Lang Jiuchuan suppressed the impulse to reduce Dao Jicang to pieces and looked toward Jiangche. Her voice was ice-cold: “Watch over her!”

In the next instant she whipped around sharply, her gaze locking onto Dao Jicang like spikes of ice formed over ten thousand years. Dao Jicang felt a chill crawl up from the very bottom of his heart under that stare, yet he forced himself to maintain a cold sneer. Trying to catch a mouse while risking the vase — she wouldn’t dare!

Yet under his glare, Lang Jiuchuan’s hands began forming seals at breathtaking speed. Her lips moved through an abstruse incantation. Vast spiritual consciousness mixed with a strand of pure Profound Dark and Supreme Yin energy surged outward — but it did not drive toward Dao Jicang. Instead, it transformed into a small, translucent barrier that separated the world of the living from the world of the dead, a protective dome that completely and utterly enveloped the infant’s swaddling cloth.

Severed from Yin and Yang, as though entering the void — the infant’s spirit, soul, and breath were completely cut off from this side of the world. At the same time, the pact connection between her and Dao Jicang was temporarily severed as well.

“What are you trying to do?!” Dao Jicang startled, suddenly realizing he could no longer sense the link to the infant.

Impossible. This Life-and-Death Pact had been transmitted to him by the Venerable Master himself. How could she possibly have broken it so easily?

Lang Jiuchuan gave a cold laugh. “Life-and-death together? You want to die — then I shall first sever the ‘together’ from your equation. She is inside my domain of floating void, completely beyond your reach. Whatever pain you suffer, whatever injuries you sustain, even your life and death — those will be yours and yours alone. You will not drag any innocent person down with you again!”

Dao Jicang’s expression changed violently.

He attempted once more to sense the infant’s condition, only to find that what had been a clear and distinct pact connection had become blurred and indistinct, until it was completely severed — at which point his expression shifted entirely. This meant that whatever happened to him now, the infant would no longer be affected in any way.

Dao Jicang turned to flee, but he had forgotten that he was already bound — and now his entire vital aura had been locked from every angle by Lang Jiuchuan, without a single blind spot. He could not move.

“You—!”

Lang Jiuchuan curved her five fingers into a claw and seized through the air, the invisible force falling upon Dao Jicang’s right arm and twisting viciously. “This — is repayment for lending your aid to evil, for having the moral depravity to lay your hands on a child!”

“Urgh — AHHH—!” Dao Jicang let out a shriek of the most extreme agony. He felt his right arm seized by an impossibly powerful invisible force that pulled and wrenched it in all directions. Crack, crack — the bones emitted a nauseating sound of shattering, and violent, excruciating pain swept his entire body.

In an instant, all sensation in his right arm was gone. He turned his head to look — it hung limply, like something wrapped in a layer of skin and flesh, needing only the lightest tug to detach completely.

Lang Jiuchuan, however, kept her attention fixed on the transparent barrier she had formed from her own spiritual consciousness. She saw the infant inside shift restlessly, but her expression remained calm. She felt a measure of relief settle in her chest.

It was working.

The corner of her lips curved upward at a sharp angle. As long as it worked.

“Not nearly enough.” Lang Jiuchuan struck with the speed of lightning. The force she deployed manifested as bone-eroding beasts, and each blow landed with the sound of cracking bone or Dao Jicang’s most agonized screams. She returned to him — multiplied a hundredfold, a thousandfold — every measure of suffering that his Life-Sharing Pact had inflicted upon the infant girl.

Dao Jicang was drenched in cold sweat, his face the color of ash, his entire body collapsed like a boneless thing. He stared up at Lang Jiuchuan with bloodshot eyes. “The Venerable Master will not spare you for this!”

“You say that as though he has ever spared me before.” Lang Jiuchuan narrowed her eyes. Before the words had even fully left her lips, she brought two fingers together and drove them with precision into the vital acupoint of Dao Jicang’s elixir field and sea of energy. “I am keeping a running account of what I owe you and yours. This strike — is repayment for the boundless suffering that Wen Yue and her child have endured in their forced separation. Without spiritual power, you will never be able to tear apart another mother and child in this world again!”

Him, the Rong Family Patriarch, the Imperial Preceptor, and all the rest — they were birds of a feather, every one of them. All of them relied on their cultivation to do as they pleased to innocent people.

