Evening had come. The last light filtered through dense canopy, casting broken patterns of shadow and gold across the ground.

Led by the blood-red horse, dozens of demon-horses moved in a steady line back toward Qingfeng Mountain.

Shen Yi rode at the back, watching the armored figure ahead.

He hadn’t intended to keep the flood dragon’s core — but having it pocketed without objection still left him faintly surprised.

By any reasonable accounting, this Demon Suppression General had contributed somewhat to killing the demon.

Well. Considerably more than somewhat.

Shen Yi acknowledged, with some lack of enthusiasm for the conclusion, that he’d been at Threshold Perfection when he took down the young flood dragon and the river deity — both badly depleted at the time — and it hadn’t been particularly difficult.

That had relied on Jade Liquid tier techniques refined to Perfection, and the panel’s endless qi supply.

But against a Condensate Realm demon, all those techniques had begun to show their limits.

The old flood dragon had already lost half its body to the halberd and was carrying serious old wounds on top of that. In that condition, it had still absorbed nearly an hour of continuous Heavenly Astral Blood-Corruption.

And even then, it had taken the Devouring Wolf Demon-Slayer and the Meridian-Severing Dragon Capture deployed simultaneously to barely close it out.

That had been close to everything Shen Yi had.

If he ran into a fully intact Condensate Realm demon next time, survival wasn’t guaranteed, let alone victory.

At least this trip was profitable.

The thousand-year caiman’s beast core, the Condensate Realm flood dragon’s inner core, plus the eight hundred years he’d arrived with — over three thousand years of demon lifespan total.

Whether that was enough to reach the Condensate Realm—

He wasn’t certain.

“Brother Shen, you have real nerve.”

Hong Lei pulled his horse alongside and dropped his voice, reading the tangled expression. “Lucky for you the old General made progress, or you’d have gone after a flood dragon with no one close enough to pull you back if it went wrong. You’re young and you have everything ahead of you — why gamble your life for a credit?”

He followed it with a rueful smile. “Though you did win the gamble. From two-band Commander to personal attendant Deputy Commander — I spent decades grinding and got less than you got in a few days.”

By any assessment of the young man’s age, he couldn’t have been in the Division for more than ten years.

Personal attendant — within the Division hierarchy, there were only the demon-hunters, the twelve Demon Suppression Generals, and the General herself above that. In Qingzhou, even first-tier sects would treat such a person with careful courtesy out of respect for General Chen’s face.

Not that Hong Lei was envious. Killing a Condensate Realm demon alone — that wasn’t something ordinary people did. Looking at the wounds on Shen Yi’s shoulders and the way the flood dragon had ended, it must have been an extraordinary contest.

“Ha — that old flood dragon, at the very end, must have recognized he was looking at something exceptional. Let it see what the Division’s finest generation looks like.”

“…”

Shen Yi gave a small nod and moved past the subject. “What does being a personal attendant actually involve?”

He hadn’t forgotten why he was in the Division.

“Benefits?” Hong Lei held up his palm. “Let me put it plainly. In any sect or great family, someone at Jade Liquid Perfection like you — unless you’re blood kin or you sign a blood contract — would need to do work for them for decades before they’d trust you enough to offer a Condensate Realm method.”

Shen Yi thought of what Zhang Tuhu had mentioned about the Jingang School. Forget the Condensate method — even a slightly lesser body-refinement technique for that level required fifty years of reciting sutras and fifty years of teaching doctrine.

“Even at Jade Liquid Perfection, I’d only have three hundred or so years. Wasting decades on that kind of thing — even if you get the technique at the end, what’s left of the lifespan to use it?”

Hong Lei blinked, then smiled tiredly. “Brother Shen — to them, you’re an outsider. The technique is their foundation. As long as it stays with them, a first-tier force stays first-tier. If you take it and hand it to the Division—” he paused, “—you know they won’t let Division Commanders through their doors, let alone ordinary constables. That shows you how much they resist the court.”

“There’s a faster route, of course. You saw Qingfeng Mountain. Other great families have similar things — ancestral items, blood connections. Sign a blood contract, become a family guardian, and with your ability no family would hesitate. But—”

“You’re a personal attendant now. Ten years at most — no, five years—”

He looked at the faintly creased brow across from him, clicked his tongue, and revised again. “If the luck runs right and there’s a major credit involved, three years isn’t impossible. The Condensate methods the court keeps aren’t second-rate, and you can select based on what suits you. Isn’t that better than what any sect could offer?”

Shen Yi’s expression shifted slightly toward interested. “Could it go any faster?”

Hong Lei’s face changed. He looked around carefully, confirmed the blood-red horse had long since disappeared at the head of the column, then pressed a hand over Shen Yi’s on the reins and used the voice-transmission technique.

“Brother — you saved old Hong’s life, so I’m telling you this. Don’t let anyone else hear it, or you’ll never get another chance for the rest of your days.”

“Three years and you can’t wait. Who would vouch for you to the court? Who’s going to trust that after reaching the Condensate Realm you’ll stay and hold a post in Qingzhou — rather than walking away, or going over to a great family, or worse, a demon?”

Shen Yi was quiet for a moment.

He realized, somewhat belatedly, that while he’d never consciously displayed anything, he’d already been giving off an impatient impression to outside observers.

In an ordinary person’s frame of reference, learning a single martial technique took decades. Cultivation advanced slowly, built up through medicinal support over years. From that perspective, his manner — practically eager to extract everything from the Division and leave — didn’t look like genuine dedication. It looked like someone who’d come to steal techniques.

Something to be more careful about.

“I know this type of temperament — you all want to reach the sky in one step. Fang Heng was like this. Lin Baixi was like this. Bai Ziming too. One of them is practicing fist techniques in the General’s courtyard, one became a demon-hunter, the third is in the infirmary treating patients.”

Hong Lei sighed, then brightened. “Work first, eat later — that’s the Division’s way. Now — based on how the General is looking at things, the sword pool refinement is most likely yours. Those three probably can’t compete with you for it.”

“The sword pool refinement?” Shen Yi’s brow went slightly uncertain.

Hong Lei realized the young man had left early and missed everything. “The old man projected the divine spirit outward — cut down the Zhang family ancestor first, then the Sect Master, then destroyed the Founding Sword with the halberd. The sword pool is now unclaimed property, under the General’s interim custody. It can’t produce anything new anymore, but it’s good for a few more uses. One use — it’ll spare you half a lifetime of medicinal grinding.”

Unclaimed.

Shen Yi looked sideways, catching the implication. “What happened to Qingfeng Mountain?”

“This is why the older ones are more dangerous.”

With Chen Qiankun out of earshot, Hong Lei spoke more freely. “The General knew the Sect Master had that particular condition from long ago. He surrounded but never destroyed — deliberately kept all the disciples there, made them experience what the Founding Sword could do firsthand, drove them apart from within, then destroyed it. The remaining disciples were put through inspection by demon-hunters. The ones without anything unusual were taken directly into the Division.”

He laughed. “The General suddenly finds himself with two Condensate Realm Commanders on his books.”

Both of the protective elders would climb past that rank soon enough, but it was still an amusing result.

“Right — you wanted Condensate Realm techniques. The General just demonstrated one approach personally. Find a sect or family that’s left something exposed, have enough ability, and you could replicate the Qingfeng Mountain situation entirely. While the texts and manuals are being transported back, who’d notice if you copied two of them?”

Hong Lei kept talking, then noticed something shifting in the young man’s expression beside him.

He stopped.

Tried to work out which sentence had done it.

(End of Chapter)