Wu Jing. The first snow drifted down in scattered flurries.

Lang Jiuchuan gazed at the two large white lanterns hanging beneath the eaves, swaying violently in the north wind, each bearing the character for mourning. Her eyes narrowed to half-slits.

The divination did not deceive me.

Someone really did die.

The deceased was the grandfather of this body she now inhabited — the Marquis of Kaiping, Lang Pu.

“Ninth Young Miss, please put this on quickly.”

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her gaze. A blinding white filled her vision — it was a mourning garment. As a granddaughter, it was only natural she should don hemp and wear mourning clothes for her grandfather.

Ha. Cast aside when not needed, summoned back when needed, to play the dutiful granddaughter and see him off in death.

Seeing that she did not move for a long while, the serving woman grew somewhat impatient and was just about to urge her along, when the mourning garment was snatched from her hands. She glanced sideways — those hands that took it were long and slender with prominent knuckles, the same color as the mourning garment itself: a pale, lifeless white.

Like the hands of a dead person.

Lang Jiuchuan draped the mourning garment over her shoulders, tied the hemp rope around her waist, and fitted the mourning cap over her head. She looked at the serving woman and twisted her lips into a ghastly smile. “Do I look sufficiently mournful to you?”

The serving woman’s heart gave a violent lurch. She instinctively retreated two steps, a chill crawling up her spine.

This Ninth Young Miss had been silent and brooding the entire journey — dark and gloomy with no trace of vitality. Now clad all in white, paired with that ashen, pallid face, she looked more spectral than ever.

No wonder no one favors her. With that grim, ghostly appearance, who could possibly like her?

Lang Jiuchuan read the serving woman’s thoughts at a single glance and let out a snort of laughter. Well, am I not indeed a ghost right now.

Any skilled practitioner would see through this concealment art at a glance — the wretched state of the body beneath, stitched and patched together in the most pitiable fashion.

When this flesh had collapsed onto that mass burial ground, the tendons in the hands and feet had been severed, the eye sockets had been emptied, and a rib had gone missing from the chest cavity — broken and ruined like a tattered cloth doll.

And she had been forcibly pressed into this mangled corpse, borrowing the dead shell to return to the living, and had thus become Lang Jiuchuan, the young miss of the Marquis of Kaiping’s household.

Thinking back on it now — she still needed to settle scores with that Panguan fellow. This hellish starting condition, she refused to believe it was not personal retaliation. Why else, among all the dead souls in the world, would she alone be given a body this devastatingly broken?

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her head slightly. A round eyeball tumbled out, and she caught it with quick hands, pressing it back into the empty socket.

Tsk. A dog’s eye really isn’t suited to a human body. It keeps falling out. A human eye is what she truly needs.

At that moment, back at the mass burial ground, the wolf hound from which the eye had been gouged lay dying atop a heap of corpses, howling pitifully. Gnawing on corpses all my days, only to have a corpse gouge out my eyes. What a wretched fate!

The serving woman, seeing her dressed and ready, led her toward the side gate. A steward was already walking toward them from the opposite direction. Spotting them, he frowned with a dark expression. “Why have you taken so long?”

The serving woman had barely opened her mouth to reply when Lang Jiuchuan had already brushed past the steward and stepped through the gate.

The steward froze. His expression darkened further.

Raised in the countryside — no manners whatsoever.

He hurried after her.

Lang Jiuchuan walked straight toward the mourning hall, paying no heed to the steward’s incessant nagging in her ear. Her spiritual sense passed through her two borrowed dog eyes and took in the scenery of the Marquis’s residence.

The closer she drew to the mourning hall, the more the drifting, mournful strains of Buddhist chanting seeped into her eardrums — it was the sound of Shengren reciting the Wangsheng sutras.

“Ninth Young Miss, this way.” The steward stepped in front of her, blocking her path toward the mourning hall, and pointed to the other side.

Lang Jiuchuan glanced at him sideways and walked down the indicated path.

The steward broke into a cold sweat.

That single look had made his heart crawl with unease.

Entering the small courtyard the steward had directed her to, a Nanny stood beneath the covered walkway. Upon seeing her, the Nanny seemed to stir with some emotion. She stepped forward two paces, gave her a discreet once-over, and spoke with excitement: “Is this the Ninth Young Miss?”

Lang Jiuchuan did not reply. She simply looked past the Nanny — someone had emerged from the room within, and their eyes met.

She was clad in deep mourning, her figure thin and spare, her face expressionless. The gaze she fixed upon Lang Jiuchuan was detached and cold.

Lang Jiuchuan’s fingers twitched inside her sleeves. She blinked.

This woman — was she her mother?

She felt a faint, subtle thread of connection.

The Nanny turned toward the woman, her voice thick with emotion. “Second Madam, our Ninth Young Miss has come home.”

Cui Shi — Second Madam of the Marquis of Kaiping’s household, and Lang Jiuchuan’s birth mother — looked down at the slight, thin figure standing in the courtyard below, then slowly walked forward and came to a stop before her.

The Nanny stepped closer and said to Lang Jiuchuan, “Ninth Young Miss, please greet the Madam. This is your mother—”

“You are not my daughter!”

The ice-cold voice cut abruptly across the Nanny’s words.

The Nanny’s expression changed, her face flooding with shock. A moment later, she sighed and spoke again, helplessly: “Madam…”

Cui Shi paid no heed to her unfinished protest. She simply stared at Lang Jiuchuan with unwavering eyes, a measure of cold indifference in her gaze, and repeated the words: “You are not my daughter!”