The village lay a hundred li beyond Tong City. Lang Jiuchuan set out with Shen Qinghe from Wu Jing, and they would not arrive until the following day — the journey could not be rushed, not with her frail condition. There was always the risk of jolting her to pieces.

Lang Jiuchuan did not return home that night, and the Bai Family erupted like a pot of oil set alight.

Cui Shi felt her illness growing worse just from the news.

The other two households, upon hearing of it, inwardly grumbled to varying degrees. Lang Jiu had gone too wild at the manor. She truly was like an untamed horse — impossible to rein in.

“Grandfather’s funeral rites were only just concluded. Everyone is supposed to remain in the manor observing mourning. She says she won’t come back and simply doesn’t — she’s far too presumptuous.” Lang Cailing had no one else to complain to, so she went to Lang Caiyao’s courtyard to voice her grievances.

Lang Caiyao was sketching a floral pattern, a faint trace of irritation between her brows. “Didn’t Madam Shen’s Nanny say she would be spending the time at the temple in prayer for Grandfather’s and Grandmother’s souls?”

“And you just believe that?” Lang Cailing pursed her lips. “How could she possibly know Madam Shen? She’s been living out at the manor the whole time. And now, the moment she arrives, Madam Shen invites her to pray together? Only a fool would believe it.”

Lang Caiyao set down her wolf-hair brush, rinsed her hands in the large porcelain basin beside her, and looked at her. “Whether one believes it or not is beside the point. Whatever she does, Madam Shen is backing her up.”

Lang Cailing was momentarily at a loss, displeased. “Wait — whose side are you on? You’re speaking up for her.”

“Seventh Sister, we are all family. There are no sides among us. She is at prayer — that’s better than if she were up to something else.” Lang Caiyao said lightly. “She is now Lang Jiu, the officially recognized ninth daughter of the Lang Family, back in the fold. You, I, she — we are all sisters of the Lang Family. If her reputation suffers, can ours remain untarnished? Her health is poor; she may linger a few more years. But you and I have already come of age. Once the mourning period ends, we will be engaged, and then married — inevitably before her. So regardless of whether she is unconventional, do not speak ill of her. It serves neither of us.”

There was one more thing she left unsaid: if the three households were to divide the family, the second household would have only Lang Jiuchuan as a lone daughter — she could take in a husband who marries into the family, which gave her far more options than either of them had.

Lang Cailing’s expression shifted. She opened and closed her mouth, then muttered, “I was only saying it here to you — not outside. I was just curious, that’s all.”

Lang Caiyao picked up the floral pattern she had just finished and lifted it to blow on it lightly, her voice measured and quiet. “Curiosity kills the cat. Once we are married, each sister will have her own husband’s household. It will not be like these days in our parents’ home, where sisters can be together whenever they please.”

No matter how close sisters might be, once they married, they became members of two different families. From that point on, visits were those of relatives. In stricter households, even seeing one another would be difficult. Take their eldest sister — she had married far away, and in the years since, aside from letters, how often had they actually met? Their second sister had married within Wu Jing, and they saw her only at the new year and major festivals, or occasionally at a garden party or tea gathering. Nothing like being able to see one another any day they wished.

So there was really no need to guard against Lang Jiuchuan too closely, nor to become overly familiar with her. Sisters always parted in the end. Good feeling might lead to frequent correspondence. As for those without — well, that was just surface courtesy.

Lang Cailing stared wide-eyed, a little uncomfortable. “The way you talk about marriage — you sound so matter-of-fact about it.”

Lang Caiyao glanced at her with a quiet snort of amusement. “At our age, did you really think we’d be staying home a few more years?”

They were both fifteen or sixteen — by all conventional reckoning, they should have been engaged and preparing for marriage long since. It was only that their marital prospects had encountered one complication after another. Lang Caiyao had met three potential matches, and found problems with each — one had kept a mistress in secret; another had a hidden ailment; the third was all respectability on the surface. As for Lang Cailing, she was simply too proud of being a young lady of a Marquis’s household, with standards too high for her own good.

