Shen Yi spread his hand slightly, and the golden body dissolved back into a pearl, settling into his palm. The divine spirit returned to his qi sea.
Only Lady Qinghua’s demon soul remained where it stood.
The woman’s eyes were faintly red, her red lips bitten together, her gaze clearly somewhat adrift — she could only maintain the most basic of lucidity.
“…”
Shen Yi shook his head with genuine feeling. The sensation of wandering wills forcing their way into one’s mind really was deeply unpleasant.
For the golden body to keep growing stronger, he’d need another demon soul to take on some of the burden.
Fortunately, he’d just acquired two more demon king lingering consciousnesses.
The fox was probably better suited to helping derive techniques — turning it into this sort of lovesick, grievance-soaked mess would be something of a waste.
The white dragon looked stronger. That one it would be.
Shen Yi tucked the golden pearl back into his qi sea, then turned and walked off into the distance.
Beneath a collapsed boulder, he found the young fox demon, its upper body shoved into a crack in the rock, trembling.
He dragged it out without ceremony and broke its skull with a palm strike.
Then opened the panel and tallied the harvest.
【Mixed-Origin-realm Fox Demon slain — total lifespan 16,000 years, 8,200 years remaining — fully absorbed】
【Mixed-Origin-realm White Dragon slain — total lifespan 19,000 years, 2,800 years remaining — fully absorbed】
【Core-Nurturing-realm Fox Demon slain — total lifespan 8,200 years, 5,500 years remaining — fully absorbed】
…
Over sixteen thousand years of demon lifespan collected.
Perhaps because the Song Prefecture trip had yielded so much, Shen Yi found this feeling somewhat meager.
Though to accumulate vast amounts of demon lifespan, the prerequisite was something sufficiently attractive to bring the demons in — and that typically meant human lives as the price. Shen Yi would rather take a few extra steps. It wasn’t as though riding the Red Cloud was tiring.
He piled the three demon corpses together.
Shen Yi opened his mouth and transmuted them all into demon blood.
The young fox had contributed only a single drop. Its elder’s contribution was somewhat better — fifty-six drops.
The white dragon’s flesh and blood rapidly coalesced into a hundred and sixty-two drops of demon blood.
That gave him a slight pause.
Surprisingly strong.
Consider that among the immortal-demon spirits in the Nine Demons Transmutation Method, the strongest so far was the mountain lord, which had consumed over a hundred drops of demon blood.
That didn’t mean the white dragon was merely half again as strong — because the immortal-demon spirits had only their demon blood to offer, while the white dragon’s demon blood represented only its physical body. Its demon core’s cultivation was a separate matter entirely.
He pocketed the demon core.
Three more storage treasures now sat in his hand.
More than tallying up the spoils, he found himself more interested in the path infant — which had now been rendered into jade.
The palm-sized jade figurine looked remarkably lifelike, its five organs all present within, though not true organs — each seemed to be composed of various rare natural materials.
Shen Yi prodded at it with a fingertip, trying to work out the white flower that represented the heart.
The white flower, riddled with cracks, looked as though it had lost all life.
Not a trace of presence remained within it.
“Does the path infant die, so the flower dies with it?”
He tried a few other things, all with the same result. He was mildly disappointed — he’d half been hoping to see if he could extract it and install it in his own path infant.
“Though this does confirm what I suspected.”
For a Mixed Origin cultivator to reach Spirit-Transformation meant using the path infant to replace the original body.
Perfected Master Changqing had clearly already accomplished this.
Even separated from his body, the path infant could survive independently — and yet he’d still only been at the Mixed Origin realm. What was still missing?
Shen Yi turned the thing over and examined it from various angles.
Concluded that it was essentially a human-shaped demon core.
Still useful as a reference point, though — something to guide the road ahead.
He tucked it into his storage treasure.
What Jiang Qiulan had once said about every Mixed Origin cultivator’s path being different might be referring to exactly this.
This man’s path infant was forged from thunder-plasma, and the rare materials that composed it were all clearly associated with lightning and thunder.
If he himself tried to refine that white flower, it would probably electrocute his path infant outright.
Different attributes meant different refining methods, without question.