To fight brutality with force — was that wrong? No.

If Heaven’s Dao would not govern this, then she would govern it herself.

If this world had no justice, then she would set a standard of justice.

Lang Jiuchuan deepened her intent, and a surge of bone-piercing cold Profound Dark True Energy invaded Dao Jicang in an instant — like countless ice needles running rampant through his meridians, bringing tearing, lacerating agony along with the horror of feeling his spiritual power rapidly erode and drain away.

“URGH — AHHHH—!” Dao Jicang convulsed his entire body in pain, tears and mucus streaming freely, his shrieks one after another without pause.

He could feel that his spiritual power was not being depleted — it was being obliterated into complete nothingness, returned entirely to empty void. This meant his spiritual power was being crippled, his hundred years of cultivation being stripped away and pushed back.

Once pushed back to nothing, he would be nothing. Without spiritual power, he would rapidly age and die.

Fear finally surfaced in his eyes. He stared at Lang Jiuchuan in horror. She truly dared to do it. She was using the most direct and most brutal method imaginable to make him personally experience every bit of suffering the infant girl had endured — while simultaneously releasing her own fury.

Venerable Master — why hadn’t the Venerable Master come to save him yet?

Jiangche stood nearby guarding the infant, shooting a somewhat worried glance at Lang Jiuchuan. He feared she might sink into madness and lose her composure — that she might accidentally kill this old Daoist priest in a moment of excess, and then the infant’s life would become truly complicated.

But he did not open his mouth to stop her either. She needed a release. He had to let her work this rage out of her system.

Watching as Dao Jicang — like a mangy dog with a broken spine — lay sprawled on the ground, convulsing and moaning without cease, his earlier arrogance and bluster entirely gone as he lay there barely clinging to life, the volcanic fury in Lang Jiuchuan’s heart finally subsided slightly. She withdrew her imposing aura and turned toward Jiangche.

Now — it was time to deal with the real problem: that damnable Life-and-Death Pact.

She sat cross-legged on the ground, steadied her breath, closed her eyes, and let her fingertip gently tap the Dizhong Bell. She began to work through the method for breaking and unraveling this pact.

Every cause must have its effect — if a pact could be forged, it could be dissolved. However, the process was intricate and complex, requiring a powerful spiritual consciousness to simultaneously stabilize both parties’ souls, to prevent either from struggling during the dissolution process and pulling against each other — which could cause the one breaking the pact to suffer a severe backlash, a loss far outweighing any gain.

Secondly, she would need to sever the cord of karmic fate binding them. The power for this had to be immense and razor-sharp — capable of inverting Yin and Yang, withstanding the pressure of the Heavenly Dao, and severing the invisible line of pact and karma woven through the souls and lifeblood of both parties, only then rendering the pact null and void.

Finally, she would need to immediately nourish and restore the infant girl’s damaged vital essence and spirit — otherwise the child would be left severely weakened from the depletion of her fundamental energy, especially given how young she still was.

This was going to be an extraordinarily delicate operation, one that would drain her own lifeblood and vital energy. Not even the smallest error could be permitted. On top of that it was both laborious and costly in spiritual power — amounting to nothing less than wagering her own life, risking her cultivation against the child’s survival. If something went wrong, the backlash could turn on her and wound her instead.

Thinking of this, Lang Jiuchuan’s aversion toward Dao Jicang and that old fox deepened by yet another measure. She suddenly found herself wondering — could it be that the trap they had set was specifically using this pact to gauge just how far her spirit and soul had recovered, and what level her cultivation had reached?

This thought made Lang Jiuchuan’s eyes fly open. She hesitated.

Before a true battlefield confrontation, no general would stupidly lay out all their strategic plans and troop strength for the enemy camp to see — that would be nothing but a naked exposure of one’s own capabilities.

And on the ground, lying at the edge of death, Dao Jicang watched Lang Jiuchuan’s focused profile. In his eyes, beneath the fear, there flashed a streak of something deeply buried and hidden — a venomous, twisted satisfaction.

When it came to plans within plans, only the Venerable Master could achieve something so flawless.

Lang Jiuchuan suddenly turned her head and looked him over with a sidelong glance. “Was luring me into your trap meant to test my strength?”

Dao Jicang went rigid.