When Lang Jiuchuan opened her eyes, she was met with the sight of entirely unfamiliar bed curtains. Startled, she tried to sit up — but her vision went dark, her head rang and buzzed, and there was not a single part of her body that did not ache, as though she had been ground over by a stone wheel.

She couldn’t help but let out a groan. Her small face, no bigger than the palm of a hand, had not a trace of color — ashen white, painful to behold.

It hurt terribly.

Her body ached; her divine soul ached even more acutely — the pain made her body tremble uncontrollably, and even lifting a single finger felt laborious and exhausting.

“You’re awake?” A’Piao’s voice came from her right.

Lang Jiuchuan turned her head and met a pair of crimson ghost eyes surveying her with scrutiny, tinged with a hint of curiosity. She furrowed her brow.

“You truly are more reckless than I imagined. With a soul as incomplete as yours, you actually dared to glimpse the foreknowledge of what is to come — that you didn’t end up with your soul scattered and obliterated means you must have accumulated great merit.” A’Piao snorted lightly. For if she hadn’t accumulated great merit, how would his master have shown up to safeguard and escort her through?

Lang Jiuchuan said nothing. She closed her eyes and called out to Jiangche within her spiritual court.

Jiangche’s spirit was curled up in a corner, looking thoroughly withdrawn and shut off from the world. When she called to it, even its tail swished only with weary, halfhearted effort.

What had gotten into it?

Lang Jiuchuan saw that it wasn’t speaking. She herself had been so ravaged by the heavenly punishment’s backlash that she had no more energy to deal with it, and simply waited for the dizziness in her head to pass before forcing herself upright. She looked at A’Piao with her white, drained face and asked, “Where is the result of my divination?”

A’Piao pulled from his sleeve the paper she had drawn on, along with a hand mirror, and held them directly before her face. “Right here — it won’t run away on you. But first take a look at yourself — you look more like a dead ghost than I do.”

The polished surface of the hand mirror reflected her face — no trace of color anywhere, dark shadows under her eyes, lips dry and pale, the very picture of someone with little life left. Only her two eyes remained — jet black and clear, deep as still water without a visible bottom.

All the vitality she had painstakingly restored — undone in one stroke, returning her to what she’d been when she had first come back from the dead.

And that — what was that bump on her forehead? Had someone ambushed her?

Lang Jiuchuan gave a short, hoarse laugh. “I glimpsed the foreknowledge of what is to come. Heaven’s punishment didn’t make me answer for it with my life — I’d call that a victory.”

Most importantly, although this divination had exacted a devastating toll, she had also grasped the Venerable’s method of divination by yarrow. The next time she performed a reading, it would come far more easily.

But this manner of glimpsing the future — it could not be done more than three times. Otherwise, even if she were the heaven’s own favored child, she would not survive it.

And this time…

Lang Jiuchuan lowered her gaze to her own slender ten fingers. “Was it Manager A’Piao who helped deflect one of the calamities for me?”

Glimpsing foreknowledge drew the severest heavenly punishment. She felt that the price she had paid was more than this — her divine soul torn, her body feeling as though flesh and bone had been broken apart and reassembled. Yet everything was still intact, still whole?

Such good fortune didn’t exist.

When the heavenly punishment fell, she had not been entirely unconscious — she had clearly felt something help bear the brunt of it for a moment.

A’Piao’s gaze flickered, and with imperious pride he said, “What you ought to be grateful for is that this divination was performed here in our Tongtian Pavilion. The Pavilion carries the blessing of the Pavilion Master’s power — even heavenly punishment can be softened and deflected slightly on your behalf. If not for that, you would be touring the underworld by now.”

Was that so?

Lang Jiuchuan’s gaze flickered lightly, but she did not refute him. She said, “Then I owe your Pavilion Master a debt of gratitude. I don’t even know how to address them — if the occasion calls for it, I really must set up a longevity tablet in their honor and make offerings day and night, to express the grace I’ve received.”

Old… old person…

A’Piao’s gaze stalled momentarily. Thinking of his own master — being called an “old person” actually seemed… fitting enough.

As though guided by some irresistible impulse, he let slip a name: “Feng Ya. My master’s name is Feng Ya — the ‘Feng’ of Fengdu in the underworld, and the ‘Ya’ of boundless suffering without shore.”

Feng Ya.

Lang Jiuchuan’s mind was struck by a sudden, sharp jolt — a piercing, agonizing pain.

