Cui Shi was merely an ordinary noblewoman of a distinguished family. Like many such noblewomen, her life followed the same path — married to an agreeable husband, managing the household and raising children, living in harmony. That was the best outcome one could hope for. She had no great ambitions, no desire to become a celebrated scholar or mentor.

For most of her life she had conducted herself according to her upbringing and the rules of propriety, conforming to convention without question. Her temperament was indeed stubborn, most especially on the matter of her daughter. She had been certain that she had not been mistaken during the delivery — the child she had given birth to had a crescent birthmark at the nape of her neck, a most endearing mark. But the child left beside her had nothing at all. She had not even felt any sense of a mother-daughter bond.

She had believed the child had been switched. She had raised the question again and again, but everyone told her she had seen wrong in her postpartum weakness, and had developed delusions from grief over the loss of her husband. There were times she even doubted herself, wanting to bury that suspicion deep within her heart — but every time she looked at the child, it was as though a knife were carving through her chest. She could not produce a single drop of maternal feeling, and instead was seized by a wave of resentment.

Later, she had even secretly gone to the Tong Tian Pavilion to purchase information, hoping they could help her investigate the matter of the child — whether or not she had truly been wrong. But she had come away with nothing.

The more hopeless it became, the more she watched that child enjoy everything that should have belonged to her own daughter, and her resentment took on a solid, suffocating form — like a possession, making her want to strangle that child with her own hands. Fearing she might truly do something to hurt the child again, when her mother-in-law suggested sending the child to a manor estate, Cui Shi agreed on the spot.

Over these years, she had stubbornly held onto the belief that the child who had taken her daughter’s place did not deserve to live in comfort at her side, and so it was better to keep the child out of sight and out of mind. Because of her unresolved grievance, she had been utterly cold to that child — she had never offered a single shred of warmth, as though only in this way could she feel she had done right by her true daughter.

But what had she done?

The child was indeed not her own flesh and blood. Yet it was precisely because of her cold indifference that the innocent child, on that manor estate, had ultimately died in such a wretched and horrific manner.

How was she to atone for this sin?

Remorse and anguish crashed over Cui Shi like a dark tide. She collapsed to the ground, tears and weeping intermingled, her voice broken and ragged, filled with boundless self-reproach and despair. She babbled in fragments: “It was me. It was all my fault. I failed her, and I failed you. Whether it was you or her, I never fulfilled the responsibility of a mother… it was all my fault. I am not human. It should have been me who died, it should have been me — ah!”

She wept until she could barely breathe, her sobs tearing at the very root of her being. The immense remorse was like a venomous serpent burrowing inside her body, gnawing madly at her organs — the pain was unbearable.

She could not forgive herself, nor could she face this cruel truth. It was her own ignorance and cold indifference, and her self-righteous certainty, that had brought all of this about.

A dark, deathly energy quietly began to seep from her body, rising as if to drift up and settle over her face.

Lang Jiuchuan stood where she was, watching her biological mother collapse in grief and weeping. Her heart was a tangle of complicated feelings. In truth, she held no particular affection for Cui Shi. She had grown up at her master’s side since childhood; all her emotional bonds were with her master and with Tantai Diji. She did not know what a mother’s love felt like.

Toward Cui Shi, she felt sympathy, and she could understand the woman’s stubborn certainty. As for Cui Shi’s cold treatment of her previous incarnation — perhaps only by keeping that distance had Cui Shi been able to bear it herself. Yet Lang Jiuchuan could not truly feel it from within, because an innocent child had been without fault in any of it.

Yet she could not condemn a mother’s love either. What wrong had Cui Shi done in wanting her own biological daughter? That child was the continuation of herself and the husband she had cherished. It was the very core of her life. What wrong had there been in stubbornly searching for her own flesh and blood?

