The moment the words “declined the marriage proposal” were spoken, even Lang Jiuchuan’s murderous aura, which had been restlessly churning, was pressed back a fraction. Her eyes lit up with curiosity. A declined proposal — could it be that the rejected party was the Rong Family’s Young Lord?

Sure enough, Yangming Zi’s expression cooled slightly. “When two families arrange a marriage, it is meant to forge a bond of goodwill between them, not to create enmity. If the Gong Young Lord has no wish to enter this arrangement, the Rong Family would never resort to pestering them. Why would we speak of humiliation?”

“Good to hear. I was rather worried you might be here to defend your Young Lord’s wounded pride.” Gong Shiliu smiled amiably. “In truth, rumors fade when met with wisdom. Rather than that talk making the rounds, perhaps it would be better for your Young Lord to emerge from seclusion and show his face — there would be no need to use an alliance through marriage to suppress the chatter.”

Yangming Zi’s expression grew increasingly unpleasant, fury kindling behind his eyes.

Lang Jiuchuan and Fuqi exchanged a glance. It seemed the scheme they had previously planned to use against the Rong Family had truly been spread through A’Piao — there was no keeping fire wrapped in paper. The Rong Family was now in urgent need of good news to stabilize their position.

What a delightful turn of events.

Lang Jiuchuan’s murderous aura diminished a little. When her mortal enemy was not doing well, she was doing just fine.

From the corner of his eye, Gong Qi caught Lang Jiuchuan’s expression. He saw the corner of her mouth curve into a smile of smug, scheming satisfaction, and his eyes flickered briefly. She knew about what they had been discussing.

This person was hiding an extraordinary number of secrets.

The Feng Family’s cultivator, Qiu Zhen, then said, “Let’s leave it at that. We are all practitioners of the same path — there is no reason we should be at one another’s throats. We came for the Shaman in the first place. Would you tell us where she is?”

Yangming Zi frowned and glanced at him. Was this really it — their dignity ground to powder and trampled underfoot, and that was just that?

Qiu Zhen gave him a quiet look that said it all: the other party was clearly going to shield her people, and the two Gong Clan youngsters were the same. Pressing further would yield nothing. Especially now that the Rong Family was in a somewhat precarious position — best not to make an outright enemy of everyone. After all, if that rumor about the Rong Young Lord having gone astray in his cultivation and lost his foundation in the Dao turned out to be true, it was far from certain whether the Rong Family could even hold on to their position as the youngest of the Xuan Clan’s great families.

Even the Enforcement Hall itself was the same — once it was absorbed into the Surveillance Bureau, conducting their affairs going forward would no longer be as free and unrestrained as before.

At that thought, Qiu Zhen’s brow furrowed. He raised his head and looked skyward with a sense that the heavens had already shifted. Perhaps the Xuan Clan was on the verge of returning to the true heart of cultivation. And yet, returning to one’s origins was no easy matter. Who among the fellow cultivators would, in this tide of change, hold fast to their convictions and attain the great Dao — and how many would be broken by the wave, tumbling back into the mortal world as ordinary men and women?

Their days of glory would be over.

The words dropped suddenly into his mind, and Qiu Zhen was struck by a wave of cold and melancholy.

Fuqi had intended to bring the Shaman out to them, but then thought of how insufferable the Enforcement Hall’s people had been, and led them directly to the woodshed instead. Sure enough, both men came fleeing back out, retching, overwhelmed by the stench of rot and decay that hit them from inside.

“What is that — why does it smell so terrible?” What was that odor? Part rotting flesh, part waste and filth, part stale and rank and putrid — every foul thing seemed to have been thrown together in one place, concentrated enough to pickle a person whole.

The woodshed door had been opened, and even Gong Qi and the others who had not gone in but were waiting outside caught a whiff. Several of their faces went a shade paler, and they covered their noses and looked toward Lang Jiuchuan.

Remarkable — faced with such a nauseating stench, she had not changed her expression in the slightest.

Lang Jiuchuan had known perfectly well that the Shaman would not smell pleasant, and had sealed off her own sense of smell well in advance. She was not so foolish as to subject herself to that unnecessarily.

“Bring the person out,” Yangming Zi instructed Fuqi.

Fuqi said, “I am not from the Enforcement Hall.”

“You—!”

