The First Legendary Demonic Scholar

Chapter 113: Chapter 113: Someone’s Here.

A faint smile appeared on Shen Yuan’s face. It was cold and considering.

He may not have realized, Shen Yuan was enjoying the thrill. The feeling of living on the edge, where his life was constantly in danger.

The dance of life and death lit something inside of him. Something that made him seem more... alive.

Yet, the smile disappeared faster than it appeared.

’Careful now’, he reminded himself, reaching once more for his brush and the unfinished ledger waiting on the desk. ’Knowing the truth and surviving it are two very different accomplishments.’

He sat back downand resumed his transcription exactly where he’d left off, expression settling back into the same practiced, diligent calm the rest of the household expected of him, giving nothing away.

The brush moved in smooth, practiced strokes across the final line of the ledger, ink settling into place with the same mechanical precision Shen Yuan had applied to every page before it.

He set the brush down, letting it rest against the holder, and rose from the desk, gathering the finished scroll carefully before stepping out of the small chamber.

Lin Xia was waiting in the main hall where she was supervising rest of the servants.

She was just sitting there with her arms crossed and when she saw him, the sharp hostility she’d worn earlier was nowhere to be seen. Instead she looked more distracted, almost dismissive.

Like she no longer cared about him.

Shen Yuan held out the completed scroll. "It’s finished."

She took it without bothering to check the contents, a rare oversight given how meticulously she’d inspected his work before.

Her eyes flicked over him once, briefly, before she waved a hand toward the courtyard beyond.

"Take the rest of the day off."

Shen Yuan blinked, the response catching him off guard enough that he nearly let it show. "...The rest of the day?"

"You heard me." Lin Xia’s tone carried none of her usual venom, replaced instead by something almost distracted, as if her mind were already elsewhere. "Go rest. There’s nothing else for you today."

Not Suspicious At All.

A woman who did not let the servants take a breath even when it was past their work time was now suddenly telling him to take the day off.

If that was not a bad sign, he did not know what was.

Shen Yuan inclined his head regardless, offering the same practiced deference he always did, and turned to make his way back toward his shed, silver eyes distant with calculation.

’She hands me confidential documents, deliberately withdraws surveillance so I can read them undisturbed, and now gives me an unearned day of rest immediately after.’ He walked slowly through the courtyard, cataloguing the timing of it all. ’Either she wants me relaxed and unguarded for something, or someone above her ordered this, and she has no idea why either.’

Neither possibility comforted him.

But he was more inclined to believe it was the first scenario.

Since the surveillance of Bang Fo was nowhere to be felt. It was like he had disappeared somewhere.

’Did he go out?’

He reached his shed without incident, the familiar weight of the estate’s surveillance technique settling back over the property as the afternoon wore into evening.

Curious, he had decided to test the limits of his cultivation-concealing technique while the estate’s surveillance pressed quietly back into place around him.

Shen Yuan sat cross-legged on his cot, closed his eyes, and reached for the unclaimed notification still hovering patiently at the edge of his awareness.

’Let’s see what two secrets are worth.’

He accepted it.

Warmth surged through his dantian immediately, far more forceful than any previous breakthrough he’d experienced.

Shen Yuan’s breath caught as he felt the compressed layers of qi within his dantian blocking his break through shatter one after another.

Walls he hadn’t even fully realized were holding him back crumbling away in rapid succession, his cultivation surging upward with a speed that left even his usually composed mind momentarily stunned.

〈Ding!〉

[Breakthrough Successful!]

[Current Cultivation: Ninth Stage Qi Gathering Realm — Peak]

[Qi Strands: 6769/50000]

Shen Yuan opened his eyes slowly, silver irises catching the dim light of his shed as he took inventory of the change.

His dantian felt different now.

If he used to feel like a starved wolf that could eat for decades before now he felt fuller.

The denser, qi coiled tightly at its absolute limit like water pressed against the final inch of a dam wall.

He could sense, with a clarity that hadn’t been there before, exactly how close he stood to the threshold of a Major Realm breakthrough.

Peak of Qi Gathering.

He turned the thought over carefully, testing the edges of his own cultivation the way he might test the balance of a new blade.

’One more push, and I’d break into Qi condensation Realm. But... simple cultivation would take me months to achieve that.’

He needed something more.

A catalyst capable of carrying him cleanly across that threshold without risking the volatile instability that came with forcing a Major Realm breakthrough on raw qi accumulation alone.

The Profound Qi Condensation Pill. Three-star pill that came with one hundred percent purity.

A hundred percent chance of him breaking through.

Shen Yuan exhaled slowly, filing the realization away with quiet, focused patience.

He didn’t have the pill yet. But now he understood exactly why the system had dangled it in front of him as a reward for something as vague and dangerous as simply surviving a month in this estate.

’Whatever’s coming, it’s going to require more than what I currently have.’

Shen Yuan decided to continue cultivating since he was already in the state of focus and see how far he could sit through the cultivation session.

The process consumed him fully enough that time slipped past unnoticed, hours bleeding into the depths of night as he refined the technique layer by careful layer.

It was the faint creak of old wood that finally snapped him back to full awareness.

Shen Yuan’s eyes opened instantly, his body going still without any outward change, senses flaring outward in the darkness of his small shed.

’Someone’s here.’

The presence hadn’t announced itself with killing intent, there was not even the sound of footsteps.

But he could feel it in his instincts that there was someone outside the room.

His gaze snapped toward the door.

Creakk....

Slowly, silently, the wooden door of his shed began to creak open, a sliver of pale moonlight spilling across the floor as a shadowed figure stepped just beyond the threshold, framed in darkness.