A’Piao was startled. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts.” Lang Jiuchuan clutched her head, her voice trembling. The moment that name had passed through her mind, her divine soul had flared with an acute, stabbing pain.

A’Piao hurriedly rummaged through his sleeve, produced a box of purple sandalwood, opened it, and retrieved a crimson-gold medicinal pellet which he placed in her mouth. “This is a Yang-Restoration Soul-Recovery Elixir.”

Lang Jiuchuan swallowed it without a second thought. The elixir’s potency dissolved swiftly on her tongue and slid down her throat into her stomach and lungs, then spread out to her limbs and every part of her body.

She pushed aside the coverlet, sat up cross-legged, formed a hand seal, stirred the energy of the five elements, and set it flowing through the full celestial circuit within her.

A’Piao did not dare interrupt her and stepped back outside, sending someone to prepare food and drink.

And so, by the time Lang Jiuchuan completed one full circulation of the celestial circuit, steaming soups and broths had already been brought before her.

Lang Jiuchuan looked at A’Piao for a long moment without a word, then ate everything placed before her without leaving a drop.

A’Piao, seeing that her color had improved somewhat, said, “Your soul is incomplete and your body is frail. You need to temper your body — and cultivate inner strength as well. Otherwise, in the future, forget performing divinations — even contending with dangerous demons and ghosts could see you dragged down and defeated by this weak physical form.”

“You’re right. So does Tongtian Pavilion have any inner cultivation manuals suited to me?” Lang Jiuchuan looked at him. “And if there are some top-grade rare and precious materials to be offered along with them, that would be best of all.”

A’Piao immediately grew wary. Trying to get more out of me again?

He squinted at her with the expression of a shrewd merchant. “We do — as long as the price is right, everything is negotiable. Tongtian Pavilion never does business at a loss.”

Lang Jiuchuan truly had no strength left to spar with him any further. She suppressed the questions stirring inside her and said, “The paper I drew — give it to me.”

A’Piao’s expression turned serious. He handed her what she had drawn and asked in a grave voice, “Did you truly glimpse the foreknowledge? Which is to say — that wicked demon will truly come into being?”

Lang Jiuchuan looked at her own drawing. “Heavenly punishment has already descended — how could it be false?”

A’Piao furrowed his brow and looked at the scene on the paper — dark clouds pressing down oppressively, a sky of grim black — as well as the demonic infant crawling out from a woman’s body. “Undying and indestructible, exempt from the cycle of reincarnation — how could such an existence be annihilated? And there are even corpse generals to guard its left and right. The Xuan Clan is going to have to go to tremendous lengths over this.”

If they went to all that effort and then simply absorbed it — that would be the best outcome. The most terrifying thing was if the Xuan Clan became a stumbling block themselves and forcibly kept the demon alive — that would be the real catastrophe.

So many times, the knife that stabs you in the back belongs to one of your own.

Lang Jiuchuan fixed her gaze on that demonic infant. It had emerged from the woman’s body, drenched in red, and lifted its head to reveal a pair of long, sharp fangs and two enormous copper-bell eyes, crimson as blood — seeming to pierce through time and space itself to stare back at her.

“If it is possible, the ideal course is to reverse its fate — to prevent it from being born at all. That is the simplest solution.” Lang Jiuchuan said in a hoarse voice. “So kill the jiangshi first, and all will be well.”

A’Piao looked over at her. “But if you do that, you would have to bear the karmic backlash of heaven’s way.”

Once you alter what the future had ordained would come to pass, she, as the one who had glimpsed the foreknowledge, would be the one to suffer the greatest karmic consequences.

Perhaps it was not fair — but this was the rule of heaven and earth. This was cause and effect.

Lang Jiuchuan smiled. “Yes. But the immense merit that comes with it — that is also mine.”

She would bear the karmic consequence, but she would equally claim the merit — for by preventing the wicked demon’s birth, she would be saving all the living beings who would have died at its hands.

If the merit outweighed the karmic consequence, then she would come out ahead.

A’Piao was shaken to his core. “Is it worth it?”

Lang Jiuchuan was perfectly at ease, utterly unruffled. “What is there to say of worth or not worth? Even when fierce winds arise, one does not abandon the road of life. Since I’ve already borrowed a corpse to return to the world of mortals — isn’t gambling with my life exactly the point?”