Several of the demon-hunters stopped their inspections of the disciples. Deep wariness moved through every face.

Only Chen Qiankun showed nothing. He released the iron halberd casually, closed his eyes — and the divine spirit left his body in an instant, taking the weapon aloft.

A demon lord with that kind of presence wasn’t enough, on its own, to trouble him.

But in less than a moment—

The halberd stopped in the air, as if uncertain. Then it fell back to his hand.

The old man opened his eyes. Something unusual had entered the calm of them.

That presence — was gone.

For something to slip past the divine spirit’s awareness at this range, at the Condensate Realm — impossible under normal circumstances. Not by suppressing qi, not by Zhang Hengzhou’s method of refining a human form, and certainly not by any low-grade shapeshifting technique.

This felt more like a displacement method — crossing a thousand li in an instant, simply to unsettle him, and then gone.

If that was the kind of power involved, what had just been shown was probably only a fraction of it.

The hand gripping the iron halberd tightened slowly.

After a long moment, he turned toward the demon-hunters.

Their expressions had shifted. They seemed to have understood.

The old man who had held Qingfeng Mountain alone — something in his eyes carried the rare quality of a person who had begun to consider their own age.

“I don’t know which demon lord thinks they can play games with me. Since they won’t show themselves — let them see for themselves. Qingzhou’s sharpest sword.”

He paused.

“I apologize for the trouble. Someone make a trip to Yushan Prefecture.”

“Invite Jiang Qiulan.”

At that name, every Qingfeng Mountain disciple present — including the two newly-collared Condensate Realm elders — instinctively moved a hand to their own neck.

The more than twenty thousand heads still stacked at Yushan Prefecture’s city wall. Still there.

The demon-hunters nodded. “General, no need to stand on ceremony. We know what this warrants.”

General Jiang’s ability to find demons wasn’t necessarily greater than General Chen’s — both were in the core-nurturing stage, and while she was the stronger of the two, neither had fully broken through. And she was the only one among the twelve Demon Suppression Generals who hadn’t taken the Martial Immortal path at all, pursuing the Mixed Origin method instead. She had none of the divine spirit’s capabilities.

But the moment she walked out of Yushan Prefecture’s city gates, every demon lord of any standing in Linjiang Prefecture would hear about it within half a day — and quietly retire to their dens.

First sword in Qingzhou. Foremost of the twelve Generals. Including both the Demon Suppression Division and all four families and five sects, only her teacher — the General herself — surpassed her.

“I have pressing matters to attend to. I won’t keep you.”

Chen Qiankun shook his head and raised one hand. The blood-red horse came like a stream of light, gave a short breath of air, and carried the old general to the mountain’s mid-slope. Four hooves stepped lightly and came to rest at the cliff’s peak above Sword-Viewing Gorge.

He looked down at the forest below, and something faintly amused entered his expression.

In the demon-hunters’ reports, the Shuiyun Township villagers had described with vivid enthusiasm a black-robed ferocious river deity with a dark blade at the hip, both eyes filled with killing intent.

In person, an understated young man.

He’d waited through the entire night — and never seen the figure come forward to pay respects.

Cautious by instinct. Decisive when it mattered. Brave enough to fight with his life. Steady in the moment of claiming the demon core, as if even a Demon Suppression General wasn’t getting in the way of that.

And yet — no attempt to leverage it into greater credit. From start to finish, he’d declined to get close, let alone flatter his way into anything.

Too good for the credit of killing a flood dragon? Fine. I’ll give it to you anyway.

He watched the young man step out of the tent below and let the rare occasion of a smile show at the corner of his mouth.

A few more years of observation, and leaving him the Qingfeng sword pool refinement wouldn’t be a bad outcome.

The Division wasn’t short on talent. It was short on talent that had been tested by real death. There was always the risk of losing someone early, but without those moments of genuine survival or failure — how was a person supposed to protect several million common people?

The seedling that came through alive — that was the one worth keeping.

Keeping him safe at my side would be a waste, though.

Stand up and be recognized.

A quiet thought settled, and he said, lightly: “Before you reach the Division compound — try coming down from that slope and I’ll break both your legs.”

The unhurried words drifted down to the two figures below.

Hong Lei, holding his horse, looked back in shock — and when he recognized Chen Qiankun’s familiar silhouette, immediately started pushing Shen Yi. “I told you, this horse was given to you by the General, which means a Deputy Commander has to lead it — what are you dragging your feet for?”

