The ink-black robe with cloud-pattern trim, cinched with a white jade belt, made an already straight-backed figure look sharper still.

Shen Yi stepped out of the room.

The old woman beamed. “Oh my — much more handsome than Heng-er. Come, sit down.”

Fang Heng moved the table into the courtyard, brought out a few simple side dishes, and only then let his gaze settle briefly on the single cloud-band at Shen Yi’s cuff.

He said nothing. He picked up a ladle and filled three bowls of thick congee.

He helped the old woman to her seat. “It’s only the two of us here, and the food is plain. Help yourself to what there is.”

“Thank you for having me.”

Shen Yi had been eating road rations for two days. He sat without ceremony and worked his way through the meal — a bite of vegetables, a mouthful of congee, steady and unhurried.

The old woman looked more pleased with each passing moment. “You’ve come from Baiyun County? Baixi mentioned you in her letter — she said you’re a good person. Have you found someone yet? Grandmother knows a few—”

Shen Yi inhaled congee and spent a moment recovering.

Fang Heng appeared to have extensive experience with this and continued eating without acknowledgment.

When the bowls were empty, he set down his chopsticks.

“My teacher won’t be back for at least two months. You’ll be staying here until then.”

He went inside and returned with a two-finger-thick volume, which he set on the table.

“My teacher made her name in Qingzhou when she was young. Five techniques were responsible for that reputation.”

“Mastering any one of them is enough to dominate demons at the same cultivation level. She passed one to each of us. These aren’t Demon Suppression Division techniques — passing one on to you doesn’t break any rules.”

“But you’re not formally of this sect. You may learn it. You may not pass it to others.”

Shen Yi had spent enough days talking with Zhang Tuhu that this was no longer new territory. In the Division or the jianghu alike — passing on techniques without permission carried severe penalties for both parties. Minor consequences involved losing hands or feet, or having the meridians destroyed — the technique taken back literally. More severe violations cost lives.

Which put Lin Baixi’s desperate improvised technique names in a new light. The Four Harmonies True Astral Force had genuinely been the only thing she could offer him without crossing a line.

“The technique I received is called Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture. It is among the deepest arts at the Jade Liquid Realm. A striking and palm method.”

“I’ll be on leave for a month. I practice three sessions daily — morning, midday, evening. If you have questions, come ask me.”

Fang Heng rose unhurriedly. “Until you’ve learned it, you don’t leave this courtyard. And don’t go mixing around with Li Xinhan’s crowd either. The cloud-band on your cuff wasn’t put there by connections.”

Shen Yi looked up slightly, his expression giving nothing away.

He’d thought Lin Baixi was complicated and difficult. He was discovering that a trip to Qingzhou had introduced him to Li Xinhan and now Fang Heng — neither of them overbearing exactly, but both carrying a certain quality in their voices, a quiet refusal to be questioned, as if they’d been pressed from the same mold.

The condescension hiding under a composed surface was something he found genuinely irritating.

“…”

The old woman’s face had been tightening progressively throughout this. She picked a twig off the ground and gave Fang Heng’s shin a light swat. “Listen to yourself — frightening people over dinner. Let someone eat in peace. Baixi praised this boy, and here you are talking about him like he’s some schemer. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

Fang Heng lowered his gaze and stood quietly through each tap. “I was out of line.”

When the old woman’s indignation had settled, he walked to a tree about the thickness of a person’s torso. The muscles across his body gave the faintest visible tremor — and then his palm and fist struck the trunk in what looked like a casual sequence.

A tree Shen Yi could have snapped with a hand gave not the slightest shudder under the repeated impacts.

“Everything has meridians. Find them. Sever them.”

Fang Heng drew back his hands and glanced over. “One more thing — did you receive a bottle of medicine at intake?”

Shen Yi took out the small bottle. “This one?”

“Every Commander who joins the Division by the conventional path receives three. Those who come up through the medicinal bath track are a different matter.”

