Jiao Feng let out a long, slow exhale, making no effort to hide the disdain in its eyes.

The extended chase had reopened the crusted wounds covering its body, the dark scabs cracking along the edges.

Young features creasing slightly, something passed through its expression — a flicker of relish.

The tearing sensation moved through it like pleasure, sending a fine tremor across the whole frame.

It opened its mouth without thinking, and a long, piercing sound tore from its throat. “—Ahhhng!“

In that strange cry’s wake, the entire low forest went silent. Every bird, every creature — all of them as if their courage had simply ceased to exist.

It looked out past the treeline, wanting nothing more than to get back to the village.

Lithe and unhurried, it moved through the trees — and almost as an afterthought, the outstretched claw reached for the black-robed Commander’s head, the motion as casual as plucking a piece of fruit from a branch.

Against the demon’s various preoccupations:

Shen Yi’s grip tightened on Erhei. His eyes were still water. Every thread of his attention was on the jagged claw coming toward him.

Scaled. Surging with qi. A strike from a body that rendered weapons irrelevant.

The Yellow King had been a dog. The apes, apes. Even the Azure Scale Matriarch was a serpent — every demon he’d encountered had been a recognizable creature pushed to supernatural extremes. But the thing in front of him — that single cry, that horn, the quality of wrongness that had nothing to do with cultivation—

This was something that didn’t need to practice to be legendary.

Shen Yi’s grip tightened further. By any reasonable expectation, those clear eyes should have held tension. Instead, alongside the hammering of his heart, something else surfaced — a feeling that was inexplicably, unreasonably close to excitement.

Qi poured through him and into the blade, merging it with the dark.

Devouring Wolf Demon-Slayer.

The blade descended in a straight, quiet line — slowed for an instant at the scales, then passed through.

Jiao Feng didn’t register pain. Only puzzlement — why wasn’t there the familiar, satisfying sensation of flesh splitting?

It looked sideways.

Half a palm had fallen. No spray of blood — only the dark blade, which had somehow acquired a few threads of crimson without announcing the moment it did so.

Shen Yi pressed the advantage without pause.

Before the disbelief had fully reached Jiao Feng’s face, the dark blade drove into its body.

Thunk.

The saber was just metal. And yet it gave off something like hunger. Threads of blood were drawn out and wound across the steel, turning it red.

“Hss—“

Jiao Feng seized the young man’s wrist. Under those talons, the Golden Sun Eight Treasures Mysterious Body’s protection flickered and gave way — pale skin splitting under the sharp points with a flash of dark light.

It wrenched, trying to pull the blade free.

Shen Yi apparently couldn’t feel it. He drove the blade three parts deeper.

Even the Mysterious Body’s reinforcement couldn’t let a Threshold Realm practitioner match a flood dragon’s physical strength — it simply wasn’t that kind of gap to close. But as the crimson qi from the blade seeped through the wound into his body, he found himself flooded with energy beyond what he’d had, and the wound at his wrist was knitting shut in front of his eyes.

“You’re eating me.”

Jiao Feng’s voice went rough. The wildness behind its eyes — more intense now than when its palm had been severed.

“You dare eat me?”

A sound that might have been a laugh, as if the idea was too absurd for any other response.

Then: fury.

The wounds covering its body split completely open. It released Shen Yi, reached up, and tore at its own flesh.

Rip.

In an instant, something ten zhang long uncoiled into the sky.

Body spiraling through the air above the trees. A nightmarish head. The single horn blazing red.

The dark blade still jutting from its side looked, from up here, trivially small.

The flood dragon screamed downward, vertical pupils fixed on Shen Yi, not even bothering to shake loose the embedded blade — out of a living body’s control, the thing had gone back to looking like ordinary lacquered metal.

“RRAAAAHHH—“

Another roar. Wind snapped the saplings. Dead leaves whirled upward. The enormous body rolled forward and bore down—

Against that scale difference, a practitioner without a blade had ceased to be a threat.

And Shen Yi, standing still with his hands at his sides, seemed to confirm it.

Until he raised his eyes.

Something in the approaching air made the flood dragon’s scales stand. It twisted instinctively to look behind—

Countless streams of force had gathered in the air at its back, assembling into a curtain of astral blades. In the moonlight they glowed with a dull red — corrupted, malevolent, the killing intent in them every bit as savage as the dragon’s own.

What manner of deviant cultivation is this?

Shen Yi’s face had gone white. He exhaled once, long and slow.

The sky broke open.

The astral force poured down like a tide and crashed across the flood dragon’s body.

It had nowhere to go — could only curl inward, hard scales toward the outside, trying to shield the softer flesh.

Bang. Bang.

Invisible force hammered into the coiled form like a blacksmith working iron, the deep resonance of it ringing through the valley, driving the dragon down into the forest below.

When the force finally passed, something remained — a faint red luminescence, clinging to its scales like embers. No amount of thrashing against the ground could dislodge it. Hissing corrosion spread steadily outward. Black scales dissolved from the outside in, exposing the flesh beneath.

“AAAAHHH—!!“

The flood dragon’s scream threw the mountain into chaos.

When the red finally burned itself out, the dragon lifted its head in the wreckage. Its body was a catastrophe. The pleasure it had taken in its own pain was gone — replaced by the pure, hollow relief of something that had almost not survived.

It looked toward Shen Yi, took in the ashen face—

And grinned. “Good. Good. My turn now.”

The words weren’t finished before it noticed Shen Yi had closed his eyes.

That posture — exhausted, defenseless, no fight left.

But something in the dragon’s chest made a small, involuntary sound of unease.

Then the sky filled with astral blades again.

Exactly the same as before.

Then a second wave. A third.

Until the heavens were entirely obscured — a vast expanse of malevolent crimson hanging over everything, the suggestion of mockery woven through the glow.

The flood dragon stared up at it from the ground.

Then it threw open its jaws, bared every fang, and let out a sound that was sharp and desperate in equal measure.

“Fake! All fake! You can’t fool me!“

Shen Yi brought his palm down.

Innumerable waves of Heavenly Astral Blood-Corruption crashed over the small flood dragon and swallowed it completely.

Forty full years of demon lifespan.

Even he felt the sting of that.

Then the panel surfaced.

【Flood Dragon Demon slain — early Jade Liquid Realm. Total Lifespan: 1,427 years. Remaining: 1,230 years. Absorbed.】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 1,435 years · Condensable】

Condensable.

Shen Yi walked through the wreckage at an unhurried pace.

The remaining fragments were still drifting with red light, half of that dissolving away in the span of a few breaths.

He crouched and picked up the flood dragon’s core — luminous, substantial — and placed it with the fox demon’s beast core.

This wasn’t the moment to inventory his gains.

He turned, moved through the forest, picked up the two unconscious figures on the way, and headed back toward the fishing village.

(End of Chapter)