Seeing that Wen Yue had made up her mind, Lang Jiuchuan wasted no further time. She took out a sheet of yellow ceremonial paper, drew a drop of blood from Wen Yue’s fingertip, dipped it in vermillion cinnabar, and wrote out a petition contract in Wen Yue’s name. Over the contract, she then drew a talisman of declaration to Heaven and Earth.

The mandate of Heaven must not be defied. To forcibly strip away and shatter a person’s fate-pattern would inevitably invite a backlash. If anything went wrong, not only would the one performing the ritual suffer harm — the one upon whom the ritual was performed might, in the lightest case, spend an entire life plagued by illness and adversity, and in the worst case, have their soul annihilated and scattered entirely.

Lang Jiuchuan would not bear too much of the karmic consequence herself. It was Wen Yue who was the mother, seeking to protect her child — and so it was Wen Yue who had to pay the price.

The contract was completed.

Lang Jiuchuan then took a piece of yin wood and carved it swiftly into a small wooden figure. She likewise took a lock of the infant’s hair and her nail clippings, adhered them to the wooden figure, and then used her own essence-blood to write the child’s birth characters upon it.

This followed much the same principle as when she had helped Yang Xiuyong at the Yang Family ancestral graves — she intended to create a substitute figure, defy Heaven’s decree to alter the child’s fate, draw the phoenix back to its nest, and break the noble fate-pattern.

She placed the small wooden figure inside a miniature ritual array, then glanced once more at the swaddled infant. Though she could not know what the future might hold, she was glad to give this child a path different from her own.

Lang Jiuchuan looked to Jiangche. Understanding at once, he leaped to the rooftop, spread his divine sense wide, and stood guard over the ritual for her.

A stick of clear incense was lit. The pale blue smoke rose in a straight, slender column.

Lang Jiuchuan pressed her hands together, forming a complex sequence of seal gestures. She lightly struck the petition contract with her palm and murmured under her breath: “Heaven and Earth shine resplendent, righteous energy illuminates all. By the spirit-treasure’s decree, this declaration is proclaimed to the Nine Heavens… by my Dao, I draw the phoenix home — carrying Heaven’s mandate, I issue this command: Edict!“

From her fingertips, a thread of pure, refined Daoist essence gathered and surged forth — vast and powerful, with flowing light flickering within it, transforming into fine threads of golden radiance.

Wen Yue and the others stood watching to one side, not daring even to breathe. Someone glanced up, and without anyone having noticed when it happened, a mass of dark clouds had begun to gather directly overhead, with flashes of lightning writhing within them.

The mandate of Heaven must not be defied. Even with a petition, to act against the heavens was still to act against the heavens.

Wen Yue’s heart hammered without rest, and a fine layer of cold sweat seeped across her brow. She leaned helplessly against Lang Caining, her strength failing her.

She had come to the Wanshi Shop entirely on impulse. It was Lu Ruiting’s intrusive, clinging harassment that had left her uneasy and agitated, and the restlessness she felt deep within — a desperate, pressing need — had driven her to seek out Lang Caining and ask to come find Lang Jiuchuan. She had thought that Lang Jiuchuan might give her some measure of peace and certainty.

She had never imagined that this one visit would bring her daughter back to her.

She had not yet had the chance to ask Lang Jiuchuan how the child had been found — but it must have taken tremendous effort and painstaking care. And now, to forcibly strip away the curse-fate pressing down on the child, she — as the mother — had her heart cut as though by knives, bearing the weight of that invisible, descending heavenly pressure.

The black clouds gathered thickly overhead.

Lang Jiuchuan extended that fine thread of spirit-fate-essence into the depths of the infant girl’s brow, capturing the pure violet qi that belonged to her phoenix fate. She did not devour or destroy it — instead, she wound her spiritual power around it, thoroughly fusing the violet qi with her own spiritual force, and then drew it out.

Her seal gestures shifted rapidly, and she directed that thread of spiritual power, now fused with the phoenix fate’s violet qi, down into the substitute figure.

But then — the unexpected happened.

It was as though Heaven itself refused to permit her defiance. Just as that thread of spiritual power was about to enter the substitute figure, the dark clouds overhead suddenly split open a seam, and a bolt of white lightning descended from the sky.

Jiangche’s tiger eyes flared wide. He let out a ferocious tiger’s roar, his killing force expanding outward. His great tiger body leapt forward and met that bolt of lightning head-on, swallowing it whole.

In the city of Wu Jing, citizens who happened to look up saw the ghostly image of a great tiger materializing in the sky, and heard that one almighty roar. They gasped in awe and cried out that a divine beast had descended, and dropped to their knees in reverent worship.

Wen Ze barely avoided stumbling off his feet. He stared at that massive spectral figure and swallowed hard.

That was no cat — it was a real tiger!

