In a fight to the death, the worst thing to lose is momentum.

Shen Yi’s unbroken, relentless pace gave the demon no way to locate his limit.

And the careful distance he maintained was, from the demon’s perspective, a chasm that seemed almost crossable yet never was.

Chen Qiankun’s wounds had already turned the demon into something like a porcelain piece on the edge of shattering.

Now, under the continuous battering of astral force—

This three-thousand-year-old Condensate Realm demon had completely lost the ability to fight back. Fear had finally crept in through a gap it could no longer hold shut.

Not only the fear of Chen Qiankun catching up — most of it, inexplicably, was coming from the young man in the distance.

This cursed Commander wanted to reduce it to rubble.

“Aoooh—“

Chen Qiankun stopped mattering. The demon let out a single rising cry and began to shift toward its true form, to take to the air.

Even death — it would rather die under that demon-general’s halberd.

A cowardly Jade Liquid Realm practitioner — and he thinks he’s fit to kill me?

“…”

Taking in the demon’s expression, something moved briefly in Shen Yi’s dark eyes.

His hands, however, didn’t hesitate at all. He drew Erhei straight from his hip.

The next instant, his body exploded into motion.

Both hands on the hilt, carried forward by everything behind him, he drove the blade down through the air in a slash of dark light.

The sharp edge punched into the demon’s chest.

Long fingers with clean knuckles gripped the hilt, soaked in burning dark-red demon blood.

“You want to die—!”

The demon’s claws drove through both of his shoulders in a single blow. The same burning blood — carrying flecks of gold — splashed across the pale face.

Those clear eyes held no particular resolve. Just pain, threaded through with a thin current of fear — the kind an ordinary person would have.

Scared?

Maybe a little.

Going to kill it anyway?

Shen Yi slowly released the hilt, made a fist.

Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture.

Through the tearing agony of those claws, the hard fist moved at a speed the eye couldn’t follow, hammering into every meridian point across the demon’s body.

The black scales — scorched countless times by the corruption-fire — fell away. Meridian after meridian sealed shut.

“Get off! Get off me!”

The demon’s arms went numb. The claws had driven into flesh and couldn’t be pulled back out.

It panicked and tried to push the young man away — and couldn’t.

Shen Yi pressed forward half a step, driving those scale-covered claws half an inch deeper into his own body.

“If you don’t die, I can’t sleep.”

His voice was barely above a whisper. He found the hilt again with one hand and wrenched the blade free, sending a spray of blood arcing outward.

The torn black robe swirled. The blade, wrapped in moving threads of blood, came down in a clean arc like a full moon.

Thunk.

The grotesque flood dragon head rolled across the ground with an expression of bewilderment on it. From the half-body left, a trail of blood ran down the path and out of sight.

That was the end of a long road of storm-like astral force and countless raised hands.

【Condensate Realm Flood Dragon Demon slain — Total Lifespan: 5,240 years. Remaining: 1,970 years. Fully absorbed.】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 3,264 years】

The hand holding the blade trembled faintly. Whether from exhaustion or something else was difficult to say.

His breathing was quick. Across his face, slowly, a wave of bone-deep tiredness.

He steadied himself, gritted his teeth, and pulled the two sets of claws out of his shoulders. The scales curved inward like fishhooks — coming free meant tearing flesh with them.

That genuinely hurt.

The half-body hit the ground.

Even dead, it wouldn’t revert to its true form. Evidently the work of taking on human shape had been substantial — which explained how it had spent over a hundred years in Qingzhou without being discovered.

Shen Yi pressed a boot to the side and, blade in hand, opened the abdomen with practiced efficiency.

At that moment, the sound of hooves came from behind him.

He looked back.

Following the trail of demon blood, a brilliantly built demon-horse the color of fresh blood led dozens of riders at speed toward this spot.

Something faintly surprised crossed his face.

Qingfeng Mountain — that enormous sect — dealt with this quickly?

On the blood-red horse, in dark lustrous armor with the iron halberd in hand, the old man looked down from height.

Chen Qiankun studied the blood-soaked young man without readable expression.

On the horses behind him, Deputy Commanders who had fought their way through decades of service looked at the scene ahead and couldn’t hide the surprise.

They’d still been occupied at Qingfeng Mountain. A Commander had run off to pursue a Condensate Realm demon alone?

And more difficult to process — looking at that half-body lying still on the ground — the lord of the Yangchun River flood dragon clan had actually been killed?

Hong Lei, arriving last, jumped from his horse, gave Shen Yi a look that held both shock and a kind of helpless exasperation, then stepped to Chen Qiankun and said something quietly.

The old man waved it off. He looked at the young man again, gave a small nod.

“What are you looking at me for. Go on — take it.”

Shen Yi returned to work with the blade, reached in, and extracted the demon core — luminous, pulsing gently — and pocketed it at his waist with complete fluency. No pause at any point.

“…”

Every Deputy Commander present held their breath for a moment.

The old General blinked slightly. Then a barely perceptible trace of amusement entered the corner of his mouth.

He pulled the reins and turned.

“Give him a horse.”

The Deputy Commander beside him startled, dismounted quickly, and walked the demon-horse over with some haste, holding the reins out toward Shen Yi.

“The demon’s body has to go to the court — that’s not mine to give you,” Chen Qiankun continued. “Ride this horse back to Qingzhou’s Division compound for me. Put your Deputy Commander’s cloak on. Come to Linjiang Prefecture when you have time — I’ll have a position for you.”

That last sentence left even Hong Lei standing still for a moment.

He’d told the General personally about Shen Yi killing the thousand-year caiman and the Heavenly Astral Blood-Corruption that had made the elder give up and break his own sword. A promotion to Deputy Commander — that was understandable.

But personal attendant was an entirely different thing.

That meant the old General was prepared to include him in a succession circle.

After the General stepped down, there would be a chance to compete with the other attendants for the Demon Suppression General position itself.

Beyond that, the more immediate benefit: a few years of closely following the General — not a temporary assignment like this one, but genuinely by his side, day and night.

As long as nothing went wrong.

The General would write up documentation and send it to the court on his behalf, securing a Condensate Realm cultivation method as the return. With enough credits, two or three trips to the War Temple before the lifespan ran low wasn’t out of the question.

As for what could go wrong — the General needed to maintain peak condition to hold down the major demons of the region, so he almost never personally fought. Under his protection, a person might go extended periods without encountering a demon at all. Compared to the Division’s ordinary people who were out there killing and dying regularly, it was a different world entirely.

“You’ve — only met him once, haven’t you?” the Deputy Commander beside him said carefully, voice kept quiet, doing his best to hold back the envy.

“Not exactly.”

Chen Qiankun smiled again, in that inexplicable way, thinking of the portrait that demon-hunters had copied from some small temple recently.

He wasn’t a true Martial Immortal — only a practitioner in the core-nurturing stage. One man overseeing thirty-some counties, more than two thousand villages, several million common people. All his attention on the Condensate Realm demons he had to keep in check. Never enough of himself to go around.

So uncountable mountain spirits and river creatures quietly built their little shrines. That was expected.

But one wearing ink-black Division robes — that was a first.

Impressive for someone so young. Stealing prayer devotion right under his nose. With that kind of nerve, no wonder the demon cores ended up in his pocket with such practiced ease.

Earlier, at the plaza, every glance Zhang Hengzhou had sent toward the perimeter had been watched quietly by Chen Qiankun — including the moment the flood dragon bolted, and a certain young man in black who’d furrowed his brow, slipped back through the crowd, and disappeared.

A shame there had been more pressing matters. No opportunity to exchange a few words.

There would be time later.

(End of Chapter)