Shen Yi looked up as well. A streak of blood-red light crossed the sky and vanished at the horizon.

That kind of freedom — something in his chest moved faintly with envy.

“…”

Well — he had a foundation of his own now.

He felt the external pill, held in check by the Solar-Fusion Furnace in his qi sea.

He brought his attention back, swung up onto the demon-horse.

Two dozen golden-eagle Commanders cleared the path ahead. Surrounded by dozens of Outer Division personnel, Hong Lei walked at an even pace holding the horse’s reins, and used the voice-transmission technique:

“The old General thinks carefully about everything. He’s worried you’ll end up on the Yangchun River flood dragon clan’s list — the flood dragon’s death, aside from these Deputy Commanders, no one else will hear about it.”

A pause.

“But Zhao Kanglin died right in front of all of us, and he was the only one who died. The Zhao family is going to wonder and hold it against someone. The old men in that family might not actually be able to do much to you — but putting out some presence early saves a lot of trouble later.”

Qingzhou city.

Under the Division’s oversight, large events rarely emerged from this place.

The occasional tale of a swordsman’s wife being carried off again. The Pingsha Valley thieves draining another few casks of some lord’s wine.

Then a stream of messenger Commanders fanned outward — and something too large to contain began to move through every corner of the city.

Qingfeng Mountain was gone.

Nothing like the gore of the Yushan Prefecture incident. Under the hand of Linjiang Prefecture’s General, a mountain gate that had stood for longer than anyone could easily count had simply ceased to exist.

In a teahouse, a storyteller gripped his striking block and stood without knowing what to do with himself.

He’d told the story of chivalrous hearts and swords cutting down demons for decades. Overnight, all of it had become genuinely what it had always been called: a story.

“I—”

His lips, dry, moved without forming anything. The account he knew by heart wouldn’t come out. He cast about for something new.

“Today — I’ll tell you all about — hmm — the river deity of Shuiyun Township, the immortal blade, and the slaying of the ten-thousand-year river spirit!”

He wiped the sweat off and brought the block down hard.

“In this dynasty, there was a mighty warrior with a leopard’s head and phoenix eyes, wearing flowing cloud-pattern gold-trimmed robes, carrying the world-cleaving river-crossing dark blade, brilliant in every aspect. Feet upon wave after wave, ten thousand shrimp soldiers and crab generals behind him—”

“The river demon bares its fearsome face, bloated and arrogant! It calls out in challenge — who dares approach?!”

“The warrior gives a cold smile. The turtle attendant clasps his hands and announces: this is a heavenly star descended to earth, the river-calming deity — and at the mere mention of the name, the river demon staggers backward in fright, shaking like a sieve, and its — ahem — thing shrivels to the size of a pea—”

“Pfft!“

The storyteller spat on his hand and launched his voice to the roof.

“The immortal blade falls — and the river demon is ground to ash!”

The heavily bandaged young man in the audience closed his eyes and muttered: “I can’t take this. I’m embarrassed on his behalf.”

The charming young woman in plain clothes raised her teacup, her composure not quite steady. “Common people love the exaggerated version.”

Li Xinhan kept watching the storyteller. “I wonder how close he is to the Jade Liquid Realm — shouldn’t be long now, should it? He’s a talent, just wasted time stuck in a backwater county.”

He thought of something.

“Oh, right — you asked me to come out and get some air, but I forgot to ask. Why are you back so early? And where’s Shen Yi?”

Li Muqing stared at the loose leaf fragments drifting in her teacup and didn’t speak for a long time.

She wasn’t sure herself why she’d come back this quickly. She’d been in that town for two days, and then she couldn’t hold herself there anymore and rode back.

What if Qingfeng Mountain pulled more Commanders. What if they pulled her.

Why had they suddenly stopped needing people?

What could a Threshold Realm Perfection practitioner possibly accomplish on Qingfeng Mountain?

Her thoughts scattered. Then Li Xinhan slowly furrowed his brow, fixed his eyes on his sister, and spoke with a rare sharpness — disbelief and something close to anger mixing together.

“You let him go?”

Li Muqing said nothing to that. She simply stood up.

Outside, a street vendor’s voice rang out.

“They’re back! The Division Commanders are back!”

(End of Chapter)