【Year one — you consume the body-refinement medicine and begin cultivating the Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body.】

In the room, Shen Yi transferred all hundred-odd medicine bottles into the silver bell.

Small as it was, the bell held personal items without difficulty.

He turned his palm over. The red pills, barely the size of soybeans, carrying a faint animal-blood scent — roughly a year’s worth — made their way steadily into his mouth.

【Year two — the body-refinement method you cultivated before seems to run along a similar path as this one. You pick it up quickly, and with the constant stream of medicines, the training efficiency is considerably higher than usual.】

【Year five — you begin to notice something is off. The Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body seems to require a specific spiritual plant to assist it. Efficiency drops.】

He’d been told about this already. It didn’t catch him off guard.

With both the Bodhi Vajra seeds and the medicines, it would have taken a hundred and eighty years. Double that should be more than sufficient.

Body-refinement was the grind that repaid exactly what you put in — more reliable than anything that depended on insight. The one thing worth looking forward to was whether the technique could combine with his demonic passive talents and produce something stronger through derivation.

Time slipped past.

It’s almost gone — and getting more would require standing credits, which would also invite suspicion.

Even setting aside the lack of surplus credits, explaining where a hundred-year supply of medicines had vanished would be impossible.

Shen Yi turned his palm over again. Only a handful of pills remained. A quiet exhale.

But what the hundred years of medicine had bought was real: force building throughout the body, skin that had taken on a faint luminescence.

With the caiman and flood dragon talent passives behind him, Shen Yi’s raw strength was already at a dominating level within the Jade Liquid Realm. And on that foundation, this body-refinement technique was still producing improvements he could clearly feel.

It was almost impossible to imagine what Jingang School disciples must have been like before the tree died — when a practitioner only needed to reach early Jade Liquid, their physical body would stack to a level equivalent to Jade Liquid Perfection. The fear they must have inspired.

Even without a Condensate Realm practitioner anchoring the sect, a hall full of practitioners that tough and that painful to hit — who’d want to encounter that.

【Year six hundred and twenty-four — even without the spiritual plant or medicine, relying on time alone, you bring the Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body to Perfection…】

【Jade Liquid · Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body — Perfection】

【Remaining Demon Lifespan: 474 years】

A full radiance of white light rose from his body and sank quickly into the skin.

Shen Yi closed his eyes and took stock. He was genuinely surprised — the physical enhancement from the Bodhi Vajra Sacred Body alone was roughly eighty percent of what the Flood Dragon’s Power had given him.

The Flood Dragon’s Power had come from a young flood dragon more than ten zhang long.

Literally tearing demons apart with bare hands.

And beyond the raw strength—

He pressed two fingertips against his arm. No need to cut himself this time.

The conclusion was clear: back at Qingfeng Mountain, Zhang Hengzhou’s claws in that depleted state would never have punched through both shoulders so easily. The young flood dragon and the caiman wouldn’t have managed it at all.

At minimum, a Condensate Realm practitioner using a technique deliberately would be required to break through now.

Manageable. It wasn’t as if he’d be standing still and letting people hit him.

He might be getting ahead of himself, but Shen Yi genuinely felt that between the Heavenly Demon external pill and this body — even without a Condensate Realm technique yet — a practitioner who had only just condensed a rough core probably couldn’t match him.

Fill in the Condensate Realm techniques, and even the flood dragon lord coming back to life might be worth testing.

Condensate Realm techniques, at least, were more accessible than a formal Condensate method.

The demons he’d killed weren’t necessarily versed in human cultivation’s internal arts — but they knew how to kill things, and the more sinister the method the better. With enough Demon Crystals, that should be workable.

He reached for the last technique volume — the White Stallion Divine Stride. A brief read gave him the shape of it.

Compared to the White Ape Dancing with the Python, this one was built for long-distance travel rather than close-range maneuvering — better endurance, not significantly faster, not suited for a fighting footwork role.

Only four hundred-odd years of demon lifespan remained, and a portion needed to be kept back for the qi sea. The last battle against the flood dragon, even in its half-destroyed state, had cost comparable reserves.

This technique could wait for more stable resources.

He fed the technique volumes into the bell and cleared the bed.

Then voices outside the courtyard.

“Commander Shen!”

Li Xinhan came limping through the night, wrapped in bandages. He crossed the courtyard with the stiff dignity of someone who had earned each step, pulled a chair over, sat down, and stared at Shen Yi.

As if checking whether this was actually the constable he’d brought back from Baiyun County.

After a long moment he slumped back, deflated. “Commander Shen — you really don’t hold anything back.”

He’d been one credit away from Deputy Commander.

He’d brought Shen Yi in precisely thinking the man would help him get there.

After Shuiyun Township, Li Xinhan as the mission leader hadn’t touched those credits — they were Shen Yi’s, he’d thought. He was new to the Division and needed credits to establish himself. Li Xinhan had been thinking about how to properly express gratitude once the wounds healed.

