Feng Ling'er finished cultivating, but failed to form her fourth tail.
Crossing a major realm required more than accumulated power; it also required an understanding of cultivation methods and cultivation itself.
"Thank you, Aunt Yue."
Feng Ling'er bowed three times, then turned her azure eyes toward Zhou Yi.
No wonder men favored fox demons. Their tender, lingering gazes and delicate, pitiful beauty could melt even a heart of iron and stone.
Zhou Yi waved his hand, drawing Feng Ling'er into his sleeve, then turned to Hu Yue.
"Do you have any last words?"
"May I know why you insist on killing me?"
Hu Yue asked in bewilderment, "I can sense that, although you work in the Demon-Slaying Bureau, you don't seek to exterminate the Demon Race."
"The main reason isn't convenient to disclose. As for the secondary reason..."
Zhou Yi said, "Someone said you were innocent because you hadn't killed any humans. I disagree, so I intend to put it to the test and pass judgment!"
Hu Yue sneered. "Heh. You'll judge my crimes by human laws?"
Zhou Yi shook his head. "Not Great Qian Law. Perhaps the Heavenly Dao."
As his words fell, the execution blade swept across the back of Hu Yue's neck. Once her soul had scattered into oblivion, she reverted to her original form-a white fox over three feet long.
He skinned the fox with practiced ease, his hands showing not the slightest rustiness.
The most precious parts were the white fox's spirit eyes. Even with her magical power and soul sealed, she had been able to see through illusions. They already qualified as extraordinary innate treasures.
Zhou Yi murmured to himself, "Looks like I was right."
The Demon and Monster Compendium's pages turned...
The white fox's illustration grew a shade clearer...
Gained 3 years of Dao Attainment.
Hu Yue's memories appeared before Zhou Yi's eyes.
A descendant of the fox immortals of Green Mound, she had found the mountain forests too lonely and cultivation too tedious, so she secretly slipped out of Green Mound Grotto-Heaven and ran away from home.
Passing through Great Qian's imperial capital, she became enthralled by the bustling mortal world. To absorb yang energy, she entered the Spring Breeze Pavilion, where the Fox Clan's innate charm quickly made her a courtesan famed throughout the Capital.
The Spring Breeze Pavilion's patron was an Attendant of the Immortal Stipend Bureau. So long as Hu Yue did not directly violate the Great Qian Code, the Demon-Slaying Bureau was unwilling to clash with the Immortal Stipend Bureau over her.
Hu Yue's strength advanced rapidly. In just a few years, she rose from the seventh grade to the sixth, with Spirit Refining within reach in the future.
Sadly, beauty made her, and beauty broke her.
A month earlier, Prince Huai's heir had taken a fancy to Hu Yue. He lingered with her day and night, so infatuated that he actually wanted to marry her.
The matter eventually reached Princess Consort Huai. Flying into a rage, she sent people to seize Hu Yue outright. After subjecting her to brutal torture, they threw her into the Demon-Slaying Bureau.
Both the Immortal Stipend Bureau's Attendant and Prince Huai's supposedly devoted heir watched coldly from the sidelines, not daring to utter a single word in her defense.
After that, she met Zhou Yi.
"The only backing you can rely on in this world is yourself."
Zhou Yi sighed and carefully sensed the magical power within him. His Dao Attainment had increased by only three years, yet its quality had undergone an earth-shaking transformation.
Before ten thousand years of Dao Attainment, his magical power had the density of water. Now it was mercury. The same amount of magical power could unleash ten times the force.
Refining qi until it was like mercury-this was precisely that.
Another change was that Zhou Yi could faintly sense the flow of energies between heaven and earth.
Baleful energy, death energy, resentment, murderous energy, anger... and exceedingly faint traces of spiritual energy and vitality.
A hallmark of the Punishment Office: baleful energy that pierced the skies.
Even the Heavenly Fox Secret Canon did not describe this wondrous sensation of perceiving changes in the energies of heaven and earth.
"Perhaps I've stepped into a higher realm."
Zhou Yi felt rather pleased, yet also somewhat troubled.
The Demon and Monster Compendium's rewards directly increased his magical power and Dao Attainment, leaving his understanding of cultivation inferior even to that of Lower Third Grade cultivators.
Zhou Yi was more like those who attained the Dao through sheer strength in legends. Without refining magical power or nurturing his soul, he would increase his strength without limit until he could pluck stars, catch the moon, and toy with heaven and earth. Then he would be little different from immortals and gods.
"A fox spirit recorded in the compendium really can't be trusted. I found her a disciple to inherit her legacy before she died, and she still planted a vengeance curse on me."
With a thought from Zhou Yi, the fox-shaped curse mark attached to his heart was forcibly dispersed by his magical power.
Ten thousand years of Dao Attainment-truly terrifying!
After leaving the Punishment Office Prison, Executioner Qing awoke from the illusion.