Meanwhile, for Lang Jiuchuan, the situation had become critical. She watched as that thread of spiritual power suddenly convulsed and rebelled, refusing to enter the wooden substitute — and instead, it was turning back, surging to plunge itself once again into the infant’s brow. Her expression went cold and grim.

Wrapped in her pure Daoist essence, the violet qi had been transformed into spiritual power. It was now far more torrential and overwhelming than the original violet qi had been. If this force plunged back into the infant — a body too young to have ever cultivated, utterly unable to withstand such violent, raging energy — she would certainly be destroyed body and soul, burst apart from within.

The infant girl, as though sensing a terror and devastation unlike anything she had ever known, screamed with every ounce of her strength, her cries tearing through the air. Wen Yue, who had never for a moment stopped watching, felt a blade of agony drive through her chest. A thin thread of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth, and she nearly lunged forward.

“Elder Sister, do not make things worse.” Lang Caining’s face was drained of colour, but she locked both hands around Wen Yue’s arm and shouted, voice sharp with urgency. “To interfere now would only plunge both of them into a desperate and hopeless state.”

Tears streamed in rivers down Wen Yue’s face. She dropped to her knees with a heavy thud, pressed her palms together, and murmured brokenly, “Heaven above — if you are displeased, direct it all at me. If a divine punishment must fall, let it fall on my body.”

Lang Jiuchuan’s mind erupted into action. She sent a burst of Daoist essence onto the infant girl’s body, sealing off the channel and blocking that thread of phoenix fate-violet spirit from re-entering. At the same time, she split off a fraction of her focus and forcibly seized that convulsing force, pressing it down into the substitute.

The violet spirit raged and thrashed. The energy writhed like a cyclone — wild, frenzied, refusing absolutely to enter the wooden figure.

“Since it will not go — why not draw it into yourself?” The water spirit’s voice drifted out from the bone bell. The bell shuddered and trembled, straining against the violet spirit in open resistance.

Lang Jiuchuan pressed her lips together. She released her insistence on the substitute figure, shifted her seal gestures in a flurry of rapid movement, and drew that thread of violet spirit toward herself — with swift, decisive speed, she guided it into her own brow.

The substitute figure would not work — so she would become the vessel herself.

This was also tantamount to seizing another’s destined fate-pattern and drawing it into herself for her own use — a transgression against the natural order that Heaven would not permit.

And sure enough: the moment she drew it into her brow, a bolt of violet lightning also fell from the sky, plunging straight down toward Lang Jiuchuan.

Lang Jiuchuan cast a protective barrier over Wen Yue and the others. In the next instant — five thunderbolts struck her at once. She coughed out a mouthful of essence-blood. The force of the lightning ravaged her entire body, and the violence of it stirred the phoenix fate’s violet spirit into wild agitation throughout her meridians.

“By my life — by the veins of the earth — I bear and carry this fate-pattern. Edict!” She issued a low, sharp command, and channeled the primordial dragon-vein source-energy that had permeated her meridians and channels since her rebirth. She used it to envelop the phoenix fate’s violet spirit — like countless fine threads wrapping around it, binding it inward, fusing together, then refining the fusion further — until at last it was transformed into a true chaos-qi, flowing freely through all her four limbs and hundreds of bones.

Another bolt of lightning fell.

She called forth the Dizhong bell and suspended it above her head. It absorbed every ounce of that lightning’s force, using it to temper and refine the bell itself.

After three bolts of lightning, the dark clouds seemed to be blown apart by an invisible wind and gradually dispersed.

And Lang Jiuchuan — as she guided that chaos-qi to traverse every meridian in her body, the colour of her face shifted like the renowned face-changing theatre art of the Shu region: white, red, violet, and ashen by turns, with blood seeping from all seven apertures.

Lang Caining watched, her eyes turning red-rimmed and burning. Her nose ached with the threat of tears, and great drops fell from her eyes. Where was there any natural-born talent? It was all earned with one’s life.

How could an ordinary person survive being struck by lightning?

Lang Jiuchuan coughed up blood in great heaving mouthfuls — but after guiding that chaos-qi through one full circuit of her body, she pressed it down deep into the cinnabar field at the core of her energy sea. She directed her consciousness inward and looked — and at the sight of that small, slowly spinning vortex of chaos-qi that had taken shape there, she felt a surge of pure joy.

Now she possessed both the dragon-vein qi and the phoenix fate’s violet qi. Together, they would become her power.

Though this had diverged entirely from her original intention, the core essence had not changed. In the end, the infant girl’s phoenix fate had still been broken.

Lang Jiuchuan turned her gaze to the infant girl and said in a gentle voice, “You have given me this thread of violet fate-qi. In return, I give you one thread of protective spirit-force.”

She pressed two fingers together and sent a current of spiritual power into the child’s brow — to ward off all evil and malevolent spirits, to turn misfortune into fortune, and to shield and shelter her through all things.