Hiss.

Struck by the Panguan brush, the black serpent let out a sharp, piercing cry. A spark flew from the brush’s tip, landed on its body, and caught flame.

The serpent’s hissing was swallowed instantly by the fire. The black sinister energy erupted from its form — and just as quickly, was extinguished.

Outside the temple, Elder Ke felt the black serpent spiral out of control. He spat a mouthful of dark blood, his bloodshot eyes going wide and round. The white at his temples spread and deepened rapidly, and age took hold of his face all at once.

His expression shifted violently. He rushed forward.

Lang Jiuchuan recalled the Panguan brush and looked down at the black serpent — reduced now to not even a trace of ash — with cold disdain.

Jiangche said, “Don’t stand there staring. Move now, or these people will die inside that illusion, offering their lives in atonement.”

Lang Jiuchuan turned to look and saw that Shen Qinghe and the others had all lost themselves to the vision. Their faces were twisted with fury and grief, tears streaming freely as they knelt on the ground and prostrated themselves — with the kind of devotion and ferocity that showed they had no regard for their own survival.

Within the Mountain God temple at that moment, thick waves of blood energy and resentment intertwined, fusing into a mass of malevolent force — like a vast net woven from dark corruption that ensnared the group inside, pressing them violently to repent. More alarming still, one among them had already begun doing harm to himself in his most vulnerable place.

Lang Jiuchuan: !

Now she understood.

This was why Female Village’s sacrifices were young men, and why the Mountain God took young men as its bride-grooms. It was because of that incomparably beautiful widow — Red Lotus. She had died beneath prejudice and the desire and lust of men.

The beginning of everything was the village men giving in to covetous desire — and so they too would perish at the mercy of their own desires, generation after generation. Men were not worthy to survive.

As if in answer to Lang Jiuchuan’s thoughts, the dark energy surged with renewed force, as if screaming its proclamation aloud — that every man must be buried with it in atonement, that every man must pay with his life.

Lang Jiuchuan hesitated no longer. She unhooked the Dizhong, gave it a single shake, and fused her heart’s intent with its resonance.

Dong.

Like a bell from the heavens, carrying an immense and overwhelming Dao intent, it shattered through the dense, smothering net of dark energy — restoring clarity, and revealing the Mountain God temple in its true form.

Shen Qinghe was the first to come to himself. His complexion had a greenish cast, and his hands trembled slightly. He looked at Lang Jiuchuan. “What was that just now?”

“The origin of Female Village’s sacrificial marriages to the Mountain God,” Lang Jiuchuan said evenly.

The guards, too, broke free from the illusion one by one and looked at each other, all of them ashen. Had they not just been on the verge of doing harm to their most valued possessions in penance?

Though it had never been their sin to begin with — and yet they had been prepared to destroy themselves for that pitiable woman.

Several of them moved at once to stand behind Lang Jiuchuan, forming a line, taking comfort in being close to Miss Lang.

“Hmph. Pathetic,” Jiangche remarked with profound contempt.

Shen Qinghe had, after all, weathered storms large and small. He steadied himself after hearing her words and said, “So — the woman named Red Lotus, after her death, her resentment refused to disperse. By means of these sacrificial offerings, she took her revenge upon the men of Red Maple Village, and transformed it into Female Village?”

“What depth of resentment must that have been, to turn a village full of people into an all-female village over these past decades? This amounts to no man escaping her reach, not across generations.” A guard named Qian Cheng murmured half to himself.

“She bore no resentment to begin with.” Lang Jiuchuan shook her head. “Having seen through the filth of the world, she felt that if beauty had brought her only extreme suffering, then death could only feel like release. She carried no hatred. Someone else made her resent. Someone else turned her into what she became.”

The crowd paused.

“What does that mean?”

Lang Jiuchuan raised her head and took in the Mountain God temple. The walls were painted over in red with lotus blossoms, and between them, images of a divine woman. At the center, a stone platform held a statue of a goddess standing atop a lotus flower — her features gentle and beautiful, her gaze compassionate, one hand raised in the gesture of bestowing grace, as though she were illuminating all living beings.

Before the platform, an offering table bore fresh fruit, sweets, and sticks of sandalwood incense as thick as an infant’s arm, burning steadily. On either side of the goddess, two lotus pedestals held countless small oil lamps, their light projected in a shape that bloomed like a beautiful red lotus.

Before the Mountain God, several prayer cushions were arranged, each one embroidered in silk thread with a great lotus flower, lifelike and exquisite.

Lotus blossoms — there was not a single corner of the Mountain God temple that did not carry the lotus’s imprint.

“She looks like the Red Lotus from before,” someone cried out suddenly in alarm.

The assembled crowd looked carefully at the goddess statue’s features. Cold sweat broke across their backs. Was that not the Red Lotus they had seen in the illusion?

Could there be some connection between the two?

“It is her.” Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze settled heavy and dark on the statue, her eyes cold.

This was the so-called Mountain God of Female Village. Red Lotus.

The crowd looked at the statue again more closely. Whether from ideas planted before they could guard against them, or from something else — having witnessed Red Lotus’s suffering in the illusion, looking now at the Mountain God statue, they could no longer see compassion in its eyes. Instead there was a thread of sinister allure, as though it were luring people in.

Yet in the illusion, before misfortune befell her, Red Lotus’s eyes had always held light, always held a smile. Her gaze had been purely gentle. She had lived with hope for her days.

After what had been done to her, the light in those eyes went out, replaced by numbness and despair.

But the eyes of this Mountain God statue held something else entirely — a subtle, unsettling seductiveness, a dark undertone that made people uneasy.

“Looking at this divine image now, I felt nothing off about it before — but now it seems very strange. Half the face of a god, compassionate; the other half like a demon — if that isn’t the very picture of something that straddles the sacred and the corrupt, I don’t know what is.” Shen Qinghe frowned, his right thumb and forefinger turning slowly against one another. “This Mountain God is a perfect likeness of Red Lotus — that cannot be a coincidence. Red Lotus suffered what she suffered, and the village of Red Maple gradually became Female Village. Even if Red Lotus herself is not behind the haunting and revenge, whoever was closest to her cannot escape involvement.”

“Her son!” Qian Cheng’s mind made the leap quickly.

“Whether it is as you say — we would need to ask the person directly.” Lang Jiuchuan tilted her head slightly to look into the darkness at the right rear of the temple. “Elder Ke — what do you think?”

The crowd started. They spun around — and sure enough, there was Elder Ke, stepping out of the shadows. No one had known when he had come to stand there.

The guards’ hands moved to the weapons at their waists.

Elder Ke stepped forward, his eyes fixed on Lang Jiuchuan. “This old man knew from the start you were trouble. I did not expect you to be quite this much trouble — you managed to evade my Little Black, and you even killed it.”

Lang Jiuchuan nudged the empty air at her feet with her toe. “So that shadow-serpent of yours was called Little Black. The name suited it — black as pitch, and ugly to match. I happen to be someone who, by nature, enjoys dealing with shadowy schemes. Sending that kind of creature against me is nothing but walking into your own death. You cannot lay that at my door.”

The crowd twitched collectively. She really did know how to talk — she had managed to claim the word shadowy for herself while turning it into a compliment.

“Glib-tongued wretch — are you not afraid the God will punish you!” Elder Ke snapped harshly.

Lang Jiuchuan laughed — though the warmth did not reach her eyes. She pointed at the statue of Red Lotus and said with contemptuous mockery, “A god? Do you mean the corrupt god you have been making offerings to?”