Demon Suppression Division. External Affairs Hall.
The crowd of Commanders pressed at the doorway. When the Inner Division woman mentioned the Jingang School, puzzlement moved through them briefly — then recognition.
Several golden-eagle Commanders pushed straight inside and said flatly: “Commander Shen saved our lives. Don’t fob him off with that thing.”
The woman gave them a look and turned back to Shen Yi. “Don’t listen to them. I’m not in the habit of protecting public resources at anyone else’s expense. I only brought it up because it was relevant. Though they’re not wrong about the rest — that upper-grade Jade Liquid body-refinement technique, the Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body, was brought to us voluntarily by the Jingang School. It’s been sitting untouched ever since.”
Shen Yi blinked slightly.
From the moment he’d arrived in this world, his deepest impression of jianghu sects was the wariness — almost fear — they carried toward the Division.
“As for why—” the woman continued quietly, “—Commander Shen probably already knows that body-refinement methods are a slow grind. More or less the same for everyone who trains in them.”
“The Jingang School was once a major sect. They had the Bodhi Vajra Tree — and with assistance from its fruit, the upper-grade technique could be brought to Perfection in just a hundred and eighty years. The resulting physical body was formidable enough that even Condensate Realm practitioners would struggle to damage it.”
A hundred and eighty years was a meaningful threshold.
Ordinary practitioners at early Jade Liquid Realm could expect a lifespan of roughly two hundred and twenty years.
Which meant any Jingang School disciple who broke into early Jade Liquid had enough lifespan to bring the Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body to Perfection — and walk around with a physical frame that overwhelmed the Jade Liquid Realm entirely.
“The tree died. And without the fruit’s assistance, no matter how much body-refinement medicine they used, the results couldn’t approach what they’d had before. Disciples could work as hard as they wanted — Minor Mastery was the ceiling. The Jingang School fell to third-tier almost immediately.”
The woman blinked and continued. “Their current abbot was fortunate. He found a half-volume Condensate Realm body-refinement method from somewhere and actually made progress with it. To avoid drawing attention from other forces, he simply offered the old Jingang technique to the Division — buying himself peace of mind.”
Something for nothing means something’s off — but in the Jingang School’s situation, finding powerful backing while trying to restore the sect was understandable enough.
“That one upper-grade Jade Liquid technique — even the General reviewed it personally and left a note: without the Bodhi Vajra Tree, the technique is worthless. Better to spend the time trying to advance a cultivation realm than cultivating this.” The woman paused. “It’s the only upper-grade technique the External Affairs Hall holds. Whether the Treasury has anything else, I don’t know — but opening the Treasury requires a personal order from the General.”
Shen Yi listened. He thought of Hong Lei’s earlier reminder.
A long moment of internal deliberation, faint tension in the brow. Then he tapped the counter lightly with one knuckle and said, deliberately offhand: “Are you saying a technique can depend on a single plant? That sounds excessive. I’ll take it.”
The woman raised an eyebrow toward the golden-eagle Commanders. She’d been perfectly clear. If he wasn’t satisfied, that wasn’t her problem.
The Commanders retreated silently. People like this didn’t change their minds through argument.
“Should the medicine allocation also go toward body-refinement?”
“Yes.” Shen Yi looked away, expression unchanged.
He’d seen it clearly enough by now. In Qingzhou, anything related to the Condensate Realm ran through the General without exception.
Which also meant that reaching the Condensate Realm meant having the strength to shake Qingzhou — a level that required strict oversight. He understood the logic.
An upper-grade body-refinement technique that required no particular talent or insight — that was the most valuable thing available to him right now.
“…”
He had the Heavenly Demon Yama external pill anchoring the qi sea, but he understood the method’s weaknesses clearly.
Carrying three thousand years of the flood dragon lord’s cultivation without any techniques at that level, and without the flood dragon’s own scaled body to back it up — useful for dominating practitioners far below the flood dragon’s strength. Against someone with equivalent cultivation, the disadvantages were everywhere. The best that could be said was that a fight was now possible where it previously hadn’t been.
More critically — the demonic force within the external pill was finite and non-renewable. If he fought to complete exhaustion in a life-or-death exchange, there was one opportunity left in it.
Without another Condensate Realm demon core to replenish it, the nearly two thousand years of lifespan that had gone into the Heavenly Demon external pill would become useless ballast.
No improvement could be neglected.
“Noted. I’ll select the best available movement art for you as well. Once everything is tallied, we’ll have it delivered immediately. If the body-refinement technique isn’t what you wanted—” a dimple appeared, “—you can come back and exchange it at any time. I’m here the seventh through nineteenth of every month. The medicines can also be swapped.”
Several nearby Commanders observed this with furrowed brows. So that’s what that was about.
“Also — you’ll be assigned three Deputy Commanders and a hundred and twenty Commanders at Linjiang Prefecture. If you’d like to bring a few people from here, three to five shouldn’t be a problem.”
She shrugged. “We’re short-handed ourselves, so we can’t send everyone off to enjoy the easy life with Commander Shen.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Shen Yi turned — and was immediately surrounded by a wall of heated stares.
He took a step. Several Commanders holding the ceremonial garments shot cold looks at the Outer Division cluster, which managed to pull back slightly.
At the very edge of the crowd, several tens of zhang back.
A figure with very broad shoulders stood quietly. Middle-aged appearance, perhaps forty or fifty, with some stubble, no weapon visible — the look of someone who worked a field.
On his shoulder sat a small girl, hair in two little bunches, skin pale and smooth, lips pink. She wore a green dress, small bare feet swinging contentedly.
She watched the black-robed young man with curious eyes.
“Chen Qiankun gives him the attendant position and recommends him to us at the same time. What exactly is he saying?”
The middle-aged man’s gaze was settled and unhurried. “When men get older they start hesitating. He wants someone promising close at hand, but he also thinks it’s a waste — he can’t decide, so he puts the choice to the person himself. He’s lost the decisiveness of his younger years. Looking at this — he won’t be able to hold Linjiang Prefecture for many more years.”
The small girl reached up and pinched his ear. “I can hear the undertones.”
“I’m not speaking about you, Grandmother.”
He smiled patiently and continued. “He wants to conceal the dragon-killing to prevent the Yangchun River clan’s retaliation, and simultaneously wants to make a public display of it to deter the Zhao family. Look at that contradiction — is that the Chen Qiankun of old? If someone this capable is being treated like he can’t withstand a single storm—”
“Offering a young man an easy choice, and then hoping he’ll refuse it on his own. It would be laughable if it weren’t so telling.”
He turned slowly.
“The General has made her third trip to the capital seeking reinforcements. Qingzhou has something large coming. We demon-hunters will be the first to die in front of it. We don’t have time to help Old General Chen babysit.”
“Ha!” The small girl swung her feet cheerfully. “Speaking of small ones — I’m fond of that Lin girl, actually. Studying demon-hunting from the Threshold Realm, nearly dying in a backwater like Baiyun County. Hilarious. Since the General can’t bring back reinforcements, we should at least fight for a War Temple refinement for her — wash some of that inexperience off. When she comes back from the Condensate Realm and finds out this boy went off to be someone’s personal attendant—” she pressed a hand to her eye to catch the tears of laughter.
It wasn’t mockery. Only — even the most ferocious beast, set to guard a home and fed on schedule, would eventually lose its edge. Fangs and claws dulled over comfortable years.
Every General in recorded history had come from among the demon-hunters.
They were wolves. The kind that dared to step beyond Qingzhou’s twelve prefectures and into demon-lord territory, licking blood off blades in danger from every direction.
That was the breed.
(End of Chapter)