Follow the General to train his body through martial arts!!
The joy came so suddenly that Ning Dashun was overcome with delight. He grabbed Lang Jiuchuan by the shoulder with one large hand and said, “What did you say — following me for martial arts training can protect him? Do you mean this?”
Keep talking, keep talking — he could listen to this all day!
Lang Jiuchuan’s brow furrowed. She glanced sidelong at the large hand on her shoulder.
Ning Dashun felt the frailty of the bones beneath his palm and immediately released her, asking, “Ah, I got too carried away with happiness — I didn’t grip you too hard, did I? Don’t take it to heart. In my eyes, you’re just like a daughter to this old man. Well, no — my age, I’d probably be more like your grandfather.”
“It’s nothing.”
“But what you just said — is it true?” Ning Dashun asked carefully.
Lang Jiuchuan replied, “What would be the point of saying something like that as a joke?”
Ning Dashun immediately turned to Ou Luozhong. “Surname-Ou old fool, did you hear that? This little one is being raised in my General’s Manor from now on.”
Ou Luozhong grew anxious. “The child is still so young.” He looked toward Lang Jiuchuan. “Actually — the business about favorable birth characters and martial arts training — couldn’t any martial arts master with similar qualities do just as well?”
“Certainly one could,” Lang Jiuchuan said, “but when there is such a fine resource already so close at hand in the maternal grandfather, why go seeking farther afield? A grandfather by blood — wouldn’t he be more devoted, more attentive, more wholehearted in his teaching than a stranger?”
Ning Dashun gave a huff. “He’s just being petty, afraid I’ll steal the child.”
“As long as it is for the child’s good, what cannot be conceded? It’s not as though you won’t see each other.” Lang Jiuchuan shook her head. “I have no intention of separating grandfather and grandchild. There are no outsiders here, so you all know how perilous it was when he came into the world — he nearly had his life-force snatched away by that ghost child. His constant crying is also because he received a terrible fright while still in the womb, and was marked by malevolent yin energy. Remaining at the side of someone with sufficient yang vigor is nothing but good for his weak birth characters, and can serve as protection for him.”
Ou Luozhong grew more serious.
Lang Jiuchuan looked at the child once more and said, “I’ve just drawn a soul-settling and fright-calming talisman on him. In a moment I’ll write out a prescription for a medicinal bath for him — soaking in it will help him grow in a more stable and steady way.”
Hmm, somehow it sounded rather like caring for a little cat or dog.
Jiangche said, “You’re being quite attentive toward this little one.”
Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze held a softness that had not been there before. “He is the first newborn I’ve laid eyes on since I came back to life, after all — and one I saved myself.”
People and people — it all comes down to fate.
Ning Dashun looked at Ou Luozhong with a provocative and triumphant gleam. Hear that? Think bigger. You already have two grandsons and a granddaughter — what’s wrong with letting me raise this one? I’m not going to harm him.
Ou Luozhong couldn’t be bothered to deal with him, and said, “Then we’ll trouble Ninth Young Lady.”
Lang Jiuchuan said, “Have the things needed for the needles prepared. I’ll rest here for a short while and go in to administer them shortly.”
“Alright, alright.”
Lang Jiuchuan found a meditation cushion and sat down, crossing her legs, placing both hands on her knees, and said to Jiangche, “Guard my meditation.”
Jiangche drifted out, his presence strengthening, enclosing her within it.
Lang Jiuchuan formed hand seals and drew the energy of heaven and earth into her body, guiding it through her limbs and every part of her frame, completing the Great Heavenly Cycle.
Ning Dashun snuck a glance and saw the girl’s whole body glowing faintly. His expression grew solemn. He pressed his lips together, pulled Ou Luozhong aside, and asked in a low voice, “What exactly happened? I was worried about Qionger’s delivery, and the servants couldn’t tell me the full story either. Explain everything from the beginning.”
Ou Luozhong, seeing that Lang Jiuchuan was channeling her energy, led him to another side room and sat down. He drained his cup of tea in one go, let out a long sigh, and then recounted the events of the day from start to finish.