Qiu Zhen, his face dark, sent two purifying incantations into the shed, then dragged the Shaman — who was barely clinging to life — out of it.

Yangming Zi took one look at the woman and knew something was very wrong. He kicked her face upward with his foot, and seeing her blank, glazed stare — as if her soul had already gone — along with the fact that there was not a whole piece of flesh on her body, he turned and glared at Lang Jiuchuan. “Did you use an unlawful punishment on her?”

“I’m not taking the blame for this — it was a battle of techniques. She simply lacked the skill. That’s all,” Lang Jiuchuan said with a cool sidelong look. “In a battle of techniques, there are winners and losers. To lose is to end up like this. Unlike certain fortunate wicked Daoists who had righteous Enforcement cultivators step in to help them turn the tide — the outcome here is rather self-evident.”

Yangming Zi and Qiu Zhen: “…”

She was absolutely making a veiled dig at them.

Yangming Zi crouched down and forced himself to examine the Shaman closely despite his revulsion. “Even her divine soul has been damaged.”

“Naturally — her life-bound parasite died, and she suffered a backlash. Of course her soul would be damaged,” Lang Jiuchuan said with a cold laugh. “She’s already fortunate to be alive at all. Most people, after suffering a backlash of that magnitude, would be long dead — past any point of return.”

Qiu Zhen asked, “Were you the one who fought her?”

Lang Jiuchuan replied calmly, “I could never presume to such a thing. It was my venerable master who offered assistance from the shadows.”

The expressions of both men shifted through several colors, and they exchanged a glance. That possibility was far more plausible — so what manner of hidden great power was this master?

Gong Qi said nothing to contradict her.

Lang Jiuchuan continued, “I leave the person in your hands. Take her away.”

Yangming Zi said, “What about the person she harmed with her parasite? And how exactly was the parasite removed?”

Lang Jiuchuan’s face showed clear disgust, her eyes cold. “The person is here with me — would you like me to take you to see what that child has been reduced to by her? As for how the parasite was removed — what, are you hoping to steal my master’s lineage for yourselves?”

Yangming Zi was so furious his eyes nearly went white. Why was this woman so infuriatingly deserving of a beating?

Lang Jiuchuan had Fuqi lead them to see Song Yuedie. Once they had gone to the side room, she turned to Gong Qi and said, “This so-called Enforcement Hall — everyone in it is planted there by the great Xuan Clan families to advance their own interests, aren’t they? Looking at them, I wouldn’t exactly call it righteous.”

Gong Qi said with a wry note in his voice, “It falls under the Xuan Alliance and is meant to keep the various Xuan Clan families in check — naturally some people from each family are placed inside. But that is becoming a thing of the past, so the Enforcement Hall’s people are all a bit prickly right now. Bear with them.”

Lang Jiuchuan raised an eyebrow. There was a story behind this.

But seeing her mortal enemy’s representatives looking so poorly — that made her feel considerably better.

When the two men returned with grim faces, Lang Jiuchuan said, “Both honored cultivators have now seen the victim. With your cultivation, you would have perceived what that child has suffered. I have not exaggerated a single thing. This person’s deeds put her beyond redemption — but I am a good person and do not kill indiscriminately. How to deal with her, I leave to you righteous arbiters of justice.”

The two were struck dumb, feeling rather as if they had swallowed a fly. This Shaman — nearly pickled in her own stench — was technically not dead. But barely drawing breath as she was, what was the difference? There was a real possibility she would die in their hands on the way back to the Enforcement Hall. In that case, would they end up hauling around a corpse to bury?

So this whole trip, they had come here to do all the hard, thankless work?

The two Enforcement cultivators gave Gong Qi and the others a long, pained look. They had been walked right into a trap.

But since they were already here, they could hardly claim to wash their hands of it. If they did, everything they had just said about apprehending wicked cultivators and malicious ghosts to set matters right would have no ground to stand on.

The two of them yanked the Shaman up to leave, but Lang Jiuchuan called out from behind them, “That wicked Daoist who fought Red Maiden — surely the two honored cultivators aren’t just going to let him go? He is a wicked Daoist, after all. Whether he truly committed the heaven-defying act of burying a living person alive for a ghost marriage — that can easily be verified. What — is it really so negligible a matter?”

Both men went rigid. Boundless Heavens be praised — there was simply no getting out of this pit.