Seeing the death energy that had suddenly begun to stir across Cui Shi’s face, Lang Jiuchuan sighed softly, stepped forward, and pressed her hand to the center of Cui Shi’s brow. That surge of deathly energy seemed to have met its nemesis — it dispersed at once, no longer daring to cling to her.

Lang Jiuchuan slowly crouched down. Looking at her anguished, weeping form, something in Lang Jiuchuan’s heart finally stirred — a faint pity and a bittersweet ache. This was a wretched soul bound to her by ties of blood. Even if she could not feel filial tenderness, she could not bring herself to be entirely indifferent.

“The past is done,” she said. “You need not take all the blame upon yourself. When it comes down to it, what befell me, what befell her, and what befell you and Ren Yao — all of it was the cruel jest of fate. The true culprit is the one who devised all of this. The head of the Rong Family — and even those who harmed her: Xi Yun and those Daoist priests — all have died at my hands. That debt of cause and effect, I have already settled on her behalf. Except for…”

Tantai Qing.

He was the true root cause of everyone’s misery.

Lang Jiuchuan’s voice was calm, as though she were telling the story of strangers. But to Cui Shi’s ears, it sounded like a silent, wordless mockery, and her weeping grew even more wretched.

Lang Dabo, standing to the side, was himself weeping, overwhelmed with grief. He hastened forward and consoled her: “Jiuchuan is right. The one who truly deserved to die is the National Preceptor. He is nothing but a malevolent wolf wearing a human skin.”

Cui Shi’s body stiffened slightly. She raised her head and looked at Lang Jiuchuan through tear-blurred eyes. “You’ve only spoken of that child’s death. But what about you? Since you used her remains to return to the living, your own death must have been—”

She could not finish. She only felt as though her heart were being sawed at with a blunt blade, each breath drawn in agony.

Lang Dabo also looked toward Lang Jiuchuan. Yes — what had she herself endured? To return by such a means, at such a young age…

Tears fell again. He dared not even ask. To have returned in such a way, her previous life could not have been any kind of peaceful end.

She did not die well. She did not die well.

His second younger brother, Lang Zhengfan, had protected the great nation of Da Yan, guarded its people, and distinguished himself in battle again and again. Yet his only child had met such a wretched end. How bitterly ironic was this?

For the first time, Lang Dabo felt a fierce resentment and hatred rise in him toward Da Yan, toward the Tantai Imperial Clan. To let the good die young and undeserving — did it merit our loyalty?

Lang Jiuchuan said nothing of it. “My memories of my previous life only go as far as receiving the National Preceptor’s orders and traveling to Pan City to suppress the rebellious formation array. The next thing I knew, I had awakened in this body.”

The two of them felt their hearts sink.

She was concealing something.

“Is it because you don’t trust us, that you won’t tell us the details?” Lang Dabo felt utterly helpless.

Cui Shi’s heart was wrung with pain. They were the closest of blood kin, and yet there was not a single thread of closeness or trust between them. If that wicked National Preceptor had not taken her away, how could a mother and daughter have grown so estranged? And that child — had she not been taken, would she ever have left her own parents and kin, only to come into Cui Shi’s household and endure years of cold rejection?

The hatred she felt was immense.

In that moment, Cui Shi’s hatred for the National Preceptor surged to its absolute peak. “For the National Preceptor to do such a dark and vicious thing — what was he truly after? If he wanted a disciple, he could have come openly to the household. Why resort to such utterly unconscionable means?”

Lang Jiuchuan replied, “I and the young master of the Gong Family are investigating. You should all carry on as before — shut your doors and tend to your own affairs.”

Hearing this, Cui Shi’s heart sank with grief. Still these words. She was still left to manage on her own, just as before, while they could do nothing to help her.

Knowing the identity of the enemy who had torn a mother and daughter apart and brought her daughter to an early, wretched death — and yet she had not the slightest capacity for revenge.

The more Cui Shi thought about it, the more her hatred consumed her. The heat of blood surged into her head, and with a quiet sound, she coughed up a mouthful of blood — and fell backward in a faint.