The torchlight finally reached the cliff and lit it up.

Hong Lei’s expression changed sharply — but when he made out the cultivation level of the figures up there, something uncertain entered his eyes.

In plain view of everyone.

The thin old man with silver hair across his shoulders stepped forward at an unhurried pace.

No expression on the gaunt face.

He simply stepped off the cliff — trousers rolled at the ankle, two stick-thin legs in cloth shoes dropping straight down — and landed without incident.

“Form up!”

Hong Lei’s pupils tightened. He drew his saber.

Even without Zhao Kanglin directing them, the twenty-some Inner Division golden-eagle Commanders moved smoothly into position. Hands turned, and from the cuffs, black chains emerged like great serpents, carrying a bone-deep chill.

The Outer Division practitioners behind them arranged themselves in their various ways — everyone with their own method. Most notable was the elderly veteran Commander, who had produced, of all things, a pair of crescent-blade daggers.

Against this formation, the Elder of Fury Sword had very poor odds.

But his complete absence of urgency was making Hong Lei quietly uneasy in a way he couldn’t quite name.

Then something heavy dropped from the dark above.

It hit the ground with a crash, took shape — and everyone went still.

Zhao Kanglin’s neck had been wrenched to face backward. His head lolled loose. All four limbs were severed, the arm-bones torn free and driven into his own abdomen like blades. Whatever had been on his face at the end was mostly confusion.

Then a figure in a blue-white robe stepped out slowly.

At the round collar, a flat head covered in scales extended forward — on either side of the skull, protruding vertical pupils. A long jaw opened and closed faintly, showing two rows of sharp teeth.

“Yangchun River — the caiman clan?”

Hong Lei drew a slow breath and recognized the demon by its features.

The bloody stench reached them from twenty paces away.

He looked back at the silver-haired old man.

“…”

“The Demon Suppression Division says we collude with demons. I have been thinking it over.”

The Elder of Fury Sword moved at a steady pace. With each step forward, the fury in his eyes diminished by half — and his qi grew stronger by the same measure.

He held the iron sword at an angle, five full feet of it, the blade scraping sparks from the ground.

“I’ve decided I might as well make it true.”

The voice was rough with age.

The Commanders’ faces had gone blank. The reason the formation was still holding wasn’t composure — it was that they’d already worked out the probable outcome and were simply standing their ground.

Something capable of neutralizing a Deputy Commander in that span of time was at minimum Jade Liquid Perfection. Quite possibly stronger than the elder himself.

“There’s no need for this.” Hong Lei lowered his head slightly, his tone carrying something that was almost tiredness, like he was stating a fact he wished weren’t true. “We were only ordered to hold the mountain roads — to make sure no demons slipped out in the confusion. As long as everyone stayed on the mountain—”

He looked up.

“You’ve colluded with a demon. This time, Qingfeng Mountain is genuinely finished.”

One Demon Suppression General had been enough to put Qingfeng Mountain under this kind of pressure. There was a General like that in every one of Qingzhou’s twelve prefectures. Call in a second one without restraint, and extermination was a single order away.

“I have spent my life killing demons.” The old man’s voice was unhurried. “For name and profit too, yes — taking their beast cores in exchange for rare medicines. But I never doubted myself.”

“And now, at the end, I find myself in bed with the very thing I spent three hundred years hunting. How laughable.”

“The sword has been in my hand for three hundred years — and it has been moved by someone else’s hand.”

He kept walking. The pressure around him climbed toward its peak.

“The Sect Master is a fool who has betrayed us all. With what remains of this old body — I trade it for the lives of those here, and to clear a path for Qingfeng Mountain’s innocent disciples.”

The fury in his eyes burned out entirely, like the last of a wick — yet the flame itself roared.

Still just short. Still not quite the true peak.

The Elder of Fury Sword’s expression grew slightly complicated. He raised the sword and pointed it toward Shen Yi in the crowd.

“You spared my beloved disciple. And I cannot spare you. I ask the Commander’s forgiveness — I need to borrow your head.”

“…”

Shen Yi looked at him. “Is borrowing optional?”

Borrowing silver is one thing. Coming straight for the skull seems like a strong opening move.

By this point he’d pieced together most of it.

The Division wasn’t wrong. The mountain did have demons — and the Division had never actually intended to destroy Qingfeng Mountain, or they’d have sent more than Commanders to hold the roads.

The Qingfeng Mountain disciples weren’t wrong either. They simply didn’t want to die alongside a demon they’d had no part in inviting — and apparently didn’t have the power to do anything about it. From the sound of it, even their cultivation had been suppressed somehow.

Everyone was a mayfly on the water, doing what they could for their own survival.

Shen Yi’s long fingers settled on the hilt and gripped.

“This old man doesn’t have much time. If I can’t take your head — I’ll leave that to it.” A glance toward the caiman demon. “Though you could also try to run. There’s a reasonable chance of making it.”

The elder acknowledged the young man’s ability without disguising it. He was past three hundred years, his body spent — even squeezing the last of his life force out through a secret technique, he had no path to victory against someone who had just crossed into Jade Liquid Perfection with a body saturated in cultivation like a rare medicine.

But by the same logic, that person had no path to victory against a thousand-year-old caiman demon.

Hong Lei looked sideways in surprise.

He’d assumed everyone here was waiting to die and trying to make it look as decent as possible. He hadn’t expected Shen Yi to still have options — and for this old man to be openly conceding inferiority.

In the brief exchange—

The caiman had walked over. The protruding eyes carried a strangely human quality to their expression. “Don’t take him at his word. There’s really not much chance.”

It extended a claw, touched it lightly to its own nostril, and something warm entered its voice. It looked faintly self-conscious.

“You have my master’s scent on you.”

A pause.

“I’ve been trying very hard to hold back.”

The voice got hotter.

“But I can barely stop myself from wanting to chew through your flesh.”

Viscous, transparent saliva descended slowly from the corner of its long jaw.

“Like this—”

The flat head trembled. Teeth ground against each other. The greed in its eyes surged and deepened — the expression of something looking at the finest meal it had ever imagined.

It wanted to crush him close and consume him in small bites, savoring every thread of blood and flesh, making all of it part of itself.

What a find. What an unexpected find.

It had left the Yangchun River because word came that the Sixth Lord had been cornered by the Division, and the clan had sent it to gather information. The Sixth Lord hadn’t returned to the river clan’s lair in a century or two.

It hadn’t expected to be able to rescue him. Just came to look — and found, on an ordinary human practitioner, the scent it had spent its life dreaming of.

It stabilized the slight trembling in its body and looked again.

Such treasure. Such exquisite material.

And if it could be paired with the terror in those eyes at the moment of death — that would be perfection.

“I really do want to eat you. Right now.”

Under the caiman’s grotesque, unhinged expression, the assembled Commanders felt their skin go cold.

All except one.

The saber cleared the scabbard slowly.

Beneath loose, shifting hair, lowered eyes — at an angle no one else could see — had gradually taken on an expression not entirely unlike the caiman’s.

The same heat.

Only more contained.

Shen Yi raised his head. The corner of his mouth moved.

“What a coincidence.”

Caught by those sharp, cold eyes, the caiman went quiet.

The heat in its gaze retreated — replaced by confusion, then astonishment, and finally consuming, furious outrage.

Like watching a plump, tender animal on a dinner plate suddenly raise its head, bare its teeth, and look back with hunger in its eyes.

A hunger that made its own look restrained.

He wants to eat ME?!

(End of Chapter)