The old ape in the rain cape removed its broad hat. The sparse black fur across its head had thinned with age.

It was small in frame but large in the skull, lips peeling back to reveal two yellowed fangs. “Good bladework. Pity about the blade.”

The younger, taller ape demon went down on one knee and produced a long object wrapped in silk. It unwrapped the cloth with careful hands, revealing an elegant ceremonial saber.

The scabbard was straight and uniformly black — lacquered to a deep shine, threaded through with gold filigree. The ape held it out with both hands in formal presentation.

Yuan Tongtian’s dry, bony fingers closed around the hilt. The blade came free with a dark, oily gleam. It regarded the weapon with something close to tenderness.

Shen Yi had been noticing a pattern.

The stronger the demon, the more faithfully it imitated human behavior.

The Yellow King had demanded a palanquin, but its ambitions had never gone beyond appetite — eating, naming itself after its own appearance, wanting nothing that wasn’t flesh. The ape demons dressed in human clothes, chose refined names for themselves from books, insisted on the youngest and most tender women. The Azure Scale Matriarch had apparently moved on to cosmetics and jewelry, kidnapping the finest craftsmen to make her ornaments.

“This blade is called—” Yuan Tongtian drew a breath, eyes bright with possessive pride, clearly prepared to deliver a proper account of its history and provenance.

Shen Yi collected himself and swung at the kneeling younger ape.

Who kneels before a fight? What is wrong with you.

The Blood-Corruption qi flooded the borrowed blade, and the stroke came down heavy and decisive toward the creature’s neck.

Since the Golden Sun Eight Treasures Mysterious Body had reached Perfection, Shen Yi had noticed his physical strength felt like a deep river — deep, constant, far beyond what it had been.

The two demons hadn’t expected him to move first.

The larger one blinked — a fraction of a second of confusion — then reached up to block, too late.

The blade went through its cervical vertebrae like soft clay.

The head rolled to a stop at Yuan Tongtian’s feet, eyes still open and bewildered.

The old ape stared down at it. Its nostrils flared rapidly. Then it let out a piercing shriek.

“Outrageous! Outrageous! You savage with no manners!“

Even it, before eating, used a damp cloth to clean its hands. It bathed every three days. Burned incense every five. When it came to the serious business of killing someone, one announced oneself, stated one’s reasons, explained both the grievance and the method.

To do it like this — so rough, so graceless, so utterly without elegance—

The shriek gave way to motion. Yuan Tongtian’s small frame launched upward, the black blade slashing out in rapid sequence — steady, vicious, the strokes of something that had genuinely trained. The moment the saber moved, it was clear: this was a complete, Perfection-level Threshold Realm bladework.

The cutting force erupted outward. The thatched shelter exploded.

Even in its fury, the blade’s path was controlled and deeply wrought — clearly developed for those unnaturally long arms, a technique tailored to the body wielding it. And the ceremonial saber was no ordinary weapon.

“No respect — you deserve death!”

“You killed my children and grandchildren — you deserve death!”

“Die!“

Yuan Tongtian hunched forward, howling, pressing forward step by step, the two enormous arms churning, each stroke faster than the last.

Under that storm of attacks, Shen Yi’s face stayed level, his footwork unbroken — though inwardly he was working through an inconvenient realization.

This old ape wasn’t like the others. Someone had taught it. The bladework was constructed specifically around those arms, and the ceremonial saber was clearly something exceptional.

His own saber had cost seven taels and two qian from the armory — minus what the armorer had skimmed.

Against demons of lower caliber he hadn’t noticed the gap. Against a peer at Threshold Perfection with equivalent technique, the difference in weapons was suddenly glaring.

If he kept trying to win without taking damage, the cost would keep climbing.

His eyes went calm. He waited for an opening and cut.

The gap in weapons was wider than he’d estimated.

One full-force exchange, and the standard saber simply snapped — the blade spinning away in pieces.

He’d half-expected it. He let the hilt go without retreating, closing the distance instead, fingers curling into a fist.

Trade a wound for a wound.

Yuan Tongtian read the intent and didn’t flinch — it actually smiled.

It knew better than anyone how sharp that blade was. It had carried it for years.

Trade wounds? You won’t survive to throw the next punch.

The black saber drove hard toward Shen Yi’s shoulder.

No tearing of flesh. No wet sound of a blade finding meat.

Clang.

Both of them stopped.

Yuan Tongtian stared at its own hand. No matter how it pressed, the dark gleaming edge wouldn’t move a fraction further.

“…”

It looked up — and caught something unexpected in Shen Yi’s eyes as well.

A flicker of genuine surprise.

So.

What were you surprised about? What were you dodging earlier? Who exactly were you performing that whole “I’ll take a hit to strike back” act for?!

Before it had finished that thought, five fingers had closed around its face, and with force that had no business being at the Threshold Realm, it was driven straight into the ground.

Yuan Tongtian felt every organ jar loose at once.

That strength didn’t belong to the Threshold. It was the realm it had been reaching toward its entire life.

How had a body-refinement practitioner with the output of a Jade Liquid cultivator managed to set up a sucker punch beforehand?

It didn’t work out the answer before a fist came down and caved in half its eye socket.

Blood flooded its nose and mouth, hot and copper-thick, spilling faster than it could hold back.

The sound of fists in the air was like a death god murmuring close to the ear.

Some distance away.

Zhang Tuhu threw another punch.

He and the Gaunt Monk had trained under the same roof — they knew each other’s patterns too well for either to gain ground quickly. The exchange had ground on without resolution.

Then one punch landed clean on the bridge of the nose.

The Gaunt Monk clapped both hands over his face, too pained to think clearly — blood leaking between his fingers — and stared past Zhang Tuhu at something in the distance.

“Getting old and you’re still pulling that trick — think I’d fall for it? Today I’m finishing this, you disgrace to the sect—”

Zhang Tuhu raised his fist again, then noticed the Gaunt Monk’s fixed stare hadn’t moved.

He set his jaw and looked back.

A chill settled between his shoulder blades.

The twenty-odd soldiers and constables stood in a loose cluster, spears and crossbows hanging slack in their hands.

At the front, Shen Yi was crouched over the old ape, fist rising and falling with steady, expressionless force. The back of his hand was covered in red and white — thick, viscous, dripping steadily.

Each impact made the demon’s legs twitch once.

Until they stopped.

He stood slowly. A long breath left him in a pale cloud. Dark eyes swept back across the road.

The moment that gaze passed over them, constables and soldiers alike buckled — knees hitting the ground in a wave, too spent even to beg.

“How long was that…”

Zhang Tuhu swallowed.

He hadn’t even finished warming up. It was already over?

Two Greater Demons at Threshold Perfection, and they’d gone down without making any noise worth mentioning.

He glanced back at the Gaunt Monk.

The man was already twenty zhang away and moving — scrambling across the ground in a way that bore no resemblance to a trained martial artist, and every resemblance to a rabbit that had spotted a hawk.

(End of Chapter)