Within the illusion, he had experienced executing Hu Yue. When he awoke, it connected seamlessly with reality.
Truth, falsehood, dreams, illusions-if one never woke up, how were they any different from reality?
It was still early, and not all his colleagues in the Ministry of Works had arrived. Zhou Yi greeted those present and began sorting and copying the books.
By evening, Zhang Cheng still had not come. Zhou Yi handed the books to Clerk Chen and returned to the Same Fortune Inn alone.
After serving in the Ministry of Works for over half a year, he had saved more than a thousand taels of silver. To ordinary people, this was a fortune: enough for a house, a carriage, and a wife, with more left over than they could spend in a lifetime.
At first, Zhou Yi had thought so too-until he visited a brokerage to inquire about housing prices.
No courtyard residence within five wards of the Demon-Slaying Bureau cost less than ten thousand taels. After all, it was one of Great Qian's four great immortal bureaus, a landmark in its own right, so the high prices were understandable.
Zhou Yi could use the Five-Element Escape Technique and travel by escape light, so somewhere more remote would also suit him.
But when he asked, even homes in the most remote and backward ward, Prospering Teaching Ward, cost over three thousand taels.
Living in the Capital was no easy feat!
Great Qian suffered from all manner of problems-rampaging demons and monsters, rebels stirring up chaos-yet overall, it was many times more prosperous than the ancient world of his previous life.
He returned to the Same Fortune Inn.
Zhou Yi was already well acquainted with the innkeeper. Over dinner, they chatted about interesting happenings in the Capital.
News spread fastest through inns and taverns. Today's hottest story was the Great Qian Army's crushing victory over the Yaksha Demon Venerable's rebel army, reclaiming more than half the lost territory.
The innkeeper was brimming with enthusiasm as he described how Great General Gongsun Qi had deployed his troops, laid an ambush, and routed the Eight Heavenly Kings in one stroke, as though he had witnessed it himself.
Great Qian had stood for fifteen hundred years. The Li imperial family's authority had long since sunk into people's hearts and bones, and almost everyone regarded the rebels as no more than a scabby itch.
Zhou Yi returned to his room, sat cross-legged on the bed, and began carefully studying the Heavenly Fox Secret Canon.
The Heavenly Fox Secret Canon consisted of three volumes, detailing cultivation through the nine grades.
The first volume concerned Body Refining, divided into three stages: skin, flesh, and bone.
Minor demons in this realm gained greatly in intelligence and physical strength, far surpassing others of their kind.
They could not yet take human form and could only rely on illusions to fool mortals.
Only after replacing their mortal bones and returning to the innate state could they become Middle Third Grade greater demons.
"Humans have no concept of mortal bones. There must be some other benchmark for reaching the innate realm-perhaps opening the eight extraordinary meridians, or something else."
Zhou Yi continued pondering the cultivation methods that followed.
The second volume covered greater demons in the Qi Refining realm. First, they drew qi into their bodies, then achieved Five Qi Returning to the Origin. Finally, the qi of the five organs gathered in the dantian and condensed into a demon core. These stages corresponded to the Middle Third Grade realms.
"A demon core... should correspond to a Daoist golden core or a Buddhist Śarīra. The Divine Dao is mysterious; it's difficult to guess how its realms differ."
Zhou Yi turned to the final volume, the third volume on Spirit Refining, which interested him most.
Those in the Spirit Refining realm could be called demon kings ruling over a region.
First, they embraced the origin and guarded the one, returned to the source and root, clarified the heart and perceived their true nature, and beheld the Yin Spirit.
Then, they refined qi and spirit together, drawing qi into the spirit and transforming the yin within the soul into yang.
They continually nurtured their Yang Spirit until it could finally leave the body.
Once the Yang Spirit was formed, they could roam the four seas at dawn and rest in the eight wildernesses at dusk, embrace the bright moon in long slumber, breathe clouds and rosy mists, and feed on flower dew... The final two thousand characters were plainly the work of someone lost in obsessive fantasies, writing their imagined vision of immortals into the cultivation method.
"???"
Zhou Yi read it over and over. He recognized every character and understood every phrase, yet strung together, they left him utterly bewildered.
He could roughly grasp the principles in the volumes on Body Refining and Qi Refining, and could simulate them with the magical power within him.
Zhou Yi could control the magical power cultivated through the Yellow Court Dao Scripture however he pleased. If he wished, he could immediately condense a golden core in his dantian, his belly, or even his palm.
Yet embracing the origin and guarding the one, returning to the source and root, clarifying the heart and perceiving his true nature, and beholding the Yin Spirit were difficult to understand, let alone accomplish.
The very first hurdle in the Spirit Refining volume had him firmly stuck.
Closing his eyes in contemplation, sitting in meditation to refine qi, emptying his mind...
He tried all manner of methods, yet found no trace of a Yin Spirit.
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