring true.

Worth noting that these wandering wills were like inner demons — the more demon lifespan poured in, the more punishing the torment.

Thousands of years of derivation, then all of that emotion crammed into his mind within a few short breaths… it was a miracle he hadn’t gone mad.

He’d held through the first half. What remained depended on Qinghua’s endurance.

“Halfway?”

Senior Brother Zhu didn’t quite follow, but a strange feeling he rarely experienced began welling up in him.

He felt at the features of his own face.

This expression — he seemed to have seen it on many people’s faces before, though it was usually directed at him.

Sh… shocked?

Shen Yi caught the shift in the senior brother’s face, and said nothing to explain it.

The obstacle this senior brother faced was actually quite simple.

Just a case of talent so extraordinary that somewhere along the way, his subconscious had stopped thinking of himself as human.

And that problem was easier to solve than almost any other.

The last person who’d believed her talent was unmatched — Jiang Qiulan — had come within a hair’s breadth of having her own cultivator’s heart shattered under the force of his overwhelming demon lifespan.

Letting this senior brother have a taste of the same experience would probably be like medicine hitting its mark.

The small loft appeared ordinary but was in truth the most tightly guarded space in all of Great Qian.

No one came to interrupt.

More than ten days passed in a blink.

Shen Yi sat in his corner, and the only difference between him and the skeleton beside him was that he still had flesh on his bones.

Both pairs of eyes were equally vacant.

The Demon Suppression Division’s accumulated faith had long since run dry.

He was simply resting.

Eighteen thousand years of demon lifespan — that was the price of reaching entry level in the Arhat Golden Body Method.

Now, at last, he could begin forging an actual golden body.

“…”

Senior Brother Zhu crouched beside him, reciting the Mind-Clearing Incantation, watching with his own eyes as this young man sat in the corner and crossed an abyss that he himself had failed to touch in three thousand nine hundred years.

Something inexplicably sour stirred in his chest.

And yet he couldn’t quite name the feeling.

“Envious?” Shen Yi glanced sideways at him.

“More than that.” Senior Brother Zhu shook his head. Envy — that was roughly what he’d been feeling seven days ago. What he felt now had deepened into something else.

“Then it’s jealousy.” Shen Yi considered for a moment, and offered the word.

The two of them earnestly discussed the taxonomy of emotions, which made for a faintly uncanny scene.

“Yes. I’m jealous of you.” Senior Brother Zhu gave a serious nod.

“That’s about right then.” Shen Yi patted the skeleton on the shoulder, then tottered to his feet and made his way to the other set of shelves.

“Junior Brother is interested in these as well?” Zhu Jue stood up, and even off the topic of Golden Body methods, his speech was perfectly clear.

“Burned myself out on the hard material — just want to rinse my brain out with something simple.”

Shen Yi let his spiritual sense sweep quickly across a dozen-odd jade slips.

“Fair enough.” Zhu Jue nodded in genuine understanding. He’d done the same once, though his lighter reading had been miscellaneous texts rather than anything from the Mixed Origin martial tradition, which he’d always found a bit too blunt for his taste.

“What are you planning to do next, Junior Brother?”

He could sense that this young junior seemed to have some intention of leaving.

“Go find Senior Brother Wu and ask for another opening.”

Shen Yi glanced briefly at the new line of text on the panel, then bowed his hands to the skeleton senior and turned to leave the loft.

“Look!”

The instant the black-robed young man stepped out, more than a dozen divine spirits snapped their attention toward him simultaneously.

A few of the bolder ones were already drifting over.

“Junior Brother Shen — have you settled on a Golden Body method?”

“Thank you — I have.” Shen Yi gave a nod.

At those words, every Martial Immortal present felt their expression shift, and what they hid behind hastily arranged smiles as they looked at one another was an undercurrent of sheer shock.

The young man had more or less just confirmed he’d reached the upper tier of Martial Immortal.

Alarming.

So the rumors had been true — this prodigy really did have an absorbent capacity that defied all reason.

And now he’d chosen a Golden Body method… which meant he’d inevitably be drawing on the accumulated faith of the War Temple’s disciples.

Most people managed their emotions and offered their congratulations, but a few faces betrayed a flicker of something else.

Zhu Jue had already proved, through personal experience, that raw talent didn’t necessarily translate to successfully condensing a golden body.

But he at least hadn’t consumed very much — even if wasted, the loss was limited.

If a creature like this pixiu were to take a turn instead, things would look very different.

It had taken just a short span of time to consume the Demon Suppression Division’s faith and reach the upper tier. How long would it take to consume all of Great Qian’s accumulated faith to attempt a golden body… a year?

If the golden body condensation failed, the consequences were simply too terrible to contemplate.

Inside the War Temple’s main hall, the four blue-robed figures were just finishing up a refinement session.

Wu Dao’an smoothed down his sleeves and let out an involuntary sigh. “Haah.”

“What is it? Has our junior brother gone off to inspect the Nine Provinces again?” The round Temple Custodian Qin chuckled amiably.

“Not this time.”

Wu Dao’an shook his head, looking genuinely relieved. “He’s been cultivating in the armory the whole time… I just feel like he isn’t quite close to us.”

From the first time he’d come to the capital, to now — he’d only seen the man face to face a total of three times.

“Perhaps we’re too old and too ugly.” Wu Dao’an frowned and smoothed his beard.

The other three turned to glare at him in unison, and collectively decided the old man wasn’t worth arguing with.

Just then, a figure in a black robe stepped into the main hall.

He bowed his hands with genuine sincerity. “Shen Yi pays his respects to his senior brothers.”

At the sight, smiles spread across several faces.

Look at old Wu going on about it — the young man was being perfectly courteous, wasn’t he?

(End of Chapter 235)