“Something to think through when I get back.”
Shen Yi called up the Red Cloud and looked out at the sky above.
Given how furious the white dragon had been, Jiang Qiulan had almost certainly gotten away. There was no need to worry excessively over it.
The woman had once single-handedly borne the entire weight of Qingzhou’s hope on her shoulders. She was no naive child in need of someone else’s care.
Breaking through to Mixed Origin was the true beginning of cultivation.
No one left to lean on after that — you simply had to keep walking forward with everything you had.
Shen Yi mounted the Red Cloud and took to the sky. This battle had taught him a great deal.
Setting aside the golden dharma form, his own strength at the Mixed Origin realm was nowhere close to the top — his advantage still lay in his physical body’s ferocity. But when it came to the path infant, his grasp of Mixed Origin techniques was essentially nonexistent, his realm low, his foundation thin.
In the exchange just past, if Perfected Master Changqing hadn’t been so thoroughly out of practice with actual combat, the advantage should by rights have been heavily in his favor.
And yet before the golden dharma form, he’d had no capacity to resist at all.
Turning it around — if he himself came up against a true Spirit-Transformation cultivator, the outcome would likely be far grimmer.
Lizhou, the Implement Sect.
Lin Jingyi and his daughter-in-law led the assembled disciples on the mountaintop, the entire sect at a standstill — even the disciples working the forge had set down their hammers, watching helplessly as the fine iron went to ruin.
A divine spirit stood still in the air above them.
Lizhou’s General, Hou Wanshan, had cultivation at the upper tier of Martial Immortal. In his youth, he’d had the qualifications to join the War Temple itself — but with his heart set on Lizhou, he’d remained here as its guardian for years.
Even meeting a Custodian, he could address them as fellow disciples.
“You don’t know which direction, don’t know who he went to meet, and all you know is ‘Silver Moon Cold Lotus’ — and you don’t even know where that is?”
Hou Wanshan didn’t raise his voice, but the faint weight in his tone was enough to make Lin Jingyi not dare breathe.
“Commander Shen is the Inspector, and…”
Lin Jingyi hesitated for a moment, then tried to offer some defense anyway.
“You could get your son to ride a cloud and come find me — you couldn’t have sent one more person to follow along? Does the Implement Sect not have a second cloud artifact?!” Hou Wanshan’s voice rose sharply.
“I—”
Lin Jingyi opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Technically speaking, this whole situation had been the result of the Inspector making his own decision and going ahead anyway. To actually keep up with them, they’d have needed at least a Core-Nurturing-realm cultivator.
The Implement Sect didn’t exactly have Core-Nurturing cultivators to spare for suicide missions outside Great Qian’s borders.
But clearly, Great Qian had never been in the habit of reasoning with wandering martial sects.
In ordinary times, the Implement Sect had a bit of standing on the War Temple’s account, but when an Inspector’s life and safety came into question, that standing amounted to nothing.
“I’ll go look now. Right now.”
Lin Jingyi drew out a cloud artifact, and climbed onto it with a wilted expression.
He just forged metal for a living. He didn’t have the courage to argue with a General.
If the man couldn’t be found and brought back, all that was left was to leave these old bones out there as well.
“…”
Hou Wanshan shot him an irritated glare. “You at least know the direction, I assume. I’ll come with you.”
Upper-tier Martial Immortal — outside Great Qian’s territory, he’d probably be operating at lower-tier Martial Immortal strength at best.
For a General from somewhere like Qingzhou or Song Prefecture, venturing outside the borders was simply not something they’d dare do.
But Lizhou was different.
As the wealthiest province of all, even if something happened to him, the War Temple would send someone to take over without delay.
“Really, the lot of you—”
Hou Wanshan sighed. Who had gone and invited an Inspector here in the first place?
Whether Great Qian had any Mixed Origin Grandmasters, he — with the surname Hou — knew perfectly well. It was only these wandering martial types who had no idea how things worked inside the War Temple.
That so-called Inspector was just a junior brother there to draw a comfortable sinecure.
A junior brother who was clearly a little too earnest about the job, though.
Genuinely difficult to comment on.
(End of Chapter 245)