And then he found out his sister hadn’t managed to keep Shen Yi from going to Qingfeng Mountain at all. He’d nearly had a falling-out with her over it.

Now—

He bit down on it. The man hadn’t needed any of that to begin with. Probably hadn’t given it a second thought.

“If the wound isn’t healed you should be resting.”

Shen Yi sat up slowly. He’d finally gotten a moment to himself after all that time at Qingfeng Mountain — and people kept arriving in waves.

He didn’t dislike the Li siblings. He’d worked alongside them. He was just wary of the family identity that came attached, especially after watching what had happened to Qingfeng Mountain’s people. That wariness had deepened.

But as long as no one opened their mouth to recruit him or started playing complicated games — they were genuinely decent.

The document in Li Muqing’s hand had been a real lifeline for most Commanders.

“Mm?”

Li Xinhan looked toward the door with sudden confusion.

His sister — who normally feared nothing and no one, who would pull out the short sword on the General’s disciples without hesitation — was standing in the courtyard looking faintly awkward.

What was this?

“Commander Shen just got back and needs rest. You two talk — I’ll just be here.”

Li Muqing touched the corner of her mouth, thought of the tall horse passing in front of her earlier, and gripped her own sleeve.

Shen Yi read the look, stood up to pour water, and said with easy, offhand teasing: “You weren’t this restrained the other day. Quite a way with words.”

His way of judging people was simple: who wanted him alive, and who was quietly hoping otherwise. She wasn’t uncomplicated, and they weren’t the same kind of person — but she clearly fell into the first category.

There weren’t many purely straightforward people in the world. Someone wishing you well was already something.

Li Muqing’s face went thoroughly red. She thought of the courtyard tree. “I — I had no ill intentions.”

Whatever small calculations she’d had in mind, she’d never actually meant for him to end up in danger. She’d assumed Fang Heng had already arranged things — which was how all three of them had ended up staring at each other in bafflement.

“What’s going on with you two? Sister — didn’t you have something to tell him?”

Li Xinhan looked between them, puzzled.

Li Muqing stepped into the room. “There is something. After you left for Qingfeng Mountain — I was collecting my things with Ma Tao and the others, preparing to leave Qingzhou—” she hesitated, “—and I saw two Jingang School disciples looking for your friend. The big one with the beard.”

Shen Yi’s hand on the water pot slowed. “And?”

“They looked unfriendly. I went over and asked a few questions. But your friend seemed in a hurry — he wouldn’t let me get involved.” She bit her lip. “I couldn’t do much, but I made them promise to bring him back after their business was done.”

She held the edge of that thought for a moment, knowing what he was sensitive about, and pressed on.

“I’m relatively new to the Division, and I was never much for discipline — just a Commander rank. I wasn’t sure I could hold them on my own.” A pause. “So I used the family name.”

“And I had Little Er follow them for a stretch. They left Qingzhou city. He had orders to attend to and couldn’t go further.”

She said it and stood there with something apologetic in her posture.

Shen Yi handed over the cup. “Thank you. I appreciate it, Miss Li.”

With the Li family behind the request, the probability of anything happening to Zhang Tuhu dropped to something negligible.

“I’m just glad you’re not bothered.” Li Muqing held the cup, and her fine-featured face went slightly redder.

“Please — what kind of business makes Jingang School people come looking for your friend and then ask someone at a personal attendant Deputy Commander rank to wait on them? The nerve.” Li Xinhan straightened laboriously, offhand. “When I’ve sent out invitations, I’ll find an excuse to get those people together — Jingang School included. You can question them directly. Tomorrow, say.”

“You’re going to go looking like that?” Li Muqing glanced at him.

“What of it? These are injuries from fighting demons.”

Li Xinhan raised an eyebrow. If he waited too long and Shen Yi left, who would believe him when he said he was on friendly terms with the Division’s youngest personal attendant Deputy Commander.

This was an opportunity for reflected standing. A few injuries were nothing.

“Don’t use your name for the invitations. Get your crowd to handle it. If Jingang School knows it’s the Li family calling, they might not come.”

Li Muqing shook her head. This brother of hers couldn’t connect with those people — they talked about poetry and scenery, he only knew mission credits and making himself look important. He’d tried to build a reputation as a leader despite having almost no one who actually wanted his company.

The Li family was one of the four great families — every generation of direct line descendants sent into the Division. In the jianghu, the public name was commanding and respected. Behind closed doors, it was something like: the ones who betrayed tradition and sold out to the court. The family with no spine.

Who would genuinely befriend Li Xinhan?

Like this latest situation — the Li family had connections everywhere, and when Qingfeng Mountain fell, they’d kept their own people out and not lifted a single finger to help anyone else.

She turned to Shen Yi. “Will Commander Shen be coming? Or would you prefer we ask on your behalf?”

Shen Yi’s expression was calm. He nodded slightly.

“I’ll go.”

(End of Chapter)