“Swallow them whole and refine the essence internally. They open and expand the major apertures. One every three months — once all three are absorbed, the twelve apertures widen by ninety percent. Absorption and storage of qi, both roughly doubled afterward.”

Fang Heng finished the explanation briefly.

Shen Yi looked at the bottle in his hand and, even after fully processing what had been said, still found it faintly staggering.

Doubling qi refinement efficiency meant one day of cultivation at the Threshold Realm covered what two days had previously. For a practitioner at this level, it was a fundamental change in what their natural talent amounted to.

The second effect was stranger and more significant still.

The total qi that could be stored across the twelve apertures was fixed — Shen Yi had spent enormous amounts of demon lifespan reaching this conclusion — and even across simulations measured in centuries, the only path forward had been slowly condensing that energy into jade liquid through sheer accumulation.

But widen the apertures by ninety percent, and the reserves you could bring to a fight nearly doubled alongside it.

And every incoming Commander received this.

“Is this medicine considered common?”

Fang Heng glanced back. “It originated with Songhe Sect, one of the major Qingzhou sects. Their private formula — they called it the Meridian-Transforming Aperture Pill, and reserved it for a handful of inner disciples. When the Division dismantled Songhe Sect for collusion with demons, the formula came with the territory. Other sects have similar things, but the best of them produce at most fifty percent of the effect.”

He continued, “The Division’s pay is modest. The benefits are not.” A pause. “As long as you survive.”

With that, he went back inside.

He left behind one tree.

Shen Yi looked at it in silence.

Same tree as before. But the vivid green of the leaves, the uprightness of the trunk — all of it had gone still in some way that wasn’t quite the right word for stillness. A look of quiet death had settled over it. Deeply unsettling.

He didn’t fully understand the technique behind it. But a method spoken of in the same breath as the Four Harmonies True Astral Force couldn’t be weak.

He reached out and turned the pages of the volume on the table with apparent idleness.

A moment later, the panel updated.

【Jade Liquid · Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture — Untrained】

“You can’t read a book like that — where are your manners? Did you have enough to eat? Was it all right? If you’ve had enough, take it inside and read it properly.”

The old woman pushed him to his feet and shooed him toward his room.

“There’s no hurry. Plenty of time.”

Shen Yi looked at the small elderly woman with a mild helplessness and something warmer than he’d expected finding its way into his eyes.

He put the book away and bent to help clear the table.

He’d gotten comfortable enough ordering Chen Ji around, and Lin Baixi had largely opted in to the arrangement. But making an old woman with no connection to him do the work on his behalf — he lacked sufficient shamelessness for that.

Besides. He’d been around so-called geniuses frequently lately, and Shen Yi — who in his old life had been most allergic to relatives pestering him about relationships and salaries — was finding, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was still more comfortable with the latter.

Being asked about whether he’d found someone was more bearable than being looked at like a problem to be assessed.

“…”

Inside his room, Fang Heng watched his grandmother’s cheerful demeanor, then looked at Shen Yi, and felt his expression settle into something colder.

First, exploiting the moment when Lin martial-elder-sister was in difficulty to squeeze out two Jade Liquid Realm techniques — and not just any two, but the Four Harmonies True Astral Force and the Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture, among the rarest of the five. Even his fellow disciples, with all their talent, had chosen only one each. This person, at the Threshold Realm, had reached for two.

Then, barely inside the Division for a day, already looking comfortable with Li Xinhan’s crowd of wealthy young Commanders — and already wearing the cloud-band robe before sunset.

And now, performing attentiveness toward an old woman who was here simply because she needed looking after — probably telling himself this was some hidden master worth cultivating, congratulating himself on his own cleverness.

Greedy and obtuse in equal measure.

Wanting to use this opportunity as a launching platform — that was human nature, understandable enough.

But not even bothering to make it look subtle.

If that wasn’t naked opportunism — what would you call it?

(End of Chapter)