The moment Elder Ke died, his soul drifted free from his body and flung itself at Lang Jiuchuan with a torrent of seething hatred.

“You — you are the one who killed my god.” Elder Ke was wreathed in black energy: the malevolent, resentment-laden aura of an intensely hostile vengeful ghost.

Even in death, he did not believe he had done anything wrong.

Lang Jiuchuan brought out the Dizhong and gave it a gentle shake. The commanding toll of the bell resonated as though it had descended from the nine-tiered heavenly halls, and the sound swept through his newly-departed soul, rattling it thoroughly. He visibly weakened in an instant.

“Even if I granted you that she was a god — I can strike down gods. Did you think I couldn’t deal with you?” Lang Jiuchuan’s smile was cold and contemptuous. “And furthermore — I’ll say it one final time. That was not a god. That was a creature of evil. Something you yourself cultivated and fed — using your own mother’s bones.”

“No — she was a god…”

“Honglian never once sought to become a god. She never harmed a single person. In death, if she had gone to the underworld as she should, she could have been reborn into a new life. Instead, she is now scattered and gone entirely — dispersed into nothing, carrying a body of filth and stain.”

“You understand nothing. They owed her that. She was so beautiful, so kind — it was this village that destroyed her. So what was wrong with us taking an eye for an eye? A life for a life is all it was. They were drenched in sin. What was wrong with making them atone?”

Lang Jiuchuan looked at the bones and said, “An eye for an eye — fine. But are you certain that’s what she wanted? Did you ever once ask her?”

Elder Ke went still.

“After everything that was done to her, if she had lost all will to live, no one could blame her. She might have wished with everything in her that time could be undone — that none of it had ever happened to her.” Lang Jiuchuan said quietly. “But what did you actually do? Every sacrifice you called an offering — how was it any different from what was done to harm her in the first place? With your own hands, you heaped more and more filth onto her soul, and in the end, you turned her into an evil thing.”

Elder Ke stared down at the skull, wide-eyed. “I was… wrong?”

“If you truly wanted revenge, you should have set fire to this corrupt village and burned it to the ground — I might have at least admired you for your filial devotion. If not that, then drag those men bodily to her grave and make them kowtow themselves to death. Not… not offer them to her as things to feed on.” Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze was indifferent as she delivered her verdict. “What you were doing was not creating a god. You were desecrating your own mother.”

Elder Ke staggered backward again and again, his eyes filled with a venom-laced devastation.

Lang Jiuchuan said nothing more. She drew out the Panguan brush, and with three strokes opened a ghost gate in the air. She tilted her head toward the opening and called out, “Anyone in there? I need an escort to lead a soul.”

A ghost officer came rushing out, flung his chain through the air, hooked Elder Ke’s soul, and hauled him away at a run.

The ghost gate closed. Lang Jiuchuan’s energy drained out of her entirely, and she sat down heavily on the floor. She was exhausted beyond words.

Silence settled over the Mountain God’s temple — nothing left but the sound of the wind.

Lang Jiuchuan turned her head. Shen Qinghe and the others were all staring at her with expressions that suggested they had just watched a ghost, and so she arranged her face into something resembling a smile. “It’s over.”

Everyone: ——!

Honestly, the smile was worse than no smile at all. It was unsettling to the core.

So when she had been speaking to the air just now, and everything she had said — had she actually been speaking to Elder Ke’s ghost, standing right there on the floor beside her?

The more they thought about it, the worse it got.

“Was he truly Honglian’s son?” Shen Qinghe asked Lang Jiuchuan.

She nodded. “If Your Lordship needs evidence to close the case, you’ll have to ask the elders of the village. They would know Elder Ke’s origins — it was a long time ago.”

Shen Qinghe walked over to the pile of bones and looked at them carefully. Slender, delicate bones — unmistakably the skeleton of a woman. He could not imagine what must have been going through Elder Ke’s mind when he had gathered up his own mother’s remains and sealed them into clay, to be worshipped day and night by the people of this village.

Perhaps in the beginning, he had been driven only by hatred — hatred for the villagers who had defiled and tormented his mother, then used her as a sacrifice to their god. The men of this village had been the first to harbor cruelty in their hearts, so why had the innocent victim been made the outcast instead?

Was it simply because she was beautiful, and a gentle widow without a husband to protect her?