Ning Dashun listened with his brows drawn tight. He had seen the Ou family’s youngest daughter before — she rarely met strangers, slight and delicate, a perfectly good little girl who, because of her constitution, had grown fearful and withdrawn, unable to socialize with ease. Quite a pitiable thing.
And now she had actually been possessed by a malevolent soul?
“Are there truly such terrifying and bizarre things in this world?” Ning Dashun was a military man — his own body carried the ferocity of a warrior, and he had been through many a battlefield. That fierce and brutal energy was far more daunting than any ghost. Ghostly entities dared not approach someone like him.
So he had never encountered anything so outlandish and incomprehensible as this.
Ou Luozhong sighed. “I would rather it weren’t so. But it exists nonetheless. And now, Miaonan’s eyes…” He trailed off.
Ning Dashun was quiet for a moment, then said, “Men like us who swing swords for a living — we don’t understand the finer things in life. Let me put it plainly: once you’re on the battlefield, whether it’s a leg or an arm you lose, or even the sight in your eyes — as long as you make it off that battlefield alive and get home, you’ve won. Old Ou — apart from life and death, nothing truly matters. If a pair of eyes can be exchanged for her life, what does it matter if she cannot see? Though of course, this is for Miaonan herself to decide. Neither you nor I are her — we cannot speak for anyone else, and we cannot know how she will feel about it.”
He rested one arm against the small side table and continued, “Is it better to spend a brief time seeing all of the world’s affairs with those eyes — its good and its evil alike — or to savor the full range of life’s flavors for the long years ahead? That is her choice to make. However she decides, it will be no one else’s doing. Because the eyes are on her body, and the pain will be hers alone to bear. All that we as parents can do is support her with everything we have — but we cannot walk her path of life for her.”
Ou Luozhong nodded. “The reasoning, I understand perfectly well. But when I truly think of her never being able to see again — this old father’s heart feels as though it’s being cut by a blade.”
Ning Dashun would not kick a man when he was down, so he merely reached across the small table and patted him on the shoulder in comfort. Afraid of leaving him too deep in his thoughts, he changed the subject: “By the way — the Lang family has a little girl who knows the arts of the Mystic Gate? I’ve never heard of this.”
“I hear she was sent to be raised on an estate from a young age because of poor health. Ah, and she is the posthumous daughter of the Lang family’s Anbei General.”
Ning Dashun had just lifted his teacup, and set it down again, startled. “Who? The Anbei General — Lang Zhengfan? She is Zhengfan’s posthumous daughter?”
Seeing him nod, an image rose unbidden before Ning Dashun’s eyes — a brilliant and insolent young face, full of vigor. Truly a rare talent for generalship, someone he had greatly admired among the younger generation. Who could have imagined he would fall on the battlefield so soon.
“It never occurred to me that the Lang family would have someone like this — a born inheritor of the Dao. Poor health, I suspect, is just the cover story. Could she have been sent to the Mystic Clan to study under a master? Those few insufferably proud members of the Mystic Clan — don’t they select talented and gifted people every three years to take in as disciples?” Ning Dashun said, with no small amount of contempt in his tone.
Ou Luozhong shook his head. “If the Lang family truly had someone who entered the Mystic Clan, how could they have fallen into such decline? That can’t possibly be the case.”
That was fair enough. Compared to forming ties with powerful noble families, having a connection with the Mystic Clan was in a league entirely of its own — just look at the Qi family, more arrogant than anyone else, all because one of their daughters had become one of the Mystic Clan’s own.
“If she isn’t, and yet this girl possesses such innate aptitude for the Dao — if the Mystic Clan found out, I wonder how badly they’d be smarting!” Ning Dashun said with a rather sardonic laugh.
Ou Luozhong imagined the unbearably smug faces of the Mystic Clan being thoroughly deflated, and — well, he couldn’t help feeling a small, shameful surge of satisfaction. After all, back then, he had debased himself completely just to beg them for a single talisman on behalf of his daughter.
“Master, Ninth Young Lady has already gone to administer the needles to the Second Young Mistress.” A servant came forward to inform the two men.