“What kind of technique is this?”

Shen Yi opened his eyes.

Something had broken open inside him. A deep, surging power moved through his body — well beyond anything a mortal frame was supposed to contain.

The Demon-Subduing Bladework and the Cloudscattering Longfist were both products of the Demon Suppression Division’s work — techniques synthesized from martial traditions across the land, engineered for rapid mastery. Already exceptional by any normal standard. After bringing all three to Perfection, Shen Yi had found himself with the strength of a bull and the speed of a thunderclap, which had been surprising enough.

But these seventy-eight characters were something else entirely. They opened onto a completely different landscape — a sensation of transcendence he had no words for, as if his very existence were on the cusp of becoming something new.

Not drawing out what’s already in the body. Using outside forces to reshape it from without.

And when outside forces are insufficient — progress slows to almost nothing.

He understood the mechanism now. The problem was he had no good solution for it.

The advancement process was tightly coupled to his current real-world state — he’d noticed that much already. His best guess: if he could actually consume medicine packed with concentrated essence before running a simulation, the pharmaceutical boost would carry over and accelerate the results.

But where exactly was he supposed to get that medicine?

The predecessor had looked impressive from the outside and been a compulsive gambler on the inside. Every coin squeezed from the populace, combined with his official salary, had gone straight into the gambling dens. What remained in his pocket would barely cover food until next month’s pay.

And a single simulation pass represented a full year. Ordinary medicine would barely register — only genuine rare treasures of heaven and earth would make a meaningful difference.

Gambling addicts deserve everything they get… deal with it later when there’s an opportunity.

Shen Yi looked at his still-substantial reserves of demon lifespan and kept pouring.

【Year sixteen — all available essence has been spent tempering the bones throughout your body.】

【Year twenty-six — medicinal resources insufficient. Progress slows…】

【Year thirty-eight — over half your skeletal structure has been tempered. But drawing essence from ordinary food alone yields almost nothing.】

His expression had been changing steadily. A thread of tension worked its way into his eyes.

【Year fifty-two — through years of slow accumulation, you break through the Bone Stage. Thunder-Wind Scripture, Volume One: Minor Mastery.】

That line surfaced, and Shen Yi realized he’d forgotten to breathe.

But the returns were extraordinary.

His body had changed dramatically — the bones beneath his flesh now carried the hardness of tempered metal, solid and unyielding as cast iron. And that sensation of transcendence he’d been chasing had grown richer, more immediate, sweet and intoxicating as honey — pulling at something deep in him, urging him closer without quite letting him arrive.

The veil over that strange and distant realm was beginning to lift.

He set his jaw and went all in.

【Year eighty-nine — accumulating essence slowly has become your way of life. Year after year. Day after day. The art of drawing essence inward and using it to temper the flesh has become second nature.】

【Year one hundred and six — one morning, you notice a change in your skin. You feel no particular surprise. It seems exactly as it should be. Thunder-Wind Scripture, Volume One: Major Mastery.】

Shen Yi didn’t pause. He could feel the realm drawing closer with every passing line.

He fed demon lifespan in like a man in a trance.

Tendons, bones, flesh, skin. One last stage remaining.

【Year one hundred and eighty-two — you cook your meal as you always do, take a bite, and find it tasteless. You sense that somewhere in the world, there is something far more nourishing.】

【It is everywhere, and nowhere you can point to.】

【You look down at yourself, and understand. What they call transcendence — the fat duck leg in your hand has become, to you, nothing more than a worldly thing.】

【After more than a hundred years of refinement, your body has become the finest vessel imaginable for that formless, nameless thing… Thunder-Wind Scripture, Volume One: Perfection.】

Shen Yi closed his eyes.

The realm felt close enough to reach out and touch. One more step — just one — and he’d be there.

The Threshold Realm. A new beginning. A different way of existing in this world entirely.

But he couldn’t take that step.

Because seventy-eight characters was where the scripture ended.

A spark of genuine irritation flared in his chest. You couldn’t have written just a little more?! Leaving it hanging like this — what’s a person supposed to do after reaching mortal peak? Just stand here?

He pushed to his feet — and went still, color shifting in his face.

The physical transformation this time dwarfed anything that had come before. The moment after the Demon-Subduing Bladework reached Perfection had been impressive. This was another order of magnitude entirely.

Shen Yi raised one hand slowly, almost tentatively, and had the distinct and unsettling impression that if he tried, he could take the woodshed apart around him without much effort.

He stood there for a moment, slightly lost — then began moving like someone waking from a long coma, working carefully through slow, deliberate stretches, relearning where his body’s edges were.

Chen Ji’s voice came from outside. “Food’s ready.”

The smell of freshly steamed rice drifted in through the door. Shen Yi’s brow furrowed as two contradictory impulses rose and fell in his mind — the habitual pull of appetite, and something newer, more abstract, that found the idea vaguely uninteresting.

His stomach won.

He stepped outside.

The living space was genuinely cramped. On a normal day the siblings each took their food back to their respective rooms. Tonight, with a guest, Chen Ji had dug up a small folding table from somewhere and set it up in the only open patch of ground.

Shen Yi watched him carry a bowl inside for Chen Jinyu and pull her door shut behind him.

“I’m really not that kind of person, you know.”

“It’s not about you. She prefers eating alone.”

Chen Ji crouched back down beside the table and began ladling rice, wiping chopsticks with the air of someone performing a task they’d decided not to think too hard about.

As he said it, the wooden door cracked open a sliver. A pair of quietly curious eyes appeared in the gap, peering out.

“…” Shen Yi pressed his lips together.

“…” Chen Ji’s hand slowed. A brief silence. Then a sigh. “If you want to come out, come out.”

Chen Jinyu pushed the door open, bowl in both hands, and came to crouch at the low table. She tilted her face up with a small, tentative smile — composed, but with a warmth underneath it.

She always deferred to her brother. The last thing she wanted was to add to his worries, which were already considerable.

But that didn’t mean she had no thoughts of her own.

Like today, for instance — what her brother had done would almost certainly strain his relationship with his superior. If it was purely about protecting her, fine.

But from where she was sitting, a man who noticed the flash of longing in the other girls’ eyes when they were helped up, and quietly stepped into that role for them without being asked — how bad could a person like that really be?

She was still thinking about it when she looked up and found Shen Yi already looking at her.

They exchanged a small smile.

Crack.

Chen Ji snapped his chopsticks together and fixed Shen Yi with a smile that went nowhere near his eyes.

You’re NOT that kind of person?! Oh, you’re NOT?!

“Eat.” Shen Yi looked away, mildly resigned.

He had one year of his own lifespan left. Whatever those thoughts were trying to become, they had no business forming right now.

He’d just gotten his hands on the Thunder-Wind Scripture — his mood was good, that was all. And the girl had a way of playing innocent while clearly thinking five steps ahead, which he found genuinely amusing.

Even if he somehow extended his lifespan down the road and eventually found himself looking for someone — or several someones, hypothetically —

Shen Yi had always had a preference for a certain type. More mature. More rounded. Less doe-eyed innocence, more knowing charm.

That thought led him somewhere unexpected.

Wait.

Essence refinement. Mortal peak.

And it didn’t give me any lifespan extension? He went to the park and did tai chi twice a week in his old life and still squeezed out a few extra years. What exactly was all that for?

The notification he’d been too absorbed in chasing the Threshold Realm to notice properly drifted back to the surface.

【Personal Remaining Lifespan: 21 years】

…

(End of Chapter)