In the Great Dan Kingdom, women generally married somewhat later. Many were only betrothed at fourteen or fifteen and did not wed until seventeen or eighteen. Among farming households, where every able body was needed for labor, some daughters didn’t leave until they were nineteen or twenty.

Even the Lang Family daughters who had already married had all done so at seventeen.

But no one went past twenty, either. By then, people would start calling a girl an old maid — her value in the marriage market diminished.

Lang Cailing propped her cheeks in her hands, staring blankly at the new floral pattern, eyes vacant. “I wonder what kind of family I’ll be matched into.”

Seeing that she had stopped dwelling on Lang Jiuchuan, Lang Caiyao exhaled imperceptibly.

While her sisters spoke of her as unconventional, the Lang Jiuchuan in question was being helped down from the carriage by a sturdy maidservant. The oversized fur-lined cloak dragged along the ground, a ring of fluffy fox fur wrapped snugly around her neck, making her face look even smaller. And the ill-fitting cloak only made her appear more slender and frail.

It was Madam Shen’s cloak. Seeing that Lang Jiuchuan had left wearing only a thin wrap and with no maidservant attending her, Madam Shen had not only given her the cloak but also assigned a strong maidservant to accompany her.

Shen Qinghe, also wrapped in a cloak, looked over and frowned. “The village is further up the mountain. The path is uneven — shall I have the maidservant carry you up?”

With this body of hers, looking at it honestly — the mountain paths would be treacherous. He didn’t want to be answerable to the Lang Family if she fell.

The Lang Family didn’t seem to know how to handle things, either. She was, after all, the daughter of a Marquis’s household. To send her out without so much as a personal maidservant in attendance was remarkably thoughtless.

Lang Jiuchuan shook her head. “There’s no need. My lord need only look after himself. Let us resolve this quickly.”

Resolve it quickly, and collect payment.

Shen Qinghe’s body stiffened slightly. He followed her gaze downward, then looked away, his hand half-lifting toward his chest before dropping again.

His backbone of integrity.

She had said she wanted his backbone of integrity.

It sounded quite incomprehensible. He couldn’t begin to imagine how to hand over a backbone — tear himself open and present it with both hands?

She had said it didn’t need to be so gruesome. She could take it simply with his consent.

Losing one bone of integrity would not cost him his life — but it would leave him with a persistent dull ache in his chest afterward. And he would become… extraordinarily susceptible to empathy.

He hadn’t quite understood what extraordinarily susceptible to empathy meant in practice. But not long afterward, when this man — who had bled without ever shedding a tear — broke down sobbing uncontrollably, he finally understood.

Shen Qinghe looked toward the mountain ahead. This was his second time coming here, and for the first time, the mountain felt like a great beast with its maw stretched wide, waiting for prey to step inside.

And on the mountain, the mountain god’s shrine seemed to stir and roil. Dense, viscous blood energy circled the temple in a slow spiral, forming a kind of small whirlwind.

A faint, muffled shriek drifted from within, and quickly fell silent again — leaving only the dark crimson-black blood energy, now thicker than before.

Lang Jiuchuan seemed to sense something and raised her head to look at the snow-blanketed mountain. A flash of revulsion crossed her eyes.

What a foul aura. Enough to make even the green hills weep.

“Big Cat — get up. Time to work. Scout ahead.”

The Jiang Che curled up in her spiritual core playing dead did not move a single hair. Did it think she was an actual cat — do whatever the owner says? It had dignity, didn’t it?

Lang Jiuchuan laughed coldly. Playing dead, are we?

She said nothing, and her spiritual power suddenly moved. She drove the full force of her soul against the spiritual core, as though intent on pressing Jiang Che out entirely — a ruthless determination, even as, constrained by the binding contract, her own soul trembled from the strain.

If you want to go wild, then stop arguing. We can both walk away, and that’ll be the end of it.

Jiang Che was being crushed until its tiger form began to distort. Furious, it grabbed its own whiskers and bellowed, “Stop — you madwoman! Fine, I’ll go, alright?!”