And so he had raged. He had raged against the village for conjuring a god out of nothing, and so he thought: if that’s how it is, then I’ll create a god myself. He sealed Honglian inside a clay statue, then played out his own theater of divine manifestation to make the god appear real, so that the villagers would willingly kneel before the Mountain Goddess, devoutly making their offerings.

And in the end — he had genuinely summoned an evil god. No — an evil thing.

Shen Qinghe didn’t quite know what to say. Even those who deserve pity have something to despise.

Lang Jiuchuan heard Jiangche speak up in her mind, and said, “Oh — and behind this temple, there’s a cliff with a bottom full of bones. It’s likely connected to this cave through some passage — there seems to be a draft of air moving between them. As for those two young men of noble birth…” she paused, “they may not have fared well. When Honglian appeared, the blood scent was extremely strong.”

Everyone’s expression changed at once — especially the guards who had accompanied them, some of whom served the two noble households directly.

Shen Qinghe turned to Qian Cheng and said, “Split up and proceed in two groups. One group will investigate this cave—” He stopped mid-sentence and looked over at Lang Jiuchuan. “Now that Elder Ke and the evil spirit have both been destroyed, is there still any danger in this temple?”

Lang Jiuchuan said, “No more danger. Just be careful near the cliff edge — don’t lose your footing.”

Reassured, Shen Qinghe gave out assignments, directing some to inspect the temple and the cave, others to summon those waiting outside the village, and additionally to send someone to find the county magistrate of Tongcheng — the village fell under his jurisdiction, and with an incident of this magnitude, he had no choice but to get involved whether he wanted to or not.

There was also the matter of the bones. The dead deserved respect — they would need to be properly collected and laid to rest.

Shen Qinghe put on a pair of gloves and cradled the skull in both hands, intending to carry it over to join the rest of the remains. But the skull, which had been sitting perfectly intact on the floor, was caught by a sudden gust of wind the moment it reached his hands. Like sand, it began to slowly dissolve and disperse, drifting apart between his palms — and the rest of the bones on the ground followed suit.

Shen Qinghe stood completely still. His hands were trembling slightly, and he was struggling to maintain his composure as he looked over at Lang Jiuchuan. “——?”

It wasn’t him who had done that.

“Dust to dust, earth to earth — this is the most fitting end for her.” Lang Jiuchuan watched the bone ash drift and scatter in every direction, her expression tranquil.

Shen Qinghe pressed his lips together and let out a quiet sigh.

Thud thud thud.

Hurried footsteps came from behind the lotus pedestal — it was Qian Cheng, returning from where he had gone. His face was the color of ash. “Your Lordship, miss — back there, back there…”

The two exchanged a glance, rose, and followed.

The Mountain God’s temple was, just as Lang Jiuchuan had said, a place with much more hidden within it than its surface suggested. Inside the cave there was a passage, concealed behind a hidden door set into the stone wall, leading directly to the cliff face. Within the passageway, oil lamps hung from the walls, alongside bright red sashes and little red lanterns, all festive and bright.

But the deeper they went, the heavier the blood scent became, until at last they came to a recessed opening in the cave wall. Two guards stood at the entrance, braced against the doorframe and retching violently.

Shen Qinghe’s heart sank at the sight.

He walked to the opening. The heavy, cloying stench of blood hit him head-on, and he had no choice but to cover his nose. He stepped inside and looked — and both his hands clenched slowly into fists.

Lang Jiuchuan peered in beside him. Red everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Women’s personal effects were arranged in full on every surface. On a ceremonial table sat a pair of dragon-and-phoenix candles, plates of various fruits, a pair of red mandarin duck cups, red wine goblets — all of it declaring unmistakably what this place was.

A bridal chamber.

And on the ground lay three freshly-made dried corpses. Every drop of blood had been drained from them. Every shred of vital soul energy was gone. They were nothing but skin stretched over bones, as though the blood and flesh had been sucked dry through the skin itself. The manner of their deaths was too horrific to look at directly.

Shen Qinghe had already recognized two of them — the young men from Changyue Viscount’s household and the family of Prince Kangle.

This was a grave crisis. Both families were from the aristocracy. At the sight of these remains, they were likely to go into a frenzy — and petition the throne to have this village razed to the ground.