The Elder of Fury Sword’s sudden stillness gave Hong Lei a moment’s relief.

He stepped back several paces and settled his qi. The hand gripping his saber had gone numb from the sword qi’s vibrations.

Hiss—

In the space of a breath, more than a dozen chains wrapped themselves around the elder’s limbs and abdomen. The golden-eagle Commanders seized the opening with everything they had — a hard-won chance, finally taken — and locked him in place.

The elder still looked entirely undisturbed.

He only bowed his head and looked at the sword in his hand.

And looking at that old companion of three hundred years, something surfaced in his clouded eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Loathing.

The two characters engraved on the blade — Qingfeng — had become a splinter in his chest.

“I should never have entered the sword pool to take you.”

The voice was thin and rough, as if his throat hadn’t touched water in a long time. Heavy with self-contempt.

At the words sword pool, expressions shifted through the assembled Commanders.

That place had nurtured Qingfeng Mountain’s Condensate Realm practitioners for generations — the foundation of their centuries of prominence, the reason they were known throughout Qingzhou. Even people from outside their walls had heard of it.

Hong Lei seemed to piece something together. He looked over with complicated eyes.

The man had colluded with a demon, had nearly gotten all of them killed, was burning through the last of his life — there was no reason to address a dying man.

Still, he opened his mouth.

“The Division’s hard, yes — one day to the next is never certain. But at least this cultivation—”

He stopped.

The elder drove the blade into the earth.

Then raised his palm with complete resolution and brought it down.

Crack.

The five-foot sword snapped in the middle.

Thin silver strands drifted.

That gaunt old face. The clouded eyes already covered over with white.

No life left in them.

Down the slope, a group of disciples with torches in hand had been hurrying toward escape. Their footsteps slowed and stopped. Their faces were bleak.

The elder had told them — when he and the demon had the Division occupied, run fast.

They’d barely come down the cliff path when they saw him end it himself.

They looked toward the distant crimson light still hanging in the air.

The old man was telling them to stop with this.

The young man in black with the saber at his hip — strong enough to fight a demon while suppressing the elder across that distance simultaneously, and still clearly not spent — wouldn’t mind calling down another storm of astral force to grind them all away.

Then the shrieking tore through the gorge.

A shape came bursting from within the unnatural fire, and the sight of it made skin crawl.

Flesh still clinging to a skeleton was closer to the truth than deep wounds. The caiman’s prized armor was nine parts gone. The flat head was missing a section — burned away, apparently. Its eyes held nothing but the one tall figure ahead.

“DIE!!“

Hand over foot it came at a run.

Just a little closer — close enough to wrap around the body, pour every drop of fury into brute force, and tear it apart completely.

Shen Yi breathed steadily. He watched the caiman approach, set his feet apart.

Fingers closed tight. Torn sleeve edges drifted.

A fist drove out — aimed directly at the meridian point that had opened across the caiman’s body.

Bang. The demon stumbled — the struck point went instantly numb.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Fists like a sudden storm. The caiman was driven back with each impact, retreating continuously, until — thunk — five fingers punched through its abdomen.

When the hand came back out, the fingertips were holding a blood-soaked demon core.

The demon’s body collapsed. Its breath stopped. The last traces of corruption-fire still licked at the bones, making a low, sustained hiss.

【Jade Liquid Perfection Caiman Demon slain — Total Lifespan: 1,820 years. Remaining: 763 years. Fully absorbed.】

Shen Yi hadn’t seen a notification like that since the river deity. Something faintly warm moved through him at the sight of it.

Then he looked at his arm without much enthusiasm.

Several gashes — deep enough that bone was faintly visible at the edges.

Not every demon charged in straight lines. That hidden tail strike — even a practitioner at the same cultivation level, caught slightly off guard, would have died right there. Good thing the Heavenly Astral Blood-Corruption existed as an option. Compared to his Threshold Realm self using the same technique, the damage output now was at least ten times what it had been — but that was also probably the ceiling for his Jade Liquid-tier techniques.

The craving for something new was getting harder to ignore. When he got back, he was going to spend some real time looking through what was available.

He brought his gaze back to the group of Commanders walking toward him.

“Brother Shen — you have genuinely shocked me.”

Hong Lei’s expression was caught between several things at once. He dug through his vocabulary for something worthy of the moment and came up empty.

What was there to say.

Even Lin Baixi herself, in person, would probably have done roughly the same. And that young woman was the General’s personal disciple — by any measure, the foremost talent among Qingzhou’s younger generation.

In Hong Lei’s estimation, that standing had just become quietly, slightly precarious.

Because Shen Yi, even now, showed no sign of having run low.

Killing a thousand-year demon. Holding the Elder of Fury Sword at bay with a raised hand. Either event on its own would have been remarkable. Both happening simultaneously—

“I have some wound medicine. Use it first.”

Hong Lei passed it over, face still doing something complicated. He’d expected a situation where everyone was trying to die as well as possible. The only person who had actually taken a wound was the one with the most ability.

A sound came from behind him.

Every golden-eagle Commander dropped to one knee in unison, both fists raised, knuckles to the sky.

No words. A moment held. Then they stood back up together.

Inner Division personnel had family names that meant something in Qingzhou. They were prouder, as a rule, than their Outer Division counterparts. But this assignment under Zhao Kanglin’s leadership had been a systematic humiliation from start to finish.

Hong Lei let out a rueful sound. “These little troublemakers — insufferable when they want to be. But when they’re grateful, they don’t hide it.”

“We’re colleagues. No need to dwell on it.”

Shen Yi applied the ointment to the wounds without particular feeling. The ways of Qingzhou’s established families were visible enough through Li Muqing — genuine when grateful, and genuinely generous, but the family flavor attached to everything made a certain kind of entanglement inevitable if you weren’t careful.

“Old Hong is blunt about things. Need anything in future, just say so.”

Hong Lei nodded and looked toward the group of Qingfeng Mountain disciples in the distance, leading the others over.

The young disciples had their heads down. Their faces were empty.

“Go on back. Am I supposed to personally invite you?”

Hong Lei waved them off, irritable.

The whole situation was a mess. A dozen golden-eagle Commanders dead — killed because Zhao Kanglin had ignored orders and charged Sword-Viewing Gorge. Then Zhao Kanglin himself dead, killed by the demon he’d been colluding with. And the one who should bear responsibility, the Elder of Fury Sword, had gone ahead and burned out his own life.

Which meant the blame would fall on Qingfeng Mountain.

“Save me, sir—”

One of the younger disciples had gone boneless with fear, arms wrapped around Hong Lei’s leg, unwilling to let go.

“You put your own blood essence into the sword pool. You nurtured the sword yourself. You took every bit of the benefit that came with it. And now you want me to save you.”

Hong Lei detached the grip and hauled the young man upright, voice dropping.

“General Chen ordered you all to stay on the mountain for a reason. I’ve worked under him. If he doesn’t value your lives, does he value mine any less?”

“Go back. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

He patted the young man on the back, brow still furrowed.

“…”

(End of Chapter)