Shuiyun Township. The fishing village.

In the churning roar of the Yangchun River, villagers moved through the dark carrying torches.

Firelight and shadow wove across their faces — flickering, unreadable. They looked ahead in silence, the dancing flames reflected in their eyes, carrying something that edged toward fervor.

Young men gripped fishing spears, the pointed ends pressed against the chests of several badly wounded Demon Suppression Commanders lying on the ground.

Liu Xiujie and Little Er lay gasping for air, eyes unfocused, consciousness beginning to slip.

Ma Tao had it worse — his close-range grappling specialty had served him nothing here. Every bone in his body was shattered, blood soaking his long jacket, breath barely detectable.

None of them could work out what possible inducement would lead a demon that had spent centuries building a name and scrubbing away the stain of its nature to suddenly turn violent — to attack Division Commanders outright.

The river deity was different from ordinary demons. It had the genuine reverence of the local people. After all this time, the Division had effectively acknowledged Shuiyun Township as its territory. In exchange, even if the deity wasn’t directly responsible for any incident here, the court could hold it accountable.

That was precisely why Li Muqing had gone straight to the shrine upon arrival — she found the river demon distasteful, but it was nominally something close to an ally.

After this, the deity had nowhere to go but the water, for the rest of its existence. One wrong move and it was finished.

Four hundred years of careful cultivation, thrown away to kill a few visiting Commanders for an offering ceremony?

It makes no sense.

“Ha! Look at you lot now — not so full of yourselves, are you!”

Meng Xian’s breathing was ragged with excitement. He planted his foot on Li Xinhan’s shoulder — the one embroidered with the gold-thread wolf — and ground down.

The three-band Commander at the Jade Liquid Realm had long since lost consciousness under the pain, one arm twisted beyond what the joint allowed, white bone splitting through the skin.

Not long before, he’d been moving people back, circulating qi to hold the river’s surge at bay.

At Meng Xian’s display, the hands of the other villagers trembled slightly on their spears.

They’d been raised on the deity’s protection. But they still held a thread of something like awe toward the court. Disliking Division Commanders wasn’t the same as daring to humiliate them — most of them felt, dimly, that it wasn’t necessary.

And more than that—

They looked up.

Outside the river deity’s shrine, Li Muqing was standing.

She was swaying slightly. The lazy elegance was completely gone from her face, leaving behind something pale and unhealthy. After a long moment she said quietly:

“Hey. Are you close to done? If you’re done, just stop.”

Across from her, the blue-green robed woman had a short sword buried in her stomach.

The river deity looked down at the protruding hilt without expression. A small smile rose to her lips. She reached out, white fingers closing around the grip — and drew it free at a steady, unhurried pace.

A faint wince crossed her face as the blade slid out through writhing tissue. She released it. The short sword hit the ground.

Her voice was very soft. “I’m waiting for him to come back. What are you waiting for?”

Li Muqing thought briefly of the black wind that had torn away earlier.

“I’m outmatched,” she said plainly. “I know.”

The river demon was clearly running on empty — some wound or drain had hollowed out its essence reserves, limiting it to less than half strength. But late-stage Jade Liquid Realm foundations were exactly that — foundations. Drawing blood at all had already been the upper limit of what Li Muqing could do.

“Stop shaking, would you!” Meng Xian slapped the man beside him, snatched his fishing spear, and his face twisted into something ugly and exhilarated.

He threw his head back and screamed: “For the River Goddess — kill this Division dog!”

He charged.

The village master had been standing to one side with a thin, knowing smile, watching the proceedings like someone enjoying theater.

At that, he lost his composure entirely.

You absolute fool — these are Division Commanders and a river demon fighting each other, what do you think a common person can accomplish?!

Even as badly wounded as the Li woman was, she could kill him with her little finger without moving her feet.

He pushed forward with his walking stick.

Too late.

Li Muqing turned and looked back. She watched Meng Xian screaming as he drove the spear forward.

She tilted her head very slightly. Her disheveled hair shifted.

“This is irritating.”

As she said it, that tall, well-formed frame simply — fell over. Like a kite with its string cut.

She’d been running on the last dregs of willpower for some time now. The river demon had been the limiting factor — Li Muqing had run out well before it.

In her narrowing vision, Meng Xian’s ugly face was stretched open with animal excitement, the yelling getting higher and more unhinged, the moment of proving himself before the deity almost arrived.

Thunk.

His expression froze exactly where it was.

Arms still raised with the spear. Mouth still open.

From the back of his throat, a dark blade had emerged.

Blood rose and filled his mouth, and all of it was drawn silently into the blade before it could fall.

“…”

Li Muqing lay on the ground. Through the fading focus of her vision, a familiar shape.

No breath left to speak.

She could only watch the tall figure pull the blade from the base of Meng Xian’s skull in a single motion.

Blood on a sharp-featured face. The dark red jacket moving.

He walked toward her at an even pace — stepped over Meng Xian’s body, and then stepped over her as well.

“…”

The river deity stood with her hands at her sides, staring at Shen Yi.

The composure she’d been wearing stripped away, replaced by something urgent. “Why are you the one who came back? Where is he?”

She looked past him frantically. The torchlit path behind him was empty.

“I prepared the finest medicines for him. Where is he?”

She was still searching when a familiar scent reached her.

Her gaze dropped to Shen Yi. Settled on the place inside his robe where a demon’s core would sit. Her breathing changed.

Her face flooded with fury.

“You dare.“

Shhk.

Shen Yi moved. Erhei came down with everything behind it.

The Devouring Wolf Demon-Slayer at full Perfection, full release.

The blade swept across the dark air like a reaper’s scythe drawn from shadow.

In her fury, the river deity didn’t flinch. Both palms came up — and from nowhere, two streams of crystalline water materialized and coiled around the blade like chains.

The blade that had cut through everything stopped.

The blood-threads running along the steel were washed clean.

Already running deep into her reserves, she held nothing back.

A third stream of water formed in her fingers, lashed into a whip, and drove toward him with savage force — like a serpent launching from the grass, intent on leaving a strip of flesh behind.

Shen Yi released the hilt. Let the blade hang suspended in the water’s grip.

His footwork shifted to the White Ape — his body becoming something harder to track — and five fingers curled into a fist.

He dropped below her reach, inside one foot of the woman in blue-green, eyes sharp and cold.

Her meridians spread themselves across his vision with complete clarity.

Sever. Capture.

The fist — pale as jade — drove into the river deity’s refined face without ceremony.

In the next instant, without demonic energy to maintain the illusion, the layers of fat beneath broke through.

Four hundred years of blood and flesh offerings. Four hundred years of the Division looking the other way. The quiet, comfortable life had taken whatever benevolent deity had once lived in that shrine and grown it, slowly and thoroughly, into something else entirely.

(End of Chapter)